No luck.
Trista wasn’t anywhere near the property and the land it was on held no sign of her either. He could go inside the church but had misgivings about that. Trista hadn’t struck him as a religious person. He recalled how uncomfortable and short her narration of grace had been at her gramma’s. Churches, especially ones in small towns, were hard to figure out sometimes. The one he had attended a time or two back home had been open and friendly. But another time, he had gone with a school friend and it was completely different. The people had seemed very skeptical and unwelcoming. He decided to call Jaxon. There had been something he said about a creek.
“Lucky? Have you found her? Is she all right?” Jaxon asked right from the jump.
“Hey man, no, not exactly.” He looked ahead to a thin gathering of trees standing on the outskirts of the property and dug his boot heel into a patch of hard red clay.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m sitting here by her Jeep parked in front of what I guess would have been her house. But she’s not here. Do you think she’d go to church? There’s a service going on at the one across the street.”
“Oh, hell no. Especially not that one,” Jaxon stated flatly. “Did you try the cemetery?”
“Yeah, I went there first. Not there either. What did you say about a creek?”
“Just that she had gone to one, I assume in the vicinity of the house, the night her sister came and found her.”
“All right well, I’m gonna go look around then. I’ll call you when I find her.”
Jaxon thanked him and they hung up. He did a once over of the land and saw the clear trickling veins of ground water not too far away. It sounded like the beginnings of a creek. Before setting out, he prayed for a little luck.
Chapter Eight
The water of the creek swirled and gushed. Lucky could hear it before he came upon it. The area’s land lay mostly flat but the closer he got to the streaming water, the more intricate it became. There were meandering drop offs that required his undistracted attention. Although only a couple feet in depth, the wrong placement of his boot and he’d have twisted an ankle in the stumble.
The stick thin trees became greener the closer he came and the rocks clumped tighter together. Oklahoma’s signature red clay of the creek’s embankment shone brightly through the water. He walked carefully, hanging onto brittle branches that hung nearby. He dipped his head to peer into a small recess that had been formed in the likes of a cave where the creek became nothing more than a trickle.
His heart flooded with instant relief. There she sat, huddled within its shelter, upon a rock, her legs pulled up so that her chin rested on her knees and her arms wrapped around her shins.
Thank you, Lord. She was okay.
Jaxon had over thought the entire situation. Glad to find her in what he’d predicted, which was simply a moment of reflection and not some zoned-out, paranoid state, he slowly hopped down the side of the embankment, intent on greeting her and then apologizing for his intrusion. But the splash from his landing caused her to look up. And it was then that he saw the truth. Her eyes were so red and swollen; they looked like they’d been raked with tumbleweeds. Her pain hit him, knocking him back.
Trista wore a dress, like she’d done every day since he’d met her. But her cream-colored tights were soaked through up to her ankles and her shoes clung to her feet in sopping form. Jaxon may have been closer to the truth than he realized.
She didn’t say hello, or reach her hand out to him when he approached. Instead, she sat on her rock, looking at him. It seemed she was unable to find a reason for why he was there.
“Trista, are you okay?” he asked with as much sensitivity as he could inject into his words.
God, he wanted to go to her and give her a hug. He’d never seen someone look so in need of one. But she seemed skittish of his presence, unsure that she wanted him there.
Finally, she spoke to him as he stood hovering nearby, just above her position within the cave.
“Why are you here, Lucky?”
It wasn’t a very friendly greeting but from what he understood, she had probably dealt with an excess of different emotions and memories already that morning. He was just glad she wasn’t catatonic as Jaxon would have had him believe.
“I, uh, I got worried about you and I was tired of staring at the walls in our room.” He didn’t want to tell her about Jaxon’s added hysteria concerning her.
“Why were you worried?” she asked as she dipped the fingers of her left hand into the chilly water.
He wasn’t going to lie. He wanted to earn her trust, as a friend and possibly more, who knew? Jaxon would have to have known that it would be no secret who had told him of her possible whereabouts.
“Jaxon called, worried about where you’d gone, alone, today. He told me about the cemetery and your old house, and this place.”
“What else did he tell you?” Her focus remained on the tiny shimmery flecks of sand being carried over her hand by the water.
The deadpan tone of her voice told him to be honest. Earn her trust.
“That you had come here to visit your mother’s grave.”
“And…”
“And that your stepfather had died recently…” He was fumbling around and she didn’t need that right now. He manned up and told her the rest. “Trista, he mentioned you had been abused and that one night you had come down to this creek, hurt yourself and that when your little sister found you, you asked her to call your gramma. I understand that’s when you went to live with her and that you haven’t been able to come back here since then.”
She seemed to sink further away, pulling her hand back up to lace with the other. She held herself curled up; her eyes were nothing but sad. He had to go to her.
He closed the couple feet between them and bent down on one knee. There wasn’t enough room within the tiny cave for the both of them so he balanced himself in a squatting position over a narrow section of the running water. He held out his hand to her but she didn’t take it.
Her brow furrowed several times, she sniffed, and then said, “I didn’t want you to know any of that.”
“I understand.”
“Please don’t think I’m crazy. I know I probably look like it.”
“No, no, darlin’. I don’t think that.” He offered her his hand again.
Water marks on the hem of her dress rose all the way up to the waist line. Her bare arms were covered in goose bumps. He was thankful that she had chosen to put on the tights. “Come here, take my hand. It’s too cold down there. We should get you out of here.”
Trista didn’t seem so eager to leave her perch. She looked down at the water that hinted at wetting her again but she was safe on the rock.
“Or, I’ll stay down here with you…as long as you want,” he said, prepared to do just that.
He realized something in that moment of her dull responsiveness. He had known her all of three days, while Jaxon had known her half her life. He had no idea how deeply she hurt, even with Jaxon’s deliberate attempt to enlighten him on the situation earlier. The feeling that he was the wrong man for this heaviness became clear. But he was here and he wouldn’t just leave her.
While in obvious duress, Trista managed to reach her shaking hand out to him.
“I was supposed to be with my momma today.” She pulled in a few shuddering raspy breaths that caused him to inch carefully closer to her. “I haven’t gone to visit with her in all these years and I was supposed to do that today. But, I just—I’m horrible. I can’t be in this town. I can’t be here. I’m sorry, momma. I’m so sorry…”
His heart ripped for her pain because he understood that kind of grief. She sat there in a worn down heap.
“Shh, darlin’. It’s okay.” He had to think and speak carefully. “You’re not a bad person. Your mom isn’t in that cemetery. Okay? You don’t have to worry about not coming back here. She’s somewhere we can’t even imagine, some place where she
watches over you and wants you to be happy. To be safe. Okay? It’s all right.”
She let him wrap a supportive arm around her back and rub her shoulder on the other side.
“I’ll go with you, Lucky.”
Bracing himself, he stood, got his bearings and then pulled her up.
“You must be freezing cold,” he said.
She shivered in response but did not admit anything out loud.
“Here, let’s do this…” He unbuttoned and slipped out of his light blue western shirt, leaving himself bare-chested, and then wrapped it around her as he had done once before. So far, none of her dresses had been long sleeved and the goose bumps only seemed to be building on top of each other.
In a weak protest, she warned, “Lucky, no, you can’t go without a shirt.”
He didn’t care about that right now. The church service would possibly be letting out, the people filing back to their cars, but it didn’t matter.
“Yes, I can. Come on, I’m fine. Let’s get you out of here.”
He rubbed the already warmed fabric against her upper arms and then across her back, keeping her tucked into his side like a protected football as they made their way up the embankment, over the red clay and back toward the Jeep.
He had one goal—to keep her wrapped in practical seclusion from the outside world.
Worried that the reason he’d kept Trista so tightly encased might have become obvious to her, he quickened their steps. There were people shuttling to their cars. The area was no longer sleepy and deserted as it had probably been when she’d arrived and parked. Now, it was awake and full of judgment.
A few children let them pass by without notice, but the elders seemed to resent their presence and sent dark stares their way. Hands lay hovering over keys in doors, necks strained to hold notice at the sight, talk became hushed. He looked down to Trista’s face, which sure enough, had lost its color. Ridicule hung thickly in the air.
“Lucky, I think I might pass out or pee myself,” she said through a shiver.
He tucked his head down closer to hers as they made the last few steps to the Jeep as discreetly as possible. “Don’t pay any attention to them. Okay? They don’t mean anything to you.”
She nodded, and then allowed him to open her door and help her into the seat.
After tragically losing his mom in a tornado, Lucky had been brought up by his dad and uncle. While they’d done their best to teach him basic manners, he’d missed out on the feminine touch and class of a mother’s presence. But he had been taught to respect others. And this short experience had been the portrayal of a bunch of folks that lacked basic humanity.
He understood the vacuum that Trista’s world must have been growing up here. The way she would have felt denied in their unpracticed Christianity. What a confusing trespass for someone so young to have figured out. Seeing the way these people acted, he felt sorry for the white building forced to house them. He’d never seen a more hypocritical bunch. He looked around before he took the driver’s seat, at all of the faces still centered unapologetically on him. The spit he spewed onto the road was a fraction of what he felt for how they’d let his friend down.
As he drove, he wondered what else there was to the past that haunted Trista. Would she share that with him? Probably not. She’d been clear when she said she wished Jaxon hadn’t said anything. But his heart went out to her, on a very personal level. There were things he wanted her to know about him. Things he’d held inside for too long because he’d never had a trusted friend like her to share it with.
Instead of backtracking their way to the hotel, he made a very large, out of the way circle. He’d seen enough of Duketown. It was his first act of protecting the woman he loved.
Chapter Nine
Trista sat in a tub of warm water Lucky had drawn for her and then watched through the door opening as he hung her clothes over the heater vent to dry. Next he made a phone call.
“That would be great, ma’am. About how long?” He fished around in his pockets and pulled out his wallet after hanging up.
He poked his head into the bathroom door, meeting her prying gaze. “Trista, I have to step out for a minute, will you be okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She was still woozy from the turbulence of her day but now that she was back in the real world, with her friend, Lucky, it was better. The remorse over what he’d learned about her still had her down but she had been through worse—that much was obvious. So she had lied a little saying she was fine, but she was getting there.
When Lucky returned, presumably prepared to pay for their meal, he saw that it had already been delivered and that she was at the table, wearing her nightgown, and sitting cross-legged on one of their two chairs. She had taken care of it. And set the table. She sat waiting for him so they could eat together and hopefully prove to him she didn’t need him on suicide watch.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I was just out getting money to cover this. How much was it?”
“It’s okay, Lucky. I got it.” She tried a smile but knew she hadn’t pulled it off. At any rate, Lucky seemed determined to be the man.
“No, I’d really like to get this,” he insisted.
“Next one’s on you. Okay?”
He must have been able to tell she wasn’t up for an argument because he paused, bit his lower lip, and then sat down.
“Thanks for waiting for me. You didn’t have to.”
“I know, but I wanted to.” Considering the day they’d had, it helped having someone else to think about. Lucky had become her best distraction.
They ate quietly. Some program played on the TV in the background. When they finished their meal, it was still early, close to six p.m.
Completely exhausted, she eyed the bed she’d like to curl up in until checkout time tomorrow. She caught Lucky staring at the pillows and had the feeling he wanted nothing more than to collapse right alongside her. Poor guy had to have absorbed every molecule of her angst today. He got up and immediately began cleaning up their dinner plates, placing a few stray items of clothing into his bag, even straightening the two chairs so that they fit perfectly into the side of the table. I knew this would happen. He has no idea what to think of me now.
“Trista, I’m gonna take a shower. You need anything before I jump in?”
“No, go ahead. Take your time. Really, I’m fine.”
She just wanted to lie down. The room was dark aside from the bathroom light which was mostly blocked by the door.
Lucky had already pulled back the covers so sliding into its plump coziness was easy. She tucked a stiff ,overly bleached pillow between her knees. Curled up, she rested on her side and faced the bathroom wondering what all Jaxon had told Lucky. The water had to be scorching to be letting off so much steam.
She was thinking of the scalding hot water when her phone rang from the dresser just feet from her. She was so comfy. Did she have to get it? But she had rarely ever ignored that ringtone and knew from Lucky that Jaxon had been worried about her. The spite she hadn’t let go of yet told her it was Jaxon’s fault for not coming. But that wasn’t fair. She’d probably have done the same thing if married, for all intents and purposes, to a psychotic zealot who wanted her entire affections to be centered on only him. Luckily she had no such partner and no unfortunate child between them.
Begrudgingly, she stumbled out from her goose-down haven and picked up before the ringing dissolved into a mouthful that would be his voice message. Better to deal with it now.
“Hello,” she said against a yawn.
But it wasn’t a brutish scolding that flew at her. He sounded—humble. “Hi. Hey, it’s good to hear you. You okay?”
“Hey, Jax. Yeah, I’m okay.” His stressed yet sincere voice had taken the bite out of her intended reply.
“Okay, well I don’t have much time, I just wanted to call and check on you. I spoke with Lucky earlier. I guess he must have found you?”
“Yes, about that, Jaxon. Look, I understand why y
ou were worried, but…I just….you know I didn’t want to get into everything with anyone else.” She tried her best to keep the irritation she felt at what he’d shared to a minimum.
“I know. I’m sorry. I knew you’d be so pissed, but I didn’t know what else to do. He thought I was overreacting about going to find you.” Jaxon quieted on the other end. And then with a slow cadence, he asked her if she’d been able to visit with her mom in peace.
“No, I tried but—” Her reluctant words were cut off. She heard a muffled rubbing sound and a loud female voice in the background. Jaxon must have tucked his phone into his shirt. She held on patiently until he returned to their conversation. It seemed Vangie had returned.
“Sorry about that.”
“Boy, we’re just two messed up peas in a pod, aren’t we Jax?”
“That’s why I love you so, baby girl,” he said, barely audible.
“I know.”
Before he had to hang up, she wanted to ask how much he’d told Lucky and beyond that, what business he had set up through Jaxon in California and how long he planned to be there.
“Hey, I have to go. Vangie’s here with Maryellie. I don’t want any problems. You understand.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s okay. I should go, too. Unless you wanted to talk to Lucky?”
She should let Jaxon go before Vangie laid into him. But it wasn’t her fault Jaxon was hooked up with someone who found new ways to break his heart and rack his balls at the same insane times.
“No, it’s okay. I’ve really gotta go. But uh, tell him I said thanks. So I’ll see you in a couple days?”
Sidewalk Flower Page 9
