“I’ll probably live to a ripe old age then.”
At this the woman finally smiled. “Me, too.”
Vera didn’t say anything else. She headed up the walk with the remaining bags, leaving Kate wondering what kind of help she’d actually been. She hadn’t done a thing other than pick up the halter.
She glanced at the porch as Rick appeared.
Is that why he stayed under Justus’s thumb? Guilt? Perhaps he couldn’t cut the ties that bound him to the Mitchells because he felt responsible for Ryan’s death. Which was ludicrous, but the mind and heart worked in mysterious ways.
Rick rubbed a hand across his chest and looked out at the horizon. Kate could feel his angst. His trouble. If she had to guess the source, she’d say things at the center, work with the clients wasn’t going as planned.
Yeah, welcome to the club, buddy.
Rick tried to be patient. The guys had only been here for four days and were still adjusting to one another. Two clients—Joe and Brandon—were from the Tango Blast organization, a relatively new albeit violent gang. They seemed the most dangerous of the group. The other three were Mexican Mafia, but from different barrios. They’d been low men in the gang and their personalities reflected their status. “We can disagree, but let’s not name call.”
Sullen eyes met his comment and worry settled in his gut. Nothing was working the way he’d envisioned it. He’d been a delusional fool to think the guys would accept him just because he’d been in their shoes at one time.
Not to mention he literally ached for Kate. He tried to stop himself from gravitating toward her, but time and time again, he found himself seeking her out, if only to soak her in as she teased the clients and did what he sought to do…bond with them.
Brandon spoke next. “Listen, not a car wash, man. That’s, like, what the cheerleaders do in high school.”
Joe grinned. “I took my mother’s car for a wash every time.
Mochilas
. Tight asses and—”
“How about a detail place?” Brandon suggested. “We could wash, wax and buff that shit up.”
Rick could see lightbulbs going off in their heads. He’d asked to meet with them right after their last GED class with the purpose of brainstorming ideas for raising money for the center.
The foundation had given the center enough money for the year, but the guys in the three-month program needed to earn their keep. Taking on responsibility was as much a part of their rehabilitation as therapy and education. Learning to work together to find solutions was key in getting them to accept a world where disagreements were met with honesty and compromise, not with guns and knives.
“That’s whack, dude,” Manny said, shaking his head.
Tension thickened.
Rick slammed his hands on the table, breaking through the testosterone flare-up in the room and drawing their attention to him. “Actually, there’s nothing like that in Oak Stand, outside of a do-it-yourself place on the outskirts of town. I’m good with cars myself.”
“Yeah,” Joe said, glancing out the back window to where the Mustang sat in the drive. “That’s a sweet ride.”
Rick could feel their interest. For the first time. “I restored it. Me and a friend, that is. So I know my way around a vehicle.”
The guys nodded.
“But we’re too far out from town,” Joe said. “Old ladies ain’t gonna drive out here so this chunty can rag her car.” He jerked his thumb toward Georges as he delivered the insult. Georges flipped Joe off.
Rick reminded them about using derogatory terms for the umpteenth time.
“Well, they damn sure ain’t gonna let us drive their cars. They’ll think we’re stealin’ them or something. We’ll be laying the wax and hear sirens,” said Joe.
Rick spent the next thirty minutes helping them iron out the particulars of the business. The guys were wary, but enthusiasm laced their words and several guys showed surprising entrepreneurial skills in their negotiations. Then he watched silently as they sketched out logos and talked about names for the business, one of which was Banjo’s. Letting the dog stay had proven to be the right move. The guys loved the scrawny mutt. The dog was another piece in the puzzle for creating the right environment.
Rick drifted away from the table, leaving them to take ownership of the business idea. He’d follow up later and make a suggestion or two for drafting the plan, but he wanted to give them space. That seemed like the right move.
He entered the kitchen, set his mug in the sink and ran soapy water for the dishes stacked on the counter. Starting tonight, the clients would share in meal preparation and cleanup. Up until then, he’d borne the burden. For some reason, he hadn’t thought much about feeding the guys. He’d spent much of his planning on the programs and supplies. Thank goodness, Vera and other townspeople had shown up with welcoming dishes. Another thing to tweak.
As he finished loading the dishwasher, Kate breezed in.
“Hey,” she said, grabbing a kitchen towel and wiping the counters. “I finished organizing all of the paperwork into different files. When you have time, I’ll show you how I set it up so it’ll be easy to put your hands on what you need.”
He watched her smooth strokes as she buffed the stove and knew exactly where he wanted to put his hands. And it damn sure wasn’t on files. He looked at the half-eaten cinnamon roll sitting on a plate he’d missed on the far counter. It made him think of that morning several days ago. The morning he’d told Kate he’d made a vow. She’d teased him then about eating things that weren’t good for him, and he’d replied that “some things were worth it.”
He looked at the delicious woman bent over picking up a bread tie from the floor.
Wasn’t Kate the same thing?
Decadent. Sweet. And absolutely worth it.
She turned and caught him watching her and the air crackled. “What?”
Laughter from the dining room jarred him from his wicked thoughts. It was getting harder and harder to drag himself from that place. And he knew his connection with Kate wasn’t only physical. It was something more. “Nothing.”
He took the towel from her and hung it up. “Actually, I do want to show you something.”
She slid him a wicked smile. “Oh, really?”
He tried to ignore the stirring in his body and focus on where he wanted to take her. “Really.”
He headed out the kitchen door past the guys at the table. Their discussion had grown pretty loud.
“That name is
chignon
. Beast,” Brandon said. He leaned forward, forearms on the table in an aggressive manner.
Manny pulled his attention away from Brandon to look at Rick. “Yo,
chulo,
where you going with my
chica?
”
Rick shook his head. He was no player. Those days were long over. “Does she know she’s yours?”
Kate rolled her eyes. “When will men ever learn? We ladies belong to ourselves.”
“That’s what we let you think,” Joe said.
Rick told them they would return momentarily and the guys went back to arguing over a name.
He led Kate out the door and down the front steps. The wind announced another cold front moving in from the north, but the sun broke through the clouds to throw some much needed heat upon their shoulders. He headed down the sloping hill toward a small copse of woods that clung to the banks of a stream ribboning the property.
Kate didn’t speak, just tilted her face up to the sun. He curled his hand and placed it in his pocket, so he wouldn’t touch her, fall into her. His body was like a guitar string, tight and ready to be played by her.
But not now. There was something he wanted to show her, a secret place that he hoped would help her understand that someone had wanted her.
The pine trees didn’t grow thick in the stand of woods. They towered above the dogwoods and redbuds, showing premature signs of awakening. Tangled graying vines curled around a small ramshackled fort built next to a huge pine tree.
“What’s this?” she asked, approaching the weathered little building. She walked straight to the door hanging on rusted hinges.
“It’s Ryan’s fort,” he said quietly, still feeling reverence for the secret place Ryan had hung out in.
She swung her head around. “Why would you bring me here? It’s falling down.”
He had good reason, but he wanted her to find out on her own, so he shrugged. Her brow furrowed as she turned and pulled the door open past withered dandelions blocking the threshold. The wood creaked and one board actually fell to the ground.
“Oops,” she said, ducking her head to peer within.
“He built it himself with boards and scraps he found around Cottonwood. He’d started it before I came to live here. In fact, the day Justus pulled up with me sulking in the back of the truck, the roofers were accusing each other of misplacing boards and a box of nails. Turns out Ryan hauled the material almost two miles across the pasture on a four-wheeler they used on the ranch.”
“I guess a lot of little boys want a fort,” she said as she brushed a cobweb away and stepped inside. “I wonder why he built it so far away?”
“So nobody would find it.”
She glanced out. “But you did.”
“He showed it to me. You’re the only other person who knows it’s here.”
Something flashed in Kate’s eyes. He couldn’t read it. She disappeared inside the fort, and he stood where he was. He wanted her to see something of her brother other than the portrait that hung over her as she shoveled peas into her mouth at dinner. He wanted her to feel like she had one tiny piece that neither Vera nor Justus held.
He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that this would help Kate move toward a better place. He wished he’d thought of it earlier, but he’d been so wrapped up in all that had been going on that he’d forgotten Ryan’s secret fort and all that lay inside.
The fort walls were held together by exposed rusting nails. Large cracks allowed outside light to fall in bright slashes across the dirty linoleum. Two large sheets of plywood served as the roof and there was only one window, which had Plexiglas covering it. The contents consisted of one rickety TV tray, a camping chair and several boxes. One lone, faded poster of Angelina Jolie dressed as Lara Croft dated the fort as early 2000s.
Kate toed one of the boxes and a spider ran out.
She brought the heel of her sneaker down on it. One down, dozens likely to go.
She cautiously lifted the water-stained flap of the nearest box.
Baseball cards. Thousands of them. Most ruined by the moisture. The Texas Rangers seemed to have been his favorite.
The next box held rocks. Nothing spectacular about them. Some were jagged with crystals, others were smooth and perfect for skipping across a still pond. A few marbles mixed within the depths. She decided to leave that box alone, for there was no telling what lurked beneath the stones.
A third box held a conglomeration of stuff: a yo-yo, a worn deck of cards with a casino logo on it, a watch that had stopped at 4:20, a bird whistle, an empty box of Hot Tamales candy and something that looked like a half-eaten Fruit Roll-Up. A couple of school papers littered the sides of the box. It appeared that at age nine or ten, Ryan had sucked at spelling but rocked fractions.
A large footlocker sat beneath the uneven window. It beckoned her like a topless dancer crooking her finger at a paunchy, bald guy.
Kate peeked out the door. Rick stood, arms akimbo, studying the writhing trees above his head. He was giving her time to get to know her deceased brother. To see the Ryan beyond the saint. But for what purpose?
She resigned herself to not knowing his motives and stepped toward the battered footlocker. She bent, flipped the unlocked latch and lifted the lid. The hinges creaked eerily. No spiders, but discolored paper hung from the inside of the lid. An address label affixed to the paper and scrawled in perfect penmanship declared the trunk to be that of Vera Horton.
Kate peered into its depths. A small stained bridle lay on top of a baseball jersey. Ryan had been number twenty-four for the Oak Stand Bears, no doubt his T-ball team if the size of the jersey was any indication. Beside that lay an elementary yearbook. She picked it up and leafed through it. Her brother had been in Mrs. Doyle’s first grade class. One of his front teeth had been missing in the class picture, and it looked very similar to the one she’d taken at age six standing beside the same teacher.
She and her brother had shared the same homeroom teacher. Maybe Ryan had sat at the same desk she’d slumped in. Maybe he’d also hidden his pencil in the groove at the very back of the desk, hoping no one else would find it and take it.
She placed the yearbook back beside the jersey. Something pink caught her eye. An anomaly like something pink among baseball cards and disgusting boy stuff had to be explored. She tossed aside a baseball cap that matched the Bears jersey and froze.
She knew that backpack—it was hers. And it had been missing for so long she’d forgotten it.
She picked it up, brushing the cheerful face of Strawberry Shortcake.
It wasn’t empty.
Hand trembling, she untied the frayed strings knitting the cloth opening together and tugged the backpack open. She pulled one item from the depths and cradled it in her hands. Carefully, she opened the journal to the first page.
Property of Katie Newman.
Beneath it, in childish handwriting were the words:
my sister.
Kate traced the spidery words then wiped the tears that dripped on her forgotten journal. Obviously Ryan knew a lot more about that mean girl who’d chewed him out for tearing her skirt than he’d let on. That he’d claimed—even in this silent, private way—knocked Kate on her proverbial butt. Especially because he would have had to dig it out of whatever moldering pile of crap it had been languishing in—he’d only been a toddler that fateful day she abandoned her prize possessions.
Damn Rick for pulling her heartstrings. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Kate shoved the journal into the backpack and dug around until she found what she wanted. She stared at the picture of her parents laughing into the camera for a moment before slipping it into her pocket.
She didn’t even know why she wanted to keep it.