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  But land and money were how men like Buck kept score. The sale of Harris Farms, if it came to that, would leave him cash rich. He could keep his yacht, buy two more houses to replace the two he would have to give up, and still have enough spare change to fly first class to Europe or Hawaii whenever he wanted. Nevertheless, it galled him to know that Suzu Harris could, if she chose, force the sale of the land they had so painstakingly acquired in their early years. Could even hold his feet to the fire over their first tomato field, the thirty acres that had been in his family since before the Civil War.

  By the time she reached Wilkesboro, Flame was stone cold sober and beginning to think that running Buck into the shallows was probably a mistake. She had played him like a fish these last two years, giving him enough line to let him think it was his idea to come to her. Start reeling in too hard and she was liable to have him break the line or spit out the hook. As long as she had come this far, though, it was easier to go on than turn back.

  “Thank God it’s not icy,” she muttered as she steered to avoid a hole where the gravel had washed out and almost scraped the car on an outcropping of solid rock. Another quarter-mile and the drive ended in a circle in front of a large rustic lodge built of undressed logs. She did not see his car, but the garage was on the far side of the house. Nor were there any lights. Not that she expected any. Not at—she pressed a button on the side of her watch and the little dial lit up. Not at one-thirty in the morning.

  The front door was locked and she rang the bell long and hard until she could hear it echo from within.

  To her surprise, the interior remained dark.

  She rang again, leaning on the bell so long that no one inside could possibly sleep through it.

  Nothing.

  A long low porch ran the full length of the house and she retrieved a door key that was kept beneath the second ceramic pot. Within minutes, she was inside the lodge, fumbling for the light switches.

  “Buck, honey? You here?” she called.

  No answer.

  With growing apprehension, she mounted the massive staircase that led to the bedrooms above.

  In the small hours of Saturday morning, Detective Mayleen Richards drove through the deserted streets of Dobbs. The only other person out at that time was a town police officer, who gave her a friendly wave from his cruiser that indicated he’d be glad to share a cup of coffee from his Thermos and kill some boring time. Another night and she might have. Tonight though, she merely waved back and continued on to her apartment, a one-bedroom over a garage on the outskirts of Dobbs where town and suburbs merged.

  The elderly couple who lived in the main house spent their winters in Florida and were glad to have a sheriff’s deputy there to keep an eye on things. Richards was glad for the privacy their absence gave her. Even when the owners were in residence, they went to bed early and seemed singularly uninterested in their tenant’s irregular comings and goings.

  Not that there had been anything very irregular about her personal life before this. She pulled her shifts. She attended a Spanish language course two nights a week out at Colleton Community College. She visited her family down in Black Creek almost every weekend. She harbored no regrets for ditching either that dull computer programming job out at the Research Triangle nor the equally dull marriage to her highschool sweetheart who had achieved his life’s goal when he traded farm life for a desk job. Except for fancying herself in love with Major Bryant, law enforcement had absorbed and satisfied her.

  Richards could smile to herself now and see that recent adolescent crush for what it was—attraction to an alpha male, generated by proximity and nothing more than the needs of a healthy body that had slept alone for way too long.

  She coasted to a stop beside a shiny gray pickup with an extended crew cab and cut the ignition, then hurried up the wooden steps that led to a deck and to the man who waited inside.

  “I thought you’d be gone,” she said, absurdly happy that her prickly reaction to his first overtures had not sent him away.

  “No.” He carefully unzipped her jacket and eased the soft pink sweater over her head, then buried his face in the waves of her dark red hair as his hands unhooked her bra.

  “Muy hermosa,” he murmured.

  Later, lying beside him in her bed, brown legs next to white, she was almost on the brink of sleep when she remembered. “McLamb said he saw you at the courthouse today?”

  Miguel Diaz nodded, one hand lazily moving across her body. “One of the men from the village next to my village back home. He took a tractor and I was there to speak for him.”

  “Tractor? Was he the guy who plowed up a stretch of yards out toward Cotton Grove?”

  “Ummm,” he murmured, kissing her shoulder.

  “He works for you?”

  “For now. The other place, they fired him when he took the tractor.”

  Mayleen Richards laughed, remembering the jokes the uniformed deputies had made. “What was he thinking? Where was he trying to go?”

  She felt him shrug. “Who knows? It was the tequila driving. Maybe he thought he could get to his woman.”

  “She’s in Dobbs?”

  “No. Their baby died and she went back to Mexico.”

  “Oh, Mike, that’s so sad.”

  “Yes. But our babies will be strong and healthy.”

  “Our babies?” This was only their third time together and he was already talking babies?

  “Our red-haired, brown-skinned babies,” he said as he gently stroked her stomach.

  The image delighted her, but then she thought of her parents, of her family’s attitude toward Latinos, and she sighed.

  Intuitively, he seemed to understand. “Don’t worry, querida. Once the babies come, your family will grow to like me.”

  CHAPTER 13

  A man can’t throw off his habits as he does his coat; if contracted in youth they will stick in manhood and old age, whether they be good or bad.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  DEBORAH KNOTT

  SATURDAY MORNING, MARCH 4

  Dwight got home so late Friday night that I slipped out of bed next morning without waking him, and Cal and I tiptoed around until it was nine o’clock and time for me to go pick up Mary Pat and Jake.

  “Are the children ready to go?” I asked when Kate answered the phone.

  “No, I’m keeping them home today,” she said and her voice was cool.

  I was immediately apprehensive. “Is something wrong?”

  “Did you speak to Cal like I asked you?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t tell me—?”

  “I’m sorry, Deborah, but I am not going to have Jake treated the way Dwight used to treat Rob.”

  “What?”

  “You must know that when they were kids and Dwight went over to play with your brothers, half the time he wouldn’t let Rob come.”

  I heard Rob’s voice protesting in the background and heard Kate say, “Well, that’s what you told me he did. Isn’t that why he’s not taking this seriously?”

  Rob’s reply came faintly, “Kate, honey, that’s what kids do.”

  “Not in this house,” Kate said firmly, and I knew she was laying down the law to both of us, and probably to Mary Pat, too, if the child was within hearing distance.

  “Kate, I’m so sorry,” I said, “but unless you spoke to Dwight yesterday when he came by for Cal, he doesn’t know anything about this.”

  Cal had only been half listening, but when he heard me say that, he froze and guilt spread across his face.

  At her end of the phone, I heard the baby begin to cry.

  “Look, I promise that Mary Pat and Cal will include him today,” I said, fixing Cal with a stern look. “Let me come and get them. You need the break, okay?”

  There was a long silence, then a weary, “Okay, but if I hear—”

  “You’re not going to hear,” I promised.

  As soon as I hung up, I called Dwight’s mother an
d when Miss Emily finished exclaiming over those body parts she kept hearing about on the local newscast—“And now a whole body?”—I asked if she could possibly drop by Kate and Rob’s and offer to sit with little R.W. during his morning nap so that Rob could take Kate out for an early lunch. “I’ll keep the children overnight, but she sounds as if she could stand to get out of the house.”

  “What a good idea,” said Miss Emily. “I’ll walk over there right now. Isn’t it nice that we’re finally getting a taste of spring after all that cold?”

  “Are we? I haven’t been outside yet.” I glanced out the window. Sunshine. And the wind was blowing so gently that the leaves on the azalea bushes Dwight and I had set out in the fall barely stirred. “Maybe we’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Cal headed for the garage door.

  “Sit,” I said quietly.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and I took the chair across from him. “You want to tell me what happened yesterday?”

  He shrugged, twined his feet around the legs of the chair, and tried to look innocent. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  His brown eyes darted away from mine. “Nothing really.”

  I waited silently.

  “We were just playing.”

  “And?”

  “He kept bugging us. Aunt Kate wouldn’t let us use the PlayStation because she said we weren’t letting Jake have enough of a turn and when we let him play Monopoly with us, he couldn’t count his money, so—” He hesitated.

  “So?”

  “So we said we’d play hide-and-seek and then . . .” His voice dropped even lower than his head. “I guess we sorta hid where he couldn’t find us and we didn’t come out even when he said he gave up and then he started crying and Aunt Kate got mad and made Mary Pat go to her room.” He looked up with a calculated glint in his eyes that more than one defendant had tried on me. “But then I did read Jake a story.”

  I wasn’t any more impressed with that than I generally was in the courtroom when the defendant says, “But I only hit him twice with that tire iron and then I did take him to the hospital.”

  “You think that makes up for getting Aunt Kate upset again?”

  He shrugged, but his jaw set in a mulish fix that was so reminiscent of Dwight that I might have laughed under different circumstances.

  “You promised me on Thursday that you were going to be nicer to Jake and cut him some slack.”

  “Sorry.” It was a one-size-fits-all, pro forma apology. “But Mary Pat—”

  “No, Cal, this isn’t about Mary Pat. This is about you. You gave me your word and you broke it.”

  “I don’t care!” His head came up angrily. “You’re not my mother and you’re not the boss of me!”

  It was the first time he’d snapped at me and we were both taken aback. Defiance was all over his face, but I think he had shocked himself as well.

  I took a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right, Cal. I’m not your mother, but now that you’re living here—”

  “I didn’t ask to come here and I don’t have to stay.” His eyes filled with involuntary tears and he wiped them away with an impatient fist. “I can go back to Virginia and live with Nana.”

  “No, you can’t,” I said with more firmness than I felt. “That’s not an option and you know it. I may not be your mother, but I am married to your father and that gives me the right to haul you up short when you step over the line.”

  He glared at me.

  “Unless you want me to let him handle it?”

  That got his attention.

  “No! Don’t tell him. Please?”

  Uncomfortable as this was for both of us, I knew that something had to be done, but this was going to take more than a simple time out or an early bedtime. Besides, there was no way I could send him to bed early without Dwight’s knowing and for now I was willing to respect Cal’s plea that he not be involved.

  “You know that what you did was wrong?”

  He gave a sulky half nod.

  “When your mother punished you for something serious, what did she do?”

  His eyes widened and he turned so white that the freckles popped out across his nose. “You’re going to spank me?”

  Even though my parents had occasionally smacked our bottoms or switched our legs when it was well deserved, I was almost as horrified as he. “No, I’m not going to spank you. But you know we can’t let this go.”

  He thought a moment. “I could not watch television for a whole month.”

  “And what’ll you tell your dad when the Hurricanes play an away game and you don’t watch it with him?”

  As soon as I’d said that, I knew what would be appropriate.

  “Here’s the deal,” I told him. “You hurt Aunt Kate’s feelings when you left Jake out and made him cry, so now it’s your turn to miss the fun. You’ll stay home from the next Canes game and I’ll go with your dad. You can say it was your idea and you have to make him believe it or else he’ll ask you for the whole story. If that happens, you’ll have to tell him yourself and you’ll still stay home. Is it a deal?”

  He nodded and by his chastened look, I knew I’d gotten through to him.

  “If I hear from Aunt Kate that you’re not trying to turn this situation around with Jake, you’re going to miss the next game after that as well. Three strikes and you’re out of all the others the rest of the season. Is that clear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah?” I said sternly, unwilling to let him get away with that deliberate show of disrespect.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered.

  “Just because Mary Pat is six months older than you doesn’t mean you have to let her lead you around by the nose.”

  “But then she may not want to play with me,” he protested.

  “I seriously doubt that, Cal. You’re smart and funny and you can think up lots of games that take three people. You don’t have to play what she wants every time. Isn’t there anything besides television that you like that Jake can do, too?”

  Again that shrug, but then he grudgingly admitted that Jake was getting pretty good at Chinese checkers. “He almost beat me last week. And when we played with the blocks, his tower was higher than Mary Pat’s.”

  “There you go then. See? You guys are going to know each other the rest of your lives and the older you get, the less it’s going to matter that he’s four years younger. By the time you get grown, four years won’t make a smidgin of difference. Your dad’s six years older than me and that doesn’t matter to either of us, does it?”

  “What doesn’t matter?” asked Dwight, who came into the kitchen yawning widely.

  “That you’re an old man and I’m your child bride,” I said as I got up to pour him a cup of coffee. “Rough night?”

  “Tell you about it later,” he answered. “You two look awfully serious. What’s up?”

  “Guess what?” I said brightly. “Your son’s giving me his ticket for the next Canes game.”

  “Really?” He looked at Cal and I could tell that he was half pleased, yet half puzzled. “You sure, son?”

  Cal nodded. “She likes them, too, and I heard Grandma talking with Aunt Kate ’bout how y’all haven’t been out together since . . . since” —his eyes suddenly misted—“since I came to live here.”

  I was stricken, knowing that he was thinking of Jonna again and that he probably felt a stab of heartsick longing for his mother, for the way things had been all his life. Another moment and I might have weakened. Fortunately for the cause, Dwight beamed and tousled Cal’s hair. “Thanks, buddy. We really appreciate that, don’t we, Deb’rah?”

  “We do,” I agreed. “Right now, though, Cal and I are on our way to pick up the others. We can swing past a grocery store if you want something special for supper?”

  “Don’t bother. By the time you get back, I’ll be dressed and they can ride with me to see if the nursery’s got in those trees I ordered. I’ll pick up som
e barbecue or something.”

  Cal was quiet on the drive over to Kate’s, but shortly before we got there, he said in a small voice, “I really am sorry we were mean to Jake and got Aunt Kate mad.”

  “You might want to tell that to Aunt Kate next time you catch her alone,” I said, not being real big on public apologies. As a child, I much preferred a few quick swats on my bottom to the galling humiliation of having to apologize to someone in front of everybody. There were no cars behind us, so when we came to the stop sign, I paused and turned to face him. “And just for the record, Cal, as long as you try to do right by Jake, this is over and done with so far as I’m concerned.”

  “You’re not still mad at me?”

  I smiled at him. “Nope, and I don’t hold grudges either.”

  His look of relief almost broke my heart.

  “Look, honey. Stuff happens. I know you wish things could be the way they used to be, but they aren’t and there’s no way anybody can change it back. Your dad and I know this isn’t easy for you. There’re going to be times when you think you hate everybody and that everybody hates you. When you make bad choices and do things you know you shouldn’t, then yeah, I may get mad for the moment. But you need to know right now that I do love you and I love your dad and I don’t care how mad we all get at each other, I’m not going to stop loving either one of you. Okay?”

  It could have been a Hallmark moment.

  In a perfect world, he would have leaned over and given me a warm spontaneous hug while someone cued the violins, and bluebirds and butterflies fluttered around the car.

  Instead, he stared straight ahead through the windshield for a long moment, then sighed and said, “Okay.”

  Hey, you take what you can get.