“Yeah, but what do you bet she won’t see it that way?” Austin sighed loudly while Darrel and Liana laughed.
The sun was setting as they hurried toward the house, and a slight chill fell over the land. Liana’s lower jaw occasionally quivered with the cold, but as they picked up the pace, her lips became less blue.
“What on earth!” Mercedes met them on the porch, hands on her hips. “I knew you boys would get into trouble.” She clucked her tongue as she wrapped an arm around Liana’s shoulders. “What’d they do to you—get you onto that rope and forget to tell you when to get off?”
“We told her, Mom.” Darrel hopped excitedly from one foot to the other.
“We did,” Austin agreed, knowing it was a lost cause.
“Yeah, I bet.” Mercedes shook her head in disgust. “You two go wash up for dinner, and I’ll get Liana a hot bath.”
“But—” began Austin, feeling like a disciplined child. Mercedes had always been able to make him feel that way. Perhaps because she had practically raised him.
“No buts.” Mercedes whisked Liana into the house and down the hall.
“I guess we’re in the doghouse,” Darrel said with a contented grin.
“No, the bunkhouse. Isn’t that where dogs sleep these days?”
Darrel giggled. “Nope. The dogs sleep in the house. Last night Jellybean was in your old room.”
Austin sighed. “Then I guess I’m the only one in the doghouse.”
After washing up, they went to the table to wait for dinner. “Don’t worry,” Wayne said to Austin. “Mercedes likes to keep us on our toes. She ain’t mad.”
“I am too mad.” Mercedes came from checking on the little boys, who were once again in bed. “They could have drowned the girl.”
Liana appeared in the doorway behind her. “It was my idea.” Her cheeks and lips were rosy now from the hot water. “And it was fun. I’d have done it again if I hadn’t . . . fallen.” To Austin’s surprise, she winked at him.
Mercedes sighed. “Well, then maybe we’re all crazy, because I go down there at least once a week to try it myself—but only in the summer, mind you.”
Dinner consisted of tender slabs of roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, and rolls. There was a peach cobbler for dessert. “I could eat like this every day,” Austin said with a sigh. “Of course, I’d get fat.”
Mercedes passed him the plate of roast beef for a second helping. “Not if you worked from sunup to sundown. Look at Wayne.”
“You work too hard, Wayne,” Austin said.
Wayne paused with his fork in midair. “Got kids to put through college.” Mercedes looked at her husband with gratitude. Austin knew what it meant to her for the boys to be educated. Perhaps one would choose to run the farm one day, but they would have a choice their father never had. A choice like the one Austin had made.
Dinner was comfortable, with Mercedes and Darrel doing most of the talking. After dinner, they left Darrel in the kitchen to finish his homework and retired to the living room, where Mercedes and Liana worked on the quilt while Wayne talked to Austin about the cattle venture he had started the year before. There was good money in it, if he could be successful. Austin was glad to see that Wayne’s plan was stable and conservative. Unlike Austin’s father, he wasn’t willing to risk more than he could afford to lose.
Near nine o’clock, Austin turned to Liana. “All ready to leave tomorrow?”
“We’ll have to carry out the boxes, is all. And I have to put a few things back in my suitcase.”
“Let’s get the boxes out tonight, if you don’t mind.”
She put down her needle. “Mercedes, I won’t be at all offended if you take out all these stitches when I’m gone. They don’t look near as even as yours. But it was fun. There really is something about quilting that takes your mind off everything else.”
Mercedes nodded. “Sometimes it’s really therapeutic.”
Austin and Liana each carried two boxes out to the truck. Though it didn’t look like rain, Austin covered them with a tarp from his tool box just in case. Then he and Liana walked back toward the house.
She covered a yawn with her hand. “I guess I’ll turn in now, if we’re leaving at six.”
“Yeah, me too.”
She stopped on the porch. “Austin, I want you to know . . . well, I had fun this evening. Thanks for showing me the swimming hole. I wish I’d had one in Nevada.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” Austin found himself wanting to explain further—about how that place had been his refuge from his father. How many nights he’d hidden there and dreamed about going away and making something of himself. Of becoming a man who wouldn’t be afraid to face his father. The first goal he had accomplished, but the last . . . well, in some ways he was still afraid of his father.
“Goodnight.” She hesitated, as though . . . as though what? Waiting for him to kiss her? Austin doubted that very much.
“Goodnight,” he echoed. He let her go inside alone. Standing on the porch, he breathed in the smells of the cool night air, recalling memories of past evenings when he had stood on this exact spot. There was a deep and lasting happiness that came from the fact that he had roots somewhere, that he could always come home. He wondered if there was a place where Liana felt this connection, or if the early severing of her roots had prevented her from planting more.
Inside the house, he found that Wayne and Darrel had retired, but Mercedes was in the kitchen making butter in her blender. “We’re just about out,” she said. “And I want it for the pancakes tomorrow.”
“You always make me pancakes when I leave.”
Mercedes’ eyes grew red, and she blinked hard. “They’re my favorite, and it makes me feel better.”
“I’ll be back.”
“I know.”
“Well, goodnight.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek.
He was halfway to the back door when her words stopped him. “You’re half in love with her already. That’s why you brought her here, isn’t it?”
He stopped and turned around slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“We’re just friends—not even that. She lost her job because of me, and I gave her another one—a temporary one. That’s all. I barely know her.”
“It happens like that sometimes.” Mercedes’ black eyes reflected her own memories. “All it takes is one meeting. A conversation. A look. A connection. And your life is never the same.”
“You’re talking about him, aren’t you?” Austin felt a tightening in his chest as he approached her. He didn’t want to see his sister ever hurting the way she had twelve years ago.
“Partly, yes.” Mercedes blinked hard, and her eyes became wet at the corners. “Don’t get me wrong, Austin. I’m grateful for my life and for Wayne, and I wouldn’t change a minute of our life together, even if I could. I know that I made a terrible mistake, which I would still give anything to undo. You know how I suffered for it. I still suffer. I will always wonder what could have been. We had the beginning of something great, but we ruined everything by our selfishness.”
Austin hugged her. He hadn’t realized that some part of his sister had remained with her first love. Of course, she had a daily reminder in Darrel. But he and Liana, well, their relationship didn’t even begin to approach that level.
Or did it?
He recalled the emotions he had felt while watching her drip on the grassy bank next to the river. For a moment he had felt a connection. Or had it been purely attraction after all? Perhaps. But certainly his concern for her lost job had not been. Neither had his anxiousness to show her the farm and the swimming hole. The fact was that she had not been far from his mind since the moment he met her.
“She doesn’t even like me,” he muttered, almost to himself.
Mercedes drew away. “Don’t make the same mistake I did, Austin. Assume nothing. Do the right thing. Be patient. And remember, gra
bbing the rose of life sometimes means getting pricked by thorns.”
CHAPTER 13
Diary of Karyn Olsen
Sunday, April 17, 1966
Travis is acting very strangely. Distant, almost. He didn’t show up in the cafeteria for lunch once this past week, and he’s never home at his apartment when I call. He did stop by a few times, but even then he doesn’t seem to hear me when I talk to him—like he’s thinking of something else. Maybe it’s because of finals. I don’t know. Truthfully, I worry that it might be another girl. Last night he wasn’t home when I called to remind him of our lunch plans today, and then he called me this morning and canceled. Didn’t say why, and I was too mad to ask. He said he’d come over tonight, though. I’m sure it was just something related to school. I mean, if he didn’t want to be with me, he wouldn’t come over, right? I wish we were married already and all this dating stuff was behind us.
The loud honking of a car drew Liana’s attention away from the financial records she was typing into the laptop as she sat in Austin’s truck waiting for his return. She looked over the parking lot to the street, but the impatient driver was nowhere in sight. Her eyes lifted to the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains that were just visible over the tops of the many buildings. From her one previous visit, she hadn’t remembered Utah as such a busy place, but the capital, Salt Lake City, was apparently large and growing every day.
A wide diversity of people seemed to make their home in Salt Lake City. Liana watched people of different races and economic backgrounds pass on the sidewalk by the parking lot. An older man attracted her attention. He shuffled along slowly, stopping every few feet to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief he took from the pocket of his suit coat. When people passed, he nodded at them and smiled.
Was Austin’s father like that? Liana wondered. Or was he like the old lady coming along now, not looking up at anyone but frowning at the concrete beneath her feet as though wishing it would open up and swallow everyone—including herself. Her countenance made a stark contrast to the old man’s sunny disposition.
Liana’s curiosity about Austin’s father had begun with their departure from the farm. After hugging Liana, Mercedes had taken Austin’s hand. “Go see him at the home,” she said. “Before it’s too late.”
Austin’s jaw clenched. “It was too late the day I was born.”
“You have to make your peace.”
“No, I don’t. He killed her. You know that, don’t you?”
Tears stood out in Mercedes’ eyes. “He’s different now.”
“Are you sure that’s not just your religion talking?”
“Of course it is—my religion and every other religion in the world. Forgiveness is necessary to live a happy life, and a part of you knows that, if you’d only listen.”
“I’ll think about it,” Austin replied in a way that said most clearly he would not think about it at all. He hugged Mercedes and said good-bye civilly enough, but once on the road he had fallen into a silent black mood that accompanied them to Utah. Not even when Liana put in the Kenny Rogers CD did he recover his good humor.
Upon arriving in Utah, he offered to find an office for her in the building where he was having a meeting, but she preferred to stay in the truck. “I might need more documents from the back.”
Liana closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the seat, thinking again of Mercedes and Austin. She profoundly regretted leaving the farm. There was something safe there, a connection of . . . of family? She wasn’t sure.
She grinned as she remembered the swing over the river and how it really had felt like flying. Her eagle picture had come to mind, and she’d had to let go of the rope, just to feel what it was like. The freedom had been . . . wonderful, and the cold water hadn’t changed her mind. Later on the bank there had been a look in Austin’s eyes, one that had made her want to step into his arms. She shivered again at the memory.
She was glad now she had not acted on the impulse. Riding for hours with Austin in his black mood had been difficult enough without adding another aspect to their relationship.
“Catching up on beauty sleep?”
Liana’s eyes flew open to see Austin leaning through her open window. “Oh, you’re finished already?”
“Already? I’ve been in there for an hour and a half.”
“Tsk, tsk. It took you that long to whip them into shape?” She shook her head. “You’re losing it, Mr. Walker.”
“Well, Miss Winn, we can’t all be as talented as you.” He slapped the side of the truck and went around to the driver’s side.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” Liana said as he started the engine. “I was beginning to think that black cloud was going to follow us all the way to Nevada.”
He grinned. “Sorry about that. I have been a bear.”
“No, just quiet—brooding. But now that you’ve shaken out of it . . .” Liana hesitated. If she brought it up, would he fall back into his bad mood? What’s it to me? she thought. After the way he’s been this morning, I have a right to know.
“What?”
“Why won’t you go see your father? I know you said he was a horrible father and a drunk, but he can’t be drunk now at the nursing home. He is in a nursing home, isn’t he? That’s what I got from what Mercedes said this morning.”
Austin cut the engine and stared straight ahead, his hands resting on the steering wheel. “He’s in an assisted living facility, not a nursing home. As for why I don’t want to see him—well, I have no love for my father.”
“You said he killed your mother.”
Austin’s eyes met hers, his forehead wrinkling as if plagued by a tension headache. “He left her shortly after I went away to college. Went to Texas to make his fortune in ranching. She begged him to take her with him, but he left her to take care of the farm.” He shook his head as though he still didn’t understand why his father had made that choice. “After all the years she’d stuck by him, he shook her off like so much manure on his shoe. He sold their best tractor and took all their savings. I believe he would have sold the farm out from under her if he hadn’t already borrowed just about all it was worth from my grandmother. She was smart enough to make him sign a contract and put a lien on the title. A year later my mom took too many sleeping pills and never woke up.”
“Suicide?” Liana’s heart seemed to skip a beat.
Austin looked away from her and stared instead at the steering wheel. He looked lost. “The doctor was a friend of my grandmother’s and ruled it accidental, but we all knew she did it on purpose. Her whole life was wrapped up in my father—much as he didn’t deserve her—and she didn’t want to live without him.”
“But he came back?”
He looked at her. “Yeah, nearly two and a half years after her death, another business venture having failed. The only reason he came was that he was broke and sick and wanted her to take care of him. Didn’t even know she was dead.” Austin’s lips curled in disgust. “The only good thing about her death was that she was finally free from his neglect. I confronted him then, but he never once admitted that he was the cause of her death or that he’d done anything wrong. A year or so later when Mercedes returned to the farm and married Wayne, she became our father’s slave. It made me so mad, as though history would repeat itself. But Wayne wouldn’t let anything touch Mercedes or the children. He made my father stay in Rock Springs. Mercedes visits him two or three times a month.”
“You’ve never gone?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I told you why.”
“It’s been, what, more than ten years?”
“Seventeen.”
“Why don’t you go see for yourself if he’s changed?”
He regarded her silently for a long moment. “Why do you care?”
Liana had been wondering that herself, and though she wasn’t altogether sure it was the right reason, she had an answer prepared. “Because it means so much to Mercedes.”
Austin rubbed his chin, a gesture she’d learned meant that he was thinking. He let out a long sigh. “Okay, while we’re on the subject of the past, tell me why don’t you talk to your adopted mother about why she and your birth mother fought? Why don’t you ask her about your mother, what she was like?”
An impossibly large, painful lump formed in Liana’s throat. She wanted to lash out at him, to return the hurt he’d inflicted, but she had been the one to open the door by questioning him about his father. Perhaps she’d already wounded him that same way. “Because,” she said slowly, “it was all so long ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I think it matters to you.”
“I don’t want to hurt my—my mother.”
“Your mother or yourself?” His eyes held hers.
Her anger at him was growing, but she felt obliged to answer. “I guess I’m afraid of what I might learn.”
“Ah.” He looked away and stared at the windshield. “I think you have my answer as well. What if I go and he hasn’t changed? What if I hate him more? Perhaps it’s better to leave the past alone.”
“And yet . . . ” said Liana. What about the longing inside her, the need to know her first mother?
Austin turned again toward her. “And yet,” he repeated. Then he gave her a strained smile. “Tell you what, if you face your demons, I’ll face mine.”
She let out a long sigh. “Poor Mercedes. I guess she’ll never get what she wants.”
Austin snorted and shook his head. “Forget this. Let’s go get something to eat. How about Chinese?”
“I love Chinese. With white rice, not fried.”
He smiled, and she wondered if he was remembering the night they first met. “Ditto—I hate fried rice.”
“But hold the lame fortune cookies,” she said before he could get too smug about their shared taste in food. “And make it takeout. I want to get home before ten.”
* * *
They arrived at Liana’s condo shortly after nine-thirty. The streets were dark and empty, except for two teenagers who stood against a car, faces close together as they appeared to exchange life-altering secrets. Liana had the CD player on and was jamming to Foreigner. She liked the way the music cut out all thought, leaving only the beat and the feeling. She didn’t miss Austin’s look of relief when he cut the engine and the music died, nor did she feel guilty. She had spent more than half their journey listening to the croon of country music and fighting the sleep it provoked.
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