Betting the Rainbow (Harmony) (2 page)

Chapter 2

HAWK HOUSE

ON THE LAKE OFF RAINBOW LANE

A
USTIN
H
AWK MAINTAINED HIS PACE THOUGH HIS MUSCLES
ached. Every day he’d go one more round on the obstacle course he’d mapped. One more circle, ten more minutes, until he was back to the man he’d been six months ago before he fell into hell.

As he gulped in air and ignored the pain, the memories of the fire came back to him. Austin never tried to push them away. The knowledge of what he’d gone through was all that kept him alive some days. He’d survived the firestorm and now he’d survive the recovery.

He plowed across the grass and ran through the back door of his grandfather’s house. Two flights up. Two flights down. A sprint to the dock and then back to the tire swing hidden among the willows.

“Made it!” he heaved as he hit the swing, sending it twirling, before he dropped on the grass laughing. If anyone ever saw him, they’d think he was crazy as a rat left to live in a maze.

Only no one saw him out here. This small lake wasn’t big enough to attract fish, much less fishermen. Twisted Creek, several miles downstream, was a wonderful getaway with huge old trees and a sandy bank just made for vacationing. In the hundred years Harmony had been settled, only three people had ever bothered to build out this far on Rainbow Lane.

The Delaneys were the first. They lived directly across the water in the little two-story white house in need of painting. They’d made their living with pecan trees and chickens for as long as anyone could remember. The once-big family had dwindled down to two girls, in their twenties, left to run the place.

The only other structure was a green cabin, a few hundred yards from him but completely blocked from view by the trees. Austin had heard it had been built by some rich guy back in the forties. The millionaire wanted to live like Thoreau on a pond while he wrote. Only he never wrote a word as far as anyone knew. Some said it took the would-be writer a year to drink himself to death. His little cabin on the lake went into an estate that rented the cabin out now and then.

Austin had heard the locals called the place Walden Cabin. The third place on the lake was his. Austin rolled so he could stare at his grandfather’s sky-blue three-story misfit. The structure was simply called Hawk House because three generations of Hawk men had owned it. The structure looked more like it should be on a coastline with sailboats drifting by, but his granddad hadn’t cared. He said he’d built it to remind him of his home in Maine. He even added the widow’s walk around the single third-story room.

Austin felt sure his grandfather’s fishing house had the only widow’s walk in the panhandle. Lying in the grass looking up at it, he could almost see a sailing captain’s wife looking out over the prairie as if she could see the ocean a few thousand miles away. “Proves all Hawk men are crazy,” he said. “No wonder I feel so at home here.”

Austin swore. Now he was talking to himself. What next? All he needed was an imaginary friend and they’d lock him up in the same place they finally locked up his grandfather. All the family said he was insane, but Austin had always suspected he simply got tired of explaining himself and decided to make up his own reality. When they finally took him to the home, he made them bring a van so there would be room for all his friends.

The old man claimed he loved to fish out on this lake alone, but no one in the family ever remembered eating a single meal of freshly caught fish.

Austin drove out here alone and after staying a week, he could understand why his grandfather came to the lake house. The place had a stillness about it. A hideout where a man could be happy in the company of his own thoughts. A place where he could think about what he wanted to do next without having to listen to others telling him what he
should
do.

The Delaneys were the only people around, and they only talked to him when they had to.

After Austin’s grandfather went to the home, Austin’s dad, the only child, used to open Hawk House in the summer. Most years he was lucky to get away more than once or twice, but Austin remembered those summers as heaven. He’d even played with the Delaney girls and a kid staying with his grandmother in town. The girls were younger than he was and wild as jackrabbits. He’d run the woods with them, exploring caves and looking for buried treasure, loving the freedom he’d never been given in the city.

The Delaneys were women now, and he was little more than a stranger to them. Austin wasn’t even sure they remembered him from those summers years ago. Even if they did, Austin had long ago lost the ability to be friendly. He waved to them when he saw them watching him switch out his truck for his boat in the garage he rented from them. He paid his bill for storing his boat and truck on their property by dropping the check in their mailbox.

In truth, he couldn’t even remember their names, and in the months he’d stayed this time, he hadn’t felt any need for conversation.

He’d started coming out alone two years ago when he was on leave from the army. Somehow, it just felt right. Then, after the fire, doctors wanted to put him in a rehab hospital. There would be someone there helping him, medicating his pain, watching each time he stumbled.

Austin had packed his duffel bag and walked out. He ran all the way to the old sky-blue Hawk House and decided he’d mend his broken body and mind here by the water. He’d had all he wanted of people and crowds of strangers. For a while he wanted to walk on the muddy beach and know that any footprints there were his.

Rising off the grass, he headed back into the house, stripping off clothes as he moved upstairs. It was almost sunset and he loved watching the last bit of daylight dance off the water. He always ran in full gear just as he’d been trained to do in the army. By the time he reached the widow’s walk on the third floor, he’d stripped to his briefs. His body felt so light he thought he could almost float off the roof.

The evening sun was there to greet him. The colors of the twilight sky did more for him than any antidepressant ever could. He was alive. He’d made it back and, for a moment, that was all that mattered.

As shadows grew, he heard laughter from across the lake. He couldn’t see them, but he knew the Delaney girls were sitting out by the water. He barely knew them, but he liked the way they laughed.

Austin wondered if he even remembered how.

Chapter 3

DELANEY FARM

ON THE LAKE OFF RAINBOW LANE

D
USTI
D
ELANEY TUGGED OFF HER JEANS, FOLDED THEM ATOP
the splintery deck boards, and sat down next to her older sister.

Abby didn’t say a word. Her feet were already in the water and her head was back as if she were sunning in moonlight. Her long blond hair blew in the midnight breeze, mirroring the weeping willows waving from across the water.

“I love this time of night,” Dusti whispered as her feet slipped into the cool lake.

“Me too,” Abby answered. “I read once that some people are born with the sound of the ocean waves for a heartbeat. They’re never happy unless they live close to the sea. Maybe you and I are like that about the lake?”

Dusti laughed. “We have the lap of water against mud and frogs croaking in our blood. Or maybe the distant sound of a fish jumping or a turtle sliding off the bank and plopping into the water. Not near as romantic as ocean waves for heartbeats.”

Abby finally looked at her sister. “What do you know? You don’t have a romantic bone in your body.”

“Maybe not, but I’m not attached to a water supply. I just like to cool off with my feet wet.” Dusti saw her sister as the dreamer, so she had to be the practical one. It had been that way all their lives. She made lists of what needed to be done while Abby dreamed of what they might do when the chores were over.

Only the chores were never finished. Not on their little spread. They couldn’t afford to hire more than summer help. Abby had given up her dream of being a nurse and come home to help when their mother got sick. After their mother died, there was never enough money to allow her to return. One semester more of school and she’d have had another life. One semester. Only for three years, that one semester had seemed as far away from being completed as ever.

Dusti shrugged, wishing she’d been allowed to at least get started on her dream. Abby could daydream about going back someday and finishing her nursing degree, but Dusti had nothing to go back to. She had planned to study photography in New York City but stayed home after high school to slowly take over the family business.

During her teens, her walls were lined with the skyline of New York. Every birthday and Christmas present was camera equipment. Only first her father died, and then a little over three years ago, when Dusti was nineteen, her mother got sick and the expensive cameras were the first things sold when they needed money.

She would do it again to keep her mother more comfortable, but, unlike her sister, Dusti didn’t lie to herself. With her mother needing constant care and keeping up the place, all funds had disappeared. Now both parents were gone and she and Abby were barely hanging on to the land. No one was living their dream, or ever would.

Abby splashed water in Dusti’s direction. “If Mom glances down from heaven and sees you showing your panties, she’ll be looking for a switch.”

Dusti smiled, remembering her mother in better times. Their mother used to hate it when her youngest daughter stripped down to her underwear and jumped in the lake. “Who’s going to see me? With Mom gone, no one cares.”

They both looked out across the moonlit lake. Not a light blinked back.

“Mr. Hawk has probably got his binoculars out.” Abby lifted her fists to her eyes as if she were using an invisible pair of binoculars. “The guy turns off all his lights and searches, waiting for you to come out and show your panties.”

Dusti pulled her shirt high. “I might as well give the loner a heart attack. It’s the only excitement I can have around here.”

They laughed as they used to do when they were both in their teens and all the world was fair.

Dreams, Dusti decided, were just one more thing she could no longer afford.

Chapter 4

WALDEN CABIN

R
ONNY
L
OGAN UNPACKED AS SHE HAD A HUNDRED TIMES
in the past year. Her two suitcases didn’t fill the six drawers in the cabin’s bedroom. Over the months she’d replaced a few blouses and shoes, but when she did she tossed the old ones. Somehow her belongings had thinned down to two suitcases. The perfect amount. Everything she needed, she could carry.

She pulled on her one pair of shorts and walked around the cabin barefooted. If was obvious that all the bedding was new, along with all towels, tablecloths, and rugs. Mr. Carleon hadn’t forgotten a single detail, right down to the kinds of soups she always kept in the kitchen. He said he’d left a little food, but from the look of the supplies, it was more like stores for winter.

She wondered how many trips the white-haired man had made on foot from the main road before he bought the little ATV. There wasn’t enough road left for his Lincoln to make the last mile to the cabin. She’d laughed and held on to the roll bar for dear life when he’d bumped down the rocky trail road toward the cabin’s single chimney peeking through the trees.

When she commented that she had no idea what to call the little cart, Mr. Carleon said the man who sold it to him just called it “the mule.” It was great for hauling supplies over back trails but seemed built with odd parts. Ronny had no idea what color it had originally been.

Mr. Carleon told her he’d had to buy a shed big enough to store the little half motorcycle/half golf cart in the trees by Rainbow Lane. He had it built, delivered, and nestled in among elms while he stocked the cabin. All in the week between her call saying she was coming home and today.

The three-room cabin had no phone, but that wasn’t important. No television, but the grand view of the lake made up for all shortcomings.

She had her cell and a laptop. That was all she’d need. Mr. Carleon had said the electricity was iffy during storms, so he’d bought flashlights and lanterns.

“I don’t want to bother you,” he’d said as he walked out after setting her luggage inside, “but if I don’t hear from you every week and I can’t reach you by phone, I’ll be hiking in to make sure you’re all right. The leasing agent said there are wild pigs in the woods, so take the walking stick and watch for them.”

“What do I do if I see one?”

“Make some noise. If they’re wild, they’ll run.”

Ronny shook her head. “I doubt I’ll be too afraid of a pig.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful,” he added as he started up the walking trail. “These aren’t the cute little pink pigs at the fair.”

She promised to call in and waved good-bye as he hiked back up to Rainbow Lane. He insisted that she keep the mule near the cabin in case she wanted to drive out. Ronny watched him disappear before turning toward what she already thought of as
her
cabin.

After finishing unpacking, Ronny walked out onto the porch and decided that she had a million-dollar view. All around her, evening shades of green welcomed summer, and the slow lap of the water against the shore made her almost believe that she was the only person around for a hundred miles. She doubted she’d go anywhere, even for a walk, for a while. The jet lag had finally caught up with her.

Curling into the padded swing, she pulled an old quilt over her as the porch swing rocked her to sleep. There were no more planes she had to catch, no more lectures or tours or dinners. Only the peace of Harmony surrounding her.

Night drifted into dawn and still she slept. There was no schedule she needed to follow. Here, next to a no-name lake, she could finally sleep.

The day aged, growing hot enough for her to kick off the covers, but her bones seemed made of jelly and all she could manage was a yawn as the wind rocked her gently.

Night, black and silent, closed in over her again. Once, she felt the cold and moaned. The swing rocked as she hugged herself a moment before the blanket floated back over her.

“Thanks, Marty,” she mumbled in her sleep. The thought of her one love smiling, watching her sleep, warmed her even though his arms never would again.

Hours later she woke with the sun sparkling between the trees along the other side of the lake. Sitting up, she stretched, realizing she’d slept almost thirty hours.

Stumbling through the cabin, Ronny tried to remember where the bathroom was located. One look in the mirror frightened her fully awake. Her hair looked like squirrels must have started nesting in it. What makeup she wore seemed to have slipped to another part of her face, and the silk blouse she’d pulled from her suitcase was so wrinkled and twisted she feared it was ruined.

Twenty minutes later she stepped from the shower feeling better. Two cans of soup and an egg sandwich finished the recovery, but as the day drifted, one thing bothered her. No matter how many times she remembered the night, the feel of the blanket being floated over her cold body never changed.

Blankets don’t float and ghosts aren’t real.
As she folded the blanket she knew she hadn’t imagined it.

When Mr. Carleon called to see if she needed anything, she asked if he’d visited her early that morning and was informed, in his polite formal way, that he would never come unannounced unless he thought she was in trouble.

Five days and nights passed. Ronny could feel her heart slowing down. Peace. She found she rose early and watched the sun rise every morning, then walked and read, and even tried to fish. In the afternoons she slept in the porch swing, loving the low sounds of the lake and the swishing noise of the trees around her. She saw birds, a few deer and squirrels, but no pigs.

And no people. After being in crowded museums, art galleries, airports, and cities, the silence was grand. For the first time in a long while Ronny took a few minutes to listen to her own breathing. She called Mr. Carleon every other day, but she didn’t bother to turn on her laptop. Nothing in the world seemed more important than being here.

The sixth day dawned, smothered in rain. A slow mist seemed to hang in the air more than fall. By midafternoon she’d curled up in her blanket and was almost asleep when she heard the swishing sound of a rushed movement through the bushes to the right of the house.

Ronny sat up, trying to make sense of the new noise in her quiet world. Someone, or something, was plowing through the brush toward her.

Before she could fight her way out of panic and move, a voice shouted, “You Ronelle Logan?”

She reached her hand out like a blind man trying to see the person who belonged to the voice, but there was nothing but gray fog past the porch steps.

Her feet hit the worn boards hard as she stood. Whoever was out there wasn’t friendly. In fact, he sounded furious.

“Yes,” she managed to whisper into the rain. “I’m Ronny Logan. Who and where are you?” Her hand reached for the walking stick just as a man’s form appeared at the side of the cabin porch.

She might have been more frightened, but thanks to the height of the porch, the man’s head came level with the railing, making him seem elfish in his dark rain slicker and broad shoulders. His feet were planted wide apart.

“What do you want?” Ronny took a step backward, wondering if she could make it to the door of the cabin before he could bound over the railing.

“Your mother named Dallas Logan?”

“Yes.” If he’d come to kill her, he was starting out on a strange note. Ronny wasn’t sure, but she doubted a check of family history was required before murder. During her childhood, Ronny’s mother loved reporting every crime she heard about. By the time Ronny was ten, she’d started staring at every stranger wondering which kind of criminal they might be.

This one’s face was almost completely hooded in the slicker. All she could see was his nose and mouth. Not much to go on if she was asked to identify him in a lineup. But then if he had come to rob her, he was going to be disappointed. She had little of value. If he had come to kill her, she wouldn’t have to worry about memorizing his features.

“What do you want?” she said again, holding the walking stick in front of her. A little compass bobbled at the top, and Ronny wished it were a knife instead.

The stranger must have noticed her shaking with cold and fear. He backed away a foot and said in a normal voice, still not friendly, “I want you to come out in the rain and get your mother the hell off my property. She turned down the wrong road and now she’s stuck on my land.”

Ronny frowned. Worse than robbery and death, her mother had come to visit. “I don’t want her. She’s on your land. She’s yours.”

She swore the stranger growled before he raised one finger and pointed it at her as if it were a weapon. “Look, lady, I already got a mother and I don’t want another one. Not one like yours.”

Ronny didn’t argue. Dallas Logan was probably the most hated woman in Harmony. She got into everyone’s business, then trampled on their nerves. She thought the world revolved around her. She’d disowned Ronny a few years ago and told everyone who would listen that her only child was dead. If Dallas Logan had been the first plague rained down on the Egyptians, there wouldn’t have been any need for more.

“Where is she?” Ronny murmured as she reached inside the door for her raincoat. Whatever Dallas was didn’t matter; she wasn’t this stranger’s problem. Ronny would at least go help get her back to the main road. Knowing her mother, she planned to continue the habit she had last year of driving by Ronny’s house and not looking at her.

“She’s stuck about halfway down my road in a boat of a car. I’m surprised you didn’t hear her screaming. When I offered to help, she told me her trouble was all my fault for not keeping a passable road to the lake. When I said I didn’t have or want visitors, she accused me of being the next generation of Unabomber and that she was going to call the FBI and have me arrested before I mailed off a wave of pipe bombs.”

“They don’t take her calls,” Ronny said as she took one step off the porch and felt her sneakers disappear in mud. “Neither do the Texas Rangers, the IRS, the state troopers, the—”

“I get the picture.” He offered his hand. “Look, if you’ll help me get her back to the road, I’d appreciate it. I don’t really care what’s between the two of you, but I’m betting it’s ninety-nine point nine percent her doing and I don’t even know you. If we get her back to Rainbow Lane, she’ll take one look at the mudslide that used to be your road and forget the visit.”

“Not likely.” She had gone back to whispering. She’d started to point out that he was assuming her mother might use logic when Ronny noticed him staring at her as if questioning her sanity. She said in a normal voice, “You’re right, though. It’s not your problem. I knew I’d have to face her sooner or later. It might as well be in the rain.” She pointed to the mule. “Could this thing make it to her faster?”

“It might even pull her out,” he said as he tugged Ronny toward the ATV.

When her feet refused to pull free of the mud, he circled her waist with his big hands and lifted her up. She was sitting barefoot in the mule before she recovered from his touch. He hadn’t asked. He’d just lifted her like it was nothing personal. He had no idea how rarely she’d been touched in her life.

If she’d thought the ride was rough with Mr. Carleon driving down to the cabin, it was nothing compared to the way this stranger took off. He sprayed mud like a speedboat sprays water. Ronny held on, her knuckles white, her jaw clamped. She was afraid if she opened her mouth to scream, she’d be eating mud.

He drove along the uneven beach to a dock that he apparently used to put his boat in the water. An old rowboat was shoved into the trees near the water’s edge. From there, he climbed back behind a huge house she hadn’t even noticed among the willows north of her place.

Rain splattered around the little windshield and dripped from the canvas just above the roll bar. Ronny kept herself from becoming hysterical by counting the ways she would probably die at any moment. Thin branches from willows kept slapping her, making her lose count as they climbed up what once might have been a road.

“How do you get supplies down to your place?” she yelled, knowing he didn’t use this path, for they were mowing down saplings as tall as the hood.

“I park my truck at the Delaney place and keep a boat over by their dock to row across to my place. Good way to discourage company.”

“I’ll remember that,” she yelled back. “What is your name?”

“Why?”

“In case I fall out. I want to know who to yell at.”

When he glanced at her, she saw his eyes. Green eyes, predator eyes, glaring at her as if he had no idea she might be kidding. “Austin Hawk,” he finally answered.

“Like the city?”

“No, like the hero. The father of Texas. Everyone in my family is named after Texas fighters. It sounds like a roll call of the Alamo when we have reunions.” His voice was cold and clipped, as if he were simply listing facts.

She couldn’t believe he was giving her a history lesson as the mule rocked from side to side. The last thought she’d have when the ATV started rolling back downhill would be the battle cry, “Remember the Alamo.”