Authors: Carlene Love Flores
“Family friend.”
“Hmm, where you from?
You got a little twang in there,” the driver
asked in his own drawl.
“Yeah, I guess I do.
Tennessee.”
“Oh yeah, what part?
Nashville?”
He didn’t want to be rude, but he really
needed to be on the lookout for Trista or her Jeep, whichever came first.
So far, there had only been a couple old
warehouse buildings, some older homes and then mostly pastures, some with cows,
some with horses.
He answered while keeping his eyes glued
to the passing scenery.
“Oh, um, south
of Nashville, down off the Duck.”
“Hmm, never heard of
it.”
They came to the crossroads of the 18 and
the 62.
The driver signaled left and
then made the turn to head west.
“So
where exactly do you want me to drop you off?
The town’s only a few miles long, really.”
“My friend said to look for her house
across from a church with a steeple.”
The driver chuckled and then explained
why.
“Oh boy, I’m glad you said steeple
‘cause there’s a church ‘bout every mile or so out in these parts.
Lucky for you, they don’t all have them steeples.”
He hoped there would be only the
one.
As their pace slowed, he did his
best to search out both sides of the windows of the moving car.
“Well, here’s the only one I see so far
with a steeple,” the driver said then pointed to his left.
Sure enough, Lucky saw the church and
then scooted over to his right to look out the passenger side of the car.
Her silver Jeep Wrangler was parked right
there on the side of the road.
There
were a load of other cars parked along the road in her company.
It looked like a Sunday service had yet to
let out.
He wondered if maybe she had
decided to attend.
Jaxon could have been
way off in his assessment of her emotional well-being.
Lucky thanked the driver and paid his fare.
“Will you
be needin’
a ride back?”
The driver tugged at his
worn, red Sooners hat.
“No sir, thank you.
I’m good from here.”
“All righty then, enjoy your time in good
ole Duketown.”
The driver seemed amused
that this truly was his destination.
Lucky walked up to the Jeep and peered
inside.
Trista hadn’t rolled her windows
up.
And there on the floorboard were her
keys and phone.
He opened the unlocked
door, and felt around under the seat.
Her small purse was just a couple inches back but there was nothing to
say where she’d gone.
Without being able
to call her, he was at a loss.
An old
house just a stone’s throw from where he stood caught his attention.
Battered and unkempt, it looked abandoned for
all intents and purposes.
If he
understood correctly, this would have been her childhood home.
Quickly, he took to checking its perimeter.
No luck.
Trista wasn’t anywhere near the property
and the land it was on held no sign of her either.
He could go inside the church but had
misgivings about that.
Trista hadn’t
struck him as a religious person.
He
recalled how uncomfortable and short her narration of grace had been at her
gramma’s
.
Churches,
especially ones in small towns, were hard to figure out sometimes.
The one he had attended a time or two back
home had been open and friendly.
But another
time, he had gone with a school friend and it was completely different.
The people had seemed very skeptical and
unwelcoming.
He decided to call Jaxon.
There had been something he said about a
creek.
“Lucky?
Have you found her?
Is she all right?”
Jaxon asked right from the jump.
“Hey man, no, not exactly.”
He looked ahead to a thin gathering of trees
standing on the outskirts of the property and dug his boot heel into a patch of
hard red clay.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m sitting here by her Jeep parked in
front of what I guess would have been her house.
But she’s not here.
Do you think she’d go to church?
There’s a service going on at the one across
the street.”
“Oh, hell no.
Especially not that one,” Jaxon stated
flatly.
“Did you try the cemetery?”
“Yeah, I went there first.
Not there either.
What did you say about a creek?”
“Just that she had gone to one, I assume
in the vicinity of the house, the night her sister came and found her.”
“All right well, I’m gonna go look around
then.
I’ll call you when I find her.”
Jaxon thanked him and they hung up.
He did a once over of the land and saw the
clear trickling veins of ground water not too far away.
It sounded like the beginnings of a creek.
Before setting out, he prayed for a little luck.
Chapter
Eight
The water of the creek swirled and
gushed.
Lucky could hear it before he
came upon it.
The area’s land lay mostly
flat but the closer he got to the streaming water, the more intricate it
became.
There were meandering drop offs
that required his undistracted attention.
Although only a couple feet in depth, the wrong
placement of his boot and he’d have twisted an ankle in the stumble.
The stick thin trees became greener the
closer he came and the rocks clumped tighter together.
Oklahoma’s signature red clay of the creek’s
embankment shone brightly through the water.
He walked carefully, hanging onto brittle branches that hung
nearby.
He dipped his head to peer into
a small recess that had been formed in the likes of a cave where the creek
became nothing more than a trickle.
His heart flooded with instant
relief.
There she sat, huddled within
its shelter, upon a rock, her legs pulled up so that her chin rested on her
knees and her arms wrapped around her shins.
Thank you, Lord
.
She was okay.
Jaxon had over thought the entire
situation.
Glad to find her in what he’d
predicted, which was simply a moment of reflection and not some zoned-out,
paranoid state, he slowly hopped down the side of the embankment, intent on
greeting her and then apologizing for his intrusion.
But the splash from his landing caused her to
look up.
And it was then that he saw the
truth.
Her eyes were so red and swollen;
they looked like they’d been raked with tumbleweeds.
Her pain hit him, knocking him back.
Trista wore a dress, like she’d done
every day since he’d met her.
But her
cream-colored tights were soaked through up to her ankles and her shoes clung
to her feet in sopping form. Jaxon may have been closer to the truth than he
realized.
She didn’t say hello, or reach her hand
out to him when he approached.
Instead,
she sat on her rock, looking at him.
It
seemed she was unable to find a reason for why he was there.
“Trista, are you okay?” he asked with as
much sensitivity as he could inject into his words.
God, he wanted to go to her and give her
a hug.
He’d never seen someone look so
in need of one.
But she seemed skittish
of his presence, unsure that she wanted him there.
Finally, she spoke to him as he stood
hovering nearby, just above her position within the cave.
“Why are you here, Lucky?”
It wasn’t a very friendly greeting but
from what he understood, she had probably dealt with an excess of different
emotions and memories already that morning.
He was just glad she wasn’t catatonic as Jaxon would have had him
believe.
“I, uh, I got worried about you and I was
tired of staring at the walls in our room.”
He didn’t want to tell her about Jaxon’s added hysteria concerning
her.
“Why were you worried?” she asked as she
dipped the fingers of her left hand into the chilly water.
He wasn’t going to lie.
He wanted to earn her trust, as a friend and
possibly more, who knew?
Jaxon would
have to have known that it would be no secret who had told him of her possible
whereabouts.
“Jaxon called, worried about where you’d
gone, alone, today.
He told me about the
cemetery and your old house, and this place.”
“What else did he tell you?”
Her focus remained on the tiny shimmery
flecks of sand being carried over her hand by the water.
The deadpan tone of her voice told him to
be honest.
Earn her trust
.
“That you had come here to visit your
mother’s grave.”
“And…”
“And that your stepfather had died
recently…” He was fumbling around and she didn’t need that right now.
He manned up and told her the rest.
“Trista, he mentioned you had been abused and
that one night you had come down to this creek, hurt yourself and that when
your little sister found you, you asked her to call your gramma.
I understand that’s when you went to live
with her and that you haven’t been able to come back here since then.”
She seemed to sink further away, pulling
her hand back up to lace with the other.
She held herself curled up; her eyes were nothing but sad.
He had to go to her.
He closed the couple feet between them and
bent down on one knee.
There wasn’t
enough room within the tiny cave for the both of them so he balanced himself in
a squatting position over a narrow section of the running water.
He held out his hand to her but she didn’t
take it.
Her brow furrowed several times, she
sniffed, and then said, “I didn’t want you to know any of that.”
“I understand.”
“Please don’t think I’m crazy.
I know I probably look like it.”
“No, no, darlin’.
I don’t think that.”
He offered her his hand again.
Water marks on the hem of her dress rose
all the way up to the waist line.
Her
bare arms were covered in goose bumps.
He was thankful that she had chosen to put on the tights. “Come here,
take my hand.
It’s too cold down
there.
We should get you out of here.”
Trista didn’t seem so eager to leave her
perch.
She looked down at the water that
hinted at wetting her again but she was safe on the rock.
“Or, I’ll stay down here with you…as long
as you want,” he said, prepared to do just that.
He realized something in that moment of
her dull responsiveness.
He had known
her all of three days, while Jaxon had known her half her life.
He had no idea how deeply she hurt, even with
Jaxon’s deliberate attempt to enlighten him on the situation earlier.
The feeling that he was the wrong man for
this heaviness became clear.
But he was
here and he wouldn’t just leave her.
While in obvious duress, Trista managed
to reach her shaking hand out to him.
“I was supposed to be with my momma
today.”
She pulled in a few shuddering
raspy breaths that caused him to inch carefully closer to her.
“I haven’t gone to visit with her in all
these years and I was supposed to do that today.
But, I just—I’m horrible.
I can’t be in this town.
I can’t be here.
I’m sorry, momma.
I’m so sorry…”