Pieces of Sky (49 page)

She stood where the porch used to be, her face lifted to the night sky. Moonlight highlighted her features, gilding her satiny robe in a hazy aura of white. He saw glistening silver streaks on her cheeks and knew she was crying. It weakened him. He had avoided her all day, thinking that would be easier for both of them. But watching her now, he realized no amount of time or distance would ever lessen the pain of this parting.

The saddle creaked as he dismounted. Letting the reins drop, he crossed toward her.

At his approach, her head swung toward him. “I’ve never seen so many shooting stars.”

He stopped beside her. “Saint Lawrence’s fiery tears. Happens this time every year.”

“It’s magnificent. A gift.”

He studied her, battling the urge to wipe the tears from her cheeks, to pull her against him so her soft warmth would fill the empty ache in his arms. “What are you doing out here?”

“Remembering.” She looked back up into the sky. “And listening.”

“For what?”

“The last-time bell.” A small, wistful smile moved across her mouth. “Endings should never come unannounced.”

He waited for her to explain.

Instead, she told him a story about her childhood and an ancient, drooping oak tree that she and her brother, George, had played in one summer.

“We imagined ourselves pirates and knights and highwaymen bent on mischief. It was a lovely summer. Because we were children, we thought those lazy days would go on forever. But winter came, and by the next spring Papa was dead, I was busy tending Annie and Mum, and George had suddenly become the man of the house. We had outgrown childish games.”

She picked up a handful of pebbles and began idly tossing them into the ruined rose bed.

“That summer, lightning struck the tree, splitting it in two. I remember standing at the window by Mum’s sickbed, watching the workers cut it into logs. It took forever. Then one day it was simply gone, as if it had never been. Not even a stump showed in the tall grass.”

She opened her hand and let the last of the pebbles drop back to the ground. “It was quite sad, really. I remember feeling betrayed. Cheated. If only I had known I would never climb those limbs again. If only I had thought to savor those last moments of that last summer. But I didn’t.”

She dusted her hands, then watched a falling star shoot across the sky. “So to remind myself to treasure all the last moments before they’re lost forever, I invented the last-time bell.”

Brady tried to remember the last time he had heard Sam laugh or felt his mother’s hand brush the hair from his brow. He couldn’t. And he determined that this moment, standing here beside Jessica in the moonlight, with the smell of burnt wood and dead dreams swirling all around them, would be a memory he would never lose. “Are you hearing it now?”

“Now I’m remembering. The stars. The sunsets. Our evenings on the porch.” She turned toward him, letting him see the sheen of tears on her cheeks. “You.”

Brady didn’t move, his face a dark shadow beneath the brim of his hat. Jessica watched his fists clench at his sides and sensed he was bracing himself. Against her? How sad if that were so. “Was it real, Brady? Did it mean so little that you could so easily throw it away?”

“It meant everything. It always will.”

“You said you would never abandon me and yet—”

“I’m not abandoning you, Jessica,” he cut in, his voice harsh and low. “I’m letting you go. There’s a difference. And don’t think it’s not the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

The brittle shell of her anguish cracked, leaving her open and exposed. “Show me.”

She watched his chest move as he breathed deep. “I’m trying to do the right thing here, Jessica. I can’t—”

“Please.” She opened her arms to him. “One last time.”

“Jesus, woman . . .” And the next instant he was pulling her against him with such force her ribs ached. “You’re killing me.”

Jessica clung to him with a desperation that robbed her of thought. Weeping with joy and need and a love so desperate it made her tremble, she ran her hands over him, pressed her face against his neck, dug her fingers into his back. If she could have climbed inside his chest, she would have. He was her lifeline, her salvation, everything she would ever need to sustain her for all of her life. “I love you, Brady.”

With a harsh sound, Brady swept her up into his arms and carried her to his horse. He lifted her into the saddle then swung up behind her. Locking her between his arms, he kicked the horse into a lope, away from the ruined buildings and out into the open valley.

Jessica leaned back against him. Lifting her face to the sage-scented wind, she felt time and the past fall behind, until there was nothing but endless open sky, and the drumming of the horse’s hooves, and the feel of Brady’s arms holding her safe.

They rode to a treeless knoll rising out of the valley floor. All around them tall tufts of buffalo grass rippled in the wind like waves on the sea. It was magical, like being on a tiny island awash in moonlight, with nothing between them and the heavens but the wind and stars.

The half moon perched atop the ridges as Brady lifted her down. In silence he cleared a space of rocks and pebbles, then untied the bedroll lashed behind the saddle. He spread it on the ground, then turned and held out his hand.

She walked toward him. There was a sweet solemnity as they joined hands under that vast, star-streaked sky, a sense of timelessness and rightness, as if they stood alone and together before a heavenly host preparing to make their vows. In Jessica’s heart she was already married. There could be no other for her than Brady. No matter what happened after this night, even if she never saw him again, there would always only be Brady.

As he slowly undressed her, Brady didn’t consider the right or wrong of what he was doing. He was in the grips of something beyond his control, beyond his strength to resist. There was just the two of them. No past, no future. Only this time, this moment.

Wanting to give them both a memory that would last through the lonely years ahead, he took his time, gave her everything he could, everything he had. And as she moved above him, her hair a soft, dark cloud streaked by moonlight, her beautiful body silhouetted against an endless spray of stars, he realized never again would anything be as good as loving Jessica, while her tears dripped onto his chest, and the wind whispered around them, and meteors shot in fiery arcs across the indigo sky.

 

 

“I’LL WRITE TO YOU. WILL YOU WRITE BACK?”

They had ridden in an hour earlier and now sat on Iantha’s porch steps, watching dawn trim the morning sky with golden ribbons and gauzy purple clouds.

When he hesitated, she gave him a prod. “You do know how to write, don’t you?”

His mustache lifted at one corner. “And count. All the way to twenty.”

She didn’t laugh, afraid it would come out a sob. She was trying so hard to be strong, but with each passing minute, she bled a little more. Lacing her fingers around her knees, she looked at the stark framework of the new barn. “How long to rebuild?”

“All of it? Years. Decades. Maybe forever.”

She couldn’t bear that, living on dwindling hope for so long. She would wither and die. “Ask me to stay and I will.”

He looked over at her, but said nothing.

Hope died, leaving a hole in her chest where her heart should have been. A distant part of her was amazed she survived the pain of it.

The sun cleared the ridges. A wash of golden light spilled down the east-facing slopes, then raced across the valley floor. When it highlighted the mesquite tree on the hilltop, Brady gathered himself to rise.

That terrible desperation gripped her again, and before she could stop herself, she flung herself toward him, her arms reaching around his neck. “I love you,” she whispered against his bristly cheek. “I will always love you.”

He held her hard against him for a brief moment, then gently pushed her away. He rose.

She thrust a hand into the pocket of her robe and withdrew the piece of paper she had put there the evening before. She pressed it into his hand. “This is my direction. Come to me. I’ll wait a year, no more.” Who was she fooling? She would wait a lifetime for this man.

He stared down at the paper, then with shaking hands, carefully folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He stood for a moment, staring down at the ground. When he lifted his head, she saw that the vibrant light she so loved was gone from his beautiful eyes.

“You were the best thing that ever came into my life, Jessica. Never forget that.” Then he turned and walked away.

An hour later, after a tearful good-bye to the women, she and Adrian left for England.

Twenty-five

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER, NOT EVEN MISERY.

Or so Brady told himself at least once a day those first weeks after Jessica and Ben left. There were no good days, only bad days and worse days, followed by nights so long and lonely he damn near paced a groove in Iantha’s front porch—until Buck got tired of hearing him tromp around and built him a new rocker. But that only made it harder, because all Brady could think about while he rocked were those evenings on the porch with Jessica.

Bad days or worse. After a while they all blended together. Somehow he managed because that’s what he did. He managed. He got by. He persevered. It wasn’t much of a life, but for those first six months, that was how it was.

Even so, progress was made.

Because of the fire, they were able to wrangle an extra week out of the Army so they could round up the scattered herd for their bid on the Reservation contract. That brought enough money to weather in the tack shed, bunkhouse, cookhouse, and several cabins before the first snow.

Elena delayed her trip to San Francisco, hoping the rail line through El Paso or Oklahoma might be completed soon. Doc worried that her hip wouldn’t tolerate a long trip in a bouncing stagecoach. But she was determined that come spring she’d go, whether the lines were laid or not. She still hadn’t told Jack.

In October, Hank spruced up and headed to Fort Union. Two weeks later he returned, empty-handed and untalkative. Brady asked him what happened. All Hank said was, “She married someone else.” Brady waited for him to say more. He knew his brother had no tolerance for weak-minded women, and Melanie Kinderly was surely that, the way she let her mother run roughshod over her. But Hank didn’t elaborate and Brady didn’t push it. He had his own problems; he didn’t need to insinuate himself into Hank’s. But it saddened him that Hank was even quieter than usual and had started growing the beard again.

Weeks became months. Jack continued to talk up Australia and all the things there that could kill you, not including climate or humans. An impressive list. He also spent more time around the compound—especially around Elena. He didn’t seem in a hurry to take off, which was a relief to Brady. Even with winter closing in, there would be plenty of work finishing the inside of the new buildings.

Plenty of misery. too. Soon after recovering from Sancho’s beating, Bullshot had a run-in with a rattler. He didn’t make it and Brady missed him sorely. He wasn’t sure when he’d get another dog.

Bad days and worse days. Brady moved through them in a constant state of exhaustion, because that was his only armor against memories he couldn’t face. If he stayed weary enough, he didn’t think—and if he didn’t think, he didn’t remember. Except at night when he awoke aching from dreams of Jessica.

But things change. Sometimes they get better, sometimes worse, sometimes both at the same time. November sixteenth was both the high and the low point of that fall. That was the day Jessica’s first letter came.

She’d made progress, too. After hard legal battles, the liens against her home were lifted, although the debt remained and had to be repaid. Toward that end and with great reluctance, she began negotiations with the mining consortium.

The rift with her sister was harder to mend. That she had arrived with Ben in tow was a shock. To reveal who had fathered him was an even bigger shock. It drove a wedge between the sisters. He admired Jessica for not trying to hide the truth.

Brady admired her capacity for forgiveness, too. He might be able to carry a heavier load, but Jessica was far stronger than he would ever be.

Her letter indicated she battled loneliness as well. He regretted that. He had hoped time and distance would help her accept the way things had to be.