The Year of Luminous Love (41 page)

She scattered the papers on the bed and saw a Post-it note in her mother’s handwriting. It read:

Eden’s knees felt rubbery. She eased onto the bed and skimmed the paperwork full of legalese. The paperwork did indeed put her in full control of everything—the house sale, bank accounts, tax matters. A thousand questions bombarded Eden, not ones for any lawyer, but ones for her mother. How could Gwen have done this without saying a word? She shook the larger envelope and another envelope fell out, this one smaller but also fairly thick. She tore it open and removed sheets of paper. Quickly she saw a letter in her mother’s jagged handwriting. Eden’s heart thumped like a drum. In all the years she could remember, Gwen had never written her a letter. Perhaps a note for school. Or words on special-occasion cards. Or scrawled mention of her whereabouts when she was on her meds. But never a letter.

Eden planted her back against the headboard. She turned on the bedside lamp with trembling fingers and began to read.

Eden drove to the complex where she had once lived with Tony, thinking she would check out whether they’d put anything into storage she might want. Not things of Tony’s, but things she’d brought from home when he’d all but forced her to move in with him. Maybe she also wanted closure. She’d heard the word bandied about in these days of armchair psychoanalyzing, and wondered if she needed it to close this chapter of her life forever.

Merely driving through the gates had sent a shiver through her, but once there, she went into the office. A pretty brown-haired teenager jumped up from behind a desk. “Can I help you?” Her drawl was as thick as tomato paste.

Eden explained her reasons for coming and gave the building number and location of the penthouse.

The girl’s eyes widened. “You’re the one who lived with that drug lord? The guy who was shot to death in Memphis?”

Eden cringed. Was this how she’d be remembered in the town?

The teen didn’t wait for an answer but just forged ahead. “After he was shot down, the cops looked for you. It was in the papers and on TV.”

“I was out of the country at the time,” Eden mumbled, wishing the girl would hush about her and Tony.

“You don’t want to rent his penthouse again, do you?”

“I only want to know if some of my things might have been stored … afterward.”

“You mean after he was killed?”

Eden thought the girl denser than a lamppost and with about as much tact. “I assume that’s when his place might have been cleared out.”

The girl’s face reddened. “Oh yes, of course. Let me check my computer.” She quickly sat down and tapped her keyboard. “Here it is,” she said brightly. “His stuff’s still in storage, but I think the property owners plan to sell it at auction come spring. To recover financial losses he left with them. You understand.”

Eden’s patience was wearing thin. “Some of the contents are mine and I want them back. My name was on the mailbox. I was a legal tenant.”

The girl looked hesitant. “Well … I … I … Do you have proof?”

Pressing her advantage, Eden said, “You cannot sell my things without my permission!” Eden flashed her driver’s license. “Is the unit locked?”

The gal leaped up. “Well, certainly!”

Eden held out her hand. “The key?”

The girl rummaged in an unlocked desk drawer and fished out an envelope marked master keys. “I have to take you,” the cowed girl said.

They drove to the storage units in a golf cart, and the girl
unlocked the door and handed Eden the key. “You can drop it in the outside box when you’re finished.”

Inside the unit, Eden sighed, dispirited by the furniture stacked and shoved into the space every which way. Boxes were stuffed with clothing, lamps, kitchenware, linens. Valuable rugs had been rolled up and pushed into corners. The bottles in Tony’s expensive wine collection had been set upright, probably ruined. So many bad memories haunted her as she started through the contents, especially when she looked at the bed where she’d lost all innocence, all self-respect. What had she been thinking, coming here?

She saw Tony’s desk wedged between the wall and the heavy mattress of the bed she’d shared with him. Suddenly she recalled the day Tony had had a carpenter come in to create a special feature for the drawer, a sliding panel that concealed a two-inch false bottom. If the cops had gone through Tony’s stuff, as she suspected they must have, maybe they hadn’t discovered it. She shoved hard against the mattress, inching it just far enough to one side to expose the bottom left drawer. She pulled it open and groped inside, fumbling with the cleverly designed panel. It slipped open and she closed her fingers around a stack of money. Her heart hammered. Tony’s cash! Probably the results of drug transactions he hadn’t had time to launder, and it was too late for that now. Who would know about this or even be able to ask about it? She shut the panel, stood and stuffed the cache into her purse, then resumed her search for her personal possessions, the things she’d come after.

The hunt was short, and she quickly filled an old grocery sack with the few things she wanted. She took one last look around, locked the unit, and left. She drove away in bright sunlight, with a cold breeze blowing through her open car
windows, pushing the stink of the storage space’s dead air off her clothing and skin. Somewhere in the big wide world, there was Garret. Somehow, someway, she would find him. And when she did, she’d find out if love, true love, was real or a romantic illusion. Eden left the condo complex knowing that along with a stash of cash, she had indeed found closure.

Jon was waiting for Ciana when she came into the barn to saddle Firecracker for her morning ride. Without preamble, he said, “I got a phone call yesterday. A bed’s opened up for my father in Texas.”

Ciana stopped short. News she hadn’t expected. She held her disappointment tightly, determined to hide it. “When will you be leaving?”

“I have five days to get him there or he loses the spot to someone else. I’m checking him out tomorrow afternoon at the county place. May be easier to drive all night.”

Tomorrow. So soon. Too soon. “I understand.”

“He can’t live alone and I … well, I need to go home.” He walked to the tack room doorway, his quarters at Bellmeade for months. “I’ll get my stuff packed up and out of your way.”

Her world had been rocked. What would it be like to get up every morning and not have him come to breakfast in the kitchen? Or to not see him working the horses? She saw a hole in her life big enough to drive her truck through. “Taking your daddy home isn’t the only reason you’re going, is it?” Intuition drove her to ask.

She watched his back stiffen. He turned, studying her with his clear green eyes, drawing out the silence, as if gathering his words from a deep place inside. “I came here for the summer.
Just three months to help my old man and for the experience of working with wild mustangs. But not much went the way I thought it would.”

Her summer hadn’t gone the way she’d planned either. “How so?”

He jammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “One night, I wandered into a dance saloon and met someone. Didn’t plan on that.”

“Me neither.”

“Then I go to work and find I’m helping a girl with cancer to train her horse. I’d known her from a one-time visit years before. I liked her. But I couldn’t get the other girl out of my head. And then, on a fluke, girl one shows up and turns out to be best friends with the gal I’m working with. Which was hard enough, ’specially when gal one asked me to keep a secret I never wanted to keep.” He shook his head. “And then the damndest thing happened. I found myself in Italy. A European side trip wasn’t in my plans, or my budget. But I went. And going damn near wrecked my life.”

The old hurts grabbed at her. She shrugged them off. “You had help with that one,” she said, meeting his gaze. “My fault too.”

He walked to her and stopped, keeping his hands in his pockets. “And when I came back here, after having stayed away from Texas longer than I ever planned, I find out my dad’s an invalid and that the cancer girl’s sick to death. So no, Ciana, nothing’s gone the way I planned it.”

He paused, but after a few heartbeats said, “And so I’m remembering all the dreams I once had—following the rodeo, saving my cash, buying property for a little spread in Texas where I can work and train horses. And dreams die hard. I
still want those things. But no one can make them come true except me.”

His words struck like arrows. He’d told her the first time they’d met what he wanted for his life. She was a complication, an unforeseen liability. And all that had happened to him since coming to Tennessee was an entanglement he had never asked for, and mostly her fault. Her throat burned.

“But the hardest part for me, the worst part, is being around girl number one day after day, and knowing she’s out of reach.”

Ciana’s eyes brimmed and her chin trembled. She knew what it was to chase dreams. She wanted Bellmeade, her inheritance, and her lifelong commitment to untold ancestors. And she wanted him. Even without the complication with Arie, the lines between them were clear—she wouldn’t leave her land, and he must go after what he’d planned long before she’d come along. She had no right to stand in the way of Jon’s dreams.

He again walked away but stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. “And, I might add, I have nothing in me that can stay and watch Arie die. So I’m leaving now, before her last dance ends. And I’m going over to tell her I’m leaving tonight. I think I owe her that much.”

“Yes, she needs to hear it from you.” Ciana’s voice quavered. Her friend would be devastated, but Ciana certainly understood his desire not to be around when the inevitable happened to Arie.

Jon headed to the tack room, the distance between him and Ciana widening in every way. In the unlit doorway, he said, “I’ve caught up on most of the outside work. You’ll be able to start spring with a clean slate.”

“We … we owe you money. I can write you a check right
now if you come up to the house,” she threw out desperately, hoping to make him stay with her a little longer.

“Mail it to me. Your mother has my mother’s address, which is where I’ll be staying until the spring rodeo circuit starts up.”

She imagined him moving west, riding broncos, getting busted up.
Back off
, she told herself.

“I best get a move on,” he said.

“Regrets?” she asked before he could leave.

“Life’s too short for regrets, Ciana. So no regrets.”

To his back, she flung, “We’ll miss you, Jon. Me and Mom.”

He didn’t turn around but walked through the door of the tack room, into the dark.

Eden met with the realtor the next day. Sharon Weber was a vivacious young woman, eager to make a deal.

“It’s an excellent offer,” Sharon said with a cheery smile. “And in these hard times—it’s a buyer’s market, you know—offers don’t come along every day. But the couple who want your house are delighted with the way it’s been upgraded.”