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But since returning to Arizona, she’d never spent the night in Gesippi.
Grandpa knew the reason why, and he’d be suspicious when he saw her bag, so it would be better to just jump right in and tell him the family’s concerns, and that she was staying indefinitely. Yes, that’s what she’d do. Hopefully, Zack would show up in time to help.
She studied the place where her early childhood had flourished thanks to horses, tree houses, creeks and Grandma’s cookies. All the Stone children had basically lived here while their parents worked evenings and weekends. But once Meredith hit fifteen, she’d been more interested in the boy next door and spending time in the tree house and creek with him. She’d also learned to make Grandma’s cookies because he liked them.
The way to a man’s heart and all...
Too bad the young man in question had been so intent on leaving Gesippi, getting an education and making a name for himself as a journalist that he’d managed to break her heart.
Ten years later, her grandfather’s horses were now gone and the tree house was in as much disrepair as her heart. The boy next door had moved away, married, had a daughter and indeed was making a name for himself by writing and filming documentaries.
He was now a widower. Not that Meredith cared.
His shy younger brother was moving on, too, and getting married.
Good, she wished him the best after their misguided relationship.
Switching off the ignition, she shook away those memories and opened the door, pausing before stepping from the car. The house had always been painted white. Grandpa saw no need for any other color. But now, it was weathered and looked a bit like a white-and-gray-speckled egg. Not a pretty one, either. The gutters circling the house were loose and in one place a section was missing.
Luckily, it was a small house, so, if necessary, she could probably do the painting herself these next few months. The Rittenhouses, Luke and Katie, her bosses at the animal habitat, had kindly changed her schedule so that she was only working weekends. They’d told her to take all the time she needed to settle things here in Gesippi. If Zack was right, she might have to take a full leave of absence. She’d heal the house even if she couldn’t heal her grandfather.
“I’ve got the time,” she whispered to herself. “I might even enjoy it.”
She gazed beyond the house to the barns and stables, now empty. Beyond, Grandpa’s land, currently farmed by someone else, spread as far as the eye could see. When she was young, she’d thought it spread to the ocean. When she hit fifteen, she knew it bumped against paradise.
A boy named Jimmy Murphy.
Slamming the door to her SUV, she stepped down not onto the walkway that led to the front door but onto grass that grew across the pathway that led to the front door.
One more thing to do: mow.
“Grandpa! Where are you?”
Used to be, he was at the front porch door before a visitor could even exit the car. It had driven the family crazy. He’d invite strangers in and offer them something to drink, talk their ear off about his family, his animals and his God. But as his hearing worsened, he couldn’t hear cars approaching. Today, if the volume of the television was any indication, he hadn’t heard her arrive, either. She’d wanted to surprise him, but maybe she should have called.
“Grandpa, it’s me. Meredith!”
The screen door was unlocked, so she stepped onto the porch. Grandpa’s jacket hung on a hook by the door. A pair of old brown boots waited underneath. Two chairs faced the windows. Newspapers were spread over one—Grandma’s. The other chair was empty, although Grandpa’s reading glasses and a half-empty coffee cup were on a nearby table.
The door to the house was unlocked also. Meredith pushed it open until she could see into the living room with its olive green couch, antique coffee table and large-screen television, which had a morning-news show blaring. Meredith turned off the TV before hollering Grandpa’s name again.
When Grandma was alive, something half crocheted always waited in a basket on the floor and partly read books lay open over the couch’s armrests. After five years, very little remained of Grandma’s presence, and if loneliness had a smell, this was it. Meredith knew it well.
Somewhere in the distance she heard Pepper bark. Maybe Grandpa was in the backyard where he liked to feed the squirrels; Pepper liked to chase them.
Veering off the front walk, she headed through the grass—which was past her ankles and full of weeds—and to the backyard.
As she made her way to the backyard, she saw more signs of neglect but no signs of her grandfather. Meredith fought the out-of-control feeling threatening to make her turn around, tuck her tail between her legs and flee.
In Gesippi, she was a Stone and had been what the kids called an overachiever, voted Girl Most Likely To Get Whatever She Wanted. No one knew that in high school she’d filled her calendar—along with her siblings’ calendars—with so many things just so they wouldn’t have to go home.
And, even more funny, the yearbook with that predication had arrived the day after she’d lost what she wanted most.
Jimmy Murphy.
Twelve months after that, one rash act had made her rethink who she was, where she was going and why. Thanks to her grandfather, she’d sidestepped a huge mistake with Jimmy’s younger brother, Danny, and she’d left Gesippi. In the years since, she’d rarely returned because while many were forgiving, none had forgotten.
It was only on television that leaving a groom standing at the altar made for good entertainment.
CHAPTER TWO (#u73e85be5-12de-512a-8c9d-b9f5a24df9a7)
JIMMY MURPHY LEANED against his shovel and watched as the brown SUV sped across the dirt road, skidding slightly while taking the bumps too quickly. Clearly an outsider who cared little about the vehicle’s alignment.
“Ray expecting anyone?” he called to his brother. Danny was on the other side of the truck, messing with a roll of plastic ditch.
Jimmy had been stuck with the digging and was glad for a break.
“Not that I know of.” Danny didn’t even sound winded.
“Any of the Stones get a new car?”
“Not that I know of.”
Jimmy could have asked a few more questions, but obviously Danny wasn’t in the mood to speculate. He was getting married in less than two weeks, the Saturday before Christmas. Although their mother and Holly, his bride-to-be, were doing all the work, Danny was stressed. Thus, all the Murphys were stressed.
They deserved to be. The last time Danny had tried to get married, his bride hadn’t shown up for the wedding.
Meredith Stone, the girl next door. Both Murphy boys had loved her. But it had been Jimmy who had owned her heart, only to walk away from her. Danny had tried to fill the empty space, but failed. In the end, everyone had gotten hurt.
For years, he and his brother had maintained a polite friendship. It wasn’t until Danny had gotten engaged that the laughter returned. Looking in the direction the car had traveled, Jimmy wiped sweat from his brow. It wasn’t easy pulling a shallow ditch, and what he and his brother were about to do was even more strenuous. Jimmy wished for the millionth time that he was back in California, sitting across from his boss, hashing out his next assignment. But his boss had asked him to take some time after Jimmy had gone over budget and still hadn’t delivered a good story on his last two assignments—a story on pandas in China and bears in Alaska
It was probably overdue. After the death of his wife a year ago, he’d been dragging his daughter to faraway places, gathering stories and losing himself.
But really losing six-year-old Briana.
The grief swelled, threatening to take him to his knees. Instead of letting it consume him, Jimmy stomped his steel-toed boot on the shovel’s edge, driving it into hard dirt by a good inch. Then he did it again, and again, and again.
Still he was mad, mad at a world that didn’t include Regina. Asthma wasn’t supposed to kill a twenty-six-year-old mother who took care of herself and carefully monitored her disease. And it certainly wasn’t supposed to kill her as she went into the bathroom to get her inhaler because she was having a little trouble breathing.
In all, her death had taken twenty minutes. It had begun as a persistent cough when she was in bed one night. When it turned into a short, strangled intake of breath, he’d still not been concerned. This had happened before. She’d finally rolled out of bed, her face taking on the blue, pinched look he knew so well. She hated her asthma, hated that it attacked her without provocation. She’d stoically and quietly walked the length of the room—not wanting to wake Briana asleep on the other side of the wall—and gone inside the bathroom. He’d heard the sounds of the medicine cabinet door opening followed by water running and something else...her hand slapping against the counter maybe.
Then, he’d heard her hit the ground.
He’d been by her side in seconds, doing CPR with his cell phone on the floor beside him so he could scream for help.
Help that had arrived too late.
Briana had slept through the whole ordeal. He’d woken their next-door neighbor to watch his little girl while he followed the ambulance to the hospital. The next morning, he’d had to tell Briana that Mommy was gone, not coming back.
She hadn’t believed him at first and continued to look for Regina, watching the door and the phone.
Meanwhile, he’d numbly called the dentist office where Regina had had an appointment the next week. Then, he’d found the number of the woman in charge of Regina’s book club. Finally, he personally visited the gym where she’d taught aerobics part-time and cleaned out her locker. There he’d accidentally encountered the grieving dark-haired personal trainer who’d known Regina was married but didn’t care.
His wife had been having an affair.
Jimmy blamed himself. He’d been passionate about the wrong things, had been gone too much and loved too little. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Briana.
He wouldn’t mess up love a third time.
Still, he didn’t want his family to know how broken he was, so instead of screaming his frustration at life, he asked his brother, “Think this irrigation technique will work?”
Danny said something under his breath.
“Wasted effort?” Jimmy queried.
“No, it will work.”
Jimmy and Danny’s parents lived five miles away, just down Pioneer Road. While their dad, Mitch Murphy, ran a cattle and sheep operation, his brother Matthew—where they were working today—farmed beans, squash, corn and whatever else struck his fancy. Against his wife’s wishes, right now Matthew also rented a few acres from Ray Stone.
The women in Jimmy’s family held long grudges.
“Not Ray’s fault the girl ran off” was Matthew’s feeling.
Jimmy agreed. Not Ray’s fault. It had been Jimmy’s for not being mature enough to listen to Meredith, to think things through, give her time. She’d been all of seventeen when he’d asked her to leave with him.”
He’d thought she’d said “No, I can’t” because she didn’t want to be with him. Only later, after he’d been in school awhile, lived a little, grown up, had he realized it had been a “No, I can’t right now.”
But it had been too late to change things by then. She’d stood up his brother at the altar and had left Gesippi. Seemed both he and Meredith had run away.
“If you’re sure it will work,” Jimmy said after a moment, referring to the irrigation technique. Danny had been quiet for too long.
“I’m sure the concept will work.” Danny came around the truck, a bright yellow roll of plastic ditch now on the back of his quad. “I’m just not sure if I have enough plastic.”
Something about bright yellow stripes running down the center of cornstalks didn’t work for Jimmy. Gesippi, Arizona, was once home to the Tohono O’odham and Akimel O’odham Indians, expert crop growers who would laugh at Danny’s efforts. From the nearby Santa Catalina Mountains, to the Saguaro National Park, to every lake in between, Jimmy preferred natural beauty. Yellow plastic–striped rows of corn just didn’t do it.
“I’m thinking,” Danny said, “that I’ll stop the quad at the end of a row and walk the plastic down.”
“Walk?”
“Well, more like unroll,” Danny admitted. “Maybe just the first few to get a feel of how I want it placed and how it’s going to settle.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing right now. I’ll anchor it on the quad. Shouldn’t be too hard to unroll.”
“Okay, see you back at the house.”
Jimmy could tell him that this was a two-man job. The roll would get stuck and one brother would need to run back to untangle it while the other pulled and straightened. But if Jimmy volunteered to stick around, he’d not be able to ride down the road and satisfy his curiosity about the SUV. Clearly the mysterious SUV was connected to Raymond Stone, and that both worried and relieved him. Strange how quickly Gesippi had settled around Jimmy, tapping him on the shoulder and reminding him that he could leave the small town but the small town wouldn’t leave him. He and Briana, his daughter, had only been back a week, which had been plenty long enough for Jimmy to notice that Ray’s body was weakening, his mind was somewhat confused and he was uncharacteristically grumpy.
As they were Ray’s nearest neighbor, Jimmy’s aunt and uncle had plenty to say about Ray being alone. Mostly how lately they sometimes saw the beam of his flashlight in the middle of the night and heard him shouting in the distance. “As if he’s calling for someone or something,” Aunt Shari had said.
He wondered if he should go over there. Jimmy didn’t care what the Stone family thought of him; he’d more than paid for his decade-old lapse in judgment. Looking over at Danny, Jimmy felt a moment’s guilt. Actually, Danny had paid more dearly. But maybe now with Danny getting married to the right girl this time, the relationship between the Stones and the Murphys would start to heal.
Besides, Jimmy loved Ray Stone as if he was his own grandpa. The man had taught Jimmy to sit a sheep, wrestle a steer and ride a bull.
His mind made up, Jimmy headed for his white Dodge 250 truck, brushing his hands on his shirt. He thought briefly about going inside and washing up, but if he did, Aunt Shari would either want to feed him or want to know what he was doing.
As he approached, he noticed the brown SUV was parked in front of the house. That told Jimmy the driver was a return visitor. A stranger would have stopped just past the road.
He parked behind the SUV as the porch door opened and a slender girl came out. No, not a girl, a woman. One he knew well. Meredith Stone, all long golden-brown hair, pink sweaters, and endless energy and smiles.
At least that’s how he remembered her.
Today her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her hoodie was black. Judging by the way she hurried down the front walkway toward him, the energy was still there, but the smile was gone.
This wasn’t good.
He almost opened his mouth to tell her how not good her sudden appearance was. Now was the worst time for her to return, just weeks before Danny got married.
Danny still avoided mentioning her name.
Heck, sometimes Jimmy couldn’t choke it out, either.
But before he could say anything, Meredith skidded to a stop right in front of him, panic in her eyes, and said, “I can’t find Grandpa.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_203e3519-6ca8-5944-9174-7ab06985898c)
WHILE JIMMY CALLED his aunt Shari and quickly gave her the rundown, Meredith paced. She hadn’t changed, not one bit, in the years since he’d seen her last. Today, she was like a two-year-old colt, not quite broke and wanting to move. She wanted to search some more, with or without him.
Hanging up, Jimmy said, “Aunt Shari will get a hold of the neighbors. We’ll spread out and cover more territory. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
“My brother’s on his way,” Meredith said. “He’s trying to get a hold of my parents. I—I didn’t know who else to call. I was about to call your uncle, when you drove up.”
Considering that the Stones and Murphys had been neighbors for more than thirty years, she shouldn’t have hesitated. “You can always call my dad, me, my uncle—” he looked her right in the eye “—my brother.”
“I’m so flustered,” Meredith muttered, “that I couldn’t remember a phone number for anyone in your family.”
Any other day, any other moment, Jimmy might have smiled. There’d been a time when Meredith had talked to both him and his brother on the phone daily, either talking or texting. Usually she’d been trying to organize their day to her liking. He’d always reorganized. Danny had actually followed her directions.
But now she looked ready to cry, something she didn’t do easily. He knew that firsthand.
“I’m usually spot on in an emergency,” she muttered.
He knew that, too. “You’re sure Ray’s not in the house?”
“I’m sure. The house wasn’t that hard to search.”
No, Jimmy had to agree with that. There were three bedrooms, which made up half the house. A kitchen, bathroom and living room made up the other half.
