Beneath the Patchwork Moon (Hope Springs, #2) (25 page)

The police department tested their emergency broadcast sirens at the same time. Those he’d heard, and yet there was a boy-who-cried-wolf vibe to the whole thing as he, no doubt along with others, pushed the noise to the back of his mind. Familiarity breeding… not contempt, but apathy, maybe? Or indifference? Hard not to become inured to a warning when the event never came to pass. Or easy to ignore, which was exactly what his whole family had done when it came to Sierra and Oscar.

All the signs were there. He’d heard his sister’s bedroom window slide open late at night, looked out his own window to see her rushing across the yard, or getting into Oscar’s car at the property’s edge, or running with him into the woods. Sometimes he’d heard the window below him close after her, knowing it was Luna shutting it, Luna keeping his sister from getting in trouble. Luna sleeping alone in the room beneath him, and keeping him awake. Awake and thinking about tiptoeing downstairs and testing the door.

She’d been the one to finally tiptoe up to his. To knock softly. To come in when he’d called. To stand at the foot of
his bed where he was already hard and pull off her T-shirt. She hadn’t been wearing a bra, and her breasts had been firm and high, and she’d been sixteen. He’d been eighteen, and scrambling out of his drawers like a kid given the keys to the candy store. He’d had a condom beneath his mattress because he’d wanted to be ready if he was ever lucky enough to talk her into his room. He hadn’t even asked, and there she was, her pajama shorts coming off, then her panties…

What he didn’t understand was how his parents had missed Sierra being pregnant. Luna had packed crackers to help her through morning sickness, but how had she made it through the family’s breakfast? The girls at St. Thomas wore white blouses tucked into green-and-black plaid skirts. Unless Sierra had covered hers with a sweater, he couldn’t imagine the outfit doing a very good job of hiding a baby bump. Then again, by the time her bump would’ve been noticeable, the school year was over, and Sierra was no doubt spending her summer hours behind her cello or in the tree house.

Luna had been there for his sister every step of the way. And except for Oscar, she’d been the only one. Angelo sure hadn’t been dependable, or aware, but then, neither had his parents nor the youngest of his siblings. That year had been a perfect storm of his being self-involved, his parents wrangling two teens and three soon-to-be, and Sierra in her own world and in love.

If not for Luna…

A sudden breeze through the window brought him back, and he looked off into the distance. Somewhere on the horizon the Edwards Plateau fell away toward West Texas, juniper and cedar and scraggly mesquite giving the ragged land the personality of a stubborn mule. And yet it was a mule with a
kick—in Sierra’s case, a deadly kick—demanding that those who lived here and traveled here respect the cantankerous nature of the hilly, winding roads.

If only he had come home…

Funny word, home. He hadn’t thought of Hope Springs as more than the place he’d grown up for a very long time. It was the house, not the town, that he pictured when anyone used the word. He also pictured Luna. He’d always pictured Luna. He’d been sixteen when he’d met her, eighteen when she’d come to his room, but she was as much a part of his time here as his family, or football, had ever been.

This was the only home she’d ever known, but she was hardly a country girl, even if she lived on a farm. She did her work here, but she sold her scarves in Austin and saw them worn by celebrities worldwide. She drove a fancy import and dressed the part of designer. That intrigued him, the juxtaposition, how she’d brought the big city to the small town, and enjoyed the best of both worlds.

She should be able to take her life anywhere, work from anywhere. And yet she was still here. In Hope Springs. Where she’d lost Sierra and Oscar. Where her own injuries had confined her to bed. Where the secrets she’d kept had originated, and where they still belonged. It was as if she’d been frozen in time. As if because of his family, and the Gatlins, she’d never been able to leave. Why that bothered him so, the idea that he’d been a part of her possibly never reaching her full potential…

He knew exactly why. He loved her and wanted her with him. He’d loved her since high school and had fought it for years. But now, after this… intimacy, he needed to tell her. It was long past time. He should’ve told her ages ago, but he
wasn’t brave enough. Man enough. Both reasons keeping him from telling his parents about Sierra’s phone call.

He needed to tell his parents about Sierra’s baby. They deserved to know the truth. It would hurt; he knew that, but keeping them in the dark was hurting them in other ways. They were placing blame where they shouldn’t. They believed things that were untrue when the reality was, he’d been the one to keep the truth from them all this time.

Luna’s hand on his back brought him back to the present. He turned from the window and took her in his arms, holding her to him, his eyes closed as he stroked a hand over her head, feathering her hair with his fingers. “Do you have a passport?”

“Yes, why?”

“Can you get Kaylie or someone to watch Frank for a few days?” he asked, finally steady enough to open his eyes.

“Probably, why?”

“Can you afford a few days away from the center?”

“Yes, Angelo.” Her eyes were bright, but worried. “What’s going on?”

“Then pack a bag.”

“Where are we going?”

“Mexico.”

“To see your parents?”

“I want to take them Sierra’s box. I want them to know about the baby, and the wedding. About Sierra and Oscar leaving Hope Springs.”

She frowned as she held his gaze, as she studied him, searching. “Are you sure?”

“I want them to quit hating Oscar,” he said, nodding. “To stop blaming you for what wasn’t your fault.”

“I tried to understand that. I really did,” she said, her cheek pressed to his chest. “All the blame for what was an accident. What good did it do anyone?”

“You lived. You’re the only one who did. Blaming Oscar gives them no satisfaction, because they want someone else to hurt as much as they do.”

“Even though if Oscar
and
Sierra had made the choice to use a condom, none of this would have happened. Sierra wouldn’t have died. Oscar wouldn’t be in a permanent vegetative state. There wouldn’t have been an adoption.”

“And you and I wouldn’t be here now. Together. In love.”

“Is that what we are?” she asked, her voice breathless and taut. “In love.”

He answered her with his eyes, which were damp with emotion, with his hands holding her face, with his mouth on hers, a tender brush of lips and encouragement.

“Do you think we would’ve stayed together if Sierra hadn’t died?”

“Yeah. We would have,” he said, and kissed her again, threading his fingers into her short, choppy hair.

“Will you come to the farm with me while I pack? I want to tell my parents where we’re going, and that I’ll explain it all when we get back. I don’t want them to worry.”

“Of course, but are you sure you want them to know?”

She nodded. “I should’ve told them ten years ago. I should’ve told everyone.”

“Even knowing the trouble the Gatlins would’ve tried to cause with the adoption?”

“I can’t think about what might’ve happened. I only know what I should’ve done.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

L
una was still finding it hard to believe that Angelo’s parents had remained in Mexico. She could easily picture Carlita Caffey living there, having grown up there, and assimilating with no trouble at all. It was different with Mike. She’d thought him so similar to her father, and she couldn’t imagine Harry giving up his life in Texas. His high school football. His friends and his farm. His pan sausage and sauerkraut kolaches. And then there were Angelo’s siblings. At the time of the move, their ages had ranged from ten to sixteen.

The four had been in school, involved in extracurricular activities there and at church, busy with all the things that kept kids in Hope Springs going from morning to night, and Isidora only just dating. To leave all of that behind when they were learning themselves, growing into their skin, starting down the road of who they would one day be… That had to have been as hard on the kids as on their parents, who took the brunt of their anger and blame. Then again, Mike and Carlita hadn’t had any trouble laying all of that at Angelo’s feet.

Leaning back in the passenger seat of her car, the wind ruffling the layers of her hair like feathers, she marveled again at how Sierra’s and Oscar’s choices had impacted so many. How her choices and Angelo’s had done the same. She’d kept
her friend’s secrets as she’d promised, when revealing them might have provided closure. And Angelo had refused those two years after the accident to push her for answers, loving her, trusting her—his choice costing him his family, his life in Hope Springs, and eventually what he’d had with her.

Yet here they were now, his right hand resting comfortably on her thigh while he held her car to the road with his left, while he braked and shifted and accelerated, the muscles beneath his jeans drawing her gaze, her memory, her imagination. Oh, how hungry he made her…

They’d lost eight years. They would never get them back. But they were together in a way they couldn’t have been when they were younger. Yes, they had much—so, so much—to work out. She had no illusion that the journey ahead wouldn’t have plenty of bumps. Maybe even a few bruises. But with all they’d endured to get here, she couldn’t imagine a wedge existed capable of driving them apart.

The wind and the sun and the distant horizon reminded her of a movie, some postcollege, road-trip escape drama, the characters in the story needing a last hurrah before enduring the “
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch
” of adulthood. Thinking of “Jabberwocky” brought to mind her friendship with Kaylie Flynn, who loved the poem as much as she did. Theirs was a friendship she hadn’t once compared to the one she’d shared with Sierra, but a friendship just as vital to her life. The two women were such individuals, her relationship with one incomparable to the other. And, yes. At eighteen, in love and pregnant, then married, Sierra had no longer been a girl.

For miles and miles the terrain had been barren, corn shriveled and gone to husk and dried cotton fields and pastures
too yellowed to graze and the highway cracked from years of being baked by the sun, then patched in black ribbons of tar. Life was there, she knew, beneath what the heat of summer had killed. Come late winter, the stirring would begin, the living things biding their time, and yet those that would never return fulfilling their own purpose, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

A part of her wondered if bringing Angelo into her life had been his sister’s purpose. She hated the thought. Hated the idea of her friend losing her life so her own would be grand. And she knew logically that accidents happened, coincidences occurred, events transpired—all of it a big series of cause and effect as the world went around. But logic was hard to draw on when her emotions were stripped raw.

If she’d moved on and left Sierra behind, this Angelo might not exist, and wouldn’t be a part of her life now. A very important, essential part. The thought of not having him, the thought of losing him… It was as devastating as what she’d suffered losing her life’s dearest friend. Yet if Sierra hadn’t died, if Angelo hadn’t suffered his guilt over ignoring his sister’s cry for help, if Luna hadn’t suffered hers over all the lies she’d told, the secrets she’d kept, she and Angelo wouldn’t be on their way to fill in the blanks of his sister’s story for his parents.

Holding on to her best friend all this time had brought Luna her Angel. And that she would never regret.

“I can hear you thinking from over here,” he said, squeezing her thigh. “The wheels turning, dredging up more old secrets I’ll have to get out of you.”

She smiled, but she didn’t look over, her head lolling to the right, her eyes drifting shut. “How do you know I’m thinking anything? Maybe my mind is blank. Like a canvas.
Waiting for inspiration I can turn into a scarf. Besides. I’m finished with secrets.”

“That’s just about the best news I’ve had in a while.”

“What’s the best?”

“I think you know,” he said, his voice deep and raw.

She placed her hand atop his and squeezed. He spread his fingers, his palm still on her leg, and she threaded hers between, weaving them together. “Did you expect this to happen?”

“When I came here? Or… ever?”

She gripped harder, holding his hand. She was never letting him go. “It took so long to get here. There’s been so much sadness. I just hate it. Not that we’re together, but… all the rest.”

“Ten years ago? Eight years ago?” He shook his head. “We weren’t really ready. I wasn’t, anyway.”

“For this?”

“This. You.” He paused, his laugh gritty. “Eighteen-year-old me didn’t have a clue what to do with you. Beyond the obvious.”

“I can’t believe I was only sixteen.”

“Sixteen going on thirty. You were so smart, so sharp.”

“That’s not what I was going for,” she said, laughing as she wondered which of them had been the most clueless. He slid his hand farther up her thigh. She left it there, needing him. “I’m nervous about seeing your parents. Do they even know we’re coming?”

He shook his head. “No reason to risk them meeting us at the gate with shotguns.”

“You thought it best not to tell them I was with you, you mean. And that we’re together.” Because his parents had made it more than clear they never wanted to see her again.

He took a deep breath, squeezed her knee, and then let her go, leaning against his door and away from her. He wasn’t rejecting her—she knew that—but it was hard not to take the distance personally. “It’s okay, you know, to not want to talk about it. Just don’t forget I’m here, okay?” And then she added, “For you,” because she didn’t want him to think she was looking for sympathy. “If you do want to talk. Or if you just need a shoulder.”

“I need you,” he said, and he reached for her then, cupping her nape, bringing her close, one eye on the road—she hoped—as he kissed her.