by Fay Robinson
“I can take care of myself.”
“But it’s silly for me to sit around in the motel when I could come over here and work on my laptop just as easily. Plus, I can cook for you.”
“I don’t need you to cook for me, Morgan.”
“Judging by the look of your refrigerator and freezer, somebody should. Do you eat everything raw or d’you live off frozen microwave dinners?”
“I can cook okay.” It was a good thing Sallie couldn’t talk and dispute that.
“Hayes, I’m better than okay, I’m fabulous. I learned the basics from my grandmother who grew up in Mississippi, and I’ve even taken classes. So I can cook anything, including the home-style kinds of things you probably go for…like, oh, country-fried steak, barbecued pork, mashed potatoes with gravy, peas, turnip greens and cornbread made with buttermilk. Doesn’t that sound good?”
“No,” he said, but with little conviction, starting to fantasize about that country-fried steak.
“How about pork chops stuffed with mushrooms? Or pot roast with potatoes, carrots and onions? I’m great with breakfast dishes, too—pancakes, crepes, pecan waffles, blintzes. Don’t you want me to fix you some of those?”
“No,” he said again, but he wondered what kind of pancakes.
“My specialty is desserts—cakes, pies, brownies and different cookies. And, of course, I make a terrific homemade peach cobbler. It’s the best thing you ever put in your mouth.”
She shut up then and waited for him to protest a final time, but he didn’t because she’d gotten him with the peach cobbler, and they both knew it. Damn those gossiping waitresses at the grill.
“You don’t play fair,” he grumbled.
She smiled innocently. “Why, I have no idea what you mean.”
KATE SLID COOKIES into the oven, set the timer and silently said a prayer of thanks to her grandmother for insisting she learn to cook.
Bret had gone back to bed after eating, giving her time to ride to the motel with Aubrey and pick up her car. She’d keep her room. Moving in with Bret—even temporarily—wouldn’t be appropriate, but he’d agreed she could spend the daylight hours at his house. At night she’d return to the motel to work and sleep.
She’d changed into slacks and a sleeveless top, checked to see if there were any messages and retrieved her computer, also stopping at the pharmacy to fill the prescription for pain medicine Bret needed but swore he didn’t.
His house was now clean and stocked with enough groceries to last a couple of weeks. A supply of bones in the refrigerator would distract Sallie and guarantee Kate safe passage to and from her car.
She turned down the flame on the beef stew she’d planned for his dinner, then went to the bedroom to check on him. He was sprawled on top of the sheet wearing nothing but cutoff sweatpants that he hadn’t even bothered to tie. They drooped precariously off his slim hips and outlined every curve and bulge.
Quietly she picked up the clothes he’d taken off last night and discarded on the chair. He probably couldn’t wear jeans until the swelling went down, but these needed soaking to keep the bloodstains from setting.
Back in the kitchen she emptied his pants pockets. Wallet, comb, string, nails, pieces of hay. She put the hay in the trash and the other things on the counter. She dug into the small front pocket, and her fingers touched something little and plastic. No, not plastic, gelatin, she realized when she pulled out the gray-and-red capsule.
The medication the doctor had given Bret was on the table, and she opened the bottle and shook one of the capsules into her palm. Gray and red. The manufacturer’s name inscribed on both capsules was the same. This had to be the penicillin pill she’d given him last night and he’d said he’d taken. But why had he put it in his pocket and then lied about it?
She wrapped the pill in a paper towel and stuck it in her purse.
Bret slept for several hours. She passed the time by tidying up his house and browsing through the books in his living room. She was surprised to find two of her own—the biography on Tipper Gore and the one she’d written on the terrorist group Shining Path as an extension of her Pulitzer prize–winning newspaper articles.
She opened the doors to the lower shelves, expecting more books, and found stacks of video cassette tapes. The dates and cities on the labels, she realized suddenly, corresponded to major concerts of Mystic Waters.
Kate had some of the same tapes in her office, copied from film so she could play them on the VCR. Many were from her private collection. The others, she and Marcus had spent countless hours searching for in the film archives of the universities where the band had performed, and in the holdings of independent filmmakers.
The band’s record company had videotapes of every performance, but Marianne Hayes Conner had issued an edict denying Kate access to her son’s work.
One label in particular caught her attention. Greensboro, 1991. She’d never watched this entire concert, only pieces of it in fifteen-second sound bites on the evening news. She popped the tape in the VCR and pushed Play.
A ripple of something powerful yet difficult to define moved through her as James appeared and his sweet clear voice filled the air.
Kate couldn’t see the audience, but she knew what it was experiencing. James didn’t just sing; James set emotion to music. He seemed to be able to look inside your soul, read what was there and then express your feelings in a way you never could.
At sixteen he’d put together a garage band with his childhood friend, Lenny Dean, and began playing clubs around Chattanooga and Nashville. At nineteen he released Free Fall. The eclectic little album used the best elements of rock, folk, blues and pop, and was so unique that it sold more than a million copies the first week.
Like his music, James was also appealingly different. Young people found someone to admire and imitate, a voice that represented their collective conscience. In a decade defined by money and self-gratification, James often sang about the environment, the plight of farmers and human rights. Most importantly, he lived according to his beliefs. At least, he’d appeared to.
She pressed Fast Forward and moved to a point later in the concert, where the band was rocking and a camera pan of the audience showed thousands of kids dancing and screaming. She had to be pretty close to the spot where—
“You won’t see anything on the tape,” Bret said from behind her. She jumped, embarrassed at being caught looking at his personal things.
He moved unsteadily through the doorway on his crutches and across the room to where she stood. But instead of stopping the tape, he advanced it and said, “Right about here was where those kids got killed, but you won’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’ve never been able to see anything, anyway.”
Silently they watched for several minutes, but Bret was right. All Kate saw was enthusiastic fans having a good time. The band hadn’t known until later that three girls had been crushed as the crowd—whipped into a frenzy by the music—had tried to press too close to the stage.
“I was told that James was pretty shaken up when he found out,” Kate said.
He nodded, not taking his eyes from the screen. “I don’t think he ever got over it. He felt guilty, depressed, angry. And he believed the deaths were an omen.”
Kate had never heard this before. “An omen of what?”
“Of even worse things to come.” He stopped the tape and pushed the button to rewind it. “He was convinced something else bad was going happen. He just didn’t know what.”
“Are you saying he had some sort of premonition?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “No, not really a premonition, but a feeling that things were never going to be the same. He thought what happened to those girls was not only a tragedy, but a sign that what he and Lenny had envisioned when they formed the band had somehow gotten distorted. The music was supposed to be good, not destructive.”
“Is that why he spoke of quitting?”
“Partly. He had other reasons.”
>
“Lenny’s illness.”
“Yes, that was one of them. When Lenny started having psychotic episodes and had to be institutionalized, James was really…distraught. He and Lenny had been best friends since they were kids, yet he’d had no idea the guy was in such bad shape. But it wasn’t only Lenny that made him think about giving it all up. After the concert where those girls died, things started to unravel and he felt responsible.”
“When Lauren killed herself, did he blame himself for that, too?”
He swallowed hard before answering. “I guess he did. We didn’t talk about Lauren. She was a touchy subject between us.”
“Because you were both in love with her?”
Kate waited for his answer without taking a breath, watching the emotions reflected in his eyes. “Yes,” he said finally, confirming what she’d suspected for many years. “Because we were both in love with her.”
The tape stopped. He ejected it and returned it to its case. Kate followed him as he took it across the room and put it back on the shelf.
“Then Lauren’s suicide must have been as difficult for you as it was for James,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I dealt with it a long time ago.”
He closed the cabinet abruptly and headed toward the kitchen with his slow awkward gait. Kate walked silently behind him, although she was burning with questions about Lauren and the singer’s relationship with the Hayes brothers.
Her curiosity went beyond needing answers for the book. As a woman, she wanted to know what was so special about Lauren that two very different yet equally impressive men like James and Bret had both fallen in love with her.
Lauren had certainly been beautiful and a good backup singer, but she hadn’t had the talent for the solo career she wanted. Without James’s help, Lauren would never have achieved any recognition at all. The reviews of her two solos on the last Mystic Waters album had been brutal.
Kate’s empathy, though, wasn’t with Lauren and her failed dreams, and she was surprised to find it wasn’t even with James.
When she looked back on those tragic events, the person she felt sorry for was Bret. The woman he loved had killed herself after realizing she’d never be a star. Then, eight months later his brother had died, and in a way that left Bret feeling responsible. That was too much pain for any one person to handle.
CHAPTER TEN
TWO DAYS LATER, Kate’s manuscript arrived from her brother by courier, and Bret settled in the swing on the front porch to read it. When she came to the door for the tenth time in an hour to peek out at him, he wondered what excuse she’d offer to justify the interruption. Were there any she hadn’t used yet? He didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Just straightening up in the living room and thought I’d check on you,” she said, talking to him through the screen.
He shifted in the swing with a “Uh-huh,” not looking up from the page but resisting the urge to laugh. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her move nervously from foot to foot. He couldn’t see her hands, but on one of her earlier trips, he’d noticed she’d already chewed off her fingernail polish and started on the nails.
And he was only on page 308. By the time he’d finished the more than six hundred pages, she’d likely have chewed right up to her elbows.
“How’s it coming?” she asked.
“Get lost, Morgan.”
“But I—”
“Get lost.”
“Oh, all right.” The bare feet and legs disappeared from his peripheral vision without further comment from their owner, leaving Bret and Sallie alone on the porch—for the moment. He was certain it wouldn’t be long before some other excuse would bring Kate to the screen door again.
First, there’d been the pillow for his back, the glass of tea in case he got thirsty, followed by the pencil to mark any parts of the manuscript he thought they should talk about. Then she’d made three trips to find out if the pillow was soft enough, the tea sweet enough and to ask whether he wanted a pen instead of the pencil.
After that, the cleaning frenzy had begun: chairs, porch floor, steps. She’d pinched the dead leaves from the hanging plants and rubbed the windows so hard that the squeaking had almost driven him insane. Unfortunately that hadn’t been the end of it.
When she’d run out of reasons for being on the porch, she’d moved her base of attack to the living room so she could peek out the door every few minutes and see how far along he was in his reading. In the past hour she’d rearranged the books in his bookshelf, swept the floor, dusted, taken down the curtains for a trip to the dry cleaners and gathered his throw rugs for torture on the clothesline with a stiff brush.
“Hey, don’t worry,” he told a trembling Sallie, who had pressed herself tightly against his side. “I swear I won’t let her get you.”
The normally ferocious dog had watched the activity with growing alarm, apparently deciding she was next in line for a good cleaning. The intensity of her growls had lessened with each of Kate’s appearances until the only sound she made was a low pitiful whimper.
He patted her reassuringly. “It’s okay. I understand. She scares the hell out of me, too.”
He found his place and went back to reading, knowing that the only cure for Kate’s ailment was for him to finish. So far he’d been mesmerized. She’d captured his and his brother’s childhood on paper with such clarity that reading the accounts was like reliving it.
It bothered him to destroy what she’d worked so hard to create. Sadly, he realized he had no choice.
The screen door squeaked and he looked up, expecting Kate. His hired hands, Aubrey and Willie, each carried a bowl.
“Man, look at you,” Aubrey said with a grin, shaking his head. “Feet propped up, a big pillow behind your back. A couple more days of this and you ain’t gonna want to git back to work.”
“You know me better than that.”
“Yep, I do.”
Aubrey folded his tall lanky frame into a nearby rocking chair. Willie, in his usual way of trying not to be obtrusive, chose to sit on the steps and quietly eat.
Bret eyed the contents of Aubrey’s bowl. “Is that my peach cobbler you’re eating up?”
“We figured we better eat it to keep you from gettin’ fat, seein’ as how you’re not doin’ any work.”
“You better have left me some, you sorry rascal.”
“Well, now, maybe we did and maybe we didn’t. Can’t rightly remember if we got the last of it or not.” He took off his cap and scratched his head in feigned confusion. “Seems to me we scraped the bottom of that bowl. Ain’t that right, brother?” Willie snickered and bobbed his head in agreement. “Maybe if you snuggle up to that pretty little gal, she might cook you another one.”
Bret shook his head, used to Aubrey’s good-natured ribbing. “You’re so full of shit sometimes.”
“Well, now, that’s true, but if I had a woman who looked like that waitin’ on me like she’s waitin’ on you, I’d sure be doin’ me some snugglin’. More than snugglin’, if you catch my drift.”
Bret did. And while he’d never admit it to Aubrey, the idea had crossed his mind with alarming frequency the past few days. He’d been in a state of partial arousal ever since Kate had walked in this morning in blue-jean shorts and her hair spilling all loose and shining across her shoulders.
When she’d bent over him a little while ago to put the pillow behind his back, her top had gaped open at the neck and he’d had lace-covered breasts staring him right in the face. That was too much temptation for a man who’d spent more time with horses than women in the past few years, and had nearly forgotten what breasts looked like.
“Brother, I do believe he’s givin’ it a hard think,” Aubrey said, making Bret realize he’d been doing exactly that.
Bret growled, “Quit your jawin’,” making both Aubrey and Willie chuckle. Heat rose noticeably to Bret’s face.
“Gettin’ hot imagining it?” Aubrey asked.
The door opened again and Kate came out, wearing her shoes and carrying her billfold and keys. She had books under her arm and his living-room curtains in a big ball. Aubrey and Willie both shot up and almost ran into each other trying to help her. Sallie whimpered, jumped down and scampered off the porch with her tail between her legs.
“Here, ma’am, let us tote that for you,” Aubrey said, taking the curtains and books, then immediately passing them to Willie.
“Thank you, Aubrey, and I want to thank you again for bringing the oysters. That was very thoughtful of you.”
“My pleasure ma’am. Hope you enjoy ’em.”
“Oysters?” Bret asked.
“Yes,” Kate said with a nod. “He brought us some mountain oysters to warm up for our dinner.”
Aubrey grinned.
“Do you like mountain oysters?” Bret asked her.
“Well, I don’t know, because I’ve never eaten any, but the idea of oysters grown in freshwater ponds sounds intriguing.”
Aubrey’s grin grew wider.
“Well,” Kate said. “Bret, will you be all right for a little while?”
“I think I can take care of myself for an hour.”
“It may be a little longer than that. I had Marcus throw in some extra copies of my books in that package he sent. I want to drop them off at the library for Miss Emma.”
“I’ll manage.”
“I made your lunch and left it in the oven.” She looked at him oddly, walked over and gently felt his forehead and cheek. “You look flushed. You aren’t getting too hot out here, are you?”
Aubrey and Willie exchanged grins behind her back, making Bret narrow his eyes at them in warning. “I’m fine,” he told her. “Go on and run your errands. These two comedians and I have business to discuss, anyway.”
“Okay, I’ll be back in a little while.” She turned to leave, then stopped. “Oh, while I’m in town I might go by the courthouse to see if I can look at the file on Henry’s mother. Do you have any problem with me doing that? I’m curious about what’s happening with her case and what motions her attorney might have filed. I used to cover a court beat for the newspaper, so I could decipher the legal mumbo jumbo for you if you’d like.”
