Catch a Shooting Star jd edit 03 12 2012 html (41 page)

“Good-bye Mr. Corbett,” Savannah said more calmly than she felt as she stepped around him to the screened door and opened it to retreat to her room for a heart-wrenching cry.

Travis could take her attitude no more.  He needed to explain to her his intensions, to tell her that he was not going to leave her forever.  He stepped in front of her and impeded her departure with a hand on her shoulder as he spun her around, sending the stack of letters spraying around their feet.  He lowered his head toward her face and growled, “You can’t just leave me like that, woman!”

Savannah pulled her shoulder from his grip with a wild wave of her arm as she stepped into the doorway and announced coldly, “You seem to think that you can just leave me without so much as a word of regret.  I would think that you would consider offering me the same pleasure.  Now, if you will excuse me, my son needs me.”

She wrestled the screened door from his hand and slammed it behind her, shutting the heavy oak inside door behind her and shutting out any protest that might have come from the man with whom she had, just a few hours ago, hoped to spend the rest of her life.  She ran upstairs to her room and threw herself onto the bed that had been her home while she had gathered the courage to recover the gentle child who slept in the smaller bed beside hers. 

She would begin her life again, with or without Travis, she promised herself as she pushed her face further into her pillow.  With time and perseverance, she knew that her heart would heal and she would replace her anger and hatred toward the man who had taken the love that she’d offered and had smeared it into the dust with the heel of his boot and had left her to grieve for what could have been, for what she thought should have been.  But until that day, she would smother herself with the pain of losing the only man that she had ever allowed herself to love while showering her son with the love that she felt for the boy who now took all of her attention. 

She cried herself to sleep, hoping against hope that Travis would bound up those stairs and tell her that he had decided to take her with him to Galveston where that supposed unfinished business was calling him.  But he never burst through her door and never took her into his arms and he never asked her for forgiveness for wanting to leave her after all that they had shared.  The night was filled with the anguish and misery of her broken heart as she tossed and twisted in her bed, drowning in a sea of desolation.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Travis leaned on the post that supported the Sheriff’s office, staring at the hotel and wishing that he had explained everything to Savannah.  Many times, he had almost talked himself into striding right over there and telling her the whole distasteful truth.  But, then, he decided to wait until morning when he was thinking straight.    He knew that tonight she would not be in a receptive mood, especially since she had not bothered to light a lamp when she had run to her room to brood.

Besides, the sky above him threatened to spill its roiling contents through clashing clouds.  It was going to be a stormy night.  No need to add fuel to the fire by starting an argument with the woman who had never backed down from his ominous stature. 

He decided to find his way to his room in the back of the Sheriff’s office.  If he took Margaret’s offer of a room at the hotel, he knew that he would eventually find his way to Savannah, to curl up next to her in her bed and beg for her forgiveness.  And, he knew that she would eventually forgive him, so long as he kept his dark secret to himself.  So, he took one last look at the blackened window where she slept and he turned to find solace in the scratchy sheets on the cot that his old friend Hayden had offered.  He closed the door to his fears, his anxiety and his worry that Savannah would never forgive him.  He tossed and turned in the small bed while the thunder clapped angrily outside.

The howling wind battered the shutters outside the hotel where Savannah slept.  The roaring storm rattled the windows above her head, interjecting itself into her fitful dream.  Booming thunder mingled with cannon fire, flashing lightning mirrored blazing gunfire and engulfing flames in a frightening scene that took her back to that terrible night when Sherman desecrated her world and her life.  Clinging to Bessie in her nightmare, young Savannah cried desperately in trepidation as the battle outside the well that protected her echoed against the sodden walls.  

In her vivid dream-world imagination, she noticed a bright, compelling light that glowed just beyond the blackened tunnel that she had never seen before.  She pulled away from Bessie to walk toward the faint light, ignoring her guardian’s pleas to return to safety.  With the hailing bullets ricocheting off the rock ledge of the well and the cannon balls piercing the flesh of the earth above her, she stumbled further down the dark path toward the shimmering beam, oblivious to the devastating event that crashed all around her.

Winding, turning, weaving and zipping back again, she followed the tunnel, obsessed with finding the source of that beckoning light.  Step by step, it slowly became brighter until it lit up her surprised face when she pushed aside the heavy oak door to reveal the treasure within.  Bright, shining objects glistened in her dream, offering a wealth of delight for her and only her.

But, when she stepped inside the dazzling chasm, a shadow overtook her elation.  She could hear Diego’s laugh above the thunder, above the cannon fire, above her mother’s screams for mercy.  Shuddering, she threw her arms up to hide from him in her childlike reaction.  Whimpering, little Savannah begged El Diablo to let her go.

“You can have it!” she cried at the devil in the dungeon of doom that had taken over the room.  Then, in her nightmare, she magically transformed into a pleading woman as she sobbed, “You can have it all!  Just let me go.  Just let my son go!”

His howling chortle echoed off the walls of the cavern, stabbing her heart with the fear that overtook her.  Turning and running, she swooped from the room like a bat, fluttering against the walls as if her sonar had gone awry.  Following her with a voice that grew ever louder as she ran, Diego’s words haunted her, “Never,
Mi Querida
!  Never!”   

As she neared the opening of the well, she searched for Bessie, but the woman with whom she had always found solace had vanished and in her place was a cavernous abyss that grew with every frightful breath that she took.  Far, far away, she heard a baby cry, its feeble, resonating sound drowned by the torrent of the terrible, trembling thunder of Diego’s laughter.

Suddenly, she awoke, the dreadful dream, all but a shocking memory.  Sniffing back the sadness, she looked toward the window and shivered at the clashing storm outside.    

She wiped away tears that had streamed down her cheeks in her sleep.  The room lit up with the flashing lightning and she hugged her blankets toward her body against the fear that the storm, if not the dream, had caused.

            Somewhere in the distance, a faint cry echoed, barely audible above the whistling wind and the rolling thunder.  As if still bound by her dream, she searched the dark room for its source.  The child’s wailing became louder and louder, drowning out the frightening noise of the storm’s persistent onslaught.  Becoming louder still, their insistent wails deafened any who could not resist their unceasing screech.

Savannah threw the blankets aside and ran to take her son into her arms, cooing, “Shhh, Baby.  Mamma’s here.”

Benny whimpered and threw his arms around his mother while she took him into her bed and cuddled with him, talking soothingly to him until he fell asleep again.  As the storm trickled to a sprinkle, she drifted into a peaceful slumber, dreaming of Robin’s Glen, of Bessie, of Benny running through the peach orchard and of Travis proudly standing on the grand porch of the mansion with her beneath his arm.  It was a stark contrast to the dream that had taken her breath away earlier.  This dream was all so very beautiful…

Chapter Twenty-Three

Morning brought with it a quiet reminder of the argument that had changed her destiny again, this time, forever.  Savannah yawned and stretched the stiffness from her muscles, remembering the exercises that Travis had taught her, but she quickly pushed the thought away with a sniff of haughty indignation.

She looked toward the tiny bed where her son had been sleeping but he was gone.  Remembering that she had brought him into her bed, she searched the blankets for his sleeping form, but except for her, the bed was empty.  Panic chased her down the stairs and throughout the hotel while she searched for her precious son, whom she had only just recovered from the Devil Himself.  Shocking memories of the nightmare that had been her life, and then reverberated in the nightmare that she had experienced last night, caused her to shiver uncontrollably. 

Shaking it away, she told herself to get hold of herself and she called her son’s name while she scoured the hotel.  She looked in the kitchen, in the pantry, on the front porch, on the back porch.  Not only was she unsuccessful with finding Benny, she couldn’t find Margaret or Jake either.

A silent prayer asked that he was somewhere with them safe and sound.  She leaned off the rail of the back porch and raised her hand against the sun.  Her prayer was answered when she looked toward the garden and saw both of her friends with her little boy beside them stooping in the carrot patch.  Relief spread over her body as she waved to them and went back inside, placing a palm upon her breast.

Jake, who had seen the fear and then relief on her face, followed her into the kitchen and watched Madeline pour coffee into a cup.  Then his heart fell when she swiped away the letters that he had found on the porch and had left neatly stacked on the kitchen table.  He had no idea that those letters meant only despair for her because they represented lifelong loneliness for the girl who he had sheltered for almost two years.  He had only believed that those sacred letters, addressed to someone who might have been a prominent figure in the girl’s life, could be a promise of happiness for her.

Savannah touched a toe to the folded map and sent it sailing across the floor before she melted into the kitchen chair and wept.  What good do these papers do for her if her love is gone forever?  What treasure would be discovered by the worthless map that stuttered along the threshold of the screened door before it faltered to a standstill on the floor?  They were all nothing to her, nothing but pulp ground from some forsaken tree that had fallen in the name of love.  Love for country.  Love for principles.  Love for that which would never be realized.

The tears flowed unchecked as Savannah cried into her forearms on the kitchen table.

“It’s alright,” Jake assured her, kneeling at her knees.  “Benny’s home, safe and sound.  Everything’s alright now.”

Savannah covered her face with her hands as she cried into them, “No it’s not. Everything isn’t alright,” she said as she dropped her hands. A great, overwhelming sigh consumed her as she continued, “Travis and I had an argument last night.  He’s going back to Galveston and he said that I should go back to Georgia, alone.”

“Oh, Maddie, I’m so sorry,” Jake said as he encircled her with his arm.

Savannah sniffed and looked him in the eye and finally told him the truth, “My name is really Savannah.  I’m sorry that I lied to you and Margaret, but I had to keep my identity a secret so that my husband couldn’t find me before I got my son back.”

Jake shook his head with a smile while he covered her hand with his and said, “I understand completely.”

“I have made so many mistakes,” she mused, as if to herself as she stared at the letters strewn about the floor.

“We all do,” he said, nodding in agreement.

“But I handled our argument in such the wrong way,” she said, rising to her feet to pace the floor.  She stopped in front of the cupboard where Jake had offered a peppermint stick to Benny.  She stared through the glass door at the jar of red and white swirls, marveling at the capacity of a miniscule stick of sugar and herb to delight in such a remarkable way.  For just an instant, she was tempted to reach in that jar of joy and chase away her troubles as her son had.

Still keeping her eyes fixed on the treats, she sighed before she admitted, “I should have tried to talk him into letting me go with him and then we could go on to Georgia.  Whatever this unfinished business that he has could only take a few months and then we can be on our way…”

“I agree,” the voice was not Jake’s.

Savannah whirled around to see Travis standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his handsome face smiling at her.  She ran to open the screen door to let him in and then threw herself into his arms.

“I’m so sorry, Travis,” she said in his chest as he held her in his arms.

“Me too,” he said, placing a kiss upon the top of her head.

Jake cleared his throat before he shuffled his foot and said, “I think I’ll go back and root around in the garden.”

Neither of them heard his words nor saw his departure, for their kiss obscured all but their love.  They spent the day sitting on the porch swing, playing with Benny, talking with Margaret and Jake while avoiding the conversation that they both knew should be addressed.  After dinner, the others went inside, leaving Travis and Savannah alone to face the inevitable.  The silence that enveloped them was not oppressive, but inviting as they sat cuddling on the swing, each summoning the words to say to the other.