The Year of Luminous Love (14 page)

“Anyway, after Jackson and I were married, Daddy took Jackson into the business, even though he was never into farming like Daddy and Jacob. After Jacob died, Jackson seemed less pressured and more at ease in the business. Daddy loved to fly that plane of his. He and Jackson went all over the country selling our farm goods to small grocers. When supermarkets began to change the grocer business, they went after contracts with them. According to Mother, when Charles
Junior died, it took four days for Charles to get home because of bad weather. Mother Nature played a mean trick on Olivia when she got pregnant with me,” Alice Faye muttered, sighing heavily. “Years later, he was piloting the plane when it went down forever with him and my dear Jackson.”

The catch in her mother’s voice left no doubt in Ciana’s mind about that crash being the worst day in her mother’s life. The day was stamped in her memory because the sight and sound of her mother and grandmother crying uncontrollably had terrified her. And at age six, the idea that her father and grandfather were never coming home didn’t make sense. They went away lots of times, but they
always
came home.

Alice Faye gazed out the car window. “I redeemed us both when I had you,” she said softly, moving back in time to before her husband and father had died. “You were my saving grace, even though you became more hers than mine.”

Ciana glanced over at her mother’s somber profile, cast in gray by the rain against the windshield. “I … I don’t think—”

“She named you, you know.” Alice Faye was tuning Ciana out, lost now in memories. “I wanted to call you Sara Elizabeth. A pretty name. But I didn’t get a choice about your name.”

Ciana hadn’t known this. She tried on Sara in her head, but it didn’t feel right. “I like Ciana.”

Alice Faye didn’t seem to hear her. “She came into my hospital room, lifted you up, saw your full head of reddish hair, and said, ‘Look, Charles. She looks like a sweet little cinnamon bun.’ And so she christened you Ciana.”

Ciana wondered if she was supposed to feel guilty about the way she looked.

“You were so much like her as you grew up. A take-charge personality. Loved hard work. Loved the land, the horses, the garden. You were all the things I wasn’t and never would be.”
The car’s wipers and pounding rain almost drowned out Alice Faye’s softly spoken words. “Then the plane crashed and we both lost our men. And you became even more important. I had no other children, but then neither did she. Yet here she is, reaching up from the grave to control our lives once again.” Her last words sounded peckish.

“Are you saying you don’t want me to have the college-fund money?” Ciana didn’t see the savings account as vengeful. Did her mother?

Her mother scoffed. “Don’t be foolish. Of course I do. You’re my daughter, and I love you. Truth is, the money’s your ticket out, Ciana. You have a door open for you I never had.”

Ciana blinked in amazement. “You would have left Bellmeade?”

“Far away. But where would I have gone, Ciana? Where does a woman go when she has no education, no husband, no money of her own, and no real purpose in life?”

Echoes of Eden
, Ciana thought. “You had Bellmeade,” she said. She’d never heard her mother express such deep regrets about her life. She’d figured every Beauchamp woman wanted to cling to the land, to hold on to her birthright and destiny.

“I didn’t especially want the place.” Still deep in her own musings, Alice Faye smiled enigmatically. “But I guess I did leave in a manner of speaking. I have found both escape and great pleasure in sweet tea and gin.”

After leaving Alice Faye at the doorstep, Ciana parked the car, slipped on a slicker, and ran to the stables, her mind reeling from her mother’s words. Olivia had always preached that being a Beauchamp was a gift from the Almighty, clearly a responsibility and duty that only a privileged few had been
granted. There had been times when Ciana sometimes felt overwhelmed by it all, but never had she wanted to be someone other than who she was. Now she had learned that her mother had wanted to be anyone
except
who she was. Disturbing.

Deep in thought, she entered the barn. Firecracker and Sonata whinnied. “I haven’t forgotten you,” she said, but then stopped, staring. Both horses were in their stalls, dry and eating a trough full of hay. She’d left them out before going into town. “How did you—”

“I did it,” Jon Mercer said from behind her.

Ciana whirled to see him leaning against the open doorway of the tack room and stamped her foot. “You scared me half to death.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Just wanted to help. Saw the horses out in the rain, so I brought them in and toweled them off, gave them something to munch.”

“Just driving past?” His story wasn’t quite believable. She lived miles from Pickins’s ranch.

“Okay. Driving by on purpose. I wanted to apologize for not coming to your grandmother’s funeral. I wanted to say I’m sorry she died because I know what she meant to you.”

She had looked for him covertly in the crowd of mourners but didn’t want to admit it to his face. “Not a problem. No one likes to go to funerals.”

“Plus, I wanted to surprise you.” He held out his hand. “Come inside.”

The old desk had been pulled away from the wall and
covered with a tablecloth. Cartons of fried chicken, potato salad, and baked beans along with paper plates and plastic forks sat on the checkered cloth.

“Supper,” he said, pulling out a chair and guiding her into it. “Bought it at the Chicken Palace downtown.” He took a seat across from her on the other side of the narrow old desk. His knees hit the solid wood backside, so he twisted sideways.

Caught off guard, thoroughly surprised, and touched by his effort, she confessed, “I don’t know what to say.”

“No need to talk. Just eat.”

She dug into the cardboard box until she found a crispy fried chicken leg. “What if I hadn’t come home?”

“I figured you’d come back eventually for the sake of the horses. And if you hadn’t come home, the horses were dry and fed and I’d have a lot of leftover chicken.”

She smiled. “I appreciate you caring for my horses. A little surprised, though, that Firecracker came to you. She can be ornery.”

He found a crispy thigh and bit into it. “I specialize in ornery.”

She blushed, knowing he was referring to her. After a few minutes of silence, she said, “Arie says you’re a good trainer. That you have a gift for connecting with horses.”

“Don’t know about being gifted. Just know I like being around them. I train them gentle-like. No need to be mean to a horse. I’ve seen trainers who are. Takes them twice as long to gentle an animal with meanness. I don’t teach a horse anything. I just bring out the things that come natural to them.”

Ciana watched his hands gesture expressively while he talked about horses. To her his hands were beautiful, squarish and capable, calloused and marked with faint white lines from old leather strap and rope burns, working hands that were as
gentle as cotton on a woman’s skin. Remembering, she shivered. “Pickins must be happy with your work.”

He grinned. “Bill thinks he’s a genius for bringing in the mustangs. The work’s gone fast because the horses are smart.”

“How about your father? Wasn’t this supposed to be his job?” She remembered Jon telling her that.

“It was, but his healing from the stroke isn’t going well. His fault, though. He won’t go to rehab like he’s supposed to. He still has paralysis on his left side. His arm’s useless, and his foot drags when he walks.”

Ciana felt instant sympathy for the man. “Where is he?”

“In a dump of a trailer on a half acre out west of here. Pickins said he could offer Dad a room in the bunkhouse, and that way I could keep an eye on him, but Dad’s stubborn. He won’t budge. And we’ve never been on the best of terms.”

“You going back to Texas when the job’s finished?”

“Would it matter?” His question caught her off guard.

“Not many rodeos around here.”

“True. And I still want my own spread and my own horses. But Bill’s saying he’d welcome me back next summer. If I want to come.”

Her heartbeat accelerated, then dropped like a stone. Could she face another summer with or without him? Could she maintain her distance and her resolve for Arie’s sake? “Good man is hard to find,” Ciana mumbled.

By now the meal was finished and their conversation had no place to go. Jon stood, scraped the leftovers into their cartons, and put the scraps into a bag. “I’ll throw this away at my place.”

Ciana stood, too, wanting him to stay but knowing she couldn’t allow it. “Thanks for the meal and for caring for my horses. I really appreciate both. It’s been a hard few days.”

“Happy to do it.” He turned at the doorway of the tack room and repeated, “Would it matter to you? If I returned next year?”

That set her adrenaline flowing through her body in a rush. “It … it would mean the world to Arie,” she said carefully. Not a lie, but not the truth either.

He put on his Stetson, bent over, and blew out the candles. “But not to you.”

He left the barn and Ciana felt as if the light and air had gone with him.

Arie cleaned the art tables hurriedly, already late for her appointment with Dr. Austin in the adult oncology wing. Three months had passed since her last appointment, meaning her status was “unchanged.”
Good enough
. A nurse passing the rec room said, “Hey, Arie, the janitor just finished installing the first of the ceiling tiles. Come see.”

Arie followed the nurse into the hall to where a handyman was folding up a ladder. She looked up. Every third tile was emblazoned with a hand-drawn image a child created during her art classes. “Oh my gosh! They’re gorgeous.”

Seeing the tiles gave Arie a feeling of great satisfaction. Something from a child who fought cancer would be seen for years to come. Some tiles would memorialize its creator; others would herald a child who beat the Big C. All were signed, colorful reminders of a child who passed through this hospital on a life journey not to be forgotten.

“Have to run,” she said, and broke for the stairwell, where she climbed to the adult oncology floor and went into Dr. Austin’s office. The receptionist directed her into an exam room where she saw Dr. Austin looking at CT scans hanging on the
light board on the wall. “I know I’m late. The art class ran long and the tables were a wreck. Ever seen what a group of kids can do with acrylic paint?”

Austin, with his wire-rim glasses and balding head, waved away her stream of words. “Have a seat.”

She didn’t want to sit. Her eyes cut to the light board. “Mine?”

“Yours.”

“What’s the word?”

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

Arie bravely stepped to the glowing scans and stared at the pictures of her torso’s midsection and saw three small dark spots in the area she knew to be her liver. “It’s back?” she asked, forcing out the words, tamping down panic.

“Yes,” Dr. Austin said. “I’m afraid so.”

“But the area was clear just months ago. No spots at all. How could they come back? And so fast?”

“I’d never have predicted this.”