Hawks Mountain - Mobi (4 page)

Granny Jo laughed. “Not a thing except that he came here once as a child with his granddad and never forgot it. Course the people in town have all kinds of stories made up about why he’s here. They just can’t resist inventing a good yarn when they don’t know the facts.” Granny clicked her tongue, then sipped her tea and gazed out over her roses toward the big oak. “I suppose Earl is spinning in his grave because I sold off part of his mountain, but it couldn’t be helped. I figure he’d be even more upset, if I lost the whole kit ’n’ caboodle.”

Becky was only half listening. She didn’t like the idea of a stranger living so close to them. Strangers couldn’t be trusted.
Especially
city
strangers.
Then again, sometimes even people you think you know couldn’t be trusted either. Sonny’s angry face flashed through her mind. A chill swept down her spine, and the familiar nausea rose in her throat. Absently, through the material of her dress, Becky caressed a bruise still visible on her upper thigh. She clutched her middle and closed her eyes, fighting down the memories that threatened. When she opened them, Granny Jo was staring at her, concern wrinkling her brow.

Granny Jo stopped rocking and leaned toward her. “You all right, girl?”

“Fine,” Becky managed with a forced smile. “I guess the cold tea and my warm stomach didn’t hit it off too well.” Granny was prudent enough not to point out that Becky had yet to even sip the cold beverage. “Does this new neighbor have a name?” she asked, trying to draw attention away from
herself
.

“Hart,” Granny said after studying Becky for a few more moments. “Nicholas Hart.
Goes by Nick.”

Becky tried not to read anything into a strange man living within walking distance of them on the ridge. She wasn’t
stupid,
she knew all men weren’t alike.
Still .
 . .

To get her mind on a new track, she clutched at something else Granny had said. “You’re selling your quilts?”

Granny sat straight in the chair and stared at Becky. “Haven’t you been listening, child? I just told you that I’m being paid a handsome sum for every one I can make.” She leaned back in the rocker and set it back in motion with her foot. “I got a tidy bit tucked away now. Had I known it would bring in so much money so fast, I never would have sold that land.” She sighed, then smiled and rocked contentedly. “But that’s water under the bridge.
Shouldn’t have to sell anymore land now.”
Granny chuckled. “That should keep Earl happy.”

Becky nodded in agreement. She knew
Grampa
Earl would have been even more upset if his Jo wanted for anything and held onto the land just so she could starve to death in her own home or lost it altogether. But that didn’t stop the waves of guilt washing over her for not realizing that Granny had hit hard times. Becky should have been able to read it in her letters, but she hadn’t. Either she’d been too concerned with her own troubles or Granny had managed to cover it up with cheery news of the valley and the people in it.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have sent you some money or come home and been here to help. Maybe then you could have kept the land.”

Granny patted her arm. “Honey, I do turn on that TV in the front room from time to time. I’m not entirely ignorant of what goes on outside this valley. I know social workers don’t get paid a whole lot. I never expected you to send money.”

“But—”

“No buts about it. You had your own life and your own expenses. You didn’t need to be sending it home. Besides, I managed to work it out by myself anyway.”

Granny’s no-nonsense reply ended the conversation. But it did nothing to erase Becky’s guilt about not being there for her grandmother when she needed her or Becky’s misgivings about having a strange city man living right on their doorstep.

Nick Hart stretched and leaned the axe against the stump he’d been using to prop up the logs he’d been splitting to stock up firewood for the winter. Using the shirt he’d discarded, he wiped the beads of sweat from his bare upper torso. Then he took a long drink from the bucket of cool spring water at his side, and gazed out over the valley below.

He’d built his cabin on the top of the ridge he’d bought from Mrs. Hawks on purpose. From here he could see the entire valley, the town of
Carson
and the misty blue mountain range that cradled it on either side. When he needed a break from his writing or his soul needed to be reminded that the whole world wasn’t dark and ugly, he’d come out here and just take in the beauty of the hills. Almost seven months had passed since he’d started working on the book, and lately, even though his intentions were always good, it seemed like he spent more and more time out here and less at his laptop. Procrastination, he told himself, the bane of every writer. But he knew it was more than that. He knew it was the memories that drove him to find peace in nature.

He turned his head, and his gaze swept the porch that fronted the cabin he’d built with his own two hands.
A source of great pride for a man who had spent so long trying to mend broken bones and bodies.
Building it had been a lot of hard, back-breaking work, but it had also been just what he needed to quiet the demons that haunted his days and nights. When he’d hammered the last nail into the last board, he’d felt a rush of satisfaction that he’d never gotten from anything else.

While writing his first novel demanded creativity, building the cabin had demanded a different type of creativeness that commanded sweat and hours of toiling in the hot sun, physical labor. Physical labor that exhausted his mind and body and harnessed his thoughts in a way his book couldn’t, and in a way that rendered him too dog-tired to dream when he climbed into his bed at night.

The sound of an approaching vehicle drew his attention from his thoughts. What part of leave-me-alone did these people not understand? He strained to see who it was, his body
taut ,
nerves on edge.

The town’s people rarely came near his cabin, except on occasion when they slowed down to gawk at him and speculate. He knew well the stories that abounded as to who he was and what he was doing on the mountain. He’d never tried to disavow any of the tales. To do that, he’d have to tell them about the life he’d lived in
Iraq
before he came here, the things he’d seen as a Navy corpsman and the nightmares that still haunted him.

Nick’s gaze trained on the opening in the trees where the vehicle would eventually appear. A mud-spattered, gray pickup with a rifle hanging on a rack obscuring the view through the back window pulled into the overgrown drive leading up to the cabin and stopped behind Nick’s truck. The driver’s door swung open, and a short, stocky man in bib overalls climbed slowly down from the truck. In his hand, he clutched a bunch of white envelopes.

“Hart.”
The greeting drifted lazily on the heated air. Sam Watkins’,
Carson
’s part-time postmaster and fulltime bottom farmer, walked toward him.

Nick nodded briefly. “Mr. Watkins.”

“Since I was
comin
’ this way, figured I’d deliver your mail.”
He held out several envelopes to Nick.

Nick set aside the bucket, and then across the pitted yard and took the mail. “Thanks.”

This hand delivery raised Nick’s suspicions. Normally, Sam stuck his mail in the box at the end of the driveway. To have him pull in and give it to Nick in person didn’t sit well.

The older man shuffled his feet and gazed around him, stalling and confirming Nick’s suspicions that he had something more to say. Nick, although wanting the man gone as soon as possible, waited, offering no encouragement.

Sam cleared his throat. “The missus wanted me to . . . well . . . uh . . . well, the ladies of the church are collecting stuff for the auction they’re
gonna
have at the church social in a couple of weeks, and she wanted to know if you’d be donating anything.” He removed his battered felt hat and smoothed back the few gray hairs on the top of his shiny head. “I told her to leave you alone, but she wouldn’t hear it.” He grinned and replaced his hat. “You know how the ladies can be when they want something.”

Yes, he knew, but this was one lady who was going to be disappointed. Donating would mean he’d be expected to attend the social or at the very least start going to church. That meant opening his life to meeting and interacting with people, and he had no intention of doing that. Isolation preserved his serenity. Isolation had built the wall he lived behind. Isolation kept away the pain of caring for someone.

Really, Nick? Then why do the nightmares keep coming back?

He shook away the voice in his head. “I don’t have anything to donate.”

“She’d be happy with anything.” Sam glanced back toward his truck as if he was as eager to leave as Nick was to have him gone. “The money’s
goin
’ to get a new organ for the church.”

“Sorry. As I said, I don’t have anything.”

Sam flashed Nick a nervous grin. “Well, guess I better be
goin
’ then. Got some other errands to run for the missus,” he added back-stepping toward his truck. “I’ll tell her you didn’t have anything to give her. If you change your mind, just let them know at Keeler’s store.”

Nick nodded, turned and then walked back to the woodpile. Before he could pick up the axe, Sam had started his truck and backed it down the driveway. Nick watched him disappear behind the trees that bordered the rutted road leading into town.

A humorless smile curled his lips. Sometimes Nick felt the loneliness of his existence creep in around him, and he longed for the company of others. But, for the most part, he enjoyed the solitude, the anonymity that his solitary life afforded him. No one relied on him for anything, and he had no one to account to but himself and his Maker. Most importantly, because he had no emotional ties, he had no one to lose.

He’d been happy with his
existence .
 . . until this afternoon, when he’d watched the sun dance off the copper hair of the woman in the meadow. She’d done something no one else had been able to do in a long time. She’d brought a spark of awareness back to Nick’s life,
an awareness
he neither wanted nor planned on nurturing.

Granny Jo watched
through the kitchen window as Becky climbed the slope behind the house, then disappeared into the thick underbrush. For long moments Jo continued to stare at the trees, her mind deep in thought. Becky had said she wanted to explore, but Jo knew the girl had something on her mind and no doubt needed the time to mull it over and decide if and when she wanted to talk about it.

“
You haven
’
t changed a jot, Rebecca Jean. You’re just like your daddy, God rest his soul.
Used to take you forever to tell me anything when you were a little one.
Still does, I guess.
”

Jo sighed, then stepped back and let the red gingham curtain drop back into place over the window. Making her way to the front hall, she picked up Becky
’
s surprisingly light duffle bag,
then
carried it up the long flight of stairs to her granddaughter
’
s old bedroom.

As she climbed the stairs, Jo frowned, remembering how excited and eager Becky had been to leave the mountains behind her and start college. The child could barely wait for graduation to be over. She’d left with such big dreams of becoming a social worker and helping those without.

What had become of that happy girl? What had happened to her Becky to dull her blue eyes and make her mouth droop at the edges? What had stolen the laughter and the life from her granddaughter’s sparkling eyes?

Sighing, Jo walked into the Becky’s bedroom. She had kept it the same as it had been when Becky walked out the door to go to college seven years ago, as if, deep in her heart, Jo knew the girl would return. A multicolored, log cabin quilt covered the single bed beneath the window. Posters of
Garth
Brooks
and
George
Strait
hung above the bed’s headboard.
A white dresser, holding Becky
’
s childhood doll collection, stood against one wall, flanked by two shelves overrun with books.
A nightstand holding a small lamp and Becky’s parents’ wedding picture stood on one side of the bed.