Welcome to Harmony (8 page)

“Reagan Truman?”

“That’s me.” She thought of adding
Almost
, but saw no need to confess to any new crimes. Besides, swapping out her last name didn’t seem like a major crime.

“Mind if we take a walk outside?” the sheriff asked, but Reagan knew it wasn’t really a question.

Reagan followed the sheriff out the door. This made sense. By the time the law finished listing her crimes, they’d be at the police car and the sheriff could toss her in the back.

“I got some bad news,” the sheriff said. Reagan started, not from the words, but from the sheriff’s arm around her shoulders.

“I just came from your uncle’s house.”

“Did he die?” Reagan pulled away from the sheriff.

“Don’t tell me he died.” If he died, she might as well cut herself up in little pieces and market herself on the Internet as a bite of bad luck.

McAllen mistook panic for caring. “No, honey, he didn’t die. He’s fine, but I’m real sorry to tell you your grandmother did pass away.”

Reagan hid her face in her hands, needing time to figure out her imaginary family tree. Her made-up great-uncle was still alive; good. Her made-up grandmother was dead. No news there. Only the town must just be finding out about Beverly Truman. If the sheriff had told Jeremiah, and now was here calling him her uncle, the old man must know she’d lied to everyone about being his niece. Reagan decided she’d been nuts to think he wouldn’t find out, but she had hoped it would be later, not this soon.

The arm of the law came around her again. “I’m so sorry,” Sheriff McAllen whispered. “Go ahead and cry if you feel like it, Reagan.”

Cry! She wanted to scream nonstop. The old man was just starting to like her . . . well enough to grunt at her over breakfast, at least. He hadn’t even paid her yet and she’d worked almost a week. Now, he’d probably have her arrested for impersonating a Truman. One hope flashed through her thoughts: Jeremiah hadn’t told the sheriff she wasn’t his niece. Maybe he was waiting to expose her in front of others, or maybe, just maybe he also wanted to believe in the lie.

Reagan didn’t look at the sheriff as they drove back to his place. McAllen was saying all the things she figured a sheriff would say. Reagan tried to think of where she could go next. Oklahoma City wasn’t an option, and when Jeremiah told the sheriff she wasn’t his niece, staying here wouldn’t be possible, either. Reagan knew that clinging to the hope he’d go along with her lie now was about as likely as trying to convince herself he liked having her around.

She had two dollars in her pocket and nowhere to go from here.

They got to the farm so fast she swore they must have teleported. Reagan kept her head down as she followed the sheriff up the steps where Jeremiah and the fire chief who’d given her a ride out last week were waiting. There was no telling if Truman was furious. He looked angry on good days.

Hank Matheson nodded at her in greeting, but didn’t speak as Reagan passed him and faced the old man. If Hank planned to complain about her not returning his flashlight, he’d have to get in line. A wholesale load of trouble was already headed her direction.

“I’d like to talk to my niece alone.” Jeremiah looked over Reagan’s head at the sheriff and Hank. “You two can take the cart and go see how the apple trees are doing. Hank, I expect your aunt Pat will want some this year as always. I put in a gate in the fence between your land and mine. She’s getting too old to climb over the fence and check on the trees.” He waved them on with one bony hand. “You tell her I’m taking good care, and both of you stay out of the mud where I’m irrigating.”

Reagan fought down an unexpected smile. Jeremiah was treating the sheriff and the fire chief like they were ten years old.

Jeremiah motioned her into the house as the cart pulled away toward the apple trees. For a second she thought about calling them back, but something inside her knew she had to face the old man alone. She owed him that much. He had a right to have his say after what she’d done.

He went to the first room to the left of the front door. It looked like an old parlor Reagan had seen once in a movie set. She’d never set foot in it and, from the layer of dust, she guessed he hadn’t either in years.

He ordered her to open the shutters. “We got some things to straighten out, girl. We might as well do it in the light.”

“Yes, sir,” Reagan said, giving him a mock salute. If she was going to get kicked out, she’d go her own way.

“Don’t get smart with me,” he said as he pulled the cover off an old rolltop desk. “We ain’t got time.”

He sat in an office swivel chair while Reagan fought with the shutters for several minutes. When the room finally flooded with sunlight, she took a seat on the nearest window bench and waited. About the time she decided he must have slipped into a coma, Jeremiah reached for something.

Reagan stared as he retrieved a roll of bills tied with a rubber band from one of the pigeonhole drawers.

He looked up at her and, for the first time, she saw sadness in his eyes. The kind of sadness that made her heart hurt to look at it. She dropped the attitude and leaned closer, recognizing grief so deep he couldn’t speak of it.

No word she could have said would have helped.

Finally, he took a deep breath and cleared his throat. The mask of anger returned to all of his face except his eyes. “I have no desire to go to town and have folks hugging on me just because Beverly died. It won’t bring her back. She was a silly woman who should have stayed here with her family.”

“She wasn’t silly,” Reagan corrected. “I think she just liked her privacy.”

He glared at her. “So you did know her. That much at least isn’t a lie.”

“I cleaned her room at the nursing home where I worked after school and read the paper to her. Sometimes I even read her letters to her. We’d talk about Harmony.”

“She tell you why she left?”

Reagan shook her head. Miss Beverly had been sad, but not lonely. There’s a difference. Even though all her friends were miles away and she only talked to them in letters, Reagan got the feeling she wanted it that way. Beverly had told her once she had a hundred books she’d planned all her life to read. If Reagan had thought about it at all, she probably figured that was why Beverly stayed at a quiet place like the home.

Jeremiah huffed. “She said it was because she couldn’t live with the memories of her husband and kids in town and she didn’t want to live with me out here.”

“I guess you two weren’t close.”

He was silent for a few moments. “I was in the army by the time she started school. When I came home, she was grown and married. We were never close. A part of me still thinks of her as that little girl I’d swing around. We never had much to say to each other after I came home from the war, but she was my sister and I want to do right by her.”

He shoved the money toward Reagan. “You go into town with the sheriff. Buy a new dress for Beverly, a nice one, and order a big bunch of flowers to set on top of the casket. Beverly would like that. Just tell the store to make sure Tyler Wright gets them as soon as possible.”

Reagan almost swallowed her gum. “All right,” she managed.

He wasn’t finished. “While you’re there, you might as well get yourself some clothes. Something nice for the funeral and whatever you need for school. I’m tired of looking at those you got on. I’ve seen refugees fresh off the boat who dress better than you do.”

“But . . .” Reagan couldn’t argue with his opinion of the clothes. They were hand-me-downs from the thrift store. But the money . . . She’d never held this much money in her hand in her entire life.

“If everybody in town thinks you’re my niece, you might as well look like you’re not living on the streets.” He stared at her. “When the funeral’s over, I’ll go into town and set up a few accounts for you so you can charge what you need at the drugstore and that Lady Bug store that claims to have everything females need. I’ll not tolerate excess, but I am aware a girl needs certain things.”

“You’re not kicking me out?”

“You got somewhere else you want to go?”

“No.” She almost added, nowhere that she
could
go, but she figured he already knew that if she was staying here.

“Spend what you need and put any left over back in this drawer along with the receipts.” He pointed at the square little drawer in the middle of the desk. “If you want to air out this room, you can. It’s yours to use if you need it.” He cleared his throat. “Beverly always liked to read in this room when she was a kid.”

Reagan twisted the roll of money in her hand. No one had ever trusted her with a dime. “Thanks for letting me stay . . . Uncle Jeremiah.”

She waited for an explosion, but none came.

He moved to the front door. She followed and they watched a battered old pickup pull up behind the sheriff’s car. “I’m the last Truman,” he whispered, more to himself than her. “If you want to pretend to be family for a while, I don’t mind.”

Reagan shifted beside him, guessing he wouldn’t welcome a hug. “If I go to town with the sheriff, how do I get home?”

“It ain’t that far. I’ve walked it many a time,” he said.

“But, if you want, I’ll drive over about five and pick you up near the post office. We could go to the funeral home and pay our respects. I imagine Beverly will be waiting there by then.”

They walked onto the porch just as Noah “Preacher” McAllen reached the first step. The old dog, who barked at everything, including fireflies, was licking Noah’s left hand in welcome.

“Who are you?” Jeremiah demanded. “Folks are wearing out my road today.”

Preacher removed his hat. “Noah McAllen,” he said. “And if you don’t mind me saying, there’s not much of a road to wear out, sir.”

Jeremiah snorted, and Reagan wondered if that was his idea of a laugh.

“I heard about your sister dying, Mr. Truman, and I’m real sorry,” Noah said. “I want you to know if there’s anything I can do to help . . .”

Jeremiah frowned. “News travels fast.”

Noah smiled. “Cell phones. I called my sister when I heard she’d pulled Rea out of class, and she told me. I came straight over to see what I can do.”

The old man stared, taking measure of the kid before him. “You could drive her to town. She’ll be making the arrangements. I’ve got work here that can’t wait.”

Reagan shoved the money into her pocket, and Noah barely had time to say good-bye before she pulled him toward the truck.

Once they were on the road, an awkward silence rested between them. Preacher looked like he was worried about her breaking into tears. Reagan couldn’t tell him that she’d known Miss Beverly was dead for almost a week.

Finally, she broke the silence. “How come old Dog didn’t bite you? He still looks at me like I’m a burglar half the time.”

Noah shrugged. “I’m good with dogs and babies.”

“Try again.”

He smiled. “I tossed him the last of yesterday’s lunch I’d left in the truck. He ate it, bag and all.”

HANK GRABBED TWO OF THE WALKING STICKS IN THE BACK of the cart and handed one to Alexandra.

She followed along behind him, glad to be away from the scene at the house. “Does your aunt Pat really climb over the fence and steal apples?”

“Yep, and I drive the getaway car. She says they make the best pies in the county. She also considers it her duty to check on the trees now and then to make sure Jeremiah is taking care of things.”

Alex pulled on one of the branches, feeling it give in her hand even though it looked dead with winter.

“Now if you’d like to join the thieving come spring,” Hank said, “you have to do it right, so listen to the rules. Only get the ones on the ground. Aunt Pat says then it’s not stealing, it’s retrieving.”

Alex laughed at the thought of Hank’s eighty-year-old aunt stealing apples. “You know I could arrest her for it whether she’s picking or lifting.”

“Go ahead,” he said as if he meant it. “One less woman at my ranch would suit me fine. I got my mom, two widowed great-aunts, two divorced sisters, and a four-year-old fairy princess. I haven’t said a word at the dinner table in five years.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. She almost felt sorry for him. No wonder he spent so much time at the fire station. The old family ranch had been his unofficially since he turned eighteen, but his mother had always lived there. When Hank’s two great-aunts retired from teaching school years ago, they moved in. Then Hank’s sisters came home a few months ago, both broken from divorces. She couldn’t imagine how Hank handled them all. Two old women, two divorced women, a mother who thought of herself as an artist, and a four-year-old niece too ill to walk.

When Alex looked up, he was smiling. She’d almost forgotten what he looked like when he smiled.

“Arrest them all,” he said. “I could use the silence. Aunt Pat may steal them, but Aunt Fat eats them.”

Alex laughed. Hank had always called his two great-aunts Pat and Fat, even though his aunt Fat was thin. She’d known the two old ladies all her life and had no idea what their first names were. When they’d taught they’d both been called Miss Matheson.

“How long have you been helping your aunt in these robberies?” She pointed a finger at him.