Chapter Twenty-One
Trethan
I couldn’t get over how right things felt between Vanessa and I later that week. We drove down a dusty country road, the sun slipping closer and closer to the horizon off to our right. Our fingers twisted together over the gearshift. It was something we used to do, back when we were teenagers, but now, it felt almost surreal to be back here, to be back to this. It was comfortably familiar, but also new and exciting, all at the same time.
I smiled over at Vanessa.
“What?” she asked, bursting out with laughter.
“What do you mean, ‘what?’” I asked.
“I mean, why do you keep looking over at me and just smiling?”
“Because you’re beautiful, and I’m lucky to be here,” I said simply.
Even though that shouldn’t have surprised her, she ducked her head, blushing cutely. I smirked again and turned us up the hill toward an overlook.
“I forgot how pretty it is up here,” Vanessa said as we got out of the car. She took a deep breath of the June air and shook her head. “You know, I don’t think I’ve been up here since the last time I was up here with you.”
“I haven’t either,” I admitted.
I draped an arm around her shoulders where we sat together on the hood of my truck. We watched the sky turn a lovely pink and orange.
“So how are things going with your gallery?” I finally got up the courage to ask. I’d been expecting her to tell me good news about it any day, but she still hadn’t said anything. I had to wonder if she still thought that I wouldn’t be interested in it, since she didn’t think I liked art. I hadn’t wanted to ask about it because I didn’t want her to think that I was pressuring her or something, but my curiosity got the better of me.
She sighed. “It’s going, anyway. I’ve made a little bit of progress.”
“Got the bank to give you a loan?” I asked. “Come on; I want the details.” She looked over at me, and I nudged her shoulder with mine and smiled encouragingly.
She smiled back and shrugged. “Well, I’ve found a group of artists who would be interested in forming a co-op, and that actually helps a lot toward funding the gallery. It means we don’t need to purchase the art or anything like that. And they’d be willing to chip in toward renting the space we need. But the problem is, we’re still about ten grand short of what we really need.
“I went back to the bank and told them about my progress. I figured they might be willing to loan me the rest of the money, now that it was a lot less than I originally asked for. They still insist that without some sort of collateral, this is too risky a venture for them.”
“Ouch,” I said, knowing that it must hurt her to hear her project called “risky” like that. “For what it’s worth, I still think it’s a great idea,” I said. “And, I’m sure that you’ll be able to turn a profit.”
Vanessa sighed again. “Thanks,” she said. “But unfortunately, I can’t help it turn a profit if I can’t even get the place going in the first place.” She paused. “The thing is, Dad said he’d do anything he can to help fund it, whether that means putting the ranch up as collateral with the bank, cashing in on some of his savings, or whatever else he can come up with. But I can’t let him do that. Like the bank said, it’s a risky investment. I don’t want to be too negative and go into it thinking that the place is going to flop. But at the same time, if the place really does flop, I would be devastated if I screwed up Dad’s ability to retire when he wants to or, even worse, if I lost us the ranch.”
“He knows the risks, though,” I reminded her, stroking my thumb across the back of her hand. “And, I’m sure his main goal in life, beyond a comfortable retirement or hanging on to the ranch, is to see you happy.”
“Even still,” she sighed. “I could never risk it.”
I hummed an acknowledgment, trying to think if there was any other way for her to come up with the money. “I wish I had some money so I could help you out,” I finally said.
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she protested. “Even if you did have the money.”
“You wouldn’t have to ask,” I said. “I’d be happy to help you out with it. I can tell how much the gallery means to you.” I was silent for a long moment. “The thing is, I love working on your Dad’s ranch, but it’s not exactly lucrative.”
She laughed. “Is he even paying you minimum wage?” she asked. “You’re not basically his slave, are you?”
“Nah, he pays me as well as he can,” I told her. “Maybe not as much as some of the other places around town, but I’d rather work for a little family ranch than some big corporate business of a place. I like the Lazy J. And, your Dad’s helped me through a lot.”
“I know,” Vanessa said softly. “But he still needs to pay you fairly.”
I snorted. “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I actually have some savings in the bank. But not to the tune of ten thousand, I’m afraid.”
“Me, neither,” she said. She shrugged. “I’ll figure something out.”
“I don’t doubt that you will,” I said encouragingly. “And, I’ll keep wracking my brain for a solution.”
“Thanks,” she said. Then, she looked sharply toward the sky. “Uh oh.”
“What?” I asked, but a moment later, I felt the answer. I grimaced. “Looks like the rain’s caught up to us.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Guess we should get headed back to town, huh?”
I hopped off the hood of the truck and held out a hand to help her down. We climbed back into the cab just as the real drops began to fall, big fat splashes that pattered heavily against the windshield. And this was only the beginning of it.
I reversed out of the parking lot and turned the car back toward town. Things only looked worse over in that direction. With the way that the sky had been darkening as the sun set, I hadn’t really noticed the severity of the weather coming our way, Now, the sky had an almost greenish look to it; that’s how threatening the storm was.
“You don’t think there will be tornados or anything like that, do you?” Vanessa asked nervously.
“Of course not,” I said reassuringly, reaching over to squeeze her leg and flashing her a quick smile, but as a bolt of lightning streaked from the sky all the way to the earth off to our left, I grimly reached over and turned on the radio, tuning it to the AM weather alerts channel.
All we could hear on the channel was static.
“That thing is supposed to always work,” Vanessa said, sounding panicky.
“I’m sure that means that there’s nothing serious to report,” I said, even though I was a bit worried myself. “Anyway, this old truck has seen worse. You know that.”
“I know,” she said, but she reached for my hand, squeezing it tightly enough that I could feel my bones grinding together. “You know that I hate storms like this, though.”
“I know,” I said. “But we’re going to be fine. I promise.”
“We’re so far from town, though!” Vanessa rapidly sounded more worried as I kicked the windshield wipers up to top speed.
“We’ll be fine,” I said again, not having the heart to tell her that her panicking was only making me more stressed, and I was the one driving the car. To be fair, driving off the road wouldn’t be too bad: the most I might hit would be a fence. And I drove slowly enough that it likely wouldn’t even do that much damage to the truck. But at the same time, I knew that if we went off the road, Vanessa would go into full panic mode, and I didn’t want that to happen.
I peered through the rain, trying to look for any markers that would show we were still going in the right direction. I hoped that I would not lose control and hydroplane. “We’ve got to be almost to the middle of it now,” I muttered under my breath, even though it was more of a prayer than anything else. For all I knew, this thing could be a few miles across, and I had no idea how long it would take to cross a few miles, when we were crawling along like this.
Suddenly, the radio came back on, interrupted periodically by fits of static. “...urged not to drive anywhere... danger of hydroplaning is very... to pull over and wait for the storm to-”
I reached over and clicked the thing off, glancing at Vanessa’s pale face. “I’m sure it’s fine,” I told her, wishing I could sound more confident. “I’ve driven in stuff like this before.” But the visibility got worse as the sky darkened to true black.
I frowned and then slowly pulled over toward the guardrail at the edge of the road, flicking on the hazard lights. “Maybe we should wait here until it passes,” I said. It wasn’t really a question at that point – there was no way I could keep driving. Where I’d had difficulty seeing out in front of us before, now I couldn’t see much of anything out there.
“How long do you think it’ll take?” Vanessa asked. “And what if someone comes up behind us?”
“The hazard lights are on,” I said, deciding to answer the second question first, since that’s the one that I had a concrete answer to. “Someone has a better chance seeing those than seeing the road, even in a storm like this. We’re the safest we could be.”
“But how long do you think the storm will last?” she asked quietly.
I paused, but I didn’t want to throw out something like “no idea.” I knew that would only make her worry more. “Might be twenty minutes, might be an hour,” I said finally. “It’s too dark to tell which direction it’s moving or how quickly.” I was tempted to pull out my phone and try to look it up, but if it was going to take a while to clear, I didn’t want to have to tell her that.
“Okay,” was Vanessa’s only response.