Deep in the Heart

Kate couldn’t read his face, but his voice held a harsh, demanding tone.

She stopped and considered her answer. “I am looking for a job here, something to keep me busy for a few weeks and make me a little money, but I don’t plan to stay after Abby’s recovered.”

This time she could read his expression. Relief, pure and simple.

“Does it matter to you? If I stay or if I leave?”

“Not a bit.”

But it did. She didn’t need to be a crack investigative reporter to recognize that Rob cared greatly whether she stayed or left.

And he favored her departure, most likely as soon as possible.

JANE MYERS PERRINE

grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, has a B.A. from Kansas State University and has an M.Ed. in Spanish from the University of Louisville. She has taught high-school Spanish in five states. She currently teaches in the beautiful hill country of Texas. Her husband is minister of a Christian church in central Texas, where Jane teaches an adult Sunday school class. Jane was a finalist in the Regency category of the Golden Heart Awards. Her short pieces have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Woman’s World magazine and other publications. The Perrines share their home with two spoiled cats and an arthritic cocker spaniel. Readers can visit Jane’s Web page at www.janemyersperrine.com.

Deep in the Heart

Jane Myers Perrine

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

—Psalms 8:1, 3–6, 9

Many thanks to the Christian adults who gave

their time and shared their faith with young people

when I was growing up, most especially Wally and

Rea Brown, the Russell Smiths, Russ and Betty

Huff, Harvey Quenette and Uncle Don.

Also with special love:

Ewart and Prudy Harper Wyle.

George, for years of encouragement and love and

for cooking dinner at least twice a week.

Ernest Spiekermann, for his Christian example and

for sharing his knowledge of wildflowers of central

Texas. Any mistakes are mine, not his.

Jessica Alvarez, the kindest, most talented and

patient editor ever.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Can’t go home again. Can’t go home again. The words repeated in the slap of the car’s worn tires against the highway as Kate Wallace headed west out of Burnet and into the heart of the Texas Hill Country.

But here she was, doing exactly that. Going home. And not a bit happy about it.

She took the curve on Highway 29 too fast. As the car leaned into the turn, Kate put her hand on the elderly buff cocker spaniel sleeping next to her to make sure the dog didn’t fall off the seat.

Why was she in such a hurry? It wasn’t as if the town of Silver Lake would disappear if she dawdled.

Slowing, she headed north on County Road 144A. Within a few minutes, she was speeding through rolling hills, past the thick groves of trees and the shimmering green grass that covered central Texas in the spring. Here and there, she spotted patches of bluebonnets, promises of the beauty to come.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled off the highway at the top of the hill that overlooked Silver Lake and kept the engine running.

Scratching her dog Coco’s ears, Kate breathed in the spicy scent of cedars as she studied the town spread out below her.

“Kate Wallace,” she whispered. “You really are home again.” An emotion filled her, an odd mixture of hope and resignation, shame and excitement which made her want to grin and to cry and to flee from here as fast as her old car could take her.

At twenty-one, she’d left Silver Lake with a brand-new degree in journalism and her entire future ahead. Without a backward glance, she’d shaken the dust of small-town Texas off her feet and headed to the big city.

Twelve years later, here she was, back in Silver Lake without her youth and confidence and missing a few other things, as well.

She closed her eyes, trying to replace the view of the small hill-country town with the towering buildings of New York and Houston and the pulsing rhythms of Miami, the cities she’d loved so much. When she opened her eyes the city limits sign—Silver Lake, Population 7,881—stared back at her and the leaves of post oaks rustled in the breeze.

No doubt about it. She was in Mesa County, Texas.

She glanced at her watch. Noon on Saturday. She could sneak into town. With everyone shopping in Austin or Granite Falls, the square would be deserted.

Not that anyone would recognize her now. She was thirty-three and looked every day of it. Her silver-blond hair had darkened over the years and she’d chopped off her long curls six months ago.

Coming home wasn’t her choice, but it was the only remaining option. After she’d testified against her boss—a well-known congressman she’d served as press secretary—few choices remained. When her sister Abby’s e-mail had arrived three weeks earlier asking Kate to come home and care for her after shoulder surgery, she’d grabbed the opportunity to escape.

She shifted out of Park and stepped on the gas. Within minutes, she passed a new Dollar Merchandise store next to a new H-E-B grocery store.

When a chatting group of people stepped off the curb, Kate returned to reality, slammed on the brakes and stopped inches short of them. Thank you, Lord, she whispered, a little surprised at how good that short prayer felt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said one.

On the sidewalk stood Sara Arroyo, her former best friend. She’d changed, but no one else in town had hair that dark and full and beautiful. Kate should jump from the car and apologize for dropping out of sight. She should tell Sara she was home and they had to get together. But she didn’t. Today she wanted to slink back into town. Besides, Sara held the hands of two children. Kate didn’t want to interrupt whatever they were doing, an explanation even she recognized as a terrible excuse.

At Lloyd’s Auto Repair and Battery Services, she turned left onto Goliad Street. She followed the curve for another block as she drove between rows of towering live oak trees dripping in Spanish moss until she stopped in front of the three-story Victorian house that used to be home.

The house appeared exactly as it had when she took off, the walls still pale yellow with the gingerbread trim painted green, pink and lavender. In the noonday sun, the house, a national historic home, shone like the multicolored jewel she was.

“That’s where I grew up, Coco.” The fragile old dog smiled up at her.

Kate hit the trunk latch and got out of the car. After grabbing a couple of worn Louis Vuitton suitcases from the back, she toted them around the passenger side of the car and opened the door. She snapped on Coco’s leash and lifted the dog out of the car and onto the grass.

Matching Coco’s pace, she ambled to the porch steps where the little dog tried to climb the first step but couldn’t lift her arthritic rear leg. The cocker slid down to the stones of the sidewalk, her soft brown eyes focused on Kate, and gave her a “Woof.”

“I know, Coco. Old age must be tough.” Kate dumped the luggage and leaned down to pick Coco up and place her gently on the porch.

“Why do you carry that dog around?”

Surprised to hear the voice, Kate straightened and saw a girl, probably eight or nine years old, standing inside the front door. She wore pink slacks and a black-and-pink-striped T-shirt. With her hand, the child combed out tangles in her straight brown hair. Who else could she be but her niece? She had Abby’s small bones and beautiful features.

“Hello, Brooke. I’m your aunt Kate.”

Brooke stared at her.

“This is my dog, Coco.”

Coco woofed, not loudly, just as a greeting.

“She’s old and has arthritis so she can’t get up and down very well.”

“That’s a really ugly car,” she said, then headed upstairs. When she reached the landing, she said, “My mother’s at work.”

Kate dropped her suitcases on the shiny parquet floor inside. “On Saturday?”

Brooke disappeared without another word.

It wasn’t as if Kate were a guest or helpless. She’d grown up here and could find a room for herself. “Stay, Coco,” she said as if the little dog would move. She climbed upstairs and looked down the long hall. Three bedrooms and a bath on each side before a right turn into the other wing.

As she contemplated the staircase and the difficulty of carrying Coco up and down, she remembered a bedroom off the kitchen where their housekeepers had stayed years ago. With its private bathroom and proximity to the back door, it would fit her and Coco perfectly.

She found the linen closet and picked out everything she needed. From below came Coco’s soft whimpers. “It’s okay,” she shouted as she climbed down the steps. Words the elderly and nearly deaf dog couldn’t hear but it comforted her to say them. That short phrase was filled with optimism, the hope that everything would be fine, that her sister would welcome her and that Coco would live forever.

When she shoved the door to the small first-floor apartment open, she found a room empty of furniture but with a heavy covering of dust and a few cobwebs. She reached out to touch the wall and felt layers of dust on her fingers. Not up to Abby’s usual immaculate standards. That shoulder must really be bothering her to allow dust and cobwebs to accumulate anywhere in her house.

Our house, Kate corrected herself, as her parents had left the house to both daughters.

She went back to the kitchen, dropped the linens on the counter and tried to reorient herself. What she needed was a broom, dustpan, some rags and maybe a chair or two. Where would they be?

For two hours, while Coco slept on a spot of sunshine in the kitchen, Kate swept and mopped, wiped down everything in the small apartment. That completed, she opened the bathroom door and groaned at the state of the tiny place but plowed right in.

Kate had never been much of a housekeeper. At times she wished she’d inherited a smidgen of her mother’s compulsive need to clean in her own genetic makeup, never more strongly than now.

“Are you going to stay in here?” Brooke called from the hall outside the bedroom.

“Yes.” Kate stood and stretched.

The child glanced around the small area and shook her head.

With one last scrub of the bathroom sink, Kate asked, “Why’s your mom at work?”

“Trying to get caught up on stuff.”

Exactly like Abby. “Why aren’t you out with your friends on a pretty day like today?”

Brooke twisted her hair with a finger. “I don’t feel well,” she mumbled. “And I like to read. In my room.”

Kate didn’t pry further. “Is there a bed anywhere I can use?” she said.

Brooke said nothing. Like her mother, Brooke gave less information than anyone needed, but Kate refused to play that game. Arms crossed, she waited.

“There’s a shed in the backyard,” the child finally said.

Oh, yes, the old shed. Her father had used it for his woodworking shop, his tools mixed companionably with her mother’s gardening equipment.

“Thanks.” But Brooke was gone.

An odd child, but with Abby for a mother, who wouldn’t be? Kate had been surprised that a man as nice as Charles Granger had married Abby, had actually seemed eager to, but he had and this lonely child was the outcome. Where was he now?

Thirty minutes later, with the rooms tidy, Kate headed out back to the shed. Once in the backyard, she paused to remember the glory of her mother’s flower beds, imagining the heaps of orange and yellow roses and beds of tulips and daffodils of brightly colored blooms now replaced by thick grass. She wished she’d come back years earlier to see Mom attacking the weeds and fooling with her flowers while Dad built stuff in his workshop. An aching sense of loss rolled over her.

In honor of her mother, maybe she’d plant something while she was here. What else did she have to do except take care of Abby after the surgery? Gardening would allow her time away from Abby before they drove each other crazy.

But she wasn’t going to be here long enough. She’d be leaving in a month, getting on with her life, whatever that meant. She headed to the shed again and shoved the door open to see a jumble of furniture that seemed to have woven itself into an enormous granny knot.

A mattress for a single bed slumped close to the door. She gave a tremendous tug and pulled it out of the building while everything inside shifted with a crash. With a firm grip, she dragged the mattress across the lawn and up the steps. This was like towing a huge piece of overcooked spaghetti, but she finally steered it into the house and dropped it in the kitchen as she gasped for air.

She’d moved the thing this far by herself, and that counted as a big success in a year that hadn’t had many. With a few more shoves, she got it into the bedroom. Heady with her victory over the obstinate mattress, she grabbed the sheets and made the bed. That finished, she stepped over Coco and headed to the enormous closet in the front hall.

As a child, she’d taken very literally the scripture advice about where to pray. Back when she was a faithful Christian who really did believe, she’d shut herself in this closet to meditate. Even today the scent of wool and mothballs made her want to fall on her knees.

Shoving away the memory of her former piety and the disappointments that had scuttled her faith, she opened the door and flipped on the light. Yes, the card table and folding chairs were still stored behind the coat rod. She pushed the coats back, picked up a chair and slid the table back to her room. By that time, she realized it was three-thirty and she hadn’t eaten lunch yet. A grilled cheese sandwich sounded good and easy.

“What are you making?” Brooke asked.

Kate started when she heard the voice. The child was so quiet, it was like being stalked by a silent, sulky phantom. “A sandwich. Do you want one?”

She shook her head. “Mother doesn’t allow me to eat between meals.”

“Okay, but I haven’t had lunch yet.” Why did she feel the need to explain herself to a—“How old are you, Brooke?”

“I’m nine.”

Why did Kate feel the need to explain herself to a nine-year-old?

She’d never known exactly when Brooke was born. The baby had suddenly appeared during the dark, silent period after Mom’s and Dad’s deaths.

Abby hadn’t told Kate about the accident that claimed their lives nearly ten years earlier, either. The first Kate knew they’d died came a month after the fatal automobile crash when the lawyer wrote Kate to explain the terms of their will and her inheritance of half of the estate. Her sister had neither written nor called to tell Kate about their passing or the funeral. She’d never known how to react to such a breach of family…well, conduct by Abby. Fury was the main emotion that filled her until she could finally sort through her grief.

During a telephone conversation almost a year later, Abby mentioned her daughter and, typically, hung up without giving her sister information about her only niece. Kate wasn’t about to beg. Pride, another one of her flaws, and a lot of anger kept her from pressing for more details.

All in all, the relationship between the sisters was a case of sibling rivalry gone very bad and very mean. It wasn’t all Abby’s fault, as much as Kate wished she could blame everything on her sister’s difficult personality. No, growing up with Miss Mesa County as a sister wouldn’t have been easy for anyone. Kate could admit now she’d been a jerk at times. Giddy with her newfound power to attract men, she’d stolen Abby’s boyfriend. Kate hated to admit even now that she’d done anything so petty. Abby had never forgiven her. Nor, she was pretty sure, had the other young woman she’d taken a boyfriend from.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to share half with me?” Kate flopped the sandwich on a plate and turned off the burner.

When Brooke shook her head, Kate poured herself a soft drink and sat down at the table.

Other than playing havoc with personal relationships, her self-centeredness had served Kate pretty well until her world blew up and she didn’t have the ability, strength or, really, the desire to deal with it. On top of that, who would have guessed she had a streak of honesty she couldn’t ignore? Not her.

When she discovered integrity wasn’t a trait greatly respected in her chosen career, she’d slunk back to Silver Lake, to care for the sister who still hated her.

Life sure served up curve balls sometimes.

Looking up to notice Brooke had flitted away again, Kate finished her sandwich, awakened Coco and opened the back door. Even with her bad hip, the dog was able to get down from the porch herself. The problem was getting back up.

While the cocker sniffed around in the yard and woofed several times, Kate opened the trunk of her car and pulled out the last of her things: her laptop, a box of her favorite books and a flower-covered gift sack, which contained the odds and ends saved over the past twelve years. Everything else—her chrome furniture, the Prada suits and Manolo Blahnik shoes—was in storage in Miami. She grabbed her purse, the now out-of-style Kate Spade bag that had cost way too much. She wished she had that money back now. She should have purchased something serviceable and much less expensive at JCPenney as she had her jeans and athletic shoes.

She toted the load into her bedroom. Then she chose a book from the box, grabbed her soft drink and settled in one of the cushioned chairs on the porch. She started to read, leaning her head back against the pillow and relaxing into the lumpy softness.

“Guess that long drive tuckered you out.”

Her eyes fluttered open. Birdie Oglesby, school librarian and a pillar of the church, stood on the porch about ten feet from her.

“Hello, Mrs. Oglesby,” she said around a big yawn as she stood. “I guess I dozed off.”

“Must have needed that nap. I’m just going to put this in the kitchen.” The thin little woman with a helmet of tightly permed white hair strode ahead of Kate. She swept into the house like an invader with no resistance in front of her, but an invader with everyone’s best interests at heart.

Kate hurried after her. Once in the kitchen, Mrs. Oglesby put a casserole dish on the counter before turning back to Kate, a sincere smile warming her features. “I’m glad you’re back, girl. Real glad.”

For the first time in months, Kate felt warmth seep through her and smiled back. “Thank you, Mrs. Oglesby. I don’t think that’s unanimous.”

“Most of the town is happy you’re back and the others? Well, some people are always negative. Probably no one could win them over, not even you at your most charming.”

“But I wasn’t always the most pleasant person, Mrs. Oglesby.” If Kate had hoped for contradiction here, she didn’t get one.

“None of us always are,” the older woman said. “Now you’re back to help your sister in her time of trouble and that wipes out a multitude of shortcomings. Goodness knows, you won’t get a thank-you from Abby, but when a family member needed something, you stepped up to the plate.”

“Anybody would’ve…”

“No.” Mrs. Oglesby shook her head. “Your sister was supposed to have surgery months ago. No one here would help her, so she finally asked you, and you came.” She waved at the dish she’d brought in. “This is a real good chicken spaghetti recipe. The church will bring food for this first week while Abby’s recovering. We’ll be back next weekend with more.”

“Thank you,” Kate said as Mrs. Oglesby headed outside.

“We’d like to see you at church tomorrow,” the librarian said as the screen door slammed behind her.

Kate had forgotten the generosity of small-town churches. Within the next half hour, fifteen more people brought food—salads, vegetable dishes, casseroles of all kinds, meat, several pies and a cake. As Kate gazed at the number of dishes on the counter, she heard a soft footstep behind her.

“Brooke, I could really use your help putting all this away,” Kate said before her niece could disappear. “Why don’t you come in and help me.” When Brooke continued to rock back and forth in the hall, one foot in front of her, the other behind, Kate added, “I don’t even know where the aluminum foil is.”

With dragging steps, Brooke entered the kitchen, opened a drawer and waved her hand at the contents.

“Okay, you and I have to decide what we’ll eat right away and what to freeze.” Kate began to wrap a pie. “What would you like for dinner tonight?”

Brooke pointed at the brisket and several other dishes. “And Miss Betsy’s red velvet cake,” she said with a bit of animation in her voice. Obviously the cake had power if it could elicit a positive response from Brooke.

“What time will your mother get home?” Kate asked after they finished wrapping and freezing the rest of the food. The question was answered by the sound of the front door opening and banging shut. Footsteps echoed across the hall and Abby came into the kitchen. No smile crossed her sister’s still lovely features, no light brightened her dark eyes at the sight of her only sister, but her stiff posture showed that Abby carried a load of tension in her shoulders, neck and jaw.

Kate started to hug Abby because, after all, wasn’t that what a person did when she hadn’t seen her sister for twelve years? Evidently not. As soon as she touched her sister, Abby stiffened even more and stepped back.

“Hello, Kate,” she said as if they’d seen each other only a few hours earlier and that experience had not been particularly pleasant. She moved around Kate and put the mail on the counter. “There’s a library notice for you, Brooke. Please take care of it.” She handed the card to her daughter and sorted through the other envelopes.

“What’s that?” Abby stared as Coco ambled into the room.

“That’s my dog, Coco.”

When Coco gave a woof, Abby laughed, not a mirthful sound. “You always said you’d have a dog named Coco, but I thought it was going to be a teacup poodle.” Abby shook her head. “This poor old thing looks terrible.”

“We’ve been together a long time.”

“Looks like it.” Abby slipped out of her crepe-soled shoes, picked them up and turned toward the stairway. “I’m going to change. What’s for dinner, Brooke?”

“Brisket, Mother.”

Abby nodded and walked from the room.

“When do you want to eat?” Kate asked her sister’s departing back and scolded herself for allowing Abby’s negative attitude to manipulate her again.

“She likes to eat at six, when she’s had a chance to rest,” Brooke filled the silence.