Beneath the Patchwork Moon (Hope Springs, #2) (2 page)

Luna Meadows had spent most of it anesthetized in a hospital bed.

She looked nothing like he’d expected after all this time, yet she looked the same as when he’d last seen her. Her eyes were as expressive as ever, her hair as dark as ever. She was no more than five-foot-six to his six-foot-two, but she’d
worked out, or filled out, or something. Her arms were buff, her nails short, her hand holding her keys, a clever weapon, as wrecked as his.

So, yeah. The same but totally different.

“You here to see what you spent your money on?” His upper hand warranted something pithier, but it was all he had, and since she had every right to be here…

She shook her head, looked down, and scuffed the toe of her shoe at the floor, as if she didn’t have it in her to argue. Especially when she knew as well as he did that neither of them was going to give an inch. That was their history. Why they’d fit so well. Why in the end neither had been able to back down. Why things between them couldn’t be fixed and had died.

Finally, she swallowed. Then she said, “You know what today is.”

Ten years ago today his sister had lost her life in a car accident, but that didn’t answer his question. “I do.”

Her hands were back in her pockets when she shrugged, when she looked at him. “Then you’ll understand why Sierra’s on my mind.”

There was a lot of that going around. “I’d tell you you’re not welcome, but since you own the place…”

“Oh, Angelo,” she said, her accompanying sigh heavy. “You made your feelings perfectly clear the day your family moved.”

No. He hadn’t. But he could understand why she thought so. He took in the colors in the scarf she wore, wondering what they meant to her, how bright the shades of red would look in the sun, because in the light from the windows they made him think of blood.

He nodded toward the chair and the open cabinet. “Looking for something?”

She waved one arm in an expansive gesture. “How many meals did your family sit here to eat? How many did I? I guess I thought… I don’t know what I thought. That there wouldn’t be so many personal things. So many reminders.”

“I think that was the point of their leaving. They didn’t want to be reminded anymore.”

She seemed to let that sink in, returning the chair to the table. The left front leg caught on the same nick in the linoleum it always had, and Angelo closed his eyes.

“I could get a service to come in and clear everything away, but I don’t want to throw out something your parents or your siblings… or you,” she said, and he looked at her again, “might want. Maybe something of Sierra’s?”

He’d argued with his parents that they pack up her room, that one day they’d want her school pictures, her recital trophies, the long tail of her hair still bagged for the donation she’d never managed to make. But they’d left every bit of her behind, as if doing so made it easier to forget she was gone. What a laugh.

Since the day she’d been ten and drawn a wooden spoon across the strings of their father’s flamenco guitar like a bow, Sierra had been the family’s Great Musical Hope, a ticket out of a life where nobody ever had enough of anything—money, time, attention, privacy. Milk. Clean clothes. Sleep. No one was going to forget.

“We all took what we needed to take.” It wasn’t an answer, but it was all he had, off-balance as he was, thinking about his sister today, feeling hollow. “What are you going to do with the place?”

“Actually, I’ve set up a nonprofit, and we’re opening an arts center.” She said it as if thankful for the change of subject. “It’s a community-based initiative, and it’ll be run by parents and educators who’ve recognized the need and want to fill it.”

Uh-huh. “You’re not a parent. You’re not an educator. Why would you be involved?”

“Because I want to be.”

“Giving back lets you buy your way out of a guilty conscience?”

“I don’t have a guilty conscience.”

“You’re not bothered by telling lies? Or at least not telling the truth?”

Her chin came up. “I’m not here to get into this, Angel.”

Something in his gut caught and held at hearing her use the nickname. Arguing with her was so familiar, and so strangely comfortable. He didn’t want to be feeling either thing, and yet they were there, those emotions, caught in the web of all the others they’d left tangled because they’d been too young, and too hurt, to fight their way out of the knot.

They weren’t so young anymore.

“Grow up, Sierra.”

“Angelo—”

“You’re old enough to get into trouble, you’re old enough to get out of it.”

Luna wrapped her fingers over the chair back and squeezed until her knuckles whitened. “You know Sierra hated it when we argued.”

She was right about that, he mused, shoving his fists into his pockets. “I can’t tell you how many times she stopped me from following when you stormed out of the house.”

“She knew how much I liked getting in the last word with you.”

Because then, like now, Luna had always wanted to win. “Is that what you’re doing here? Having the last laugh on the Caffeys? Or is there something else you’re trying to prove?”

She shook her head, her hair a wave of motion as it fell from its knot. “What could I possibly have to prove?”

“Then why?” he asked, walking toward her.

She waited until he stopped, as if she couldn’t speak while watching him, as if she didn’t trust him. Or as if she didn’t trust herself. “Funding has been cut to arts and music programs across the country. The Hope Springs school district isn’t exempt. And St. Thomas only offers so many scholarships. Not every child who deserves it will get the help Sierra did.”

Something his family knew well. “And here I thought you needed a tax write-off for all that money you’re making selling scarves to Hollywood.”

She blinked once, twice. “You know what I do?”

“I know some,” he said, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Angel…”

Her voice, when she said his name, was tiny and soft, as if his keeping up with her had some meaning, when the truth of it was he was only here for the answers she’d never given him. With the house no longer in his family, this might be his last chance to get them. “I want to know what happened the night Oscar Gatlin’s car went off the Devil’s Backbone and down the ravine.”

A shiver ran through her as her gaze fell. “You know what happened.”

He waited until she’d stilled, then crooked a knuckle beneath her chin and lifted it. “No. I know what the
investigators think. I know what you told me… before. I want to know the rest. I want the whole truth. I want to know what you saw. I want to know why you were there. Why, if you were following them, your car crashed at all. I want to know all of it.”

“Angel—”

But he was on a roll, and he let her go as he looked around the kitchen and into the living room beyond, the mess of the place giving him an idea. “How long do you think it will take to clear out this house? Top to bottom? Drawers, closets, attic, barn, all of it?”

“I don’t know. Five days maybe?”

“Can you get the power and water turned on today?” he asked, looking back at her.

“I should be able to,” she said, nodding.

“Then let’s do it. I’ll stay here instead of at the hotel on the interstate. We’ll clean it out. We’ll hash it out.” He paused. Maybe giving her an inch would help get him his mile. “I’m sure there are more than a few things you want to know from me.”

She swallowed, then said, “There are, but I don’t think this is the best way—”

He couldn’t think of a better one. The two of them. This house. Their past. “Yes or no, Luna? Yes or no?”

CHAPTER THREE

I
f Luna had had the faintest clue Angelo would be at the house today, she wouldn’t have come. Or maybe she would have; she’d never been given the option, so how could she know? And why—oh why, oh why, oh why—had seeing him again had to happen like this, when he was unexpected, and she was ill-prepared, and the past remained suspended between them, sharp-edged and unapproachable? But that question could wait. Others, not so much.

What was he doing in Hope Springs?

Why hadn’t she asked?

How had he known she’d bought the house?

Where was her brain, saying yes instead of no?

He wanted five days of her time. Five days she’d never thought she’d have with him. Five days during which she’d have to watch every word she said, because along with her time, he wanted answers. Would the risk of his finding out about the accident weekend be worth learning how and why things between them had gone wrong? Apparently, some part of her thought so. She just wasn’t sure it was the part she should be listening to.

That was the thing about having been confined to bed after the accident. Luna had learned so much as a fly on the wall,
listening to her parents’ friends talk—about Oscar Gatlin’s condition, about how long it would take her own injuries to heal, how like this person’s brother or that person’s wife she might always walk with a limp. She was eighteen years old. The thought of being in physical pain for the next sixty or more had been another turn of the screw. Her body hurt, her soul ached. She missed Sierra desperately.

But the most unsettling talk she’d heard was that of the Caffey parents falling apart, leaving their four children still at home struggling. Leaving Angelo, who’d returned to Cornell after Sierra’s funeral, to act as head of household, though he’d been but twenty, a college sophomore, and half a continent away. Yet not once during the next two years had he let on how bad things were.

It wasn’t until the day his family moved that she found out. How his father’s furniture orders had been canceled when his grief got in the way of his work. How the stitches in his mother’s quilts had grown uneven; then the quilts themselves were left unfinished. With his parents’ savings depleted, bills went unpaid and the collection calls started. The house went without a new roof, the car without new tires. The yard went to seed. Why his parents thought Angelo was equipped to handle all of that when his money was earmarked for school and living, his time for studies and work…

For so long, Mike Caffey had been a local institution, building furniture in Hope Springs longer than Luna had been alive. The coffee table in her parents’ living room was Mike’s, as were the matching lamp tables. Even the shelving unit still in Luna’s bedroom had come from Caffey Furniture.

Whereas it now held the docking station for her iPod, her library of escapist thrillers, and framed photos of her
scarves torn from the pages of entertainment magazines, it had once been stuffed with Beanie Babies, cluttered with bottles of glittery nail polish, covered with little sticky-note Polaroids of her friends.

Over the years the tiny pictures had fallen, the adhesive losing its tackiness to time. She’d picked them up when she’d found them, tossed some in the trash, taped others into her yearbooks. Only one remained in place, tied there with a ribbon she’d glued to the back. One she’d taken of Sierra climbing into the family’s car in front of St. Thomas the day they’d met.

Angelo had been standing in the open driver’s door, yelling across the roof for her to hurry. Sierra had turned back to Luna, rolling her eyes and sticking out her tongue, and Luna had taken the shot. Not focusing on Sierra, but on her brother, his dark hair falling over his forehead, his mouth open, his narrowed eyes hooded as he’d looked from his sister and caught Luna’s gaze.

And oh the way he’d taken her in, ignoring whatever it was Sierra was saying to study her… her face, her hair, which was waist-length then, too, and held back with a band, her body, which he couldn’t see much of at all, covered as it was by her uniform, but which responded as if he could see all of her. As if he wanted her.

Of course, none of that longing had meant love at first sight. Even after they were together, they’d fought like dogs. That history, the accompanying memories, would no doubt make the next five days epic. She wasn’t sure she was up for epic. She wasn’t sure, honestly, if she was ready for Angelo at all.

Once back at home, Luna went in search of her mother. She found her propped against a stack of pillows on the family room sofa, an open book facedown in her lap, a cloth on
her forehead, her eyes closed. A glass of fizzy, iced Sprite and a sleeve of saltines sat on the coffee table within reach, as if she’d just settled in to fight the morning sickness that plagued her every day long past.

Julietta Meadows smiled as Luna plopped into her father’s recliner, kicking off her shoes before tucking her legs beneath her. Her bare feet squeaked against the leather seat.

“How’re you feeling?” Luna asked, though the answer was obvious.

“Like I should know better.” Her mother shifted to sit straighter, setting her book on the floor as she looked to where Luna sat. “All the times we talked about birth control when you were growing up, you’d think I wouldn’t have gotten myself knocked up at forty-six years old.”

“Momma! Don’t say that.” As close as Luna was to her mother, and to her father, they were still her parents. She preferred not to think about the intimate side of their relationship—even if her mother’s unexpected pregnancy made that intimacy more than plain.

“Well, it’s the truth,” she said, reaching for her drink and toying with the straw as she brought it to her mouth. “And it shouldn’t have happened. But it has, and your father and I will love this little bean just as much as we love you. It’ll be harder to deal with the lack of sleep this time, but that’s the difference twenty-eight years makes. I’ve gotten used to my nine hours a night.” She shifted again, took a small sip of soda, and let it settle on her stomach before speaking again. “How goes the arts center planning?”

Luna thought about sidestepping the obvious until her mother felt better, but the obvious was why she was here. “I saw Angelo today.”

“Angelo Caffey?” her mother asked, her frown caught between curiosity and disbelief.

Luna nodded. “I went by the house, and he showed up out of the blue. I didn’t see a car, so I didn’t realize he was there until it was too late.”