The Man She Once Knew Read online

  He’d encountered the garden on one of those uneasy nights, leaping from the bed that had been his as a teen—the same bed where he’d once conjured up dreams of the life he’d live, the places he’d see, the difference he’d make.

  The bed was too soft for him now. Too much a torture, stinking as it did of his failures. He’d taken up sleeping on the floor instead, often outside on the screened-in porch at the back of the small house. He couldn’t get enough of fresh air, of room to move. Some nights he took off down the country road in front of his mother’s house, running five, six, ten miles at a time, trying to sweat out fifteen years of misery.

  And the present, as devoid of hope, in some ways, as each day behind bars.

  He stifled the urge to throw the hoe like a javelin, to damage something, hurt something, to shatter the paper-thin wall with the rage that he pushed down and down and down—

  He stopped in his tracks, dust motes drifting in the air, sweating and shaking with the effort of keeping it all inside. Why did Callie have to show up now and make him face exactly how far he’d fallen?

  Lock it down. Kill the fury with your bare hands. If you don’t get a grip, son, you’ll be in here forever. The advice of fellow prisoner Sam Eakins, eighty years old if he was a day, had saved him in those early weeks when David’s gut-churning fear had become a smoldering rage.

  He had to stop thinking about what might have been. It couldn’t matter that he had a crap job, cleaning up after drunks in a bar where patrons like Mickey Patton seldom missed an opportunity to jab at him, to spill a beer purposely on a freshly cleaned floor. To relish that David was cleaning toilets when he should have been flying a jet and wearing medals.

  He had a job he badly needed, the only work anyone would give him. There was so much to be done around his mother’s place, chores that she’d left neglected as her health declined. Until David had returned, he’d had no idea how impoverished her circumstances were, worse even than when she’d been newly widowed and responsible for a child.

  If the roof over her head wasn’t to fall down, the repair was up to him, and materials cost money. He’d sent most of his pitiful prison pay to her, but obviously it hadn’t gone nearly far enough.

  He stepped outside, washed off at the faucet and spotted his mother moving about in the kitchen, preparing his supper. He stared down at the hands that resembled his father’s, then reached into his pocket and fingered the knife he had reclaimed from the small desk in his bedroom. His hands were rusty from years of disuse, but each day they itched a little more to resume the carving his father had taught him.

  When the police had come to arrest him, he’d left the knife behind so it wouldn’t be confiscated in jail. His fingers had gone blind after that, no longer able to create beauty or humor from only a stick, a block of wood. The last carving he’d completed before prison was one he wasn’t ready to see yet.

  He flexed his hands, his father’s hands, then closed his fingers one by one into a fist.

  No. Not yet. Until he could carve with the rage purged from his heart, he would leave the knife unopened.

  David shook himself like a dog shedding rain.

  Lock it down. Get a grip.

  CALLIE HALTED two steps into the kitchen. Unbelievably, the small, scrubbed-to-an-inch-of-its-life house still smelled of the lavender water Miss Margaret used to iron her sheets, underlaid by frying bacon, homemade bread and a million or so cups of mint tea. She expected the older woman to pop around the corner any second.

  By rote, Callie had entered the back door from the driveway. The front door was only for company, Miss Margaret had told her that first day. Callie was family, she’d insisted, however little Callie could believe back then that she belonged anywhere, especially in this warm refuge.

  Callie glanced out the picture window that had been Miss Margaret’s pride and joy, the one that gave her great-aunt a good view of the backyard she’d labored so many hours to create. Oh, she’d tended the front and sides, as well—weeds were not tolerated, and she’d had an eagle’s eye for the slightest up-cropping—but the back was where her heart was planted. Vegetable garden off in the right-hand corner, roses lining the left. In between lay her rock garden, an exotic Southwestern creation as out of place in these ancient, rounded green mountains as Miss Margaret would have been in the desert.

  I do believe I was a cowgirl in another life, she would say. On my one trip to Los Angeles by train, I saw the desert for the first time and something in my soul expanded. A look of intense regret would furrow her brow at the mention, but she never explained beyond one admonition. Do not let your dreams pass you by, Callie Anne. When your heart tells you you’re home, you listen, you hear me?

  Miss Margaret had been as foreign to a fourteen-year-old in full rebellion as a rose was to a coyote. Callie had rolled her eyes that first time, but after seeing the hurt she’d dealt to someone more harmless and innocent than Callie had ever been, she’d kept her cynicism to herself. Miss Margaret had been out of another century and older than dirt to boot in Callie’s view, but a kindness in her smoothed off some of the edges of Callie’s wild misery.

  Miss Margaret had taken one look at her full-on Goth attire and pressed her lips together so hard they’d nearly disappeared. Just when Callie was ready to bolt, Miss Margaret had confided that two of her little earrings resembled a pair she’d wanted when she was young, except that her father would have sent her to the woodshed for piercing her ears. Ladies didn’t do that, she’d said, then, with a puckish grin, she’d asked if Callie thought she was too old to try it now.

  An astonished Callie had found herself offering to do the deed.

  The Callie who stood in nearly the same spot now was surprised to find herself smiling.

  Okay. She exhaled slowly. It’s only one night.

  She walked through the space, trailing her fingers over the old Tell City maple table and chairs in front of the picture window, the rocking recliner where Miss Margaret had sat to watch her television at night. Beside it stood a table groaning under the weight of not only a lamp but a good six months’ worth of catalogs and magazines and, of course, Miss Margaret’s ever-present King James Bible.

  Callie stooped and started to pick up the Bible but faltered, her fingers instead drifting over the cracked leather binding, the gold cross worn nearly transparent.

  Then she spotted the grocery list begun but not finished in that familiar spidery handwriting. She felt an urge to give way to grief she hadn’t expected to feel for an old lady she hadn’t seen since she left Oak Hollow.

  Darkness encroached in this place of haunted memories, chipping away at Callie’s carefully built defenses.

  She leaped up so suddenly she stumbled. Quickly she righted herself and charged through the house, flipping on the lights in every room.

  Hoping to chase away the ghosts that still lurked.

  ON HIS WAY TO WORK in his mother’s ancient sedan, David took a detour. How many nights had he driven past the little house after Callie had left.

  He turned the corner and saw light blazing from all the windows in a profligate display Miss Margaret would never have indulged—

  No. She could not be staying.

  Go away, Callie. He’d seen at the chapel that she hadn’t known about him, but she would by now. Someone, probably lots of someones, would eagerly spill all the gruesome details to her.

  He’d borne a lot, would have to bear more until his mother was gone and he was free at last. But seeing Callie, having her look at him the way everyone else did—

  That, after all he’d survived, might finally break him.

  Please, Callie. Go away and let me be.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MORNING’S LIGHT BANISHED the night’s foolishness. Callie went about her preparations to leave, careful not to focus on any more details of this place in which she’d spent seven life-altering months. Other than the severely cut black suit she’d worn to the funeral, she had only the slacks and blouse sh
e’d traveled in. Last night she’d washed out her lingerie and spread it out to dry on a towel bar while hanging up her suit in the closet of the room that was once hers.

  She’d had no sleepwear either, and bare skin in Miss Margaret’s house felt like a serious breach of manners. She couldn’t bring herself to don anything as personal as one of the worn, soft nightgowns bearing the scent that was uniquely Miss Margaret’s, however. Callie had compromised on a light robe and had dropped off to sleep early, surprising herself.

  Now she combed through the cabinets looking for coffee she knew she wouldn’t find. With a pang for the giant red-eye coffee—strong regular coffee spiked with espresso—she normally grabbed on her way to work in Philly, Callie had to settle for Miss Margaret’s beloved Earl Grey. No tea bags were tolerated in this house, so Callie found herself preparing tea Miss Margaret’s way. There was something surprisingly soothing about engaging in the ritual she’d seen performed so often.

  Miss Margaret didn’t hold with mugs; a proper china cup was a must. When Callie opened the cabinet door, still painted cream and hinged with the hammered copper dating from the fifties, she spied the familiar china with its moss rose pattern, and for a second, Miss Margaret was all too real again. Callie ignored the tug, poured herself a cup, then carried it outside.

  How many mornings had she awakened to find Miss Margaret in her garden wearing the old-fashioned sunbonnet made by Miss Margaret’s mother from flour sacks? How many conversations had they conducted there, the older woman’s hands never idle while Callie fumbled to identify vegetable from weed?

  She shook her head in amazement that at her age, her great-aunt had still planted, still managed to weed and water. Gardening is life, she’d say to Callie. You learn everything you really need to know about the world right here.

  Who would wind up with this place? Who would care for it, love it and baby it as Miss Margaret had?

  Callie bent to pluck one weed from the row of—Her brow furrowed. What were these plants? She rose abruptly. What did any of it matter? She would be gone this afternoon at the latest.

  Oh, crap. Her stilettos were getting wet in the dew. Wouldn’t her coworkers howl if they could see her beloved Manolos damp—wait. Was that dirt on the toes? She quickened her stride, lifting her foot high as she sought to spare the one indulgence in a sober wardrobe bought to ensure that, at only thirty, she was taken seriously in her position.

  The reminder was a good one. She did not belong here, and it was no business of hers what happened with anyone or anything in Oak Hollow. Her life was elsewhere. She’d fought to make it so.

  Thus resolved, she went inside, washed her cup and did a quick, impersonal check of the premises to be sure everything was squared away. Then, with a moment’s hesitation over leaving the door unlocked, she got into her car and started it. In less than five minutes, she was parking across the street and down a bit from Albert Manning’s law office. She walked swiftly, preoccupied with thoughts of what she would do first when she got back to Philly.

  As she passed the post office, the door swung wide, and she nearly smacked right into it. A quick dodge to the side, and she tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

  A hand grabbed her arm and steadied her.

  She lifted her head. “Excuse—” Every last thought vanished as she stared into a face she had once known intimately.

  “David,” she finally managed, her arm still tingling where he’d touched her, even through the fabric of her jacket. Whatever she might have meant to say dried up at the sight of him.

  He only stared down at her, his face a mask.

  He was big, so tall. She wasn’t the tiny girl he’d known—she’d grown three and a half inches after she’d left here, five seven now. With her stilettos, she was an inch or so shy of six feet.

  But he’d grown, too—six four, six five now at a guess—but it wasn’t his height or even the layers of muscle that made the biggest impression on her.

  It was his eyes. Once they had been mossy-green and soft, had spoken volumes to her, whether of love or heat or amusement. Patience had often lingered there, as well, far beyond what anyone would expect from someone so young.

  When Callie had been exiled to Oak Hollow by a mother who wanted freedom to play with her latest sleazy boyfriend, she hadn’t tried to hide her contempt for the hick ways of the locals. In return, she’d been ridiculed by the kids for her Goth attire and disliked by adults for her bad attitude. She’d pretended she didn’t care, but David had found her in the woods one day, crying her eyes out. A compassionate soul, he’d talked to her and begun coming around, even though the other kids gave him a hard time.

  She could accept all the changes she now saw in his frame, the new angles to his face, even the lines time and misery had carved into it.

  But his eyes were a stranger’s, hard and blank. Flat as though he and she had never met. As if they were nothing to each other.

  Then astonishingly, he stepped around her without a word.

  “David—” She reached out to stop him.

  He shrugged her off and kept moving.

  Callie turned and stared at his back. He’d once been so kind to her, so gentle. They’d shared something profound, yet he was pretending not to know her? Fury rode to the rescue. How dare he? She hadn’t asked him to show up yesterday and set tongues wagging. She’d tried not to think of him last night, but he’d been one of the specters haunting her dreams. Now he disappeared from sight without a single glance back, as though she had no meaning to him.

  Nothing could have put her back up quicker. She’d been judged wanting for too much of her life, and she had spent years of painstaking effort making sure she excelled, that no one could ever find her lacking again.

  She stared in the direction he’d gone. Fine. We’re done. Good riddance.

  One hour. She would give the attorney one hour for whatever he needed to say.

  Then Oak Hollow and all it had meant to her was over and done with.

  KEEP WALKING. Get the hell out, get away from her before it’s too late. David’s long strides ate up the ground, the day’s promising beauty lost on him as he barely kept himself from breaking into a run.

  While her touch, that too-brief clasp, burned his skin like a brand.

  When he was completely out of sight, he looked around to note that he’d wound up outside the fence of Mickey Patton’s welding shop, a junkyard of discarded pieces of farm equipment and rusted cars and trucks. Frantic barks pierced the air as the pit bulls Mickey kept for security lunged at the fence as though David were meat and they hadn’t eaten in weeks. The pipe fence posts sang as they slammed into them, teeth bared, mouths foaming.

  “Killer, Cutter—shut the hell up!” Patton emerged, face screwed up in displeasure.

  Then he caught sight of David. “What are you doing here? Get your ass gone before I call Sheriff Carver on you and have you locked up again. You should be in there for life, you worthless son of a bitch.”

  David was no scared boy now, and though Patton was pure mean, David had faced down men in prison who made Patton look like a first-grader. He knew he could take the man in a fair fight, but Patton would never put himself in that situation. No, he made sure that his taunts were the most vicious only when the bar was crowded, when there were plenty of witnesses, everyone aware that David was on parole and didn’t dare touch him.

  His fingers formed a tight, hard fist as he battled the urge to give back some of what he’d been forced to take. He wanted to hurt this bully, wanted to take back his dignity, to stand tall and not back down to anyone ever again. He’d swallowed a bellyful of humiliation and shame, and some days his insides were stained black with self-loathing.

  At those moments even thoughts of his mother, so fragile and needy, were barely enough to pull him back from the edge. He forced himself to go when every fiber of him craved to stay. To avenge.

  “That’s right, you candy-ass coward—run. Run like the spineless murderer you are,�
�� shouted Patton.

  Each word was a spike driven into his brain, a lash on his back, a barb worming its way into what remained of his self-respect.

  When Patton began laughing, David truly understood what it was to hate.

  He just wasn’t sure who he despised more, Patton or himself.

  A SMALL, NEAT WOMAN SMILED as Callie entered Albert Manning’s reception area, formerly the living room, she imagined, of the frame house this building had been. The furnishings were slightly shabby, but the space carried an air of welcome she appreciated right now after the bruising encounter with David.

  She felt strangely vulnerable, robbed of the dream that out there somewhere in the world was a decent, honorable teen grown into an even better man.

  That couldn’t matter; she was strong on her own. She didn’t need anyone. She had made herself.

  Finally the sweet-faced little woman looked up. “Mr. Manning can see you now.” She rose and escorted Callie through the door behind her desk.

  “Good morning.” The older man crossed to her. “I hope you slept well.” He gestured her to a chair. “Would you care for anything? Coffee? Tea?”

  “No.” She had to force herself to slow down, to return the courtesy. “But thank you. It was nice of you to provide food at Miss Margaret’s. I’m afraid I didn’t do justice to it.”

  “My wife will be sorry to hear that. She enjoys feeding people. Perhaps you could join us for dinner tonight instead.”