Love Lift Me (16 page)

Fourteen

Shane
and I made it a point to be together as often as possible after our
unforgettable experience on the farm. We were enjoying each other so much, days
turned into weeks in the blink of an eye. I was wrapped up in it, in him, and
for the first time in my life, I felt like I’d found the missing piece that
made me whole.

Most
of the time Shane was busy handling his case against Patterson Reid and I was
tied up with chores around the farm, but Shane and I nearly always found a
chance to see each other in between. There was ample time on most days and I
was also thankful for the opportunity to get out of the house.

Sometimes
I would meet Shane for coffee at the same place Cindy had caused me to blow a
gasket when we weren’t able to be together later. We also went out to nice
restaurants in the city on weekends, took in movies, rode the horses (he was
getting much better!), or toured the city or the countryside in his sleek car
looking for things to do. More often, though, we kept things simple with a quiet
dinner together in the suite he was renting followed by a thrilling night of rumpled
bed sheets and ceaseless pleasure.

Occasionally,
Shane would have to work late into the evening, handling whatever new stumbling
block Reid’s legal defense threw at him. It was hard to be away from him even
for a single night. It was similar to how I’d felt with Hale when I left for
school, only much more profound. This time, though, I was confident that it
would only be a short while before I was back in Shane’s arms and experiencing
everything he had to give.

“Your
new fella takin’ you to the Harvest Festival?” Daddy asked me while I was
washing dishes after lunch one afternoon. “Gon’ be a biggun this year. I hear ol’
Patterson Reid done spent a heap of money to make it a nice ‘un. Gots to put a
shine on things to keep folks ‘round here holdin’ up them protest signs and
all.”

“Shane
hasn’t said anything about it,” I answered with a shrug.

Daddy
took one last bite of chicken and handed over his dish to me. “Uh-huh. Don’t
you want to go, Lil’ Bit? You used to love ridin’ them rides when you was a
youngin. Figgered you’d be bouncin’ like a junebug about it but you ain’t actin
too excited.”

“I
don’t know. Maybe.”

“Oh,
George, I know she wants to go,” Mother joined in from the kitchen table. Her
voice was slight but didn’t waver. She was fingering the ceramic handle on her
cup of coffee and looking out the window and I’d almost forgotten she was
sitting there. The plate of food in front of her had barely been touched and
she’d been as quiet as a mouse since morning.

“She
can’t fool me. I seen her eyein’ that poster for it down at the drugstore the
other day,” Mother continued. No sooner than she’d finished talking, Momma had
a fit of raucous, hoarse coughing that seemed to rattle right through her
bones.

I
flung some of the soap off my hands and walked over to her. “Are you ok, Momma?
You’ve been coughing like that for a week now and it isn’t getting any better.”

She
turned towards me, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and brushed it off. “Fine,
I’m fine, Mary Katherine. A cold, is all. This weather settlin’ in has put an
itch in my lungs.”

“Maybe
you ought to go back and see that doctor-” Daddy started and she gave him a
grunt.

“Ain’t
no use in it. Don’t need no doctor, you, and quit a-changin’ the subject,”
Mother shot at him. The old fire was still there, that much was certain. Daddy
shut his mouth, held up his hands and stepped into the living room, muttering
to himself the whole way.

“Jus’
ask
him, Mary Katherine,” Mother said, and clutched my hand. “I’m sure
that nice boy would love to take you.”

“He
might not want to, since the whole thing is being financed by Patterson Reid.
You know darn well Shane’s prosecuting him.”

“That
don’t matter,” she said earnestly. “I can see somethin’ special between you
two. Don’t let some rich old fool stop ya’ll from goin’.”

Her
hands were so cold, like the life was draining right out of them. She was thinner
than before now, even weeks after the chemotherapy had ended. When she came
home from her last appointment, she had told all of us that everything was
going to be
fine
. Was she lying? I could hardly believe that the person
in front of me was the same resilient, vibrant woman I’d known all my life.

“Momma,
please…eat some more of your lunch. You’ve barely touched it.”

She
let go of me, peered down at her plate, and then let out a sigh. Her sunken
eyes moved back to the window and she resumed watching the brown and drying
cornfield, which had been laid into broken, hollow stalks from the harvest.
“Maybe in a little while. I ain’t hungry right at this moment, Mary Katherine.”

“You
have
to eat, Momma.”

She
continued to stare out at the field and whispered softly, “Not now, honey.”

“But
you’re withering away!” I said, louder than I wanted, and brought my voice down
as I continued, “You’ve been like this for days, just sitting around and…and
moping. It’s not like you, Momma. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,
Mary Katherine. Just thinking on some things, s’all. Can’t a person just sit
for a while and think?”

“Thinking?
About what?”

“Never
you mind,” she said, more defiantly, and choked back another bout of coughing.
“Jus’ leave me be, honey.” I grabbed the plate to take it away, but she
surprised me with a slap on the wrist. “Now, I done tol’ you, I’m gonna eat
that in a little while, girl. You jus’ leave it right there where it is and get
on them clothes. Reckon the ones hangin’ up outside is ready to come in by now.
I can finish up with the dishes while you do that.”

I
raised one eyebrow and felt her hand retreat from my wrist. Before I could say
anything else she’d already turned back to the window and was looking out
again.

That
night, after a hello kiss and before we’d even reached the end of the farm’s
driveway, Shane asked, “So, do you think you’d have any interest in going to
that big event they’re having over at the county fairgrounds? I hear it’s going
to be the biggest thing this town has seen in a long time.”

I
was dumbfounded, to say the least. He actually
wanted
to go?

“The
Harvest Festival, you mean?”

“Yeah.
I know,” he said with a shrug, reading my reaction, “It’s really the Support
Patterson Reid Festival more than anything. I don’t blame you if you don’t want
to go.”

“But
I-”

“That
man doesn’t deserve any support at all if you ask me. I just figured if I show
my face, people might get the idea that I’m not holding any grudges against the
local workers. I’m working on something, like I told you before, that might
just bring this whole thing to a close and let all those folks continue
working. I just need a little more time.”

“Shane,
we can-”

He
sighed and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I don’t know. It was probably
stupid to ask anyway, Kat. I’m sorry. You probably have no interest in going-”

“Shane!”
I finally broke in and he raised his head a little in surprise. “I
want
to go. I was already going to ask tonight if you’d take me, but you beat me to
it. To be honest, I never thought you’d want to go because of…well, like you
said.”

“Oh,”
he said simply and nodded. Then, his smile broadened as if on instinct. “Ok.
Yeah. That’s great!”

“You
still haven’t told me what this plan of yours is with Reid. Is that why you
want to go to an event he’s sponsoring?”

Shane
was silent for a moment. As I watched him, I could have sworn I saw the gears
turning in his head as he considered a response.
Why was he being so
secretive about this? Didn’t he know that he could trust me by now?

“My
presence there might help with it. Public support will be important in making a
smooth transition if things go how I hope.”

I
scrunched up my eyebrows and tried to understand. “A transition to what?”

“Kat,
I…” He sighed again, but this time, I could tell it was directed at me.

“Can’t
you tell me?”

“No,
it’s not that,” he said.

“Well,
what is it?”

“I’m
trying to broker a deal to end this thing. Patterson’s damned scientific expert
is doing everything he can to refute the survey data. I know he’s full of it,
but it’s a real threat to the prosecution. He’s had almost a dozen employees
claim before the judge that the plant was following government policy, even
though even a blind man could see they haven’t been. On top of that, one
witness recanted their testimony. It’s bad.”

“Which
one recanted?” I asked.

“That
Miller guy. The one who worked at the phosphate plant for so long.” Shane’s
expression turned even more serious as he continued, “And damn it, we had him! I
just
know
Reid paid the guy off. God only knows how much it took. I can’t
prove it, though. Miller’s testimony was supposed to be a slam dunk, but he made
all of us look like idiots instead. It feels like everything is falling apart.”

“So
Patterson might win?”

Shane
turned the wheel hard and pushed the accelerator. “He might, Kat.”

“What
kind of deal were you thinking of offering him? Surely you can’t just let him
walk away after everything he’s done. It’s going to take years to clean up the
mess left behind by his company.”

“The
deal isn’t with him,” Shane said, then he opened his mouth, as if to say more,
but promptly clamped his lips together.

“Who
is it with?” I asked.

Shane
drove on, avoiding my gaze by watching the traffic in front of us. It became
clear that he didn’t want to answer.

I
questioned him again, “You aren’t going to tell me?”

“Look,
it doesn’t matter, ok? If I can make it happen, Patterson Reid will be serving
a nice long stretch in prison and no one has to go searching for work. That’s
really all that matters here, isn’t it?”

I
craned my neck and observed him. He acted confident but he was obviously
uncomfortable telling me about his plans.
What was Shane hiding?
Something didn’t sit right with me at all. I’d never seen him act so mysterious
about anything.

“I’m
sorry I can’t tell you more than that,” he said. “It’s best if you don’t know
too much about it. The whole thing could fall apart, anyway, and what I’m doing
isn’t exactly something my bosses would agree with.”

“It’s
not illegal, is it, Shane?”

“No
way,” he said quickly and shook his head. “I’m almost certain that it’s not. It
could lead to a lot of questions, however. There is no need for you to be involved
in case it goes sideways.”

The
car continued to hum along for a while, passing the steel lamp posts arranged
along the roadside and creating a steady swishing noise from the rush of air
that dominated the cabin. As the outside darkened, the lamps all seemed to
flicker to life in unison. We crossed over the bridge into Wilmington and I
looked down into the empty water below, which looked like a black void that had
swallowed everything up.

“Are
we…ok?” Shane finally asked.

I
thumbed the leather armrest.
Why did I even have to open my big mouth and
ask about the case?

“Kat,
talk to me. I don’t want this to come between us. I need to you to trust me.”

“I
do,” I said, almost a whisper. “I think I understand. Do what you have to.”

By
the time we sat down for dinner, the subject had moved away from the case and
Shane was flipped back into entertainment mode. We laughed and drank wine while
sharing stories from our past. I told him about the Harvest Festival and what
it was like during my childhood and he told me about the time his best friend
dared him to climb the water tower in the middle of town. Afterwards, we
retired to his suite, my head swimming from one glass too many, and in the
darkness Shane quenched my other, deeper thirst.

Try
as I may, my mind would not rest about what he’d told me in the car. As I
listened to him sleep, I pushed the worry away again and again. Shane was doing
something he thought was right, but it must be something that could also get
him into trouble. He claimed it was legal. Still, my gut was telling me that he
was purposefully keeping information from me, and not just to protect me.
What
on earth was he getting himself into?

Nearly
a week passed and Shane didn’t speak about Patterson or the secretive deal
again. That was kind of a relief to me. Maybe it had worked and I’d be hearing
the verdict before I knew it. Perhaps he changed his mind about it altogether.

I
wasn’t going to let it bother me. At the moment, Shane’s arm was around my
shoulder and he was escorting me towards the fairgrounds, which were in full
swing.

A
sign above the entrance spelled out, “
Welcome!”
in thousands of bright,
flickering, green and red lights. Whoever was in charge of decoration had opted
for a Christmas theme. The sides of the archway that held the sign were painted
like candy canes with billowing gold bows tied around them at the middle. Vendors
had parked their food carts in rows alongside dozens of different carnival
games and children raced back and forth to try and win all the prizes they could.
Above us, holiday music rang out like background noise that mingled with the
rumbling sound of the crowd. It looked like the entire town had come out to
join the festivities.