Sorry, whoever you are. I’m not about to break into a gallop. I might not have anything else left, but I can still muster a shred of dignity.
Three generations of family portraits on the staircase wall watched in approval as she regally descended the steps. As a child, she’d sped past them as fast as she could go to avoid their see-all stares, but now she drew strength from them. She might have to sell the house out from under their gilded frames, but she’d do it with her head held high.
And she’d burn the house down to the ground before she’d let it go for taxes.
Think positively, Laurel Elizabeth. Maybe your caller is a prospective buyer that the Realtor has sent over to look at the house.
She opened the heavy oak door a few cautious inches. Just last week someone had lobbed a string of firecrackers at her when she was out in the yard, searching for her newspaper. Of course, it was right before the Fourth, but she doubted that those firecrackers were a patriotic salute.
Dear God in heaven, who was this on her doorstep?
Her caller was a giant, a big man darkly silhouetted against the red blaze of the high-summer Texas sunset. She couldn’t make out his face because of the glare behind him, but he was built like a tank and stood maybe six four, six five. Definitely not Prince Charming. More like the Incredible Hulk. She glanced down to make sure the screen door was still locked.
“Laurel? Laurel Harlow?”
The voice seemed familiar. She couldn’t quite place it, but her visitor sounded more surprised than dangerous. She pushed the door open wider, and the man’s face came into focus as he moved forward to examine her through the wire mesh.
She stepped back a pace. He responded by taking off his dark glasses and smiling, a slight baring of his teeth.
“It’s Jase Redlander, from old Bosque Bend High.”
Her heart did a quick rabbit hop. Jase Redlander, of course. His voice was deeper now, his shoulders broader, and he’d grown a good three inches in height, but it was definitely Jase.
Jase, whom she’d loved to distraction. Jase whom she thought she’d never see again. Jase, who sixteen years ago had been run out of town for having sex with his English teacher.
He folded his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. “Sorry to bother you, but I just drove in from Dallas and I’ve got sort of a…well, a family emergency that might end up in your lap.” He grimaced and glanced behind himself at the evening traffic moving along Austin Avenue. “Can we talk inside?”
The noise got bad this time of day, with everyone driving home from work and out to play. Back in the 1880s, when Great-Grampa Erasmus built Kinkaid House on a narrow dirt road that headed toward the state capital, he never could have imagined that it would one day be widened to four lanes, with a central turn lane being proposed for next year.
Laurel tried to keep her hand from shaking as she unlocked the screen.
“Of course. Come in.” Her voice got stuck somewhere in the back of her throat. “How nice to see you,” she managed to murmur.
But, standing aside as he entered, she saw that this was a different Jase Redlander than the teenager she’d fallen in love with sixteen years ago. The cut of his coal-black hair, the upscale Levi’s and European-style polo shirt, the set of his shoulders—everything about him signaled money and power and confidence. Obviously he’d wrestled with life and won. She, on the other hand, had lost big-time. Could he tell?
Not if she could help it.
She relocked both outside doors, led him down the wide central hall, and unfolded the doors into the drawing room.
Three generations of her mother’s people, Kinkaid women with money to burn, had managed to make the overlarge room, originally a double parlor, into a popular gathering place for Bosque Bend’s moneyed elite in times past. Victorian sofas, heavy chairs, and grotesquely carved little tables, all flanked by potted greenery, formed intimate conversation groups, while fragile undercurtains, confections of snowy lace, filtered the harsh Texas sun coming in the front windows into fantastic arabesques on the oriental carpet.
Jase had always loved this room. Years ago, he’d told her that if he ever died and sneaked into heaven, God’s front room would look like this.
She hoped he wouldn’t notice that heaven was somewhat the worse for wear. The upholstery was threadbare, the drapes faded, and the windows dingy. She glanced uneasily at the dark rectangles on the far wall, where the more saleable paintings had hung, then at the entrance to Daddy’s study, which looked positively naked since she’d sold the fig-leafed marble youths who’d guarded the doorway for as long as she could remember.