Sweet Baby

by Sharon Sala

  And that was when she saw the old half barrel, lying on its side against the stack of Art’s hay. Several staves had gone missing, and the middle ring of iron had rusted away. But there was enough of it left for her to remember… and she remembered where it had been.

  Her heart started racing as she stood.

  “Brett!”

  Her voice broke on his name as she started to run; ignoring the pain in her bare feet, she darted across the yard toward the hay.

  “Brett!”

  Now she was screaming his name, and men were coming out of the house, some of them curious, others wild-eyed and nervous, looking for a target that wasn’t there.

  Brett was inside the house when he heard her, and in the moment it took him to turn and run, it seemed as if his heart had stopped and started a dozen times. He bolted out the front door, his gaze immediately on the crowd by the road, and when he didn’t see her there, he headed toward the back, calling her name as he ran.

  There was a group of men at the haystack, staring at a woman they were convinced had gone mad. She was on her knees and clutching at an old wooden tub as if she’d just found the proverbial pot of gold at a rainbow’s end. And she kept muttering the same thing over and over beneath her breath.

  “The tub. He buried her beneath the tub.”

  Brett shoved the men aside, dropping to his knees beside her.

  “Tory. I’m here. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Her voice broke as she looked up at him with a tear-stained face.

  “The tub. It was Mother’s flower barrel. We’ve been looking in the wrong place. He didn’t put her under the bathtub. It was this tub. Oh, God, Brett, she’s in the well.”

  Everyone froze as Tory got to her feet, urging Brett to follow her. It was as if she’d forgotten the others were even there. She moved past the hay toward the border of trees, and then stopped so suddenly that Brett almost walked on her bare heel. When she began pulling at weeds, Brett grabbed at her arm, stilling the fever with which she was working.

  “Tory, you’re not making sense. What did you—”

  And then he saw it, too. All but hidden by a waist-high stand of noxious weeds that cows wouldn’t eat. Something that concealed the concrete cover of what had once been a well.

  Oh, God… could this be?

  “Tory, tell us what you remembered!”

  She looked up at him, then back at the men. The scent of crushed weeds and heat was thick in her nostrils, and the bottoms of her feet were beginning to sting. But she could take care of herself later—after she showed them where her mother would be. She pointed to the concrete slab.

  “That tub. We always planted flowers in that tub. And it sat here… on top of an old dry well. Oliver didn’t lie. We just misunderstood.”

  Rentshaw shifted gears, ordering everyone in place. Within moments, a crew of men were down on their knees, pushing in unison and holding their breath as the slab began to slide.

  Brett reached for Tory, but this time she was beyond anyone’s help. Inch by inch, the pit beneath began to reveal itself, and when there was more than a foot of space open to view, Tory pushed her way to the edge, peering inside.

  Someone turned on a flashlight, and so did another, and then another, until there was a wide, steady beam shining down in the hole. The beam moved like a beacon, slicing through the darkness and illuminating the small, perfect skeleton at the bottom of the pit. What was left of a leather belt was around the waist, and there was one small shoe on and another shoe off.

  A gasp went up from the men around her, but Tory didn’t hear and couldn’t see. She was staring at the world through a veil of tears. When she started to rock back and forth on her knees, weeping with the quiet of a heartbroken child, there wasn’t a dry eye left among them. She leaned forward, unaware that Brett was holding on to her tightly. In a sweet, high-pitched voice, she called out to the woman below.

  “Mommy… Mommy… I’m home.”

  Epilogue

  Brett lay stretched out on the bed. Except for the shirt hanging on the back of a chair near the door, he was dressed and ready to go. His blue jeans were old, his tennis shoes clean. And his T-shirt, the one he had yet to put on, was almost as old as the child straddling his knee.

  Dark curls tumbled around her face, and the little hair bow Tory had clipped in only minutes earlier was hanging down around her ear. She crawled from one leg to the other, begging for another ride on the “horsey,” and every now and then pausing to see what her mother was doing. At three and counting, she’d reached a fascination with all things of a feminine turn. Be it perfume or a ribbon, lipstick or pearls, Bonnie Ruth Hooker had the face of an angel but the spirit of an imp.

  He glanced up at the wall, to the framed magazine cover and the caption beneath the photo. A Face in the Crowd. He kept remembering the pride that he’d felt when it had hit the stands. Someone else had the byline on the story inside, explaining how the picture Tory had taken was instrumental in solving a twenty-five-year-old mystery regarding her past, but the picture was credited to her. His wife had become a celebrity in her field.

  His focus centered when Bonnie kicked the inside of his knee as she crawled across his lap. He reached down and lifted her high above his head, laughing as he dangled her just out of reach.

  “Have mercy, Tory. Aren’t you about ready to go? Miss Priss is making me black-and-blue.”

  Tory looked into the mirror, smiling at the reflection of what was going on behind her.

  “She just ate a Popsicle,” she warned him. “Be careful you don’t get it back in your face.”

  Startled, Brett quickly lowered his daughter back down to the bed and then grinned at her little red face. “And you would, wouldn’t you?” he muttered, trying without success to reposition the bow in her hair.

  “I’ll fix it in a minute. Just as soon as I braid my hair.”

  Brett gladly relinquished his task, watching instead as Tory pulled the hair away from her face and then separated it into three long sections.

  “Memorial Day at Mom’s is fun, but it will be hectic. Remember last year?”

  Tory arched an eyebrow. Bonnie had barely been two, and she’d let Cynthia’s house cat out into the yard with the neighbor’s dog. As the old saying went, there had been hell to pay.

  She grinned. “Between Celia’s pair and Bonnie, hectic is putting it mildly.”

  “Well, it’s Mom’s fault for spoiling them. After Celia and her family moved to Tulsa, nothing would do for her but selling the house in Denver and moving here to Oklahoma to be close to all of us.”

  “Nanny,” Bonnie said, and turned a somersault on the bed. Brett grabbed her just before she went off on her head.

  “Careful,” he muttered, and set her down between his legs, once again trying to clip the bow back in place.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tory said. “I said I’ll fix it in a minute.”

  Bonnie leaned against her daddy’s tummy, suddenly aware that her mother was doing something interesting to her hair.

  “Do me,” she begged, pointing to the twists Tory was making of the long lengths of her hair.

  “I can’t, sweetheart. Your hair’s not long enough yet,” Tory said.

  “It might have been if she hadn’t taken the you-know-whats to it last month.”

  Tory grinned. “Yes, and if you hadn’t left the you-know-whats where she could reach them, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  Brett made a face. “They weren’t exactly within reach,” he reminded her. “They were on the cabinet.”

  Tory rolled her eyes. “And so was she.”

  Brett grinned. “That’s my dainty little daughter. The way she climbs, we should have named her Tarzana, not Bonnie.”

  Bonnie wasn’t finished talking, but her focus had moved from her mother’s hair to the old doll sitting on a corner shelf.

  “Mommy’s doll?” she asked, pointing to the shelf.

  Tory reached for a band to tie off her brai
d. Bonnie had asked the question a thousand times, and Tory figured it would be asked a thousand more before she became too old to care.

  “Yes, that’s Mommy’s doll,” she said.

  “Her’s dirty,” Bonnie said.

  Tory smiled. Bonnie’s questions never wavered from a set routine. “Yes, she’s dirty, because she got lost from me.”

  “Buts you found her,” Bonnie said.

  “Yes, I found her,” Tory said.

  “Then you found me,” she cried, and threw up her arms in a winning gesture, as if she’d just crossed a goal line and won the game.

  Brett rolled her out of his lap and set her down on the floor, chuckling as he gave a gentle swat to her little behind. “Yes, in a manner of speaking, then we found you.”

  “I gonna get my flowers,” she yelled, and bolted out of the room before anyone could object.

  When Brett would have gone after her, Tory shook her head. “It’s okay. I already loaded the ones we’re taking to the cemetery. I gave her one to carry… and it’s plastic. What can she hurt?”

  Brett took Tory in his arms, cupping her hips and pulling her close. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, his world settled. She smelled sweet and tasted sweeter.

  “I love you, baby,” he said softly. “So much.”

  Savoring the rhythm of his heartbeat as it pounded beneath her ear, Tory sighed, wishing they could stay this way forever. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “More than you will ever know.”

  A crash shattered the last of their moment. They looked at each other, then broke apart and ran.

  ***

  Tory got out of the car and stretched as Brett unlocked the trunk. The cemetery was crowded and she glanced toward Bonnie, making sure she was in sight before letting her thoughts wander.

  The months after they’d found her mother’s body had been crazy. The paperwork needed to have her parents disinterred and then reburied in Oklahoma had been endless. It seemed as if no one liked change. But Tory was different. She relished it. And thanks to Brett’s insistence, the rape counseling she’d gotten had healed the remainders of old wounds. Now she thrived in every way.

  She felt a touch on her arm and turned. Brett handed her a bouquet of roses and a smaller one of assorted marigolds.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and saw relief on his face before he walked away. Impulsively, she called out. “Brett.”

  He turned.

  “I love you.”

  His dark gaze raked her face and she saw the truth in his eyes, even before he spoke.

  “I love you, too.”

  And then their daughter interrupted and the moment was gone… but not forgotten.

  “Mommy, why we puttin’ flowers onna ground?”

  Tory handed her daughter a handful of roses. Bonnie was at a need-to-know age, and to a point, Tory was willing to tell her anything she needed to know, but no more.

  “We’re decorating the grave.”

  “What’s a grave?”

  Brett heard the question and gave Tory a careful look. “Want me to take her back to the car?”

  Tory shook her head. “No. She’s just curious.”

  Luckily, Bonnie had already forgotten her last question and moved on to another.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the engraving on the tombstone beside her.

  “That says ‘Ruth Ann Lancaster.’ And the other name says ‘Danny Lee Lancaster.’ They were my mommy and daddy. They went to heaven when I was a little girl like you.”

  Bonnie frowned. “I don’t like heaven.”

  Tory knelt and hugged her, understanding instantly what was wrong.

  “I’m not leaving you, sweetheart. I’m right here, and so is Daddy.” Then she stood and turned to the nearby tombstone.

  Bonnie looked up at her mother’s face and frowned as they laid the flowers on the grave. “Are you sad?”

  “A little,” Tory said.

  “I hold your hand,” Bonnie said.

  “And so will I,” Brett added.

  “Thank you, my dears,” she said gently, and took what they offered.

  As they returned to the car, Tory glanced back at the flowers she’d just laid on the grave: roses for her father, the others for her mother. The yellow and orange blossoms were small compared to some of the other more elaborate arrangements around them. But it wasn’t the size of the flowers that counted, it was the thought behind them.

  Year after year, Ruth Lancaster had marked the coming of spring by planting those same little flowers in the old wooden tub. It seemed only fitting that they should mark her passing, as well.

  Other Books by Sharon Sala

  A Thousand Lies

  A Field of Poppies

  The Perfect Lie

  Remember Me

  The Chosen

  Butterfly

  Missing

  Reunion

  Snowfall

  Bloodlines

  Dark Water

  Mimosa Grove

  Out of the Dark

  The Whippoorwill Trilogy

  Whippoorwill

  The Amen Trail

  The Hen House

  About the Author

  Sharon Sala is a long-time member of the Romance Writers of America, as well as a member of Oklahoma RWA. In 2014, she published her one-hundredth novel. A fan favorite, Sala is an eight-time RITA finalist, winner of the Janet Dailey Award, four-time Career Achievement winner from RT Magazine, five-time winner of the National Reader’s Choice Award, and five-time winner of the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, as well as Bookseller’s Best Award. In 2011 she was named RWA’s recipient of the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her novels have been on the top of major bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly. Sala also writes under the name Dinah McCall.