There was a flurry of activity on the porch; then Jesse’s sisters came down the stairs, surrounding Leah and Birdie and bringing them inside. Suddenly everyone was fussing over the Blackburn sisters. A cousin had powder and lipstick and a comb, and proceeded to use them with abandon. An aunt had picked the remnants of the season’s chrysanthemums and tied the bouquet with a pink ribbon. Ginny Collins presented Leah with a white hat, the narrow brim accented with the same ribbon.
Leah was touched by all the attention. She knew the women were trying to make up for her mother’s absence.
She was walking down the steps before she had time to think about what was coming. Birdie, in her red and white checked dress, went first, taking the steps slowly and leaning against the rail. Leah stepped out on the porch as soon as Birdie made it safely to the ground.
Jesse was standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for her, handsome in a dark suit that had probably fit his stepfather better than it fit him. But it didn’t matter that the suit was a little short and a little tight. This was Jesse. Leah waited for Birdie to move away, patient as her sister stopped for a long breath, then took the time she needed to get past Jesse, who gave her a warm smile. Finally, with Birdie safely clear, Leah walked down to meet him.
The ceremony was short. While some had helped her primp, the other women had arranged dried flowers, twigs and leaves in jugs, and set them in a wide semicircle in the clearing just beyond the house. She and Jesse followed the preacher and Birdie. When they were settled, the preacher pulled out his Bible and read Psalm 128, then began to preach.
Leah tried to listen, but afterwards all she could remember was Jesse’s expression. His eyes were warm, his lips turned up in a smile, but three sentences into the sermon, his foot began to tap. As the preacher droned, it tapped faster, and faster. Jesse had more energy than any man Leah knew, and standing there with nothing to do was surely driving him crazy. Despite the smile, she knew he was about to burst.
Just as she was afraid he was going to bolt, the preacher asked them to repeat their vows. She wasn’t sure what she said, but whatever it was, she did it correctly. In a moment the pronouncement was made, and she and Jesse Spurlock were married and kissing.
As the last person finished congratulating them, the music began. People brought more gifts and piled them on the porch for the new couple to take home. Birdie had even brought the Lover’s Knot quilt to show it off.
“We have to stay a little while,” Jesse said, “but just before it gets truly dark, you meet me on the back porch, and we’ll go out that way without saying that’s what we’re doing.”
She liked that. She was already exhausted, and she wanted to be alone with him. They went inside hand in hand, and she was whirled from one set of arms to another as two fiddlers and Aubrey Grayling on the banjo filled the house with music. Two of Jesse’s tiniest nephews clung to her dress, and she lifted them up to dance, one in each arm. The family applauded when their mothers finally came and took the little boys away.
Birdie had her own admirers. Old men graciously took her in their arms and, barely moving, took her through the dance steps. Puss Cade’s mother told Leah how sorry she was that Puss and her brother had not been able to bring his family home for the wedding.
“I sent a right smart bunch of yarbs to help little Alice,” Leah said. “I surely hope she stops feeling poorly.”
“We depend on you the way we depended on your ma,” Mrs. Cade told her. “Nothing we buy at Grayling’s helps half so much as what your ma would give us.”
An hour later, Leah saw that the sun had almost set. A quick scan showed that her new husband was nowhere in sight. Unless he was out in the barn sampling some of the whiskey his own corn had made possible, he was waiting for her on the back porch. She fanned herself as if she were too hot and smiled at the women who had engaged her in conversation.
“I think I’ll just go get a little air.” She waved her hand harder. “All that dancing has me as hot as a chimney fire.”
One of the women winked. “We’ll see to it that nobody comes after you.”
Leah winked back.
She made her way through the room as unobtrusively as she could. In the kitchen, she pointed to the door when Mrs. Collins asked if she needed anything. “Just some air,” she said.
Mrs. Collins winked, too, and went back to washing dishes with two of her aunts.
Jesse wasn’t on the porch, so she descended the steps into the shadows. An arm snaked out and grabbed her, but before she could screech, Jesse’s lips silenced her. She put her arms around him and kissed him back. She could taste whiskey and warm-blooded male, and she liked the flavors very much.
Finally she pulled away. “You like to have scared me witless.”
“You witless is a sight I’d like to see.”
She giggled. “Can we get away now?”
“The wagon’s all ready.”
She wished they had a car. There were some in the mountains, but only where roads were good enough to warrant. The roads in this hollow were made for walking. Even the wagon was a bone-jolting ride.
She had an idea. “Let’s not take the wagon. Let’s walk. We can go through the woods.”
“I got it loaded up with all the stuff folks give us today.”
“We can get that later in the week. I don’t want to start my marriage all shook up like a beehive in a bear’s paws.”
“Then come on.” He pulled her behind him, but she dug in her heels.
“Jesse—” she kept her voice low “—let’s get Birdie’s quilt.”
“And carry it all the way back?”
“I want to sleep under it tonight.”
She could hear his snort, but he started in the other direction. In a minute they were at the wagon, and he lifted her up to find it. She took the quilt and folded it under her arm; then she let him lift her down.
“C’mon,” he said. “Or somebody’ll figure this out.”
“Leaving the wagon will fool ’em for a while.”
“It might at that.”
He led her through the farm, sure of every step. The sun was gone, but the sky was still light enough that they could find their way. Soon the moon would come up, and they would be able to see it from the window in the loft.
Things took a bad turn when they got to the woods that ran between the Cade and Spurlock farms. Leah had not considered that her best shoes might not stand up to a walk through the darkening woods. She stepped over a log and her foot twisted. In a moment she was facedown on the forest floor.
She’d hardly had time to cry out before Jesse gathered her in his arms and helped her up to sit on the log. “Are you all right?”
“I just…I cain’t…” She tried to catch her breath and couldn’t.
“Don’t get all tightened up. Put your shoulders and head down. Let ’em droop. Now see if you can breathe.”
She did as he’d said, and air filled her lungs again the moment she stopped fighting it. “How’d you know that?” she asked when she could talk.
“I been in enough fights to know what it feels like.” He slipped off her shoe and felt her ankle. “How’s that?”
Nothing hurt. She realized she was lucky. She was clumsy, not injured. Her laugh was shaky and low. “I feel about as silly as I can.”
“We were going too fast. It’s my fault.”
“I was in a hurry, just like you.”
He laughed. “Well, we got to rest a spell now. I’m not fixing to risk another fall on the way home.”
She could see the sky through the canopy of leafless tree limbs. It was indigo verging on black now, and she could see the stars appearing one by one. “It’s getting cold, but look at them stars come out, Jesse. You ever seen anything prettier in your life than stars?”
“Just when I look at you.”
“I must look a sight right now.” She started to brush off her dress, but he swiped her hand away.
“I can see better.”
She sat still as his hand traveled over her breasts, lightly brushing away leaves and tiny branches, and puffs of rich, dark dirt. His hands felt as if they had always belonged there, yet she was certain they would always feel unfamiliar and wickedly forbidden, too. “You getting it all?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we ought to slip you out of that dress, Leah. You know, so’s we can shake it out real good.”
“Jesse!”
“Why not? We just got married. Nobody said nothing about not being together out under the stars, did they?”
“I’m sure the preacher said that very thing.” She let him know she was teasing by lifting one of his hands and kissing his fingertips.
“You weren’t listening to that preacher and neither was I.”
“I was too listening! He said something about me being a fruitful vine and having some olive plants.”
“I don’t aim to raise olive plants. Got too much to raise as it is. But children? Someday. For now, I want you to myself for a while.” He began to kiss her neck, the place just under her ear, her earlobe.
“Then maybe we ought to wait a while on this,” she said, her breath coming faster.
“Or maybe, since there’s not a lot we can do about having babies, we ought to do this a whole lot while we still can.”
She could feel him unbuttoning her dress, and his hands against her skin were better than against the cotton. Oh, so much better.
Just as she was about to strip off the dress herself, he stopped and moved away.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
He rose and picked up the quilt, which she had dropped as she fell. He shook it out; then he moved away to a small space where the ground was deep in fallen leaves.
When he’d spread the quilt, he turned and opened his arms to her.
Leah stood on shaky legs; then, as Jesse watched, she wiggled the dress from her shoulders and let it float silently to the ground.
“Don’t you worry about getting cold now. You come to me,” he said in a husky voice. “And I’ll keep you warm. Me and this wedding quilt.”
And in no way did he disappoint her.
T
wo weeks later, Kendra wasn’t thinking about quilts or Isaac’s family. Noise was the issue. Noise, and men streaming on and off her property. Noise and trucks and power saws and backhoes and excavation equipment for which she had no names. She was amazed at how quickly permits had been granted, crews assembled, initial plans drawn up. There were a million fine points to be discussed and decided upon, but all had agreed that Jamie’s ideas were sound and should be incorporated.
The first order of the day was to excavate a portion of the hillside behind the house for a second guest suite and family room. The space was there, and although Kendra saw no reason to finish it immediately, roughing it in would add valuable square footage to the house were it ever needed.
Cash joined Kendra on the front porch, where she had gone to get farther away from the grinding whir of a cement mixer. “You having second thoughts?”
It was eight a.m. and she was already fanning herself with the Outlook section of last Sunday’s
Washington Post
. She smiled up at him. “Absolutely not. I’m having fourteenth thoughts. Fifteenth, maybe.”
“It’ll all be worth it. You’ll have central air.”
“I tell myself that a lot.”
“I’ll tell you how to keep yourself cool without it. Simmer a pot of water with lavender and rosemary, then strain it and put it in the refrigerator. When the weather gets hot like this, you dab it all over you, then sit out on the porch with a big glass of cold mint tea. It’s all anybody needs.”
“And that’s what you do?”
“Me? I sit inside where I’ve got ceiling fans and air-conditioning and open a six-pack.”
She laughed. “Any other tips for the less fortunate?”
“I know a bundle of folk remedies. That comfrey you got in that pot on the porch, for instance. You can use that to help heal broken bones. Did you know that?”
She was delighted. “I
thought
that was comfrey. I dug it out of the garden and put it in that pot. It looks like an illustration in one of my herb books, but I wasn’t sure. I should have shown it to you. Nobody else has been able to tell me.”
“Called it knitbone in the old days.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
“My granny. She was a dowser, too. She didn’t exactly take to anything new. Whenever she could get me to sit still, she taught me the old ways.”
“Well, I guess someday we’ll see if she taught you anything helpful.”
“When it’s time, I’ll figure out where to drill a better well. You don’t have to worry.”
Cash was just getting up again when they heard a shout from the back of the house. The machinery ground to a halt. A stream of profanity filled the silence.
“I guess I’d better see what’s up.” Cash strode back through the dogtrot. Since she had nothing better to do, Kendra followed.
Behind the house, where a gaping hole abutted the structure, she saw the problem. Black Beauty, who hadn’t been spotted since construction began, had reappeared. One of the men had him cornered against two boulders that had been excavated and set above the new hole in the ground. The huge snake was coiled as if to attack. As Kendra watched, the youngest of the workers, a skinny man with long stringy hair under a lumberyard cap, came striding over with a rifle. He motioned with his head for the other man to move away.
“Let him go. He gets away from those rocks, I’ll shoot.”
The other man stepped back, and the snake began to wriggle away.
Kendra didn’t have a moment to think. She flashed back through time to the night when she had cowered in a dark parking lot, terrified she was about to die. She saw a handgun swinging up, heard the loud report of the bullet that had nearly severed her spine. Then she felt nothing but fury.
She jumped off the porch and took three steps toward the young man, knocking the rifle out of his hands just as he braced it against his shoulder.
“The hell, woman!” The man, red-faced with anger, bent down to pick up his rifle. “That could have gone off!”
She stepped on the barrel so he couldn’t retrieve it. “Don’t you dare pick that up! Who told you it was okay to bring a gun on my property?”
He straightened, and his eyes were angry slits. “I carry it to protect myself!”
Cash was between them. He put a hand on Kendra’s shoulder. “Randy here was trying to help.”
“Help? That’s not a poisonous snake! You told me yourself it kills rats and whatever else. And that has
nothing
to do with my point. Nobody but
nobody
sets foot on this property with a gun. I don’t care if that’s not the norm around here, do you understand?”
Everybody stared as if she were having a psychotic break right there at the construction site.
“It’s a friggin’ snake,” Randy muttered. “I didn’t want you being scared every time you saw it.”
She tried to take a deep breath, but oxygen didn’t help. She was shaking all over, and her leg was threatening to buckle. She needed to sit. For a moment she was afraid she was going to pass out.
Cash took her arm, as if he knew he had to steady her. “You all listen up, okay? Ms. Taylor has about the best reason out there not to like guns. She got shot by some nut-case in the city, and you scared her half silly just now. Okay? You understand what I’m saying?”
She saw six sets of eyes sizing her up, trying to figure out exactly who they were dealing with and whether they wanted to continue. A lot rested on her response. No one here was a gun-wielding maniac like the man who had shot her. These were men who were used to guns, who saw Randy’s response as nothing more than chivalry laced with a smidgen of bravado. She could let them know she understood and keep their respect, or she could disregard the obvious facts and flog her self-righteousness.
She lifted her foot off the rifle barrel. It took every ounce of strength. “I guess I scared you half silly, too.”
“Somebody should have told us,” Randy said, half under his breath.
“Well, you know,” Cash said, his tone changing to something a little less friendly, “I don’t half expect my crew to get gun-happy on me. So if I didn’t say anything, that’s why. Maybe I better think of anything else I need to warn you about. You know, the stuff I thought good sense would cover.”
Kendra knew it was up to her to salvage the situation. She didn’t want the men who would be here every day to take a dislike to her. She wanted them to like their job and do it well. She held out her hand, even though it was visibly shaking.
“In the city guns only mean one thing. I guess it’s different out here. I appreciate you trying to protect me, Randy. But nowadays I’m a lot more afraid of guns than I am of that snake. And my nieces love him. I don’t know what I’d tell them if somebody shot him.”
Randy took her hand, because there was really nothing else he could do. He mumbled his response. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I appreciate that. Thank you.”
“You oughta post your land, though. You don’t want hunters, you got to put notices all around your perimeter. Come fall, you’ll wish you had.”
“I’ll make sure that gets done.” She looked around. “Anyone see where my snake went?”
Randy answered. “Ma’am, that snake’s long gone. But if he comes back, we’ll be sure to leave him alone.” He glanced at the other men. “You want we should protect the rattlers and copperheads, too?”
Somebody laughed. Kendra could feel the tension ease. She managed a brief smile. “Can we tackle that later?”
The men peeled off to do what they’d come to do. Cash clapped Randy on the back to show there were no hard feelings. Then he stepped up to the dogtrot and held out his hand to help Kendra back up. “That leg of yours okay? That was a big leap for you.”
She realized her bad leg was throbbing. A lot. “It’s okay, but I’d better take it easy for a while.”
He walked her to the front. “If you’re going to live in the country, you got to understand country people. We don’t have much in the way of animal control out here. We have a problem, we take care of it ourselves.”
She countered, “And
you
have to understand we don’t live in the kind of world where you can shoot anything that moves. Randy’s not Daniel Boone.”
“You know what I think? People like him and people like you probably got a lot more in common than you imagine. It’s too bad somebody doesn’t sit down and explain it in a way that makes sense to reasonable people on both sides. Because gun control is one of those issues that’s going to define the twenty-first century.”
Over the weeks she had become even more aware that Cash was both intelligent and educated. “You were good back there. They listen to you. They like you.”
He grinned. “What’s not to like? I’m just a simple country boy.”
Hours later, Kendra sat on the front porch, watching darkness steal across the clearing. All the lights were off, although the first mosquitoes of the season were finding their way to her anyway. She had done research and found that a variety of herbs were supposed to repel them. Catnip oil, lemon grass, pennyroyal, rosemary. Skeptical, she settled for spraying DEET on her arms and legs, although she had citronella candles ready if needed.
She was exhausted, and her leg was throbbing relentlessly. She still felt unsettled from the morning’s confrontation. As she faced off with Randy, she had relived the parking lot scene, and several times, as the day progressed, she had flashed back to the shooting. Those brief interludes had taken a toll. Now, when she thought about guns on her land, she felt light-headed with both anxiety and fury.
More than once since moving here, she had sensed someone on her property and sloughed it off as imagination. Now she wondered if poachers were stalking prey in her woods, although she’d heard no gunshots nearby since moving in. Spring was definitely not deer season, but she knew some hunters paid little attention to the calendar. And what could she do to protect herself? Get her own gun? Wasn’t it a gun that had caused all her problems?
She closed her eyes and tried to let her mind drift to something pleasant. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Rain was expected later, and the local farmers would be happy, since spring had been dry. She would lie in bed and listen to the drops thrum against the tin roof.
Lie alone and worry about poachers.
She forced her mind in a different direction. The renovation was a hassle, no question, but the result? The result was going to be glorious. She could imagine just how lovely the house would be once it was finished. Though living right at the worksite was challenging, traveling back and forth to make decisions when she resumed her job was going to be more so.
Just the thought of moving back to the city made her heart speed. And what
didn’t
, this evening? She couldn’t think about her job, her husband, her sister and nieces, her injuries, the future….
In frustration, she opened her eyes and there, at the clearing’s edge, stood three deer: two does and a young buck. They were about forty feet away. As she watched, they drew closer.
She held her breath and waited as they approached the porch. She knew this was a common enough sight here, that her neighbors would probably shout or fire shotguns to send them into the woods. Vegetable gardens needed protection; so did azaleas and hydrangeas.
She preferred the deer to anything planted in the clearing. Against all odds, traffic, hunters, encroaching civilization, the deer were testimony to Mother Nature’s resourcefulness.
The buck raised his head and stared straight at her. She stared back, curious what he would do. The standoff lasted for seconds. Then he turned and leapt toward the woods. In a moment, his female companions followed.
“Goodbye,” Kendra whispered. “You’re welcome anytime.”
The sky was growing darker. She would have to move inside before the rain arrived, but the deer had worked a bit of magic. She felt comforted. She would fix a simple dinner, maybe drink a glass of wine with it, and afterward she would write to her sister. She would tell Jamie what had been done so far and explain that what was now the cabin’s living area would be a wonderful guest suite, just the way Jamie had suggested. Kendra would ask her to bring the girls and be the first guests to use the suite the moment it was finished. She would install bunk beds along one wall.
She got to her feet and squinted into the purple-tinged twilight, hoping to get one last glimpse of the deer. At first she saw nothing but trees and shadows. Then she saw movement.
For a moment she thought the deer had stopped just inside the woods, planning to return to the clearing after she went inside. But as she watched, she saw a slim figure move from one tree to another.
A man.
Without thinking, she slipped behind a porch pillar, her breath catching in her throat. She could see he was moving farther into the woods. If he’d been watching the house, now his attention was elsewhere. She was fairly certain she knew the cause. Three deer, and the hell with hunting season.
The fury she’d felt that morning returned. Someone was stalking the lovely creatures that had visited her clearing. She felt impotent. Who was she to go up against a man who was probably carrying a rifle? Hadn’t she already gone up against a maniac and almost been killed?
But what if she could scare him away? What if she went into the woods and shouted that she’d seen him and called the sheriff? What if she let the man know he’d been spotted and ought to leave before someone arrived? Would he know the threat was bogus, that the sheriff’s department probably didn’t have the manpower to follow up on this kind of call, and that if they tried, it might be hours before anyone arrived?
Even if
he
wasn’t frightened away by her shouts, the deer certainly would be.
She was no fool. She had no business in the woods at night just before a storm, facing off with a poacher. But even as she considered it, she was moving away from the pillar and toward the steps. The bullets that had lodged inside her had clearly destroyed more than tissue; they had destroyed her ability to be rational in the face of danger.