The Patron Page 2

  “Have you been fine all your life?”

  “I’ve had the most glorious life of all. Do you know why?”

  “Because of tilting your face up at the sun?”

  “That, yes. But also because of your Pop. We’ve loved each other very well for forty-five years. That’s the most important thing, Crystal. The love of your partner. You must choose wisely. When he comes, the idea of love might scare you, but you must do it anyway.”

  “Was my mom a sunflower?”

  “The most beautiful one I ever saw. Like you will be someday.”

  “Will you still be here then?” I asked. “When I’m beautiful?”

  “I hope so. I’m already old. Did you know I was forty when I had your mother? We didn’t think the good Lord would bless us with a child. We’d been married twenty years by then. I couldn’t believe it when the doctor told me.”

  “Is that old to have a baby?” I didn’t know anything about babies. All I knew was that my mom had only been nineteen when she had me. I’d overheard her tell someone that once.

  “It’s pretty old but not impossible. I had a friend who had a baby at forty-four. We thought we should have a club for geriatric mothers of babies.”

  “You won’t die soon, will you?” I didn’t even want to think about my world without Nan.

  “I will eventually but not any time soon, God willing. Watching you grow makes me want to stay here as long as I can. I sure would love to live long enough to see you all the way grown. But whether or not you can see me here on earth, I’m always right there.” She tapped my chest. “In your heart. Whenever you need me, just call out and I’ll answer.”

  A shadow passed overhead, covering the sun for a moment. Nan put her dry, warm hand on my arm. “Look up, Crystal. That’s a bald eagle.”

  A bird with wings as wide as I was tall seemed to ride the wind. Mesmerized by her graceful flapping, I watched as she swooped low over the grasses that swayed in the breeze and made the music of the meadow.

  “I’ve never seen one this close,” Nan whispered as she took my hand.

  The powerful creature dived into the grass and came up with a small field mouse in her beak. We squeezed each other’s hands as she soared up and into the blue.

  “Isn’t she something?” Nan asked.

  “Yes,” I breathed. The strength and power of the eagle reverberated inside my own body. I grew robust as I stood there in the aftermath. She was there inside me just as the deep river and wild roses were. From then on, they lived inside my body and soul. They were me and I them.

  On the way home, the warmth in the car made me drowsy. Nan didn’t believe in naps. She said they kept a person from sleeping properly at night. I fluttered my eyelids to stay awake. “Nan, what’s it like here at Christmastime?”

  “Magical. They put lights up in all the trees and the storefronts. And it’s all white with snow. The skiers come, of course, which we like because they bring money to the good folks who live here.”

  I peered out the window at the northern mountain. The wire and posts of the chairlifts seemed lonely hanging over the snowless brown ski runs. I turned back to look at the quaint, orderly main street of town. Hanging baskets with purple and yellow flowers hung from the brick buildings. People roamed the sidewalks as if they had no place to be other than exactly where they were.

  “Did you know that no two snowflakes are alike?”

  “How do you know?” They were so small, how could anyone see the differences?

  “They put them under microscopes. I think, anyway.”

  A little girl with a golden braid sat on a bench outside an ice cream shop. Her cone had a scoop of pink ice cream. Next to her, a blond man ate one with chocolate. My favorite. I sighed, wishing I could taste that sweetness on my tongue.

  Nan must have noticed my covetous gaze. “Should we stop for a scoop?”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. We’ll bring a bowl back for Pop, though, or he’ll be sad. He loves ice cream.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I asked.

  Nan parked on the street, and we hustled over to the shop and each ordered a cone. She got a weird kind called rum and raisin, but I went with chocolate. She asked the clerk to set aside a scoop of maple nut for Pop. “It’ll melt if we bring it out with us.”

  I nodded, then licked my cone. My eyes widened at the creamy, rich flavor. “This is the best ice cream ever.”

  “Everything in Emerson Pass is better,” Nan said.

  We walked outside. The little girl and her father were still seated on the bench. The man called out to Nan. Everyone knew her here. “Joy, how are you?”

  “Jack Vargas. I haven’t seen you in months.”

  “I’ve been working in Denver during the week. The company has an apartment there.”

  “Brandi, you’re getting so big,” Nan said to the girl.

  The little girl ducked her head. Shy, like me.

  “This here is my granddaughter, Crystal. She’s here all summer, Brandi, if you’d like to come over to the farm to play.”

  Brandi raised her gaze to inspect me. “Where do you live normally?” Her voice was as creamy and sweet as the ice cream. She had round eyes like a doll. Her skin was tanned and her yellow hair had white streaks in it as though she spent a lot of time outside. A pair of jean shorts and a peach-colored tank top were probably a lot more fashionable than the overalls Nan had pulled out of a box of my mother’s old things. Brandi was pretty. Too pretty to be my friend.

  “Seattle,” I answered between nervous licks of my cone.

  “That’s far away,” Brandi said.

  “I had to come on the airplane.”

  “All by yourself?” Brandi asked.

  “Yes, but they made me stay with a lady the whole time. She was kind of mean. She gave me a pin, like a pilot has on his uniform.”

  “Really? I’d like one of those. I’ve never been on a plane.”

  My earlier envy of her beauty lessened. I was a city girl who had been on a plane. That gave me a little something anyway, even if I was skinny and pale as a ghost. “You can come over and see it if you want.”

  Brandi looked up at her dad. “Can I?”

  “I’d have to check with your mother, but I don’t see why not.” Jack Vargas looked a lot like his daughter, tanned and blond. His hair was cut as if he’d be on TV delivering the news. Actually, now that I looked at him more closely, he kind of looked like a Ken doll. Even his tan shorts and blue T-shirt seemed like something I would dress my Ken doll in.

  He turned to Nan. “She looks like Jennifer at that age. I think I remember those overalls.”

  “You know my mom?” I asked, so surprised I almost dropped my cone.

  “They were friends when they were little,” Nan said. Why did she have the “Don’t ask for another glass of water and it’s bedtime” voice?

  “Sure, right.” Jack tossed the rest of his ice cream cone into the trash can next to the bench. “How’s your mom? Is she here?”

  “No, she just sent me. Nan says this place broke her heart.” Is that what she said? I had a feeling I hadn’t quoted it quite right.

  Jack Vargas looked down at the ground, as if there might be something on his shoe.

  “All right, then. We have to go.” Nan motioned toward the car with her chin. “I’ll get Pop’s ice cream.”

  I gave Brandi a shy smile. “Guess I’ll see you around.”

  “Not if I see you first.” Brandi giggled. “My dad always says that.”

  I walked away, still smiling. Maybe I’d made a new friend?

  I’d had no idea then that Brandi would become my very best friend in the world. That first summer turned into many more with my Nan and Pop. They were killed in a car accident the year I turned twenty, just shy of their eightieth birthdays. Everyone in town said they went out together, just as they always had for most of their lives.

  Four years after their death, the richest man in Seattle came into the restaurant where I
worked and asked me out; I said yes. I’d said yes again when he asked me to marry him. Even when the trolls of the internet tried to take me down, I stayed tall and sure like a sunflower. I knew I had not married him for his money. He’d been my heart. My true companion. My soul mate.

  Then he died. Then I lost our baby.

  A part of me died with them.

  I could no longer breathe in the city of grays and mists. So I went home. Home to Emerson Pass and its indigo sky and snowflakes and Brandi. If someone had told me what awaited me there, I wouldn’t have believed them. The secrets of the past rose from the ashes to change my life.

  1

  Crystal

  What is it the Buddhists say? To live is to suffer? I don’t know if they’re right, but by the time I turned thirty, I knew three truths on which to base my life. To love greatly was a risk that could and often did lead to pain. There wasn’t enough money in the world that could cure a broken heart. The only antidote to a soul split wide open was service to others.

  On a morning in November, I padded to the window of Brandi’s guest room and drew back the curtain. A frost covered the ground. Fallen leaves glistened under the late-autumn sun. I hugged myself, shivering from cold.

  The sound of the garage opening was followed by Trapper’s truck backing out of the driveway. He and Brandi had a doctor’s appointment with their ob-gyn in Louisville. Twenty weeks. They’d learn the gender of their baby. She would be fine, I told myself. The baby too. Soon I would have a little baby who would be like a niece or nephew. Brandi had already asked me to be his or her godmother.

  From behind me, the creaking of the bed drew my attention. I turned to see that Garth had wakened. His long legs tangled up in the sheets, he lifted up on one elbow and gave me one of his lazy smiles. His wavy dark hair had flattened on one side during the night. In combination with an imprint of the sheet on his cheek, he looked like a little boy. But this was no child. This was a man. A good man. Good folks, Nan would have said.

  “Morning,” Garth said with that sexy drawl of his. He’d spent time in a lot of places in the country, but his accent came from being raised by a Texan. “City Mouse, you all right?”

  He called me City Mouse because he’d watched me try to cut wood into kindling one day. Until the fire came roaring through the southern mountain and took both our homes, he’d been able to see my house and yard from his deck. The flames would have taken me, too, if not for Garth. My devastatingly handsome dark-haired neighbor swooped in like that bald eagle had snatched the mouse and gotten me out of there alive.

  Garth Welte. My eagle.

  He’d saved me, and I’d given myself to him. My body, anyway. In the dark, I came alive under his touch. I was free of memories of Patrick then. In the mornings, though, I returned to the shadows, ashamed and guilty. This was the last time, I’d assure myself. But then another night would come.

  “Are you cold?” Garth asked. “You want me to get you a sweater?”

  That was Garth—always asking how I was doing or feeling. The laid-back drawl and low timbre of his voice soothed me like a favorite song.

  I sat on the side of the bed, careful not to touch him. If I did, we’d be right back doing what we did together all too well. “I’m fine.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Garth said. “That last night was our last time. I’m moving out, and we need to get on with our lives. Separate from whatever it is we’ve been doing.”

  “We’re a broken record.” I peeked up at him from under my lashes. “I don’t know why we can’t seem to stop.”

  “Could it be because we don’t want to?” He sat up, positioning a pillow behind his back.

  “But you know the longer we do this, the harder it will be to stop.” I smoothed my hand over the cotton blanket.

  “And neither of us wants to get involved emotionally,” Garth said.

  “That was a statement, not a question, right?” Had he changed his mind? Was he starting to fall for me? I had no idea what went on in that brain of his. As concerned as he always seemed for my well-being, he kept his own feelings to himself.

  “I know what you want me to say.” Garth ran a hand through his hair.

  “You do?” I asked.

  “I do, and I can’t say it anymore.”

  “Garth.” What was he doing? The rules had been clear. Sex. Friendship. That’s where it stopped. There would be no talk of anything long term. No feelings allowed.

  “I know. I know I’m changing the rules. Or I want to.”

  I sprang up from the bed and wrapped myself around the bedpost. “No, you don’t just up and change the rules.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t lie to you. I’m not made that way. Every time we end up in bed my feelings deepen for you.”

  “Deepen?” I disentangled from the post and stepped backward toward the windows. Deepen was a verb, a changing thing. The deep green of the river. Like me. Isn’t that what my Nan had said on that day so long ago?

  “I didn’t want to.” His eyes, the color of the apple-cinnamon tea my mother was so fond of, glittered at me from across the bed.

  “I’ll never love anyone but Patrick. You know that.”

  “That’s what you say,” he said softly. “And if that’s true, then you’re right. We have to stop doing this.” He stared at his hands. A muscle flexed in his cheek. He was gritting his teeth. Sometimes in the middle of the night I heard him gnashing them. He needed a mouth guard. But that’s the kind of thing a wife suggests, not a woman participating in a casual fling.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

  “I know that.”

  “If you’ve decided you’re ready for more, I’m holding you back from meeting the right person.” If anyone should have all the family trimmings of life, it was Garth. He was kind and patient and so very good. I’d watched him with the children at the shelter where we’d set up a place where the families who’d lost everything in the fire could stay until their new homes were built. He had a gentleness about him that drew the children to him.

  The money for the shelter had come from me, but Garth was the heart of the effort. Especially when it came to the kids.

  “I didn’t think I wanted something bigger than this,” Garth said. “I came here to live without complications. My divorce was enough heartbreak for a lifetime.”

  I nodded. Garth rarely mentioned his ex-wife. However, it didn’t take a genius to understand how hard it had been on him. His parents had divorced after his brother’s death, and he’d vowed to himself that he would never be part of a failed marriage.

  I should never have let this get started. I hadn't planned on sleeping with him. But after the evacuation we’d ended up at the same campsite. We’d been emotional and in need of comfort and had fallen into bed. Or in this case, a sleeping bag. I’d had too many swigs of whiskey. When he invited me into his tent, my fear and loneliness betrayed my better judgment. To my mortification, the whole thing had been a disaster. Afterward, I’d cried in his arms. I’d have thought that would be the end of it, but when we both ended up homeless, Brandi and Trapper had invited us to stay with them. Our bedrooms were way too close. The very first night, I slipped into his room. From that night on, we’d tried to resist each other, but somehow our chemistry kept bringing us back to the same place.

  “Clearly the Welte men aren’t lucky in love,” Garth said with a wry smile. “But that doesn’t stop my dad.”

  His father had been married four times to progressively younger women.

  “I’m very fond of you,” I said. “You’ve been a great friend. I’d hate to lose that.” The thought of walking out that door crushed me. Thinking of being here without him left me chilled to the core. Still, I had to let him go.

  "You’re right,” he said, sounding so defeated that I inwardly cringed. I’d done this to him. “We can't go on like this. I'm not the smartest man in the world like Patrick was. But I know people. I know what it feels like when a woman loves m
e. I can feel it in my hands every time I touch you. So go ahead, Crystal, deny it to yourself. I know better. But until you’re ready to let yourself live again, there’s no hope for us.”

  I started shaking. Garth had never spoken to me this way. The raw emotion and anger in his voice scared me. Not as smart as Patrick? Did he think I found him lacking because of who I’d been married to?

  “This has nothing to do with you missing anything,” I said. “This is about me.”

  He cursed under his breath. “You’ve got that right.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Stop saying that.” He plucked his boxer shorts from the end of the bed and threw back the sheet before standing.

  I averted my eyes to keep myself from gazing at his spectacular form. He’d been a winning Olympic skier when he was young. Even in his midthirties, skiing and working out had kept his body in great shape.

  Skiing.

  A ski trip had killed Patrick when the private helicopter they’d rented had crashed. No survivors. That’s what they’d said to me. Not, your husband was killed. There were no survivors.

  Even now, three years after his death, anger sparked in my chest. Why had he chosen that trip? I knew the answer. He lived for adrenaline. Garth was the same. He tore down the slopes with that same reckless quality that killed my husband. He’d been all about risk and living large with no thought to how his behavior might have heartbreaking consequences for the woman who loved him. There was no way I would ever go through that again.

  “It’s not because of anything you’re lacking,” I said. “You’re a skier. A daredevil. Which means I cannot possibly fall in love with you, even if I wanted to.”