Baby, Come Home (9 page)

11

F
or the next couple of days, Amy concentrated on updating the Evermore Bridge plans to support the deadweight of the bridge itself, along with the live weight of whatever vehicles and loads would be transported over it. She added expansion joints to allow for the extreme temperature swings here in the mountains, and steel crossbeams that should, if ever tested, withstand the forces of an F4 tornado in the unlikely event a similar disaster ever befell the town again. Reinforced concrete in the center of the stacked-stone piers would keep the bridge rooted more securely, and strategic openings near the roof would allow wind to pass through the bridge rather than buffeting it side to side.

She sat on a boulder overseeing the site where workers were deconstructing the piers as carefully as possible to preserve the stones to be used again. The rock and concrete abutments that supported the bridge where it met land and water were in surprisingly good shape, but would be shored up with reinforced concrete. A crew was building walls to divert creek water away from the abutments to allow the area to dry before the pouring could begin.

When Nikki Salinger had first arrived in Sweetness, the workers had balked at being treated by a “female” doctor, so Amy wasn’t sure what her own reception would be. But thus far, the workers had been responsive to her instructions and respectful of her authority. She had to admit, it was satisfying to return to a place where she was once a nobody, now a somebody. A somebody in the position to give orders.

Amy shivered deeper into her fleece jacket and studied a diagram of the proposed lattice truss roof system on her laptop, also more fortified than the original.

If only people could be reinforced so easily—a buttress here, a bracket there—to support their deadweight and live weight. The encounter with Marcus had left her shaken and feeling as if time was closing in for her to tell Kendall about his son. But considering how aloof Kendall had been since their conference call, she was starting to think there was never going to be a right time.

And Tony was being uncommunicative, his sporadic phone calls leaving her more concerned than secure. The worrisome flip side of telling Kendall was revealing to Tony his father’s identity. He’d asked about his father a few times when he was younger, but Amy had always been vague, never revealing Kendall’s name, for which she was now glad. Tony was technologically adept and might’ve attempted to locate Kendall before she was ready.

Amy squeezed her eyes shut. Who was she kidding? She would never be ready.

But this seemed like a particularly precarious time to dump something so life-changing on Tony. It would be better to wait until he’d finished the quarter at the military school and was back home, in more familiar surroundings. If she told Kendall after the bridge project was complete and he wanted to see Tony, he could visit them in Broadway.

She exhaled slowly, her breath a white cloud in the cool air. Yes…that seemed like the best plan.

The whirring sound of a tractor approaching caught her attention. After years on jobsites, she could recognize just about any kind of machinery. She closed her laptop and shaded her eyes against the bright sun. Kendall’s broad shoulders were silhouetted in the driver’s seat. Even at this distance, he made her heart pound faster. The tractor moved slowly, pulling a flatbed trailer. Stacked on the back were the thick timbers and wooden parts she recognized from the Lost and Found warehouse.

She stood and watched as he pulled the load off to the side of the road onto a level area, close enough to be handy to the work site, but still out of the way. He expertly parked the bulky trailer, and Amy found herself admiring the fact that even though he’d probably been the boss on most jobsites, it was clear he could hold his own with the workers. He shut off the tractor engine. “Is this spot okay?” he shouted to her.

“Fine,” she called back.

He jumped down and walked to the rear to unhitch the trailer.

She enjoyed watching him move his big, athletic body. She idly wondered if making love with him now would be different than before.

Not that it was bad before…

She pushed aside those wayward thoughts as he strode toward her in mud-spattered jeans and boots and a heavy red flannel shirt…with pink sweater fuzz all over it. She bit down on the inside of her cheek—he’d obviously been nuzzling with Rachel again.

He came to a stop before her. “Marcus wanted me to tell you the Preservation Society okayed the blueprints this morning.”

“That’s good news.”

He didn’t offer commentary. “Our fabricator is delivering the metal for the construction bridge tomorrow morning.”

“That was fast.”

“I thought fast was what you wanted.”

Amy bit her lip. “That’s right.”

His mouth tightened. “It’s a short span and the parts are standard, so they had what we needed. Anyway, while the fabricator is here, he’s going to pick up lumber for the covered bridge, and a materials list to take back with him. So we need to determine which of these reclaimed pieces we can use.”

His brusque manner straightened her back. “Are you offering to help me?”

He gave a curt nod. “The clock’s ticking.”

“You won’t be missed?” she asked.

He squinted. “By who?”

She reached forward and picked a pink ball of fuzz from his shirt, then let it fly away in the breeze.

He shifted and his face turned as red as his shirt.

Amy’s phone rang. She pulled it out and glanced at the caller ID:
Tony
. The fact that her son was calling while she was talking to his father made her blood pressure spike.

“I need to get this,” she said to Kendall. “Excuse me.”

She walked away a few steps and answered. “Hi, sweetie. This is a nice surprise.”

“Hey,” came the sulky reply. “How’s Hicksville?”

“Fine,” she said patiently. “What’s new with you?”

“Can you come and get me?”

She gripped the phone tighter. “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m bored.”

She relaxed and kept her voice steady. “We talked about this. I have to be here for a few more weeks, and you have to be there for a few more weeks. We can get through this, right?”

A labored sigh sounded over the line. “I guess so.”

“Good. I have to get back to work, but call me tonight, okay?”

Another sigh. “Okay.”

“I love you.”

“Love you, too,” he mumbled, then hung up the phone.

Amy disconnected the call with a fond smile, then turned back to Kendall, who was staring at her. She panicked, wondering if he’d overheard any of her conversation. Her mind spun back over the phone call, trying to remember if she’d said anything that would make him suspicious. They stared at each other, and she swallowed hard, waiting for him to demand an explanation.

His mouth tightened as he jerked a thumb toward the load of recovered timbers. “Let’s just get this done.”

“Okay,” she said, exhaling with relief. “If you start looking for numbers, I’ll pull up the blueprints.” She opened her laptop and retrieved the old and new blueprints in side-by-side windows. “Ready when you are.”

He climbed up on the trailer to stand among the pieces, then crouched to inspect a timber on the end. “Fourteen.”

She found the corresponding piece on the old blueprints. “It’s a crossbeam.” Then she checked the updated blueprints to see if that beam would have the same dimensions. “Yes, we can use it if it’s in good shape.”

He took off his heavy work gloves and ran his hands over the length of the smooth wood, then picked it up with a grunt and turned it over. The amount of effort it took for a strong man like Kendall to lift one of the pieces gave her renewed fear and respect for the ferocity of a storm that had left the sturdy covered bridge little more than a pile of pickup sticks.

“This piece needs to be sanded,” he announced, “but it’s solid.”

“Good. Except that crossbeam is now number…eighteen.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small bottle of spray chalk. “This should do until we can burn or chisel the numbers into the wood.”

While Kendall marked the piece, she deleted it from the materials list.

“Next,” he said, “is…thirty-five.”

They methodically worked through each of the two dozen pieces of wood and over a dozen pieces of wrought iron stacked on the trailer. It was tedious work, but in the end, they were able to salvage more than half of the pieces. And sometime during the rapid-fire back and forth, voices had softened and body language had eased.

Amy caught Kendall’s gaze. “I guess we can work together pretty well if we try.”

“I guess so.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.

She was getting used to the beard and mustache—it suited him. Unbidden, the thought slid into her mind that it would feel good to be kissed by him. All over. Suddenly her fleece jacket was too warm. She casually unzipped the front to let in cool air, but was further unnerved that he seemed riveted to the movement.

“I’ll get Marcus the updated materials list,” she said unnecessarily, then cast around for an intelligent work-related question. “Do you know what kind of turnaround we’re looking at with the fabricator?”

“A little longer than usual because of the metal parts, probably a week.”

A week was still very good. Glad to have her mind back on the project, Amy asked, “Are they reliable?”

He nodded. “We’ve worked with them on every modular building in town. When they deliver, every piece is inspected and checked off the materials list before they leave the site. Then it’s just a matter of putting together the puzzle pieces.”

She gave a little laugh. “Right…child’s play. I have to warn you, building a bridge is a bit more complicated than putting together a prefab building.”

He chewed on her comment. “I know that.”

Those questions she’d never asked him—the exciting projects he’d worked on…without her. “So you’ve built a bridge or two?”

“Or three,” he said mildly. “Nothing as ambitious as this one, of course.”

“Same here,” she admitted. “In fact, I’d have to say this is…” She tapered off, afraid to reveal too much about the emotional attachment she felt to this bridge.

“Special?” he prompted.

All of the memories they’d made there together, most likely the place where they’d conceived their son. She simply nodded.

Their gazes locked and the moment stretched on. Finally Kendall cleared his throat and nodded toward the workers standing in the creek bed. “So how’s it coming?”

“Fine for now. How about at the other site?”

“I was just going up to check. Hop on and I’ll take you with me.” He smiled. “Just like old times.”

The smile almost did her in—it was Tony’s smile, the one he gave her when he was trying to talk her into saying yes. Now she knew why she could never resist it. She remembered riding on a tractor with Kendall around his parents’ place, just to keep him company when he plowed or bush-hogged a pasture. Along the way, they would stop and take advantage of any soft pile of hay or shady tree. It was almost embarrassing to think back on. Such a rural thing, courting on a tractor. And she’d loved every minute of it.

But she wasn’t that girl anymore.

“I’ll pass,” she murmured. “I want to get this materials list to Marcus and render the specifications for the fabricator.”

If he was disappointed by her response, he didn’t let on. “Suit yourself.” He turned and walked away, then looked back. “I almost forgot—Colonel Molly asked me to tell you to stop by when you have a chance.”

Amy was immediately suspicious. “Did she say why?”

“Nope.” Then he grinned. “Good luck.”

Amy opened her mouth to call after him and say she’d changed her mind about going with him, but was stopped by the sight of his backside in work jeans that were worn in all the right places. She was feeling too vulnerable right now to be pressed up against him on the tractor, with everything vibrating and throbbing and bouncing around.

Amy closed her eyes and sighed. Colonel Molly was the lesser of the two evils.

12

A
my stopped by the construction office to print the materials list for the covered bridge for Marcus and to launch the rendering program that would provide exact specifications for each piece in the updated blueprints. The fabricators would use the specs to cut each part of the bridge to precision, and number them for assembly.

To her great relief, Marcus was strictly business and didn’t bring up anything about Tony or her talking to Kendall. But she knew from his arched eyebrows and tight-lipped answers that the subject was simmering just beneath the surface. Individually, the Armstrong brothers were a force to deal with, but together, they were formidable. Family came first. And she knew Marcus well enough to know he wouldn’t let a blood relation—especially a
male
blood relation—escape from the fold.

Deep down, it was what she feared the most, Amy admitted. That once Tony found out about his heritage, he would choose his father—and this place—over her.

This place,
she thought as she walked down the main street toward the dining hall, this place that seemed to put barbs in the people who lived there and hold them down, hold them back,
draw
them back. The name of the town was so deceiving. Sweetness. It sounded simple and idyllic, yet in her experience, it had been anything but.

Amy reluctantly returned smiles of people she passed. Some faces were becoming familiar to her, which spooked her a little. She didn’t come here to become part of the community, she was strictly a temporary contractor.

She walked into the dining hall and her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t yet had lunch. Not that the gray mystery meat patties looked very appetizing—Nikki had told her a food revolt was on the horizon—but she needed some type of fortification.

“Amy!”

She looked up to see Nikki walking toward her, carrying an empty tray. “Hi, Nikki.”

“Good to see you. How are things going?”

Amy nodded and smiled. “On schedule.”

“I wish we could talk, but I have to get back to the clinic. How about dinner tomorrow evening at the boardinghouse?”

Amy hesitated.

“Don’t worry, I won’t invite Kendall,” Nikki said, then added, “unless you want me to.”

“No, no,” Amy said, holding up her hand. “But don’t exclude Porter. I’d like to get to know him better.” In case her son would be spending time with him in the future.

“Okay, dinner tomorrow,” Nikki said. “But I’ll make plenty if you change your mind about inviting Kendall.”

Amy gave her a tight smile. “I won’t, but thanks.”

They said goodbye, then Amy joined the food queue. Molly McIntyre wore a camouflage apron and lorded over the serving line like a drill sergeant, especially where the school kids were concerned, putting the food on their plates that she deemed appropriate before shooing them on their way. Even the adults seemed to cower and accept their fate as gelatinous fare was plopped onto their plates. Amy’s nerves jumped as she neared the front, but she had to admit, she was curious as to what the woman wanted. Molly’s eyes lit up when she saw her in line.

“Amy! Your hair is more like I remember.”

Corkscrews, Amy acknowledged wryly. Her flatiron couldn’t conquer the winter humidity. She smiled back weakly, thinking whatever Molly wanted couldn’t be too bad if she was being friendly. “Kendall said you needed me to stop by?”

“It can wait until you eat lunch,” Molly said, dipping a ladle into a vat of something thick and unidentifiable.

“Actually,” Amy said, “I need to get back to the jobsite, so maybe just something portable, like fruit?”

Molly looked disappointed, but handed her ladle to a helper and came around from behind the serving counter carrying an apple and a carton of yogurt. “I guess you got hooked on this sissy food when you moved to the North.”

“Er…yes. Thank you.” She put the items in her pocket to eat later. “What did you want to see me about?”

“Follow me,” Molly said, then turned on her heel and walked off, assuming Amy would follow.

She did, trotting to keep up as the sturdy woman exited the building, then walked toward the Lost and Found warehouse. Amy was starting to get a bad feeling—she didn’t want to go back into that sad place full of forgotten belongings. “Molly, if you found something of my aunt’s—”

“It’s not something that belonged to Heddy,” Molly said over her shoulder, and kept walking.

Amy frowned, but followed her into the warehouse. Betsy sat at the desk working on a laptop. She smiled at Amy and removed her earbuds.

“We found something of yours! And it’s wicked.”

Molly looked at Amy and rolled her eyes. “I think she means it’s nice.”

Betsy walked over to a file cabinet and unlocked it, then rifled through for a few seconds before removing a plastic bag marked “M. Bradshaw.”

Amy’s heart skipped a beat. Her mother’s name was Marie.

“This belonged to your mother,” Molly confirmed, taking the bag from Betsy and opening it to withdraw a gold chain with a pendant.

Amy’s mouth went dry when she saw the pendant, a stylized circle of a mother holding a child. The child was represented by a sizable diamond. “I know this necklace,” she gasped. “My mother is wearing it in pictures I have.”

Molly smiled and handed it to her.

The pendant was heavy, a ball of gold. “But how… Did my aunt have it?”

“Heddy didn’t have it,” Molly said. “When it was found and turned in, we saw it had the initials MB on the back, but we didn’t know who it belonged to.”

Amy turned it over and saw the miniscule letters. “How did you know it was my mother’s?”

Molly tapped her temple. “Since we met again the other day, something has been nagging at me. I went back and read through Heddy’s letters and found this one.” She pulled an aged envelope and a pair of reading glasses from her apron pocket, then removed the letter and found her place with her finger.

“‘My adorable niece, Amy, is ill, poor child, something to do with her stomach. The doctors say she needs an operation. But Stanley lost his health insurance and Marie is worried sick over how they’re going to pay for it. I gave them all I could spare, but when Paul died, he left me with so much debt, I’m afraid I’m going to lose my house. Marie has a nice necklace with a diamond in it that Stanley bought for her with money he won in Vegas. He says it’s worth a lot. She doesn’t want to sell it, but that woman will do whatever it takes. She loves that little red-headed girl something fierce. We all do.’”

Molly stopped reading, but Amy couldn’t see her anymore through the haze of tears. She touched the spot on her abdomen where a faint scar remained from the surgery she had no memory of. “And whoever my mother sold the necklace to…they lost it in the tornado?”

“Looks that way,” Molly said, then shoved a handkerchief in Amy’s hand. “Could’ve been someone she knew, or maybe a pawn shop—heck, it could’ve changed hands a half dozen times since then. But the important thing is it’s back where it belongs.”

Amy dabbed at her tears, but her throat was still thick with the unfairness of losing loving parents she couldn’t remember. In that moment, she softened toward her widowed aunt Heddy, too, who must’ve been emotionally and financially overwhelmed to have a child thrust on her. Amy knew what that was like…except the child thrust upon Aunt Heddy hadn’t been her own. And the child hadn’t been particularly appreciative for the safe, if meager, home provided to her.

Shame enveloped her.

She closed her fingers over the pendant. “Thank you,” she said to Molly. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”

To her surprise, the erect woman gave her a quick, but heartfelt, squeeze. “There, there. Shake it off,” Molly said with a hearty sniff. “I need to get back to work.”

“So do I,” Amy said with a smile.

“I’ll walk you out,” Molly said, stuffing the glasses and letter back into her apron pocket.

Nursing guilt for rebuffing Betsy on the previous visit, Amy thanked the young woman and said goodbye, then walked out with Molly. “That was a very kind thing to do for someone who once stole from you.”

Molly gave a dismissive wave. “Bygones. Besides, you were a child.”

“Still, I knew it was wrong. But you made an impression on me.”

The woman smiled. “What’s the saying? It takes a village to raise a child.”

Amy had heard the saying many times, but this was the first time it made sense to her. It was true that so many people in Sweetness had lent a hand in raising her—concerned teachers, nosy neighbors, chiding grocery clerks, meddling ministers. All of them had touched her life somehow.

“Molly, is there an ATV around I can borrow?”

“Take mine,” Molly said, pointing to a vehicle painted with mottled camo paint parked under a nearby tree.

“I’ll be back in about an hour,” Amy promised.

“Take your time and be careful.”

Amy jogged to the four-wheeler, stopping long enough to lift the necklace over her head and tuck the pendant inside her blouse. Then she climbed on and turned the ATV toward the main street. She chugged along slowly, conscious of the children leaving the dining hall to return to school for afternoon classes. Her heart squeezed when she looked at their faces. She missed Tony so much. She was counting the days until she saw him again.

After she was clear of pedestrian traffic, she veered left up a broken roadway that led to Clover Ridge, where the Armstrong boys had grown up, and where one of the largest cemeteries was located.

She bit her lip. Had the cemetery survived the tornado? Were the roads clear enough for her even to reach it? She was suddenly overwhelmed with remorse for having been so neglectful of her parents’ and aunt’s final resting place.

The cracked, weed-choked road gave way to another that was in even more disrepair, then another. Now that she was away from the downtown area, she was starting to get an idea of the amount of work that remained to make Sweetness a habitable place. Kudzu-covered mounds were the only indication that homes had once stood in these places. The opening to the little hollow where she’d lived with her aunt was so overgrown, it was impassable. Her heart lodged in her throat, and she fought back tears. Their little rental house hadn’t been much to speak of, but it didn’t seem right that it had been wiped from history.

She kept riding across the ridge, slowing when she reached the Armstrong property. She swallowed hard—the house where she’d loved to spend time with Kendall’s family was gone, but the land was cleared. At the end of the fragmented driveway the newly painted black mailbox heralding “Armstrong” made her smile—a pronouncement that the Armstrongs were back to stay.

In the field next to the lot, uniform logs were stacked in a crosshatch pattern for drying. Nikki had told her the homestead property now belonged to Porter. It looked as if he were contemplating building a home for them sometime in the near future. Then Amy gave a little laugh—Porter’s time might be better spent getting that church built.

She goosed the gas and continued past more abandoned rubble, out to the cemetery where her family was buried. She expected it to be a tangled jungle of weeds, but the place was in decent shape—the Armstrongs had obviously made it a priority to keep the graveyard in check out of respect.

Her heart swelled. That was the kind of men they were—mavericks…heroes…leaders. It was comforting to know there were still people like them in the world.

She pulled up next to the tall gate that had received a new coat of paint recently and cut the engine. After walking inside, she surveyed the sea of gravestones—some of them dating back to the Civil War—and was filled with shame that she wasn’t quite sure where her family plot was located. There had been a tree nearby, she remembered, and a small stone bench.

She scanned the area and headed in the direction of the remains of a large tree. The bench was gone, but as she walked, she felt sure she was on the right track. She swung her head back and forth, scanning headstones, recognizing the names of families that had once inhabited the town: Maxwell, Cole, Smithson, Cafferty, Moon. If any headstones had been damaged by the tornado, they had been repaired. No surprise, the Armstrong plot where Kendall’s father was buried was perfectly manicured. The brothers took care of their own.

And Tony was one of their own.

The thought was both comforting and worrying.

She proceeded through tall grass to the rear of the cemetery and the lots that were less level and not as scenic. She searched her memory, but it was the cleared area that drew her attention to the Bradshaw plot marked with a simple white cornerstone with an engraved “B.” To her amazement, the graves were neat and the marble headstone that marked her parents’ grave was clean.
Beloved husband and wife, Stanley and Marie Bradshaw
.

Who had tended their graves? As soon as the question flitted through her brain, she knew the answer: Kendall.

Amy crouched to touch the stone, her tears flowing freely now for the people she knew only from a handful of hazy photographs. Their lives had been cut short, and here they lay, neglected and forgotten by their only child. When she’d left Sweetness, she’d turned her back on every memory, the good with the bad. She put her hand over the lump of the pendant underneath her shirt and made a silent vow that when she left this time, she would come back to visit regularly.

She glanced over to her aunt’s grave, two plots over from her parents’ resting place. When she’d left, Aunt Heddy’s grave had been a mound of dirt and clay, covered with the drying remains of a few bunches of flowers that friends had sent for the funeral. It had apparently settled and grass had taken hold…but her aunt didn’t have a headstone.

Amy took a deep, cleansing breath. That, at least, she could remedy.

The wind picked up, tossing the ends of her springy hair. She surveyed the sprawling cemetery as the breeze kicked up leaves, giving life to the quiet place. The breeze swirled around the headstones, whispering and moaning. It was as if the long-gone residents of Sweetness were speaking to her.
Don’t forget us
.