Ghost of Summer

by Sally Berneathy

  "Records? Oh, you mean all that paperwork in the office? It's a pretty big mess. Not to speak ill of Pete, but I think it kind of got away from him. Evelyn said she helps both of you as much as she can, but she doesn't know what to put in the blanks if you don’t tell her, and she has a terrible time trying to read your handwriting."

  Sheriff's deep laughter rumbled into the soft, gathering dusk. "When you dad and I were young, there wasn't so damn much paperwork. A man got drunk, shot off his mouth or his gun, we threw him in jail then let him out the next day when he sobered up. Once in a while we had to hold somebody over for the judge, but even that didn't take a pile of paperwork higher'n my hat brim."

  "I'll admit paperwork is not my favorite part of law enforcement."

  Sheriff grunted agreement. "Grimes is making such a fuss about that harmless paint on his barn, I guess I'll have to write all that up, too."

  "In triplicate."

  "Lot of work for nothing. Crazy old man thinks somebody's out to get him. I told him he wasn't that important to anybody."

  Luke chuckled. "You have a way with words, Sheriff."

  A firefly—lightning bug—blinked over near the honeysuckle. Soon the yard would be full, but he and Katie wouldn't be chasing them now. They'd be sitting on the porch where their parents had once sat to watch them.

  "You know," Sheriff drawled, "I've been thinking maybe we ought to get us a computer."

  "A computer?" In the Sheriff's office in Briar Creek?

  "Yeah, they've been after me for some time to get a computer system. Then we can be connected to all the other law enforcement agencies around the country. We could get on a computer right here in Briar Creek and compare Homer Grimes' DNA to somebody's DNA in New York City. Imagine that." He shook his head as if in disbelief. "You used one in Houston, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but it doesn't eliminate all the paperwork."

  "Good. Then you could train Evelyn."

  "I don't think—"

  "Sure make it a lot easier to get run driver's license checks and get all that stuff from National Crime Information Center. It's in the budget. Been there for a while. I was just waiting for Pete to retire. He didn't like new-fangled gadgets. Too old to learn, I guess."

  Luke smiled since Sheriff was at least six or seven years older than Pete...maybe more.

  A burst of harsh light interrupted their conversation. He turned to see Katie coming through the door with a tray of glasses. Leo brushed past her, gliding onto the porch like a ghost.

  Kate felt an unexpected rush of warmth at the sight of Papa and Luke sitting on the steps just the way she'd seen them so many times when she was a child...except now Luke was taller than Papa.

  "Katie-girl," Papa said, shielding his eyes, "why don't we turn out the porch light? You can't see the lightning bugs."

  "Oh, sorry." She leaned back inside to flick it off, and a gentle, shadowy world changed Papa and Luke from real people to dark silhouettes.

  A shiver darted down her spine. So easily they seemed to leave, though she knew it was only a trick of the darkness. Luke and Papa still sat on the porch.

  However, the reality was that Luke had left years ago.

  Were Papa's mental lapses the first sign that he was leaving her?

  No. She couldn't accept that.

  She handed out the glasses of tea and took a seat in the ancient porch swing beside Leo who'd already made himself comfortable. The swing creaked alarmingly, but it always had even when she and Luke were children.

  "It's nice out here," Luke said.

  "Mmm," Papa agreed. "June's a good month in Briar Creek."

  Kate laughed, loving him so much it was almost painful. "You say that about every month, even August."

  "No." Her eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness, and she could see the grin on his face. "Surely not August."

  "Even August," Luke confirmed, giving her a conspiratorial grin.

  She responded without thinking, a smile on the inside as well as on her lips. Just a reflex, a habit left over from the past. With one foot, she pushed back and forth in the groaning swing, the action providing some release of the tension inside.

  Papa seemed perfectly normal now. Since their discussion of Mama's dishes, the only thing he'd done that concerned her was to slip away upstairs to his bedroom and close the door right after dinner. When he'd been up there for almost half an hour, she'd considered going up to check on him, but then Luke arrived and he came down full of energy and seemingly fine.

  Now, as they sat outside in the summer evening, he talked only of inanities, of friends and neighbors and weddings, deaths and births. So far as she could tell, Papa's mind was sound except for brief excursions into that one area.

  "The Gardners had a big barbecue last month to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary," he said. "It was quite a shindig. All the kids and grandkids came back. Must have been a hundred people there. Well, at least fifty. Too bad your mother had to miss it. She grew up with Helen Gardner, and she sure was partial to Helen's chocolate cake. Me and your mama went to a lot of barbecues together."

  "How long were you and Mama married?" Kate asked. She knew the answer, but it was a game they played. Papa wanted to reminisce about Mama, and she always indulged him, asking questions so he wouldn't feel badly about repeating information over and over.

  "Let's see," Papa said, counting on his fingers.

  Maybe she shouldn't have asked, shouldn't have encouraged his reminiscences in view of recent developments. She could only hope he wouldn't say something that would reveal his problem to Luke. This was private, between Papa and her. She didn't want outsiders to ridicule him. And Luke was an outsider. The closeness they'd once shared was gone. A part of the past.

  She tensed, waiting for Papa's answer to her question.

  "Nineteen years."

  She breathed a sigh of relief. At least he hadn't said forty-five, hadn't included the twenty-six years since she'd died.

  The affection in his voice, even in those few words, was unmistakable. He still loved his wife even though she'd left him so long ago.

  Kate's heart ached for his loss.

  "Seventeen before Katie was born," Luke said softly, and she was surprised that he remembered.

  "Seventeen before Katie was born," Papa repeated. "We'd given up on having children. What a surprise you were! All those red curls and those big eyes—you were the spitting image of your mother." He chuckled. "She always said you were stubborn like me, but I'm not so sure you got that trait from me."

  "She said I was stubborn? But she died when I was two years old." Was his mind wandering again? "How stubborn could I have been at that age?"

  As soon as she asked the question, she wanted to retract it. She didn't want Luke to hear the answer. She didn't want to hear the answer herself. She held her breath, desperately wanting him to come up with a logical reason for his comment.

  "Oh, Katie-girl. You were the queen of the house from the day you moved in," he said cheerfully, and Kate let out a small sigh of relief. Still she wasn't sure if he'd slid through the sticky situation accidentally or if he was simply sharp enough not to let Luke know that he didn't believe death had parted him from his wife.

  "Luke," he continued easily, "do you remember when you two decided you absolutely had to have a horse or your lives wouldn't be worth living?"

  Luke laughed softly, his gaze warm on Kate's face. It was tempting...so tempting...to fall into that gaze, to lean against that broad chest just the way she used to when it was thin and skinny instead of broad and sexy.

  She lowered her head, turning her attention to stroking Leo and to studying the cracks between the boards of the porch.

  Even if she weren't engaged to Spencer, she couldn't lean on Luke. She didn't need to lean on anybody, for that matter. People who could stand on their own made it just fine; those who leaned on somebody were sure to fall when that person went away.

  "Yeah," Luke said in answer to Papa's question.
"I remember. My mom and dad said no the first hundred times I asked them, then they just ignored me. You found somebody outside town who'd let us come out and ride every weekend. We thought we were real cowboys."

  Sheriff stood, drained his glass and tossed the leftover ice into the yard. "Well, I think I'll go upstairs to watch reruns of Golden Girls. Moved the little TV to my bedroom when Katie gave me that big one for Christmas two years ago."

  Kate rose from the swing. "Are you all right, Papa?"

  "I'm fine, sweetheart. Since you're not usually here on weeknights, I guess you don't realize how set I am in my little routines like going to bed early and getting up early for work. Why don't you kids go on down to the root beer stand? You used to beg me to take you there almost every night. Now you're all grown up and you can drive yourselves. And you can stay out as late as you want."

  He brushed past her, opened the door for Leo to enter, then turned back to them. "Katie, don't forget to invite Luke for the dinner you're cooking tomorrow night."

  Nothing wrong with his short-term memory.

  "Dinner? Does this mean you've learned to cook?" Luke teased. "You won't burn the marshmallows this time?"

  "Katie's a great cook. Takes after her mother. See you tomorrow night." Papa entered the house, letting the screen slam behind him.

  "Sounds great, Sheriff," Luke called after him.

  "Uh, Luke, about this dinner..." She shrugged and grinned. "I probably would burn the marshmallows as well as the salad. I'm afraid Papa's a little confused." That was putting it mildly.

  Luke stood, walked over and took her hand, smiling down at her. "Your father's proud of you, Katie. He thinks you can do anything."

  His fingers stroked her palm, an innocent, friendly gesture, but his touch created sparks so intense she looked down, expecting to see them flaming brightly in the darkness.

  As though he could sense her response, Luke dropped her hand abruptly, strode to the edge of the porch and gazed out into the night. Kate stared after him, heart pounding, thoughts whirling chaotically, an equal mixture of embarrassment and desire sending the hot blood rushing to her face.

  "Don't worry," he said. "I'd have been disappointed if you'd turned into a gourmet cook. You wouldn't be the same Katie. We'll eat whatever you burn."

  "I'm not the same Katie," she said weakly. There was another understatement if she'd ever heard one. The Katie he'd known had held his hand hundreds of times without ever feeling that burst of heat lightning.

  "Can I bring anything for dinner? A bottle of wine?"

  "A bottle of antacid would be more like it. I'm not sure what kind of wine goes with peanut butter sandwiches."

  Luke laughed. "I'll have to think about that. How do you feel about heading on over to the root beer stand like Sheriff said? I had a float there just the other night, and it was like a trip back in time."

  "Thanks, but I don't think so. I'm pretty tired after my drive down here." Liar, liar, pants on fire. The childhood chant rang through her head, taunting her. She wasn't tired at all. In fact, she felt exhilarated as well as terrified. Those two emotions should keep the adrenaline pumping until close to dawn.

  "I understand. I'd better be getting on home myself. Walk out to the street with me. There's something I want you to see." He reached toward her hand, hesitated then continued the movement upward and ran his fingers through his hair instead, turned and started down the walk.

  Was he afraid to touch her? Had he sensed the way she felt?

  Did he feel the same thing?

  This was crazy.

  She moved down the walk beside him, careful to keep just the right distance...near enough to show that she wasn't worried about being close to him and far enough away that their bodies wouldn't accidentally touch.

  The only thing she could see in the street was a big old convertible.

  He opened the door and gestured her inside. "Remember this?"

  "No. Should I?"

  "Dad's old Chrysler. We went to the root beer stand plenty of times in this."

  "So we did." Kate brushed her fingers across the flawless paint that glowed a deep cranberry red even in the faint light that filtered down from Papa's upstairs window.

  "I just couldn't bear to part with the old girl," Luke continued. "So I fixed her up instead."

  "You did a terrific job." She knew he wanted her to sit on the leather interior, to admire his obviously prized possession from every angle.

  But the idea filled her with the same ambivalent feelings Luke did—a desire to recapture long faded sunshine and a fear of the storm that came after. The irrational feeling that she might suddenly, inexplicably, be whisked into the past kept her feet planted firmly on the ground.

  Ridiculous.

  She forced herself to slide onto the seat.

  "I replaced the entire dash," he said, leaning inside to point out the immaculate area, now missing the crack in the vinyl that had been there when Luke's father purchased the car used.

  "It's beautiful. You've put in a lot of work."

  "It was worth it."

  "You'll have to take me for a ride tomorrow after dinner," she heard herself saying, much to her astonishment. Damn! The blasted car had jerked her back into the past!

  "I'd love to."

  He seemed to lean closer, or maybe it was only a trick of the shadows or her imagination. She could smell his familiar scent of soap and peppermint chewing gum and something new, something male and tantalizing, something that tugged at her inner recesses. The darkness of the new moon hid his expression, but she could feel the energy, the strength, the masculinity, emanating from him.

  The same as when they were children but different.

  They weren't children anymore.

  They were adults. A man and a woman.

  Hidden from the rest of the world in the night.

  Of their own volition, her lips parted, anticipating—

  The soft strains of a hauntingly familiar tune drifted to Kate's ears on the summer air, tugging her back to reality.

  She swallowed. "Where is that music coming from?"

  Luke pushed away from the car, from her, and stood rigidly straight. "I don't know."

  She scrambled out of the Chrysler, onto the sidewalk, into the present. "It's coming from Papa's bedroom." She pointed to the window on the second floor of their house where the open curtains fluttered in the breeze, a perfect frame for the scene inside.

  As she watched, Papa moved slowly, rhythmically, back and forth across his room, arms extended at odd angles.

  "What's he doing?" Luke asked.

  Kate shook her head. "I don't know. That song...do you remember? He used to play it a lot when we were kids. It was one of Mama's favorites. The Anniversary Waltz."

  Kate continued to stare in hypnotic fascination at Papa's window. He almost looked as if he were dancing. He certainly wasn't watching television.

  Then it hit her. He was playing old phonograph records and dancing with Mama.

  For just a moment she got caught up in his fantasy and could have sworn she saw the faintly glowing outline of a woman in Papa's arms.

  She blinked to clear her head.

  "Now that you mention it, I do remember that song," Luke said. "But what's going on with your father? Is he dancing by himself?"

  "Of course not. He's...he's doing aerobics," she blurted.

  "Aerobics?"

  "Very low impact. For senior citizens. Well, it's been great seeing you, Luke. Let's get together and do it again soon." She started up the walk.

  Luke chuckled, a low, sensual sound, halting her in mid-step. She'd never before noticed he had a sensual chuckle. "How about tomorrow?" he asked. "You're cooking dinner for me. Remember?"

  "Of course I remember."

  The phone rang, and Papa stopped dancing, moved across the room and out of her field of vision.

  "Omigosh! That's probably Spencer! I forgot to call him." And she'd left her cell phone in her room. Had he tried to reach
her and then called Papa's number?

  "Spencer?" Luke asked.

  Kate looked at Luke, horror washing over her. She'd been with him twice today. They'd reminisced about old times and talked about their new lives. She'd found herself attracted to him in an inexplicable way she shouldn't be.

  And she'd totally forgotten her fiancé.

  "Spencer Osborne. We're..." Why was it always so hard to say? "We're engaged."

  "Oh."

  "Yes, he's a very nice guy. I know you'll like him. He works for the same company I do. He's stable and reliable and helps me keep my feet on the ground and he played golf with the CEO of our company today." Oh, Lord! Had she really said that? Why was she babbling?