Shadows of Yesterday

by Sandra Brown

  “Leigh, my God, listen to us,” he croaked. “I love you. I’m leaving for I don’t know how long and I don’t want to go with this anger between us. Please understand.”

  Heartbroken but fighting for her sanity, her life, she pleaded, “Show me you love me. Stay with me. Don’t go.”

  “You ask too much,” he said in anguish. “Don’t ask of me something I can’t give.” He took another step toward her. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to let anything happen to me when I know you’re here waiting for me.”

  The words reverberated in her head. Echoes of the past. Words so easily spoken, so untrue, so unreliable. She paled visibly and dodged his extended arms. “No,” she rasped. “No, Chad. If you go, I won’t be waiting for you. I won’t spend my life sending you off with vapid little smiles and platitudes like, ‘Please don’t get killed before I see you again.’ I won’t!”

  The lines around his mouth hardened even as she watched. The warm light in his eyes went out as quickly as a candle being extinguished. He pulled himself to his full height and brushed past her. At the door he paused to toss one last knife into her heart. “Thanks for the loving send-off.”

  The door slammed behind him.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was her father who came into the office an hour later. Blessedly, everyone had respected her need for privacy and had let her cry out the first bout of tears alone.

  Harve Jackson opened the door gingerly and, finding his daughter slumped over the arm of the leather couch with her head buried in her arms, came quietly into the room. “Come on, honey. Let your mother and me take you home.” He touched her tentatively on the shoulder.

  Leigh raised her tear-bloated eyes to him. “Is everyone gone?”

  “Yes.”

  She sniffed, wiped at her mascara-streaked cheeks, and stood with the help of her father’s hand under her elbow. Like one bereaved, she let him lead her out of the office. Her mother and Chad’s parents were waiting for them in the hallway. Amelia came toward her and embraced her lovingly.

  “Why don’t you and Sarah stay here until Chad gets back? We’d love to have you. I can’t bear the thought of you being all alone in that big house.”

  “I think she should come to Big Spring with us,” Lois intervened. “We haven’t had her and Sarah to ourselves for a long time.”

  Amelia looked as though she wanted to argue, but her husband’s restraining hand on her arm kept her silent. Instead, Stewart said, “We’re here when you need us, Leigh. Anytime.”

  Tears, tears that she thought would have been dried up by now, flooded her eyes as she said in a choked voice, “Thank you for everything. The wedding was just beautiful.”

  Lois had been holding a sleeping Sarah during this exchange. Leigh let her mother carry the baby to the Buick, as her father draped the lynx coat over her suit and led her outside in Lois’s wake. Leigh needed no urging to leave quickly. The remnants of the wedding and its following reception were repulsive to her. She avoided looking at the once-beautiful wedding cake that now resembled a ravaged carcass. The candles had been extinguished. The wicks that had glowed with a celebration of love were now blackened and lifeless. The flowers reminded her of Greg’s funeral. She breathed in the cold air as she stepped out onto the front porch. Everything beautiful in the world had suddenly seemed to decay and she couldn’t get the stench of it out of her nostrils.

  Lois had been biding her time, biting her tongue, awaiting the opportunity to let Leigh know in no uncertain terms her view of the turn of events. As soon as she had handed Sarah over to Leigh where she sat in the back seat and they were wheeling away from the house, she said, “I could have warned you, but your father told me to mind my own business.”

  “I’m still warning you to mind your own business. Be quiet, Lois,” Harve said.

  “I won’t. Not now. Didn’t I tell you she was making a ghastly error? Didn’t I tell you she was getting into the same horrible situation she had with Greg? We begged her to come live with us after he died, but no. She had to live alone. She has no better sense than to have a baby in the back of a pickup truck and now look at what she’s gotten herself into. She never learns. She won’t listen to me.”

  “It’s her business.”

  Leigh let them thrash it out between them. She didn’t take offense at their talking about her as though she weren’t there. She didn’t feel she was. Her mind was far away, on a deserted highway she’d had no business driving on alone when in the last few weeks of pregnancy.

  Hadn’t he said that, softly chiding her on her foolishness even as he helped her? You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met. He’d said that, too, flashing her a brilliant smile, white against the tanned, weather-roughened face. Beard-stubbled. Blue-eyed. Eyes that laughed. Eyes that sympathized. A bandanna tied around his forehead like a renegade Apache. Thick dark hair falling over it. He’d never worn a bandanna like that since then. She’d have to tell him how much she’d liked it. Maybe someday when they played tennis or—

  There might not be a someday. God, what had she done?

  On that lonely stretch of highway on that summer day, racked with pain and fear, she had trusted him. Stranger that he was then, she had put her life in his hands. Why, now that she was his wife, did she mistrust him? Now that she knew the man he was, now that she loved him, why had she let fear creep in? Wasn’t love stronger than fear?

  You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met. Your husband is going to be so proud of you.

  No, he couldn’t be. He couldn’t be proud of a wife who had sent him off with no word of comfort, no touch, no kiss. He certainly wouldn’t think that she loved him, not with the unselfish, self-sacrificing kind of love that each knew was essential to the survival of a marriage true to its vows of taking each other for better or worse. What if he didn’t know how much she loved him? What if something happened to him and he never knew

  “Turn around,” she said suddenly.

  Lois’s strident lecture on how foolish Leigh had been abruptly ceased, and she stared over the back of the seat at her daughter. “What?”

  Ignoring her mother’s incredulous look, Leigh repeated, “Father, please turn the car around. I’m going back.”

  “Don’t you dare, Harve, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Dar” Lois started sympathetically.

  “Either turn the car around or let me out here. I’ll walk back with Sarah if necessary. I’m going to stay with Chad’s parents while he’s away.”

  “Harve, you can’t,” Lois said. When the turning car told her that he could, she gave up on him and turned again to Leigh. “Leigh, it’s better this way. If you stay with him, you’ll be miserable the rest of your life.”

  “I’ll be more miserable without him. Right, Sarah?” Leigh asked of her daughter, who was looking up at her with what appeared to be an approving smile. “We’d be miserable and lost without him, wouldn’t we?”

  “Then I wash my hands of the whole affair,” Lois said. “Don’t expect me”

  “No one expects anything out of you, Lois. Now shut up.”

  Lois gawked at her husband, her mouth working with mute wrath. She cast another venomous look toward her daughter, who met her gaze levelly until Lois looked away. Finally she sat straight forward in her seat, perfectly erect, righteously indignant.

  “Thank you, Father,” Leigh said, scrambling out of the back seat as soon as he pulled the car to a stop.

  Harve Jackson retrieved her luggage from the trunk of the car and set it on the front steps of the house. “Leigh, for better or worse, Chad’s your husband. You’re doing the right thing.”

  “Yes, I know.” She kissed her father on the cheek. Leaning forward, she spoke through the window. “Goodbye, Mother.” She got no answer, but then she hadn’t expected one. Her mother would come around. Lois’s fits of sulking seldom lasted long.

  When Leigh turned away after waving her parents off, the Dillons were waiting at the door for her. Amelia was smiling br
oadly and came to relieve Leigh of Sarah. Stewart apologized for not being able to help her with her bags. His trouser leg was empty as he leaned upon his crutch. She hastened to get inside.

  Over Amelia’s protests, Leigh helped her clear away what the caterer hadn’t done. “I told them all—caterer, florist, everyone—to come back tomorrow,” Amelia said. “Because of Chad’s leaving, they all understood.”

  They were rinsing out punch glasses in the kitchen. Stewart was watching the last of the New Year’s Day football games and entertaining Sarah on his lap.

  “I let Chad down, Amelia,” Leigh said quietly. “When he needed my support the most, I didn’t give it. He must be so disappointed in me.”

  “He understands and he loves you, Leigh, and despite how you acted before he left, he knows you love him.”

  Wanting so badly to believe that, Leigh turned to her mother-in-law with anxious eyes. “Do you think so?”

  Amelia patted her on the hand. “I know so. I won’t be a meddlesome in-law and butt in where I’m not wanted, but I’m a good listener if you want to talk about it.”

  * * *

  The courage she had found within herself was tested when Leigh saw the news reports of the fire in Venezuela on network television. It was such a horrendous inferno, such a rapacious drain on the fuel supply it was consuming, that it had made headlines worldwide.

  Thankfully Leigh was able to busy herself at the mall for several days, taking down the Christmas decorations and overseeing their storage. The person she had recruited to take care of her work while she was away on her honeymoon had been called out of town the day after New Year’s. The pots of flowers used to replace the now-wilting poinsettias were delivered and had to be arranged in the beds.

  The residents of Saddle Club Estates were each responsible for taking down and storing their own decorations. Leigh hired two students to help her with those at Chad’s house. Using her key, she showed them where to store them in a closet inside the garage. While she waited for them, she stood beside the pickup parked inside, running her hands over the faded, chipped paint, remembering.

  The evenings were the hardest. Amelia was delighted that she was getting to watch Sarah throughout the day, though Leigh had offered to take her to the sitter she used in town. Such a suggestion was met with a deluge of protests. Stewart seemed not at all disconcerted to have two new females under his roof, but went about his business of running the cattle ranch seemingly unaffected.

  Feeding his vast herd became a challenge when a blizzard blew in from New Mexico and left frigid temperatures and twelve inches of snow behind. Not prepared to handle more than a few inches of snow at a time, the west Texas community came to a standstill. Highways were closed; schools and businesses got an unexpected holiday; anybody with common sense stayed indoors.

  During the second day of confinement, Amelia and Leigh were in the kitchen making fudge. Stewart had come in near-frozen after he and his hands had distributed bales of hay to the herd. He was watching television in the living room, eagerly awaiting the fudge.

  “Leigh, Chad will love you forever if you learn how to do this. That boy can eat a pound of this himself,” Amelia said as she dropped a dollop of the cooking fudge into a measuring cup of cold water. “Now watch, this is the tricky part. You have to make sure it’s hard”

  “Leigh, Amelia, come here quick,” Stewart called from the living room. His urgency was transmitted to them and the fudge was forgotten as they dashed down the hallway. Leigh’s first thought was that something had happened to Sarah, but one sweeping glance of the room told her the infant was still sleeping on a pallet.

  “Stew” Amelia began only to be interrupted.

  “Shhhh. Listen,” Stewart said, pointing to the television screen.

  The news reporter with a map of Venezuela behind his left shoulder was telling of a new development on the fire that had raged out of control for more than a week.

  “Efforts to put out the fire have proved futile for the experts of Flameco. Today the situation became even more grim when another storage tank holding thousands of barrels of crude exploded. The storage tank is positioned in a group of others, making the situation critical. Safety doesn’t permit our reporters to get any closer than two miles from the site, so details are sketchy at this point.

  “Rumors that several men were injured as a result of the explosion have come in, but identities of the injured or the extent of their injuries have not been confirmed. We’ll keep you abreast of the situation as details are made known to us. Now back to our regular programming.”

  Stewart used the remote-control switch to snap off the sound. Leigh watched transfixed as a woman won a new refrigerator and jumped up and down exuberantly, kissing the host of the inane game show and all but choking him with his microphone cord. To Leigh, there was something obscene in jubilation over winning a new refrigerator when men could be burned, injured… dying.

  The Dillons were sensitive enough not to insult her with banalities. Leigh knew that they, too, were worried. They weren’t about to tell her not to be.

  The afternoon dragged on. No one was hungry, but they kept up the pretense of normality and ate the stew Amelia had had simmering all day.

  When the telephone rang soon after six o’clock, they stared at each other, searching for reassuring expressions, finding none. Stewart pulled himself up on his crutch and went to answer.

  He spoke quietly, calmly, but Amelia and Leigh knew the call was about Chad. When at last Stewart came to stand beneath the archway, their worst fears were confirmed.

  “He was hurt with several others. They’re being flown to Houston. As a matter of fact, they should be getting there soon.”

  Leigh’s eyes squeezed shut. Her hands held on tight to each other in front of her breasts. “How… how…”

  “I don’t know what happened to him or how bad it is. That was an official from the Venezuelan government. His English was as bad as my Spanish. I don’t know. We can call Flameco, I guess, but I don’t think the headquarters will know any more than we do at this point. All we can do is—”

  “I’m going down there,” Leigh said firmly, and took decisive steps toward the stairs with the intention of running up them to change her clothes.

  “Leigh.” Amelia reached out for her. “You can’t. Not without knowing what you’ll find. I won’t let you go to Houston alone. Besides, the weather…” She let the frozen landscape outside speak for itself. The bare branches of the pecan trees were encased in a tubing of ice. “The roads and airports are closed.”

  “I’m going,” Leigh said forcefully. “Chad owns an airplane. He has a pilot. He’ll fly me to Houston if I have to hold a gun to his head. You have a four-wheel-drive truck,” she said to Stewart. “You hauled hay around in it today. It can take me to the airport. I’m going.” She stared at them both with iron determination. Then her expression crumbled pitiably. “Please help me.”

  * * *

  She saw the lights of the runway looming closer as the pilot started their descent to the private landing field in Houston. The flight had been harrowing. Until they had flown out of the winter storm, the small aircraft had been buffeted by icy winds. Leigh found no comfort from the pilot, who persistently muttered to himself about stubborn broads with no more sense than God gave rubber ducks.

  The storm that had played havoc with north Texas had left only a cold rain behind it in coastal Houston. The reflections of the runway lights were blurred on its wet surface. The aircraft cruised past hangars housing private airplanes as it taxied toward the small terminal.

  Leigh gripped the edge of her seat and prayed that she would be met by a car and driver and rushed to the hospital as Stewart had promised. Even then, there was the outside chance that she would be too late, or that… No! He would be all right. He had to be.

  The plane whined to a stop and the disgruntled pilot cut the engines. He shoved his soggy cigar, which Leigh had requested he extinguish, back into his mouth
and said, “We’re here.”

  “Thank you.” She unsnapped her seat belt and bent to step onto the stairs that the pilot was unfolding out the door. She was traveling light, carrying only one bag she had hastily packed with essentials. She thanked the pilot again as he handed it down to her before he grouchily stalked off toward one of the hangars.

  The heels of her boots tapped loudly on the concrete as she rushed toward the lighted building. Pushing through the glass door, she ran up to the only attendant she saw in the deserted terminal. “I’m Mrs. Dillon. Is there someone here to meet me?”

  Myopically the janitor eyed her up and down, taking in the lynx coat and the long hair swirling around its collar. “Someone here to meet ya, ya say? I don’t rightly know,” he said. “Was somebody s’pposed to be?”

  Putting down an urge to knock the broom he was leaning on out from under him and scream, she said, “Thank you anyway,” and dashed toward the front of the building and out another set of heavy glass doors. The sidewalk running its length was deserted. The street, too, was empty, save for an El Dorado parked at the curb. She leaned down, but found it empty.

  Her shoulders slumped in anxiety. Where was her ride to the hospital? Stewart had assured her—

  “Looking for me?”

  Her heart slammed into her ribs. She spun around, whirling the fur coat around her like a matador’s cape. He was leaning against the building in the shadows. Had she not known him, not loved him, she would have been terrified of him.

  His clothes were filthy. One leg of his jeans had been split to his thigh to allow for the plaster cast on his foot and calf. The other foot was shod in a cowboy boot caked with mud and splattered with oil. His denim jacket hung open to reveal a shirt unbuttoned indecently low. A bandanna had been rakishly tied around his forehead. Propped against the wall beside him was a crutch.

  She dropped her bag onto the wet sidewalk, took two stumbling steps, then hurled herself into his waiting arms. “Oh, my God, Chad, darling, are you… Sweetheart… Are you all right? You’re hurt… are you hurt?”