Echo Falls, Texas Boxed Set

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Echo Falls, Texas Boxed Set Page 46

by Patti Ann Colt


  “You’re welcome.” He stepped back, a puzzled look on his face.

  He probably couldn’t figure her out.Welcome to the club.

  He got back in his truck and backed from the driveway, giving her a short wave and a small smile as he pulled away.

  Two days until the will was read. Two days to do what?

  Be alone with her thoughts? Be alone in a house that had more jarring memories than comfort? Reluctant now, she trudged to the porch, every step worse than the ones that carried her to the gravesite at the cemetery. Instead of going in, she kicked off her glossy pumps and let down her hair. Then she sat in the rocking chair and shifted so she could see her grandmother’s garden. She set the rocker in motion and just rocked, hoping for a miracle but expecting none.

  ££££££

  Summer didn’t know what possessed her.

  The weekend loomed before her. The least she could do was spend part of it catching up on her sleep. She wound the Grandmother’s clock on the living room mantel before going to bed. Hours later with eyes wide-open, the bongs of the downstairs clock struck two a.m. She rose, plagued by memories, and went down the hall to pull down the stairs to the attic. It had been a long and grueling day, but here she stood on the precipice, bald bulb lighting the small gloomy space.

  She wanted her grandmother’s hope chest with her mother’s wedding dress, her baby book, and her grandmother’s diary. The chest had her baby clothes wrapped in plastic and all the letters her grandmother had saved—the ones her grandfather had written from the front during World War II. She was in conflict with herself, but some part wanted to read those letters to remember the man who had fallen in love and married her grandmother, not the man who had turned so cold and judgmental.

  She took two steps into the twelve-by-twelve space and paused. The room was only sparsely filled now. Two old lamps, a dozen boxes, and the trunk right where she remembered it. Propped against it were three two-foot by two-foot paintings, turned away from her. She didn’t remember them being up here, but it had been a lot of years. Her grandfather could have moved things around, thrown things out, and to be honest she didn’t understand why any of her paintings were still in the house.

  Puzzling over her grandfather’s behavior, she stepped closer. Thirty-eight of her first paintings had been in her grandmother’s sewing room. She’d studied them with a critical eye and yearned for that raw, unrefined talent she used to have, careful to keep the lid slammed on why he’d kept them. Instead, she’d focused on the fervent wish to have that joy back instead of this blank nothingness every time she stared at a stretched white canvas.

  She took a deep breath and held it, her nerves raw from emotion, tension, and a passel of guilt and unresolved conflict.

  Dust tickled her nose, and she sneezed.

  Why were these paintings in the attic and not in the sewing room with the rest? She pulled the canvases away from the chest and studied the three landscapes in the dim light. She had built a name for herself with landscapes, the images of flowered meadows and crowded cities, ocean mists and stark peaks. They spoke to her, or they used to.

  Jonathan had sold her first painting right off the wall above his fireplace when she’d been twenty and still a struggling student at art school. A banker- financer friend had paid an obscene amount of money for the meadow of sunbonnets across a rolling hill because his wife had loved the composition and the color palette.

  And because Jonathan had the guts to not blink in a pricing game of up-the-ante.

  That simply, she’d become sought after by the rich and famous.

  With an obscene inheritance from his industrialist father, a fashion designer mother, and an international financier for a stepfather, Jonathan had nothing but rich friends and influence. Buying her paintings off his wall had gotten to be a tradition at the frequent parties. When she’d sold her first commissioned piece to the same financer, bragging rights among his wealthy friends had only fueled more success. Graduation from college with honors only added to the ways she’d proved her grandfather wrong.

  She studied the three canvases with a critical eye, tipping each to make the most of the dim light. She’d done a lot of local scenery when she’d been learning—the reservoir, the churches, sunset over the courthouse, Mustang Stadium.

  Her brow furrowed. She didn’t remember painting these.

  She could vaguely recall the locations. One appeared to be the crossroads near the canyon, one of the empty fields around the airport hangar, and one of a house she didn’t recognize, but was definitely Echo Falls vintage.

  She lifted the three paintings and made her way back down the narrow stairs to her grandmother’s sewing room. She laid the art on the bed on top of the ugly red checked gingham bedspread. The white room had tiny cherries on a wallpaper border around the ceiling and cold plank flooring, the kind that felt refreshing against your toes in the summer, but froze your digits in the winter and sent you scurrying for slippers.

  When she’d lived here, she’d done a lot of drawing in this room, but most of her painting at school. When the canvas had been completed, she’d brought them home to store in this room. With permission from her art instructor, she’d left several groups of blank canvases at school at a time. Her grandfather created such a ruckus every time he’d had to buy her new art supplies, she’d taken to marking them to keep others at school from “borrowing” her stuff.

  She turned the frames to the light and checked the backside. Her signature should be sprawled across the back of the canvas, marked in permanent black ink with a date.

  No mark on any of the three.

  She turned them back and pulled the lamp over to look at the technique, the brush strokes, the color combinations, while at the same time searching her memory. Most paintings struck a chord. She could remember mixing a certain color or sketching the outline lightly underneath or how long it took to get the sky the correct shade.

  These weren’t hers.

  They were close to her technique, but they weren’t hers.

  She sank to the bed, pulling her knees up under her chin, chewing her lip.

  “Who in the world?” She spoke out loud, the harsh sound of her voice in the quiet house making her tremble with anger and anxiety. “Who would do this?” The words whispered this time only furthered her sense of isolation in the dark hours of the night.

  She left the paintings face up on the bed and retrieved her cell phone from the dresser in the bedroom across the hall. Speed dialing Jonathan, she hugged herself and paced back to the cheery room with the insult on the bed.

  “Yeah,” came the sleepy answer.

  “I found three paintings in the attic of my grandfather’s house that look like mine. They aren’t.”

  “Summer?”

  “Did you hear me? They aren’t mine. They’re fakes.”

  “What time is it?”

  She heard rustling and thought to look at the clock and calculate the time difference. She winced. “Sorry, I thought you’d be up. But these look like mine. Scenery I probably would have chosen, although this airport one is dull.”

  “Summer, hold on a sec. Let me get awake.” A plaintive meow filled the pause. “Now start over.”

  “I can call you back in the morning.”

  “I’m awake now,cher. Speak.”

  “Three paintings. Stored for some reason in my grandfather’s attic. There’s more than three dozen from my early years here in the sewing room, but these aren’t mine. They look like mine. They aren’t.”

  “I’d ask you if you’re sure, but considering the ones that appeared in Miami—and I’ve seen them by the way—I won’t.”

  “What is going on, Jonathan?”

  “Not sure,cher, but I want a look at those paintings.”

  “What’s to be gained by forging my art?”

  “Any fakes out there will cause problems with the market value of your own paintings, and you’re a hot commodity right now. It’s the bucks,cher. People are al
ways looking for knockoffs.”

  “I don’t like dealing with the business end of this, Jonathan. I just paint. And not very much of that lately.”

  “You sound discouraged and not like yourself. Want me to fly out?”

  “No. But should I call the police?” Having an excuse to talk to Tom Applegate brought chills and thrills dancing in an awkward rhythm down her spine.

  “The locals? Not sure they could do anything. I’ve hired a private detective. I’ll talk to him in the morning and call you. I want to compare those paintings to the ones from Miami.”

  Summer juggled the phone between her ear and shoulder and removed the paintings from the bed. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “Good night,cher.”

  “Night, Jonathan. Kiss Suzy.” She heard him snort as she clicked the off button.

  With the adrenaline fade, came sleepiness, and yet she didn’t want to go to her room. Why did she decide to stay here instead of the Holiday Inn on the State Highway? Something about those paintings being in the house like a thief in the night rubbed on her Twilight Zone nerves. When she’d first seen the house after so many years, she’d let the nostalgia free. She felt closer to her grandmother here, closer to good memories of both grandparents, and even the years of separation didn’t change that.

  She pulled her grandmother’s rocking chair to the window along with the footstool. She pushed apart the drapes so she could watch the street, and then sat with a light quilt over her lap. With the windows closed, she couldn’t hear the night’s sounds. If a girl’s memory was true, there would be owl hoots, dogs barking, the zap of the neighbor’s bug zapper.

  The night was dark, the streetlight across the way was out, and the one on the corner didn’t extend its brightness this far. But Mrs. Patch had left her porch light on, illuminating the red geraniums in a pot on the porch, while leaving the profusion in the flowerbeds in shadows. The contrast made Summer reach for an old drawing pad and her satchel of pencils, left on the bottom shelf of the bookcase as if she’d just walk back in the room and start drawing.

  The sketching felt good, steadied her, made her forget the questions about her talent, her grandfather, the forgeries, everything. Strong lines, subtle shading, smudging here, sharpness there. Hours later, she put down her pencil and danced a little jig around the room. She carried the dance across the hall and fell face down on the bed and slept.

  ££££££

  Childhood in Echo Falls was idyllic. For Tom, it was a tossup whether his parent’s or his grandparent’s house meant more to him. Seems like he’d spent an equal amount of time at both. His grandparents had great food, lots of hugs, and a helping hand. His parents had safety, dependability, and love all wrapped up in a big rambling house with lots of hiding places and a tree house out back.

  Monday morning was sweltering and bright by nine a.m. Tom parked at the curb of his parent’s house and radioed to dispatch to take him off the clock for an hour. He got out and glanced over the roof of the house at the big oak tree in the back yard.

  The tree house was gone now. There’d been quite the debate when his father had taken the revered structure down. The hideout hadn’t been used for years and interfered with the ambience of his planned gardens. Meg had been a senior in high school, Tom just home from college and in his first year on the police force.

  Tom looked over the rolling lawn, the profusion of color bursting from the flowerbeds and frowned. The front bed hadn’t been weeded in what looked like weeks. That wasn’t his father. As soon as he saw even a smidgeon of a weed, he was out there with the trowel digging it out. And what was up with this request to meet at the house for the reading of the will instead of the office? He’d never done that before. Family and work always stayed separate.

  Concern wasn’t something he was used to feeling for his father, and it didn’t set right. He reached for his cell phone to call Chad. He was interrupted when a silver sedan pulled up behind his truck and stopped. He clipped his phone back into the carrier and walked to the curb to greet Summer.

  He rounded the back of her car and was greeted by the vision of long, tanned legs exiting the car—no skirt or shorts in sight. Brown strappy sandals suggested there was an outfit involved, but all that toned skin just short-circuited his thought process. What he wouldn’t give to watch her strut down the street.

  “Staring at something in particular?”

  Tom jerked, realizing in the same instant that he’d kept on drooling while Summer had gracefully risen from the car—denim miniskirt and ivory tank top, dark hair swept up with an elaborate twist and a silver clasp, and the palest hint of make-up. She was stunning. The impression of hometown girl was strong in the look, and although it looked effortless, Tom was sure it wasn’t.

  “Dressing down?” Tom watched her bend back into the car. If he wasn’t determined to keep his emotions in check, he might acknowledge the sizzle that was skating south of his belt. He might even do something about it. Except he was determined not to feel that way about her.

  “I beg your pardon, dressing down?” She straightened with a brown leather purse the size of China.

  “Never mind,” Tom muttered.

  She slammed her car door. With long-legged grace, she glided toward him and stopped about a foot away, invading his personal space. He stifled both the need to step back and to jerk her flat against his chest. She smelled of something earthy and flowery—like jasmine musk—a scent an old high school girlfriend had been fond of. Her fingers were wrapped around the strap of the purse, paint under the nails and the skin turning white from gripping the leather. She wasn’t as casual about this as she wanted people to think with her getup.

  “Is your father here?” She seemed more than glad to ignore his mutterings, which only sparked his temper. He took a long, silent breath. What was the matter with him? He’d misplaced Mr. Cool and Collected, and it was starting to annoy the hell out of him.

  Tom looked around, but the garage door was closed, and there were no cars in the driveway. “I haven’t been up to the house yet. I just got here too.”

  “Well, let’s go up together then and get this over with.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “I understand. I want to get this resolved too,” he said, giving her an out.

  Following her up the walk, he got an intimate look at those legs and the way her hips moved when she walked. He would have groaned and closed his eyes, but he was made of sterner stuff than that. A flash of some he-refused-to-name sensation wanted to put his lips where the wisps of hair brushed her neck.

  Summer paused at the bottom of the steps and gave him a look that said she knew where his eyes had been. He shrugged, not bothering to defend himself. He was a guy and he wasn’t dead.

  He passed her and opened the screen door. The door was locked, though, so he searched his pocket for his keys and unlocked the door.

  “Dad,” he called out. No answer.

  “Come on in the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “I’ve already had several cups this morning.”

  “Juice? Tea? Mom probably has both.” He walked down the main hall, passed the staircase and into the kitchen-family room that ran the length of the back of the house. Four large plate glass windows made it appear as if the garden were right in the room.

  Summer gasped when he moved to the counter, able to see the effect of the colorful garden for the first time.

  She walked to the windows. Morning sunlight streamed through the windows, casting her in an ethereal glow. Tom took the coffee can from the refrigerator and then did a double take at the rapture on Summer’s face. He stood motionless, wanting to kiss her, to capture the emotion of the moment in an unforgettable way. He moved to do so, then caught himself.

  She took a deep breath. Became a woman again, not Aphrodite.

  “It’s beautiful. Who’s the gardener?” She flexed her fingers.

  Tom breathed, through his nose, deep into his lun
gs. “My father. It’s a hobby. One he says relaxes him after a day in court.”

  “Some relaxation. He’s brilliant.”

  Tom put the coffee can on the counter and looked out the window. He’d been used to people commenting on his father’s garden for years, but never really stopped to look and consider. It had always been a part of his life, a norm, not really something he thought about as extraordinarily beautiful or that his father was gifted. Time slowed for a moment, like an hourglass dropping one grain of sand at a time, and he realized she was right. It did take enormous talent to accomplish what his father had with their acre yard.

  The mix of colors, the shapes of trees and bushes, the textures of the leaves, the height of flowers meandering around an expanse of lawn, the small pond, and a brick path. Hours and hours of work. In fact, Tom remembered when it had been more lawn than flowers, when there had been room for kids to romp and play. He’d been aware, of course, of multiple projects. He had helped his father haul bricks to pave the path and to bring home the cement birdbath with the cherub as a base.

  He heard the clink of the lock being released on the sliding doors and turned to see Summer slip from the house onto the patio. She walked to the far edge, just to the start of the brick path and stood ever so still. He followed her, the sweet smell of his father’s roses tickling his senses the moment he stepped into the yard.

  “This is paradise,” she whispered.

  He walked up behind her, trying to see the yard through her eyes.

  “God, I want my sketch book,” she whispered.

  “I’m sure my dad wouldn’t mind if you came back.”

  He heard footsteps and turned.

  Bill Applegate stopped on the threshold, dressed in jeans and a button down blue shirt. “No, I wouldn’t mind at all. Hi, Tom.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  Summer turned and for the third time, Tom stood rapt, his attention hers for the asking. Her face was flushed, her eyes shining—an innocent that begged to be savored.

 

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