Deanna Talcott - A Ring And A Rainbow

Hunter looked at her, and his eyes went kind of soft, like toffee that was melting in the sun. He slipped off the porch rail and came down to sit beside her on the steps. With one grimy hand, he awkwardly reached over to pat her bony knee. “Your daddy could be a doctor, Claire. If he wanted. Look how nice he stitched up Rufus, when he got hit by that car.”

Claire nodded, and instead of thinking about how her father had sewn the jagged cut on Rufus’s back leg, she fixed her gaze on the rainbow, vaguely wondering if wishing on it would be enough to make her dreams come true. Every time she was with Hunter, she thought she was the luckiest girl in the whole wide world. Last week she’d even gotten him to play “wedding” with her—even though he’d made her promise not to tell.

She’d worn her Grandma’s long white fuzzy robe—the one that she’d dug out of the ragbag—and Hunter had worn the top hat that he’d gotten at the circus last year. Although they couldn’t remember all the words, Hunter figured if they said the “till death do us part” stuff, that ought to do it.

Thinking back on it, Claire impulsively leaned over and gave Hunter a dry-lipped peck on the cheek.

“Yuck!” Hunter drew back and wiped at the spot. “Claire! Quit it! Girls don’t go around kissing boys.”

“I wasn’t kissing boys,” she said defensively. “I was kissing you.”

As if that made all the difference, Hunter forgot about it and sat back. The rainbow grew brighter, the colors more distinct. “Okay. Hey? You wanna find it?”

“What?”

“The gold at the end of the rainbow.”

“You bet,” Claire said, unconsciously echoing her daddy’s favorite phrase.

Hunter bolted off the steps. “Finders keepers!” he yelled, racing ahead of her and into the woods.

Claire ran after him. They clambered over the split rail fence and scrambled through the thicket. They splashed through the creek and dashed over the sodden ground and into the field.

“Over there,” Claire pointed. But when they looked up, the rainbow had dimmed.

They ran harder and faster, until Hunter held his side and Claire was out of breath.

“Wait. It’s—it’s gone….” she faltered, her face pinched. They both looked at the place the rainbow was supposed to be and turned around—and around. Until they were dizzy, and they were certain it was gone.

“We waited too long,” Hunter said finally. “Maybe next time.”

There was nothing left to do but trudge back to the cabin.

“I thought for sure if we found it everybody would be happy,” Claire said finally. She blinked back one hot tear before Hunter saw it and called her a crybaby. “At least for my mom and dad, and everything.”

“You know, Claire,” Hunter said, when they got to the fence, “I’ll bet if we buried a little gold, the next time we had a double rainbow, it would make more. Lots more. And then all we’d have to do is just go dig it up, and we’d have all we’d ever need. We could do all the things we ever wanted to do. We could help everybody.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

Claire stopped and looked at him, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Hunter? I know where to get some gold.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“I do.” She climbed over the fence and started walking faster. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

The car still stood in the driveway, and her mother’s purse was still in the front seat. Claire climbed in and zipped open the little side pocket. Then she pulled out the ring. “See. Momma showed me this morning. It was Grandma’s. And it’s real gold.”

“Hey. Neat. That’ll work. I’ll get a can from the garbage and we’ll bury it out in the woods. Nobody will ever find it but us.” Hunter smiled widely, exposing a space where a tooth ought to be. “Claire, I’m telling you. We’ll have everything we ever wanted. We’re going to be rich. And we’re going to make everybody happy.”

Claire chose the deepest, darkest spot in the woods to bury the can, and as she patted the last handful of dirt atop it, had no idea that the only thing she was going to be was in trouble. Great big fat trouble.

In life there were supposed to be beginnings and endings, and when Claire Dent looked back over her thirty-four years in Lost Falls, Wyoming, she realized she’d had very few of either. Her life was like a story with a great big middle. It didn’t have a particularly fascinating beginning, and it didn’t appear to be heading toward any remarkable ending.

Today, however, changes were in the air.

If things went as she expected, she’d finally put “the end” on one of the most painful chapters of her life—and she’d be happy to do so.

She yanked open the oven door. She let 350 degrees of dry heat smash her in the face as she gazed in at the chicken pot pie. The gravy bubbled around the edges of a perfectly browned crust, and the scent was heavenly.

Heavenly.

Huh. What an ironic comparison to have, especially today. Claire had lived next door to Ella Starnes for as long as she could remember. The woman had been a paradox. As outspoken as a candidate on a bipartisan ballot, as charitable as a saint. It didn’t seem possible that she was gone. She’d just slipped away in her sleep two nights ago. Of course, if there was a woman to make the heavens sing, it would be Ella. She was probably up there now, orchestrating some kind of plan.

Ella’s oldest daughter, Beth, had called this morning, to tell Claire all the kids were coming home. There were five altogether. Beth, and her sisters—Mindy, Courtney, Lynda—and her brother, Hunter. Every one of the girls had married and moved away, yet they all came home at least once a year, sometimes more often. Claire knew their lives as intimately as she knew her own.

Hunter, on the other hand, was a different story. He hadn’t found his way home in twelve years, and rumor had it that he was single, filthy rich and managing a reputation that alternated between reckless and restrained. Hunter was a venture capitalist, and Ella joked that he lost everyone’s money but his own.

Claire could have cared less—but the idea of Hunter coming back rankled.

He was the last man on the face of the earth she ever wanted to see. Not for all these years, and not after all these years—and certainly not when she was messed up with grief about his mother. They’d parted ways when she refused to wait any longer for the wedding he’d promised her, and he insisted on going off to make something of himself. Their breakup was one notch short of ugly, but Claire had gone on about her business and held her head up—even though she knew everyone in town talked about how he’d jilted her.

Jilted, as in never a ring, only a promise.

Still, she had an obligation to the family, and as a good neighbor, she’d see that obligation through. She’d take the pot pie over and leave it on the table so they could have a hot meal when they got in. She’d purposely avoid Hunter, even as she made him aware of her presence.

She’d let him know that here, in Lost Falls, people kept their promises to one another. That they ate pot pies, not beef Wellington and parsleyed potatoes.

It would be enough. For today.

Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, he’d discover that she’d gotten him out of her system. He’d see firsthand that she wasn’t impressed with him, or what he’d done with his life—or how much money he’d made. By the time it was all said and done she’d make sure he knew that she didn’t regret staying in Lost Falls, not for one minute. In fact, by the time she was done, she’d make him wonder why he’d ever left.

Claire took out the pot pie and glanced out the side window. The kitchen windows of the Dent and Starnes homes faced each other, separated by a shared blacktop driveway. No one was home yet; the driveway was conspicuously empty.