Home to Walnut Ridge

by Diane Moody

  “Sure,” Tracey said, picking up the protected page. She took her seat as Noah, Dad, and Alex leaned over her shoulders.

  Dear Father,

  I was so very sorry to hear that Evan had been killed in battle. I hadn’t shed a single tear since I was a boy, but I confess I cried all night after receiving your letter. How I wish I’d told Evan how much he meant to me.

  Even though I’m from the South, I’ve always liked Mr. Lincoln. He’s very kind to all of us who work here. When his son Willie died back in February, President Lincoln did not return to work for almost three weeks, as he and Mrs. Lincoln suffered through their grief. We all felt the sadness in every room of this great house.

  But now, as I experience my own grief‌—‌one caused by this wretched war‌—‌I find myself angry as well and fearful of my actions. Others I work with know I am from Tennessee and regularly provoke me about my allegiances. Just yesterday I nearly punched a footman for a vulgar joke he made about the Confederacy.

  That is why I have decided to leave here at once and come home to Walnut Ridge. If you and Mother will have me, I want to come home.

  Your son,

  Craggie

  Chapter 11

  After Sadie left, Buddy said goodnight and went upstairs. Noah helped Alex and Tracey finish the dinner dishes, then Alex headed off to the barn to work for a while. Noah was much too wired to call it a night, so on a whim he invited Tracey to take a ride with him. She balked at first, uneasy about riding a motorcycle in the dark. The fact that she quickly came around pleased him. She borrowed Buddy’s leather jacket, spare helmet, and protective eyewear, then followed Noah out to his bike.

  “Wow. This is a lot bigger than Dad’s. A lot more chrome, too.”

  “Bigger, but older than Buddy’s. It’s an ‘04 Ultra Classic, but it’s got all the bells and whistles.” It even has helmets with communication headsets.” He then showed her how to plug into the communication port on the bike and where the switch was to activate the headset. He climbed on and helped her up onto the seat behind him. He motioned for her to hold on. “You’ll probably want to‍—‍”

  “Oh, I’ll definitely want to.” She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his ribcage. “I’m new at this, you know. I practically cut off Dad’s circulation on the way home from the airport.”

  “Good to know. If you notice my voice jumping an octave or two, you might want to ease up. Ready?”

  She tightened her arms around him. “Ready.”

  Holding the clutch, he turned the key and powered up the Harley. It was one of his favorite sounds‌—‌like a personal, open invitation to relax. He gently eased off the clutch and slowly drove the bike down the long, winding driveway. A few minutes later they were rolling along, the cool autumn air whisking over them.

  “You okay back there?”

  “Doing great. You okay up there?”

  Noah laughed. “I’m good, thanks. Check out that moon.”

  “Whoa! It’s beautiful! I forgot how big those harvest moons can be.”

  “What, you didn’t have them in D.C.?”

  “Yes, wise guy. We have harvest moons in Washington. But I was always too busy to notice. Hard to take in a sight like that sequestered in an office ’til all hours.”

  Noah drove them out of town on the two-lane country road with no particular destination in mind. He’d never had a woman passenger before, but he decided then and there he liked it. In fact, he liked it a lot. It felt good to have Tracey’s arms wrapped around him. A little strange considering they’d only known each other a few days. That, and how intimate it was, feeling her pressed against him like this.

  They rode in silence for fifteen or twenty minutes until they came to a bluff overlooking a river. Slowing, he pulled off and parked. “I’ve never been up here before. Mind if we take a look?”

  Tracey pulled off her helmet and eyewear. “This was a favorite parking spot back when I was in high school. Mind you, I was never up here. Dad always convinced Alex and me that if we ever did that sort of thing, he’d know. ‘I’ll just know,’ he’d say. I had images of him jumping out of the bushes if I ever came up here with a guy. He sure put the fear of God in us.”

  Noah secured their helmets. “I guess we’re safe then.”

  “Safe?” she asked, following him up the steps to the lookout.

  He turned back, reaching for her hand. “Buddy’s home in bed. I don’t think you have to worry about him jumping out of the bushes.”

  She laughed, keeping up with him until they reached the top. A concrete wall served as a barrier to keep them from falling down the long, steep embankment below. “What a view‌—‌I had no idea we were this high up.”

  Tracey walked around him. “It’s absolutely breathtaking. Oh my goodness, I don’t know which is prettier‌—‌all the twinkling lights below or the canopy of stars above. Especially with the moon looking all fat and orange like that.”

  “Well, I did call ahead. Asked for something breathtaking.”

  She laughed quietly. “Did you now? So you planned this? Like a rendezvous or something?”

  He could tell by the look on her face she hadn’t meant to say that. Even in the moonlight he could tell she was embarrassed. “Ah, yes, ma’am, it surely does. I called up Dial-A-Sky and said I’d be coming up here with a beautiful young woman at‍—‍” he checked his watch‌—‍ “8:55 and would they please toss out a few stars. I had to pay extra for the moon, of course. Being so big and all.”

  “So now you’re mocking me? You and your stars and your big fat moon?”

  “Not hardly. I’m not that clever. But you have to admit it was a good one.”

  “What, the Dial-A-Sky?”

  “Subject change,” Noah said, turning around so he could lean back against the wall. “I still can’t get over all this business with the Lincoln teacup and your Uncle Craggie hiding it in the wall of the smokehouse. If I hadn’t seen the letter with my own eyes and compared the handwriting to the note we found with the cup and saucer,” he shook his head, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  He watched Tracey looking out at the view below. “Unbelievable, isn’t it? And thank goodness Sadie is such a stickler for keeping the town’s archives. Imagine if we’d found that teacup and had no possible way to find out how it got there.”

  “She’s incredible,” Noah said. “She’s quite the fountain of information. I keep trying to envision this Craggie fellow on his last day at the White House. What possessed him to steal that teacup? Was it just a souvenir? I find it hard to believe someone with a reputation like his would be smitten with a particular pattern of china.”

  Tracey chuckled. “Yeah, probably not. And from what Sadie found in her research about that china and how so many pieces of it were broken and missing‌—‌it makes you wonder if Craggie was part of those on staff who deliberately dropped a piece here or there out of spite toward Mrs. Lincoln.” She shrugged. “Then again, maybe he just stole it right from under their noses.”

  “Which in Abe’s case, was quite large.” Seeing her perplexed expression, he added, “His nose. You could hide a band of gypsies under that nose of his.”

  She bumped against him, smiling. “Hey, have a little respect. He was our president, after all.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Or, is it possible, as Sadie indicated, that the china really was defective,” Tracey continued. “Remember she said Mrs. Lincoln replaced it with a whole new different set when her husband was re-elected? How sad that they never got to use any of it because he was assassinated.”

  “Somehow I doubt the First Lady gave it a thought, considering someone just murdered her husband.”

  “Duly noted.”

  Noah turned to face her, his hip still leaning against the wall. “So somehow, whether he just wanted a souvenir of his tenure there at the White House‍—‍”

  “Or maybe he took it as proof that he’d actually worked there. Think about it. He’d al
ways been this wild child, roaming half the country. Everybody back home probably thought he was an embarrassment to his family. There’s no telling what they all thought of him.”

  Noah followed her lead. “Maybe it was just a last-minute whim on his way out the door. Maybe he was about to leave and noticed a tray with the cup and saucer just sitting there. So he grabs it, slips it under his jacket, and walks out the door.”

  Tracey nodded, a far-off look in her eyes as if imagining the entire scenario. “Then he comes home, maybe even tells his folks it was a parting gift from the Lincolns.”

  “But‌—‌being the ne’re-do-well the townspeople knew him to be‌—‌maybe no one believed him. Or . . . or maybe, after all his bragging around town, he began to worry that someone might steal it.”

  Tracey faced him, continuing the supposition. “And Sadie said all this would have happened right about the time Craggie’s father was having the new smokehouse built.” She suddenly grabbed his arm, caught up in the imagery. “So he hid it in the wall because he was leaving to join the Confederate Army! Sadie told us he enlisted shortly after he got home, remember? He told his parents it was something he had to do, to fight in Evan’s place.”

  He stared at her, a shudder rippling over him as his imagination drifted away from the image of the young man, and in its place, a deep and quite unexpected affection for the woman standing before him. She said nothing, her face still filled with wonder at the story they’d just shared. As if they’d both been there, witnessing the entire scene.

  Her smile began to fade as she searched his eyes, no doubt distracted by his silence.

  Kiss her . . . a voice seemed to whisper in his ear. He wondered where such a notion came from, and then he heard it again.

  Kiss her!

  And so he did.

  He leaned down ever so slightly, his eyes still locked on hers. “Tracey . . . ?” Had he actually breathed her name? Or merely imagined it?

  She hesitated only a moment. Then, “Yes?”

  He swallowed, tamping down his own hesitation. “I think I’m going to kiss you.” He hadn’t meant for it to sound so matter-of-fact, but there it was.

  Her eyes glistened in the moonlight as her face warmed with a smile. “I was hoping you would.”

  As his lips touched hers, something inside him shifted. Changed. Melted. Giving way to something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Her arms slipped slowly around his waist, the familiar sound of their crinkling leather making him smile as their kiss lingered. He gathered her into his embrace, loving the warmth of her in his arms and admitting to himself he’d wanted to do this since last night on the back porch at Walnut Ridge. That he was actually holding her now beneath the stars and losing himself as she kissed him back . . . it all seemed too good to be true. And then that voice inside his head‌—‌the same one that had prompted him to kiss her—convinced him to stop all the analyzing and enjoy the moment.

  And so he did.

  Chapter 12

  As the first rays of the morning sun crept into her room, Tracey rolled over on her back and pulled the comforter up to her chin. With her eyes still closed, she remembered Noah’s first kiss last night on the bluff. Then the second and third . . . and somewhere along the way, she lost count. She smiled at the memory, still surprised how suddenly it happened, and the way her heart had skipped a beat when he wrapped her in his arms.

  They’d stayed on the bluff talking until the autumn night’s chill chased them home. She’d wrapped her arms around him all the way home, different somehow from the ride out there. Back at Walnut Ridge, she wasn’t ready to say goodnight. Nor was he. They made hot chai lattes and sat by the fire in the den. There they talked for hours about the silliest things. His love of Jimmy Stewart movies. Her favorite indulgence‌—‌getting lost in historical novels until the wee hours of the morning. His utter disgust for sushi. Her instinctive gagging reflex at the sight and smell of Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and sauerkraut. His appreciation for a more relaxed life away from the big city. Her fondness for the old house and the chance to come home again.

  When he asked what caused her to walk away from her job in Washington, she was evasive. She didn’t want thoughts of Morgan to spoil their perfect evening, but somehow it all came spilling out. She’d noticed the tiny muscle on Noah’s jaw twitching when she told him about that last night at the White House reception.

  “You should report him, you know,” he had said. “There are laws about these things.”

  “No, I could never do that, Noah. I couldn’t do that to Amanda. Never.”

  Moments had passed. The old clock on the mantel slowly ticked as the fire beneath it crackled. Finally, he leaned back on the sofa and sighed. “I suppose it would be devastating‌—‌for her and for you. But it’s not right. He was taking advantage of you. He doesn’t deserve to stay in office.”

  “I know, but it’s over now. I’m home.”

  “You haven’t heard from him since you left?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard from him. Last time I checked, he’d left thirty-seven voicemails and twenty-six text messages. I never answered, and I quit listening after my first night home.”

  “Thirty-seven voicemails? Twenty-six text messages? Tracey, that’s a form of stalking. He’s a U.S. Senator‌—‌doesn’t he have anything better to do?”

  “Can we please change the subject?”

  He took her hand. “I’m sorry. Yes, by all means. Let’s change the subject.”

  She pulled his hand free and lifted his arm around her shoulders, snuggling against him. They sat together silently for several moments. As his breathing steadied, she wondered if he was falling asleep. She turned to face him, pleased to find him gazing at her. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “After I met you the other day, I asked Alex about you.”

  “Must have been a brief and boring little chat.”

  “Not really.”

  “And what did Alex tell you?”

  Tracey swallowed hard. “She told me you’d lost your wife.”

  Something in his countenance changed. She saw it in his eyes. He seemed to be holding his breath, and right away, she wished she’d never asked. When he said nothing, she did. “I’m sorry, Noah. Forget I asked.”

  “No,” he said, quietly looking away, his eyes now fixed on the fire. “No, I . . . it’s just that . . .” He pulled his arm from behind her and took both her hands in both of his. He slowly looked up at her, searching her eyes. “I’ve had a really nice time with you tonight, Tracey. And I really like you‌—‌I do.”

  He paused, briefly looking down at their hands as if searching for the right words. Her heart pounded, so afraid of what he might say next.

  “I would really like to spend more evenings like this one with you. I’d like to see where that might go. But for now . . . “ He blinked, moisture filling his eyes. “For now, I’d like to ask you if we could have that talk for another time.” He closed his eyes, his expression pained. “If that’s okay with you.”

  When he opened his eyes again, she pulled her hands free, then cupped his face with them. Unable to find the words, she’d simply nodded, then gently kissed him. “That’s perfectly fine with me.”

  He’d held her quietly, then led her to the front door where he put on his jacket and with a final kiss, said goodnight.

  Now, with last night’s memory fresh in her mind, Tracey sat up and wondered at the whole incident. Would they have that chance to see where their relationship might lead? Or had she blown it, asking something so personal, so soon?

  As her thoughts ran wild, her cell phone vibrated.

  Morgan. Again.

  She threw back the covers and stepped into her slippers. “Senator, I have just one thing to say to you on this bright and beautiful morning‌—‌phhhbbbt!”

  The old flannel-lined jacket felt good as Tracey made her way down to the barn. Ten minutes earlier she’d found a note by the coffee pot: Got an ea
rly start this morning. I’m down at the barn so grab a cup and come join me! ‌—‍Alex

  The oversized mug warmed her hands on this clear, brisk morning. She let herself drink in the sights and sounds and smells as she walked along the well-trodden path to the barn. Walnut Ridge had always been her balm, her refuge. The rustle of leaves beneath her feet reminded her how much she wasn’t missing Washington and the stress that always kept her in knots day and night. She pushed those thoughts away, not wishing to ruin such a beautiful day.

  It’s so good to be home.

  “It’s about time, Sleeping Beauty,” Alex teased as she set aside her paint brush. “Nice of you to join me this morning.”

  Tracey hugged her with her free arm. “Just because I’m not up before the chickens doesn’t mean I’m a slacker. Look‍—‍” she said, lifting her wristwatch face up. “Five minutes after seven. Not too shabby.”

  Alex placed a noisy kiss on her cheek and turned back to her paints. “Yeah, especially since you didn’t get to bed ’til after two.”

  “Yeah? And how exactly do you know that?”

  Alex whipped around with a broad smile on her face. “Well, kiddo, it’s not like Noah just tiptoed down the drive when he left.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “His Harley has a distinct rumble when it starts.”

  “Ah. Well, I guess there’s no keeping secrets from you. But why do I feel like I’m in high school again, and you’re spying on me and one of my boyfriends?”

  Alex laughed then squatted down on the floor beside the coffee table she was working on. “Nah, I left that to Mom and Dad. I was too busy reading my books.”

  Tracey set her coffee cup on an upturned barrel. “Yeah, like Mom ever cared about what we did or didn’t do. Y’know, I was thinking about her the other night before I went to sleep. And it dawned on me; she was probably going through menopause when all that happened.”