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There were also no lovers, or close friends, she thought. Her funeral would be small.
The beep of her cell phone interrupted her morbid thoughts.
“Hello, Parker speaking,” she said.
“I’m in!” came a soft voice. “I followed the map. It was just a few miles from where the bus stopped. The house is perfect, and your housekeeper delivered more groceries than I’ll be able to eat in a year. And, Parker, you were right. This isolated place will be heaven.”
Parker forgot her problems. She could worry about dying later. Right now, she had to help one of her artists. “Tori, are you sure you weren’t followed?”
“Yes. I did it just the way you suggested. Kept my head down. Dressed like a boy. Switched buses twice. One bus driver even told me to ‘Hurry along, kid.’”
“Good. No one will probably connect me with you and no one knows I own a place in Crossroads. Stay there. You’ll be safe. You’ll have time to relax and think.”
“They’ll question you when they realize I’ve vanished,” Tori said. “My stepfather won’t just let me disappear. I’m worth too much money to him.”
Parker laughed, trying to sound reassuring. “Of course, people will ask how well we know one another. I’ll say I’m proud to show your work in my gallery and that we’ve only met a few times at gallery openings.” Both facts were true. “Besides, it’s no crime to vanish, Tori. You are an adult.”
Victoria Vilanie was silent on the other end. She’d told Parker that she’d been on a manic roller coaster for months. The ride had left her fragile, almost shattered. Since she’d been thirteen and been “discovered” by the art community, her stepfather had quit his job and become her handler.
“Tori,” Parker whispered into the phone, “you’re not the tiger in a circus. You’ll be fine. You can stand on your own. There are professionals who will help you handle your career without trying to run your life.”
“I know. It’s just a little frightening.”
“It’s all right, Tori. You’re safe. You don’t have to face the reporters. You don’t have to answer any questions.” Parker hesitated. “I’ll come if you need me.”
“I’d like that.”
No one would ever believe that Parker would stick her neck out so far to help a woman she barely knew. Maybe she and Tori had each recognized a fellow loner, or maybe it was just time in her life that she did something different, something kind.
“No matter what happens,” Tori whispered, “I want to thank you. You’ve saved my life. I think if I’d had to go another week, I might have shattered into a million pieces.”
Parker wanted to say that she doubted it was that serious, but she wasn’t sure the little artist wasn’t right. “Stay safe. Don’t tell the couple who take care of the house anything. You’re just visiting, remember? Have them pick up anything you need from town. You’ll find art supplies in the attic room if you want to paint.”
“Found the supplies already, but I think I just want to walk around your land and think about my life. You’re right. It’s time I started taking my life back.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Parker had read every mystery she could find since she was eight. If Tori wanted to disappear, Parker should be able to figure out how to make it happen. After all, how hard could it be?
The hospital door opened.
Parker clicked off the disposable phone she’d bought at the airport a few weeks ago when she and Tori talked about how to make Tori vanish.
“Miss Parker?” A young doctor poked his head into her room. He didn’t look old enough to be out of college, much less med school, but this was a teaching hospital, one of the best in the country. “I’m Dr. Brown.”
“It’s Miss Lacey. My first name is Parker,” she said as she pushed the phone beneath her covers. Hiding it as she was hiding the gifted artist.
The kid of a doctor moved into the room. “You any kin to Quanah Parker? We get a few people in here every year descended from the great Comanche chief.”
She knew what the doctor was trying to do. Establish rapport before he gave her the bad news, so she played along. “That depends. How old was he when he died?”
The doctor shrugged. “I’m not much of a history buff, but my folks stopped at every historical roadside marker in Texas and Oklahoma when I was growing up. I think the great warrior was old when he died, real old. Had six wives, I heard, when he passed peacefully in his sleep on his ranch near a town that bears his name.”
“If he lived a long life, I’m probably not kin to him. And to my knowledge, I have no Native American blood and no living relatives.” By the time she’d been old enough to ask, no one around remembered why she was named Parker and she had little interest in exploring a family tree with such short branches.
“I’m so sorry.” Then he grinned. “I could give you a couple of my sisters. Ever since I got out of med school they think I’m their private dial a doc. They even call me to ask if TV shows get it right.”
“No, thanks. Keep your sisters.” She tried to smile.
“There are times when it’s good to have family around.” He said, “Would you like me to call someone for you? A close friend, maybe?”
She glanced up and read all she needed to know in the young man’s eyes. She was dying. He looked terrible just giving her the news. Maybe this was the first time he’d ever had to tell anyone that their days were numbered.
“How long do I have to hang around here?”
The doc checked her chart and didn’t meet her gaze as he said, “An hour, maybe two. When you come back, we’ll make you as comfortable here as we can but you’ll need—”
She didn’t give him time to list what she knew came next. She’d watched her only cousin go through bone cancer when they were in high school. First, there would be surgery on her leg. Then they wouldn’t get it all and she’d have chemo. Round after round until her hair and spirit disappeared. No, she wouldn’t do that. She’d take the end head-on.
The doctor broke into her thoughts. “We can give you shots in that left knee. It’ll make the pain less until—”
“Okay, I’ll come back when I need it,” she said, not wanting to give him time to talk about how she might lose her leg or her life. If she let him say the word cancer, she feared she might start screaming and never stop.
She knew she limped when she was tired and her knee sometimes buckled on her. Her back already hurt, and her whole left leg felt weak sometimes. The cancer must be spreading; she’d known it was there for months, but she’d kept putting off getting a checkup. Now she knew it would only get worse. More pain. More drugs, until it finally traveled to her brain. Maybe the doctor didn’t want her to hang around and suffer? Maybe the shots would knock her out. She’d feel nothing until the very end. She’d just wait for death as her cousin had. She’d visited him every day. Watching him grow weaker, watching the staff grow sadder.
Hanging around had never been her way, and it wouldn’t be now.
A nurse in scrubs that were two sizes too small rushed into the room and whispered, loud enough for Parker to hear, “We’ve got an emergency, Doctor. Three ambulances are bringing injured in from a bad wreck. Pileup on I-35. Can you break away to help?”
The doctor flipped the chart closed. “No problem. We’re finished here.” He nodded to Parker. “We’ll have time to talk later, Miss Parker. You’ve got a few options.”
She nodded back, not wanting to hear the details anyway. What did it matter? He didn’t have to say the word cancer for her to know what was wrong.
He was gone in a blink.
The nurse’s face molded into a caring mask. “What can I do to make you more comfortable? You don’t need to worry, dear. I’ve helped a great many people go through this.”
“You can hand me my clothes,” Parker said as she slid off the bed. “Then you can help me leave.” She was used to giving orders. She’d been doing it since she’d opened her art gallery fifteen years ago. She’d been twenty-two and thought she had forever to live.
“Oh, but...” The nurse’s eyes widened as if she were a hen and one of her chickens was escaping the coop.
“No buts. I have to leave now.” Parker raised her eyebrow silently, daring the nurse to question her.
Parker stripped off the hospital gown and climbed into the tailored suit she’d arrived in before dawn. The teal silk blouse and cream-colored jacket of polished wool felt wonderful against her skin compared with the rough cotton gown. Like a chameleon changing color, she shifted from patient to tall, in-control businesswoman.
The nurse began to panic again. “Is someone picking you up? Were you discharged? Has the paperwork already been completed?”
“No to the first question. I drove myself here and I’ll drive myself away. And yes, I was discharged.” Parker tossed her things into the huge Coach bag she’d brought in. If her days were now limited, she wanted to make every one count. “I have to do something very important. I’ve no time to mess with paperwork. Mail the forms to me.”
Parker walked out while the nurse went for a wheelchair. Her mind checked off the things she had to do as her high heels clicked against the hallway tiles. It would take a week to get her office in order. She wanted the gallery to run smoothly while she was gone.
She planned to help a friend, see the colors of life and have an adventure. Then, when she passed, she would have lived, if only for a few months.
After climbing into her special-edition Jaguar, she gunned the engine. She didn’t plan to heed any speed-limit signs. Caution was no longer in her vocabulary.
The ache in her leg whispered through her body when she bent her knee, but Parker ignored it. No one had told her what to do since she entered college and no one, not even Dr. Brown, would set rules now.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_21e9ba84-4cb7-51fd-afec-f727668ba053)
Crossroads, Texas
YANCY GREY WALKED the midnight streets, barely noticing where he was going or caring that winter’s breath still circled in the breeze.
Today was his birthday. Or at least he thought it was. His mother’s memory had been smothered with pills most of his childhood. She’d told him she’d filled out the birth certificate a week or so after he’d been born when she’d finally healed and sobered enough to walk to the clinic in Crossroads, Texas.
When Yancy had run away at fourteen, he doubted she’d noticed. She’d never celebrated his birth, and after he left, he continued the nontradition through his wandering teen years and his early twenties, which he’d spent in prison. And now, he thought, during his calm years in Texas.
He was alone at thirty-two and wise enough to realize that it wasn’t a bad place to be. The old folks at the Evening Shadows Retirement Community, where he worked, would have thrown him a birthday party if they’d known, but they were all tucked in their beds by dark. They counted away what was left of their lives, but Yancy wanted to count forward.
He’d been with the retired teachers for seven years now, repairing their homes, managing the twenty-cottage complex that had started as an eight-bungalow motel set in a town where two highways crossed. The school system had originally bought the old motel, hoping to offer small homes to new teachers, but those retiring from teaching had wanted to stay in town and together.
Yancy drove the old residents to the doctor and picked up their prescriptions. He cared about and for them. He repaired everything around the place and built a new cottage now and then when a single teacher needed a place to live out his or her days in peace.
In return, they all loved him and tried to pass down their wisdom. Cap taught him carpentry and plumbing, and Miss Bees had taught him to cook. Leo was a wizard with money and had him investing, and Mrs. Abernathy had even tried to teach him to play the piano. No matter what project he took on, Yancy knew there would be someone waiting to advise him on every detail.
Yancy sometimes thought he’d gone from high school to grad school in the years he’d been employed by the teachers. They were a wealth of knowledge, and he was a ready pupil.
But when it came to women, nothing they said worked. He hadn’t had a date in months, and the two he’d had last year had convinced him that being single wasn’t so bad. There seemed to be no family for him, past or future. No girl wanted to be seen with an ex-con, handyman, drifter, no matter how nice he was or how much her grandmother bragged about him.
Looking up, he saw the old gypsy house a quarter mile away, far enough from the lights to not be in town and close enough to not be completely outside it. His place. Nestled among the barren elm trees, the house still looked haunted, even if he had framed up the second floor and repaired the roof. The trash and tumbleweeds were gone, but no grass or flowers grew near the porches. Like him, the place didn’t quite fit in among the others in town.
Yancy had built a workshop behind the hundred-year-old crumbling remains so that he could rebuild the old house better than it had been built a century ago. The workshop looked more like a small barn, with a high roof and a loft for storing supplies. Inside, the bay was big enough to hold six cars, but he’d set up long worktables and saws he’d bought at flea markets and yard sales.
This crumbling home and five acres of dirt surrounding it might not look like much, but it was his, all his. A grandmother he’d never met had left it to him, along with enough money to pay the taxes for years. He didn’t care that he had no relative to ever send a birthday or Christmas present for the rest of his life. This was enough.
Last Christmas, the ladies at the Evening Shadows had held a fund-raiser in his barn. They’d hung quilts to cover the walls of tools and shelves, then loaded the tables with homemade sweets and crafts. He swore everyone in town had come and bought an armful, whether they needed a new tissue-box cover or reindeer coaster set or not.
He’d loved helping the ladies out, but was glad when his shop was back in order. Old Cap had taught him that there needed to be a place for everything, and Yancy believed he could have located, with his eyes closed, any tool on his walls.
From the first day he found out the place had been willed to him, Yancy had decided to start remodeling from the inside out. When he finished, the place would shine. He’d move into a real home for the first time in his life. The house might have held only sadness and hate thirty-one years ago when his mother lived here during her pregnancy, but he’d rebuild it with the love of a craftsman who’d learned his skills in prison and had dreamed of a project like this one.
The workshop door creaked a little when he opened it.
Yancy smiled. He liked the sound; it was like the place was welcoming him.
As he did every other night, he tugged off his coat, hung it on the latch and began to work. Tonight he’d sand down aged boards that would eventually be polished and grooved to fit perfectly in the upstairs rooms of the house. He’d turned the four little rooms downstairs into one open space, with a kitchen on the back wall and a long bar separating it from the living space. The bar had taken him three months and was made out of one piece of oak.
He’d bought a radio months ago, thinking that music might be nice while he worked, but most nights he forgot to turn it on. He liked the silence and the rhythm of the midnight shadows, and he liked being alone with his thoughts and dreams. Seven years ago, when he’d arrived, he’d had nothing but a few clothes that were left over from before he’d gone to prison. Now he was a rich man. He had a job he loved and he had the silence of the night in which to think.
As he began to sand the wood and carve away the stress of the day, the loneliness of his nights and the worries he always had about the tenants he cared for all slipped away as his muscles welcomed the work.
This was what he needed. A passion. A job. A goal to move toward. When he finished, he’d have pride in what he’d done, and no one could take that from him.
After a while, he heard a sound above his head. A slight movement, as if someone had shifted atop the loose boards stacked along one side of the loft.
Another sound. The creaking of the flooring.
As he had each time for a week when this had happened, he didn’t react. He simply kept working. If the invisible visitor had meant him any harm, he would have known it long before now. Maybe some frightened animal had taken shelter from the last month of winter, or maybe a drifter just wanted a warm place to rest before moving on. He’d been there in his teens. He knew how much a quiet, safe place could mean.
Yancy was lost in his work an hour later when a loose board shifted above and tumbled down.
A little squeak followed.
Yancy waited, then said calmly, “If you’re trying to kill me, you’ll need to toss down something bigger than a two-by-four.”
“Sorry,” came a whisper.
“No harm. I’ve known you were up there for a while. Want to come down and say hello?”
No answer.
“I got a thermos of hot coffee I haven’t had time to drink. You’re welcome to it.”
“You’re not calling the police?”
“Nope. Sheriff probably has his own coffee.”
Yancy thought he heard a hiccup of a laugh.
A slight woman dressed in jeans and a blue-checked flannel shirt moved down the ladder. Her long, dark braid brushed her backside as she lowered from step to step.
“I didn’t mean to spy on you,” she said, without looking at him. “The barn wasn’t locked, and I just wanted to be out of the cold a few nights ago. It smells so good in here I’ve found myself coming back.”
“It’s the fresh-cut wood. I love the smell, too.” He went back to work. “So, you walk at night also? It’s a habit of mine.”
She nodded. “I don’t usually come this close to town, but walking seems better than trying to sleep.”
“I know what you mean.” He handed her the thermos. “Coffee’s strong. It was left over from where I work, but it’s hot. Should take off the chill.”
She untwisted the lid and poured herself half a cup. “I like the sounds of the night and the way I can walk without having to speak to anyone. I can just walk and be a part of the land, the trees, the air.”
“You don’t like talking to folks?”
“Not much. I’ve just said more to you right now than I’ve said to anyone in days.”
He grinned, thinking no one at the retirement home would believe this story when he told it tomorrow. A pretty woman, about his age, with hair as black as midnight, hiding in his loft. And even stranger, she said she didn’t like to talk but yet she still talked to him.
He liked the idea that they shared a love for walking the shadowy roads and also for not having much to say. He was usually the one folks skipped talking to. “You’re welcome here anytime. I’m Yancy Grey and I’m remodeling—or probably more accurately, rebuilding—the old Stanley house.”
“I know. I can see that.”
