Reclaimed (11 page)

He’d been gone. She’d thought of him as self-serving and snobbish because he hadn’t stopped to welcome her until he wanted to buy the property. All the while, he’d been gone. She’d been entirely presumptuous—a total fool.

Suzanna looked at the floor and swallowed. Andrea was a different sort of woman than she’d ever known. Blunt, but compassionate. Honest, but tactful. She would call things what they were, pretty or not, but she could do it with the kind of grace that left you better, not shredded.

“Anyway.” Andrea patted Suzanna’s shoulder. “All that to say, I’m glad you’re okay with him now. He is my brother. It’d be terrible awkward if you were to loathe him since you and I are going to be such good friends.”

“Are you sure you want me for a friend?” The words slipped out before Suzanna processed them.

Andrea laughed. “Girl, you’ve no idea how long I’ve prayed for a girlfriend to show up down that dirt road. Here you are, neighbor. God’s answer, in the flesh.”

Another answered prayer? Maybe God had aroused from slumber.

Tom had a bonfire crackling in the backyard by the time Paul delivered Kiera home.

“’Night, Uncle Paul.” Kiera moved toward the stairway. She had school in the morning and knew the drill.

“’Night, Keys.”

She paused before she ascended from sight. “Hey, Uncle Paul?”

He halted his steps just before the kitchen. “Yep?”

“I won’t tell anyone what we talked about today, okay? It can be just between you and me.”

His warm grin matched the swelling of his heart. “Thanks, Keys. Just between us.” He winked, and she climbed the remaining risers.

Paul moved past the kitchen, through the dining room, and out the French double doors to the patio. The fire burned orange against the twilight sky, and the air smelled of applewood smoke and hot cocoa.

“Hey, brother.” Dre turned in her Adirondack chair. “Did you keep my girl from falling off?”

“Kiera wouldn’t fall off.” He dropped into the empty chair next to Tom. “And I didn’t let her ride Buck. She’s all in one piece and getting ready for bed.”

Dre nodded. “There’s enough in there for one more mug, I think.” She bobbed her head toward the thermos sitting on the stone fire ring.

Paul poured himself a mug, anticipating Dre’s homemade cocoa, like her tomato soup, a delicious masterpiece. Many years back, before he understood what a gem his sister really was, he’d questioned Tom about building a house with a very large kitchen, complete with an industrial cooktop, twin ovens, and two sinks. Over-the-top. That’s what Paul had called it.

Tom had grinned. “Here’s what I know: it makes my wife happy, and that somehow makes my stomach happy.”

Made all of their stomachs happy. Paul ought to thank Tom when Dre was out of earshot.

“Did you know Mike had been a pastor?” Dre opened a conversation before Paul was done musing. It got his attention.

“No.” A pastor?

“We didn’t either.” She sipped her cocoa.

“Did Suzanna tell you that?”

“Yep, just today.”

Paul scratched his head. The Pickle got more peculiar every day. “How’d that come up?”

“We were talking about her home in Colorado. It just came out.”

“Home?” The fire snapped and Tom shifted the wood with a long stick. “Didn’t seem like it was much of a home from what you said, Dre.”

“How’s that?” Paul sat forward, leaning so he’d have a better view of his sister.

Dre shook her head with a sad face. “I asked if she was able to keep in touch with people back home. She didn’t have anyone besides her sister.”

She exchanged a look with Tom, and he took her hand.

“You’d figure if she grew up there, lived there her whole life there’d be at least one good friend she would still talk to.”

Puppy in a ditch.

Paul’s mind blipped back to the woman he first met. Angry. Maybe she had a reason. More than the legitimate irritation at the fact that she’d been made to feel unwelcome on her own property. Maybe anger covered a deep well of pain.

“Let’s not let that be her life’s legacy, Paul.” Dre leaned toward him, still holding Tom’s hand. “We’re her closest neighbors, and thus far, her only friends in Rock Creek. Let’s show her life doesn’t have to be lonely.”

Paul stared at the flames, tipping his head to acknowledge his sister. He wasn’t focused on the future though. He was too puzzled by her past.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Paul slowed his pickup and turned into the drive. Suzanna’s house was becoming familiar.

He shifted his ride into park and sat deliberating. Eight in the morning was pretty early for calling on a neighbor, but she did say she got up at four. And she made some dang good coffee. Besides, it’d been almost a week since he’d checked on her last. He wouldn’t guess she’d call for help if she needed it. He’d best check.

Cutting the engine, he opened the door. The October air nipped at his bare forearms. Time to pull out the flannel.

What would a city girl like Suzanna Wilton think of flannel? Surely it’d left the fashion world by now. So had cowboy-cut jeans, he guessed.

Did it matter what Suzanna thought? Who cared?

I think Miss Wilton is special
. Kiera and her innocent comments. They’d set his brain off-kilter all week, and somehow Suzanna made it into his musings more often than she should.

He cared, apparently. Truth was he had to force himself away from her driveway for five days straight. It’d been a relief when he discovered his milk was running low. Now he had an excuse to drive her way. If he could only make up one for why he’d stopped.

He was being neighborly. That was why. No need to get all twittered over it. Good grief, what had gotten into him?

Paul flung the pickup door shut with a little too much gusto. His boots pecked at the cracked concrete as he walked to her side door. Surely she wouldn’t expect him to use the front door, would she? Those things were for lost salesmen and determined missionaries.

Suzanna met him at the screen door. Good. They were on a side-door-use basis.

“Hey there, Pickle.” Paul tugged at the brim of his hat. “Was heading into town and I thought I’d stop real quick.”

She smiled, pushing the door wide. “Come in. I was due a break. Coffee?”

He chuckled. “You know the rule.”

“Never turn down a cup.”

Paul nodded as he clomped into her kitchen. Inhaling, his eyes slid shut. Ah, go-mud. Good go-mud. No, he shouldn’t call it mud. Suzanna’s coffee was way too good to be labeled mud.

“I was hoping you’d stop by at some point.” She filled a blue mug and passed it into his hand.

“You could have called.”

Her cheeks turned rosy. “No, it wasn’t important, and I know you’ve got a place to run. A really big place.”

Dropping onto a chair at her table, he pulled his hat off. “Nothing’s so important I can’t help a neighbor. What’s up?”

Suzanna filled her own mug, a cream-colored ceramic vessel with painted leaves scattered all over and the words
grow hope
etched on the front.

She sat across from him. “Two things, actually.”

Paul nodded.

“First, I tried putting that cheater on the gate, but I couldn’t get it.”

“Oh shoot, Suz. I forgot about that.” Dimwit. He’d gone crazy the whole week telling himself he didn’t have a good reason to go over. Here she’d been waiting for his promised help. “I can do it as soon as I finish.”

“No hurry.” She tipped her cup and took a drink. “I’d like to go too.”

Too timid to plunk down to her basement by herself, but stout enough to want to know how to work things. Paul smiled.

“And the second?”

Suzanna scooted her chair away from the table. “I finally started going through some of my dad’s stuff. He had a notebook labeled ‘Rock Creek Property.’” She grabbed a binder from her desk in the front room. “He was looking at cattle. I wondered if you could tell me about them.”

Paul leaned his forearms against the table. “Sure. I’d be glad to.”

He took the notebook and opened the front. Information sprawled over pages printed from Internet sites. Angus, Maine-Anjou, Highland, Hereford, and at least six other breeds were represented in a one-inch-thick stack of papers. Mike had highlighted certain aspects of each breed: benefits in calving, susceptibilities to various illnesses, finishing rates.

“Your dad’s research looks thorough.” Paul continued to shuffle through the pages.

“He liked research.”

“What was he looking for?”

Her brows rose. “I was hoping you could tell me. Dad didn’t do much with animals. He had some when he was younger, but it wasn’t his passion. He liked growing things.”

“Growing things?”

“Yes, growing things.” Suzanna smiled, and it reminded Paul of the first rays of morning sun. “We even had our own miniature greenhouse. He loved the dirt, and anything green that came from it.”

Intriguing. Mike knew exactly what he was doing as he reclaimed this run-down property. All the while his neighbors thought he was on an ignorant fool’s mission. They’d all thought it was a city slicker’s attempt to get “green” in his blood. He’d already had it.

“Did he have any training?”

“His family owned an orchard on the Colorado Western Slopes, and he researched. Like I said, he loved research.” Suzanna sipped her coffee.

An orchard? Mike had lived here for six years. Paul hadn’t known his neighbor at all. “Why did he leave the family business?”

Suzanna traced the wood grain on the table. Her expression seemed distant—sad. “He didn’t plan to at first. He was managing it when he and my mother got married, but I guess somewhere in between my sister and me, he felt called.”

“Called?” Paul yearned to see her eyes. Would they tell him more than her flat voice?

“To the church.” She looked up. A storm brewed behind those blue windows.

Had she hated being a preacher’s kid?

“What happened to the orchard?” he asked instead.

“It was auctioned off. I guess my uncle took over after Dad left. Mortgaged it beyond what he should have to expand and then couldn’t pay when a late-spring frost wiped out an entire crop. Insurance didn’t cover the whole amount of the loss or the loan payments.”

One year? They lost everything in one year? How much had the uncle gambled?

Paul watched her gnaw on her lip. She kept her eyes averted and traced the leaves on her coffee cup.

“How old were you?”

“When they lost the orchard?”

He nodded.

“Two or three. I don’t remember.”

“But you remember what happened?”

“No.” The storm surged in her eyes, and her tone suddenly cut hard. “No, I don’t have any memory of the orchard. My mother told me about it.”

She was angry. Paul tried to put the puzzle together, but there weren’t enough pieces. She didn’t remember the orchard and had no emotional connection to it. Why would something so distant provoke her?

Suzanna pushed a hand through her hair and came to her feet. “Do you need more coffee?”

Subject closed.

“No, I’m good. Thanks, Suz.” He drained the last bit and pushed away from the table. “I can come by this afternoon, if that works better for you.”

Confusion wrinkled her face.

“To put that cheater on the gate?”

“Oh.” Relief smoothed her expression. “Yes, that would work. I should be done for the day by two.”

Nodding, Paul ducked into his hat. “Can I keep this?” He held up the binder. “I can look it over a little more this week. Maybe I can figure out what your dad was after.”

Her smile removed the last trace of anger from her eyes. “I’d appreciate it, Paul.”

Paul stepped out the side door and clomped back to his pickup. Suzanna waved from the screen door as his engine growled and then stepped out of sight as he backed out of her drive. What brewed inside her? A puppy tossed in a ditch. Where was that ditch, and who had done the tossing?

Suzanna dug through the cardboard file box. Memories, long since packed up. Why had Daddy kept them?

A photo album of the orchard. He and Mother appeared together often, teenagers wrapped in the delight of youthful love. A worn hat, pinned with a note.
Fedoras never go out of style
. Mother’s wedding bouquet, shriveled and gray, held together by a faded red ribbon. She’d carried roses. Two dozen long-stemmed red roses. Certainly, Daddy had bought them.

Their wedding picture. Suzanna had never seen it before.

A crinkled envelope stood in the corner of the box, jaundiced with age. It was addressed to Daddy in Mother’s hand and bulged like an overstuffed suitcase. Dare she look? Everything personal and intimate may lie printed on those yellowed pages. The love of her parents, declared in the secrecy of their letters.

A love she’d never witnessed.

Would reading them help her understand?

She began to read, her hands trembling. Pain blended with anger as the pages opened, and words tumbled through her head.

At the age of seventeen, Mother declared undying love. At nineteen, she penned the same commitment, though qualified.

I cannot see myself as a pastor’s wife. Michael, if that is your calling, evaluate it carefully. I was destined for a greater calling than to serve the ungrateful masses of a preacher’s congregation. You know it would not be a life I could endure.

Suzanna’s eyes bulged, and her throat felt swollen. Daddy hadn’t gone to seminary until after she’d been born, but he’d been called as a teenager?

Her eyes burned as she studied the aged wedding photo. Mother’s smile was perfect, set in her flawless complexion. It was a well-rehearsed expression, one Suzanna had witnessed often enough, though never at home. Daddy’s smile reached only to the tips of his mouth. His eyes spoke of a torn soul. Maybe of a poor decision.

Their marriage had been a mistake. The revelation spiraled a new despair in Suzanna’s soul. Did that make her entire existence a mistake as well?

Someone pounded on her kitchen door. She glanced to her watch. Almost two. Paul had come, just as he’d promised. Relief washed over her. His timing was perfect, rescuing her from the agony of the past.

She answered his knock with a smile, and he held up a DeWALT power drill.

“Got that cheater?” He pulled the trigger, and the bit squealed into motion.

Suzanna nodded. “In the garage.” She slipped into her mud boots, which she’d discovered were necessary farm gear, and followed Paul toward the garage. Retrieving the winch system, she pulled it out of the open package. “I had it on, but I must have done it wrong. It wouldn’t tighten like I think it’s supposed to.”

They walked down the road to her south pasture, and Paul took the cheater. He had it positioned and was securing it to the post before Suzanna could fumble with the not-so-informative insert.

“Are you up for a ride this evening?” He finished with the last of the screws and pulled the loop over the post. Stepping back, he let Suzanna close it.

“Horseback?” She cranked the handle, and the gate pulled tight. Easy enough. She’d tried to attach the cheater to the wrong side of the post. No wonder it hadn’t worked. If only the thing had come with decent instructions.

“Yeah.” Paul waited, one hand in his pocket and the other still holding the drill. “Supposed to be clear, I think.”

Suzanna glanced at the sky, pale blue and cloudless all the way to the horizon. She hadn’t been on the horse all week, allowing her backside to recover. Plus, to be honest, she wasn’t sure she could saddle up on her own. What if she put the bit in