The House Near the River Read online

Angie was disturbed to see that her grandmother showed the strain of the past weeks and guessed that having a missing granddaughter had not contributed to her good health. She took her turn at being hugged and patted and felt almost that she was back home again. The inward ache at the absence of her other family, so hopelessly lost in the past was stilled for a moment.

  This was where she belonged, where she was meant to be.

  They hated to break off the visit with Grandma, but finally they went on to the bed and breakfast that had been home and business to their family since they’d had to rebuild their lives after the loss of David. It was late in the day and the child was visibly tired. He sat huddled in his father’s lap while Angie drove them home, thinking that it was odd that neither her father or her grandmother had asked her many questions.

  They seemed to think that getting David back was answer enough for everything, but she couldn’t understand how they could be so lacking in curiosity.

  The Prairie House, the bed and breakfast her family owned and operated, had once been a country school house. Made of red brick by the WPA during the 30s, it had been large enough to house a good-sized populace of youngsters through eighth grade and been closed down in the late 80s when the children were bused into the nearby town of Van Alstyne for school.

  The building had been basically sound, but very shabby when her parents bought it. Mom had still been lackluster, all her fire and energy gone, but Dad had at least pretended to enthusiasm as they refurbished the building for commercial purposes and rebuilt their own lives.

  “It’ll be like a visit to the farm for city families,” Dad had told her. Accordingly when the building was mostly finished, he’d purchased a Jersey cow, two goats and a flock of hens and advertised the place as the Prairie House, a visit back in time. At first business had been slow, but had built gradually and these days it was rare not to have fairly regular guests, most of them with small children particularly interested in the farm animals and the old equipment Clarence had acquired in an attempt to portray farming the way it had been when his grandfather was a boy.

  When Mom died, Angie had feared that her father would soon follow. She’d given up her job in Dallas and moved back out to help with the running of the bed and breakfast. To her surprise she hadn’t much missed her featureless cubicle among a batch of systems engineers, though she had felt some loss of the excellent salary that was hardly replaced by her income from the bed and breakfast. She liked being her own boss and planning her own days.

  Now she was eager to be back home again and was sure that Ivy and Edie, two sisters who assisted them, would be as glad to be relieved of some of their duties.

  “This is home now, David,” Dad said.

  The little boy blinked sleepily. “Mommy here?” he asked.

  He still continued to asked for his mother though Clarence had told him that Mommy was in Heaven and wouldn’t come back. Angie supposed that idea was too much to take in for a little boy who had lost so much. Sometimes he asked for Clemmie or one of the children and when he suffered some small hurt, he begged for Matthew as though he was the only one who could provide safety and healing.

  Each experience was heart-breaking to Clarence who daily mourned the fact that his wife was not there to share his delight at David’s return, and for Angie, who had not only lost her mother, but those who were hopelessly anchored in a past she could not reach. With each mile they’d driven from western Oklahoma she was more distant from Matthew and his family.

  They drove along a neatly graveled driveway planted with lilac bushes, now winter bare as were all of the trees except the pines and cedars, and Angie was reminded of that other drive in Oklahoma through rutted dirt that led to the house where Matthew lived with his sister’s family and felt a pang of homesickness.

  She was grateful when the two helpers told them dinner was ready and that for once there were no guests. They ate chicken and dumplings, fresh garden peas, and chocolate pudding before leaving Ivy and Edie to the dishes. Dad gave the two women the next few days off as a reward for all their help, then took David off for his bath.

  Angie was left to go to her own small apartment, a bedroom, small living room and bath. She sighed, telling herself now was the time to relax and feel normal. She had resolutely ignored the cell phone that had been restored to her, fully charged, once she’d reached her cousin’s house, not wanting to deal with messages or calls from either officials or a curious press. Now she turned it on, ready to receive her life back again.

  She messaged several women friends that she was safely back home and then called Jason and felt a rush of familiarity as his voice sounded, “the long lost is returned.”

  She laughed only a little out of politeness. “It’s me, Jason. I’m back home.”

  “Can’t wait to see you. I’ll come right out.”

  She was so tired, she would have stopped him, but she heard the click of a completed call and knew it was already too late. Anyway it would take him a while to get here, traveling out busy Highway 75 from Richardson, the large suburb just to the north of Dallas.

  When they’d first moved out here, the city just north of Richardson had been the jump off to lower population centers, small towns that still had a feeling for the past lay between them and the sprawling city to the south, but in the intervening years they’d all turned into cities and the countryside into developments or expensive homesteads. No longer true farm country, a spread of sixteen acres like theirs was increasingly almost too valuable to hold on to, and they were always receiving offers from builders.

  Even the closest town, little Van Alstyne where she’d attended school, was no longer quite so small now that developments were springing up around its edges.

  All of this made the north-south highway between Dallas and the Oklahoma border a very busy strip of roadway. Even on their acreage they heard the roar of passing trucks.

  She bathed and changed into familiar jeans and a deep blue pullover, then joined her father in the kitchen where he was putting together a quick supper of scrambled eggs and toast with hot chocolate. David, already dressed in his pajamas, sat yawning at the table. “Shirley Kay,” he said and began to cry.

  Clarence and Angie exchanged looks. “His closest playmate,” she explained. “I’m sure he’s confused and missing faces that had become familiar.”

  “I know who Shirley Kay is,” Dad responded. “She is my aunt and she lives in Michigan and she prefers to be called Kay these days.”

  Angie stared at him in bewilderment. “Aunt Kay. I’ve heard of her, but don’t remember ever seeing her.”

  “She doesn’t travel. Her health is bad these days.”

  Little Shirley Kay. Funny, dad wasn’t asking the questions she’d expected. He seemed to be taking this in stride in an amazing way.

  “Her name was Harper. She’s not a Ward.”

  “Mother was a Harper. She married a Ward.”

  And so the Wards took over what had been the Harper farm. She was afraid to ask how that had happened. She might learn things she’d rather not know.

  Then the rest of it filled in. Grandma! Grandma had to be one of them. “But no one was named Rose.”

  “The girls all chose to use different parts of their names as they grew older.”

  Comforted by marshmallows on his hot chocolate, David began to eat.

  “Anna?”

  “She was Anna Fay. She became Fay. She died before you came to us.”

  Little Anna. Angie felt a sharp pang of loss at news of her death.

  “Then Grandma is Sharon, but I never heard her called anything but Rose.”

  “Rose Sharon.” He smiled. “Her mother picked it out from the Bible. Rose of Sharon.”

  “She was seven. She might have remembered me.”

  “She always said . . .” He stopped suddenly as though wondering if whatever he’d been
about to say was wise. “You’ll have to talk to her. She’s been having a series of small strokes, her doctor said. Her memory isn’t what it once was.”

  “What has she told you, Dad?”

  He met her eyes with his clear gaze. “Practically nothing, Angie. Frankly I dismissed what she said as the ramblings of an aging woman. Now . . .” He looked at David, his gaze troubled. “Now I’d believe anything you chose to tell me.”

  She didn’t ask about Matthew. She was afraid of what she’d learn.

  “Angie, we have David back. All we can do now is go on and feel blessed. I’m sure that somewhere your mother knows he’s safe and that gives me considerable comfort. My job now is to look after and enjoy my two children.”

  Angie studied him solemnly. “I’m just not sure where I fit in, Dad.”

  Before he could answer, a loud knock sounded at the kitchen door and Jason came in without waiting to be asked, grabbing her up in his arms and whirling her round and round. “You’re back. I’m so glad you’re back,” he shouted.

  David was a little alarmed by the presence of a stranger so after greeting Jason, Clarence carried him of to bed. Angie supposed he thought as well that she and Jason deserved privacy for their reunion.

  Angie tried to dismiss a tall lean figure with a weathered face from her mind as she greeted Jason. Five years younger than the other man, he ran and biked to keep in good condition, and looked to have a bright future as an attorney. He and Angie had met two years ago at the home of mutual friends and started dating casually about a year ago.

  One of Angie’s reasons for the weekend in Oklahoma was to give serious thought to his proposal that they move in together.

  Like a good lawyer, he started from a defensive position. “Now Angie, I know you’re hacked because I wasn’t in Oklahoma with your dad looking for you, but I had this big case.”

  Oddly, she hadn’t even thought about his absence. “It’s fine, Jason,” she said, “I know how demanding your work is.”

  Matthew wouldn’t have been able to stay away, not if he thought she was in danger. And his work was just as important as Jason’s, the lives of his family and the animals that depended on him were his responsibility.

  Guiltily, she told herself this wasn’t fair. She had no right to compare the two men, to place them side by side in her mind.

  This was where she belonged and only a few weeks ago she had been seriously considering some kind of living arrangement that included Jason. She had to get back to the normalcy that had existed then. But then he tried to kiss her and instinctively she pulled away, dodging his touch.

  “Angie,” he said mournfully. “Didn’t you miss me, baby?”

  The truth was she’d hardly thought of him. She couldn’t admit that. Her women friends all thought she was so lucky to have Jason. He was good looking with his light brown hair and blue eyes, his tall, strongly built frame, and he was successful and ambitious. He even had a sexy cleft in his chin and a most engaging smile.

  Matthew’s hair was darker and beginning to recede ever so slightly. He was strong from working hard and he probably looked to a future which only included more back-breaking work. He didn’t smile a lot and his chin, though a strong one, was just a chin.

  Oops! There she went again, making comparisons.

  “Of course I missed you, Jason,” she lied.

  He led the way out into the entrance hall and on into the public living room. With no guests in the house, they had that large, comfortable room to themselves. He sank down on a cushiony sofa, patting the seat at his side as an invitation to her.

  A little reluctantly, she joined him. She couldn’t help wondering why she’d called him. She was too tired tonight to deal with this. Tomorrow would have been better. She would have been more in her right mind.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The cotton he’d been planting when she’d left now stood several inches above the ground and the days were hot and dry, turning toward summer. At first he’d nearly gone crazy going over and over again those seconds when he’d seen first David, then Ange vanishing before his eyes.

  They were simply there and then not there. He knew it was no good searching, though that was what he was doing when Clemmie found him and he managed to finally get it said. “They’re gone. David and Ange. They’re gone.”

  It hadn’t stopped there. She’d asked where they’d gone and why. Who had taken them away that they’d departed so suddenly. She’d only seen them moments before.

  Tobe asked questions too. And the neighbors. And other policemen, he didn’t bother to find out who they were or where they came from.

  By then he was shaking again like when he’d first come home. He couldn’t look people in the eyes, but stared off somewhere to the right of their faces while he fumbled with their questions. He heard Tobe telling Clemmie he needed to be sent away somewhere and should have been pleased at her adamant refusal.

  Now along with moments where his buddies burned in a fiery tank, he relived the moment when David stepped away and Ange tumbled after him. He couldn’t sleep, didn’t bother to eat, but then he realized he wasn’t the only one who mattered. Clemmie and the kids, they were dependent on the cotton crop to get them through the next year with any degree of comfort.

  The next morning he was back on the tractor when the sun came up and he did that every day until dark when he went in to help with the milking and feeding. He ate enough, the food tasteless as dust in his mouth, to allow his body to keep working and slept when he was so exhausted he could do nothing else.

  Now the worst of the work was laid by. In a few weeks they’d start hoeing weeds out of the cotton, but Clemmie and the kids could manage that. Besides last night he’d come up in the darkness of the hallway to hear Tobe and Clemmie talking in the living room at the front of the house, a room rarely used except for rare occasions of formal entertaining.

  He heard Tobe ask her to marry him and his sister answering softly that she couldn’t, not right now with the way things were.

  So if he left, Clemmie and the kids would have Tobe to look after the place. He and the sheriff had never been exactly best buddies, but he figured he was a good old boy, somebody Clemmie could depend on. He reckoned even his late brother-in-law would think she deserved a better life than looking after a crazy brother.

  The Nash was the only thing that was his own. He’d leave his share of the farm, its animals and equipment to his sister and hope that someday his nephew might take over in the family tradition left them by pioneer grandparents and parents.

  The next evening after everyone was in bed, he packed his few belongings in the trunk of the car, took the couple of hundred dollars in cash he’d been saving for what he’d hoped would be his marriage to Ange, and leaving a note and all the rest of the money he had for Clemmie, he got in the car as quietly as possible, glided down the driveway and took off with no idea where he was going.

  By dawn he was in Oklahoma City and, forced to choose between south and north, turned south and drove through Norman and Noble, then Pauls Valley and Ardmore. He stopped in the Arbuckle Mountains to camp for a couple of days under the shade of the trees that populated this part of the state. He bought bologna, cheese and bread and when that ran out, found a job with a farmer who needed some seasonal help.

  A month later, no longer shaking or visibly ill, he said goodbye to the farm family and headed into Texas. He had managed to lock the pain inside him so that on the outside at least he was the strong, stoic man he chose to be.

  He picked up odd jobs enough to buy food and gas until he reached rich farm country where the cotton was considerably further along than back at home because of the longer growing season. He got plenty of work hoeing cotton, slept in his car and lived like a hobo.

  This country was different from home. Instead of small farms worked by the owners, properties were larger and labor was hired a
nd fortunes made by the extensive production. The nearest town had three cotton gins and two streets of elegant looking homes built in the Victorian style by the previous generation.

  One of the farmers for whom he hoed cotton saw that he was a hard worker, learned he was a vet, and managed to find out something of his background as a cotton farmer. With some indifference, Matthew agreed to take on a job as foreman, overseeing the work of others. With the job came a small cottage and better money. He found he enjoyed cleaning up, getting his hair cut and buying new work clothes.

  Almost out of habit he started attending the little neighborhood church on Sunday mornings and to begin to know people well enough that when he went into town on business for the farm to be recognized and called by name.

  He wondered if it was time to move on again, but thinking about that was too much effort. The cure for what ailed him, he had learned, was hard work and lots of it.

  He remembered that sometime or other Ange had mentioned that she lived in north Texas so he felt closer to her here in the same part of the state though separated by years.

  He wrote to his sister, telling her he was okay and what he was doing. He made it sound as though he was all right, though he knew she would guess differently.

  She wrote back. She and Tobe had married a few days after he left. With his help she was managing the farm. The kids were fine, but missed him. She wanted him to come home.

  One place was as good as another to Matthew, but the reason he didn’t do as Clemmie asked was because he figured his family was better off without him. The kids didn’t need a sour old uncle around the house. They needed to look to the future with a hope he could no longer feel.

  By fall when the first frost came and the cotton was ready for harvest, his boss was so pleased that he was given a substantial bonus, which he put in an account at the bank since he had no need to buy anything extra.

  He tried not to think of Ange or to remember the war years and was mostly successful. He liked to think he was growing a thick crust around his own feelings. The only way he could keep going was to feel as little as possible.