The Comforts of Home (28 page)

As people final y started to get up and dance, Border’s brother came in. Like before, he sat at the bar and ordered one beer. Brandon stil had his construction clothes on. He nodded at a few people, but mostly he just smiled at Border playing away. Beau knew his friend didn’t have any parents, but he sure had one big brother who was proud of him.

When they took their break, Harley brought them food and Cokes. “You boys are getting better. I’m starting to recognize a few songs.”

“Thanks,” Beau said, wondering if it was a compliment or not. Border didn’t seem to care. The steak burgers and fries had total y distracted him.

Brandon Biggs pushed away from the bar and headed over to say hel o, but he stopped when he noticed the man at the last booth.

Beau couldn’t hear what the two men were saying to each other, but it didn’t look too friendly. Final y, the guy with a cast on his arm half stood and took a swing at Brandon.

Brandon ducked, then lifted the cowboy over his shoulder as if he were a sack of grain. With Brandon gripping his good arm, the guy had no chance to fight.

Brandon carried him out of the bar and no one seemed to notice the kidnapping.

Beau wasn’t about to say anything. He had only five minutes to eat before he had to start the next set.

NOAH WOKE UP WHEN REAGAN’S RATTLING OLD

PICKUP turned off Lone Oak Road and hit the dirt trail heading toward the Truman farm. He’d driven it so many times in high school he recognized every bump, and right now every one felt like a hammer pounding in his head.

Only Rea wasn’t driving; she knew when to swerve right or left. For a moment, in the dark of the cab, he didn’t recognize Brandon Biggs. He and Bran had fought off and on for years. Biggs had lived in a few towns around Harmony. They’d butted heads in footbal and during after-game fights.

The strangest thing seemed to be that Bran and Reagan were friends. A mismatched pair if he’d ever seen one. She didn’t come to the middle of the big guy’s chest, but Noah had seen her poking him with her finger and yel ing when she thought he wasn’t listening to advice.

Funny thing was, the big guy always backed down.

Reagan was petite and would probably get carded until she was forty. Bran, on the other hand, must be inflatable.

Every time Noah saw the thug he seemed to get a little bigger. Not just tal er or fatter, but bigger al over from head to foot.

Noah gulped down the need to throw up and said, “She cal you to come get me, Bran?”

“Who?”

“You know damn wel who. Reagan.”

“I haven’t talked to her. I just went in to watch my little brother play at Buffalo’s. Didn’t take much when I saw her truck to figure out you were the one driving it. Since you’re too drunk to drive, I’m just taking you with me while I take her truck back to her.”

Noah didn’t believe Bran. Reagan had been watching over him like a mother hen since she brought him home.

“I’m not staying with her,” he admitted. “I’m just staying out the Truman place.”

Bran smiled. “I figured that out too. She’s got you on some kind of pedestal, thinking you’re a hero, but I’m giving you fair warning: When you let her down, and you wil let her down, I’l be there to catch her.”

Noah thought of slamming his fist into Bran’s smiling face, but either they’d run off the road and hit one of the evergreens old Jeremiah had planted after the prairie fire a few years ago, or Bran would pul up and beat him senseless. Drunk and with one arm in a cast, Noah didn’t think he’d put up much of a defense. In fact, he almost wished the thug would pound on him a while.

“Let me out at the side door.” Noah said. “And much as I hate it, I guess I should say thanks. I would have been real y embarrassed if my sister had stopped me driving drunk.”

“You could have kil ed yourself.”

“No such luck.” Noah climbed out of the pickup and headed up the stairs. He had no idea how Bran planned to get back to town, and he real y didn’t care.

A half hour later Noah stepped from the shower. His body was healing. The bruises had faded and his arm no longer ached, but now he felt like something was wrong with his mind. Any other time, when he had to sit out a while to recover, he’d counted the days until he could go back.

Now, he seemed to be mourning each day as being one less day he could stay here.

Getting drunk didn’t help a thing, not that he thought it would.

He stepped out into the hal way and slowly felt his way to his room. Halfway down, his hand encountered something soft along the wal . Something breathing.

Noah gently felt the body. A mass of curly hair. Short.

Rounded. “Rea?” He was surprised she hadn’t slapped him. He quickly pul ed his hand away.

“I wanted to say something before we both cal it a night, if you’re sober enough to listen.”

“I’m sober enough,” he said.

“About that kiss this afternoon . . .”

“I shouldn’t have done it,” he admitted. In truth he didn’t even know why he had. She’d just asked him what he dreamed about, and she was definitely one of his favorite dreams.

“You’re right, you shouldn’t have kissed me,” she whispered. “I want to give it back.”

She placed her hand on the side of his face and slid her thumb to his mouth. A moment later, her lips replaced her touch and she kissed him.

At first he didn’t react. He couldn’t react. If he’d been less drunk, maybe he would have thought what to do. If he’d been more drunk, he might have just relaxed and enjoyed it.

She ended the kiss before he could decide.

“There,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Don’t kiss me again unless I ask you to, and you’l die of old age before I ask.”

She was gone so fast he bumped against the wal reaching for her.

MARCH 14

SUNDAY AFTERNOON WAS ALWAYS THE SAME.

RONELLE went to church with her mother, cleaned the kitchen after lunch, and slipped into her only pair of jeans and an old T-shirt of her father’s. Dal as usual y commented that Sunday was a day of rest, so while her mother napped, Ronel e did the list of chores Dal as always left taped to the fridge.

When she finished, she settled down at the kitchen table and began a new crossword. Clouds gathered in the sky outside the kitchen window and Ronel e wondered if rain was heading in again. The days were changing from winter to spring, but the air stil had a chil to it.

As the clock struck five, her mother hurried in, re-dressed in her Sunday best. When leaving, Dal as was always in a rush, as if her days were so ful she barely had time to move from one important appointment to another.

“I’d like to take you with me tonight,” Dal as shouted as though Ronel e weren’t three feet away. “But this is an important meeting to plan my high school reunion. If you tag along they’l think I have dementia, like Freda May Wil is.

Her daughter is the only one at the meetings who real y doesn’t belong, but no one says anything because poor Freda can’t remember her own name half the time.” Ronel e put her pencil down and looked like she was listening.

“I have to go or you know al they’l do is talk about me.

I’m sure that’s what they do if I’m late or leave early. I know it even though I let them think I don’t.”

Ronel e was only half listening. In her mind she was reliving for the hundredth time how Marty had kissed her.

“Why don’t you walk down to the diner and get you something? Your cooking skil s are so poor a rat would starve around here if you did the meals. I didn’t have time to even buy frozen dinners yesterday what with my hair appointment. Now with that endless wind my hair wil probably be a mess by the time I get there. They scheduled the meeting al the way out at Hil top Baptist Church and, of course, Betty insisted we al bring a salad. By the time we eat and get the meeting over with, I know it wil be late, but if I miss it they’l screw up this year’s reunion as badly as they did last year’s.”

Ronel e knew better than to do more than nod.

“The walk to downtown wil do you good. You’ve been sitting around al day. Be sure you’re back before dark. It’s a dangerous world out there, Ronel e. You’re lucky you’re not a woman men take a second look at or you’d find out just how dangerous.” Dal as pul ed her lettuce and apple salad from the refrigerator. “Don’t forget to lock the doors when you get home. I don’t want to walk into a bloody crime scene when I get back home.”

Dal as left, stil talking and total y unaware that her daughter hadn’t said a word in two days.

Ronel e thought about putting on her pajamas and eating the last of the chocolate ice cream, but she didn’t want to stay home, and the soup she’d had for lunch had left her hungry. The evening was stil and so cold the bare branches crackled in the old elm trees. She’d enjoy a walk.

She tied her hair up in a knot, slipped her jacket over the white T-shirt and left out the back door. No matter where she walked in town, there was always the chance her mother’s friends might see her and report in, but if she walked the old dried-up creek bed that ran behind her house on its way across town, she could be alone.

Once in a while, when Dal as Logan went to bed with one of her headaches, Ronel e would walk the creek after dark. Then she could hear the music from Buffalo’s Bar and Gril on summer nights, and even cross into the shadows of downtown and window-shop in stores locked up for the night.

She slid down the five-foot slope and felt her feet crunch on long-dead leaves. To her this place had always been like a secret wonderland. She loved the rare times she walked its windy trail while there was stil enough daylight to see al its wonders. Sometimes she’d imagine that she had stepped into the first days of Harmony when the town was little more than a general store and a livery stable. Harmon Ely owned the town and al around. Three men worked for him: a Matheson, a Truman, and a McAl en. Al three men brought their families west, but Harmon’s never came. In the end, when he knew his family wasn’t joining him, the old man left everything to the three families. The creek bed had been a river then. Ronel e could almost feel the ghosts of al those early settlers surrounding her as she walked.

Once she’d found a plate, old and broken into a half dozen pieces in the mud of the creek bed. She’d hidden the pieces away and each time she returned to that spot, she’d stop and put the plate back together like a puzzle she’d worked many times. Somehow the pieces held her to the history of the place.

Ronel e passed the steps behind Winter’s Inn and knew Martha Q had them built so she could also walk the creek bed, but it was far too cold for anyone her age to be out this late. Ronel e assumed the plans for the club Martha Q

wanted to start were stil being ironed out. It didn’t matter.

She couldn’t see herself going, and she knew her mother wouldn’t insist. After al , if Ronel e found a man, that would leave Dal as alone.

When she reached the trees behind the Blue Moon Diner, Ronel e decided to stop in for her dinner. The wind was starting to kick up and she didn’t want to be out when it started raining or got too dark. She was halfway up the slope when she spotted a couple arguing near the back door of the diner.

Ronel e slid back down the slope, kicking up rocks and dirt as she moved. She didn’t want to interrupt the couple.

Retracing her steps, she walked about half a mile and decided to climb up where a smal bridge crossed over the creek bed. The concrete was old and crumbling in spots.

She’d heard the city council arguing about when to replace it, but
later
always got the most votes.

A cloud blocking the weak winter sunset and shadows of trees made it hard to see just where to step or grab hold.

She managed to get to the street and reached for the piping running along the side of the bridge.

Just as she stepped forward, the piping gave and Ronel e jumped up toward the road. Her foot slipped on the crumbling edge of the bridge and she hit her knee hard. A second later she yel ed in pain and rol ed. The stinging on her knee, the roar of a motorcycle, and the screech of tires al blended together.

Ronel e closed her eyes and tried to think of herself as invisible so no motorcycle would find her, but the steady pounding of footsteps coming toward her told her she’d failed.

“Lady, are you al right?” someone yel ed.

It took her a second to remember to breathe. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked up into the face of the tattooed thug she’d seen at Marty’s duplex. He’d shaved his head, making him even more frightening, but up close she saw that he was younger than she’d thought. Maybe only eighteen or nineteen. Marty had introduced him as Border Biggs.