by Liza Kendall
This had been the family room, when the house was intact. A large picture window had been to the left of where Charlie sat. It had faced out to the back lawn, where there’d been a white gazebo for entertaining. A flagstone path had led to it.
To Charlie’s right had been an old brick fireplace, most of which had survived until Granddad got blind drunk one night and attacked it with a sledgehammer. Concerned citizens driving by had alerted Bode Wells, the sheriff, who’d come out to try to reason with him. When reason didn’t work, Bode had been decent enough to let Granddad finish the job—and his pint of Jack Daniel’s—before driving him to his apartment and not to jail.
That was how people in this town were: decent. They looked out for one another. They cared. And they had looked out for and cared about Granddad for years now. Which made it all the more important that he not take that for granted, that he not spit in their faces and cling to his bitterness.
Charlie wondered how to reach him. In her mind’s eye, she saw Grandma Babe enter the room in her rooster apron, peering over her horn-rims at him as he fussed and crabbed over an article in the newspaper. All right, King, Charlie heard her say as she handed him a whiskey on the rocks. That’s enough, you old curmudgeon. Now it’s time to say thank you to the good Lord that you have eyeballs to read that rag, and the leisure to do so, and a comfy leather chair to sit in while you complain about the politicians.
Tears sprang to Charlie’s eyes, and Babe told her that was enough of those, too, thank you very much.
But what do I do? Charlie implored her as the sky continued to rumble overhead. How do I get him to move on? To free himself from the past? She found herself praying for a solution, praying for him, praying for a way out of what he was asking her to do at the council meeting.
That’s when the rain blew in, seeming to mock her efforts. The black sky shattered into a million liquid silver bullets, pelting her as she ran back to Progress and fumbled with the ancient handle to get the door open. She was soaked by the time she scrambled in.
Charlie grabbed a mangy, musty old jacket of Granddad’s from the space behind the seats, wrapped it around herself, and let the storm have its thunderous temper tantrum outside. It flailed and thrashed and blustered and poured while she sat safely in the old metal cocoon and peered out at it. Despite the raging weather and her state of exhaustion, despite Granddad’s antics, she felt comfortable here in Silverlake. As if she belonged. And as if some invisible force were calling her home.
She liked Dallas, and her job was okay, but all she did was work, and she’d never put down roots there. It was too easy to skate on the surface of things: make small talk and run meaningless errands, and turn to the TV or her iPad for company in the evenings. Charlie again found herself with the fierce urge to rebuild the house that should be standing in front of her, porch beckoning, lights welcoming. And maybe if they rebuilt the house, then her parents or even Brandon would come home.
Pragmatism reared its ugly head as she mused. What would she do here to make a living? And how could she escape seeing Jake in a town this small? They’d run into each other anywhere and everywhere: Schweitz’s, the bank, Shear Glamour, Sunny’s Side Up Diner, The Tooth Fairies . . .
So? said a belligerent part of her. Jake Braddock didn’t own the town. Besides, they’d managed to stand in the same tiny hospital room at the same time, and the world hadn’t come tumbling down. Maybe they’d even get to the point where they could be friends. If Granddad could accept Jake’s presence, she should be able to as well. As long as her family didn’t insist on repeating the past and destroying everything Jake cared about.
But Granddad’s demand that she be his proxy still weighed heavy. She didn’t want to defund the fire department! That would cause Jake to lose his job. Who could she ask to stand in for her?
Charlie closed her eyes, listening to the now-steady beat of the heavy raindrops on the hood, roof, and windows of the truck. The din soothed her somehow. She heard Grandma’s voice saying, when Charlie was small, that into every life some rain must fall. That it helped wash away grime and grow new flowers. Charlie remembered asking her, as a little girl, what thunder was for then. And Babe paused a moment before telling her that thunder was just the sky being a bully.
So what about lightning? she’d asked.
Lightning, her grandmother had said, was dangerous. Made you open your eyes and see things that might have been previously hidden. It could strike viciously and reduce your illusions to ash.
What’s an illusion, Grandma?
Shh. Go to sleep, sweet pea. Go to sleep.
So Charlie did.
She awoke with a jolt maybe an hour later. She’d been sleeping upright in the truck, her head bent forward. There was a trickle of what must have been very attractive drool in the corner of her mouth, and she had a terrible crick in her neck. It took her a moment to realize where she was: snoring in Progress, like a drunk, on the former front lawn of the Nash mansion. Nice.
The rain had stopped, though the trees were still dripping. Charlie stole a look at herself in the rearview mirror and wished she hadn’t. Her hair looked like a bird’s nest, her eye makeup was smeared, and her nose was so shiny it reflected the emerging sunshine. “Hello, gorgeous,” she muttered. “Let’s not take a selfie.”
She fumbled for her cell phone to make sure the hospital hadn’t called. No messages. Good. Her stomach gurgled, then rumbled like an outboard motor. She was in dire need of some food and a shower. Charlie dug her index fingers into the corners of her closed eyes, trying to relieve the tension she felt, and then turned the key in Progress’s ignition. The dependable old engine roared to life, and she put the gearshift into reverse, then stepped on the gas. But there was no familiar lurch backward, only an acceleration of the engine.
Charlie looked down, thinking maybe she’d popped the truck into neutral, but no. She tried again, with the same result. Progress made no progress. What was going on? She tried a third time, stepping harder on the gas, but the back wheels of the truck just spun in place. Oh no . . . Surely not? Surely . . .
Charlie killed the engine and climbed out of the truck, only to sink her high-heeled Italian boots now ankle-deep in mud. She eyed them with an emotion too weary for despair and peered at her back tires, also sunken deep into the mud. Her efforts to reverse had only made the tire trenches worse. Wonderful.
Okay. What to do now? She supposed she could call the local garage—was it still owned by the Larsens? Or she could try to help herself first. She looked around for any big flat rocks or planks of wood. Hmm. No planks, but there was a rock a few feet away that looked promising. Charlie tried to take a step forward but found that it was challenging. She looked down at the boots she’d been so excited to score on sale and cursed them. They were idiotic under these circumstances. What she wouldn’t give right now for a pair of flat-soled rubber rain boots—the uglier the better!
Charlie sighed, pulled her left foot out of the sucking mud, and bent over to unzip the boot. She stepped out of it, grimaced, and planted her socked foot into the muck. Then she bent to unzip the right one. She left the boots where they stood, next to Progress, and squelched over to her chosen rock, where her feet sank yet again. She looked ruefully down at her manicure, which she’d paid good money for last week in the city. Screw it.
Charlie bent over the rock and started scrabbling in the dirt. Problem: The rock wasn’t so flat. In fact, it was possible that it was more of a boulder . . . She heard the noise of a vehicle approaching, and looked under her arm at it. A Dodge Durango, red. Oh no. That wasn’t—surely not—it couldn’t be—
Jake Braddock.
Nooooooooo!
Not again. Not here. Not now.
Charlie realized the picture she must be making at the moment: butt in the air, bootless, with muddy socks, scraggly hair, filthy blackened hands, and a beet red face, because her head was hanging u
pside down. She had some choice words for her choices in this situation.
Plan A: She could run before he recognized her. Too late. Progress was a dead giveaway. Besides which, if she ran in her socks, she’d slip in the mud, wipe out, and look even worse, like a giant skid mark.
Plan B: She could dig like a manic mole to hide. If she started right this second, she figured she could sink her face and head at least to the ears, which would mean she couldn’t see or hear Jake laughing at her. But the downside of that plan was not being able to breathe, and she utterly refused to die looking this bad.
Plan C: Charlie could embrace her white knight a second time, pretend to adore being a damsel in distress and a cliché. No. No, she absolutely refused.
She had a cell phone! She could call AAA for a tow—well, no, because she wasn’t a member. Wait, yes, she could! She’d join now, right this minute. Where was her wallet? Her phone?
The Durango had pulled forward and stopped. A figure that looked an awful lot like Jake Braddock got out of it and shut the door. Tall, dark tousled hair, broad shoulders. T-shirt under a flannel shirt rolled to the elbows. Arms so cut with muscle that they were defined even under the plaid.
Charlie straightened, turned at the waist, and with effort, unstuck one foot and set it down in front of her. Then with determination, with what she thought of as sheer brio, she unstuck the other one, but she slid on the first, lost her balance, and pitched forward onto her face. Mortification had never smelled so much like weeds, wet earth, and—ugh—deer dung.
This-is-not-happening-this-is-not-happening-this-is-not-happening! she sang to herself. Nope-not-never-not-not-not-nope! I am dignity itself, shimmering in the wind, the very spirit of grace. This is so not happening. I am visualizing this not happening. I can create my own reality with my thoughts . . .
There was a suppressed rumble of amusement above her. “Charlie?” Jake’s voice quivered with the effort not to laugh. Smart man. “Is that you?”
She raised her face and spat out a blade of grass. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I am a complete and total stranger, Jake Braddock. Get that straight. You have never seen me before in your life.”
“Okaaay,” he said cautiously.
“That’s the only way I can deal with the humiliation of this situation on top of the humiliation of the other situation. Got it?”
“Yep.” He paused. “Would you like a hand?”
Charlie pushed herself to her knees, squatted on her haunches, and just looked at him.
He gestured at her. “Oh . . . oh, boy. You—”
“Don’t say it. I don’t want to know.”
His lips twitched and his dark eyes danced, and yet he managed to adopt a kindly expression, which was the biggest insult of all—aside from his being so hot here when she was . . . not hot.
“Hi, beautiful,” he said.
“I hate you,” she said.
“You can’t hate me. I’m a total stranger, remember?”
“Right. But you look highly suspicious and generally loathsome. So I’m pretty sure I hate you anyway.”
“Fine. I’m good with that.”
She decided it was time to stand up, and did so, ignoring his proffered hand. “I’m too dirty.” She was absurdly proud of herself for making it to her feet without his help.
“I don’t have a problem with dirty girls,” he said with a totally straight face.
She glared at him.
He cleared his throat. “That went over well. So can I ask what happened to your shoes?”
He followed her gaze to the Italian boots, sprawled where she’d left them next to the truck. “Ah.” His mouth worked. “And you decided to leave the truck . . . why?”
She pointed to the rock. “I thought maybe it was flat and I could put it under one of the wheels.”
“Well, that explains everything,” he said dryly. “And nothing. Why are you out here?”
“Because . . . because . . .” She gestured at the blackened foundations of the mansion. “I have this crazy idea that I should rebuild it,” she blurted.
Jake’s mouth tightened, and the good humor drained from his expression.
She suddenly felt terrible. Of all the places for him to find her, out here was the worst. “There are a lot of good memories here, too, Jake.”
“Yeah,” he said baldly. Abruptly. “So, you need a tow?”
Chapter 9
Of all the places in the Texas Hill Country that Jake did not wish to stop, Charlie had to stall him at this one.
It was bad enough driving past the burned-out husk of the Nash mansion almost every day on some odd job or other. He usually turned the radio up loud long before he approached and made a point of looking for deer in the trees across the road, or checking the lake for signs of a top-water bite. He kept his head turned away.
Jake still woke up some nights to those licking, devouring walls of fire, that skin-melting heat. It was indescribable, impossible to convey the horror of it. He’d felt like a human marshmallow, crisping and blackening on the outside, his blood boiling and his organs bubbling inside. For precious, hideous seconds, he’d stood gaping and steaming in his own sick fear. Then, impelled by some stronger emotion, he’d hurtled back into the house to find Grandma Babe.
The back wall of the house was in flames. The fire had knocked out the electricity, so the only light seemed to come from hell, and it was precious little because of the thick, suffocating, nightmarish smoke. It wasn’t just smoke, either . . . it was a hot blanket that had dropped him to his knees. But on his knees he’d gone forward, crawling like a blind, crazed baby, searching for Charlie’s grandmother, feeling his way along.
He got to the bottom of the stairs, where he heard a high-pitched whining, a bark, then a disembodied canine scream and the skittering of paws. A rattling of chain, then a thump, thump-thump and a howl as Mr. Coffee came hurtling down the stairs and hit Jake head-on. Grandma Babe had clearly pushed him, trying to save him. So she was still okay . . .
The dog was tangled in a sopping-wet towel, and Jake dragged the animal, towel and all, backward, in the direction of the front door. Jake tugged and scrambled, heaved and gasped, until he got the squirming, whining bundle through the door. He pitched them both forward, rolling them down the porch steps.
The dog was hysterical, and the once-cold wet towel was steaming. Charlie rushed, white-faced and panting, to take Mr. Coffee. Jake himself was banged-up, bruised, gasping. But Grandma Babe was still in there, upstairs. Without thinking, Jake ignored the screams from the front lawn, pushed past a wild-eyed Kingston Nash, hurled himself up the porch steps, and crawled back into the inferno.
The walls pulsed with horrific heat. It was a toxic, burning malevolence that tore the oxygen from his lungs. He was hopping with adrenaline and a weird fury at the fire. He couldn’t beat it—no way—but he wasn’t going to let it take anyone he loved. Jake crawled once more to the stairs.
He didn’t remember making it up them. All he could recall was feeling the texture of the carpet at the top of them, and then something soft—Babe Nash’s thigh. She lay there quiet amid all the terrible cracks and pops and thunderous whooshing. He shouted her name. No response. Oh God.
Jake knew he couldn’t stand up—the smoke was too thick and too scalding. The only breathable air was close to the floor. The only way to get Babe out was—he didn’t think about it. He simply positioned himself at the head of the stairs, facing down and facing the floor. Then he pulled her up onto his back, holding on to her arms as best he could with one hand, and slid down the stairs on his belly, balancing somehow with the other hand. It hurt. It wasn’t dignified. But it worked.
He had little memory of getting from the stairs back out the front door. All he remembered was clumsy weight and awkwardness, and a sheer terror that drove him like some prima
l motor. Then they were on the front lawn, with people screaming. Charlie’s mom rushed to do CPR on Babe, while tears streamed down Charlie’s dad’s face as he embraced Brandon.
Jake collapsed onto his back in the grass, desperate to drink in all the night air available, with the moon and the stars as chasers. Instead, he coughed and hacked out smoke. Rolling onto his stomach, he gasped in dirt and bits of grass along with the clean air he craved. Then he coughed those out, too.
He became aware of a hand slapping him on the back. Jake? Jake! Are you all right?
It was Charlie. She was crying.
You got her out! she said, over and over. You got Grandma out.
Except he hadn’t gotten her out in time.
Jake shook off the memory of the Charlie of the past and focused on the one standing comically before him in the present.
Yep. The best of times, the worst of times. That was Charlie in a nutshell. The idea of her rebuilding the mansion . . . the idea that maybe she was rebuilding to stay, well, that was the kind of nightmare scenario that used to keep him awake at all hours once he’d stopped being haunted by the opposite: that she was never coming back. And yet another part of him (well, a couple of different parts of him, truth be told) had the notion that after all this time, Charlie Nash keeping him up all night wasn’t the worst thing he could think of anymore.
God, Charlie, the truth is, it feels good to see you. I never thought I’d be able to say that. But it feels good to see you, looking so alive.
And I still hurt so badly inside.
He surveyed the bright-eyed natural disaster standing in front of him and alternately wanted to yell at her and take her in his arms. Jake had never wanted to kiss a swamp creature before. But here he was, wanting to back Charlie Nash up against the nearest tree, lick the mud from her mouth, and have his wicked way with her. There was something very wrong with him.
But even covered from head to toe with sludge, with a piece of grass stuck to her cheek and her zombie eye makeup, he wanted her. Even growling like a small bear from mortification, Charlie was gorgeous, which entertained him and aggravated him at the same time.
