High Plains Hearts (47 page)

“Maybe,” she said slowly, “it’s about time I listened to Him.”

Hayden leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his straw-colored hair, bleached by the summer sun. “Sunshine was always run by His principles, you see. One of our favorites is: ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ ”

“That’s the Golden Rule, kind of,” she said.

He laughed. “You’re right—kind of. We have it right up here in its traditional format, the one everybody learns as a kid. The Golden Rule isn’t just something we have on the wall.” He pointed to one of the many plaques displayed beside them. “Those words are the foundation of everything we’ve done here for three generations.”

“
Do
unto others
,” she said, and as she spoke the words, her stomach twisted. It was such a basic tenet of living—one she’d let herself forget.

“
As you would have others do unto you
,” Hayden finished. “I know that in some businesses, the rest of the line is
Before they do unto you
, but that’s not the way we operated.”

“Our customers were family. Some still are, but the fact is that there’s not money to be made in this any longer,” Gramps added. “The big vacation spots have advertising budgets that we just couldn’t compete with.”

There was no rancor in his words. It was evident that he had come to peace with the fact that Sunshine wasn’t what it had been in the past.

“What do you plan to do with Sunshine?” Hayden asked.

The question brought her up short. It was the one part of her plan—if she could call her half-baked, spur-of-the-moment decision a “plan”—that she hadn’t developed completely.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I just know that I want to be here.”

“Because God sent you here?” Gramps asked, and his eyes, the same sky blue as his grandson’s, but clouded, met hers squarely.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Maybe,” Hayden suggested, “you’d like to see Sunshine before you decide. Drain those root beers and let’s go out for a walk.”

She groaned inwardly at the thought of walking even one more step outside with her sandals on but she smiled and stood up. “I’m game.”

As if reading her mind, Hayden asked, “Do you have some sneakers you could put on? Those shoes don’t look very comfortable.”

She started to shake her head but then she remembered that in the borrowed truck was her suitcase, and in that suitcase was a pair of rubber-soled shoes that she’d tucked in at the last minute, in case there was an exercise facility at Sunshine. She almost laughed at how clueless she’d been.

Soon, with her feet in the shoes that had cost her a week’s pay, she began the tour of Sunshine.

“Here’s an outbuilding,” Hayden said, “and there’s another one, and there’s another one, and there’s another one.”

“What are they all for?” she asked.

“For storing lumber from torn-down sheds in case we want to build more.” He grinned at his grandfather.

“This larger one was once the canteen,” Gramps said, ignoring the good-natured gibe. “That’s where kids used to come in from swimming and buy taffy and pop.”

“And the parents would gather in the late afternoon or evening for a rousing game of Monopoly or Clue,” said Hayden. “In the evening, we’d grill hamburgers and hot dogs or serve some of Gran’s famous tater tot hot dish. On rainy days, which were rare but they did happen, everyone would gather there and we’d play charades.”

“Now it’s a storeroom.” Gramps opened the door and led them inside.

Boxes were piled haphazardly around the perimeter of the room. On one end, a counter divided a small kitchen from the rest of the building. Dust motes danced in the midafternoon sun, and Livvy thought that if she stood still and listened hard enough, she’d be able to hear the laughter of the years of customers.

“We had some good times here,” Gramps said, running his hand over the back of a chair draped with what seemed to be an old curtain. “Do you remember, Grub?”

“I do.”

The two men were lost in memories, touching the doorknob, the windowsill, the scattering of tables. With the kitchen and the bathrooms, now marked L
ADS
and L
ASSIES
in an old-style block print, it was easy to see what it had been.

Livvy walked around the room, her real estate training clicking into place. The canteen was a mess right now, but it had possibilities. For what, she wasn’t sure, but it was there.

“Let’s show her the swimming hole,” Hayden said, breaking the silence.

They left the canteen and reentered the bright afternoon.

“This is beautiful,” she said, looking at the vista that was so incredible it was almost overwhelming.

The Badlands, touched with coppery tones, surrounded them. Overhead, only one stray cloud drifted lazily, the sole break in the endless blue sky. In the distance, a bird trilled, its melody gracing the air with a song.

They passed a cluster of cabins, each one painted a different color that had probably once been bright but had faded to a softly muted hue. Each one sported a worn sign declaring its rather prosaic name: the G
REEN
C
ABIN
, the Y
ELLOW
Cabin, the R
ED
C
ABIN
, the B
LUE
C
ABIN
, and so on. She counted quickly: There were eleven of them.

A chicken, startled from its hunt for bugs in the dirt, flapped off in a great display of wings and feathers and screeching squawks that shattered the afternoon stillness.

The path to the small swimming area had been permanently etched in the ground by countless feet making their way to the water.

Hayden provided the narrative as they followed those long-gone footsteps.

“It’s part of Little Starling, the river that goes through here. It makes a little bend here, and with the help of a tractor, a dredge, and some good old-fashioned elbow grease, that became Sunshine’s version of a lake. Today it probably wouldn’t be legal, but the river’s adapted to it, so it’s all good.”

Around a straggling set of trees, the glistening water was a surprise in the dry landscape.

The pier, now weathered to a soft gray, was missing some of the boards, and it leaned to one side. A lifeguard station was near the sandy beach, but it was missing most of the steps to the top. Only a foolhardy soul would attempt to climb it.

Algae-laced waves lapped at the shore, and in the stillness, Livvy could hear more birds and the faint sound of insects buzzing along the water’s edge.

“It needs some work,” Gramps said.

“The whole thing needs work,” Hayden said. “I don’t know, of course, what you plan to do here, but the fact is that except for Gramps and me and our friends, no one comes here. Sunshine hasn’t had any customers for two years now.”

It was such a difference from the hustle of Boston. There were no car horns honking. No radios blaring. No one talking.

Livvy stood motionless, letting the nothingness of it all overtake her. She felt tiny and yet part of all creation. The soft breeze lifted and dropped her hair around her cheeks and forehead.

And, as she listened to the sounds of God Himself—the soft splash of the waves, the trill of the birds, the hum of the insects—she fell in love.

“I want it.”

The words hung in the air. She saw the exchange of a glance between the two men, felt their sadness, and knew in her heart that with those three words, she had sealed all of their fates.

“Let’s go back to the house,” Hayden said at last.

She reluctantly tore herself from the idyllic scene and followed Hayden and his grandfather back up the path, past the odd assortment of outbuildings, and to the house with the ancient pickup truck parked in front of it.

Martha Washington acknowledged their return with the flick of an ear, but otherwise didn’t stir as they walked through the living room and back into the kitchen.

“I don’t suppose in Boston they do much business at the kitchen table,” Hayden said as they sat at the red dinette set.

Livvy laughed. “Some. But you’re right, usually I’d invite you to my office and we’d draw up the paperwork there.”

“You’re still interested? Even after seeing the rest of Sunshine?” His tanned forehead furrowed into a concerned frown.

“Especially after seeing the rest of it.”

Gramps’s fingers traced a groove in the tabletop. “This has been our life for many years. Decades, in fact. It’s—” His voice broke, and Hayden covered his grandfather’s hands as the old man gathered himself. “It’s hard, letting this go into a stranger’s possession. It was everything to Ellie and me. Now she’s gone, and I’m going to lose Sunshine, too.”

“Gramps—” Hayden began, but his grandfather shook off the interruption.

“I need to say this.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I hope you understand that I want a few days to absorb this, to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.”

“It’s our only choice,” Hayden said gently. “We can’t do this any longer. Not this way. We have to let it go.”

Livvy fought back the tears that suddenly choked her. She’d arranged many sales of family homes, some of them foreclosures, and most of them had torn at her heart, but none of them had been as personal as this. She’d never been the buyer, the one who was taking the property.

She reminded herself that this was a business transaction. They would receive payment for it, and it would probably be enough to keep them solvent for years to come. It was their choice. They had put the property up for sale. They had done it. Not her. She was merely the one who had come to their aid.

So why did she feel so terrible?

“Gramps, tonight we will pray about it,” Hayden said, and his grandfather nodded. Then the old man pushed his chair back and stood up.

“I’m very tired. I hope you’ll excuse me, Livvy, but I need to lie down.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

Hayden’s eyes followed his grandfather’s steps as he left the room and went into the living room. Neither of them spoke as they listened to the man’s heavy tread as he climbed the steps to the second floor.

“My grandfather means everything to me,” Hayden said at last. “Everything. It’s important to me that he is at ease about this. Before we make any agreements, I want to make sure he understands.”

“Certainly.”

“Plus I know you’d like to see the house, too.” He glanced upstairs, as if he could see right through the ceiling and into what must have been his grandfather’s room, judging from the footsteps that she could hear through the plaster. “That will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“I understand.”

They stood up, and together they left the kitchen. In the living room, Martha Washington had woken up and was following Gramps up the stairs.

“She’s his cat. No matter what he says, she is his.” Hayden watched the cat climb the steep staircase. “The other cats have been adopted out, so she’s the only one left. Despite what he said earlier about her coming with the property, Gramps won’t let her go—he can’t let her go.”

Livvy didn’t know what to say. The entire thing—the decision to quit her job, put everything she owned into storage, and come to a state she knew nothing about—was overwhelming. Intensifying it all was seeing the interaction of the two men as they bid good-bye to a family treasure.

At the front door, he pulled a baseball cap from the coat tree there and shoved it on his head as soon as they stepped outside. She smiled as she read the printed words over the bill: C
OOTER’S
H
ARDWARE
.

Outside, he paused to move a chicken from in front of the doorway. It flapped its wings and objected strenuously as he placed it onto the ground. “We’ve managed to get our animals down to Martha Washington, who is about as much a barn cat as I am, and this hen. I suppose you could technically call her free-range, but it’s mainly because she refuses to listen to us and stay in the coop area.”

As if understanding exactly what Hayden was saying, the chicken glared at him with her beady eyes, clucked, and strutted right back onto the porch.

Livvy and Hayden looked at each other and laughed. “See what I mean?” he asked. “Not only has she made this entire place her home, she has attitude. At least she does go back to the coop to lay her eggs, although once in a while this old lady”—he pretended to scowl at the recalcitrant chicken—“she’ll think she’s funny and plop an egg in a lawn chair, so you’d be wise to check before you sit down out here.”

“It’ll be hard for you to part with Sunshine, won’t it?” she asked.

He turned his head and studied the horizon, with the irregularly shaped buttes notching into the sky. “This has been part of life since I was an infant,” he said at last. “Oh, I was born in Bismarck, and I went to college in Grand Forks on one end of the state and Williston on the other, but Sunshine was where my heart was. My grandparents ran this place from the time they were married, and the highlight of every summer was coming here. And then when my parents died, Gramps and Gran took me in and I moved to Sunshine permanently.”

“It’s part of your family,” she said softly.

He tugged the baseball cap off and ran his hand over the top of his head. The sun caught his golden hair for just a moment before he slapped it back on and moved off to shoo the chicken away again.

“It is. Gran died two years ago, and Gramps lost his heart. He decided to close Sunshine then. He said he couldn’t have one without the other.”

Livvy wished she had her sunglasses with her to hide her eyes, which were once again filling with tears.

“One day,” Hayden said, “one day I want to have what they did.”

“Sunshine, you mean?”

“I mean their love. They not only finished each other’s sentences, they often spoke together. I remember being a kid and watching them sit next to each other. They breathed in unison. My mom used to say that their hearts beat as one. When Gran died, Gramps …”

His words trailed off, and she put her hand on his arm. “It must have been really difficult.”

He nodded. “He’s gotten vague and forgetful now. It’s for the best that we sell Sunshine. I can stay with him in the summer, but I teach in Obsidian in the winter, and I can’t always get out here to check on him. It’s a trek in the winter as you might imagine. The road gets pretty nasty when the snow comes, and I worry about him. He can’t drive anymore. And with our winters here, somebody can’t always get to him.”