Ghost of Summer

by Sally Berneathy

  No, she could train Papa on the computer and he could train Luke.

  If Papa was all right, then she needed to go back to Dallas.

  Not that the thought of being around Luke again bothered her.

  But she had things to do in Dallas.

  She thought of that kiss, of the way his touch made her giddy.

  Okay, maybe the thought of being around him did bother her just a little bit. All she needed was a short time away from him, long enough to get this chaos in her brain straightened out. Then she'd be fine.

  Never mind that the thought of never kissing Luke again made her feel the way Elwood P. Dowd must have felt when faced with the injection of drugs that would get rid of Harvey forever.

  Well, she could just get over it, and that would be a lot easier to do when she got back to Dallas, away from Briar Creek and Luke's presence.

  ***

  Once Kate finished looking at the pictures of Evelyn's grandchildren and started working on the computers, getting the system set up and installing software, she became completely absorbed in what she was doing. Even so, Luke's presence somewhere in the office was like a shadow that constantly hovered at the corners of her mind.

  She was working at the terminal in Papa's office when the phone rang. It had rung several times but Kate barely heard the sound over her concentration.

  However, she heard as if with preternatural hearing Papa's soft words at Luke's door, "Luke, I may need you on this one."

  She went out into the reception area. Papa and Luke were already rushing out the back door. "Papa? What's going on?"

  He turned back and smiled without the slightest sign of tension. "Just a routine call, Katie-girl. Hurry and finish those computers so Luke can use it for the paperwork on this one when we get back."

  In contradiction to his casual words, he and Luke hurried out.

  "Evelyn, where are they going?"

  "Hank's Liquor Store out on the highway. The security company just called. His silent alarm went off." Evelyn shook her head, tsked a couple of times then went back to her paperwork. "Crime's getting almost as bad down here as it is in the city."

  Kate could feel her heart rate increase. "Crime? You mean Hank's being robbed or something?"

  Evelyn looked up. "It's all right, Katie. It's probably a false alarm anyway, but if it's not, Sheriff can take care of it. He does it all the time. That's what a sheriff does, you know."

  A thousand images tumbled through Kate's mind...images of robbers and guns and Papa, of a ghostly Mama whispering in Papa's ear at just the wrong time, distracting him, advising him to shoot or not to shoot—who knew which?

  Papa had told her nothing ever happened in Briar Creek!

  Kate grabbed her purse and keys and ran out the door to her own car.

  Hank's was only a couple of miles down the highway. When Kate squealed into the parking lot, she saw that the official Sheriff's car with colored lights whirling was already there.

  Probably a false alarm, she told herself. Her heart was in her throat, and her hands were trembling so badly she could hardly get out of the car.

  She dashed to the glass door of the small building, grabbed the handle and froze.

  Inside the store Luke, no longer the little boy playing with cap pistols, shoved a big man with a stocking over his head against the counter and slapped handcuffs on him. Papa, as cool as if he'd been home pointing the remote control, stood back holding his gun leveled on the second man. An obviously terrified clerk stood behind the counter, as far back as he could get. The robbers looked other-worldly and evil with their features contorted by the stockings, but Papa and Luke had things under control.

  They could not have been there more than a few seconds before she arrived, but that's all it had taken for them to subdue the bad guys.

  Her terror turned to pride at the two men in their roles as something more than men...peace keepers for the town, protectors and guardians.

  Your father and your friend.

  But she barely had time to take a single breath of relief when a third man emerged from the back room with a gun in his hand, behind Papa.

  Kate shoved the door open and started to scream, but any sound she might have made was drowned by an explosion. Time seemed to stop with the bullet in mid-air and Kate poised with her mouth and the door half open. For what seemed like an eternity, though it couldn't have been more than a fraction of a second, she didn't know who had fired, where the bullet was headed, if Papa or Luke had been hit.

  Then she saw the third man's gun spinning from his hand as his eyes and mouth widened in shock. Papa straightened from a crouch and turned his attention back to the second robber while Luke charged over to grab the third man.

  Kate eased the door closed and leaned against the window, sucking in deep breaths and ordering her heart to slow down.

  It was all right.

  Papa and Luke could handle things. Papa's reflexes were good. He could still shoot accurately. Luke was strong and brave, very much a man with nothing left of the young boy who'd been her friend.

  And she'd better get away from there before they came out and caught her. She didn't want Papa to know she'd doubted him.

  And she didn't want Luke to know she'd been worried about him.

  As she raced out of the parking lot and headed home, the phrase danced through her head, Papa's all right. Maybe he talked to Mama, but Dr. Kramer had vouched for his physical soundness, and the scene she'd just witnessed vouched for his mental stability and quick reflexes. Like Elwood P. Dowd, his idiosyncrasy was actually kind of charming.

  She giggled to herself, giddy in her relief as her heart finally slowed from the scene she'd just witnessed.

  So what if Papa wanted to set a plate for Mama. They could have tea the way they'd done when she was a little girl, using her toy dishes. A cup for Papa, one for Luke, one for Katie and one for Mama.

  She pulled into the parking lot behind the jail but she didn't get out of her car immediately.

  They'd invited Mama to those tea parties, now that she thought about it. Papa had always told her that Mama was still with them. When she'd brought home a good report card, he'd praised her and assured her that Mama would be proud of her, too.

  Maybe this wasn't a sudden aberration at all. Maybe Papa had always communed with Mama.

  As she'd grown up, the tea parties had stopped, of course, along with many of the references to Mama.

  Kate sat in the parking lot in back of the jail and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, trying to recall exactly how Papa had acted when she was young, if he'd talked to or about Mama then.

  When had everything changed? When had the references to Mama become fewer and less direct? When had her own vivid dreams about her mother faded?

  She couldn't recall that exactly, either, but it almost seemed that her childhood memories were in color and her later ones in black and white.

  She'd always associated that phenomenon with the natural process of growing up.

  Coincidentally, it had come about around the time when Luke left. But that was, age-wise and experience-wise, when she'd begun to grow up.

  She'd put her past behind her long ago, deliberately forgotten many of the details. Luke hadn't been the only one who'd been depressed by the major lifestyle change caused by his father's death and his subsequent move to Houston. The difference was she hadn't wanted to recall any of it...until now.

  Not that she really wanted to now, but she needed to remember some parts. She needed to be able to remember specific details about Papa's references to Mama while editing out specific details about her friendship with Luke. There was no point in dredging up the pieces of the past that were painful.

  But Luke had been such an integral part of her life, she wasn't sure she could separate the two.

  With a sigh, she got out of the car and went into the building.

  She'd just seen Papa handle himself quite well in a life and death situation. Doc Kramer had assure
d her that he was physically healthy. Papa didn't want to move to Dallas with her. Short of having him declared incompetent, something she would never do, nor, she suspected, something any judge would agree to, there was nothing she could do.

  As soon as she got the computer up and running and Papa and Evelyn trained, she would return to Dallas and get on with her life.

  She barely made it back inside the office before Papa and Luke came in with their prisoners. While they dealt with the legalities of getting the three men installed in jail, Kate stayed out of the way, in Luke's office, working on his terminal. He came in once to get something and glared at her.

  Well, he probably wasn't really glaring at her, just glaring about the situation in general. She shouldn't take it personally. Especially not when she didn't care what he thought of her and was planning to leave town soon anyway.

  So why did she keep looking up from her work every time he passed the door, hoping to catch his eye so she could smile at him?

  She focused on her work, fiercely ignoring that leftover urge from her youth.

  ***

  Luke was furious. He could barely wait until he and Sheriff got the perps booked and into jail so he could confront Katie.

  She was still in his office, working on that blasted computer.

  He strode in and leaned over the desk, then spoke quietly so Sheriff wouldn't hear. "Outside. I want to talk to you."

  She looked up, and for an instant something human and vulnerable, something of the old Katie, flickered, but then it disappeared, and he could see the sheen of the around her glass that was transparent and thin yet kept him from getting too close. "We can talk here," she said.

  "No, we can't. I don't want Sheriff to hear this."

  Fear brushed across her features. He ought to reassure her that nothing was wrong with Sheriff, but he didn't. He turned and walked away, knowing she would follow him.

  When they were out back in the parking lot, he whirled on her. "What in the hell were you doing following us, trying to come in the door when we were in the middle of an arrest, when there were guns everywhere?"

  She flinched. "I didn't realize you saw me."

  "I saw you! Sheriff saw you! You almost distracted him from that other guy! You almost got him killed!"

  Katie paled, her eyes becoming large and silvery in their lightness. She backed up until she bumped into a car, stopped and leaned against it, balancing with both hands. Her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed. "I'm sorry. I only wanted to help," she whispered.

  "No, you wanted to spy! You didn't trust Sheriff or me to take care of the situation. Katie, I know you're worried about your father, and I know it's because you love him, but you've got to stop it. He's an adult. He may be older, but you've got to leave him his dignity."

  Katie pushed herself erect. "You don't understand," she said quietly, then turned and walked back into the office, her head high.

  Luke shoved his hands into his back pockets. Standing alone in the parking lot, the heat beating down from above and surging up from the concrete below, he watched her go.

  No, he damned sure didn't understand. He didn't understand what was going on with Katie and he really didn't understand why, in spite of everything...her engagement, her distance, how different she had become over the years...he still wanted to go after her, pull her into his arms and comfort her, then kiss her breathless.

  Maybe that last wasn't such a bad idea after all. He'd already lost her. The Katie he'd been friends with a lifetime ago had vanished into the mists of time. She was a different person.

  He'd been furious when he caught a peripheral glimpse of her at the door of the liquor store just before that third man came up behind Sheriff. The distraction could have cost either him or Sheriff that critical millisecond of timing, could have cost them their lives.

  But, he realized, he wasn't just mad at her for her foolish actions. He was mad at her for not being the little girl he grew up with. He was mad at himself for expecting the impossible. He was mad at the world because it kept right on moving along, changing with every heartbeat.

  He'd been foolish to think he could pick up where they'd left off seventeen years ago. Neither of them was that same person. They'd been apart more years than they'd been together.

  He'd found a good life in Briar Creek. Maybe some things had changed, but that was just what happened. He was back where he belonged, a few years older, a few lifetimes wiser...

  And he had no idea what he was going to do about Katie.

  ***

  The universe stretches into infinity, filled with moons and stars and planets and streaking comets. Rainbows decorate the heavens above the earth after a storm, and every day begins with the miracle of a sunrise. But loving you, Jerome, and watching our little Katie grow, is still the best of all miracles and wonders.

  Jerome smiled as he read the computer screen. "Emma, you never stop surprising me. You don't know anything about computers. How did you do that?"

  Emma laughed softly somewhere in the vicinity of his left ear. "Why, Jerome Fallon, I know just as much about computers as you do! I listened to Katie explain it, too. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's all energy, just like the television."

  He studied the keyboard, then, his big fingers clumsy on the small keys, painstakingly tapped onto the screen I love youu Emma Fallon. You and Katie are teh only miracles I neeed. Lets go home sweetheart.

  Her lips tingled against the skin of his cheek. "I have one more thing I want to do with your new computer system. Would you bring up that e-mail program?"

  Jerome studied the screen, the keyboard, the mouse and scratched his chin. "Now how the heck do I make this program go away?"

  "I can do it," Emma offered.

  "Just give me a minute. I remember now. It's the X up there in the corner." He touched the mouse, sending the arrow skittering all around the screen, then finally centered it on the X and clicked.

  Do you want to save the changes you made to Document 5? the ghost in the computer asked.

  Of course he wanted to save Emma's wonderful note.

  Save as

  The universe stretches into infinity.

  Jerome chose yes then brought up the e-mail program as Emma had requested.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Papa didn't complain the next morning when Kate told him she was going home early, probably the following day. In fact, he didn't even seem surprised.

  She waited until around ten o'clock to go into the office, hoping Luke would be out on some sort of deputy-type assignment. After the way he'd yelled at her yesterday, she had absolutely no desire to see him. When they'd been together in Dallas, especially that night in her condo, she'd lost her mind completely and begun to relax around him, even kissed him. And things had gone steadily downhill from there.

  You're a slow learner, Kathleen Fallon, she told herself.

  No, you're not, Katie. You just have a soft heart that gets bruised easily.

  Kate paused with her hand on the door of the Sheriff's office. Is this the way it started with Papa? Odd thoughts floating around in his head that seemed to come from somebody else? Would she soon be talking to Mama and maybe even seeing that big rabbit, Harvey?

  She set her jaw and opened the front door of the Sheriff's office. "Good morning, Evelyn. Is Papa here?"

  "No, he got a call to go out to the Granger place. I think Wayne Granger's just lonesome again. But Luke's here."

  The way Evelyn smiled when she imparted that last bit of information made Kate cringe. Could everybody in the whole town see that electrical current that sparked between Luke and her? Even after he'd chewed her out yesterday, even while she was so angry with him she could have punched him and so hurt she could have cried, she'd felt that current as she brushed against him while going over some of the computer instructions.

  Well, one more day and she'd be out of there. A hundred and twenty miles was a long way for electrical sparks to fly.

  She went straight to
Papa's office to finish up a few things on the computer system.

  She barely had time to get the computer booted up when Luke charged in and slammed the door behind him.

  Kate looked up. His jaw was set, his eyes dark with rage. Kate straightened automatically, ready to defend herself against another outburst like the one yesterday.

  "You come down here to meddle in Sheriff's life, you nearly get him killed, then you start on my life."

  Thank goodness she hadn't allowed herself to become too emotionally entangled with Luke again, or his attitude would really hurt.