Tomorrow's Sun (14 page)

He didn’t have what it took to be a dad. But he didn’t have what it took not to try with everything in him. He turned and walked out through two sets of automatic doors. Yanking open the truck door, he looked down. The backpack was empty.

The cat was gone.

September 3, 1852

“Stay home tonight, Liam. I need you to help with the rendering in the morning. “Mam planted reddened hands on the tie of her apron.

“I have traps set. I can’t leave them.”

“Traps? So early?” She held the speckled blue pot over his cup.

He kept his eyes on the murky coffee swirling like a river current. “Wolf traps.”

Mam made a clucking sound and lifted the iron cornbread pan from the table. “And what are you worried about? That a rabid chicken stealer will suffer if you leave it overnight? Serves it right, I say.”

Coffee scalded his throat, but he couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t take the chance Da would finish in the barn and come in and enforce her request. Not to defend her, but to hurt the son he claimed was not his. Liam smiled but hid it from his mother. With each passing year, Da’s denial grew more foolish. The face that looked back at him from the drinking barrel on a windless day was a young version of Da, but Liam vowed to spend the rest of his life proving any resemblance to Patrick Keegan ended there. And Da knew it. With a brush of lips on Mam’s creased brow, he snatched his coat from the bench and his musket from the hooks above the door.

The fringe on his sleeves slapped his sides as he sprinted toward the woods. He’d tethered Fallon to the apple tree behind the outhouse, though he’d fought for the shelter of the barn when they’d returned from church. Avoiding Da’s distrusting eyes on these nights had become a game. As he tightened the saddle, he prayed this would be the last time then repented of his prayer.
Father, You alone know when this will end. Grant me patience to do Your will. Protect us all this night
.

He rode the three miles to the river in prayer. The sky was cloudless, speckled with stars. Only a sliver of darkness at the edge of the moon betrayed its waning. Still low, it hovered over the pines. Shadows stretched from headstones in the cemetery. The light would make the going easy. And treacherous. A coyote howled. Yelps followed. Liam guessed at least five. Sweat trickled down his sides in spite of the cold.

The hair stood on his arms as he neared town, reining Fallon to a walk. “Whoa, boy.” He spoke as much to his racing pulse as to the gelding. On the other side of the river, lamps burned in two of the hotel windows. He crossed the bridge. Fallon’s hooves echoed like
drumbeats. Just checking traps
. He rehearsed his defense.

A bit early to be trapping, isn’t it? The pelts aren’t thick yet
.

Wolves, sir
. Fear conjured the outline of a gun.
They’ve become a nuisance. I get paid for each carcass
.

The jacket opened. A .45 caliber Derringer glinted in the moonlight.

Get hold of yourself, Keegan
. Liam took off his hat and ran a gloved hand through his hair. God had given His angels charge over his comings and goings thus far. He chastened himself for doubting as he rode silently into the trees across the river from Hannah’s house.

A candle burned in the upstairs window. Her window. But tonight she wouldn’t be sitting at her desk. He slid off Fallon, tied the reins to a skinny birch then hoisted the saddlebags over his shoulders. Did Mam wonder if she was losing her mind when every few weeks a loaf of bread would disappear from the cupboard or a slab of smoked sidepork wasn’t where she’d put it? He hated the deception, but there would be no place for him under his parents’ roof if they thought he sympathized with the abolitionists. If Da knew what he was doing tonight, Liam might well find himself swinging from a limb of the twisted oak that shaded the chicken coop.

He lifted the pine boughs off the canoe then stood still, trying to shake the feeling he wasn’t alone. Fallon’s nicker broke the night silence. And a branch snapped behind him.

N
umbly brushing eraser crumbs off the side of her hand, Emily stared at the empty chair lying on its back, flat against the floor where it had fallen.
Lexi. “Did he hurt you?” Call 911
. The fragments piled one on top of the other, triggering her own haunting memories.

Sierra? Are you okay? Can you hear me? Can you…?
Blood, orangey-red in the afternoon sun, streaked across her forehead, into her hair, and onto the snow. Eyes—brown, dull, lifeless—staring, not seeing.
Sierra!
The scream hurt, ripped along her spine, black lines slithered before her eyes, blocking the sun.

A soul-deep shudder roused her. She pulled her sleeve back from her watch. Jake had been gone half an hour. She stood and righted the chair.

Focus on what you know to be real in the here and now
. Crossing her arms over her chest, she paced to the window then back to the table. Two floor plans lay side-by-side on the table. One professional, the other drawn in pencil on graph paper. One a series of little boxes, the other wide-open and airy. One old, almost unchanged, the other new, innovative.

Was she describing renovation plans or people? She didn’t know all that much about Jake, the professional keeper-of-the-same. Other than college, he’d lived in Rochester all his life. She’d never lived outside of Michigan, so they had that in common. But she’d traveled, seen the world. Had he? A town this size would make her claustrophobic. She craved new tastes, smells, views. The accident had reduced her life to a series of orderly little boxes. It was time to smash some walls.

She looked at her watch. Only four more minutes had passed. What was going on? He’d told Lexi to lock the door and asked if she’d been hurt. Who was after her? Would he call her when he knew something?
Lord, take care of her. Comfort Jake
. The prayer, so much like all the others she’d uttered in the past months, came naturally. Did God tire of hearing nothing but 911 calls?

Rolling her shoulders back, she circled the table, shaking the tingling out of her hands. Damp spots on her sleeves marked the spots her hands had clamped.
“Go to your happy place, Emily.”
She’d laughed every time her therapist said it. No matter what was tearing at her insides, the psychobabble brought a laugh. Leaning her forehead against a windowpane, she closed her eyes.

She had a happy place. And she’d never even been there.

California…Monterey…light and airy…waves hitting rocks… lulling, soothing… Where the blue-dome sky kissed the horizon. Where a beachfront room awaited her.

Someday.

She paced into the kitchen, picked up a handful of almonds. They tasted like river rock. She looked again at her watch.
“God is our refuge and strength.”
The words scrolled through her mind. She needed to know the rest of it.

She climbed the stairs and lifted the lid from the bin that held the letters. She’d arranged them in order on a stack of T-shirts to avoid touching them and reread the words of the letter dated November 3, 1852.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear.” She read the verse out loud.
Lord, be Lexi’s refuge and Jake’s strength
. With an inexplicable need to commit it to memory, she read the verse over, and then again.
“A very present help in trouble.”
From the church pew, she contemplated the iron rods on the wall—converging in the center, flattened at the ends. She stood and crossed the flowered linoleum and stroked the cold metal with her thumb.

Thunder rumbled, rattling the windows, and her phone rang.
B
RADEN
I
MPROVEMENTS
flashed in white letters.

“Jake?”

“Lexi’s okay. She had an asthma attack and she’s in the ER. She’s going to be fine.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah. Hey, I won’t get back to your place today. I’ve got a situation. Lexi’s cat ran off, and I think it’s too scared to go home.” His sigh sent a chill from her earlobe to her fingertips. “I’ll explain that later. But if Lexi finds out I haven’t got the cat, she’s liable to have another attack. I need to hunt it down.”

“Can I help?”

Several seconds passed. “Actually, you could. Do you know how to get to the hospital in Burlington?”

“I’ve got a GPS.”

“Can you meet me near the emergency room entrance in about twenty minutes?”

“I’ll be there.”

Another silence. “Thank you.” Roughened by emotion, his tone sent a shiver down the opposite arm. She set down her phone and found herself focusing once again on the cross.
Lord, protect that cat
.

A smile stretched the out-of-practice muscles at the sides of her mouth. She was making great strides—she’d added two people and a cat to her prayer list.

“Kind of like a stakeout, isn’t it?” Adam bent low and leaned toward the dashboard, gazing at the darkening pewter of the afternoon sky.

Emily turned on the defroster. “We should have coffee and doughnuts like the cops do.”

“I’ve got peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers.” He lifted the flap on a huge camouflage-print pocket near his left calf and pulled out a clear cellophane package. “They’re a little squished, but it’s still nourishment.” A red tab zipped along the side, loosing six impossibly orange cheesy crackers.

Taking two, Emily questioned what nourishing ingredient caused the square to glow in the cloud-choked light. “Thank you. Makes me feel like a kid again.” She scanned the houses on the hill. They were parked across the road from Adam and Lexi’s house, facing west, with a river on their right. “Is this part of the same river that goes through Rochester?”

“Not here. This is the White River. It joins with the Fox and Honey Creek”—he pointed to the northeast—“on the other side of Echo Lake and then flows into Illinois.”

“Wow. You’re a walking Wikipedia.” She pressed her lips together then smacked them. “Sorry. I suppose you get tired of people picking on you because you’re smart.”

“Sometimes.” His head tilted to one side. “People used to call me Encyclopedia Brown.”

“That’s a compliment. Did you read
The Case of the Secret UFO?”

“Yeah. Do you read those’ cause you’re a teacher?”

“Actually, I read that one while I was living at a rehabilitation hospital last year.”

“Jake said you were in an accident. What happened?”

“I was skiing in Colorado. I lost my balance and collided with another skier.”
I shouldn’t have been there
.

“That must have been awful. What happened to the other person?”

“She…lived.”

“Thank God.”

“Yes.” She looked over her shoulder. No cat in sight. “Don’t you think she’d come through the woods?” Adam had picked the spot to wait and watch—their stakeout. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait at your house?”

Adam shook his head, a bit more emphatically than seemed warranted. Dark eyebrows wrinkled in closer to his nose. “Pansy’s a weird cat.” He pointed at the sky over the water. “Cumulonimbus,” he muttered.