Beneath the Patchwork Moon (A Hope Springs Novel Book 2)

by Alison Kent

  She couldn’t think of anyone she wanted to see less, except, as always, he was hard to look away from, making her uncomfortable as she approached. While Oscar had been a teen heartthrob, deep dimples and smiling green eyes and a shock of dark hair always falling forward, Oliver was something else. Male model something else, all sharp cheekbones and elegant nose. A mouth with a natural smirk. Eyes to match Oscar’s beneath a hooded brow. Feathered lashes like a chimney sweep’s brush.

  “Excuse me,” she said, rather than ignoring him the way she wanted to as she walked by. Why had he come here today of all days to leave his mark on her private communion with her friend? Really, though. It spoke to who he was—entitled, selfish, uncaring… the opposite of everything his brother had been.

  He turned and followed as she made her way to her car. “I heard you bought the Caffey place.”

  It was hardly a secret. She stopped, glanced back. “And that brought you here why?”

  “I like knowing that family’s connection to Hope Springs is severed for good. Except for that,” he said, nodding toward Sierra’s grave. “Too bad they had to leave her here.”

  “You’re a jerk, Oliver,” she said, the urge to strike out rising as she started walking again.

  His footsteps sounded close behind. “And your good friend wasn’t? The friend who ruined my brother’s life?”

  She spun, jabbed her finger toward him. “Have you ever thought you might have it all wrong? That Oscar cost Sierra hers? He was the one driving, after all. Or have you forgotten about that?”

  His brow lifted. The corner of his mouth followed. He looked from her finger to her face, his hands at his hips, the tails of his blazer flaring. “You’re the only one who would know, aren’t you, since you’re the only one who saw what happened?”

  Why was he questioning who’d been behind the wheel? She couldn’t fathom. “You’re right. I am. So you’ll just have to take my word for it, won’t you?”

  “I heard Angelo’s in town.”

  “He is, yes,” she said, her keys now in her hand, this conversation ridiculous, Oliver keeping pace at her side where the path widened.

  “Not for long, I hope.”

  “He’ll be here as long as he needs to be for what he’s doing,” she said, walking faster, wishing she could run and escape his long stride. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know how long that is, and it’s not your business anyway.”

  “Unless I make it my business.”

  “Good-bye, Oliver. I’d say it was nice to see you again, but it never is.”

  “I drove out to the crash site this morning,” he said, and Luna’s steps slowed, her feet moving on their own, her mind whirring. “Have you been back there since the accident?”

  She shook her head, unable to imagine a reason to return, or one he would have, and rushing now, desperately needing the safety of her car. The locks clicked and the lights flashed as she hit the button on her key fob. But she wasn’t fast enough.

  Oliver reached the Audi the same time she did, blocking her with his hip from opening her door. “Someone’s put up a new cross. I thought it might’ve been you. The original was on its last legs when I was through there this summer. I was hoping that would be the end of it, but I guess your girl here had other friends.”

  She hadn’t known there was a cross at all, though she knew the custom and shouldn’t have been surprised. What surprised her was hearing about it from Oliver. Why hadn’t anyone else told her? “Move, please, so I can get in.”

  He moved, but only to lean against the car. “There were a couple of bouquets and stuffed bears when I got there around eight, I guess it was, but there were a dozen or more, a whole furry zoo, by the time I climbed out of the ravine.”

  Her stomach tumbled, and it took her several seconds to catch her breath. “What?”

  “There were a couple of bouquets—”

  “No.” Her heart was beating so hard she was certain he could see the movement in her chest. “What did you say about the ravine?”

  “I climbed into it. Then I climbed out of it.”

  “Why?” She couldn’t even… What was he saying?

  He crossed his arms, looked toward Sierra’s grave. “Ten years, and I’d never seen where the car landed. Where Oscar landed.”

  “And you wanted to? Because… you thought it would be a nice way to memorialize the date?” Was he insane? She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. “Will you move? Please? It’s late. I need to go.”

  No dice. In typical Gatlin fashion, Oliver stayed where he was, waiting for what he wanted. Doing whatever he had to do to get it. Determined to win. “Hard to believe anything from the accident would still be down there to find. Or that anything would’ve survived the elements. But that’s the thing about a convertible. No top. Stuff goes everywhere. Falling into places no one thought to look.”

  Was he saying he found something? “Oliver, just spit it out.”

  “Who is Beth Johnson?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Let me try this again.” He pushed away from the car to loom over her. “Have you ever heard of an attorney named Beth Johnson?”

  An attorney. Oh, boy. “Honestly, Oliver,” she said, gripping her keys harder. “I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

  “I found a plastic document file. Worse for wear, obviously, after ten years, but still mostly sealed. The papers inside had some water damage, but it had been wedged in a crevice beneath a rocky outcrop. Lots of the words were pretty clear.”

  “Okay. I care about this why?”

  “You’re going to pretend this folder didn’t come from the accident? From Oscar’s car?”

  She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how she was still standing. She could barely feel her fingers when she reached for the handle and pulled open the door. “Ten years, Oliver. I can’t imagine that it did.”

  “The one date I could make out was September. Ten years ago. So maybe you’d better start imagining.”

  Then he slapped his hand to the roof of her car and walked to his, leaving her there to wonder how soon her bottled-up past would crack open. And what the genie would do with all of her secrets once it was free.

  After her visit to the cemetery, Luna was emotionally wiped out, but she was also too tired to sleep, and that sent her to her weaving shed. She’d return tomorrow to the house on Three Wishes Road. She wasn’t up to seeing Angelo again. Not yet. Not until she’d digested what Oliver Gatlin had told her.

  Oscar and Sierra hadn’t shared with her any of the details of the arrangements they’d made. Their attorney’s name had never come up. But Oliver finding the document file in the ravine and being able to make out the words he had worried her. She was worried most of all by the date. That made it hard to believe the paperwork had belonged to anyone else.

  She wondered if he’d researched Beth Johnson before coming to the cemetery. If he knew who the woman was and had been fishing for a reaction, or a confirmation of his suspicions.

  Whatever he’d been up to, Luna didn’t think she’d ever been more grateful to Sierra and Oscar for keeping her out of the legal loop. She only hoped what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her with Oliver, because if she wasn’t careful, what she did know was going to cause her grief with Angelo.

  As always happened, once she closed herself inside her weaving shed, the outside world fell away. She loved her weaving shed, loved that it had once been used to store the tools her father used in his trade. When he’d built his larger shearing barn, he’d converted the building for her, finishing the inside with a hardwood floor, adding insulation, installing the lighting and climate controls she needed.

  Throwing the shuttle of weft yarn through the shed of the warp, she thought back to her first conversation with Kaylie Flynn, who’d so quickly become such a close friend after they’d met earlier this year. The other woman, having returned to Hope Springs to open a café, had asked Luna why she wove scarves and not larger
items. Her answer rose now to mock her. A short attention span. Instant gratification. With the right yarn and design inspiration, a scarf took almost no time at all.

  But for the Caffey-Gatlin Academy’s fund-raising auction, she’d committed to five larger pieces sized for use as throws or shawls. She was hoping to trade on the success and reputation of her Patchwork Moon label and bring in some serious cash. Every bit of the work would be worth it, every cent raised vital, but she would be treating herself to a serious massage and a vacation once all was said and done.

  It had been a while since she’d sat at her loom for any length of time. She would feel it later, in her back and her shoulders, her hands and the muscles of her arms. For now all she felt was the work, the colors in this piece taking her back to the day she’d met Sierra, the black and pine green plaid of their school uniforms, the flecks of gold in Sierra’s brown eyes. The deep emerald of the lawn fronting the St. Thomas Preparatory School. The acorns dropped by the oaks scattered across the grounds like tiny sorrel umbrellas.

  Tonight she had Luigi Boccherini’s cello concertos playing, the music a soothing background noise while she worked. She’d heard both Oscar and Sierra play from Boccherini dozens of times, and the familiarity of the melodies made the birth of her friendship with the other girl an easy story to weave. The music, however, was not loud enough to drown out the sound of the door opening, or her father’s soft footsteps on the hardwood floor.

  She smiled to herself as she pulled the beater toward her to tighten the yarn, then set the shuttle aside and spun around on her stool. “If you’re trying to be sneaky and quiet, it’s not working.”

  Harry Meadows stopped walking midstep, like a kid caught in the act of being mischievous. He was tall and limber and had yet to go gray. Even the scruff on his face remained dark. Just not as dark as Angelo’s. Though why her every thought had to turn to Angelo…

  “I didn’t want to disturb you,” her father said, shoving his long-fingered hands into the pockets of his khakis.

  She loved her father to death, but this one thing he’d never understood: It took almost nothing to disturb her, and then it took forever for her to get back on track. Working the loom was an easy, repetitive motion. It was seeing the story in the pattern and colors that demanded her focus.

  But since he rarely came to find her unless he had something on his mind, she gave him a welcoming smile as she stretched her arms overhead and her torso side to side. “I love you. You never disturb me.”

  “I believe the first,” he said, returning her smile and coming closer, pulling up a stool matching hers to sit. “But we both know the second is a big fat lie.”

  She held up her thumb and index finger. “Maybe a little bit of one.”

  “You’ve been out here quite a while,” he said, his brown eyes sharp as he took her in. A father’s concern and miss-nothing gaze. “Do you need anything? You skipped supper. Tea? Something stronger?”

  His good manners had him offering the obvious, though he knew she never ate or drank more than water when working. The habit had gotten her into trouble more than once, when she suddenly found herself dizzy and on the verge of collapse. “I’ll come in for a bite in a bit. I’d like to make some progress on this piece if I can.”

  His mouth quirked ruefully. “If you can find your groove again, you mean.”

  She leaned forward to wrap her arms around him, breathing in Ivory soap and sun-dried chambray. “I’ll find it. But I won’t ever again have this moment with you, so tell me what’s on your mind. It’s not like you to come out just to check on me.”

  “I’m that transparent, huh?” His smile was soft, his humor good.

  Her sister was going to be so lucky. Just as she had been. Just as she was. “Or predictable, anyway.”

  “Guess I can live with that.”

  “So…” She watched as he pulled his mouth to one side the way he did when he had something he didn’t really want to say. “Spit it out.”

  “Your mom tells me you saw Angelo Caffey today.”

  Ah, that, she mused, and nodded. She’d seen him, she’d argued with him, she’d made a deal with him. But there was no reason her father needed to know about that. Not tonight, anyway. He most definitely did not need to know any of the whys. She wasn’t quite yet settled with the whys.

  He took in her nod, asked, “Does he know about the academy?”

  “That there will be one? Yes. That it will be named after Sierra and Oscar?” She shook her head. “I’ll tell him. But we’ve got some other things to work out first.”

  “Oh?” Her father crossed his arms and swiveled on his stool. “Such as?”

  Honesty being the best policy… “Things I should’ve said to him a long time ago.”

  “About the accident? Or about Sierra?”

  “Are those my only two choices?”

  “They’re the ones that make the most sense. They’re the two things you and Angelo have in common. You didn’t attend the same school or share the same circle of friends. He was older than you, a boy…” He let the sentence trail, as if struck with thoughts he hated to voice. “Unless there was something between the two of you I never knew about.”

  “Besides my crush?” she asked, grinning and hoping her father would forgive her the little white lie should he ever learn the truth.

  “Yeah,” he said, his grin more reluctant. “I did know about that.”

  She let that settle into the mess of upset she’d been fighting since Oliver Gatlin’s revelation, the pressure behind her breastbone creating an incredible ache. “I saw Oliver Gatlin earlier. At the cemetery.”

  Her father grew pensive, focused, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah? What did he want?”

  She picked at a chip in her nail, took a deep breath. “He told me about a new memorial cross at the accident site. He’d been out there this morning.”

  “Paying his respects?”

  “More like digging for information.”

  “Information about what?”

  If she got through this without throwing up… “That weekend… Everyone knows, has known for years, that Oscar wasn’t at his music workshop, and Sierra and I played hooky from art camp.”

  Her father nodded sagely. “And everyone has always wondered what you three were really doing.”

  That same “everyone,” realizing she wasn’t going to answer and wanting to spare her the hurt, had eventually stopped asking. “I know. But I promised Sierra I would never tell anyone.”

  Frowning, her father ran one hand back and forth over his short-cropped hair. “What do you mean?”

  “I want to tell you,” she said, her throat closing around the words. “But it’s so big, and so many people are involved, and it’s going to cause so much hurt. And I promised Sierra.”

  “And you think Oliver’s going to find something and beat you to it.”

  He was quiet for several moments after she nodded, several long moments during which Luna’s body was stiff with nerves. It was so unfair for her to mention this to him. She knew that. But she needed his advice, and he would understand that, even without her putting her plea into words.

  “Sierra’s been dead for ten years, Luna,” he finally said, then hands on his knees, he pushed down as he used the leverage to gain his feet. “You’re the only one holding yourself to the promise.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” she said, sorrow nearly drowning her. But he was halfway to the door, and then he was walking through, letting it close softly on its own instead of slamming it.

  But she heard the slam in her mind, because she knew he’d stopped himself only so as not to disturb her further. That was the man he was, thoughtful of others even when wounded. She hadn’t been thoughtful at all. And these latest wounds, they were on her.

  Every single one of them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning, Luna left the farm early, using the private entrance to her suite rather than stopping in the kitchen for breakfast. She wasn’t in the
habit of telling her parents how she’d be spending her days, but with Angelo in town, and her mother and father both aware, she couldn’t imagine not caving under their scrutiny.

  Oh, they wouldn’t come out and ask, but they’d know. Just like her mother always knew not to accompany her to the cemetery. Just like her father always knew she needed to hear his plain truth.

  And now she had Oliver Gatlin’s revelation to deal with. Unbelievable that he’d found detritus from the accident, but it made sense Oscar and Sierra would’ve had the paperwork with them. If the plastic of the folder hadn’t torn enough to damage the papers inside… She didn’t want to think about what his discovery would’ve meant if the contents were fully legible.

  First Angelo demanding answers, and now Oliver finding clues to the truth. Was her father right that she was the only one holding herself to the promise she’d made Sierra? Or had her friend’s death severed that bond, leaving her free to share the secrets? And how was she supposed to do that exactly? Bring everyone together for a slide show? A PowerPoint presentation?

  Yeah, that would be a fun time for all. Especially after seeing the anger neither Oliver nor Angelo had been able to let go. She didn’t understand the destructive emotion lingering. The pain, yes. But obviously neither man had processed his grief. Both were still looking for someone to blame, and she filled the bill.

  She was the one who’d walked away from the accident. Or crawled away, rather, dragging her broken body from her own car. But her injuries didn’t seem to matter to either man. All they knew was that she was the sole survivor—though her living in her parents’ home all this time spoke volumes about that particular truth.

  Her mother was right: it was time for her to get on with her life, time to cut the ties binding her to the past and the tragedy stored there. Unfortunately, she mused, pulling into the Caffeys’ long driveway, shutting off her car, and watching the front door open as if Angelo had been waiting at the window for her to return, that would also mean losing her connection to the boy, the man, who took up a very large place in her heart. Sierra she would always have with her, but Angelo, her Angel…