The Haunting of Autumn Lake (8 page)

“Well, thank you kindly, ma’am,” Gentry said, accepting the plate with his right hand.

“Here you go,” Autumn said, carefully placing the fork on the plate with the fruit roll. “And let me help you.” She positioned the chair she usually sat in so that it was next to the small table at the side of his bed. “Mama found this new recipe awhile back, and she’s been bakin’ it every other day since! She claims she hasn’t gotten it just right yet, even though Daddy and I swear to her that she does.” She took the plate from Gentry and sat it on the small bedside table. “Can you sit down all right?” she asked him.

Autumn tried to ignore the way her heart somersaulted in her bosom at his having called her
honey
. Oh, she understood it was just a habit—something he probably just called women. But it thrilled her all the same.

“Mmmm!” Gentry moaned as he chewed the first bite of Vaden Lake’s newest batch of apple fruit rolls. “Good heavens, girl! Your family is gonna spoil me rotten on apples. This is the best thing I’ve tasted…maybe ever.”

Autumn giggled, delighted by his reaction and the sincerity of it. “Mama will bust her corset strings when I tell her! I’m sure she’s plannin’ on enterin’ this new recipe at the county fair next month. Oh, I hope she wins!”

“Well, if I was judgin’ the contest she would,” Gentry said, taking another bite of the pretty pink apple biscuits. “I ain’t never tasted anything like this. What makes ’em pink?”

“Well, you be sure and tell your mama that I coulda ate a whole pan of these,” he said, devouring another piece of the dessert. “And anyhow, I love a woman who’s willin’ to feed a man somethin’ sweet for breakfast.”

“Then you’ll love my mama,” Autumn said. “She makes sure my daddy starts every mornin’ with three things.” Counting on her fingers, she listed, “Either bacon, ham, or eggs, somethin’ sweet to go with ’em, and big lickery kiss before he heads out the door.”

Gentry chuckled as he chewed. “She sounds like the perfect woman,” he mumbled.

“Daddy says she
is
,” Autumn sighed, sitting down on the side of the bed.

Gentry looked up to Autumn, his gaze settling on the sketchbook tucked under her arm.

“What’re you always drawin’ in that book of yours?” he asked.

Autumn blushed—for mostly she’d been drawing Gentry James! “Uh…um…” she stammered. “I’m working on a special Christmas present for my mama. I-I’ve been making sketches for weeks now…so I’ll be ready to paint Jethro’s portrait when the time comes.”

Again Autumn laughed. “Me? Have a beau?” She shook her head. “No, Jethro isn’t my beau.” Pausing to settle a giggle, she began to open her sketchbook, looking for the best sketch of Jethro. “Though, if you knew me well enough…you might believe he was my beau. Goodness knows I like him far more than most men I’ve met.”

Instantly Autumn’s smile faded—for an image of Riley Wimber had popped into her mind. Autumn pushed the thought of him aside, however. She wouldn’t waste one moment of her time with Gentry James on her worries concerning Riley Wimber.

“Here,” she said, having found her favorite sketch of Jethro. “This is Jethro.”

Turning the sketchbook so that Gentry could see the sketch, she smiled as she watched a frown pucker his brow. “I don’t see anybody,” he said. “That just looks like a pumpkin layin’ in a field to me. Though I will say that you are one very good artist, Miss Autumn Lake.”

“Thank you,” she said, adoring the compliment he’d given her. “And it is a pumpkin layin’ in a pumpkin field. Jethro is my mama’s favorite pumpkin this year…and the biggest pumpkin my daddy has ever grown.”

Gentry smiled at the girl. Was she serious? The girl was planning on painting a portrait of a pumpkin for her mother for Christmas? The sketch was certainly the best rendering of a pumpkin he’d ever seen—not that he’d ever seen a sketch or painting of a pumpkin before—but it was obvious Autumn Lake was a very talented artist.

Still, he couldn’t keep himself from asking, “You’re foolin’ with me, right?”

“Nope,” she said, her smile broadening as she studied her own sketch. “Mama and I love pumpkins! Daddy does too, of course…but only because Mama does. It’s why he bought the pumpkin patch when Mr. Wimber passed on. He bought it for my mama…and every year he grows the most beautiful pumpkins anywhere.”

Gentry grinned.
Here she goes
, he thought. In his ten days or so in the company of Autumn Lake, he’d learned one thing—that though she might be a beauty on the outside, the girl was even more beautiful on the inside. And one thing that made her so beautiful was the way she’d launch into a description of something or another that she loved. It may be her daddy or one of her brothers, but time and again Gentry had learned that it was mostly either something to do with nature (specifically harvest season or Christmastime) or some intriguing tale she’d heard somewhere along the way.

The truth was Gentry adored the girl for it. She had a way of making life seem good—even filled with hope. Autumn Lake saw beauty in the world instead of ugliness, from the biggest oak tree adorned in crimson leaves to the tiniest little worm she’d found while shucking corn. He almost laughed out loud as he remembered the day she’d gone on and on and on about how she couldn’t wait for the harvest moon to appear. She told him all about how much she loved the harvest moon—about how, to her, it looked like a big orange and golden pumpkin sitting in the sky. She explained how sad she was that it only happened once a year—but then promptly turned tail and resolved that she guessed that’s what made it so very, very special. On and on she’d talked—her lovely songbird’s voice describing the feel in the air on the night of a harvest moon, how the breeze seemed happier and the grass felt cooler.

Autumn’s nearly poetical description of the one night of the year when she loved the moon best had lulled Gentry to sleep that day. For a time, he’d forgotten his pain as he’d listened to her melodic voice and gently drifted off to unconsciousness. As he studied her a moment—as she continued to explain why she and her mother both favored pumpkins so—Gentry wondered for a moment if she truly loved the harvest moon as much as she’d professed to or if it were her way of soothing him that day. He wasn’t sure which it was because he’d been with her enough to know that it could’ve been either.

“I’m hopin’ Daddy chooses Jethro to go to seed,” Autumn said, snapping Gentry’s attention away from a dreamy harvest moon to a large, ripening pumpkin sitting in a field. She shook her head. “Mama’s gonna be so sad to see him go. So…I thought I’d paint his portrait for her for Christmas. It’s the one thing I can do well sometimes…draw and paint.”

With the sweet taste of apples and cinnamon candy lingering in his mouth, Gentry licked his fork and placed it on the now empty plate.

“Those are the best kinds of gifts, if you ask me,” he said. He didn’t know why he’d said it. But he had.

“Paintings?” Autumn asked.

Gentry smiled. “Well…I meant the kind of gifts a person makes on his own…usin’ just his skills or talents or the feelin’s in his heart that he has for the person he’s makin’ it for.”

“Me too,” Autumn agreed.

Gentry looked up then—his gaze locking with the stormy gray-blue of the girl’s pretty eyes. What the hell was he talking about? He sounded like an idiot! She softened him too much, that was for dang sure. He wondered for a moment if it really were Autumn Lake that was softening him up—or was it just his weakened state of body?

He looked away from her and back to the empty plate before him. “Well, I’m sure your mama will like the paintin’,” he said, pushing the plate across the table and leaning back in the chair as a frown furrowed his brow.

“I-I hope so,” she mumbled.

The sound of her voice was strange, and he glanced up to see her staring out the window. He thought she looked as if the color had drained from her face a bit.

Following her gaze, he saw that several young men were standing just outside the window. They looked to be about his own age.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do you know them fellas?”

“Um…yes…of course,” she stammered. Gentry looked back to her as she quickly closed her sketchbook and cast her gaze to the floor. “I-I grew up with them. They’re local boys,” she explained.

“Because for a moment, I saw somethin’ pass by the window…and I thought it was the Specter at first,” she said. He noticed the way her eyes lit up with an extra sparkle as the color returned to her face a bit.

“The Specter?” he asked, voluntarily taking her bait.

Autumn sighed with relief at the fact Gentry had seemed to believe her fib. She hadn’t thought she’d seen the Specter at all—but she had seen Riley Wimber peeking through the window. He and three other young men from town were standing right outside Doctor Sullivan’s house—right outside the patient room window. A cold shiver had washed over Autumn when she’d seen Riley looking in at her, but she didn’t want Gentry James to know what a fraidy-cat she was—or what secret suspicions she’d been keeping from her parents. Therefore, when he’d asked her what was the matter, she’d lied and blamed it on the Specter.

“Gentry James!” she began, as if scolding. “Are you tellin’ me that no one has told you about the Specter yet?”

Gentry shook his head, and Autumn sighed—dazzled by the way his hair moved across his forehead and eyes when he did.

“Nope,” he said. “I mean…I heard somethin’ or other about a rider that the schoolteacher’s sister saw out in a cornfield or some such thing…but I didn’t realize it was supposed to have been a ghost or whatnot.”

Autumn smiled, all her concerns and worries about Riley Wimber vanishing as quickly as a puff of smoke. “Well then, Mr. James…why don’t you sit back and let me tell you the tale?” she offered.

He chuckled and nodded as he did indeed lean back in his chair. Proper or not, Autumn couldn’t keep from tucking her legs up to one side under her dress as she leaned toward him and began, “It was a love triangle that started it all, you know.”

“Oh, it usually is,” Gentry mumbled.

Autumn loved the way he mumbled—loved the way his perfect lips moved when he did.

“You see, about thirty years ago…there was this young cowboy who rode into town one day,” she explained in a whisper. “But he wasn’t all shot up like you were, Mr. James.” She shook her head and continued, “No, sir. He was just a young cowboy lookin’ for a place to weather out the autumn and winter. Seems he’d been fired from the ranch he’d been workin’ on…because the boss’s daughter had fallen head-over-heels in love with him, and the boss didn’t approve of his daughter lovin’ a cowboy. So this cowboy rides in to town one day, lookin’ for work or somewhere he can wait out the bad weather seasons. His name was Ritter Houston…but folks just called him Ritt…and it was said he was as handsome as the summer was hot and long.” Autumn sighed and looked down to the quilt covering the bed. It was a simple nine-patch quilt, but the orange and brown squares made her think of pumpkins and rich soil—sunsets and chocolate cake—and she smiled.

“The fact was Ritter Houston was so very handsome that any female he passed would sigh and nearly swoon,” she added. Already caught up in her own story, Autumn didn’t even realize what she said next. “Why, I imagine he was almost as handsome as you, Gentry James. That’s how handsome it has always been said he was.”

Gentry’s eyebrows arched beneath his long hair hanging over his forehead and almost to the bridge of his nose. Had the girl just inadvertently said he was handsome? He smiled, for he could tell she hadn’t even noticed what she’d said. She was truly a wonder to behold when she was telling a tale.

Raking his hand back through his hair in an effort to clear his vision so he could see Autumn Lake more clearly, he stifled a chuckle of amusement as she simply continued with her story—entirely unaware of the compliment she’d subconsciously offered to him.

“Well, the story goes that there was a very beautiful saloon girl workin’ at the local saloon then. Her name was Cat Russell…Cat bein’ short for Catherine,” Autumn continued. “She had long black hair and the deepest green eyes. The folks swore that heaven itself had set two emeralds in her head where most people just had eyes. How Cat Russell came to find herself workin’ in a saloon out in some little town like this was, no one knew. But it didn’t matter. Every man in town was in love with her.”

Gentry was intrigued as he watched Autumn rather unconsciously reach up and pull the pins from her hair as she spoke. She began combing her long ebony tresses with her fingers, and he grinned—liking the look of her with her very long, wavy hair pulled forward over one shoulder as she worked with it.

“Yep. Even though Cat was a harlot, every man in town adored her,” she continued. “But then Ritt Houston rode in to town…and Cat’s emerald eyes never noticed another man after that day. They became scandalous lovers, you see.”

“Did they now?” Gentry asked, pleased when she looked up to him, blushing.

“Mmm hmm,” she confirmed. “Scandalous lovers. The kind nice people try to ignore.”