High Plains Hearts (48 page)

“It’s the sensible thing to do,” she said.

“Sensible—but horrendously painful.” He straightened his back. “Well, as we know, we can want what we want, but that doesn’t mean we can have it. Meanwhile, do you have lodging in Obsidian?”

“I’m going to be staying at the Badlands Vista Motel.”

He winced. “You’ll want to move out of there rather quickly. Lu and Ev, the owners, are as honest as the day is long, but they haven’t upgraded anything there in at least twenty years, and that includes the mattresses, I’ve heard. How long are you planning to stay?”

Livvy leaned against the side of the house and studied the man in front of her. He really was amazingly good-looking—his face was tanned, his eyes were an astonishing bright blue, and his legs were long and rangy in the denims he was wearing—but had something gone wrong with his brain?

Hadn’t they just spent most of the afternoon discussing her buying the old resort?

“I am planning to stay here,” she said, her voice sounding, to her relief, sure and strong.

“Here? Oh no. No. No, that won’t work.” He looked quite distressed.

“Well, not
here
. Not right away, that is. You and your grandfather will need some time to find a place to stay, and I don’t know how long you’ll need because I’m not familiar with the housing situation in Obsidian, if that’s where … you’ll be … staying?” Her words faded away as he began to laugh.

“ ‘Housing situation’? Obsidian has one apartment building, which is where I live in the winter. It’s got four units and is nearly as bad as the Badlands Vista Motel, but not quite. It’s cleaner, for one thing. I don’t know what we’ll do.”

“I have no intention of kicking you out of your home. There are still many dotted lines to sign on—inspections and assessments, transfers and titles—before the deed changes hands.” She knew from her experience working for Mr. Evans that one could never plan definitively on moving in quickly. There was almost always some snag somewhere. Paperwork didn’t arrive on time, floodplain issues appeared, a banker was on vacation—they’d all happened.

“This is really sudden,” he said. “I have to say that when Gramps and I put the advertisement in the
Bismarck Tribune
, we never thought it would travel all the way to Boston, and certainly we hadn’t even dreamed that someone would take us up on it. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a little time to consider this.”

She clutched the edge of the railing that ran around the porch. He couldn’t back out of it. The tumbledown resort, with its crazy assortment of colorful sheds and the rainbow of cabins and the dusty canteen, had taken root in her heart.

“We have no choice except to sell,” Hayden continued, his voice so quiet that it seemed as if he were talking to himself. “We have no choice.”

“I don’t want to rush you, but—” She stopped before saying what was obvious to both of them, that he and his grandfather needed to sell, and she was a ready buyer. In any market, a decrepit, closed-down resort in the middle of nowhere would attract few buyers, and in this market, anyone showing even a faint glimmer of interest needed to be kept close to the deal.

He pulled the cap from his head and once again smoothed his hair and shoved the cap back on. “Tomorrow let’s get you set up with a decent place to stay. I think this will all work out. If it’s His will, it’s my will.”

She nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Here? Or in Obsidian?”

“Meet me at Clara’s Café, at eight?”

“I’ll see you then.”

She climbed back into the truck Trevor had rented to her, and she was aware that Hayden was watching her as she tried several times to start it. Just when she thought she’d certainly flooded the engine, it caught in a great blaze of muffler sounds and backfires, and she waved as she pulled away from the resort and onto the county road to Obsidian.

So this was Sunshine.

Her mind was spinning with the possibilities of what could happen with it. Given the proper amount of love and care, it could come to life again. She was sure of it.

An idea had started to take root. Maybe it wasn’t possible, but maybe it was.

The vision of those little shacks scattered around the house poked at her mind, begging for her to pay attention to them. Could she do it?

Fishing
.

Hayden hadn’t mentioned it during the tour, but the advertisement had touted it. If the fishing was good, then maybe, just maybe, it would work.

The idea wandered around in her brain, picking up momentum as she began to see the possibilities.

A fishing resort. People loved to fish. On the Travel Channel, she’d seen shows about folks going deep-sea fishing to get marlins or some other huge fish. Of course, there wasn’t a deep sea around here, but there had to be something swimming in that river.

It was good. It was. It would take a lot of work, but she wasn’t above that. If she did most of it herself, it wouldn’t cost a horrendous amount.

She’d never swung a hammer but just the thought of it sounded wonderful. Nailing boards into place, putting up drywall, even plumbing. None of it was too much for her.

Yes, she was headed into the construction business. She patted the book beside her.
The Complete Guide to Home Construction and Repair
. It would be her Bible.

Her Bible.

She remembered the faith she’d seen displayed. Hayden and Gramps hadn’t said much, but their belief was clearly the cornerstone of their existence.

She’d gone to Sunday school and church when she was young, in the little town on the western edge of Massachusetts, but when she got to be a teenager, overnights and weekend getaways with her friends had taken precedence, and she’d never gotten back to it.

She pulled at last into the motel parking lot, and let herself into her room. She picked up the remote control for the television and clicked it, but nothing happened. The batteries were probably dead.

It was all right. She wasn’t in the mood for watching television anyway. Instead, she sprawled across the bed, the pillows bunched under her, and opened her laptop. The motel, as old and decrepit as it was, managed to have a fairly good wireless signal, and soon she was connected with her mother.

“Hey, Mom. It’s Livvy. You’ll never guess where I am.”

“Livvy! Are you all right? What happened? You’re in North Dakota? What’s it like?”

“It’s incredible. It’s just incredible. I don’t know any other way to say it. It’s incredible.”

“And what’s this place like? The place you want to buy?”

“Sunshine is incredible. The owners are incredible. Mom, am I saying
incredible
enough?”

Her mother laughed. “I’m just guessing, but I gather the place is incredible? I’d love to see it, and I wish your dad and I could get there to help you, but we’re stuck here until December. I’m sorry, hon. I feel bad, but we’re tied up with our teaching.”

“I understand, Mom,” she said.

“You’re not in over your head, are you?” her mother asked, suddenly serious. “This isn’t really like you. Usually you’re such a quiet young woman. I expected you to be working for Mr. Evans forever.”

“That’s just it,” Livvy said, noticing a water stain on the ceiling over the foot of the bed. Luckily it looked old. “I needed a change.”

“There’s a boy, isn’t there?”

“A boy? Mom, I’m twenty-five years old!”

“Okay, a man. A young man. There’s a young man involved with this, isn’t there?”

Livvy thought of Hayden as he stood on the porch, his gaze fixed on the Badlands silhouetted against the sky, his hair as golden as reflected sun, and the tenderness in his voice as he talked about his grandfather.

She changed the subject. With mothers, it was the safest thing to do when young men were involved.

Hayden sat on the porch, ignoring the chicken that pecked at his shoestring. This day, which had started out dealing with the endless supply of boards, had moved into the promise of fishing, and then ended with a flourish when Livvy Moore had driven up in Trevor’s truck, which had more filler than original metal.

He shook his head. That truck—he’d have to have a talk with the young Trevor about putting a city woman into it and then sending her out on the county roads, some of which were so washboarded that you risked your teeth driving on them, you’d be so jarred by the unevenness. If the truck had broken down, what would she have done?

She probably had a fancy cell phone, but coverage was spotty out here, and only one company provided any service. If she wasn’t with that provider, the only thing her phone would be good for was—well, he couldn’t think of anything it would be good for.

He sat forward suddenly, startling the chicken so much that it squawked at him and flapped off to sit on the railing and watch him with a wary eye.

What bothered him, what he needed to know for once and for all, was why she was there, wanting to buy Sunshine.

She had told them the story of the windblown newspaper and he had no reason to doubt its veracity. But there were many unanswered questions. What was a Bismarck newspaper doing in Boston? Why did it blow up against Livvy’s car? Why hers?

He stared at the chicken, which walked sideways along the railing while clucking to itself.

“Do you have any ideas, chicken?”

Apparently it didn’t, for with a flap of wings, it propelled itself from its perch to the seat of the chaise longue on the other end of the porch.

“Don’t even think about laying an egg there,” he warned, but the chicken settled in, still keeping watch on him. He’d have to check the crease in the cushion later in the day.

The front door swung open, and his grandfather came out and joined him on the porch.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Gramps said. “Kept thinking about this whole thing, and then I thought Ellie was making a peach pie. It sure smelled good.”

Hayden patted his grandfather’s hand. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

Gramps continued, “But then I remembered that she was gone, and you know, I guess maybe I was asleep and just dreaming, wasn’t I?”

“Maybe.”

“When you were just a little pup, Grub, you came to your grandmother and me and asked how we knew that this life wasn’t just a dream.”

“And what did you say?” Hayden knew the answer, but he loved to hear the story.

“I did what any sensible grandfather would have done. I yelled, ‘Wake up!’ at you as loud as I could.”

Hayden laughed. “You nearly scared me into the next year!”

Gramps shrugged. “Made my point. If that didn’t wake you up, it wasn’t a dream.”

Hayden let the afternoon breeze drift over him as he sat next to his grandfather. How often he had taken these moments for granted, but now each second seemed precious, measured as it was.

He was not only losing Sunshine, he was losing his grandfather.

A scratching at the door broke into his train of thought. He got up and let Martha Washington out. She waddled over to Gramps’s feet, and he scooped her up and placed her in his lap.

She stretched out, draping herself across his thin and bent legs, and shoved her head under his hand so he would pet her. Her purr filled the air, and Hayden shut his eyes.

He wanted to savor this moment, a time of perfection, a—

It all happened at once. The cat screeched and tore across his arms and knees, claws out, while the chicken attacked it with beak and talons. Hayden reached into the skirmish and separated the two.

He got the chicken off the porch and the cat back into the house before rolling his eyes at his grandfather.

“Wow, that fray was a furious flapping and flurry of feathers,” Gramps said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Hey, maybe I’ve got a second career as a poet!”

Hayden shook his head. “As they say in the movies, don’t quit your day job, Gramps. Don’t quit your day job.”

“My day job, huh? You are a hoot and a half, Grub. My day job is making sure Martha Washington doesn’t take out the chicken.”

“Or that the chicken doesn’t take out Martha Washington.”

They settled back and looked out at the vast panorama.

“This is the end of it,” Gramps said.

“Maybe. It’s your call.” Hayden glanced at his grandfather. “I don’t want you to make a decision you’re not comfortable with.”

“I think she’ll be all right, don’t you?”

“Who? Gran?” Hayden’s stomach twisted, as it always did when Gramps’s mind slipped.

“No, you goof. Livvy.”

“She doesn’t have a clue what to do with it,” Hayden said.

Gramps laughed. “You’ll be here to advise her.”

“Once Sunshine is hers, I won’t have anything to say about it.”

“Sure,” his grandfather said. “Sure. You go ahead and think that.”

Hayden thought of Livvy, the way her short dark hair was tossed in the gentle summer breeze as she stood by the swimming hole, her dark eyes, deep with sympathy, watching his grandfather. She was going to be good for Sunshine.

L
ivvy stood in front of the mirror that was attached to the wall of the old motel. She brushed and rebrushed her hair, but no matter what she tried, it wouldn’t lay flat. An early morning rain threatened, and her hair responded as it always did in high humidity. It became a dark brown curly mop.