Redemption (21 page)

As she disconnected, she thought about Pamela Chandler. The woman had been so wrong for Frank. Pamela hated the ranch, didn’t ride, didn’t even eat beef.

Nettie had suspected, even though it had been years after her own marriage, that Frank had wed on the rebound. He never seemed happy when he stopped in the store. The divorce and Pam’s leaving seemed to free him. He’d perked up after that, even though he’d never married again.

Now she was sorry she hadn’t been the one to give him a child. Tiffany could have been the daughter they raised together.

Just the thought choked her up and brought burning tears to her eyes. She hurriedly brushed them away.

She and Frank had made their beds all those years ago and now they had to sleep in them, alone and full of regrets.

For a while, she’d hoped that with Bob gone, she and Frank might finally have a second chance. But as Tiffany drove up in front of the store, Nettie watched her with a growing sense of loss. It was as if the girl had killed any hope of her and Frank finding their way back to each other again.

* * *

L
ORALEE
C
LARK WAS
dusty, dirty and exhausted, but there was still one old box of photographs she hadn’t gone through.

She was also hungry and wished she’d thought to eat something. But she couldn’t stop now. Weary, she dragged the last box over to the rocker, and with much less enthusiasm than when she’d started, began to go through it.

The snapshot was at the bottom of the box. The moment she saw it, her pulse drummed in her ears. With trembling fingers she picked it up, torn between despair and a surge of self-satisfaction that made her want to snatch up the stupid cell phone, call her daughter and say, “I told you so.”

She knew she recognized Kate LaFond. And now she knew why that memory came with such a sense of sorrow.

Kate LaFond looked just like her mother had when she was young.

Gripping the photo in her fingers, she went into the kitchen where the light was better. The trees now obscured her view of the hollow back into the Crazies.

But thirty-odd years ago, she’d been able to see the house’s chimney from her kitchen window. Just as she’d been able to see Teeny the few times she had sneaked down to the house for a quick cup of coffee or just a short visit while Loralee hung clothes or washed windows.

It had been years since she’d thought about the people who lived up in that hollow. But she never forgot a face, she thought as she looked again at the photograph. She’d taken the snapshot the day the woman had stolen down while her husband had gone into town.

“I wanted to show you my baby girl,” she’d said.

Loralee had stared down at the precious newborn. So tiny. So sweet. “She looks just like you. She has your heart-shaped face.”

Teeny had beamed. She was smiling in the photo as she held her precious baby daughter out by the lilac hedge in Loralee’s backyard. But the moment the photograph was snapped, Teeny had looked worried.

“My husband wouldn’t like this,” she’d said.

“Your husband will never see it. But years from now you might want to come take a look at it,” Loralee had said right before she’d snapped the photo.

Loralee had forgotten about the roll of film and hadn’t had it developed until over a year later. Too late for Teeny to see the photo.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

W
HEN THE RESULTS
of the hospital tests came back, Kate walked down to Claude’s room to find him lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said as she came into the room, closing the door behind her.

“Something new for you?”

He smiled at that and she could see he was feeling better.

“I have some good news,” she said. “I’m not a match. I’m a perfect match.” She saw his relief though he tried hard to hide it.

“I’m glad you’re my daughter and that you now have no doubts about that, but I don’t want you to do this. This is major surgery. I’ve already lived my life. You haven’t. I won’t take a chance with yours.”

“I talked to the doctor. It’s a piece of cake. You’ll have to take anti-rejection pills, but he is very optimistic that because my liver is a perfect match, you won’t reject it.”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, his voice small.

“For the café. What else could it be?”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I would think you would hate me for not showing up in your life sooner. For waiting until I needed you before I told you that I’m your father.”

“Harvey Logan was my father.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you had him.”

She heard something in his voice and let out a sigh. “That was your doing, too?”

Claude gave her a small smile. “I had to pull a few strings but my best friend is a lawyer. I knew Harvey and his wife, Meg, desperately wanted a baby and that they were good people.”

“You could have kept me.”

He laughed at that. “An old sickly bachelor who lived over a café in the middle of nowhere?” He shook his head. “I did what I could for you. I had no idea Meg would die so young or that that fool Harvey would drag you around the country, looking for lost treasure. I blame myself.”

“Why would you?”

He laughed softly. “I was the one who got Harvey hooked on it. There’s so much I need to tell you.” He looked pale again and she could see he was fighting exhaustion.

“First we’ll get you well, then you can tell me everything,” she said. “You can tell me about my mother and why the two of you didn’t run away together.”

He nodded, his face seeming to age with sadness.

* * *

L
ORALEE
C
LARK STOOD
for a long time looking out her kitchen window and remembering the day Teeny Ackermann’s life ended up in that hollow—and the horrible sense of guilt she’d felt.

The woman needed your help and the best you could do was take a picture of her and her baby girl?

She’d gone to the sheriff, hadn’t she? She’d tried to save the poor girl. At least her daughter had survived, apparently.

If Kate LaFond really is the baby in the photo
.

“She is,” Loralee said to her empty house. Out the window, she saw something that made her squint. Lights up in that hollow. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen them lately.

In that instant, she knew what she had to do. She looked around for her walking shoes as she tried to tell herself she’d done everything she could back then. Even thirty years ago, people kept their noses out of other people’s marriages. She remembered mentioning Teeny to her husband, Maynard.

“I wouldn’t go trying to forge a friendship. Not with Cull Ackermann’s wife,” he’d said, not looking up from his meal.

“I feel sorry for her. The way her husband treats her just makes me...”

His head jerked up, his soup spoon in hand, stilling the rest of her words. “It’s none of your business what goes on up there, Loralee. That woman married him. You butt in and... Well, nothing good will come of it, I promise you that.” He shook his head. “It’s bad enough Cull bought that piece of land so close to ours, then putting up all those no-trespassing signs and him and his boys threatening anyone who comes near. He’s armed those young boys and told them to shoot anyone who trespasses. You stay away from that place, you hear me? No telling what that fool and his kin will do.”

Maynard had gone back to his soup, having said all he was going to say on the matter.

Loralee had never laid eyes on Cull Ackermann, but she’d glimpsed his boys on occasion—usually when one of them was stealing something from her garden.

The first time she’d caught them, she hollered out the window for them to skedaddle—just as she would to any young boys.

The two older boys had turned to look at her. Something in their dark eyes had sent a chill rattling through her. She’d just stood there feeling helpless while they ripped out some of her plants as they left.

She’d known then that they would be back. They’d scared her enough that she had no desire to run into their father. She’d started keeping a loaded shotgun by the back door.

But when they returned, she’d never threatened them with it. That was the second time in her life she’d felt like a coward. The first time was when she hadn’t helped Teeny Ackermann and her baby daughter.

After Maynard’s warning and her run-in with the Ackermann boys, she had broached the subject of her concern for Teeny to the Beartooth Quilting Society.

“Cull’s wife made her choice when she married him and said ‘till death do us part,’” one of the older women had said.

“If she’s unhappy, then why didn’t she take off a long time ago?” another said.

“I agree. Has she ever asked for your help?” another asked.

“I can tell she’s scared of what he’d do,” Loralee said. But she swore at that moment that if Teeny ever asked, she’d help her, no matter what anyone said.

“We all make compromises in marriage, some more than others,” the elderly member had said. “I think this younger generation is much too quick to break their vows the minute things get tough. You have to admire a woman who makes the best of her situation.”

And that was that, until of course the horrible day when all anyone was talking about was the Ackermanns. By that time, Teeny was already dead. No one regretted not helping the poor woman more than Loralee.

Swallowing the bitter taste of guilt, Loralee set out for Ackermann Hollow, armed with her old shotgun.

* * *

F
RANK INVITED
T
IFFANY
out again late that afternoon. She said she didn’t want to go for a horseback ride.

“We can just talk, get to know each other,” he suggested.

She hadn’t jumped on that, but she did drive out. He’d made hamburgers on the grill, only to find out that she was a vegetarian. She picked at the salad he made her instead.

He had no idea how to reach his daughter—just that he desperately wanted to. Sometimes when he was around her, he had the feeling that she wanted to get to know him. He could feel her resisting him, though.

Maybe that’s why he decided to tell her about his crows.

She’d thought he was joking at first. “You gave them names?”

He’d nodded and pointed to the telephone line where some of them had gathered. “At night they roost together to sleep.” He told her about one time in Oklahoma when an estimated two million crows had roosted. “But tens of thousands of them roosting together isn’t unusual. No one knows why they do this. It could be the wagon-train theory—you know, safety in numbers. Or maybe it’s like a large sleepover where they stay up all night talking. Scientists have wondered where they exchange the important information, like where to migrate, where not to go and where to find abundant food. Maybe it’s why they roost.”

He thought of stories he’d heard about the passenger pigeon. Migrating flocks could darken the sky for hours as they passed. He would give anything to have seen that. None remained on earth, making him fear that the same could happen to the crows.

His crows. They were the only family he’d had—before Tiffany. He put out bird feed and scraps for them. He celebrated the births of the “kids” each year. He named them by their personalities and swore that he could distinguish one bird from another by their calls.

When he admitted this and told her about the one he named Billy the Kid after a deputy who used to work for him, Tiffany actually laughed.

“I saw a video about crows that drop nuts into traffic so the cars run over the nuts and crack them,” she said, more animated than he’d seen her. “Then the birds wait until the light changes before they go out there to get the food.” She smiled. “That’s pretty smart, isn’t it.”

Frank returned his daughter’s smile, feeling as close to her as he had since learning she was his child. “They’re smart birds,” he agreed. “They’re a lot like humans. They have close-knit families and the kids play tag together. The breeding mother and father are the blackest and glossiest of the group. They’re easy to spot because they stay close to each other.” He pointed them out. “The father follows the mother wherever she goes, staking out his territory. If another male crow tries to horn in, he inserts himself between them.” Strife and fighting among the birds, Frank had noticed, were highest during the spring.

When he looked over at Tiffany, he realized he’d said something wrong.

That spark of interest he’d seen in her had quickly extinguished. “Even crows understand family better than you do.”

He realized belatedly what he’d said, but it was too late. “I’m sorry. I get carried away when I talk about the crows.”

“They’re just birds,” she snapped.

Not to him. But he could see that she would never understand how special they were to him. Or care, for that matter.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She shrugged and looked away. He caught a shine in her eyes. A moment later, she made an angry swipe at her tears. “You said you didn’t know about me.” Her gaze was red-hot as it met his. “My mother said you knew. You were just glad to be rid of us both. So if you only have crows for family, it’s your own fault.”

Frank was glad he couldn’t get his hands on Pam at that moment. It astonished him that she could hate him so much that she’d poisoned his own child against him. “I wanted children so, of course, I would have definitely wanted you if I’d known about you.”

“You didn’t want children with
my mother,
” she challenged.

No. Toward the end he hadn’t wanted to have children with her, so he said nothing rather than lie. He suspected she would have known it was a lie anyway. “I wish I’d known about you.”

Speaking of lies, how many had Pam told this poor child?

“How about ice cream?” he suggested.

She shot him an angry look. “I’m not four. I need to get back to my apartment. I have work to do.”