Chapter 6

Hi, Mom.”

The greeting sounded inane to Heidi’s ears. She sank onto a chair opposite the gray-haired woman, slumped in a wheelchair, organizing buttons into piles on the tray in front of her.

This was going to be harder than she’d expected. Heidi knew seeing her mother for the first time since she was diagnosed with dementia would be tense, but the envelope she held between her fingers made it even more so. Questions of whether Loretta Lane would even recall the words she’d penned or be able to explain what she’d meant by them was yet to be seen.

Heidi watched her mother’s long finger move a brown button into a pile of blue. She offered Heidi a small smile, with no sign of recognition, and dropped her gaze to the buttons. She was a shell. There was no familiar scrutiny of Heidi. No familiarity at all. Heidi hadn’t expected the twang of bittersweet regret to build a lump in her throat.

“Mom?” she tried again.

This time, Loretta Lane lifted cloudy blue eyes, her gray brows furrowed in concentration. A tiny smile touched her dry, chapped lips. “Ohhh! It’s you!”

Heidi nodded, reaching out to take her aging mother’s hand. “I’m here.”

She didn’t know what to say. Which was sort of funny. Her father had always said Heidi could sing and dance her way out of a hostage situation. Now? She was tongue-tied. She set the envelope on the table between them. Maybe her mother would notice it, say something about it.

Loretta ignored it and reached out, patting the top of Heidi’s hand. “Good girl,” she crooned.

Her palm was cool, the skin almost translucent. She was seventy-six. Heidi only thirty. In some ways, it didn’t seem fair she was losing her mother before she was barely out of her twenties. And this? The hand pat, and now the way her mother’s fingers folded around hers? This was a gentle side of her mother she’d not often seen. Mothers were supposed to live—forever—even if you didn’t really like them. Loretta had just always been there. Always. Heidi could look back to her early years and recall vague moments of fondness. A mother who’d nurtured her. But as she grew, things changed. Her parents trusted her less, faith became rule-bound, and Heidi had pulled away.

A twinge caught her. She had pulled away. Sometimes finding her own blame in the distance between her and family was painful—too painful—to focus on.

“How’s that young man treating you?” Loretta’s words broke Heidi’s train of thought. The older woman’s expression showed concern with a hint of criticism.

Heidi drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No young man, Mom. Just me.” She flicked the edge of the envelope, hoping to draw subtle attention to it.

“Oh good.” Loretta gave a curt nod and raised her gray eyebrows sternly. “I never liked him. Not a spiritual bone in his body.”

Heidi had no idea who her mother thought she was talking about. She lifted the envelope. Time for a more direct tack.

“I got your letter.”

Loretta tilted her head to the right, looking down at the envelope. A pause. Finally she reached for it and read the address. There was a little sound in her throat, one of surprise, and then she lifted her eyes to Heidi.

“That girl. That girl.” She shook her head and handed the envelope back to Heidi. “She likes bluebirds. Did I tell you that?”

It was true. Heidi had always loved bluebirds. An uncomfortable sensation filled her as she realized her mother was speaking to someone else entirely. She didn’t recognize her. Didn’t recognize the letter.

“So much trouble. But so tender too.” The woman’s eyes grew distant. A thick knot formed in Heidi’s throat.

“Mom?” Heidi pressed gently.

“What, child?” Loretta tilted her head in the other direction. Studying. Eyeing Heidi with a clouded gaze. “Oh!” Her hand fluttered to her throat, and she leaned forward. “You came!”

Heidi wasn’t sure who her mother thought she was now. “I did. Yes. You asked me to.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Loretta had a bit of clarity in her vision now. She nodded thoughtfully, her eyes narrowing, deepening the wrinkles at the corners. She squeezed Heidi’s hand.

“It was my fault. I—I had to see you.” There was a desperation in her mother’s voice. Loretta glanced at the envelope and released Heidi’s hand, reaching for it again.

“I’m here,” Heidi whispered.

“This.” Loretta tapped the envelope on the table. “Vicki doesn’t know I wrote to you.”

“I assumed she didn’t,” Heidi responded.

Loretta bit her chapped bottom lip. She looked away and up, then back to the table. When she raised her eyes, there was confusion in them again. Loretta’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard.

“You’re really here?” There was wonderment on her face now. Confused wonderment. Her eyes were wide, staring at Heidi as if she were looking at a ghost.

“Yeah, Mom. I’m here.” Heidi mustered a smile.

The woman blinked several times to clear her vision. She patted the sides of her short gray bob and shook her head as if to unclog her thoughts.

“Well, then,” Loretta breathed. “I thought you were dead.”

Fast-growing darkness suffocated the car, squeezing Heidi’s conscience like a vise. She pushed the gas pedal down further, urging the car forward with an unwise increase in acceleration.

Dead. Her mother thought she was dead. She’d recognized her in the end, hadn’t she? Or was she lost in a world of her own making? The letter written by her mother was discarded on the passenger-side seat. Worthless words with no explanation.

She’d come to Pleasant Valley at the pleading of a mother who didn’t even know who Heidi was.

Trees whizzed by on either side of the road, the center line a blur. Heidi flicked her headlights on to offset the dusk. Her mother’s words repeated over and over in her mind, creating a familiar and very unwanted weakness in Heidi’s stomach. Her breaths came short and quick.

“I thought you were dead.”

Heidi knew it was her mother’s dementia speaking. But still, she’d vocalized Heidi’s worst, most innate fear about her family. That one day they would disown her. The misfit child who never measured up and was no longer worth their efforts.

“I thought you were dead.”

Heidi squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them just as fast. Driving wasn’t a great time to try to erase the memories, but the gut-clenching anxiety of the day was giving panic far more power over reason. So many memories flooded her mind, shortening her breaths. They whirled out of order, chaotic, suffocating any ability to coherently process them. Just memories in a jumble, embraced by dread.

Her pastor dad lecturing her twelve-year-old self about how listening to the secular music radio station wasn’t glorifying God and certainly wasn’t helping with her spiritual development. Images of her mother sitting on the edge of Heidi’s bed when she was fifteen and curled into a ball of tears, inexplicable emotions coursing through her, and hearing her mother coach her that she needed to work on her faith. Daily devotions, prayer, all of that would make this unreasonable sense of panic leave her.

What more likely than not was meant to be some sort of loving instruction had instead made Heidi feel less than. She wasn’t enough spiritually, she didn’t have enough faith, she didn’t read the Bible enough . . . so that by the end of high school, Heidi had had enough.

“Oh my—!” Heidi jerked back to reality as a dog darted into the road. She slammed on the brakes, the tires screeching their resistance to the sudden attempt to stop. The rear end of the car fishtailed left, then right, and then that sickening sensation when the left side of her bumper slammed into the creature.

A yelp.

A scream.

Heidi tried to compensate for the erratic movement of the car, but she’d been going too fast. The nose of her vehicle aimed for and careened into a grassy ditch. The crash shot Heidi’s body forward, but thankfully her seat belt locked and held her back. The impact wasn’t great enough to inspire the airbag to deploy, but regardless, the jolting stop left her stunned.

Everything fell silent with the exception that she could hear her breaths, her heart pounding in her already throbbing head. Heidi fumbled for the car door. It opened without issue, and she unhooked her seat belt, stumbling from the vehicle.

Bewildered, she stood in the long grasses of the ditch.

A keening wail pierced through Heidi, shaking her to her core. She wiped her hand over her eyes, blinking rapidly. Tears burned their way down her face, and Heidi swiped at them.

The figure of a young woman running down the sloped yard from a house set up and away from the road jerked Heidi’s attention from her own dizzying state of mind to the dog she had just hit.

Oh dear God.

Heidi stumbled forward. She wasn’t a dog fanatic, but she had no desire to hurt one, let alone a family pet!

The dog was whimpering, its front legs pawing at the asphalt. It was a stocky white pit bull with a tan mask. The fading daylight didn’t help Heidi’s assessment, but if she were placing bets, the dog’s rear leg had to be broken.

Another wail, this time coming from the side of the road, yanked Heidi’s attention from the wounded animal to the woman. She was at best in her early twenties. Her slight frame looked as if it could blow away in the wind. When she reached the road’s edge, she froze as if an invisible wall were there. Her forearms rotated in an aggravated circular motion, and her body rocked as she wept.

Heidi held out her palm. “Stay there! Please.” The last thing she needed was a frantic pet owner rushing to the dog’s side and being bit due to the animal’s instinctive defense mechanism. Or worse, being hit by another idiot driver like herself.

The young woman didn’t answer. She was fixated on the dog, and her weeping had contorted her face into one of sheer agony.

Heidi squinted into the diminishing light, trapped between rescuing the dog she’d hit or hurrying to the emotional aid of an obviously distraught human being. Not to mention, it was getting more difficult to see. Curse the dusk! It was so empty. She hated this. Hated being alone and solely responsible. Hated being confronted with the reality of the day’s events from a ghostlike face at her window, to her mother. Now this?

The woods were closing in on her. Their branches reached for her, even though they bordered the mowed lawn of the country residence. Heidi’s sense of reason whirled faster and faster in her mind, like a carousel on hyperdrive. She couldn’t pause it, couldn’t grab hold of it to slow it down, to make sense of anything.

Heidi sank to the road, still caught between the woman and her dog. She needed escape, not unlike the agitated owner who continued to rock in grief. Heidi’s body shook from nerves, her hands quivered, and her fingers clawed at her jeans in a rhythmic tic. She couldn’t control it. Couldn’t stop it. She was drowning . . .

Headlights blinded her.

No!

Heidi scrambled to her feet, drawing in quick shuddered breaths. She held out her hands, and if she had the superpower to stop the truck that was approaching, she would. It slowed, then pulled off into the driveway, just shy of where the dog lay. Tires crunched on gravel as the vehicle pulled to a stop. A door opened, then slammed shut. Flashlight. A large form.

“Emma!” The gravelly voice sliced through the tense air. The man ignored the dog and sprinted to the woman’s side. He squatted down in front of her so they were eye to eye. He didn’t reach for her. His hands perched on his knees.

“Emma. Emma, everything is all right. Let’s breathe.”

It was Rhett Crawford, the mechanic.

He took a deep breath. He let it out. Emma imitated. They breathed in, breathed out, breathed in, breathed out. Heidi noticed she was breathing with them. Her anxiety that threatened to immobilize waned now into a more controllable distress.

Rhett reached into the pocket of his tan Carhartt jacket. He pulled out a red ball, big enough for a hand to comfortably wrap around. He handed it to Emma, who took it.

“Squeeze it, baby girl.”

She did.

“There you go.” He stepped away from her.

Emma calmed, and even though her upper body still rocked, she was in control of herself now. Rhett snatched his phone from the back pocket of his jeans and sent a quick text. Once done, he turned back to Emma.

“I texted Mom. She’ll be down in a sec, okay?”

A nod from the young woman, large eyes searching Rhett’s and finding stability there.

Rhett shifted from her and stepped toward Heidi. His eyes brushed over her, then settled on the dog. She heard him curse under his breath.

“You all right?” His words were tossed at her as he neared the dog.

“I’ll live.” Her response was flippant, but it was all she could think to say.

He knelt by the animal, who lifted its head and whimpered. Rhett mumbled something to the dog, running a hand down its spine, its leg. The dog whined.

Rhett stood and motioned for Heidi. “Stand over here.”

She moved toward him, casting an unsure glance at Emma. He followed her gaze.

“She’ll be okay. I need to run to my truck.”

Heidi stood over the dog as Rhett ran to the tailgate of the pickup. He came back carrying a piece of scrap plywood.

Kneeling by the dog, he looked up at Heidi. She stood there helpless.

“We need to get Ducie onto this plywood and off the road,” he instructed. “Can you help?”

“Ducie?”

“The dog?” His voice had a hint of irritation.

“Oh.” Heidi knelt next to Ducie. Big chestnut-brown eyes stared up at her, begging for help.

This was her fault. All her fault.

It was now her turn for medical attention. One hour later, that is. Heidi was still shaking, although she’d done a decent job of hiding that fact by fabricating her special, nonchalant smile, often called upon in moments when she was certain the Apocalypse was all of sixty seconds from beginning. She sat on the edge of a kitchen chair, in the house from where the dog had run and Emma had followed. To her surprise, Emma’s mother was none other than the antique owner, Connie, who’d sold her that awful photo album with the doppelgänger dead woman. Apparently, Connie was Rhett’s mother too.

Rhett had removed his jacket and also the flannel shirt that hung loose over his T-shirt. The greasy baseball cap was still secured on his head. He didn’t give her nearly the same attention as he’d given the dog. Rhett was pouring coffee into a mug as though driving one’s car through an animal into a ditch was just another day at the—well, not the office—the shop?

Heidi blinked rapidly to do away with the white spots that often affected her sight when she was warding off panic.

“Nothing’s broke?” Rhett inquired, his voice even.

“My car might need surgery,” she quipped, but it came out a bit snappy. Even conversation directed toward her felt overwhelming. Trying to segregate the elements of the messy day was like trying to sort a bag full of macaroni noodles into a baby-food jar.

“I meant you.” There was no humor in Rhett’s voice. He didn’t sound irritated either. Just a straight shooter.

“No, I’m fine.” She wasn’t. She never was. But she lied to herself about it every day, so lying to a stranger was simple.

“K.” He didn’t even ask what happened, or why she’d hit Ducie, the dog, or what she was planning on doing with her car half buried in his parents’ ditch.

Rhett turned toward her, coffee mug in his hand. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Huh?” Heidi blinked.

“Cream or sugar?”

Oh. Wow. He was prolific with his words. Heidi blinked several times and then shook her head. “Black.”

He raised an appreciative brow and handed her the mug.

Connie Crawford breezed into the room, easing out of her sweater and hanging it on a wood-stenciled row of coat pegs by the door. She patted her son’s shoulder as she passed him on her way to the coffeemaker.

“Emma is fine,” she reassured them. Connie’s brief sweep of the room with her soft smile included Heidi.

“I’m so sorry,” Heidi breathed.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to sit in that chair while we all hustled around you the last hour!”

“Oh no, no. I mean, what can I do? Can I pay the vet bill? Anything.”

And please don’t sue me. She could feel the anxiety crowding her throat, burning tears behind her eyes. It was here. Full on. She’d be lucky not to throw up.

“Heavens no!” Connie leaned against the counter, holding the warm mug between her hands. Her eyes were warm, if not downright apologetic. “Ducie is Emma’s service dog. We have insurance for him, so it will cover the vet bills. My husband just called from the vet with Ducie.” She glanced at Rhett. “It looks like a clean break of the tibia. They’re casting it now.”

Heidi sucked in a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

“We got that part.” Rhett had an edge to his voice. Either he was irritated she’d repeated herself, or he was irritated at her. Probably both. She could see the tension in his shoulders, around his jaw, and the corners of his eyes.

“Rhett.” Connie said his name as a mother might veil a slight scolding to her adult child.

Rhett pushed off the opposite counter. “Not much we can do about your car tonight.” He avoided Heidi’s eyes. “I’ll send someone tomorrow with a tow truck.”

Connie moved past her hulk of a son, who only needed green skin and a raging growl to complete the persona. She seemed to read Heidi’s face, her pasted-on smile, and her stiff shoulders. She pulled out a chair at the table beside her, leaning forward on her elbows, hands still cupping the coffee mug.

Heidi looked down at her coffee, un-sipped and perched in her hands. The liquid tremored a bit as her hands shook.

Connie narrowed her eyes. “Are you truly all right?”

“I am.” Heidi consciously made her shoulders drop. She softened her smile and met Connie’s eyes. Eye contact was always good. It helped people believe you were telling the truth. But the way Connie searched hers told Heidi that the woman was not one to be fooled.

“Really. I just feel awful.” She did. Inside and out.

“Accidents happen.” Connie gave her a reassuring smile. “The only reason Ducie even ran into the road was that Emma had the dog out for their evening walk and Emma’s scarf blew off her neck. Ducie was attempting to retrieve it. He was unleashed and ran out into the road. So it was our fault.”

“You don’t leash service dogs at home.” Rhett growled like one as he crossed his arms.

Connie shot him a stern glare. “You do in some circumstances.”

He harrumphed and stalked from the room.

“Ignore Rhett.” His mother waved him away. “He’s insatiably protective of his sister. You could be Winnie the Pooh and he’d still glare at you if he thought you’d put Emma or her dog in any danger.”

That was—reassuring?

Heidi sipped her coffee for something to do. To keep herself from crying. She hated this uncontrollable part of her. The kind that ran away with her logic and self-confidence and left a quivering mess behind.

“Anyway,” Connie finished. “Emma has autism. She’s high-functioning, but routine is important and this will obviously be a setback for her. Rhett is a natural-born rescuer and fixer.”

And she was a natural-born screw-up. Heidi winced. They’d get along fabulously.

Connie tipped her head and studied Heidi. “Did you ever find out if you’re related to that woman in the photograph?”

Change of subject. Connie was adept at calming nerves. Normally, Heidi would have allowed herself to be sidetracked, but that particular question revived events from earlier in the day.

“Um, no,” Heidi answered.

“I’d be curious to know if you are. I’d love to help you find out, if you ever want to.”

The sound of work boots clomping on the hardwood floor brought both women’s heads up. Rhett marched back into the room, snatching up his keys from a key-ring hook on the side of one of the cabinets.

“Let’s go.” He stood over Heidi.

“Go?” Heidi craned her neck to look up at the superhero wannabe with serious personality issues.

He stared down at her with the thunderous scowl of the Hulk.

Connie interceded. “That’s Rhett’s refined way of saying he’ll take you home.”

Heidi smirked—she had to—at Connie’s unveiled dig at her son’s manners. She supposed being driven home by Rhett wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but it was the Hulk in him that kept Heidi from thinking Rhett Crawford was even remotely a superhero.