Coming Home to You

by Fay Robinson

  “Granny Mag,” Kate finished for him, suddenly realizing the significance of his story and this place. “Margaret Taylor Bridges. Your maternal grandmother.”

  “You’ve done your homework.”

  “Obviously not well enough. I didn’t trace your family history on your mother’s side beyond your grandparents.” She looked at the graves with renewed interest. “These people—Joshua and Elizabeth Satterfield—were your great-great-grandparents, weren’t they?”

  “Yes. The farm passed out of the family and became pastureland after Elizabeth died in 1915. I bought it back a few years ago. Most of it ended up as Pine Acres, but I kept fifty acres, intending to build a house for myself. I’d grown up hearing wonderful stories about the place from Granny Mag, and I got this crazy idea that I should settle on the same spot where Joshua and Elizabeth’s house had been and live a simple life like them.”

  “A return to your roots?”

  “Something like that.”

  So that was why he was living here, in Alabama. “Why didn’t you build a house here?”

  The shadow of regret for desires unfulfilled passed slowly across his face. She recognized it, having seen it in her mirror.

  “Dreams die, I guess,” he said softly. “People die. And what seems simple never really is.”

  His terse sentences said what poets have attempted to describe for hundreds of years—the ironies of life—but Kate heard no poetry in his words, only sorrow for the loss of a dream and the loss of a brother, who’d died much too soon.

  Unintentionally, Bret Hayes had also described himself—a man whose simple facade hid a soul of great complexity. In this respect, at least, the brothers were very much alike.

  Kate was beginning to understand him. And yet today he’d repeatedly surprised her. In bringing her here, in showing her this private place that meant so much to him, he’d given her an unexpected gift. The idea overwhelmed and confused her.

  Crouching at the foot of one of the graves, he picked up a clump of dry pine needles and nervously twisted it with one hand. He didn’t look at her, never looked at her when the conversation grew serious. His face betrayed him when he tried to hide his feelings. She knew that embarrassed him, and so he glanced away or lowered his head, even turned his back to her so she couldn’t look into his eyes.

  “Thank you for sharing this place with me,” she told him.

  “You understand you can’t write about it, don’t you?” he asked, seemingly mesmerized by the circular movement of the brown needles. “If fans knew James’s ancestors were buried here, they might desecrate the graves in search of souvenirs, like they did at the family plot in Chattanooga.”

  “I understand. I was furious when I saw the damage they did to the headstones, and so thankful when your family built the mausoleum and moved the graves. It’s a beautiful resting place for James, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.”

  Kate’s intuition kicked in. “You have seen it, haven’t you?”

  “Sure.” His tone was convincing, but something about his answer made her doubt the credibility of it. If she could catch a glimpse of his face…

  She dropped down in front of him and took the pine needles away. She held his hands within her own. Earlier she’d watched him lift a heavy saddle with one hand, as if it weighed nothing. Moments later that same hand had lightly, lovingly, rubbed across the head of a child. The hands were like the man, she decided. They possessed both strength and gentleness.

  He’d stiffened when she touched him, and he watched her in silence as she turned his hands over and lightly brushed her thumbs across his skin. Hands always told a story. His spoke of hard work outdoors. The palms were rough, as were the pads of his fingers. A ridge of tiny calluses marred the tips of the fingers on his left hand, and cuts, not quite healed, ran across the second joint of the two middle ones. The stained skin told her he often worked in the dirt.

  She had his attention now. She looked into his eyes.

  “You’ve never seen the mausoleum, have you?” she asked, fearing she already knew the answer.

  Silent seconds passed. Indecision showed on his face.

  “I’ve never been there in person,” he said finally. “Only seen pictures of it.”

  “Why haven’t you visited?”

  “I haven’t found the time to go.”

  “I don’t believe that.” He looked away. “No, please don’t hide from me,” she pleaded, making his gaze come back to her face. “You don’t have to hide your feelings from me or lie to me.”

  “What makes you think I’m lying? I work hard. The horses have to be fed twice a day and I can’t leave that responsibility to anyone else. I don’t have time to take off.”

  “Now, Hayes…”

  “Well, I don’t,” he said defensively.

  He stood abruptly. Kate also rose.

  “You’ve gone to elaborate measures here to protect the graves of relatives you never knew. Yet you want me to believe you haven’t visited the tomb that holds your brother, father and grandparents because in the four years since your family built it you haven’t found the time? That makes no sense.”

  He scowled, unable to deny the logic of her words.

  “What keeps you away?”

  “My conscience,” he said, his voice filled with self-loathing. “I can’t force myself to visit my brother’s tomb because I know I put him there.”

  “That’s not true. A freak of nature…God’s will…something…I don’t know…made that plane crash. But you’re not responsible. You didn’t kill him.”

  “I did kill him. I was so angry he’d lied to me about taking drugs that I…” The painful memories etched his face with agony. Kate held her breath and prayed he’d go on. He needed to face the bad memories before he could get past them.

  “You what? What did you do that makes you feel responsible for James’s death?”

  “I told him…he was dead to me, that I no longer had a brother and nothing he said or did would ever change that. And I hit him. Not once, but over and over until I had to be pulled off. I’d never hit my brother in anger before in my life, but that night I wanted to kill him.”

  “But you didn’t kill him,” she repeated.

  “No, not with my hands. With my anger. He begged me to listen to him, to stay and try to work things out, but I refused.”

  “He had to know you didn’t mean what you said.”

  “I did mean it. When we were growing up, we were very close, but we’d lost that somehow and it was too late get it back. I didn’t want to get it back.”

  Kate’s heart skipped a beat. “No. I can’t accept that.” She shook her head, although his face told her he spoke the truth. “But he was your brother. You loved him. You’d never have walked away from him or given up trying to help him.”

  “I did walk away. I meant what I told him and he knew it. I’d watched drugs kill or destroy the minds of too many people I cared about, and I wasn’t going to go through it again, not with him. He got on that plane because I left him no choice. I refused to forgive him or give him the help he begged me for. And he died because of it.”

  Kate didn’t speak, but the tears that escaped against her will and slowly moved down her cheek conveyed her feelings better than words. He reached out and gently put his hand against her face, wiping a tear away with his thumb.

  “Do you cry for him, Kate?” he whispered.

  She drew a ragged breath. Giving in to the overwhelming desire to hold him and be held, she wrapped her arms around him and put her head against his chest. Both brothers had suffered so much because of a few words hurled in anger. One brother was dead and could never be returned to her. The comfort she offered the other would never match his pain, but it was all she had to give.

  “No, Bret, not for him,” she lied. “Only for you.”

  SHE WAS SILENT in the truck on the way home, something Bret decided didn’t happen too often. Twice today he’d upset her enough to make h
er cry, and that was probably a rare thing, as well.

  The tears she’d shed for him had not only been a surprise, but had touched him deep inside. When she’d clung to him and whispered those tender words, he’d almost fallen apart.

  But now the tender words had been replaced with silence, and the eyes that had looked upon him with compassion avoided him. She stared out the front window, thinking…what? He didn’t know. The awkwardness that had shadowed them at times throughout the day had returned to settle itself on the seat between them. Since leaving the ranch, they’d exchanged only a handful of sentences, and those had been mere pleasantries. Fifteen minutes had gone by without a word spoken.

  They were back to being “Hayes” and “Morgan,” and the intimacy they’d shared at the graves was gone.

  He supposed she regretted revealing her soft side. A woman like Kate, whose job required her to be tough and unbending, would equate softness with weakness and consider both a liability. She wouldn’t understand how appealing that softness was.

  His gaze moved over her, lingering on her pensive face before returning to the road. He’d spent the day trying to keep his raging desire in check, but he was failing miserably at the moment.

  Her clothes were dirty, and her cap was on backward. The Kool-Aid the children had brought her when they’d returned from their ride had given her a cherry-colored mustache that matched the sunburn on her nose. She was irresistible, and he ached to touch that stain with his lips.

  He chided himself for the disturbing thought. Things were becoming too complicated. She was the enemy. He couldn’t be attracted to her.

  If he was smart, he’d take her back to the motel right now, tell her their deal was off and let that be it. But he hadn’t acted wisely yet where she was concerned. Maybe one more stupid act wouldn’t hurt.

  “I’m going to drop by my house and unhitch the trailer and then I’ll buy you supper,” he said, determined to breach the wall she’d erected. After tonight he never had to see her again, but he wanted tonight. For once, he wanted to end his day not feeling so damned empty.

  “I don’t expect you to feed me.”

  “It’s nearly eight. Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry.”

  “Then let me buy you supper before I drive you back to the motel.”

  “You wouldn’t offer to do that if you knew how much I can eat,” she said, finally looking at him.

  “So, if you eat like a pig I’ll make you pay for your own meal.” That forced a whisper of a smile from her. “Deal?”

  “My arms are filthy.”

  “You can wash up at my house. And over supper you can have your ten minutes to make your pitch.”

  “All right, but I’m not getting out unless you tie up your dog. I like my ankles and I want to keep them.”

  He turned into the driveway as the sun sank below the horizon and the trees became silhouettes against the sky. An excited Sallie raced the truck to the house. The mares in the pasture trotted to the fence and called a welcome to Bret’s gelding in the trailer.

  “Do you want to come up to the barn with me?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll wait here.”

  “I have fillies and colts in the corral on the other side of the barn.” Maybe that would tempt her out of her somber mood.

  She perked up. “Can I pet them?”

  “All you want. I’ll even let you help me feed them.” He stopped the truck, slid it into Reverse and carefully backed the trailer into its grassy parking place near the fence. “I’ll go tie up Sallie.”

  He fastened Sallie to a clothesline post with a rope, then dashed in the back door to the kitchen to hide the dirty glasses left in the sink. Maybe she wouldn’t notice the cobwebs in the corners of the kitchen or the muddy boot marks on the floor.

  A pile of freshly washed laundry—underwear and socks—lay on the kitchen table. He hurriedly carried them to the bedroom and threw them on the unmade bed.

  How long had it been since anyone other than him had set foot in this house? He wasn’t sure. When his hands, Willie and Aubrey, were working, they preferred to put their lunches and drinks in the refrigerator at the barn rather than walk to the house. He never invited anyone to visit. His few encounters with women during the past few years had purposely been elsewhere.

  He glanced in the bathroom, thankful to find it fairly clean. After opening the windows wider and turning on the ceiling fan in the living room to chase out the stagnant air, he left the house through the front door. Kate had climbed out of the truck and stood under the halogen yard light, looking at what remained of the garden on the other side of the driveway.

  “Very artistic,” she said, pointing to the scarecrow.

  “That’s Henry’s creation. It’s supposed to frighten the deer so they won’t eat my peas.”

  “Does it work?”

  “No, but he’s proud of it so I leave it up.” He opened the door of the trailer, and his gelding backed out without prompting. “How about holding him while I unhitch the trailer?” He handed her the lead rope and she accepted with reluctance, nervously staring up at the big horse.

  “He’s not going to try anything, is he?”

  “No, he’s gentle.”

  “Do you think he’d let me touch him?”

  “Sure. He likes you to rub that blaze on his nose.”

  Bret smiled to himself as she inched her hand slowly toward Dusty’s head while begging the horse not to trample her to death.

  It didn’t take him long to unhitch the trailer and grab a flashlight off the dashboard, but that was all the time she and Dusty needed to get acquainted. When he walked to the back of the trailer, the horse had lowered his head so she could scratch him behind the ears.

  “I found something else he likes,” she said, grinning with pleasure.

  “So I see.”

  “His ears are soft, almost like a puppy’s. And you’re right—he’s very gentle.”

  “Not all of them are. They have different personalities. Some, like him, enjoy being around people and being touched. Others don’t. Would you like to lead him?”

  “Could I?”

  “If you’re careful. He gets anxious sometimes when he’s close to the other horses, and he’ll step on you if you don’t watch out.”

  She became more animated on the walk up the dirt road that led from the house to the barn, fully exercising her innate curiosity about everything. She made him explain what horses eat and how much, how they’re trained and what diseases they can catch. It amazed him that her brain could store the answers to the millions of questions she’d probably asked over the years.

  He didn’t mind the questions. One of the few subjects he could talk about with some authority was horses, and it had been a long time since anyone—any woman—had shown an interest in what he did.

  When they got to the barn, he flipped on the lights in the wide alley that divided the stalls. He should have known she’d walk immediately to the one thing he didn’t want to answer questions about.

  “What’s this contraption?”

  “A mount.”

  She ran her hand over the hard rubber and into the tubular hole at the end. “A mount for what?”

  “Breeding. That’s what we use to collect the semen for artificial insemination.”

  She jerked her hand out of the artificial vagina. “You mean they don’t actually…and that’s where he puts his…?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, trying not to laugh.

  “Oh, nasty.” She wiped her hand on her shirt. “You could have told me what it was before I stuck my hand in there.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s clean. We disinfect the tube every time we use it.”

  He turned on the lights over the corral so she could see “the babies,” as she called them, although most of them had been born in late winter and were already six months old.

  When she saw the long-legged colts and fillies, she went all sweet and motherly. They came to the fence a
nd she had to stroke each one, immediately forgetting Bret’s existence.

  “Do you want to help me feed Dusty?” he asked, trying to win back her attention.

  She didn’t even look at him before she waved him away. “No, go ahead.” One of the colts stuck its head through the fence and nudged her. “Oh, you’re a little doll,” she cooed. “Will you give me a kiss? How darling you are.”

  Bret glowered. He wondered what he’d have to do to get her to talk to him like that. For the first time in his life he was jealous of a horse.

  Leading Dusty into the barn, he tied him outside one of the stalls and went to the feed room where he began filling buckets with a high-protein mixture of grain.

  Feeding was a major undertaking twice a day. During the week he had Willie and Aubrey to help, but weekends it was just him. He’d never minded the work, but tonight he was resentful of the time it took because the woman intrigued him. If he didn’t hurry, the grill would be closed and he’d have to take Kate straight back to the motel, losing the extra hour he might spend with her over supper.

  His mind was on that hour and not on what he was doing when he opened Dusty’s stall and followed him in. Had he been thinking straight, instead of daydreaming like a moon-eyed kid, he’d have checked the stall to make sure that pesky raccoon hadn’t slipped under the door again to scrounge for leftover feed.

  That thought hit him about the same time the cornered coon hissed and Dusty screamed in terror. Bret lunged to the side as the horse reared. The front hooves missed him when Dusty whirled and bolted out the door, but the horse went out kicking, catching Bret solidly on his left thigh and cutting the left side of his chest, under his ribs. The frightened coon also made a hasty exit out the open door.

  “Hayes? Where are you? Why is the horse loose?” Through his veil of pain, her anxious voice seemed miles away. “Hayes, answer me!”

  He tried but he couldn’t. The floor of the stall was designed to be easy on the feet of confined horses, but underneath the three-inch rubber surface was concrete. When he’d fallen on his side, the jolt had knocked the breath out of him.

  He struggled to sit up. His chest ached and his leg felt worse, but he was more worried about his gelding than himself. Had he closed the gate in the yard when he and Kate had come through it? With great relief he remembered that he had. Dusty was trapped in the corridor between the gate and the barn. Even if he jumped either fence that bordered the dirt road, he’d be in the pasture with the mares. He couldn’t get out onto the highway.