Hideaway Page 28

  She hugged Blue against her as if she craved the touch of something living and breathing.

  “I’m sorry,” Dane said. “You didn’t want me to preach, and I did it anyway.”

  “Just don’t make me recite a prayer and get born again.”

  “Okay.”

  She raised her hand as if to touch his face, then hesitated and sank her fingers into Blue’s fur once more. “Will you be okay?”

  “I’ll be fine.” He wanted to stay with her, but she didn’t want him here. He had to respect her privacy and give her time to grieve in her own way. And he needed to get to the boys on the island. “You’ll come to Bertie’s later?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll be back to check on you.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Dane?”

  He turned back.

  “I didn’t mean what I said earlier.”

  He frowned.

  “You’re a very attractive man, pushy or not.”

  “Please don’t give up on all Christians just because of the jerks.”

  “I’ll see.”

  Cheyenne meant what she’d told Dane. There was definitely something about him that drew her, and she didn’t think all of it was physical attraction. Not all of it.

  Much of what he’d said made sense. If the words had come from anyone but Dane, she wouldn’t have listened, and she was sure Dane didn’t think she had. How could he know there was a large void inside her that craved a healing she hadn’t found? Was it possible she could find that healing from the God Susan had believed in, and Dane and Bertie and Red? And Ardis and Jim.

  As Dane disappeared over the top of the rise, she self-consciously glanced upward at the cloudy sky. There was no God there. All she saw was cloud, which was water. But beyond that?

  “Are You there?” she whispered. “I don’t know why all these things are happening, and maybe I don’t have to understand. But I need something more.”

  When you seek Me, I will be found. That was what Dane had said. But according to Dane, she wasn’t seeking God as much as God sought her.

  But why would He seek her, of all people? Her name and reputation were being dragged through a destructive legal process. She would never be the same, never be quite as trusting and open with her patients. She would depend less on her clinical skills, and would run more tests, which would increase the patient’s final bill. And for what? To be able to defend herself in court the next time she was sued. In emergency medicine, it seemed as if there would always be a next time.

  “So you see,” she whispered, “I wouldn’t be much good to You the way I am.”

  She lowered her gaze, then turned back to the house, feeling silly. God had more important things to do than listen to her whine about her career.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  On Thursday, the day of Red’s funeral, the parking lot of the Hideaway Community Church was filling quickly when Dane pulled the van alongside the curb beneath the shade of a maple tree. He had all the ranch boys with him. Cook pulled up behind him in his own car with Brian, Wes and David, three young men who had spent a good portion of their teen years at the ranch. Jinx pulled in behind Cook in the rebuilt ’55 Chevy, which Cook and the boys had been working on in the garage for the past two years in all their “spare” time.

  “You sure Cheyenne’s coming in the limo with Bertie?” Blaze asked as he opened the front passenger door and stepped out.

  “That’s what she told me when I called Bertie’s.”

  Cheyenne had spent the past three nights at the Meyer house so Bertie wouldn’t be alone. During the days, the other boys had taken Blaze’s chores at the ranch so he could milk the goats for Bertie while she dealt with a steady flow of visitors who had come from a radius of twenty miles to pay their respects and bring food. Dane was ashamed of himself for being relieved that the date between Austin and Cheyenne didn’t materialize.

  Austin met Dane and his crowd of kids in the vestibule of the church. His son stood beside him, dressed in a suit almost identical to Austin’s. To Dane’s dismay, when Austin stepped forward to greet them, Ramsay pointedly turned away, ignoring Blaze, and stepped to the other side of the vestibule.

  Blaze caught up with him and tapped him on the shoulder. When Ramsay turned, Blaze leaned close and said something. Ramsay shook his head and backed away. Blaze followed, raising his voice. Ramsay shoved him away.

  “Stop it!” he said, loudly enough for the others to hear. “Leave me alone!”

  Austin walked over to them. “What’s going on here?”

  Blaze and Ramsay stared at one another in tense silence, then Ramsay looked away. “Nothing, Dad. We were just having a little disagreement about schoolwork.”

  “School’s out, and you two need to have some respect for the dead.” Austin gave Dane a look of annoyance over his shoulder. “You’d think as much as this town—and especially this church—has done for you lately, you’d care enough to have a little more control over your boys when you’re here.”

  Dane bit back an angry reply as silence descended in the foyer. In seven years, he had never been more aware of Austin’s ugly personal connection to him—and to his wife. All the painful suspicion—the painful knowledge—that he had intentionally stored away in the back of his mind now threatened to spill from his mouth. He bit his tongue. Hard. Austin had changed since then. And he had suffered.

  “Blaze,” Dane said softly. “Let’s go in and sit down with the others, son.”

  For a moment, he thought Blaze was going to argue, but then Bertie stepped in the back door with Cheyenne. It became obvious that several vestibule loiterers had been waiting to greet Bertie, and she was immediately surrounded.

  A soft voice attracted their attention from the entrance to the sanctuary. “Bert? Bertie Meyer?” A small, white-haired lady peeped around from behind Cook, and the boys made way for her.

  Bertie’s face crumpled with tears. “Edith Potts, where’ve you been?”

  Edith crept past the boys and stepped forward to wrap her arms around Bertie tenderly. They held each other and wept.

  “I know he’s where he needs to be,” Bertie said, “but if only I could’ve tagged along.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Edith crooned as she patted and caressed Bertie’s back. “I was gone to my niece’s in Denver, and I just heard the news yesterday.”

  Cheyenne hovered beside them, looking so distracted and uncomfortable that Dane approached her. “You can sit with Cook and the boys and me if you want. We’d love to—”

  “Thanks, but Bertie invited me to sit with her and her nieces and nephews.” She took his hand and squeezed it. “Dane, I—”

  “Ladies,” Austin said in his deepest, most reverent voice as he placed a hand on Bertie’s shoulder, “we’ve reserved a special section at the front of the church for you.” He turned to lead the way.

  Cheyenne squeezed Dane’s hand one more time, then released him and followed Bertie.

  Dane gestured to Blaze, and together they followed the rest of the group inside.

  “You’re not much of a mixer, are you?” Blaze murmured softly as he walked beside Dane.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You no more than get close to Cheyenne when Barlow works his way in between you. I can’t believe she doesn’t see through that guy.”

  “I think she does. Besides, she canceled her date with Austin to stay with Bertie. Now, are you going to tell me what’s going on between you and Ramsay?”

  There was no reply.

  “Blaze?”

  He looked up at Dane as they reached the two pews filled with ranch boys. “First you tell me something,” he whispered. “Do you think I’m the vandal?”

  Dane knew as soon as he hesitated that it was the worst possible thing he could have done. He saw the hurt in Blaze’s expression. “My heart says you didn’t.”

  Blaze slid in and sat down,
leaving room at the end for Dane. He leaned close to Dane’s ear. “When your heart finally convinces your head of the truth, let me know.”

  Cheyenne was helpless against the influx of memories that attacked her when a young redhead man by the name of Lyle “Jinx” Jenkins sang the identical song that had been sung at Susan’s funeral—all about walking and talking in a beautiful garden with the voice of the Son of God in his ear.

  This time she felt a difference, however. What if the words were true? What if there were a few special people who actually knew God the way they said they did? And what if these special people—such as Red and Bertie and Susan and Dane and Ardis and Jim—did exist spiritually in a different dimension, in a place where they could perceive God’s voice, or even His touch? What a difference He would make in their lives.

  Anyone could lie about knowing God, even to themselves. But Cheyenne couldn’t allow them to lie to her.

  As Jinx ended his song, Bertie leaned toward Cheyenne and touched her arm. “That boy always loved Red.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “He even looks like Red used to, with all that bright hair. Red was sure proud of him.”

  Cheyenne was glad Red’s death had been determined to be from natural causes—his heart. The injury on the side of his face had apparently occurred when he fell. The sheriff was still trying to discover who had taken Red to the island and left him, but no one seemed to know.

  Though the lack of a satisfactory conclusion frustrated most everyone else, Bertie didn’t dwell on it. “After all,” she’d told Cheyenne yesterday, “it won’t bring Red back to us. For his sake, I wouldn’t want it to.”

  When the pastor asked for people to approach the microphone and recall memories of Red, Dane rose and made his way forward.

  “Red was one of my best friends,” he began. “He befriended me when I first arrived here, ten years ago, and he and his wife, Bertie, helped us establish the ranch. They’ve been like grandparents to my boys ever since, and we will all miss him terribly.”

  He went on to tell about Red’s history, about the many ways Red had helped friends and neighbors around Hideaway, about the goat cheeses and garden vegetables he had frequently given away as gestures of goodwill, and the many lawns he had mowed for the widows in the town.

  Dane’s attention focused often on Bertie, and then, as if against his will, went to Cheyenne. As he spoke of Red’s deep faith, he continued to glance at her, as if to see if she was listening. She was.

  When Dane stepped down and someone else took his place, Cheyenne glanced at Bertie to see how she was doing.

  Last night, before bed, Bertie had said something that intrigued her.

  “God’s given Red and me a lot more years together than others get, nigh on sixty-six years,” she’d said. “I reckon we’ll recognize each other once I join him.”

  “You truly believe that, don’t you, Bertie?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Believe?” Bertie looked around at her.

  “About Red being in heaven.”

  “Sure I do, but it don’t make any difference whether I believe it or not, the truth’s the truth. It says right there in my Bible that there’s a heaven, and I know Red and I both belong there.” Her eyes teared up, as they so often had in the past couple of days. “Someday soon I hope to join him.”

  “Oh, Bertie, please don’t talk like that.”

  Bertie frowned up at her. “Like what?” She sniffed and wiped away her tears. “Honey, there ain’t nothing wrong with crying over Red’s death, and nothing wrong with looking forward to heaven. I know he looked forward to it. I just miss him, is all.”

  Cheyenne placed a hand on Bertie’s arm as someone else took the microphone to eulogize Red. I miss him, too, Bertie.

  Summer made itself impossible to ignore on the last Tuesday in June, with sunshine that threatened to melt the plastic clothespins on the line out beside the house, and humidity that made even Cheyenne’s thick, straight hair curl into waves. She had promised herself when she first arrived that she wouldn’t use the air conditioner, and she didn’t want to break that promise this close to the end of her stay.

  She was leaving Thursday. The closer the time came, the more her heart ached, and the more she wanted to impress the natural beauty of this place into her memory—even if she did suffer heat stroke in the process.

  It felt good to be able to leave the windows open and feel the fresh—hot, sultry—breeze blow through the house. She couldn’t do that in her apartment in Columbia without the—

  “Stop it,” she muttered to herself. Making comparisons between this place and home only depressed her. This was not home.

  She poured a glass of tea and stepped out onto the front porch. Domestic and wild sunflowers were thick this year, according to Bertie. The yard had obviously been tended in the past by someone who loved flower gardens. The blackberries in the woods were also ripening. She planned to fill a bucket with them before she left, and leave some for Bertie, and take some to Ardis in appreciation for allowing her to heal here for three months.

  In spite of continued grief, Cheyenne knew she was, certainly, recovering from the worst of it. She had discovered that, in the richest sense, Susan’s spirit, as well as Red’s, lived on. If Cheyenne had come here for no other reason than to discover that for herself, this time of limbo was worth it. She avoided thinking about her own mortality. That, she would save for another time.

  Blue scratched at the screen door, and she let him out to join her on the porch, in spite of his tendency to want to snuggle his hot, furry body against her sweaty, bare legs and stick his nose into her tea. She hoped he would adapt well to air-conditioning.

  She had made special arrangements, and agreed to pay a monthly premium, in order to keep a pet at her petless apartment complex. She just couldn’t face the loneliness of that place without the affectionate presence of at least one other living being.

  Blaze had already transplanted her coop of Bantam chickens to the ranch, and Austin Barlow had agreed, reluctantly, to her request that he allow the ranch to have Courage. Dane had convinced Bertie to let him and the boys milk the goats in exchange for a steady supply of goat milk and vegetables from the garden. It was all working out.

  Cheyenne dashed a stray tear from her cheek and looked up at the sound of a motor from across the lake. She glanced at the small Timex watch she had purchased at the general store last week. Blaze was on his way over for a final lesson.

  She had a glass of tea waiting for him when he arrived, and he took it gratefully. He sat down on the steps of the porch and pressed the glass against the side of his neck. He seemed subdued.

  “Is everything okay?” She sat down beside him.

  “Nope,” he said gruffly, not looking at her. “Nothing’s okay.”

  “Has something happened at the ranch?”

  He shook his head and took a long swallow of tea, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Grass is getting deep in the yard again. You want me to mow?”

  “There’s no reason to,” she said. “There won’t be anyone here to see it.”

  “Fine,” he muttered, glaring at the yard as if it had personally offended him.

  “Okay, out with it, what’s on your mind?”

  “You don’t want to hear it.”

  “Of course I do.”

  He gave her a sideways glance, his thick brows drawn low. “It’s all your fault.”

  “Please don’t tell me the chickens are sick.”

  “No, that’s not—”

  “And Courage? Is he okay?”

  “Courage is fine, I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about you leaving and never coming back. Dane’s been moping around the house like the world’s about to end, and—”

  “He is?” She couldn’t imagine why this would make her feel better.

  “And,” he said irritably, “I’m never going to pass my written test for my driver’s license without more—”

  “That’s silly. Of course you’l
l pass it.”

  “And you’re leaving and never coming back.”

  “You just said that.”

  He gave her an anxious look. “You mean you’re really never coming back? Not even for the annual fishing tournament in August?”

  “What tournament?”

  “The one the ranch sponsors every year, the first Saturday in August. Dane calls it our goodwill tournament, to help promote goodwill between the ranch and the town. Come on, Chey, Cook says practically everybody in town shows up for it, and there’s a great prize for the person who catches the biggest fish.”

  “What’s the prize?”

  “Slave labor. Whoever wins gets to boss the ranch boys around all day on any Saturday they choose until Christmas. We mow yards, trim hedges, do dishes, pretty much anything, Dane says. The locals love it.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Do you mean you’ll really think about it, or are you just trying to shut me up?”

  She couldn’t believe she was actually going to miss this kid. “I mean I’ll think about it.”

  “As in, ‘Yes, Blaze, I’ll check with my boss and see if I can get the time off—’”

  “Blaze.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell Dane to put your name down on the roster. Even if you’re just blowing smoke, at least it’ll cheer Dane up.” He finished his glass of tea and set it down on the concrete. “Chey, what do you think of Dane?”

  “I think he’ll make a go of the ranch. Why?”

  He sat for a few seconds in silence. “Well, I’m not playing matchmaker or nothing—”

  “Or anything. Watch your double negatives—”

  “—but you sure would be a nice addition to the ranch, kind of a house mother, and maybe you could also open a clinic.”

  “Oh, Blaze, you too?”

  He shrugged. “Well, but if you married Dane, it sure would put a strain on the relationship for you to be all the way up in Columbia, and him and me all the way—”

  “He and I.”

  “And who’s going to help me get my driver’s license?”