The Year of Chasing Dreams (38 page)

He looked up. “Soder! This guy’s name was Roy Soder? Like my grandfather?”

“It is, or was, your grandfather, Jon. Your mother told me some of your family background before she left. And of how you both changed your last name after her divorce.”

He shrugged. “Okay. A weird coincidence. Are you mad because I didn’t tell you?”

“No. But … well, read these entries.” She handed him the most damning of the diaries.

He read, recoiled. “Is this for real? They had an affair and she got pregnant?”

“It’s for real.”

He reread the words, lingered over Olivia’s speculations about the father of her daughter, named Alice Faye. Ciana knew the passages by heart. He set the book aside, stared out at the rain for quite a while, and Ciana gave him plenty of time to absorb the implications of Olivia’s fears.

Finally he turned to Ciana. “So if she’s right, we’re related?”

“Looks that way. Some sort of cousin.” Her voice quavered.

“Who have you told?”

“Eden.”

“Your mother?”

“Not yet.”

He swore, raised himself up to his knees, raked a hand through his hair. “I hardly remember that crazy old man. He ruined my dad preaching his hate about something that happened long before I was born. Dad once told me that the Soders had been screwed out of their inheritance by someone.” Jon shrugged. “I was a kid. I lived in Texas and I didn’t care.”

“It was my grandmother who took the Soder farm over and rolled it over into Bellmeade. Remember the day we visited him in the Murfreesboro nursing home, and the reaction he had when he heard I was a Beauchamp? Now it makes sense.”

Ciana rested her hand on his arm. “It would have been
your
land, Jon. And your mother’s.” She watched his face as he weighed her words. “You could have built your horse-training business on that land.”

“I can build my business back in Texas, Ciana. I wanted to
build it here to be near you.” He studied her. “I know what I want. Question is, what do you want?”

“You.” Her voice shook with the single word. “But … if we’re really kin …” She was scared and felt sick.

“You have me. Always have.”

She couldn’t look him in the eye. “I just never thought us falling in love could become the punch line for a redneck joke.”

“I’m not laughing.”

Emotion filled her throat. She wiped her eyes. “I have to tell Mom.”

“So tell her. We can’t let some long-dead man and woman and what they did together destroy us. If you don’t want to marry me, you tell me. You dump me because you don’t love me, not because of this. I don’t give a damn where either of us came from. Or
who
we came from. This mess is not our fault.”

But blame wasn’t an issue. If they shared bloodlines their marriage could be considered incestuous. The very word made her shudder. The fury in Jon’s voice made her pull back.

When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Is this being-related business going to matter to you, Ciana? To us? You need to tell me now.”

But words stuck in her throat. She felt like she was drowning, like she couldn’t find the surface. The depths of the problem transcended the two of them. It reached to the unborn.

When she didn’t answer, he stood, stared down at her. She desperately wanted to speak to him, say something, but no words made it through her throat. “I guess you’re already telling me how you feel.”

“No, Jon! Wait.” She struggled to her feet.

But he was already down the ladder, and minutes later, she
heard the barn door open and the truck start and drive away. She began to cry, shivering and alone, shell-shocked. A future without Jon was no future at all. She bent, gathered up the books with shaking hands. The nightmare wasn’t over. She still had to face Alice Faye Beauchamp.

Eden sat in the coffee shop with Garret, staring out the window and watching the rain turn a sidewalk into a mini-stream. Together they’d gone to a movie and walked a busy mall, but neither had improved her mood.

“You going to tell me what’s got you snarled up?” Garret asked, following a sip of his coffee.

“It shows, huh?”

“The tornado was more subtle, love.”

Eden sighed. “Trouble for Ciana and Jon.”

“How so? Jon’s happy.”

“He won’t be after today.”

“Talk to me. Hard to be sympathetic when we’re talking in riddles. Besides, my editor’s getting a bit bothered that I’ve been here for months and still haven’t delivered one story about traveling round America with my girl. We need to get on the road. Is this wedding of Ciana’s ever going to happen?”

Eden sighed. “Don’t know.” He looked confused. “It’s a long story.”

He glanced out at the pouring rain. “Looks like we have all afternoon. I’ll buy more coffee.”

When he resettled with the fresh cups of coffee and a pastry, Eden launched into the story of what was now facing Ciana and Jon. She started in the past, with Olivia, Charles, and Roy and finished with her and Ciana’s discussion about telling Jon and Alice Faye. Garret listened, never interrupted,
his features changing from curious interest to a frown to disbelief and shake of his head when she wound down the narrative.

Silence fell between them at the end, held, until Garret said, “I’m gobsmacked!”

Eden hadn’t heard the word before, but its meaning was obvious. “It’s put Ciana in a tailspin too.”

“It’s a pisser, all right. What now?”

“Don’t know. I don’t think Jon will care, but Alice Faye … well, that’s the tough one. She and Olivia were always at odds. Now it makes sense.”

“Poor Mum Alice.”

Eden struggled to hold back tears. “They’re my family, Garret. Ciana and Arie were like sisters. When I was younger, I wanted Olivia to adopt me. Yes, Alice Faye drank, but never in public. She was never hateful to us girls. It was the family’s little secret, hard for Ciana growing up, but in spite of it they were a tight family. I wanted to belong to them. Arie’s family was too big and noisy, but the Beauchamps—well, that was where I wanted to be. After we came home from Italy and my mother left town, when I didn’t have anyone, Ciana took me in and Alice Faye ‘adopted’ me. She’s made me feel I’m as good as her own. Ciana didn’t mind one bit. I think it took some of that being-a-Beauchamp pressure off her. Alice Faye has taught me about planting and gardening and preserving food and baking … all the things Gwen couldn’t manage with her bipolar devils. Mum Alice’s life is simple and now that she’s sober, she talks all the time about being happy. This stuff about Olivia and Roy …” She looked into Garret’s eyes. “What if it destroys her?”

Garret reached over, engulfed Eden’s hand in his. “Don’t like seeing the ones I care about hurt. Especially you.”

“I don’t matter in this.”

“You matter to me.” He scooted his chair around, butted it up to hers, and put his arms around her. “In Australia there are laws about intermarriage. Some relationships among family members can get away with it. Others can’t. All wound up in genetics, with passing on recessive genes.”

“Don’t know what the laws are here.” She leaned into his shoulder.

“I think we should give Ciana and Jon and Mum Alice some space tonight. Don’t you?”

Reluctantly, she nodded, knowing that all the space in the world wasn’t going to change the circumstances if Alice Faye was the child of Olivia and Roy Soder.

Ciana came into the trailer, saw her mother sitting at the small bench table and staring at a bottle of gin. All the air left Ciana’s lungs. “Mama? What are you doing?”

“Thinking hard about how much I want a drink.” Alice Faye looked like a rag doll with hollow eyes.

“Where did you get it? I thought you’d dumped it all.”

“I’d hid it in the barn a year ago. Remembered it just this morning after I read the diaries. Image of the hiding place just popped into my mind.” She snapped her fingers.

Fear clutched Ciana. The gin bottle stood on the table like an accusatory finger. Her mother had been sober for so long, and now it would be Ciana’s fault if she picked up the bottle again. Ciana inched forward, slipped into the folding chair always set up across the table’s bench seat. “Have you—?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Have you called your sponsor?” Ciana reached for her cell. “I can call her.”

“Stop.”

Ciana swallowed bile. She was a child again, scared and afraid, seeing her mother slumped over, drunk. Tears filled her eyes. “Mom, please …”

“Please what? Back off.” Her mother offered a withering stare, making Ciana flinch.

Ciana had brought Alice Faye the diaries right after Jon had driven off, told her mother the marked pages were a “must read.” Self-loathing filled Ciana. “I should have never given the diaries to you.”

“Course you should have. Now I know
the truth
. Isn’t truth supposed to set a person free? I don’t feel free, I feel betrayed. My whole life could be a lie.” Unshed tears gleamed in Alice Faye’s eyes. “How does she keep doing it? How does that old woman keep hurting me? Even from her grave!”

“Your life’s not a lie, Mom.”

“The hell it isn’t! I was a Beauchamp, daughter of—who, Ciana? Who am I the daughter of?” She held out her hands as if balancing a scale. “Am I Roy Soder’s daughter? Am I Charles’s daughter? And who in hell was Roy Soder to make such a mess of things?”

“Mom … don’t …” Ciana pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “She—she never meant for things to go the way they did. It was a bad time for her … those nights he came and stayed. The two of them were a time bomb waiting to go off. There were other diaries. Before the storm—You would see …”

“Well, ain’t that a shame.” Venom filled Alice Faye’s words. “Two people who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”

“She got even with him,” Ciana offered desperately. “She bought his farm for back taxes. She took his land. He never forgave her for that.”

“Not surprised about that either. Olivia’s way. Don’t get
mad, get even.” Silence fell between them. The window AC units hummed in the background, worked to cool the muggy interior.

Ciana searched for a way to build a bridge between herself and her mother. “Roy poisoned Wade against the Beauchamp name too. Jon—” She couldn’t finish.

Alice Faye looked stricken. “She poisoned all of us, didn’t she? Me and you and Jon. I’m sorry, baby girl. You were the only thing I ever did right for her. For me too.”

“I—I can’t help what happened way back then, and how things turned out. Neither can you, Mom.”

Alice Faye leaned back into the vinyl upholstery. “What did Jon say when you told him? He does know, doesn’t he?”

“I told him. He says he loves me, no matter what.”

“This is a real mess.” Alice Faye eyed the bottle, making Ciana’s stomach lurch. “I need some time to think.”

“I … I don’t know if …”

“If you should leave me alone? Afraid I’ll go on a bender?” She touched the bottle. “Guess that’s why I hid it. Insurance against a bad time that might come on me. Turns out, the sky has fallen in.”

“You made it through the tornado. To getting Bellmeade up and going again. You take care of us, Mom. I—I don’t want to lose you.”

Alice Faye studied Ciana. “The tornado didn’t hurt near this bad, little girl.”

Ciana’s chin trembled. Her mother made a dismissal motion with her fingers. “Go on now. Taking this drink is on me. Nothing you can do to stop me.”