Seeds of Trust

by Cynthia Reese

  “Yeah?”

  “A guy didn’t like a profile I’d done. Said he thought it was supposed to be a puff piece, but…it was part of an investigative series, you see. I was really good at investigative journalism. He sued me. It took me two years to fight it, but I won. I even won a countersuit for defamation—a half million dollars.”

  “So why are you working with your dad?”

  “Advertisers started dropping like, well, like flies. The judgment I won is tied up in appeals courts. I couldn’t pay the staff, couldn’t pay the rent. Couldn’t pay much of anything there at the end. I had to shut the doors and file for bankruptcy. Hardest thing I ever had to do. Lost pretty much everything.”

  “Then that’s how you know.”

  “What?”

  “You…I’ve wondered from the start why you seemed so determined to help us. I’ve known investigators in the past—I mean, investigators from insurance firms—and they’re nothing like you.”

  “You make it sound like a compliment.”

  “I meant it like that.”

  “My dad…” She put her plate down and pushed it aside. “My dad wouldn’t.”

  Ryan reached over, touched her face. “Just because you have a heart and a sense of compassion doesn’t mean you’re not good at your job. You’re very good…at everything. Including frying chicken.”

  Over the basket, he met her lips in a kiss. Then he sat back, a dazed look in his eyes.

  “Whew,” Becca murmured. “Mee-Maw’s say-I-love-you chicken really does work as advertised.”

  “Thought you didn’t know what she called it,” he teased. “As good as the food is, it’s the company, not the menu.”

  Becca didn’t answer. She couldn’t help thinking how things would change tomorrow. She knew that with her father around, she’d have to protect her heart a bit more. Her dad would frown on the way she was so free with Ryan. Never let your guard down around a target, her father had told her.

  She’d let her guard down, all right. She’d let Ryan steal away with her heart.

  “Hey,” Ryan said, “are you afraid of the dark? I want to show you something, but I have to switch off the lights to do it. Will you be okay?”

  Becca smiled. “I trust you.” She stowed the rest of the dishes in the picnic basket and moved it to one side.

  Ryan scooted down the ladder. “Here goes!” he warned from below.

  With a loud click, the barn went black. She heard Ryan come back up the ladder. “Wait just a bit for your eyes to adjust,” he said, “and let me unlatch this… No, close your eyes.”

  “This must be some sort of whamdoozler of a surprise,” she commented, but she closed her eyes anyway.

  A moment later, she felt the night air on her face. “Can I open them? What are you doing?”

  “Okay, you can look.”

  Becca opened her eyes to see an open access panel, and beyond it, stars studded the evening sky, which seemed to stretch on forever.

  “Oh, my. Oh, my…that is so beautiful.”

  “I can’t afford to give you the real thing, but a sky like this, well, it’s a country boy’s diamonds.”

  The Atlanta skies were never this clear, this bright with stars. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a night full of constellations glittering down at her.

  “See? There’s Casseiopea. That’s the first constellation I could ever find. And see the Big Dipper? And the Little Dipper, too.” Ryan held up her hand, tracing out the pattern the stars had made. “And there’s the North Star.”

  “I always thought the North Star was supposed to be this huge bright star. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed to find it was such a dinky thing.”

  Ryan, his profile lit by starlight, shook his head. “The North Star’s special because it stays in one spot. You can count on it being there to guide you. It stays true.”

  “So…who’s been your North Star, Ryan?”

  “Gramps, I guess. And Mee-Maw. My parents are great, don’t get me wrong. But I always felt like I was born in the wrong generation. My dad couldn’t wait to leave the farm behind—I never could figure out what his hurry was. The closest he ever got to a farm was teaching agricultural courses at Abraham Baldwin. My mom was a city girl. They’re perfectly happy cooped up inside the city limits of Tifton. I guess one reason that Gramps would be my North Star is that…he did stay true. He did—”

  Something broke in Ryan’s voice then and he fell silent. Becca chose not to push any harder on something that seemed so raw within him.

  “What about you?” Ryan asked finally.

  “I guess…my aunt Mala. She had her own way of doing things, but she practically raised me. My dad loved me as best he could, but he didn’t count on being left with a little girl to bring up on his own.”

  “What about your mom?”

  A pang of sadness tore through Becca. “She…died when I was five. I barely remember her—just, little fragments, you know? She was…happy. I remember her being so full of life. It freaks me out to think that I’m older than she was when she died. My Aunt Mala, Dad’s sister, came to live with us after that.”

  “Well, your aunt Mala did a fine job.”

  “Of what?”

  “Bringing you up. You…you could be a North Star for me.”

  Becca’s mouth went dry. She wasn’t sure what to say. She closed her hand over Ryan’s fingers. “Why do you say that?” she whispered.

  “Because…my heart keeps telling my brain that you understand a guy like me. Maybe it’s the way you don’t seem to mind being on a farm. City girls, you tell ’em about the seven-day work-weeks and the long hours, let ’em get a whiff of diesel fuel and they’re outta there. Even a lot of country girls—they’re so ready to hit the big city they’ll grab on to the first guy on his way out of town. But you…” He looked her full in the face now, his fingers sliding up into her hair. Without asking, he loosened the ponytail she wore. “You seem to fit here. You don’t even mind Mee-Maw.”

  “I love Mee-Maw. And I…” She couldn’t get the words out. She was afraid saying what she felt would break the spell. Instead, she satisfied herself with, “I love it here. I love the rhythm of country life.”

  “See? Who else would get that?”

  Somewhere close by, an owl hooted, its lonesome call punctuating the feelings overflowing in Becca’s heart. Whoooo. Whoooo.

  Who else but Ryan would I feel this comfortable with? Who else would I belong with?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BECCA DIDN’T START to worry the next morning until she realized that Ryan wasn’t at breakfast—and that the tractor was still in the barn.

  They’d parted with a sweet kiss at her bedroom door. She’d felt sixteen again, slipping in past curfew. Maybe that’s what she liked most about Ryan—he made her feel as if she had a fresh, clean start on life.

  But this morning, with no Ryan at the breakfast table and a tractor still cold in the barn, she wondered if perhaps he’d had second thoughts. She even went so far as to peek into Ryan’s “thinking place.”

  The hayloft was empty.

  Even Mee-Maw looked worried. Becca brought in the basket of eggs from the chicken coop to find her on the porch, scanning the horizon for some sign of Ryan.

  “Y’all didn’t fight any more, did you?” Mee-Maw asked Becca. Then she waved away the question. “Listen at me, soundin’ like some ol’ busybody gossip. I don’t need to know that.”

  “No, Mee-Maw…we, um, we had a really good talk.”

  “He must have his mind on something. I hope he’s not off moping at Mac’s grave.”

  A chill went through Becca at Mee-Maw’s anxious speculation. “Is that bad? Does he do that often?”
/>   “When he needs to work something out in his head or when he’s fretting about something.”

  “Wh-where…”

  Mee-Maw stretched out one gnarled hand and pointed. “See up there? That rise with the thicket of trees? That’s the family plot. You might find him up there.”

  Becca hesitated. “What if he doesn’t want me to butt in?”

  “You can always leave him alone, right? But I’d sure like to know he’s okay.”

  Becca nodded and started down the steps. “Me, too, Mee-Maw.”

  The morning air was soft and cool but with a hint of the heat that would come. Becca trekked up the rutted dirt track leading up the hill that Mee-Maw had indicated.

  She slowed when she came to the first of the trees. A bit farther, Becca stopped at a low brick wall, within which crumbling headstones stood silent. The only sound was a sassy mockingbird high up in a gigantic live oak tree. Its broad branches sweeping low and wide, the tree stood like a guardian over the cemetery, casting a dim shadow over the area.

  Becca swept her eyes over the markers and graves. She saw no hint of Ryan from where she stood. Seeing an open gate in the wall farther down, she took a few steps toward it.

  Now she could hear something—someone had started speaking.

  Ryan.

  Becca picked her way through the graves and around the oak tree. Ryan crouched ahead of her at the end of a grave in a newer part of the cemetery. The hill, she could see, dropped off sharply. From this vantage point, the farm’s acreage spread out in a panorama of morning sun, in stark contrast to the family plot.

  Her breath caught at the peacefulness of that view, and the way Ryan was kneeling.

  Part of her wanted to turn and walk away. She didn’t belong here, not now. She felt guilty for intruding on this moment. Surely, though, he’d heard her.

  If he had, he gave no sign. He went on talking in an almost conversational way.

  “—don’t want to let you down, Gramps. I need to do right by Mee-Maw, but…I don’t want to do this by myself anymore. I think maybe you’d tell me it was okay.” Ryan’s shoulders and taut back muscles moved under his T-shirt as Becca saw him drag in a deep breath. “I’m thinking Jack’s wrong and we should tell her. What do you think?”

  Ryan fell silent.

  For a moment, Becca almost expected to hear a response—crazy, she knew. Still, the way Ryan had spoken, it was as if he’d been talking to a real live flesh-and-blood person.

  Only that sassy mockingbird sang a reply, though.

  Then Ryan rose to his feet, his back still to her, and spoke again. “I still miss him. Still can’t believe he’s gone. I expect you think I’m a nut job, Becca, talking to a dead man like he’ll answer back.”

  She jumped at the sound of her name. So he had known she was there all along.

  Becca joined him. She stared down at the smooth granite. then closed her fingers around Ryan’s. “Did he?”

  “Hmm?” Ryan met her eyes and reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Answer, you mean?” He shook his head. “Nope. Not that I could hear. But that’s just like Gramps. He liked you to figure things out for yourself.”

  Becca thought of her dad, who had a similar outlook on life. “I know a guy like that.”

  “I pretty well had my mind made up before I came up here. I just needed…to talk it through.”

  “Okay, then.” Becca’s heart thrummed in her ears. She gave Ryan’s fingers an encouraging squeeze. “I’m ready to listen.”

  “I figured you already had it sussed out. You know about the tax bill. You know that J.T. was from Texas. And you know…you know that I worked for an ag-chemical company.”

  “I’ve been trying to fit the puzzle pieces together for a while, Ryan, and I’m still missing a piece or two.”

  He let go of her hand and crossed over to the brick wall before sitting down heavily. “Well, I started the whole mess.”

  Becca went still for a moment, her mouth dry, her brain focusing on Ryan’s words. A tremor of doubt quaked through her.

  Her feet moved of their own accord, closing the gap between them. Ryan grasped her hand and pulled her down to sit beside him.

  For another moment, Becca couldn’t force out the words. It was all she could do to inhale a breath of the damp, mossy air.

  “How?” she asked. “How did you start it?”

  Please, don’t let him have come up with the idea, please, please—

  “Stupid. I was a stupid idiot. I’d come home for a visit—I’d been out to Texas, consulting with some of the farmers who were dealing with the vine out there. Gramps and I were at the feed store, and somebody was bellyaching about how slow the drought disaster-relief money was coming in.”

  Becca stayed quiet and waited for Ryan to continue.

  He traced one of the gaping cracks in the mortar with his finger, picked up an acorn and used the point to doodle first a heart, then savagely cross it out. “I told ’em, ‘be glad you weren’t like those folks out in Texas. Sure, they had checks in their hands overnight, but they were at a complete loss about how to even plant next year’s crop.’ I said—” Ryan closed his eyes as if in pain “—I said, ‘You want a slam-dunk insurance settlement? You just find a few dodder vines in your field.’”

  Relief pulsed through Becca—and a little shame at doubting Ryan. Her heart settled into a less painful rhythm as she waited for Ryan to divulge the rest of his story.

  “So the next day or so, Murphy comes schmoozing up to me at a Rotary meeting Gramps had dragged me off to—Gramps liked to show me off. I was the boy who’d gone off to college and done him proud, you know? He was proud of his grandsons, me and Jack.” Ryan’s mouth twisted.

  “Yes?” she prompted when he didn’t go on.

  “Murphy was full of questions about the vine. I thought he was just…making conversation. He asked me, wasn’t J.T. from that area of Texas? I told him I thought so.”

  Ryan shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. “I gave it to him all—the means, the method…even told him who knew where to get it.”

  “But you didn’t mean to, Ryan. You had no idea that he’d twist what he learned—”

  “It didn’t matter. I shouldn’t have trusted Murphy. I just, well, he looked successful, and he was always talking about how farmers had to move with the times.”

  Ryan shook his head again. He slapped his palms down on the wall in frustration. “Can’t be undone. Guess I can’t waste time worrying about it, can I?”

  “So that’s the big secret? That’s what you’ve been worried about? That the federal government will haul you off to the federal pen because you mentioned the dodder vine to Murphy?”

  “No.”

  Ryan rose to his feet and paced restlessly. He kicked at a half-buried rock in the grass until it came free. Then he picked it up and hurled it over the wall and down the hill.

  “Then…what?” Becca guarded her heart. No more doubt. She would not doubt him anymore. She knew this man. She knew him better than she knew most any person on this planet.

  “For one thing, I kept my mouth shut, Becca. That has to make me complicit, right? When I saw that dodder vine…well, at first, I thought it was some sort of horrible coincidence. But then…it was too convenient. You saw it—I mean, it practically screams scam at you.”

  “Okay, I agree, it doesn’t look good. But if you come forward with what you know…if you help me find J.T.—”

  “If I help you find J.T., Mee-Maw may finish out her days in that federal prison you were just talking about.”

  “What?” The word came out strangled, harsh, even to Becca’s ears. “What do you mean? What does Mee-Maw have to do with this?”

  “Gramps is dead. So�
� This is scary. Telling you. Jack is going to kill me.”

  “What about Jack? Does he—”

  “No. I told you…just…I know I’m slow telling this, but just let me get it out. And then…well, then you can decide what to do.”

  Becca nodded. “Sorry. I… Well, go on.”

  He didn’t for a long moment. Ryan compressed his lips and looked as though he was trying to figure out just what to say.

  “When I first spotted the vine, I called all the farmers around, notifying them. I wanted to report it then—you know, through the usual channels so that other farmers in the area would have a jump on it. Murphy came out to see me. I thought he was dropping by for some fatherly type advice. I was still pretty new at everything, even though I’d helped Gramps for years.” He stopped, a sick expression on his face.

  “I take it Murphy had something else in mind.”

  “Oh, yeah. Like telling me that Gramps had agreed to send J.T. back to Texas to bring the vine to Georgia. He has pictures. Took ’em on his cell phone. Gramps. J.T. By J.T.’s truck—with J.T. holding the vines up. That’s when Murphy told me that Mee-Maw had paid off J.T. to become scarce.”

  “You don’t honestly believe that—”

  “I didn’t. Not until I found a canceled check Mee-Maw had written to J.T. for five thousand dollars.”

  A wave of nausea swept through Becca. “Did you ask her about it?”

  “Didn’t do any good. What did you get out of Mee-Maw every time you asked her about J.T.?”

  “Well—” Becca hesitated “—not much,” she admitted. “She did finally tell me his full name and offered to give me his social-security number. But…she didn’t want to talk about him.”

  “See? Same problem I had.”

  “We can’t put it off any longer, though, Ryan. She has to tell us what that money was for. This isn’t just an insurance scam…this is an attempt to defraud the government.”

  “Don’t I know that?” he snapped. He closed his eyes again. “Sorry. I’m— I don’t mean… I know you’re right. But honestly, I’m afraid of the answer she might give us. If she knew Gramps had something to do with that vine… Murphy said Gramps brought the vine in to pay off the tax debt. That I gave Gramps the idea…a slam-dunk insurance scam.”