Really Something (24 page)

Whatever big emotional scene Duncan had pictured in his head wasn't what he got when he arrived at the farmhouse. Instead, he got a Hollywood drama, complete with a lot of waving arms, four-letter words, and complete freaking out.

“My movie is total
toast
, Scotty!” Jerry Wiggs was shouting when Duncan climbed out of Earl's truck. “No set. No movie. No moolah for anybody. Which means Wes Craven's gonna beat my ass at the Christmas box office. Again. Man, I hate him and his freaky fingernail Freddy friend.”

Chunks of Aunt Mae's farmhouse remained, looking like a building project half-done. Allie's mother was bustling between the crew and her family, handing out what looked like plates of food. It took a second for the whole scene to make sense to Duncan, and for him to register Katie's spaghetti, such an ordinary meal, among the craziness of the tornado's aftermath.

Allie's father kept trying to get his wife to sit down, to no avail. Allie's sister Carlene sat to one side, quietly eating, watching the goings-on, not really talking to anyone.

To the rear of the whole thing some skinny pale guy in a red velvet jacket paced back and forth like one of those crazy polar bears at the zoo, muttering to himself that if he could just get Jerry a latte, everything would be okay.

Duncan couldn't have cared less. He'd barely listened to Earl's conversation on the ride over here, and even now didn't hear Earl's ramblings about the movie crew, and how he'd changed his mind about the influx of cash. “Now that we're going to have a rebuilding project,” Earl said, “well, I think Tempest could use a little boost in the financial arm. These movie people could be just the ticket.” He chuckled. “Pun intended. What do you think, Duncan?”

But Duncan had already wandered away from Earl, his gaze scanning what was left of Aunt Mae's farmhouse, looking for the two familiar faces he had yet to see. Earl walked off and joined in on the meal.

Finally, Duncan caught a glint of metal.

Katie.

She was laughing as she came around the corner of the house, or what remained of the corner of the house, a tray of bread slices on her lap and Ranger on his leash by her side. The dog, apparently still a bit unnerved by the storm—or maybe worried about his mistress amid the debris—kept looking up at Duncan's sister from time to time, his tail in a nervous wag, as if ensuring himself that she was okay.

Relief flooded Duncan's chest and he covered the distance separating them in a clip. “Katie, you're okay.”

She beamed at him. “Yep. Thanks to you and to Allie, I'm just fine.”

He gathered her into a hug so tight, he lifted her out of the chair. “Thank God.”

“Hey, you're squishing the bread.”

He laughed and let her go. “Sorry.”

“That's okay. I love you, too, big brother.” She gestured with her head toward the right. “Allie's here, too.”

He turned and saw Allie then, looking not much worse for wear. In fact, looking more natural than ever, her hair back in a ponytail, her makeup gone, still wearing the same dress pants and blouse from earlier, but paired with Katie's old flip-flops. Allie was handing out napkins to the odd assemblage around the picnic table.

The relief in Duncan's chest quadrupled and all the damage around him seemed tempered somehow by the sight of everyone he knew, alive and safe and sound. “Allie got you out of the house?”

“Dragged us out is more like it,” Katie said. “She came over with her family, took one look at that weather report, and made us all get in the van and drove us over here herself. Then she herded everyone into the storm cellar. Carried my wheelchair down there herself. You should have seen her, yelling at Jerry to get a move on.” Katie laughed. “I think he was more scared of Allie than he was of the storm.”

Duncan chuckled. “That's something I would have paid money to see.”

“You gotta love a woman like that.” Katie slugged her brother. “And don't tell me you don't love her.”

He sighed. “Katie, it's complicated.”

“How so?”

“She's not who you think.”

Katie waved a hand in dismissal. “You mean that whole Allison Gray thing? I know about that. It's no big deal.”

“No big deal? Katie, she lied.”

“So? Who doesn't?” Katie stared at him. “You never guessed?”

“Hell, no. Who would? She didn't look the same, not by a long shot.”

“Duncan, she didn't change that much. Maybe you only saw what you wanted to see.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Katie gave Ranger a pat, then looked up at her brother. “Allie lost a lot of weight, yes, but the real her was always behind her eyes, and in the way she talked, acted. You knew her a lot better than I did in high school. You never noticed any resemblance between Allie and Allison when you were with her? Never even put the names together?”

“No. And I even had—” He cut off that sentence. Some things his little sister didn't need to know about his private life. “I never guessed.”

“Geez, Duncan, don't you watch those makeover shows?”

“You're the one with the remote control.”

She laughed. “True. And TLC probably isn't your cup of tea.”

Duncan's gaze traveled in Allie's direction again. He took in her hourglass figure, assessing it through new eyes, searching for the resemblance, the clues he'd missed. He'd found her beautiful, of course, but it had never been solely her looks that had attracted him. From the start, it had been her attitude, the way she'd matched him in wits—

The way the Allison Gray he'd known had done the same thing.

Two women, similar names—the idiot light went off in his head again—and he realized he'd been as blinded by the outside as anyone else. He hadn't seen past it, hadn't put the clues together, because he would have never imagined that Allison Gray could become Allie Dean.

“Why wouldn't she tell me the truth?” he asked, his attention swiveling back toward his little sister, who apparently had a lot more wisdom than he did. “Why would she hide all that from me?”

“Maybe she wanted you to know her for who she was inside, rather than judging the outside,” Katie said. “If there was a way for me to lose this chair magically, to make people stop seeing me as the poor paralyzed girl, hell, I'd jump on it in a second.”

“I would too,” he said to his sister, his hand going to hers, thinking of the dozens of doctors they'd talked to, all saying the same thing.

“Hey, water under the bridge.” Tears lingered in her eyes, shadowed by acceptance. “I'm okay with it. Sometimes, you gotta move on and, if there's one thing Allie taught me this week, it's that I can still be a girl, still be me, no matter what my legs can or cannot do.” Katie drew in a breath, let it out, then gave Duncan's hand a squeeze. “You need to give Allie another chance.”

“But she lied to me, Katie,” Duncan said, watching Allie as she talked to Jerry, wondering if he knew her at all. He thought he'd known Allison Gray pretty well. And he'd thought he'd known Allie Dean.

Turned out he hadn't known either one of them. Not really.

But how much of that was his own fault? How hard had he really tried to see the truth? He'd known all along that something wasn't exactly right with Allie Dean, that she was hiding something, and yet, he'd ignored that nagging feeling.

He'd never pressed, never tried to uncover the truth. Had he been afraid of what he might find? Knowing, as he did, what could be hidden behind the walls people erected?

People like himself.

“Yeah, well, we all lie, don't we?” Katie raised her head to soak up some of the sun, such a striking oddity amid the fractured town left in the tornado's wake. “Hell, I lie to myself every day and you know what? I'm tired of it. I'm tired of drinking so I'll forget, because all I do is wake up with a hangover and twice the pain. It's time I dealt with what happened.”

“You've done a pretty good job so far this week.”

“Yeah, that's been a start. That's why I invited Allie over tonight. To tell you both I think it's time I went to rehab.” She exhaled, returned her attention to her brother. “I think it's time we moved on, Duncan. This tornado's like a sign.”

“What do you mean?”

“The houses are gone. But we have insurance. We have a chance at a new start.” Katie swallowed, then met his gaze. “Use some of that money to go after your dreams, wherever they might lead. You don't have to be my keeper anymore.”

“Katie, no, don't—”

She put up a hand to stop him. “It is way past time I grew up. I'm going to do my rehab, both the mental and the physical. I want you to use the insurance money to rebuild the farm so that when I'm done, I have a place to come home to. Let that downtown house go to Hell, where it should be.”

Duncan could only nod in agreement. He had no wish to rebuild it either.

“And you go be whatever you want, Duncan. I'll be okay. Really.” She patted Ranger, then drew in a breath, before looking around the farm, or what was left of it. “Kinda ironic, isn't it?”

“What?”

“That this place is gone. The house, I mean, or most of it. But that damned tree survived.”

A few of the oak tree's branches lay scattered on the ground, but the tree itself stood against the stark landscape, as if flipping the bird to all of them. “Determined little thing isn't it?”

“I think it's there to remind me.”

“Of the accident?”

“No,” Katie said, and Duncan heard something new in her voice, something thoughtful, deep. “That Nature is more powerful than I am. That God has something in mind for my life. And just when I think I can control my future, He's going to put that damned tree in the way and spin me in a new direction.”

Duncan swallowed, then lowered himself to his knees and caught his sister's hand. She was ready to deal, she'd said. Maybe it was time he did, too. Asked the questions he'd never asked, filled in the gaping holes and found a little closure. For both of them. “What happened that night, Katie?”

When her gaze met his, tears pooled in her deep blue eyes and he wanted to take the words back. Closure was overrated, especially if it made Katie cry.

“You already know that answer, Duncan.”

And he did. He'd read it in the times she'd holed up at Aunt Mae's, even after their aunt had died when Katie was ten. The despondency that had settled around her in that last year, the permanent sadness he'd hoped to shake by throwing her a party. “You were sick of him, weren't you?”

The tears slipped down her cheeks, glistening on her perfect skin. “I was never good enough, Duncan. No matter how hard I tried, I was never good enough for him.”

“Ah, Katie, you were perfect. He was screwed up, not you.” It had never been either one of them, or anything either of them had done. John Henry had been his own worst enemy, disowning his sister Mae, pretending she didn't even exist because she was quirky and had married someone he hadn't liked. He'd demanded perfection, never realizing how that had cost him joy and love, and how much that had cost his children. “We kept trying to measure up to an impossible standard and you know what? It was our father who couldn't be happy. He had everything, Katie, and yet he was never, ever satisfied. Not with a meal, not with the number in his bank account, and not with his children.”

She nodded, silent for a while, then another tear slipped down her cheek. “All I wanted to do was get away, to stop him from hurting me,” she said, her voice catching on a sob. “I was drunk and I thought—” She cut off the sentence, then shook her head, her fists pounding at her legs, as if beating them could undo the decision of that night. “I thought I could make it all go away. Instead I made the biggest mistake of my life. And in the process, I ended up taking another life. How stupid was that? How incredibly stupid could I be?”

“Katie—”

“No, Duncan, don't try to soothe that over. I know what I did. I made a stupid decision, and when my friends tried to stop me from driving, I kept on going. I never should have gotten behind the wheel. Never should have…” She started to sob, her shoulders hunching and shaking, her whole body trembling with grief, remorse. “They were my friends.”

“I know, Katie,” Duncan said softly, going to her, wishing for the ten thousandth time that he could take that pain away, ease it for his sister, and knowing again that he couldn't. “I know.”

“I was the one driving. I was the one,
I
was the one.” She cried for a long, long time, Duncan holding her, the pain tearing through them both, so long overdue. When she had no tears left, Katie looked up at her brother. “Do you know who tried to talk me out of getting in the car?”

He shook his head.

“Carlene, Allie's sister. She and I had a huge fight over it. She tried to take my keys away, but I found them and I got in that stupid car anyway.” Katie sighed, then laid her other hand over Duncan's. “It was never your fault, you know, for not being here.”