The House Near the River (13 page)

They drove along a neatly graveled driveway planted with lilac bushes, now winter bare as were all of the trees except the pines and cedars, and Angie was reminded of that other drive in Oklahoma through rutted dirt that led to the house where Matthew lived with his sister’s family and felt a pang of homesickness.

She was grateful when the two helpers told them dinner was ready and that for once there were no guests. They ate chicken and dumplings, fresh garden peas, and chocolate pudding before leaving Ivy and Edie to the dishes. Dad gave the two women the next few days off as a reward for all their help, then took David off for his bath.

Angie was left to go to her own small apartment, a bedroom, small living room and bath. She sighed, telling herself now was the time to relax and feel normal. She had resolutely ignored the cell phone that had been restored to her, fully charged, once she’d reached her cousin’s house, not wanting to deal with messages or calls from either officials or a curious press. Now she turned it on, ready to receive her life back again.

She messaged several women friends that she was safely back home and then called Jason and felt a rush of familiarity as his voice sounded, “the long lost is returned.”

She laughed only a little out of politeness. “It’s me, Jason. I’m back home.”

“Can’t wait to see you. I’ll come right out.”

She was so tired, she would have stopped him, but she heard the click of a completed call and knew it was already too late. Anyway it would take him a while to get here, traveling out busy Highway 75 from Richardson, the large suburb just to the north of Dallas.

When they’d first moved out here, the city just north of Richardson had been the jump off to lower population centers, small towns that still had a feeling for the past lay between them and the sprawling city to the south, but in the
intervening
years they’d all turned into cities and the countryside into developments or expensive homesteads. No longer true farm country, a spread of sixteen acres like theirs was increasingly almost too valuable to hold on to, and they were always receiving offers from builders.

Even
the closest town, little Van Alstyne where she’d attended school, was no longer quite so small now that developments were springing
up
around its edge
s
.

All of this made the north
-
south highway between Dallas and the Oklahoma border a very busy strip of roadway. Even on their acreage they heard the roar of passing trucks.

She bathed and changed into familiar jeans and a deep blue pullover, then joined her father in the kitchen where he was putting together a quick supper of scrambled eggs and toast with hot chocolate. David, already dressed in his pajamas, sat yawning at the table. “Shirley Kay,” he said and began to cry.

Clarence and Angie exchanged looks. “His closest playmate,” she explained. “I’m sure he’s confused and missing faces that had become familiar.”

“I know who Shirley Kay is,” Dad responded. “She is my aunt and she lives in
Michigan
and she prefers to be called Kay these days.”

Angie stared at him in bewilderment. “Aunt Kay. I’ve heard o
f
her, but don’t remember ever seeing her.”

“She doesn’t travel. Her health is bad these days.”

Little Shirley Kay. Funny, dad wasn’t asking the questions she’d expected. He seemed to be taking this in stride in an amazing way.

“Her name
was
Harper. She’s not a Ward.”

“Mother was a Harper. She married a Ward.”

And so the Wards took over what had been the Harper farm. She was afraid to ask how that had happened. She might learn things she’d rather not know.

Then the rest of it filled in. Grandma!  Grandma had to be one of them. “But no one was named Rose.”

“The girls all chose to use different parts of their names as they grew older.”

Comforted by marshmallows on his hot chocolate, David began to eat.

“Anna?”

“She was Anna Fay. She became Fay. She died before you came to us.”

Little Anna. Angie felt a sharp pang of loss at news of her death.

“Then Grandma is Sharon, but I never heard her called anything but Rose.”

“Rose Sharon.” He smiled. “Her mother picked it out from the Bible. Rose of Sharon.”

“She was seven. She might have remembered me.”

“She always said . . .”  He stopped suddenly as though wondering if whatever he’d been about to say was wise. “You’ll have to talk to her. She’s been having a series of small strokes, her doctor said. Her memory isn’t what it once was.”

“What has she told you, Dad?”

He met her eyes with his clear gaze. “Practically nothing, Angie.  Frankly I dismissed what she said as the ramblings of an aging woman. Now . . .” He looked at David, his gaze troubled. “Now I’d believe anything you chose to tell me.”

She didn’t ask about Matthew. She was afraid of what she’d learn.

“Angie, we have David back. All we can do now is go on and feel blessed. I’m sure that somewhere your mother knows he’s
safe
and that gives me considerable comfort. My job now is  to look after and enjoy my two children.”

Angie studied him solemnly. “I’m just not sure where I fit in, Dad.”

Before he could answer, a loud knock  sounded at the kitchen door and Jason came in without waiting to be asked, grabbing her up in his arms and whirling her round and round. “You’re back. I’m so glad you’re back,” he shouted.

David was a little alarmed by the presence of a stranger so after greeting Jason, Clarence carried him of to bed. Angie supposed he thought as well that she and Jason deserved privacy for their reunion.

Angie tried to dismiss a tall lean figure with a weathered face from her mind as she greeted Jason. Five years younger than the other man, he ran and biked to keep in good condition, and looked to have a bright future as an attorney. He and Angie had met two years ago at the home of mutual friends
and
started dating casually about a year ago.

One of Angie’s reasons for the weekend in Oklahoma was to give serious thought to his proposal that they move in together.

Like a good lawyer, he started from a defensive position. “Now Angie, I know you’re hacked because I wasn’t in Oklahoma with your dad looking for you, but I had this big case.”

Oddly, she hadn’t even thought about his absence. “It’s fine, Jason,” she said, “I know how demanding your work is.”

Matthew wouldn’t have been able to stay away, not if he thought she was in danger. And his work was just as important as Jason’s, the lives of his family and the animals that depended on him were his responsibility.

Guiltily, she told herself this wasn’t fair. She had no right to compare the two men, to place them side by side in her mind.

This was where she belonged and only a few weeks ago she had been seriously considering some kind of living arrangement that included Jason. She had to get back to the normalcy that had existed then. But then he tried to kiss her and instinctively she pulled away, dodging his touch.

“
Angie,” he said mournfully. “Didn’t you miss me, baby?”

The truth was she’d hardly thought of him. She
couldn’t
admit that. Her women friends all thought she was so lucky to have Jason. He was good looking with his light brown hair and blue eyes, his tall, strongly built frame
, and he was
successful and ambitious. He even had a sexy cleft in his chin and a most engaging smile.

Matthew’s hair was darker and beginning to recede ever so slightly. He was strong from working hard and he probably looked to a future
which
only included more back-breaking work. He didn’t smile a lot and his chin, though a strong one, was just a chin.

Oops! There she went again, making comparisons.

“Of course I missed you, Jason,” she lied.

He led the way out into the entrance hall and on into the public living room. With no guests in the house, they  had that large, comfortable room to themselves. He sank down on a cushiony sofa, patting the seat at his side as an invitation to her.

A little reluctantly, she joined him. She couldn’t help wondering why she’d called him. She was too tired tonight to deal with this. Tomorrow would have been better. She would have been more in her right mind.

The cotton he’d been planting when she’d left now stood several inches above the ground and the days were hot and dry, turning toward summer. At first he’d nearly gone crazy going over and over again those seconds when he’d seen first David, then
Ange
vanishing before his eyes.

They were simply there and then not there. He knew it was no good searching, though that was what he was doing when Clemmie found him and
he
managed to finally get  it said. “They’re gone. David and Ange. They’re gone.”

It hadn’t stopped there. She’d asked where they
’d
gone and why. Who had taken them away that they’d departed so suddenly. She’d only seen them moments before.

Tobe asked questions too. And the neighbors. And other policemen, he didn’t bother to find out who they were or where they came from.

By then he was shaking again like when he’d first come home. He couldn’t look people in the eyes, but stared off somewhere to the right  of their faces while he fumbled with their questions.  He heard Tobe telling Clemmie he needed to be sent away somewhere and should have been pleased at her
adamant refusal
.

Now along with moments where his buddies burned in a
fiery
tank, he relived the moment when David stepped
away
and Ange tumbled after him. He couldn’t sleep, didn’t bother to eat, but then he realized he wasn’t the only one who mattered. Clemmie and the kids, they were dependent on the cotton crop to get them through the next year with any degree of comfort.

The next morning he was back on the tractor when the sun came up and he did that every day until dark when he went in to help with the milking and feeding. He ate enough, the food tasteless as dust in his mouth, to allow his body to keep working and slept when he was so exhausted he could do nothing else.

Now the worst of the work was laid by. In a few weeks they’d start hoeing weeds out of the cotton, but Clemmie and the kids could manage that. Besides last night he’d come up in the darkness of the hallway to hear Tobe and Clemmie talking in the living room at the front of the house, a room rarely used except for rare occasions of formal entertaining.

He heard Tobe ask her to marry him and his sister answering softly that she couldn’t, not right now with the way things were.

So if he left, Clemmie and the kids would have Tobe to look after the place. He and the sheriff had never been exactly best buddies, but he figured he was a good old boy, somebody Clemmie could depend on. He
reckoned
even his late brother-in-law would think she deserved a better life than looking after a crazy brother.

The Nash was the only thing that was his own.  He’d leave his share of the farm, its animals and equipment to his sister and hope that someday his nephew might take over in the family tradition left them by pioneer grandparents and parents.

The next evening after everyone was in bed, he packed his few belongings  in the trunk of the car, took the couple of hundred dollars in cash he’d been saving for what he
’d
hoped would be his marriage to Ange, and leaving a note and all the rest of the money he had for Clemmie, he got in the car as quietly as possible, glided down the driveway and took off with no idea where he was going.

By dawn he was in Oklahoma City and, forced to choose between south and north, turned south and drove through Norman and Noble, then Pauls Valley and Ardmore. He stopped in the Arbuckle Mountains to camp for a couple of days under the shade of the trees that populated this part of the state. He bought bologna, cheese and bread and when that ran out, found a job with a farmer who needed some seasonal help.

A month later, no longer shaking or visibly ill, he said goodbye to the farm family and headed into Texas. He had managed to lock the pain inside him so that on the outside at least he was the strong, stoic man he chose to be.

H
e picked up odd jobs enough to buy food and gas until he reached rich farm country where the cotton was considerably further along than back at home because of the longer growing season. He got plenty of work hoeing cotton, slept in his car and lived like a hobo.

This country was different from home. Instead of small farms worked by the owners,
properties
were larger and labor was hired and fortunes made by the extensive production. The nearest town had three cotton gins and two streets of elegant looking homes built
in the Victorian style
by the previous generation.

One of the farmers
for whom
he hoed cotton saw that he was a hard worker, learned he was a vet, and managed to
find out
something of his background as a cotton farmer. With some indifference, Matthew agreed to take on a job as foreman, overseeing the work of others. With the job came a
small cottage
and better money. He found he enjoyed cleaning up, getting his hair cut and buying new work clothes.