Desperado

by Lisa Bingham

  “Kari!”

  Raindrops splatted against the windshield. Leaning forward, Bronte eyed the flickers of lightning with concern. They were almost there. They should be able to outrun the storm.

  Lily stirred restlessly in her seat. “How much farther?”

  “Less than a mile.”

  Intermittent drops continued to strike the glass, leaving perfect circles in the dust, but Bronte hesitated in turning on the wipers. The blades—much like her tires—should have been replaced months ago. If she turned them on now, the rain and dirt collected on her car would muddle together in a streaky mess, and she needed to see the towering willow tree that marked the end of the lane …

  There!

  For the first time in years, Bronte felt a flutter of joy and hope. They were here. They were finally here!

  Slowing the car, she turned into a narrow gravel road. The tires crunched over the weathered ruts, the noise bringing a sense of excitement that edged out the weariness and pain.

  A strip of winter-matted grass grew up the middle of the rutted track, and puddles gathered in the potholes. On either side of the lane, fence posts had been linked together with strands of barbed wire. The fields beyond were just as she’d remembered, loamy carpets of brown sprigged with chartreuse shoots of sprouting grain. As they drew closer to the house, the fences gave way to dozens of lilac bushes that had grown so closely together that they formed an impenetrable hedge. To Bronte’s delight, she saw that grape-like nubs had begun to appear amid the leaves. Any day now, they would explode into a fragrant wall of purple and pink and the air would grow rich with the scent of the blossoms and the drone of bees.

  “Look!” she exclaimed to her children. “Annie’s lilacs will be in bloom soon.” She cracked the window, allowing the heady fragrance of rain and soil to fill the car.

  Lily eagerly pressed her face against the glass, but Kari remained stony and silent. Nevertheless, Bronte sensed an expectancy in her daughter’s posture that hadn’t been there before.

  “Where’s the house?” Lily breathed.

  “Past the next bend.”

  As Bronte eased around the corner, a part of her was a child again. She expected to see Annie waiting on the stoop wearing a cotton dress cinched tight by an all-encompassing apron. Bronte could almost smell the yeastiness of freshly baked bread that clung to the house and taste the moist carrot cookies that were pulled from the oven the moment she and her siblings arrived. As soon as Bronte ran up the front steps, she would be enveloped in her grandmother’s warm, bosomy embrace. She would breathe deeply of Annie’s unique scent—face powder, lilies of the valley, and Nilla Wafers, which Annie stowed in her apron pockets for when she needed a “boost.”

  Bronte was so enveloped in the memories that it took Kari’s sharp inhalation and Lily’s plaintive, “Oh!” to pierce the fantasy.

  Easing to a stop, Bronte peered more closely through the rain-streaked windshield. As her eyes focused on the weathered farmhouse, a mewl of disappointment escaped her lips.

  If not for the porch light and a dim glow emitted from the garret window, Bronte would have thought the house had been abandoned. Weeds choked the once beautiful flowerbeds and the lawn was burned and nearly nonexistent. The sagging wraparound porch was missing half a dozen balusters and the front steps were rickety and threatening to collapse.

  The outbuildings had suffered a similar fate. Bronte remembered the chicken coop, barn, and garden being painted a pristine white. When she’d seen them last, they’d been perched on an immaculate lawn edged by tufts of peonies and iris. But if any of those perennials had survived, they would have to fight their way through thigh-high weeds and thistles.

  “I thought you said this place was nice.”

  Kari’s tone made it clear that she thought Bronte teetered on the verge of senility.

  Bronte didn’t bother to comment. What could she say? Her memories weren’t so gilded by age and distance that she could have mistaken this … this … mess for the idyll she’d enjoyed each summer.

  Reluctantly, she eased the car closer to the main house. Rain began to fall in earnest now, but even the moisture collecting on her windshield couldn’t hide the utter neglect.

  “Are you sure Grandma Great lives here?” Lily whispered.

  “Of course she lives here,” Kari snapped. “But Mom didn’t bother to tell us what a dump it is.”

  Rain pattered against the roof of the car, the rhythm growing frantic as the downpour increased. Conceding to the inevitable, Bronte switched on the wipers, waiting vainly for the streaks of grime to be swept away—as if by cleaning the windshield she might find the condition of Annie’s house had been a trick of light and shadow.

  If anything, the view was more depressing.

  A part of her wanted to throw the car in gear and leave. Bronte didn’t want to consider that her fondest memories could be tarnished by this current reality. But she honestly couldn’t go any farther. She’d pinned her hopes and her endurance on reaching Annie’s house. Now that she was here, she didn’t have energy left to alter her plans.

  Needing to validate her decision, Bronte turned off the car. For long moments, the drumming on the roof and the ticking of the cooling engine underscored the silence.

  Then she said, “Stay here.”

  There were no arguments as Bronte grasped the map from the dashboard. Holding it over her head, she threw open the driver’s door and darted into the rain. Avoiding the damaged step, she hurried to the relative shelter of the porch and pressed the doorbell.

  As she waited for her grandmother to appear, Bronte could feel her children’s gazes lock in her direction. Once again, she realized that she should have waited until she’d been able to reach her grandmother. If Grandma Annie had known they were coming …

  What?

  What would she have done?

  Weeded the flowerbeds? Thrown a coat of paint onto the house?

  Why hadn’t it occurred to Bronte that she and Grandma Annie had aged at the same rate? In her mind’s eye Annie had remained the same vivacious woman she’d been when Bronte had seen her last. She must have slowed down in the past few years. Obviously, the maintenance of the property had become too much for her.

  Dear God, what if she weren’t up to an impromptu visit?

  Bronte’s gut suddenly crawled with new worries. Damn, damn, damn. She’d been desperate to get her children away from the trouble brewing at home. Bronte had thought that if she had time alone with her girls, she could mend the brittleness that had invaded their relationships. Then, when the opportunity arose, she could explain that the move from Boston was permanent.

  As well as the separation from their father.

  “Ring it again!” Kari shouted from inside the car.

  Foregoing the doorbell, Bronte opened the screen and pounded with the knocker. Annie could have grown hard of hearing. She had to be … what? Eighty-five? Eighty-six?

  Why hadn’t Bronte kept in touch more? Why hadn’t she pushed aside Phillip’s overwhelming demands and reached out to her grandmother? Instead, Bronte had grown so ashamed of her situation and her inability to make it better, that she’d limited her contact to cheery phone calls and the “too, too perfect” letters tucked into family Christmas cards.

  The grumble of a distant engine drew her attention. Allowing the screen to close with a resounding bang, she wiped the moisture from her face as a pair of headlights sliced through the gathering gloom.

  For a moment, she was exposed in the beams as a pickup rolled from behind the barn and headed toward the lane. At the last minute, the driver must have seen her, because the path of the truck altered, veering toward Bronte and her children.

  A growl of thunder vied with the sound of the engine as the vehicle jounced to a stop. It was a big truck, purely utilitarian, with a stretch cab and jacked-up wheels with shiny rims unlike anything Bronte had ever seen in Boston. The window to the passenger side slid down and a man leaned closer so that she coul
d see his shape like an indigo cutout against the pouring rain. Much like the truck, he was built for hard work with broad shoulders and powerful arms.

  “Do you need some help?”

  His voice was deep enough to carry over the drumming of the rain and something about its timbre caused her to shiver.

  Using the map as her makeshift umbrella, Bronte ran closer. “Yes, I’m looking for Annie Ellis. I can’t get an answer at the door. Do you know if she’s expected back anytime soon?”

  The stranger in the truck removed a battered straw cowboy hat, revealing coffee-colored hair tousled by rain and sweat and eyes that were a pale blue gray. A faint line dissected his forehead—whiter above, a deep bronzed tan below, conveying that he spent most of his time in the sun. He had features that could have been carved with an ax, too sharp and blunt to be considered handsome, but intriguing, nonetheless.

  “Exactly who are you?” he asked bluntly.

  Normally, she would have bristled at such a tone, but she was tired—emotionally and physically. All she wanted was a hot cup of tea and sleep. Deep, uninterrupted sleep.

  “My name is Bronte Cupacek. Annie is my grandmother.”

  The man’s gaze flicked to the van, the Massachusetts license plates, and the children who were pressed up against the windows watching them intently.

  “Ah. The Boston contingent.”

  Something about his flat tone rankled, but before Bronte could decipher his mood, he delivered the final blow to an otherwise devastating few months.

  “Your grandmother fell down the stairs yesterday afternoon. She’s in a local hospital.”

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