Chapter Twelve
So, she’d messed things up.
Which, she’d been bound to do.
She was, after all, a Truehart. When it came to things like love, she was an absolute expert at ruining them.
She’d known that her whole life. Why it was suddenly pissing her off, she couldn’t say.
Wouldn’t say?
Yeah. That was more the case, because she actually did know why she was pissed off about it.
She’d spent the past week cleaning house, chauffeuring kids, going to teacher meetings, and cooking meals. Nothing different than the prior week, except that Sullivan had been making himself scarce. Instead of eating with the family, he took a plate to his room, claiming research paper deadlines or bookkeeping for the farm.
Which, by the way, was beginning to shape up.
Kane had made good on his promise, sending out dozens of volunteers to get the land ready for planting season. Clementine had been good to her word, too. She knew how to get things done. Even the orchard was being renewed, the trees trimmed back, the dead ones removed.
Pleasant Valley Organic Farm was running like a well-oiled machine, everyone doing his or her part. All of them working together to keep things going until Sunday recovered enough to take over. She’d been moved to a rehab facility Monday. Rumer and the kids had visited her twice since then. She always seemed a little confused and a little sad, her speech slightly slurred, her movements sluggish. She had her right arm in a brace and braces on both legs, but she’d managed to take a few steps to show the kids that she could.
As far as recoveries went, hers was going about as well as could be expected. Rumer told the kids that all the time. She explained things like head injuries and brain damage and memory dysfunction, but she hadn’t out and out told them that Sunday remembered very little of their lives together.
She suspected they knew.
They were always quiet when they visited and silent after, but Rumer and Sullivan had agreed to let things play out for a while longer. There’d been some improvements in Sunday’s memory, and the doctors were hopeful for more.
Time was what was needed, and she and Sullivan had agreed to wait a little longer before they explained the truth to the kids.
They’d agreed and then they’d moved on. Sullivan doing his thing. Rumer doing hers. No more great minds thinking alike. No more co-parenting. She was the housekeeper doing her job, and he was the uncle doing his best for his brother’s kids.
She was supposed to be happy about that.
He’d obviously listened to what she’d said about not wanting to be hurt. He’d obviously decided to respect her boundaries.
And that was what she was pissed about.
Not at him.
At herself for being too scared to tell him the truth—she didn’t want the boundaries, she didn’t want the distance. She wanted him.
“You really need to stop being such a chicken,” she muttered, opening her closet and pulling out the soft sweater dress she’d borrowed from Minnie. Tonight was the music festival. Flynn and Porter had flown back for the night just to hear Heavenly sing. The choir was scheduled to perform at seven. Heavenly would perform at eight. She had to be at the school at five, and the rest of the family was dropping her off and then going to dinner.
The family.
Which Rumer was not.
She’d helped the crew get ready—clean clothes, brushed hair, shiny shoes, lectures on respectful behavior.
The whole nine yards.
She’d helped Heavenly into the seventies prom dress she’d chosen from Minnie’s collection. Pale lavender eyelet with Swiss dot sleeves and a high neckline, it worked perfectly with her wispy pixie haircut and gamine features. Her choir robe had been pressed and hung, and Rumer had handed it to Sullivan as the entire clan walked outside. He’d looked as nervous as Heavenly. Maybe a little more, his tie crooked, his hair mussed.
She’d wanted to straighten the one and smooth the other. She’d wanted to stand on her tiptoes and kiss his lips, and tell him that everything was going to be just fine.
But...
He was respecting her boundaries, and so she’d just stood at the door and waved and promised that she’d be there before the choir sang.
“Dummy,” she growled, wrestling herself into the dress, smoothing it down over her hips, and eyeing herself in the mirror above the dresser.
Good enough.
That was her verdict, and since she didn’t need to be any better than that, she figured she was ready to go. She grabbed a blazer from the closet, shrugging into it, and snagging her purse from the hook. It was heavy with books and toys and crayons; heavy with the feel of kids and family and love. She’d miss that when this gig was over.
She walked downstairs, moving through the empty house, listening to the creak of old wood and the settling of century-old beams. Did Sunday remember any of this? Did she miss it? Or had home become the place she was? Had the hospital and staff, nurses and doctors become her place of refuge?
One way or another, it would be a difficult adjustment when she returned. The kids would struggle. She’d struggle.
And, Rumer would be in Seattle, back at work, back in her neat and orderly apartment with no one knocking on her door before dawn or screaming in the middle of the night.
“God, I’m going to miss that,” she said as she stepped outside.
“Miss what?” a woman responded, and Rumer nearly jumped out of her skin.
She whirled around, saw that Clementine was sitting on the old porch swing, legs crossed and hidden by a long cotton skirt, her hair pulled back into a perfect braid.
“Holy cow, Clementine! You nearly scared the tar out of me!”
“Sorry about that. If it makes you feel any better, you scared me, too. I thought everyone had gone to the festival.”
“Then, why are you sitting on the porch?”
“I like the view, and Sunday never minded.” She smiled, but there was something dark in her eyes, something sad and secretive. “Are you heading to the school?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask why you didn’t just go with the rest of the family?”
“I’m not family.”
She snorted.
“I’m not.”
“Tell that to the kids. See what they have to say about it.”
“They know that I’m working for their uncles.”
“What they know and what they feel are two different things, Rumer. Love happens quickly for children.”
“I know.”
“Then, don’t plan on walking away with your heart free and your soul unattached.”
“Who says I was?”
“No one. I’m just making a statement. I’ve always liked Sunday and the kids. I want what’s best for them.”
“Sunday and the kids? Not Matt?”
“I liked Matt, too, but, then, everyone did.”
“I get the feeling there’s a story in that.”
“Maybe, but it’s not mine to tell.” She smoothed her hair and glanced at her watch. “What time does the festival start?”
“About an hour from now, but Heavenly’s group isn’t performing until seven.”
“It’s only five-thirty. You’re leaving early.”
“I want to get a good seat.” She also wanted to check on Heavenly. The teen had been quieter than usual the past few days. Rumer had chalked it up to nerves about the upcoming performance, but Heavenly had refused to talk about it.
She’d also refused to talk about her mother, her siblings, her feelings about any of them.
“Do you mind if I come along?” Clementine asked.
Surprised, Rumer met her eyes. “Of course I don’t. I’m in my grandmother’s pickup, though. It’s not all that comfortable.”
“I guarantee you I’ve ridden in worse.” Clementine followed her down the porch stairs and across the yard, her long skirt swooshing through the grass, her boots clomping on the gravel drive. Combat boots and cotton skirts, and a butter-yellow sweater that fell nearly to her knees. On anyone else, the look would have been more street person than haute couture, but on Clementine it worked.
“Any news about when Sunday will be returning?” she asked as Rumer unlocked the truck.
“No. She’s in rehab until she regains more function. Right now, she needs help with everything.”
“That’s a shame, and I’m sure very frustrating for her.”
“I’m sure. She’s not saying much, though.”
“Does she know that Matt’s gone?”
“Sullivan and his brothers told her last weekend. Sullivan said she took it pretty well.” He’d also said that she’d cried. No loud, gasping sobs, silent tears that had rolled down her cheeks, soaked the collar of her T-shirt, and broken his heart.
He hadn’t said the part about the broken heart.
She’d seen it in his eyes and heard it in his voice, and if she hadn’t already drawn her line in the sand, if he hadn’t proven that he wouldn’t step over it without an invitation, she’d have massaged the tension from his shoulders, whispered in his ear that things were going to be okay.
“It’s a sad situation any way you look at it.” Clementine sighed, tucking her skirt a little tighter around her legs. “Hopefully, me going to this shindig isn’t going to cause problems. It suddenly occurred to me that it might.”
“Why would it?”
“Just a little trouble I got into. Or, maybe, it would be more accurate to say, trouble I didn’t report to the police.”
“That’s vague.”
“It’s old news, Rumer. The young couple that were living in the rancher with me and my . . . ex abandoned their newborn. She had a heart condition, and her mother wanted to get her medical attention. The father thought God would heal her. I tried to convince them both that the hospital was the only place for a heart baby. The next thing I knew, the baby was found by a shop owner in Benevolence, and all hell had broken loose.”
“How does that have anything to do with you?” Rumer pulled onto the road, the old truck bouncing along like it had the very first day she’d arrived at the farm.
“I knew who’d abandoned the baby. I didn’t go to the police.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Exactly. The people in Benevolence didn’t trust me to begin with. Now, they really don’t, but I know how to bring the farm back from the brink. I’m going to do it before I leave again.”
“Leave and go where?”
“Good question. Pleasant Valley Farm was supposed to be my new beginning. I’m going to have to come up with another one. Eventually.”
Rumer planned to ask what she meant, but her cell phone rang, and she pulled it out of her pocket, answering without glancing at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“I need you to come get me,” someone sobbed, the words so garbled, she could barely understand them.
“Okay. How about you tell me who you are and where you are, so I can do that?”
“It’s Heavenly.”
Her stomach dropped, her mind racing through a million possibilities, none of them good. “What’s going on?”
“I just need you to come,” the girl cried.
“I’m almost at the school. Tell me what part of the building you’re in. I’ll be there in two shakes of a stick.”
“I’m not at the school.” She was still crying, her voice muffled by what sounded like wind or traffic.
“Then, where the heck are you?!” she nearly shouted, squealing into the school parking lot and braking hard.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean—?” She stopped herself. Just stopped. Made herself take a breath and focus. Heavenly wasn’t at the school. Which was bad. She was crying. That wasn’t good, either. But, she was obviously alive and okay enough to make a phone call.
“Okay,” she said more calmly. “Where do you think you are?”
“I don’t know!” Heavenly wailed, sobbing wildly into the phone.
Clementine touched Rumer’s arm, met her eyes. “What’s going on?” she mouthed.
“Call Sullivan,” she replied, and Heavenly sobbed even more loudly.
“Don’t call him! He’ll freak,” she gasped.
“I’m freaking! You’re supposed to be in the school. With your choir director. Getting ready to sing. How did you end up lost?” she asked as Clementine jumped out of the truck and made the call.
“I was trying to get to Mom.” She sniffed, the sobs seeming to die down. Maybe just talking to someone she trusted was calming her fear. Whatever the case, Rumer was going to take advantage of it, because the sun was already going down, the temperature was dropping, and Heavenly was wandering around somewhere in a cotton eyelet dress and platform heels.
“Where does your mom live?” she asked. “And how did you plan to get to her?”
“Not my birth mom. Sunday. I . . . wanted to talk to her before I sang. I wanted her to hear the song, because she’s the only person I really ever sing for, and she’s the only one who can tell me if my voice sounds good.”
She was crying again, and, God help her! Rumer wanted to cry, too.
“Honey, listen to me,” she said instead. “We’ll work all that out after we figure out where the heck you are. Did you try to walk from the school?”
Heavenly hesitated, and Rumer went cold with fear. “Heavenly! Did you walk or did you get a ride with someone?”
“A guy I know from choir offered to give me a ride, but then I didn’t know how to get to the rehab facility, and he brought me to the hospital instead.”
“You’re in middle school. Which guy in your choir has a license?”
“Dominque Samuel’s brother, Tanner, does. I know him because he works the sound system for performances.”
“Oh. My. Gosh. Heavenly, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I didn’t want to sing in the damn choir without Sunday hearing the song,” she said, sniffing back more tears.
“Okay. That’s fine,” she said, not wanting to upset the teen more than she already was. They both needed to be clear-headed and focused. “We’ll talk about your choices later. Right now, just please tell me that you’re still at the hospital.”
“I already told you that I don’t know where I am. I asked for directions to the rehab place, and a lady at the hospital told me it was only a couple of miles away, so I thought I could walk, but I guess I got turned around, and I can’t even find the hospital anymore.”
“Do you see any street signs?”
“Not on this street, but I saw one a minute ago. You want me to walk back and look for it?”
“Yes, but stay on the phone while you do it.” She leaned across the seat and motioned for Clementine to move closer. “Can you go find the choir director for the middle school? Her name is April Myers. Tell her there’s been a mix-up and Heavenly is on her way.”
“You’re asking me to be the bearer of bad news?” she responded.
“Would you rather go hunt down a distraught teenager?”
“Not in a million years. I’ll find the director. You find the kid.” She raced off, cotton skirt billowing as she sprinted toward the door.
Rumer yanked the door closed, put the truck into gear, would have pulled out of the parking lot, but she heard a car horn, then saw the van rolling toward her.
The back door slid open, and she caught a glimpse of Twila’s worried face and Moisey’s excited one before Sullivan hopped out and closed it again.
He jumped into the truck, his muscles taut, his expression grim as he eyed the phone. “Is that her?”
“Yes.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“She’s a little worried about you freaking out.”
“She should be,” he muttered as she passed him the phone.
“Heavenly? It’s Sullivan. We’re on the way. Stay where you are until we get there. Yeah. I do know where you are. I’ve got an app to track you using your phone.” He paused. “You’re darn right I invaded your privacy. I worry about you. I want you safe. I don’t ever not want to be able to find you. But, don’t get your britches in a bunch about it, because I won’t have any need to track you after tonight. Your butt is going to be grounded from now until you turn fifty!”
He didn’t return the phone.
Which was fine. Rumer was driving, going a little too fast, watching the sun dip lower in the sky, worrying as it disappeared below the Spokane skyline.
“Yeah. I’m still here,” Sullivan said, breaking the silence, “and you’re still there, and the sun is about to go down. Maybe you should have thought this through a little more before you went running off on a fool’s errand.” He paused, apparently listening to Heavenly’s side of the story.
“That’s a great excuse, kid. Really great. Except for one thing, you could have told me you wanted to see her. You could have explained everything before you had some bonehead teenager drive you into the city. I’d have let you skip school. We could have done it this morning, had Starbucks and one of those cheese pastries you like.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose, and God! His hands were shaking.
Shaking!
“She’s just a kid, Sullivan. She made a mistake. Getting angry about it—”
“This,” he said through gritted teeth, “is not anger. This is godawful, gut-wrenching, holy-freaking terror. She’s thirteen! Alone on the street looking like a fashion icon from the seventies. Do you know how many perverts are out there?”
“One is too many.”
“Exactly!” he nearly shouted. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.”
“You don’t have to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I damn near took your head off for making a comment.” He still had her phone, and he pulled his out, too.
“We’re ten minutes away, Heavenly. So help me, if you move from that spot, every hair on my head will turn white, and you’ll be the one I blame for it.”
Heavenly must have been talking, because he fell silent.
His hands were still trembling, and she lifted the one closest to her, crossing that line, the one she’d drawn, the one that was a clear demarcation of the roles they should play.
And, it didn’t feel wrong.
It felt natural and right and good.
“She’s going to be okay,” she said, and he nodded, his hand tightening on hers as she exited the freeway and entered the city limits.
* * *
She was standing on the street corner, just where the GPS tracking app indicated she would be. Lavender dress glowing in the dusky light. Pale arms and upper chest visible through the Swiss dot mesh that covered them. Long neck and narrow shoulders making her look delicate and vulnerable and so young his heart hurt looking at her.
He should have made her wear a coat. He should have insisted on boots instead of the open-toed platforms she was wearing. He should have done a dozen things he hadn’t. Including and not limited to handcuffing her to her choir director when he’d dropped her off at the school.
He was out of the truck almost before Rumer stopped it, a dozen words on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t say any of them, because she was moving toward him, the dress hiked up around her scrawny calves, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Sullivan.”
“Me too,” he said. Just that, because he wasn’t sure what else he could say without sounding harsh and angry.
“I guess I won’t be able to sing tonight,” she murmured as she climbed into the center of the bucket seat, moved her skirt so that he could climb in next to her.
“There’s still time to make it there,” Rumer said, already pulling away from the curb.
Heavenly didn’t respond, and he thought there was more to the story about how she’d ended up in Spokane than what she’d been saying, more than some desperate need to see her mother.
“Do you not want to sing?” he guessed.
She shrugged.
“How about words?” he suggested. “They’re usually a lot more helpful than a shrug.”
“I’m . . . scared,” she whispered, playing with one of the charms that hung from the bracelet he’d given her.
“To sing in front of so many people?”
“To fail. To show everyone that they’re right, and I’m just a stupid loser who can’t do anything well.”
“First of all,” he said. “You’re not stupid or a loser—”
“I guess you forgot the reason why we’re sitting in this truck,” she replied, and he smiled. Just a little. Just a hint, because he couldn’t help being amused by that.
“What you did was stupid. That doesn’t make you stupid. So, let’s move on to something else. Like being afraid to fail. You can’t ever succeed if you’re not willing to do that.”
“That’s what Sunday always said.”
“Sunday was right.”
“Sunday isn’t getting up in front of judges and singing some dumb song for them. I am.”
“The song is haunting and beautiful,” he responded, because he’d listened to her sing it the night she’d agreed to participate in the festival. Mrs. Myers had asked if he could drive her to the church and let her practice there. He’d agreed. He’d also agreed—at Heavenly’s insistence—to stay outside the sanctuary.
He hadn’t agreed not to listen.
He’d stood in the vestibule for an hour while she’d practiced a Scottish folk song. Not in English. No. She’d sung it in Gaelic, her voice pure and as haunting as the melody.
It still gave him goose bumps to think about.
“You haven’t heard it,” she responded. “You’ll probably hate it.”
“I heard it when Mrs. Myers coached you.”
“You told me you wouldn’t listen,” she grumbled.
“I said I wouldn’t sit in the sanctuary when you practiced. I didn’t. I stood in the vestibule for an hour straight wondering how a thirteen-year-old kid could sing a song with that much heart in it.”
“Sunday taught it to me. Her mother taught it to her. It’s about a maiden who sings under the trees while she waits for her love to come home from the sea,” she said wistfully. “Even Mrs. Myers doesn’t know if I’m singing all the lyrics right. Only Sunday does, and I wanted to be sure I had it right before I sang tonight.”
“It’s too late to check in with her now. Next time, tell me what you need ahead of time. I’ll help you get it if I can, okay?”
“Okay,” she responded, leaning her head back against the seat. “I wish she could be there, though. I only picked the song because she loves it. Otherwise, I’d have sung Adele. Everyone knows her lyrics.”
“Adele’s got nothing on you, kid,” he said, and meant it.
“No one can top Adele, and I’m not trying to. I just don’t want the kids to laugh at me because I’m singing some weird song in another language.”
“Do you think it’s weird?” Rumer asked.
“Well . . . no, but—”
“Then own it the way you own that dress and that bracelet and that awesome haircut.”
“Tess loves my hair. She’s trying to get her mother to give her the same cut.” She touched short strands, and Sullivan pictured her in a few years, a little more confident, a lot more grown up.
He didn’t think he’d want to be all the way in Portland when she went from being a gawky young teen to a beautiful young woman. No, he thought he’d rather be close to the farm with a locker full of shotguns and a list of questions to ask any guy who happened to show any interest in her.
“You and Tess have been talking?” Rumer asked, obviously not at all concerned about the fact that Heavenly was going to be dating one day.
“We ate lunch together this week. I thought she was a snob, because she’s one of those pretty girls that always acts perfect, but she’s really nice. I was going to ask if she could spend the night next Friday, but I guess I messed that up.”
“I never said you couldn’t have someone over. I just said you were grounded,” Sullivan reminded her. “So, I might be willing to let your friend stay over.”
“Really?” Heavenly asked excitedly.
“Yeah. You just have to agree to one thing.”
“I won’t be mean to the dweebs,” she vowed.
“Not that.”
“I’ll clean the whole house so Rumer doesn’t have extra work to do.”
“Not that, either.”
“Well, it’s not like I smoke or do drugs or any of that crap. What else is there?”
“No boys. Ever,” he responded.
Her eyes widened, and her lips quirked, and then she was giggling, the charms on the bracelet jingling as she threw her arm around his shoulder and hugged him.
Hugged him!
“I guess I won’t be having her over then,” she said, and Rumer joined her laughter, the two of them sniggering nearly all the way to the school.
They made it just in time for Heavenly to throw on her robe and march out with the choir. As far as Sullivan could tell, the performance was flawless. An hour later, Heavenly walked out onstage again. This time, in her lavender dress, her hair feathering around her face and nape. She looked cool as a cucumber.
Sullivan was a nervous wreck.
He sat in the audience, Oya in his lap, Maddox leaning against his arm, his mouth so dry, he thought he could gulp a bottle of water and still feel parched.
The music began, the intro played on an Irish tin whistle, the notes drifting into the soft rumble of voices in the audience, of papers and cloth rustling as people looked at programs or shifted in their seats.
Sullivan didn’t move. His palms were sweating, damn it. As if he were the one standing up on the stage waiting to sing the first note.
Rumer leaned toward him, her lips tickling his ear.
“She’s going to be fine,” she whispered.
“What if she forgets the words?” he whispered back. “Or gets so scared, she can’t sing? What’s that going to do to her? I should have told Mrs. Myers she couldn’t do it. I should have—”
Heavenly began singing, the first stanza so perfectly pitched, so lovely, the audience stilled. No murmurs now. No rustling.
“Holy crap,” Rumer breathed, her fingers curving around his. He could feel the goose bumps on her forearm, the wild slushing of blood through her veins.
He knew how she felt. Amazed. Awed. Surprised.
He felt the same. He’d bet every person in the audience did.
Because, no kid Heavenly’s age should be able to sing like that—face to the heavens and arms opened as if she were waiting for her lover to walk into them. No inhibitions. No self-consciousness. She was singing to a phantom audience in some faraway place in her mind, singing perfectly, displaying her soul for the entire room to see.
And, God!
All he could think was that she needed someone standing behind her, holding a shotgun, a baseball bat, a bowie knife, making sure every damn loser in the world stayed away.
When she finished, no one moved.
Other participants had gotten applause and catcalls and shouts of encouragement. She got silence as the last note faded, as the tin whistle played the coda.
He watched as she came back to herself, her focus shifting from the song to the audience. She scanned the crowd, and he thought she might be looking for her family.
He’d be damned if she didn’t see it.
He stood, tugging Rumer up with him. She was already clapping, the sound breaking whatever spell had fallen over the audience. One by one, people stood, Rumer’s applause turning into the thunderous sound of the audience’s approval.
He knew from watching the other participants that Heavenly was supposed to bow to the audience, to the judges, and then to the musician.
He knew she was supposed to walk off stage to the left, and disappear into the wings.
Instead, her face crumbled, all the coolness disappearing, her eyes flooding with tears. She lifted the dress up to her knobby knees and ran down the stage stairs, barreling past Mrs. Myers and out the auditorium’s side exit.
The audience was silent again, and Sullivan was moving, handing Oya off to Flynn and running up the aisle, slamming open the exit door, Rumer right behind him.