by Jodi Thomas
Reagan tugged off her shoes and settled in for her nightly talk with Noah. They’d dated occasionally until they both decided they were meant to be friends. She wasn’t ready for a boyfriend and he was too focused on rodeo to have time to date.
Only lately, he wasn’t as open as he’d always been and she didn’t know how to ask what was wrong. Half the time he acted like he was mad at her and she couldn’t think of anything she’d done.
They talked of school and homework, but he didn’t mention the date he’d had with Jennifer and she didn’t tell him about Gabriel Leary. When she said good night, Reagan wished she hadn’t called.
Maybe it was the fog, but all the world seemed lonely tonight.
Chapter 2
JANUARY 9, 2008 ALONG TIMBER LINE ROAD
THE CHILI WOULD BE COLD BY THE TIME GABE WALKED THE three miles home. He knew the path well and had no problem moving through the shadows black as spilled oil across the land. He’d walked them all his life. First to school because he didn’t want to ride the school bus, then as therapy when he came home from the army wounded in both body and soul. And now he made the walk because it was Wednesday and he didn’t want to eat his own cooking.
He favored his left leg and knew he should have brought his cane, but he hated using it. The stick reminded him of a life he’d given up. One explosion, one glance in the wrong direction and the world he’d known, the one he’d built on another man’s name, had vanished.
Holding on to a bare branch, he climbed out of the dry gully at the edge of town and began crossing open fields. Memories walked beside him tonight. He’d just turned seventeen when his father beat him for the last time for not completing all his endless chores. He’d packed a change of clothes, a dozen of his favorite comic books, and seventy-three dollars, then he walked all night.
It was noon by the time he’d traveled the thirty miles to Bailee and caught a bus to Amarillo. From there, he tried a dozen businesses downtown before a sweet lady gave him a job at a little breakfast/lunch place called the Hickory Inn a block from the train tracks. Minimum wage and a meal on his break. She agreed to pay him in cash if he’d show up sober every morning at five and promise to stay for the lunch run. He figured out he could shower at a shelter a few blocks away and hang around there until late afternoon. Then, Gabe learned the hard way that it paid to be off the streets before dark. A storage shed behind the little café became his home for a year, until he turned eighteen.
Gabe shivered remembering that cold shed. Sometimes it would take him a half hour to warm up enough to move at normal speed. He’d spent that year planning. The number one thing on his list was never to return to Harmony, but he had.
He crossed Timber Line Road and saw his father’s old house in the distance. It had been a Sears Kit home, shipped by train a hundred or so years ago. Small, one story, the wind had beat on it over the years until it blended into the landscape. This weather had a way of doing that to everything around. Sometimes Gabriel thought his whole world was the color of the dirt that constantly blew.
Part of him hated being back, even with his father long dead. Part of him knew this might be the only place left on the planet for him to hide.
A few minutes later when he entered the house, he checked the alarm system. Most folks driving by might think the old barn and house were abandoned. They’d never guess it had a hundred-thousand-dollar security system he’d installed himself.
Gabe pulled off the Glock strapped to his good leg and left it on a shelf by the door. The years in the army had taught him well. Never be unprepared.
He walked through the rooms stripped of all furniture except work tables and long desks loaded down with classic comic books and his own drawings. A living room or dining room would have been worthless to him. Gabe needed workspace and the basics. Nothing more.
A stray dog, who’d taken up residence with him a few years back, wandered in from the hallway looking bothered that Gabe had awakened him. He was German shepherd tall but greyhound thin and the color of wet sand.
“Some guard dog you are, Pirate,” Gabe said as he scratched the mutt’s head. “With only one eye you’d only see half a burglar anyway.”
Pirate followed him to the kitchen, his nose bumping into the sack of food with every other step Gabe took.
Gabe ignored the dog. Pirate had been hungry since the day he arrived with ribs poking through his chest. Someone had probably dropped him out on the road thinking it kinder to let a car kill him than to have him put to sleep. Only Pirate was a survivor.
Sitting down, Gabe pulled the meal from the bag remembering how he’d been walking the midnight streets of Harmony one night a few years ago, staying in the shadows, when Edith Franklin, from the Blue Moon, spotted him. She’d been a few years older than him in school, but she recognized him and stepped out in the cold.
“Gabriel!” she’d shouted in the tone of voice a mother would use to call her children inside. “Come in for some coffee before you freeze. I’ve got a pot I’m about to toss.”
He’d circled round to the back door of the Blue Moon and sat in the diner’s kitchen drinking coffee as she cleaned. They didn’t talk much, not like old friends. He guessed neither had any memories of the past dozen years that they wanted to share. Life hadn’t treated her any better than it had him. He had a wide scar across his chest, a thin one along his jaw line and another that ran almost the length of his leg. Judging from her sad eyes, he’d guess her scars were more on the inside. She couldn’t be more than thirty-four, but she looked fifty.
So this is what happens to shy, gentle girls who marry to get away from home, he had thought.
She’d packed him a takeout dinner that night without asking him what he liked and charged him two dollars.
He’d been returning every Wednesday since for whatever she packed in the bag. Sometimes, if it was cold outside, she’d invite him in for coffee, but most of the time she just thanked him for the business and told him to take care of himself.
Guessing from the premature age lines on her face and her tired eyes, Edith had had her full quota of sorrow. She didn’t need any of his. So, he’d thank her for the meal and vanish back into the night.
Until tonight, the pattern had never changed. He usually circled through the old part of town, feeling strangely at home there because nothing had changed since he’d been a kid. On warm nights, he’d stand by the storm drain outside the sheriff’s office and listen to people talk. Between dispatchers yelling and deputies passing time with stories and news, Gabe knew pretty much everything going on in town. On cool nights, he liked to lift himself silently up in the old tree on the square and pick up conversations as folks passed. Legend was the town’s founder, Harmon Ely, planted the tree hoping his grandchildren would play beneath it. But his wife and children never came west and when Harmon died, he left all his land to the three men who worked for him. The McAllens, the Mathesons and the Trumans either owned, or had sold off, all the property for miles around. They weren’t rich, but rooted. Gabe thought that might be more important.
The three families were also the town’s longest-running soap opera.
From what Gabe could tell, nothing much changed in Harmony during the ten years he was gone. The three families still pretty much ran the town. Alexandra McAllen was sheriff, Hank Matheson was fire chief and a half dozen of each family served on the town council. Only the Trumans hadn’t populated. As far as he knew, the girl he saw tonight would be the last Truman soon.
Gabe pulled out a bag of cookies from the takeout she’d given him and smiled. “Thanks, Reagan,” he said aloud and wondered what the little redhead must have thought of him. That I’m crazy, he decided. Why not? Half the time Gabe himself thought he was nuts. When he’d come home five years ago he’d sworn he’d leave as soon as he could walk, then his dad died and he decided to stay until he was ready to face the world again. Two tours of duty had left him craving solitude.
But, the time to step back into life
never seemed right and thanks to the Internet, he could order anything he needed and have it delivered. In the solitude of his farm, he’d found a way to make a living and no one around would ever know. The drawings he’d done as a child and his love for comic books had morphed into a career in graphic novels. He could step into his imaginary world and be whoever he wanted, without scars and fears.
“Someday, I’ll get back to the world,” he promised himself as he ate his supper. Chili, a ham sandwich, and cookies plus he’d actually talked to someone tonight. For the first time in a long time life was almost normal.
While he ate, he thought of Reagan. She was small, but probably grown as tall as she’d ever be. Her hair reminded him of the color of rust and seem to bounce around her face. He’d watched her earlier from the side window of the diner. She had to stand on her toes and stretch to reach the shelf where all the paper goods were stacked.
She was brave, too. Walked right out and handed him his meal. Now and then someone saw him moving about the town or across his fields. Most acted like they didn’t see him. A few darted away as if afraid. But Reagan Truman, despite her small frame, had shown Truman blood and stood her ground.
Gabe stopped eating and left his supper on the table. He needed to do something about the Truman girl and the sooner he got started, the sooner he’d be headed back to town.
He’d barely made it out the kitchen door before Pirate raised his head table high and lived up to his name by finishing off the takeout.
