Cora's Heart: A Cypress Hollow Yarn

by Rachael Herron

  “I never said mine wasn’t an idiot. We missed them when they died, but nothing, nothing, ever got us ready for the loss of Logan.”

  Valentine nodded her assent.

  Louisa’s voice was softer. “You know I’d give anything to have him back. You know that, sister. Having Mac back doesn’t help with the pain of not having Logan. It might make it worse, actually.”

  “I’m still so mad at Mac,” Valentine said.

  Her words surprised Cora, but she wasn’t sure why. She knew Valentine had been as hurt as she’d been that Mac didn’t come to see Logan, that he hadn’t been back since his own father’s funeral, eight years before. She’d just thought Valentine had been better at getting over it than she had.

  “What kind of reason could he have had? He never told us.” Valentine eyes looked shadowed. “He just didn’t show up. And now your son is back without any real excuse, hale and hearty.”

  Cora heard what she didn’t say, and she knew Louisa did too: And mine isn’t.

  From the other side of the screen door, out in the dark, a shuffle was heard, followed by a crashing sound. Valentine looked at Cora. “Oh!”

  As all four small dogs started yapping. Cora had to raise her voice. “It’s probably just a possum or a raccoon.” It hadn’t sounded like either one, actually, but when Valentine and Louisa were together, Cora was left to take care of things.

  “Carry the broom,” said Louisa. “In case it’s a burglar.”

  “So I can hit the gun out of his hand?” Cora muttered as she took the broom Valentine held out to her.

  The screen door swung open silently. “Hello?”

  “Who’s out there?” Louisa and Valentine stood silhouetted together in the doorway. “What is it, Cora?”

  “Shhhh!”

  “Should I call 911?” Louisa stage-whispered. “If it’s a murderer, we should call them early, not after it’s too late.”

  “Hello?” Cora called. Fog partially obscured the slim sliver of moon, and in the dark yard items loomed black and large. Valentine’s old truck looked like something Stephen King would write about – it would probably roar to life at any moment and start chewing yard tools. The old shed looked like somewhere an ogre would live, not a place that merely housed the sisters’ gardening shears and trowels.

  “Is anyone out here?” She made her voice firm. It was easy, actually; she didn’t expect to see anything but a prowling possum. A skunk was her outside guess, and God knew, if she saw white on black she would hightail it back to the house as fast as she could possibly run. One of her goats had been sprayed once, and the barn still sometimes filled with the noxious fumes when the summer sun heated it up.

  So when she came around the old Ford and almost ran into the man who stood there, still as stone, arms crossed, hat pulled down obscuring his face, Cora let out a scream that pierced the night air and made the man roar.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Fear is your body’s way of telling you you’ve cast on too many stitches. – E.C.

  The man’s yell frightened her so badly that Cora immediately screamed again, louder, her voice even more piercing the second time.

  Mac gave another yell to match. “Goddammit, Cora, what the hell? You scared me!”

  “Who is it? We’re calling 911!” yelled Louisa. “Hit him with the broom! The broom!”

  “I scared you? You’re the one lurking out here like a common criminal!” Cora went halfway around the truck so she could see the house. “Don’t call! It’s just Mac.”

  “Just Mac,” he repeated.

  Cora swung back to face him. “What made all that noise?”

  “I knocked over the gajillion flower pots at the bottom of their steps.”

  “If you were on the porch, why didn’t you come in?”

  He leaned on the truck with a deep sigh, turning his face up to the night sky. An errant moonbeam threw the long, flat planes of his cheekbones into relief, and Cora realized that she was standing too close to him. She took a step back.

  “I went to find you first, then I came here. But then I overheard you all talking, and I got the hell off the porch. I can’t explain myself to Aunt Val. I mean –”

  “Oh, really?” This was suddenly too much for Cora. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come when I should have. I wish I could explain why.”

  “It was good that you apologized to me. But right now you don’t say sorry to me,” Cora said, leaning forward at the waist. She barely controlled herself from shaking her finger like an angry school teacher. “You say you’re sorry to her. To Valentine. That’s all she’s needed to hear for years. That’s what she’s been waiting for, and I didn’t know that until tonight, and oh, God, if I’d known, I would have tracked your ass down and made you say it, not because I needed it, but because she looked so damn broken-hearted just now when she brought it up. You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself. You get to apologize to her.” Her voice broke as she ran out of words and breath at the same time.

  Neither of them moved. His eyes were dark, and his chest was rising and falling as if he’d been running. Her breathing matched his.

  Was it her anger that made her feel this pull toward him? What put this ridiculous longing in her veins? Why could she do nothing but meet his gaze, battling it back as if it were a challenge that she could meet, could win?

  “Jesus, Cora.”

  And with only those two words as warning, Mac pulled her roughly against his chest, using just one arm, bracing his other against the truck. His mouth came down on hers, and he was kissing her suddenly, and it felt both so right and so far beyond wrong that Cora could do nothing but kiss him back. She kissed him harder than he kissed her, she stroked his tongue with hers, and all the while her brain screamed Wrong, wrong, wrong!

  But why then couldn’t she stop herself? Why was she pulling his head down to her, reveling in the feeling of his fingers jammed through her hair. She sucked for one short sweet second on his lower lip until he gasped and pulled her even closer against him. She could feel him, hard, through his jeans, and the thought of what he would feel like without them made her go hot and wet. She wrapped her leg around his upper thigh and pulled him against her, imagining what he would feel like deep inside her. She was molten, heated and liquid.

  Then the guilt hit, landing as heavily as the kiss had. The eucalyptus above rustled, as if watching. Listening. Anyone could see them out here. Anyone could know.

  Cora pulled back. His arm tightened.

  She pushed against his chest. “They’re right inside. Holy shit, Mac. What did you just do?”

  Mac’s eyes in the moonlight were languorous now. Unrepentant. “What did I just do? You were as much a part of that as I was, sugar. Maybe more.”

  Cora raked her fingers through her hair pushing down what he had just pulled up. “No. Just – no.”

  “I wasn’t asking for anything. It was a kiss. Nothing more.”

  He was lying. She’d always been able to tell.

  Cora stalked away fast, ignoring the fact that her teeth were chattering almost as hard as her hands were shaking. Thank God Louisa and Valentine had gone into the house when they’d heard it was him – if they’d seen that…

  Cora banged open the screen door and steamed inside and only after she was in the kitchen did she stop to think about what she must look like. She could feel her overheated cheeks blazing. She knew her eyes were as wild as her hair must be. Even her shirt was a few degrees sideways when she looked down at it.

  Valentine arched one eyebrow. That was all. Cora wanted to protest, but how could she? Luckily Louisa hadn’t seemed to put two and two together yet.

  “Where did you leave my son the prowler?” she said, a large bowl in her hands.

  “Outside. Where he belongs.”

  Louisa shook her head. “I don’t know what kind of ice cream he wants. We have two, chocolate chip and fudge brownie.”

&nbs
p; “He wants chocolate chip,” said Cora, before biting her lip.

  She refused to give Valentine the satisfaction of meeting her eyes, so she got down another bowl for herself. “I want fudge brownie,” she said, as if that would make all the difference in the world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ask for help. An experienced knitter will have the correct answer; an inexperienced one will be so flattered that you came to her that you’ll come up with an even more perfect solution together. – E.C.

  Dammit, he’d put it off too long. It wasn’t going to be easy, asking them. Mac took the bowl of ice cream his mother handed him with a gratefulness that felt forced. He didn’t want ice cream. He didn’t want food, in fact. He didn’t want a drink. What he wanted was another kiss or seventy-three from Cora, but that was impossible. He had no idea why he’d done it. It was the worst time, in the worst place. Jesus, practically in front of Logan’s mother, with Logan’s wife.

  If he’d come home to figure out how to forgive himself, he was shooting himself in the foot. And God help him, he wanted to pull the trigger again.

  “You want more?” Louisa hovered over him, the scooper in her hand.

  “You’re dripping ice cream on the floor,” said his aunt.

  “Hush,” said Louisa, but she put the scoop in the sink. “Just tell me if you want anything else, Mac.”

  He hadn’t seen his mother this helpful since… he couldn’t remember how long. Mac didn’t trust it. But maybe it would make this a little easier.

  “I have to talk to you. All three of you – that’s why I tracked you down tonight. Perfect timing. I mean, with all of you being together like this.” He was babbling. Jeez. Mac didn’t babble. What was going on with him? It didn’t help that Cora was looking sideways at him like a racehorse with another coming up fast on its flank. She was ready to hightail it right out of there – he could see it in the skittish look on her face. He took a deep breath.

  “So, Royal, the guy who’s my boss, wants to buy our land to raise horses on.”

  Cora stared at him, her eyes wide. “I thought he was just kidding when he said that at the bar.”

  Mac shook his head. “He’s dead serious.”

  Aunt Valentine laughed. “Why here? There’s land up and down the coast.”

  “None as perfect as here. None with the right drive-time to his other businesses. He can be in Silicon Valley in two hours, and that’s important to him. He doesn’t want to be inland in the valley. He thinks horses run better in the damp air, and he might be right.”

  “Our land?” said Louisa. “As in yours and mine, Mac?”

  Mac shook his head and twisted his mouth. This was the hard part. “All of our land. Yours, Mom. Aunt Valentine, yours. Mine. And yours, Cora. Royal always has big dreams, and he sticks to them. He wants a large parcel of land, here, and that’s not available anywhere on the coast right now. But together, our land would be the size he’s looking for.”

  Again Cora didn’t hesitate. “The answer is no.”

  He rubbed at his temple. “That’s your knee-jerk automatic answer. And by no means does he expect you to make a decision that’s uninformed. There’s plenty of time –”

  “No,” Cora interrupted him. “Never in a million years.”

  “He’ll pay good money.”

  “How good?” asked Louisa, scooting forward in her chair.

  “As good as you want it to be. Over asking price, for sure, for anything on the coast. There’s no other location that’s this ideal that would be up for sale – I’ve been scouting it for the last eleven months.”

  “You’ve been here and didn’t tell us?” Cora’s voice was ice.

  Shit. Mac ran his finger along the edge of the table that his aunt had always had sitting here, in this very spot, for as long as he could remember. “Only once.”

  “Mac.” Aunt Valentine said his name softly. Sadly.

  “I was just checking land records, and I had to go to the local office to pull them in hard copy. Did you know that there isn’t another parcel of land that isn’t BLM or subdivided into minuscule parcels for twenty miles? Our family, as a block, has the perfect coastal location.”

  “Where did you stay?” asked his mother.

  “What? Oh, I just came down for the day. I didn’t even stay a night. That’s why… That’s why I didn’t call you.” The actual truth was that he’d been in a hurry. Royal had needed him back with the information and had been grateful to him for doing the scouting, but he’d still had his own job to do. One horse had gone lame just that day and while he trusted his vet tech Gomez to do the right thing, he still hadn’t been there, at the stables. It had seemed like a good idea, then, that fast zoom down the coast followed by a faster one going north again.

  Okay, maybe it hadn’t felt like the right thing. But it had felt like what he had to do. Dammit, he shouldn’t have to justify his actions.

  “I don’t understand. You came here, but… And anyway, our land isn’t even for sale.” Aunt Valentine shook out the drying towel she was twisting again. Twist, shake. Twist, shake.

  “He wants it to be,” said Louisa. “That’s obvious.”

  “Exactly, Mom. We need to discuss selling.”

  “Maybe you all do.” Cora hurriedly stood and took her bowl to the sink. She washed it, using the sponge like a weapon. While her back was still turned, she said, “But I don’t have to talk about a damn thing. I’m not selling.”

  This was what Mac had been worried about. They were jumping to conclusions too fast. “It’s not like I’m asking you to abandon hearth and home. With the money Royal’s willing to pay, you could hire movers to dig up and move your whole houses and put them back on your new land. Cora, you could still live in the farm house. Aunt Valentine, you don’t even live in your house anymore. I’ve never lived in Granddad’s house. Two of the four houses are empty now, and we could just move the other two. You could still sit right here in this exact kitchen, in the same positions, same chairs. Just a different view out the windows.’

  Cora turned, pressing her back into the edge of the sink. Behind the anger in her eyes, Mac could see something else, something darker.

  He hurried to continue the pitch he’d spent so much time worrying about. “You’d still have your homes. And you’d have land, as well as the money to maintain it. We could even make sure we buy land together, like it is now. Nothing would change but your GPS location and your bank account balance.”

  Aunt Valentine gave a sharp, humorless laugh. “You say that as if our land doesn’t have history. As if we don’t love our view. As if the word home, itself, can mean whatever you want it to mean. Daddy’s buried on this land. My son is buried next to him. You’d ask us to leave that?”

  “What kind of money?” asked his mother, more quietly.

  Aunt Valentine twisted the towel again. “Why do you care, Louisa? It’s not like you need the money. If anything, Cora and I would be the ones interested, and we’re not.”

  Louisa clucked her tongue against her teeth, a sound Mac knew that his aunt hated. “At some point in your life, you’re going to have stop being foolish about money, sister.”

  “You have nothing to say to me about my finances. I dug my way out of the hole Skully left me in when he died, and I’m proud of that. And with the pie business, Cora has helped me more than you ever have.”

  “But I’m family,” retorted Louisa. “I don’t have to –”

  “Louisa!” Valentine said.

  “I mean, of course Cora’s family, but I just meant I’m your twin,” said Louisa.

  But she had meant more. Mac knew it, and what was worse, Cora knew it. She’d wiped the bowl dry and had picked up her keys off the table and put them in her front pocket. He’d forgotten that Cora had always traveled without a purse – just what she could put in her jeans or overalls pockets.

  “Well, I guess that’s my cue. Thanks for dinner, Valentine.” Cora kissed her on the cheek.

  Louis
a looked miserable, and Mac didn’t mind seeing it. His mother could stand to think about someone else every once in a while.

  “You’re a pain in the ass, Louisa, you know that?” Aunt Valentine snapped the towel again. “Cora, on the other hand, is a delight. Always cheerful, always ready to lend me a hand. And she never, never, asks for anything in return.”

  Cora raised her hands. “Stop this. I hate it.”

  “No, let her,” said Louisa. “Let her get it all off her chest. Let’s hear it all, hear how you love Cora more than your own twin.”

  Aunt Valentine stuttered in what sounded like frustration and failed to complete a full word.

  Cora now had tears in her eyes. “Please, both of you, stop.”

  “I don’t love her more, you idiot,” Valentine was finally able to say. “But I love her differently. She’s easier to love than you are. She’s like a puppy dog that’s never had a home. Whereas you’re a cactus, scaring everyone. And if anyone gets too close, you stab them. That’s not easy to love.”

  Louisa stood. “I won’t take this from my own sister.”

  “If not me, then who?”

  Mac didn’t know what to do. He should step in, but how? And all he could see was Cora. Couldn’t they see what they were doing to her? Her hands were shaking. “Cora,” he started.

  “No. I’m not talking to you.” Cora turned to Valentine. “A puppy dog? Is that how you’ve always seen me? As a stray? Someone you had to take care of, like all the cats and dogs you take in? Like Lottie there?” She pointed to the dachshund trembling at Valentine’s feet. “That makes sense. Now I get it.”

  Aunt Valentine shook her head. “Don’t you start on me, Cora. You know how much I love you, and you know why.”

  “Yeah.” Cora’s voice trembled like her hands. “I married your son. I took care of your biggest pet.”

  “That’s not the reason. We took you in, just like he did.”

  Cora’s eyes widened. She gave a sharp inhalation, and her eyes swam again.

  Mac was desperate to tuck her against his side, to lift his thumb and push those tears away… It was dangerous to look at her – he didn’t know how long he could remain still. In an attempt to lighten the air, he said, “You do love a stray, though, Aunt Valentine.”