One Summer (49 page)

Jeremy leaned closer to press his cheek against his mother’s.

“It was the worst nightmare.” His voice broke and, sobbing, he buried his face against Glenda’s thin shoulder.

“I’ve been having nightmares, too,” she whispered. “Horrible nightmares, about you being trapped in a dark cave and calling to me. I tried and tried to go to you.”

“I was in a kind of cave, and I did call you.” Jeremy lifted his head to stare at his mother.

“Yeah? I kept dreaming you were in danger.”

“I was. You saved me. That bad woman was gonna kill me—”

“That’s enough,” said the nurse. “We don’t want to upset your mother, do we? You can tell her about your adventures later. For right now, she needs to be quiet and rest.” The nurse put a silencing hand on his shoulder.

Jeremy bit his lip. Glenda reached up and pulled him close. Mother and son clung to each other as the nightmare slowly went away.

Outside in the corridor, Tom Watkins scowled at Chief Wheatley.

“You had no right to let these kids think she was dead. They’ve been through pure hell.”

Wheatley sighed. “I told you how it was, Tom. My primary goal was to keep Glenda alive. We couldn’t protect her from everybody in Tylerville twenty-four hours a day for what might’ve been weeks. She was in a coma when we found her, and she stayed in a coma till yesterday, when I’m told she started hollering Jeremy’s name and woke up. If we’d told anybody, especially the kids, that she was alive, the whole town would’ve found out. You know how people are. And there wasn’t anybody, including you, who I wasn’t a hundred percent sure was not a suspect. We had a guard outside her room, but one slipup, and she could’ve been dead for real. Don’t forget she saw the killer.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Seemed like the best thing to do was let the killer think she was dead until Glenda woke up enough to tell us who stabbed her.”

“And did she? Tell you, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah. About this time yesterday. By the time she gave us Kay Nelson’s name, the woman was already attacking Miss Grant and Harris and your boy.”

“Thank God they’re all alive.”

“Amen to that.”

The door to Glenda’s hospital room opened, and Jeremy came out. The nurse waited in the doorway.

“She wants to see the girls and Jake.” Jeremy was beaming even as he dashed tears from his cheeks.

“Mama! Mama!” The three children rushed toward the open door.

“One at a time,” the nurse said good-humoredly. Ashley pushed forward, and the door closed behind her.

“Mama,” Jake said pitifully as he and his sister turned away from the door. His lower lip quivered in ominous warning.

“You’ll both get a chance,” the doctor told them, placing a consoling hand on each small shoulder.

“Mom’s alive, Jake,” Jeremy told his brother. He looked at Lindsay. “Mom’s alive, Lin!”

“That’s pretty great, ain’t it?” Tom Watkins said, smiling.

“Yeah, Dad. Pretty great,” Jeremy answered, and grinned.

Epilogue

“K
ay
was
crazy, wasn’t she?”

“Of course she was.” Johnny took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. Since he’d come zooming to her rescue on his motorcycle, rocketing through the storm at speeds of well over a hundred miles an hour and leaving the police far behind, he had seemed to need to touch her. Even in the hospital under heavy sedation as he was that first night, he had tossed restlessly, calling for her, until Rachel, whose flesh wound had required only outpatient treatment, had come to sit with him. He’d quieted as soon as she’d taken his hand.

The time was two months later, and Rachel stood with Johnny beside her father’s grave. Stan Grant had died that horrible night when Kay had tried to kill them, and the urgent summons of all family members to his bedside was why Rachel had found no one at the house. His passing had occurred at exactly five minutes past six o’clock.

Rachel, at first haunted by the fact that she had not been with him when he died, gradually became possessed of a notion that gave her comfort and would not leave her.

The clock had chimed six only minutes before the branch had blown through the windows and the wheelchair had moved. If that had not happened, Kay would most likely have killed Johnny, and possibly Rachel and
Jeremy, too, before the police arrived. Rachel was certain in her own heart that they had been saved by the spirit of her father, who had passed from this life at almost the precise moment of his daughter’s greatest need. Had he paused on the road of his final journey to save his daughter’s life?

Rachel felt certain that at the end his spirit had been in that room with her.

It was a lovely thought, and Rachel embraced it. It helped her to let go of her father with love rather than grief and turn her focus forward to the remaining days of her own life.

“We can stay in Tylerville a little longer if you want,” Johnny said softly. It was November now, and a definite chill hung in the air. Johnny wore his leather jacket zipped up around his chin, and Rachel’s coat was of heavy wool and skimmed her ankles. The only reminder of his wound—a jagged scar midway up the left side of his neck where Kay’s bullet had gouged his flesh—was hidden beneath his leather collar. Rachel’s own wound was no more than a graze, across the top of her shoulder near where her bra strap rested. It ached faintly in the cold, and she wondered if that ache would stay with her for the rest of her life as a reminder of what she’d almost lost.

“No, I’m ready to go. I just wanted to say good-bye to Daddy first.”

“I wish I could have known him better.”

“I wish he could have known you. I wish he could have been at our wedding.”

They had married quietly, in the living room at Walnut Grove, only the day before. Jeremy was best man, and the rest of the Watkins family, with Glenda in a wheelchair, had been in attendance. When they left the cemetery, they would be heading straight for Colorado, which Johnny had always wanted to see, for a combination driving tour-honeymoon. Rachel’s only stipulation was that
the journey be undertaken by car, not motorcycle. Johnny’s only stipulation was that he drive.

“Johnny, do you think it’s possible Daddy’s spirit saved us?”

Johnny lifted the hand he held to his lips. They had talked about this before, and he knew the idea gave her comfort,

“It’s possible,” he said. “Why not? Certainly something of us survives death, and your father loved you devotedly.” He smiled down into her upturned face, and quoted softly:

“ ‘The countless generations like autumn leaves go by: Love only is eternal, love only does not die.’ ”

“That’s beautiful,” Rachel breathed, turning into his arms, which closed tightly around her. Briefly she was reminded of Kay’s obsession, and she shivered.

“Henry Kemp.” Johnny identified the poet with satisfaction. “Like Robert Burns, he had a hell of a line.”

“Oh, you!” Rachel pulled away from him, but she was laughing. His words had banished the sudden chill.

“I love you,” he said, suddenly fierce.

“I love you, too,” she answered.

Johnny bent his head to kiss her. Then, fingers entwined, they walked together out from beneath the trees overhanging the graveyard into the bright sunshine of a new life.

Karen Robards is the author of twenty-three books. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her husband, their three sons, and a sizable menagerie.