He picked up the phone and tapped in Sammie Jo’s number. “You remember that promise you forced from me, about making sure Allison stayed in Almost? I’m going to need your help on that, Sammie Jo.”
And he swiftly outlined what he needed her to do for him.
“And I think you’ve only got about fifteen minutes,” he warned.
Sammie Jo assured him that fifteen minutes was a lifetime in Almost.
No matter what arguments she’d used, Allison had been unable to dissuade Carolyn from accompanying her into Taylor’s house. She’d begun with the nearly surefire “I’m fine, thanks. See ya.”
Carolyn had chuckled a little, but gotten out of the car.
She’d tried reminding Carolyn that her daughters and the triplets must be worried.
Carolyn had picked up the telephone and called Aunt Sammie Jo.
“They’re watching a movie,” she said when she hung up. “And they asked me to remind you to watch the video they shot for their documentary on Almost.”
She pulled a videotape from her large handbag and plugged it into the VCR and clicked the television onto the right channel. On-screen came the most atrocious footage Allison had ever seen. It was jerky, dizzying in its wild angles and inexperienced photography.
“Oh, look, there’s Cactus kissing Aunt Sammie Jo,” Carolyn murmured. “Why, those boys. Look at the theme. It’s a whole tape of people kissing. Taylor and Steve in the background. Pete.”
Allison stood, mesmerized by the strangely alluring video. Then she saw herself and Chas on Taylor’s back porch. He was drawing her into his arms, a slow smile fading from his face. She remembered the way his hands had slipped into her hair, tilting her head upward for his kiss.
She remembered how frightened she’d been that day. How conflicted.
Now, with her memories largely intact, and the past laid open to him—to herself—she felt like such a different woman from the one on the video. She wasn’t the frightened girl anymore, nor was she the hard-bitten, love-blocked reporter. She was something else entirely.
Watching herself kissing Chas on-screen, feeling those warm, soft lips even now, she understood what she was. She was a woman in love.
And she resolutely turned from the television. She was also a woman who wasn’t going to stick around to bring more danger to those she loved. Not to Billy, not to the triplets. Not to Chas.
“Who’s that?” Carolyn asked.
Allison glanced back over her shoulder at the screen and froze in place. “That’s him!”
“Who?”
“Dorchester or whoever he is.”
Her heart scudded painfully in her chest, as if trying to burst free. The boys had been wanting her to look at this footage for days. If only she had. Maybe Billy wouldn’t have been hurt, maybe Chas’s forehead wouldn’t have been slashed by a flaying hoof.
“That’s the man that hypnotized me. Oh, dear God, he kidnapped me.” A flood of memories far more dizzying than the video washed through her mind.
“But I don’t understand. How could the boys have caught him on tape when no one else ever saw him?”
As the camera panned jerkily, Allison pointed at the screen. “That’s why. He’s been with the field hands. Just one of them. No one ever even notices the farmworkers. I told him that. When I was under. I told him everything.”
A sick dread rippled through her. All her secrets, all her hopes, he’d stolen them all from her, giving nothing in return but the cessation of her addiction to cigarettes. Not quite a fair trade-off, she thought with a wry, dark bid at humor.
She tried one last, desperate ploy for Carolyn’s departure. She didn’t want the argument she knew her sister-in-law would give her. She didn’t have time for it, not if she was going to be able to lure this Dorchester away from Almost.
“I left some things at Chas’s house. Would you get them for me? Oh, and the animals will need feeding.”
“Homer Chalmers is doing that,” Carolyn said blandly, removing her coat and turning up the heat in the house. “And we can get your things later. Or Doc can bring them over.”
“What about Pete?”
“What about him? He’s at the hospital with Chas and Billy.” This last earned her a sideways glance.
She gave up. “I’m leaving, Carolyn. I have to.”
“Okay,” Carolyn said. “Running’s good.”
“What?”
“It’s action of a sort. Not the best kind, maybe, but whatever works for you.”
“What are you saying?” Allison asked.
“Me? Nothing. I’m only agreeing with you.”
“I can’t let anyone else get hurt because of me.”
“What about Doc?”
“I’m talking about real physical danger.”
“And a heartache that’s lasted fifteen years isn’t physical danger?” Carolyn asked calmly.
“You don’t understand.” Even as the words slipped from her mouth, she felt they were childish. Petulant.
“You’re wrong, Allison. I do. A couple of years ago, a couple of local thugs tried running me off the ranch so they could use the place as a drug-storage facility. They threatened us, they chased us. They tried to kill us.”
“You had Pete.”
“I found Pete then. But not by running. By staying and fighting for what was mine, what I wanted. What I loved. I even had to fight Pete to stay.”
“But I don’t even know who I’m really fighting,” Allison explained. “And the longer I stay here, the more the people I love are in danger.”
Carolyn walked up and grasped Allison by the shoulders. She looked down in the younger woman’s eyes, meeting them squarely. “Then let the people who love you help you. Running isn’t the answer, Allison. It never is in the long haul.”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“Yes, I do,” Carolyn countered as calmly as ever. “Sammie Jo told me a long time ago.”
“No, she never knew—”
“That you were pregnant and lost the baby when Susie was killed in the car wreck. She knew. Everybody knew, Allison. This whole town is family of some kind. Everybody knows. Except Doc, maybe. I don’t think anyone would have wanted to hurt him because everybody knew he was doing a kindness for Thelma and Billy. But everybody’s heart bled for you. Every one of them would have laid down his or her life to make things all right for you.”
“But—”
“And still would. Doc most of all.”
The telephone rang, making Allison start, but Carolyn only turned loose of her to pick up the receiver from the end table. After her initial hello, she was silent for several seconds, then said, “I think that’s a good idea.... No, but I will.... All set, then.” She replaced the receiver.
“What’s all set?”
“That was Sammie Jo. We’re all going over to Doc’s.”
“What? Why?”
“Homer called her a few minutes ago, and it seems the shepherd cross that Doc’s been tending has been raising quite a fuss.”
Fear clutched at Allison’s chest. “And...?”
“And he can’t get in the front door of the clinic. So everyone’s going there.”
“But—”
“Oh, Allison, stop your fussing. You’re worse than Alva Lu Harrigan. Are you going to wear that shirt? The only reason I ask is that most of the town’s likely to show up there.”
Knowing now exactly how Alice had felt at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, Allison looked down only to discover she was wearing one of Chas’s shirts. Inside out.
The man known as Quentin expected the entire town to be buzzing with the day’s mishap. He anticipated every phone in Almost to be working overtime. He even laid a small bet with himself that Allison would be surrounded by several of the relatives who so betrayed her fifteen years ago, or more likely, the country stud.
But never in his wildest imagination had he so much as considered that the townspeople would turn out as if Allison’s troubles wer
e the next county fair. She’d never told him that. She’d blocked that from him. How?
And then he knew. She hadn’t known it herself.
From his hiding place inside good old Doc’s closet, he’d been all set to grab the pair of them and force Allison to remember him while the country stud watched. He even smiled a little now, remembering the plan.
His smile slipped. It hadn’t been Allison and her stud who entered the house. It was some old biddy with a casserole dish. Followed by some old man with a cane and a cowboy hat big enough to fit on one of his cows. Some younger people had followed them, each of the women carrying a dish of some kind.
The old farmer he’d been blistering his hands for wrestled a large cooler in through the door and called out, “Sodas are here!”
Children filed in, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged couples who oohed and aahed at the sight of a Christmas tree in Doc’s living room.
One of the party-goers started the stereo playing after some discussion about Doc being such a softy as to have kept all those old albums all these years. And soon Christmas music wrapped the conversation in bizarre novelty.
From his crack behind the closet door, he watched as several of the smaller children lay flat on the floor drawing pictures they carefully folded into imperfect squares only to place them beneath the softly glowing tree.
Nothing made sense. And fear warred with his rage. This wasn’t right. Nothing about it was right. It wasn’t just that Christmas music was playing in the waning hours of the February evening, nor that townspeople were arriving at house when the host was noticeably absent. They were all accepting of it. As if it were normal.
He wanted to scream out at them to look around, to listen. You’re all insane, he wanted to yell from the safety of the closet.
And still the people arrived. Laughing, talking, arguing, looking happy or disgruntled, but none of them appearing confused. Some liked the tree; others didn’t. Some remembered Allison, while others had to be reminded of who she was, what she had been. One wore a Santa Claus hat, yet another was dressed all in funereal black.
He’d spent every waking hour of his life trying to understand people. He’d believed he knew how they worked, how they ticked. He knew what buttons to push to get them to speak, what triggers to use to make them stop.
But this strangely homey scene was frightening on a deep, profoundly disturbing level. Not one of these people pouring into the house seemed to find the situation at all odd or unique.
With all of them there, however, he would have to wait. He quietly pushed his way back to the recess of the closet filled with empty suitcases, fishing boots and a couple of doggy toys that he discovered squeaked when touched. Luckily the music and conversation were so loud that no one else noticed.
Except one little girl of about four who ran for his hiding place on chubby little legs.
Unerringly she went for the closet. He held the doorknob securely as she stretched up on tiptoe to tug at it. When she finally toddled away, bored with the open door that wouldn’t open farther, he heaved a shaky sigh of relief and settled back among the dirt and clutter of the country stud’s closet.
He wished he had thought to carry a mirror in the nylon bag of tricks. He always felt better when he could see himself. He felt stronger. More in control. And he knew if he could look into his reflection’s cold eyes, these tears rolling down his cheeks would miraculously dry.
Chas arrived at his home and ended up having to leave Pete’s Cherokee out in the street since his entire long driveway was filled with cars. Lights blazed from every room of his house and he could hear the warm sounds of laughter and Christmas music wafting out into the cold dusk.
He hurried to the house, his heart nearly bursting with the affection he felt for these people who had all poured out on this Sunday February afternoon to help him help Allison.
He walked through his front door into a veritable warm ocean of love.
“Is Allison here?” he asked the first person he saw, which happened to be Alva Lu Harrigan, dressed more as though going to a funeral than a rescue.
“That girl was always late to everything. And into mischief? Sammie Jo tells me she’s in some kind of trouble again. There, what did I tell you?”
She wandered away from him, her attention snared by a child trying to reach one of the tree’s decoration. “Now, you! Stop that, you hear me?”
Chas smiled at her retreating form. A crabby mother hen, clucking every step of the way, she’d nonetheless undoubtedly been one of the first to arrive to help Allison.
“How’s Billy, Doc?”
“Terrible thing about your boy, Doc.”
“This what you had in mind, Charles?” Sammie Jo asked, laying her frail hand on his elbow.
He grinned down at her. “This is exactly what I wanted.”
“Carolyn’s bringing her over from Taylor’s.”
“Any sign of the stranger?”
“Charlie Hampton said one of his field hands saw a city-slicker type running across one of the fields.”
“Is Charlie here?”
“He is that, but you’re not going to talk to him until you come in the kitchen and let me see to that cut on your forehead.”
Chas chuckled. “Billy said it looked grungy.”
Sammie Jo led him to the kitchen, shooed someone off a chair, and made Chas sit in it. “Can’t reach you way up there. Lucky for you Allison’s no shrimp like her old aunt.”
Chas didn’t say anything to that. He closed his eyes as Sammie Jo washed the dried blood from his brow and tried not to think of Allison’s reach, Allison’s anything. Naturally that was all he could think about.
“Hey there, Homer. Tell Charles about that stranger Charlie Hampton’s field hand saw. You were out there this morning.”
Homer, nearly eighty years old, chuckled and coughed. “This fella name of Quentin dropped round this morning to try talking Charlie into planting Jerusalem artichokes—don’t that beat all? Whaddya do with ‘em, I asked him, he said they put ’em on salads. That’s all. Just salad. I told him—”
“Homer! Tell Charles about the stranger he saw.”
“Oh, right. Anyways, this Quentin fella says he spied a city boy with blond hair and glasses a-running across the back forty of Charlie’s place earlier today. Reckon it was about the time your son was being laid flat by Charlie’s horse. The boy okay?”
“He’s fine,” Chas said, frowning over the information Homer had given him. Billy had said the man’s hair was black. Allison had remembered it being both black and blond. Black when he didn’t wear glasses, blond when he did.
“Quit frowning, Charles. You’re making my job more difficult.” He winced as she dabbed at the cut. “You shoulda had them take a couple of stitches when you were—”
A sudden swell in the noise emanating from the living room was immediately followed by a quick roar, nearly a cheer.
“Allison’s here!”
Allison was certain every square inch of Chas’s home was holding a human body. Palpable love stretched out to greet her, and hands reached for hers, for her hair, her shoulders. The triplets wrapped themselves around her waist.
“Did you see the video?”
“We’re here to help you catch the bad guy!”
“I wish Steve Kessler, Texas Ranger, was here!”
Christmas music blared from the stereo, an entire chorus singing “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Tears stung Allison’s eyes, and she blinked rapidly to drive them away.
Nearly as one, the crowd looked from her toward the kitchen.
Chas stood in the doorway, filling it.
She didn’t know what to say to him. This entire congregation had to be his doing. To protect her. To surround her in his world of love.
She loved him. She knew this with the clear certainty of the sun rising or setting, with the complete surety that a moon and stars appeared on cloudless nights.
But was love enough to
bridge the past? Even his son had been affected by it, hurt by it. And although she’d finally released the pent-up emotions clinging to those terrible days in the past, nothing could change what really happened. She was permanently, physically scarred by it. Didn’t Chas deserve more than that? Didn’t he deserve a child of his own loins? He who loved so deeply and so easily, didn’t he deserve everything?
She didn’t know what showed on her face, but she was left in no doubt of what he was feeling. His love for her blazed from his warm, warm brown eyes. And a stark vulnerability held him still, while a muscle jumped and spasmed in his tight jaw.
Carolyn pushed past her with the boys’ video in her hand. She crossed to Chas’s VCR and popped in the tape. “Come look at this, everybody,” she said. “This is the man who hurt Billy, who’s been stalking our Allison.”
Allison was struck by the nearly eerie contrast of the chorale singing “Deck the Halls,” while Almost townspeople crowded in to view a stalker that had been among them.
“Why, that’s young Quentin,” Charlie Hampton burst out. “He’s been working my soil. He can’t be the one. He saw a man running...” he trailed off. “Lied to me. Flat-out lied.”
“Anyone else see him around?” Carolyn asked.
Several heads nodded. Now that they thought about it in context of his being a field hand, sure, they’d seen him.
Sammie Jo had sold him a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese just yesterday.
Martha Jo had served him coffee at the Almost Café, he and the other field hands.
Jackson Bean had seen him driving that old red pickup truck.
Delbert Franklin hadn’t worn his hearing aids and asked what everybody was talking about.
Charlie Hampton said, “I let him stay in the hired hand’s trailer, the one on the back forty.”
As one, all eyes turned to Chas. This was his “lady” who’d been harmed by the man, his son who had been hurt by him. It was up to him to make all the decisions regarding the man’s capture.
He nodded slowly, and no one there had any doubts that he was aching to go with the four men silently donning their coats to go check out the trailer. But when he looked over at Allison, they all understood why he wasn’t leaving with them.
Almost Remembered Page 20
