Penny McCusker - Noah And The Stork

“We prefer to make the announcement when and how it best suits our purposes.” And because there was sure to be some opposition, and he didn’t want it to become public knowledge until he had the foundation of the project already laid. “If it gets out before we release it, the deal will be off.”

“At least that’ll make the decision easier.”

Noah sighed and sat down again. “Are you worried that people won’t understand why you decided to sell?”

“It’s not other folks I’m worried about, it’s myself,” Gardner said. “About all I got left’s my pride.”

And that was more important than his family’s welfare? “I’d like to be able to set your mind at ease,” Noah said, putting aside his anger and disgust, “but you’re the only one who can do that.”

“We’ve worked long and hard to get this far and it don’t sit right just giving up.”

Noah shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. If you don’t sell, someone else will.”

The man still hesitated.

“Mr. Gardner, I know how you feel.”

“You got no idea—”

“Yes, I do.” Noah tried to tell himself this was about business and nothing else, but it was too late for that. “I grew up on a farm like this,” he said. “My father didn’t have the money to buy cattle, so we worked, harder and harder every year, trying to get a decent cash crop in a state where winter lasts eight months of the year and spring and fall make up the other four.” And the worse things got, the more often he’d felt the back of his old man’s hand. Then after his mother died…

He’d gone a long way to forget those years. There was no point in remembering them now. “I know you want better for your family, Mr. Gardner. That’s not going to happen as long as you stay here, and we both know it.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, both of them taken aback by how much it mattered to Noah, and not just because he wanted the property.

“I know I’m being stubborn, son, but—”

“Do you think another chance like this is going to come along? Ever?”

Gardner took a deep breath, let it out. “When you put it that way…”

The farmer held out his hand. Noah shook it, but the relief he felt had nothing to do with getting the job done. “You should have a lawyer check that purchase agreement over before you sign it,” he said.

“Hell, Bryant, you seem trustworthy.”

Noah countersigned the paperwork, thinking a lot of people made the mistake of thinking he wasn’t trustworthy, but one of the first lessons he’d learned was to look out for number one. The second lesson was that by the time somebody had stabbed him in the back, it was too late to do anything about it. Little by little he’d adopted an offensive strategy toward life—he never purposely hurt anyone, but if someone got in his way, he didn’t waste his energy on regrets.

The Gardners, however, had nothing to worry about; the purchase agreement was aboveboard and soon they’d be on their way to a new life. It wouldn’t take much to be an improvement over this one, Noah thought, as he stepped outside.

The main house was mostly gray, with white paint still clinging to the weathered wood in enough places to give it a strange mottled appearance. The barn listed badly to one side and the other outbuildings weren’t much better, including one Noah would’ve sworn was an outhouse. The Gardners followed him, Mr. and Mrs. Gardner looking eerily like the couple in the painting American Gothic with Mr. Gardner clutching the purchase agreement instead of a pitchfork.

Noah climbed into his car and started it, savoring the smell of leather and his own aftershave, the coolness of the air-conditioning on his face and the comfort of the seat, with its built-in heat and lumbar support, beneath him. He felt more at ease—not because of the luxury that surrounded him, but because the world could do with one less place like this. Even if some of the people hereabouts lamented its loss, at least the Gardner children would benefit.

He bumped and jounced down the potholed driveway, along the slightly smoother two-mile stretch of dirt road that led to the main gravel road, and finally to the two-lane highway, a straight and unforgiving line of blacktop that stretched to the mountains behind him and the horizon in front. He heard the throaty purr of the Porsche’s engine, felt the rumble of it through his seat and saw the landscape passing by the car windows, yet he felt like he was going nowhere.

Two weeks ago he’d known exactly who he was and where he was going, and his world had been what he made it. He’d been a man without a past, at least as far as anyone he knew in Los Angeles was concerned. His friends had learned not to ask him about his childhood; he only made jokes, or if they pushed him, gave answers that were vague at best. And the women he dated weren’t really interested in the past—or the future, for that matter. He made very sure of that.

Now, here he was, stepping right back into the life he’d managed to escape. And he’d done it willingly, not to mention arrogantly, certain he could walk in his own footsteps without any consequences. Hah. How deluded had he been to think that? And he wasn’t talking about the stroll he’d just taken through the worst moments of his childhood.

He was talking about the best moments. All of which revolved around Janey.

She’d saved him from everything, the travesty of his family, from closed minds and unsympathetic authority figures, from his own self-destructive tendencies. At a point in his life when he was the town outsider, when almost no one in Erskine accepted him, Janey had. It was that simple.

And when she’d needed him, where had he been? Where was he now? Still focused on his career, his future, his own wants.

Sure, he’d called her house twice in the two weeks since he’d discovered he had a daughter. Both times she and Jessie had been gone and he’d left messages, grateful they weren’t there to ask questions while resenting the fact that he felt obliged to check in with her at all.

He gunned the engine, watched the speedometer notch up to seventy, a foolish speed to be traveling on a backcountry road where a cow or a slow-moving tractor could be over the next hill. He didn’t slow down, even when he passed the turnoff for Erskine. He wasn’t ready to go back there yet. Besides, Jessie didn’t want him around, anyway; she’d made that perfectly clear.

SPRING IN ERSKINE. There was no better season, Janey decided, and no better place to spend it than her hometown.

Erskine didn’t change from year to year, the same old buildings, the same mountains and pastures and hay meadows, but in the spring it always seemed…newer, fresher. People opened windows to let in the breeze off the mountains, a breeze so crisp and clean it slipped into corners and swept through shadows, and left them brighter somehow. The winter’s accumulation of dirt and dead leaves had been banished from the doorways, window boxes had been filled with geraniums and impatiens, and planters hung from eaves, dripping with ivy and crowded with glossy-leaved begonias.

It was such a beautiful day that she’d left her car at home and walked to the school for her afternoon art classes. She really should have taken Jessie directly home after school; she had a hundred tasks to complete, grades to tally for final report cards, trim to paint. Phone messages to listen to…

She looked down at her daughter and decided there wasn’t any rush to get home. Two weeks had passed since Noah had left with a promise that he’d be back. Two weeks and two phone messages, they still hadn’t seen him. As the days continued to add up, facing the answering machine each evening had become a real challenge. If the message light was blinking, it meant Noah couldn’t make it again. If there was no message, it was even worse.