Promise Me Texas (A Whispering Mountain Novel) (30 page)

EPILOGUE

T
HE LEAVES AROUND THE COLLEGE CAMPUS WERE
changing from green to brilliant reds and yellow as Andrew walked beside Levi and Leonard. In the months he’d had them in his home, they’d grown and matured. A sadness had settled over them both when they’d said good-bye to their father almost six months ago, but he’d kept in touch with letters.

“You sure he’s here?” Levi asked. “This isn’t the kind of place my father would be.”

“His last letter said he’d meet us here.”

A thin man wearing a funny hat came toward them. A gentleman with a flair about him.

Andrew smiled. “Professor Smith, I believe.”

Both boys stared for a moment, then ran into the professor’s waiting arms.

Benjamin looked like a man whose heart was exploding with joy. He winked at Andrew. “It took me a while, but with the right papers I’m now teaching here at the college. I have a cottage on campus that will suit the three of us.”

“I’m glad,” Andrew answered. “I’ll miss them.”

Benjamin held his sons. “I’ll read them your stories. I see another collection is due to come out soon. What’s it called?”

Andrew couldn’t hide a hint of pride as he answered, “
Peterson’s Gold.
”

As they turned to walk away, Andrew added, “Bethie told me to remind you to come for Christmas. She’s already planning. Colby, Madie, and the baby will be at Whispering Mountain too.”

Benjamin shook his head. “I don’t know if the McMurrays would welcome me.”

“Of course they will. I’ve already read them a story about a man who loved his sons so much he pretended to be a priest to get close to them. They think you’re a grand hero.”

“Papa,” Leonard said. “Can we go home now?”

Benjamin took his sons’ hands and nodded his thanks to Andrew. “Take care of Bethie.”

“I will.” Andrew turned and walked away, thinking he could just catch the midnight train and be back to her before dawn.

Read on for a special preview of the next heartwarming HARMONY novel from Jodi Thomas

B
ETTING
T
HE
R
AINBOW

Coming April 2014 from Berkley!

CHAPTER 1

June 1, 2013

R
ONNY
L
OGAN CLIMBED OUT OF THE TINY PLANE AND
stepped onto packed dirt as a dust devil danced in the plowed field bordering the Harmony, Texas, landing strip. The legs of her white linen trousers flapped in the wind. She swore she could feel a thin layer of dirt settling over her to welcome her home.

Home,
she thought,
after over a year,
I’m finally back
. She’d returned to face her past and the memory of losing her future along with her one true love.

“Thanks, Derwood.” Ronny glanced at the old hippie of a pilot. His shirt was so spotted with chewing tobacco she thought he might have been wearing camouflage. “When I left Harmony I thought this little plane was a wild ride, but after flying over the jungles of Malaysia, it seemed like smooth sailing. I salute your skill.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Logan. It was a real pleasure to transport a nice woman like you. You was always a pretty girl, but traveling made you downright beautiful. Ever’ single man in the county will be knocking on your mother’s door begging you to go out.”

She nodded a thank-you for the compliment knowing she wouldn’t be staying with her mother, Dallas Logan. In fact, Dallas probably wouldn’t answer the door to the daughter she’d disowned for running away from home at twenty-seven.

“I’m not interested in going out with anyone.” Smoothing her short hair back Ronny wondered if her mother would even recognize that she was forty pounds lighter and what seemed like a hundred years wiser.

Derwood might be twice her age, but Ronny swore she saw him blush as he changed the subject. “I’m sorry to pry. I ain’t used to talking to passengers. My last trip was two crates of prize chickens for the Delaney farm. They complained all the way. If the flight from Amarillo had lasted any longer I’d have had to ring a few necks.”

“I’m glad I missed seeing that,” she said as she looked around for her ride. A strip of dirt someone had scraped years ago and left to dry rock-hard and one hanger built in patchwork style from used lumber were all she saw.

Derwood took the hint. “You got someone picking you up? I could get the truck out and take you the last mile into town.”

A long black Lincoln pulled off the main road and headed toward them, answering his question. Her ride was coming.

Ronny stood frozen in the hot sunshine as the car drew closer. She’d known all year that this day would come. She’d have to step back into her hometown, but not back into her life. Never back into being the shy daughter of the town gossip. Never back into caring so much for the first man who loved her that she wished she could have died beside him.

In the year she’d traveled alone around the world, she’d grown and realized she could live a full life without love or even company. She’d developed skills and learned to communicate in several languages. Surely she could handle the small-town people of Harmony. She had left a few friends here, but she had never been a part of the town and she wouldn’t be now.

All Ronny Logan wanted was a solitary nest to land in for a while. She needed the peace and calmness of this place, not the people or the memories. Her soul was tired. She wanted time to think. Not to dream or to remember, but to plan. It seemed that since the day she’d walked out of Dallas Logan’s house, Ronny had been changing, growing, morphing into someone she never thought she’d be able to be.

A tall, thin man in his sixties stepped out of the car and smiled at her in his polite way. “Welcome back, Miss Logan. I’m glad you’re home.”

She took his offered arm and moved toward the Lincoln. “I expected the ladies at the bed-and-breakfast would have fattened you up by now, Mr. Carleon. A year with Martha Q and Mrs. Biggs and you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Oh, but I have. You won’t believe the strange world I’ve stepped into since you’ve been gone. I’ve even taken up writing my memoirs. I’m thinking of calling it
Adventures in Service
.”

Mr. Carleon took two bags from Derwood and put them in the back of his polished car as he continued: “I followed your e-mailed instructions to the letter. I’ve told no one about your return, but there are lots of people in this town badgering me for news of you. When you’re ready to make an appearance in public, they’ll be waiting to welcome you. Until then, you’ll have your silence.”

“I need time. For right now I don’t think I’m ready to see anyone.”

He nodded as if understanding. She almost expected him to tell her that Marty Winslow would have wanted her to visit her friends, but Mr. Carleon would never be so presumptuous. The old man must be the last of a dying breed. The perfect butler, confidant, chauffeur, organizer. She had no doubt he could run the White House or Winter’s Inn Bed-and-Breakfast with polished skill.

“I thought that might be your wish.” He grinned as if proud he’d guessed right. “Even though I had the duplex cleaned and made sure the best room at the bed-and-breakfast was available, I also leased a cabin out on Rainbow Road. It faces a small lake. There are walking trails probably made by animals coming in to water, a porch swing and no one close enough to see your lights at night. I’ve stocked it with a few basics, but if you’ll call me after you’ve settled in, I’ll be happy to deliver whatever you need.”

“Sounds perfect.” Ronny let out a breath she felt she’d been holding for days. “You’re still taking care of me, aren’t you, Mr. Carleon?” It had taken her a month into her trip to stop being surprised at the depth of details Mr. Carleon had covered. The hotels knew she liked a morning sun window, a shower, not a bath. Fruit was always delivered each evening along with maps and a suggested agenda for the next day. Mr. Carleon was doing what he did best: taking care of people. First Marty Winslow and now her. “Thank you for being so thoughtful.”

“Marty would have wanted me to. He gave me enough stock in his company over the years that I’ll never have to work. I consider keeping up with you as my hobby. I’ve kept every postcard you’ve sent me pinned to a map on one wall of an office I rented downtown. I needed to have somewhere to go every morning. Hanging around the B&B wasn’t an option. It was either cut my own throat to keep from eating all the cinnamon rolls each morning or find somewhere to go. Setting up an office within walking distance seemed the least violent solution.”

Ronny didn’t have to ask why. She knew the owner of Winter’s Inn and could guess. Unless someone had slit Martha Q Patterson’s throat, the innkeeper was probably still talking.

He opened the passenger door for her. “Where to first?”

“I need to pay Derwood for the flight.” She reached for the leather satchel she’d carried through a dozen countries.

Mr. Carleon lowered his voice. “Already drafted from your expense account, miss, and you gave him a very nice tip.”

“Good.” She curled into the car. “Do you think we could drive by the cemetery before you take me to the cabin? I’d like to tell Marty I’m back.”

“Of course.” Mr. Carleon started the car and turned on the same soothing music she had listened to when she’d been driven to visit Marty at the hospital. Those days seemed a million years away.

Ronny closed her eyes and let memories filter into her thoughts along with the haunting symphony that always seemed to be playing in the back of her mind.

Scenes of her life drifted like photos floating on midnight water. The childhood as an only daughter of a mother who wished she’d never been born. The job in the back room of the post office she’d gotten at eighteen so she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. One broken man who finally saw the real person inside her when she was twenty-seven. He’d pushed aside his crippling anger at life long enough to care about her. The memory of his loving touch, still so vivid in her mind that she could almost feel it now. The darkness of his disappearance. His return to Harmony after a year so he could spend his last few days alive with her.

When the car turned into the cemetery, Ronny straightened and shoved a tear off her cheek. She’d carried Marty in her thoughts for a year and now it was time to say good-bye.

His love would always warm her, but today she’d turn off all emotion, all feelings. The wound of losing him might never heal, but she could wall in her heart and will herself never to love again. After today she planned to be alone through life. Never again would Ronny Logan let emotion rule her world.

CHAPTER 2

A
USTIN
H
AWK MAINTAINED HIS PACE THOUGH HIS MUSCLES
ached. Every day he’d go one more round on the obstacle course he’d mapped. One more round, ten more minutes.

As he gulped in air and ignored the pain, the memories of the fire came back to him. Austin never tried to push them away. The knowledge of what he’d gone through was all that kept him alive some days. He’d survived hell and now he’d survive the recovery.

He plowed across the grass and ran through the back door of his grandfather’s house. Three flights up. Three flights down. A sprint to the dock and then back to the swing hidden among the willows.

“Made it!” he heaved as he dropped to the grass, laughing. If anyone ever saw him they’d think he was crazy as a rat left to live in a maze.

Only no one saw him out here. This small lake wasn’t big enough to attract fish, much less fishermen. Twisted Creek, several miles downstream, was a wonderful getaway with huge old trees and a winding, sandy bank just made for vacationing. In the hundred years Harmony had been settled, only three people had ever bothered to build out this far on Rainbow Road.

The Delaneys were the first. They lived in the white house in need of painting. They’d made their living with pecan trees and chickens for as long as anyone could remember.

The green cabin, built halfway around the rim of the lake between him and the Delaneys, had been built by some rich guy back in the forties. The millionaire wanted to live on a pond like Thoreau while he wrote. Only he never wrote. Some said it took the would-be writer a year to drink himself to death. His little cabin on the lake went into an estate that rented the place out now and then.

And the last place—Austin rolled over so he could stare at his grandfather’s sky-blue three story misfit—was simply called the Hawk House. The place looked more like it should be on a coastline with sailboats drifting by, but his granddad hadn’t cared. He said it reminded him of his home in Maine. He even added the widow’s walk around the single third story room.

Austin felt sure his grandfather’s fishing house had the only widow’s walk in the panhandle. Lying in the grass looking up at it, he could almost see a sailing captain’s wife looking out over the prairie as if she could see the ocean a few thousand miles away. “Proves all Hawk men are crazy,” he mumbled. “No wonder I feel so at home here.”

Austin swore. Now he was talking to himself. What next? All he needed was an imaginary friend and they’d lock him up in the same place they finally locked up his grandfather. All the family said he was crazy, but Austin had always suspected he simply got tired of explaining himself and decided to make up his own reality. When they finally took him to the home, he made them bring a van so there would be room for all his friends.

The old man claimed he loved to fish out on this lake alone, but no one in the family ever remembered eating a single meal of freshly caught fish.

Austin drove out here alone and, after staying a week, he could understand why his grandfather had come. The place had a stillness about it. A place where a man could be happy in the company of his own thoughts. A place where he could think about what he wanted to do next without having to listen to others telling him what he should do.

The Delaneys were the only ones who stayed year-round. After the old man went to the home, Austin’s dad, the only child, used to open it in the summer. Most years they were lucky to get away more than once or twice, but Austin remembered those few weeks as peaceful.

He started coming out alone two years ago when he was home on leave. Somehow, it just felt right. Then, after the fire, doctors wanted to put him in a rehab hospital. Austin packed his duffle bag and walked out. He had two months’ vacation and no one could tell him what to do. He ran all the way to the old sky-blue house and decided he’d mend his broken body and mind here by the water. He’d had all he wanted of people and crowds of strangers. For a while he wanted to walk on the muddy beach and know that any footprints there were his.

Rising off the grass, he walked back into the house, stripping off clothes as he moved upstairs. It was almost sunset and he loved watching the light dance off the water. He always ran in full gear just like he’d been trained to do. By the time he reached the widow’s walk on the third floor, he wore only his briefs. His body felt so light he thought he could almost float off the roof.

The evening sun was there to greet him. The colors of the twilight sky did more for him than any antidepressant ever could. He was alive. He’d made it back and, for a moment, that was all that mattered.

As shadows grew, he heard laughter from across the lake. He couldn’t see them, but he knew the Delaney girls were sitting out by the water. He’d never seen them close up, but he liked the way they laughed as he wondered if he even remembered how.

A light from the cabin near him blinked on.
Another person on the lake
, he thought, and like the Delaneys, he had no intention of meeting whoever rented the little green house perched close to the water.