The Year of Chasing Dreams (33 page)

“Not the way I drive,” Alice Faye snapped. “Now, don’t argue with me. I’ll bring you straight back after your visit. Come on, honey.… Have a nice long ride on your horse. Animal’s miserable for you.”

That got inside Ciana as nothing else could. How she longed to ride! “That’s a low blow.”

Alice Faye gave a self-satisfied smile. “All’s fair in love and arguing with a stubborn child.”

Angela touched Ciana’s cheek. “Go on, girl. Hug Jon’s horse for him, hear?”

Weary to the bone, Ciana knew she couldn’t fend off both these women.
Home
. She wanted to go home to Bellmeade, and to touch the land that rooted her. She kissed Jon’s mouth, and followed her mother out the door of Jon’s hospital room.

Once out of the unit, Ciana balked because it was late in the afternoon. She promised she’d come first thing the next morning, and her mother agreed, but threatened severe consequences if she didn’t. The next day Angela put Ciana in the truck and saw her off. Ciana never let up on the gas pedal on the drive, chose to bypass her town, and take a country side road to her property.

Ciana set foot on Bellmeade thirteen days after the tornado, remembering how she’d left it, hardly believing what she saw now. The devastation and destruction had been put mostly right by days of hard work by friends and neighbors. And yet the scars remained. The grounds looked as if a giant animal had left claw marks on defenseless trees and earth. Along the driveway were empty spaces or stumps where the great oaks had once proudly stood. In place of the house she again saw the lone standing chimney, deemed still usable, according to her mother. She saw orderly stacks of bricks salvaged from the old house. Otherwise the earth where the
house had stood was barren. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never put things back as they had been. She drove to the barn, sadness blanketing her homecoming.

She parked, and Eden and Alice Faye hurried out to meet her. “We’re just getting ready to replant some of the garden,” Eden announced, brandishing her gardening gloves. “Garret’s down working on the stables.”

Ciana heard the whine of a far-off saw. “The place looks good,” she said, her voice quavering.

“Better,” her mother corrected. “We still have a long way to go. How’s Jon?”

“The same. But Angela is with him, so if he wakes up …” She let the sentence trail.

“Come see how we’ve fixed up the barn,” Eden said after a brief, awkward silence.

Ciana went in with them, let out a low whistle. “Nice job. Looks comfy.” The stalls were empty as the horses were out to pasture, but parts of the barn had been turned into make-do housing. A dining table had been created from several long planks of wood laid across two sawhorses, with folding chairs set on either side. A full-sized refrigerator and a mini camp stove were sitting just outside the tack room door. A battered, salvaged piece of furniture served as a surface to stack paper plates and plastic utensils, alongside a pile of candles, for although the gas generator was running, it was only used for essentials such as the fridge and fans. Ciana recognized two candelabra of ornate silver from Bellmeade’s storied collection, given to various brides as wedding gifts through the years. There was even an old sofa and two cushiony easy chairs donated by someone.

“If we need extra seating we just move the sawhorses,” Eden explained, looking proud of their accomplishments.

“Not ideal,” Alice Faye said, “but I can shackle a meal together. We’ve heard that electricity’s supposed to be back by tomorrow.”

Ciana had heard in news reports that utility trucks had been dispatched from all over the south and east to help with the overwhelming task of resupplying electricity. The rural south would be last in line. “Where does everyone sleep?” Ciana asked.

“Garret and I are up in the loft.” Eden raised her eyes upward.

Ciana surmised that the cohabitation ban had been lifted. “And Cecil?”

“At his place,” Alice Faye said curtly, then added, “You going for a ride or just going to stand there and jabber?”

Ciana threw up her hands in mock surrender. “A ride, of course. Where did you park the saddles?”

Outside, she whistled to the horses. Their heads came up, but while Firecracker gazed at Ciana, she stood chewing a mouthful of grass and refusing to move. “She’s mad at me for disappearing for so long,” Ciana told Eden.

“You mean she’s
pouting
? I didn’t know horses could act like children.”

“They can and do.” Ciana grabbed the oats bucket and banged it on the side of the fence rail. The promise of oats brought Firecracker forward at a trot and drew a laugh from Eden. In no time, Ciana had the horse saddled and mounted. “Want to come?” she asked Eden.

“No thanks. A girl could fall off one of those things. And I think I hear tomato plants calling to me.”

Ciana rode at a leisurely pace toward the sound of a power saw humming, and came up on Garret bent over raw lumber, and covered with sawdust. He was shirtless for the sun was
warm, and his head of blond bushy hair was wrapped in a bandanna. The sight of him made her miss Jon all the more as she thought back to the times she’d come up on him in work mode, his muscles bunched, sweat rolling down his broad chest and flat abs, his Stetson shielding his face from the sun.

“Hey!” Garret called when she rode up. “Eden said you were coming for a day.”

She reined in Firecracker, smiled at Garret, nodded toward the stack of new lumber he was cutting to replace the stable rook torn away by the storm. “You’re going to be busy for a while.”

He gave a grin and a wink. “Can’t let a bit of wind spoil my handiwork.”

“I—I can’t thank you enough, Garret. I know this isn’t the trip to the U.S. you planned.”

“Aw, no worries. Been writin’ my articles and sending them off, and my editor keeps asking for more. Lot of people in my country are keen on things American, and giving a firsthand account of the tornado and its aftermath has quite a followin’.” He wiped his brow. “Miss my mate, Jon, though.” He gave her a salute and went back to work.

Ciana continued on her mission. Much as she dreaded it, she had to check out the fields of hay and corn and soybeans, her crops. The storm had left damage everyplace, and it remained to be seen if she had any crop left, if she’d be able to feed her horses this summer and fall, or if she’d have to turn out her boarders and plow under the fields and replant. Alfalfa seed wasn’t too expensive, but the harvest would be very late, meaning more feed would have to be bought, and that
was
expensive. Ciana heeled her horse and Firecracker went forward.

The rolling pace of the horse, the blue sky and sun, the
scent of the earth—these elements soaked into Ciana’s mind and body. How did people make it day after day cooped up inside office buildings and malls without touching the outside world? Even when she’d been stuck in school for twelve years, she had sneaked outside during lunch or between classes just to grab lungfuls of bright clean air. The outdoors always beckoned and beguiled her, even from the time she’d been a small child and Olivia had walked her around and pointed to and named different plants and flowers.

She saw the planted fields from afar and her heartbeat took an uptick. She saw green cornstalks standing ankle high. Hardly able to believe her eyes, she clicked her tongue to hurry the horse, stopped at the side of the fenced field. Her corn crop was undamaged and growing! She rode to another field and saw it green with alfalfa hay. Every planted field was not only green, but unscathed. The tornadoes had passed by, dumping rain, but skipping over the fields—at least her fields—and leaving them intact.

She dismounted, stood gazing out over the beautiful vision of growth. Her throat tightened as her heart swelled with gratitude. Family, friends, the blessing of escaping nature’s fury, humbled her. Nothing could change what had happened, but people were strong and resilient, and hope propelled life through destruction and chaos.

After grooming Firecracker and visiting with her mother and Eden, Ciana made one more stop before turning toward Nashville. She parked at the head of Main Street in downtown Windemere and walked the length between traffic lights, staring from side to side at the damage left behind by the category four tornado. Buildings had been leveled or crushed. Many
of the storefronts had been there since before the turn of the twentieth century, surviving a major flood, a few fires, and one earthquake. Now there was rubble and disaster everywhere she looked. The sight of the devastation was gut-wrenching. Still, there were people on the street cleaning up, sorting through the debris, attempting to salvage what they could. Some looked shell-shocked, others resigned.

Several called out to her. “Sorry about your property.”

She went from person to person, received their sympathy, offered her condolences. A few asked, “How’s Jon?” There were few secrets in a small Southern town, and people knew how gravely he’d been hurt. No one seemed to have any animosity toward her refusal to sell out any longer either. The tornado had blown that away too. They were all in this together, and grateful to have survived.

Ciana stopped in front of what had been the feed store. A bulletin board had been erected, and the townspeople had turned it into a streetside memorial. Flowers and candles, toys and stuffed animals were gathered and heaped at the base of the board. Messages holding prayers and comments had been stapled and tacked up on the wood. In the center, a list was also posted:
In Memoriam
. Ciana’s heart grew heavy when she read the nine names of those who had died. The oldest had been seventy-five, the youngest eleven months. She hung her head and shed private quiet tears.
So much loss
.

At the bottom of the list were verses from the King James version of the Bible: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” And another: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” and another, “Bind up the brokenhearted.”

Ciana was struck again by the resiliency of the people, country people. Her people.

She returned to the hospital at dusk, relieving Angela so she could go down to the cafeteria, and took up her vigil at Jon’s bedside. She turned on the light above his bed to better see his face, sat, laid her head on her arm, placed her mouth inches from his ear. “Let me tell you what I saw today when I went home.” She told him of her day trip, of riding the land, of feeling sunlight warm her skin, and of how people were digging out, rebuilding, starting over. She told him, not of ruin, but of hope and the future.

Finally she sighed, stroked his hair. “Come back to me, Jon Mercer. Let’s go home together. I miss you so much. I love you so much. You’re all I want for the rest of my life. Houses can be rebuilt, but
you
come along once in a lifetime. I want you back. Please … please, come back to me.”

She lifted her head, leaned forward and, as she’d done so many times before, she pressed her lips to his. And his lips moved under hers. She flew backward, strangled out a cry, and stared down into his wide-open eyes.