The Story Keeper (25 page)

“You don’t have to
lie
. Just don’t
tell
him. My dad’ll come get the horse. It’s fine.”

“Your uncle’s going to wonder why I’m
here
.”

“I’ll just say I called you.” Her gaze rolled toward the screen with casual disinterest.

There were footsteps in the hallway overhead now. I couldn’t help myself
 
—I grabbed my purse, slipped into my jacket, and moved out of the direct line of sight.

Hannah frowned at me. “What’re you doin’? Seriously, it’s no big deal.”

“What’s no big deal?” Evan’s voice. He came halfway down the steps and stopped.

“Hey, Uncle Evan.” Hannah craned to see him through the
doorway. “If we watch another movie. I told Jennia Beth it’s no big deal.”

Another half-dozen rapid, angry-sounding footfalls, and he was in the room, staring at me, clearly stupefied by my presence there. Even his skilled and creative mind could not conjure a reason why I would be in his theater room watching
The Little Mermaid
with his niece. His mouth dropped open slightly and an eye flash came my way. That expression spoke volumes. It said,
I cannot believe the nerve of you, woman.

I quickly began working toward a graceful exit. “I really do need to go. Now that there’s someone home with you.” The last part was an attempt at explaining myself. A little. At least.

Hannah pivoted her feet to the floor, crossed the room, and wrapped her arms around my waist. “Thanks for coming to watch movies with me. Do you
have
to go?” She gave me a conspiratorial look, and the meaning was clear enough.
Don’t tell.

“Yes, I really do.” I peeled her off, held her face in my hands, and saw the sad, vulnerable little girl again. “I meant what I said in the car on the way up here, okay? Never again. Anything like that. You hear me?”

She sighed, then slipped from my grasp and returned to flop across the recliner.

Evan jerked his chin toward the doorway, and I followed him from the room, hoping to leave without running into Granny Vi. She didn’t need to be party to a spit-and-scratch match between her grandson and me, or to know about today’s incident on the side of the highway.

Neither Evan nor I spoke until we had made it down the hall and out a door that led to a sunken stairway area.

“The driveway’s that direction.” He motioned toward the stone steps
 
—telling, not asking
 
—and I complied by starting up the stairs.

“I’m assuming you must’ve hidden your car around back because I didn’t see it on the way in,” he spat.

I could feel my temper moving into simmer mode. I didn’t deserve this. I was only trying to help, and really, after Coral Rebecca’s call, I was still smarting, off-balance, and not in the mood to take another punch. “I parked where Hannah said to park.”

“I told you to stay away from Hannah. What were you doing, casing my house for more of your mystery manuscript?”

Cresting the stairs, I wheeled at him. “Believe it or not, Evan Hall, everything isn’t about
you
. Today didn’t have anything to do with the manuscript. But it has
everything
to do with that little girl in there. And if you cared about her as much as you care about who’s infiltrating your precious mountain, maybe you’d be asking how I ended up here with her today.”

“You have no
idea
what’s going on in this family.”

“I know what it’s like to be a kid with no mother around. She needs someone, and not her great-grandmother, who’s too ill to keep up with her, or a dad who seems to think it is
okay
for his daughter to ride all over the county by herself on a horse she has no business taking out of the barnyard. She almost got
run over
today. On the highway. And when I pulled up, some creepy trucker was offering her a ride, and she was going to take him up on it so that she could get the horse back home without anyone knowing.”

The emotional current hit tsunami strength and picked up debris, the stress of the day, the week, this
place
rising up and spilling over, rushing down the stairs like a flood. He could drown in it for all I cared. Maybe when he finally thought about his niece climbing into some stranger’s truck, he’d wake up and realize I was just doing what any decent person would’ve done.

But right now he was as stone-faced as usual. In fact, he looked like he wasn’t about to accept any explanation if it came from me.

“You know what . . . ? Whatever,” I bit out, tossing my hands. “You believe what you want to believe about me, but
talk
to Hannah. Someone needs to be watching her.”

His eyes narrowed, his chin rising defensively. I’d hit a sensitive spot. “Her dad was supposed to be here with
 
—”

“It’s not about who’s
supposed
to be doing what!” The breath-stealing weight of pent-up frustration pressed down hard. I was slowly, slowly being submerged in my own life here, and there seemed to be no good way out. Every time I bailed a bucketful of water, three more fell in my face. “It is about
her
. About what
she
needs. I don’t know what’s going on around here and I don’t even care. I have enough family issues of my own to worry about, believe me, and . . .”

The dam burst, tears rushed in, and I did the only thing I could. I turned and ran for my car.

The car door handle rebelled when I yanked it, my grip slipped, and three fingernails bent backward. Snatching the remote from my pocket, I clicked, pulled the handle again, and the same three fingernails ripped to the quick when it didn’t give. “This stupid thing!” The next thing I knew, I was pounding the window, completely losing it.

I heard Evan behind me before I felt his hand on my arm, stopping me from taking another swing. The key chain clattered to the concrete and he picked it up. “Hold on a minute.”

“Give me my keys!” Pulling away blindly, I stumbled against the car and hit the side mirror.

He kept the keys out of reach. “I said, just hold on a minute.” Beneath the air of command, his voice was gentle, no longer
rage-hardened. “I apologize, all right? It’s been a rough day with Granny Vi, and then some idiots at the gate wouldn’t get out of the way, and then I get home and something’s going on with Hannah . . . again. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. Tell me what happened today, exactly.”

I sniffed, burbled, looked for something to wipe my nose with. On top of the emotional overload, it was cold out here. Evan reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of gauze that had come from either the hospital or the horse barn, and handed it to me.

I mopped my face. The rest of the roll slipped from my hand and unwound across the driveway, drawing a ribbon toward the house. “I’m . . . I’m sorry too.” I let the tail of the gauze loose in the wind, and it sailed away, swirling like tissue at a naughty kid’s midnight toilet paper raid. “Wait. No, I’m not. You’re a jerk.”

“Sometimes,” he admitted, a rueful twist teasing his lips. “I have been known to aim at the wrong target. Jake was supposed to be here with Hannah today while we went to Charlotte. And from what you’re saying, he wasn’t.”

I repeated the story, more calmly and in detail this time
 
—where I’d found Hannah, where the gray horse was now, and what had happened on the side of the road. “And the thing is, she was ten steps away from the guy’s truck, and when I think about that, it scares me to death. I wouldn’t even have let that guy drive
me
someplace.”

Evan paced away and then back, his hands braced stiffly on his belt. “When I find Jake, I’m going to kill him. You know, I don’t ask much from him for being here. Stop drinking and take care of his kid, that’s all. She needs her daddy.”

The overload of debris-laden issues swelled in me again. I thought of the phone call from Coral Rebecca, my father saying
it would be okay if I came to the family birthday party.
Okay.
“She needs
someone
. It doesn’t have to be her daddy.”

He seemed surprised at first that I would say it. Sadness quickly replaced the shock. “It should be her dad.” He lifted his hands, let them fall and hang helplessly at his sides. “I do everything for him. I’m still trying to get him out of a DUI from before he moved here. And he had Hannah in the car with him when he did it. What’s it going to take for him to wake up?”

I thought of my own father again, of all the times I’d wanted him to stop and look at me, to see
me
instead of a reminder of my mama. Of all the times I’d wanted to be able to tell him my ideas or troubles or fears. Of all the times I’d needed him to simply say those three little words that every girl yearns to hear from her dad. All these years later, I was still waiting.

“Some people don’t wake up. Ever.” I was talking to myself as much as to Evan. “I grew up with my father off in the woods half the time and preaching and taking a rod to us the other half, and it still hasn’t changed. What mattered most was that someone else stepped in for me, filled the gap. Wilda Culp wasn’t my mom and she wasn’t my dad, but she was someone I could count on. Someone steady and consistent. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough
 
—just knowing I had one person who was reliable every time.”

He turned his back to the car, leaned against it, and crossed his arms, letting his head fall forward. I stood beside him, soaking the last of the warmth from the metal. It’d be cold again tonight.

“I can’t stop wanting Jake to be better than he is. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”

This was a side of Evan I hadn’t seen before. The battered, broken side dealing with painful family realities. Just like me.
“Maybe it’ll happen at some point, but Hannah needs someone now, not later. She really is a great kid.”

“I know she is.” He looked my way, his eyes catching the light and taking on a silver hue. Suddenly I was aware of our nearness, of his shoulder touching mine. I couldn’t feel his warmth through my jacket, yet I could. “She likes you a lot. It’s possible that she was headed to Uncle Clive’s place on the lake today, but I have a feeling she might’ve been on her way down there to the cabin when you found her with the horse. She’s asked me over and over if you were coming back.”

A wall started upward brick by brick. I could hear it building between us.
Clink, clink, clink.
Evan couldn’t see the barrier, but I could. “I’d love to keep in touch with Hannah, but I’m only here for a couple more days at most. They’re ready for me to get back to the office.”

“Leaving empty-handed?” He seemed surprised and maybe even a little disappointed that I was giving up.

“Not leaving with what I came for, I guess.”

He softened, his gaze meeting mine, pulling me in momentarily. “There’s no manuscript to find, you know.
The Story Keeper
. All I ever wrote of that thing was seven, eight chapters . . . maybe. What you read in the partial was most of it. I based it on a story I’d heard growing up
 
—one of those mountain tales that’ve been handed down. The partial did a good job of gathering rejection letters, but that’s about it. I haven’t thought about that thing in years.”

I searched his face. Was this the truth finally? “I’m guessing that nobody got beyond the hand-drawn title page.”

Groaning, he booted an acorn, watching as it rolled away. “That’s how green I was. I thought it was sheer brilliance, coming up with my own cover and putting it on that bright-blue paper. I
thought that would really make it stand out, grab attention at all those big publishing houses in New York, and I’d take the place by storm. I didn’t have a clue that you were supposed to write the
whole
book first. I was pretty much fresh off the boat when I sent out those first submissions. It was shocking when the rejection letters started coming. Shocking, I tell you.”

“Well, the artwork on the title page actually wasn’t that bad.”

“I can’t believe after all these years you found that thing.”

“Evan, I didn’t
find
it. It found me. I wasn’t embellishing the other day.
The Story Keeper
ended up on my desk one morning with no explanation. That’s the truth. People aren’t even supposed to take things off Slush Mountain.”

“It’s forbidden territory, yes, I know.” His gaze wandered my way again, soft wrinkles of amusement fanning over his cheeks. “I checked on you. I do still have a few friends around New York. You landed the Tom Brandon memoir a couple years ago. Quite a coup.”

A strange giddy feeling twinkled through me before I knew what was happening. I didn’t want it to be there. But it was. He’d taken the time to ask about me, to find out some things.

“Yes, I did. I was proud of that Tom Brandon deal.” It was a relief to have moved the conversation back to business. Safer territory. Beyond
The Story Keeper
, anything happening between Evan Hall and me was a non-possibility. My life was in New York. I wanted no more ties to these mountains than I already had. Besides, I’d vowed never again to mix business with pleasure after the disastrous relationship that had left me minus a job and plus a dog.

Dog . . .
Gee whiz, I’d completely forgotten about Friday. He was still downstairs in Evan’s theater room, sound asleep in a popcorn coma.

“I’ll bet.” Evan was sizing me up now. “The snowmobile thing and the night in the mountains was quite a story. You’ll go pretty far to get what you want.”

I leaned away a bit, trying to gain a clearer perspective on his meaning. “It was good business, but getting stuck on the mountain overnight wasn’t part of the plan. The thing is,
The Story Keeper
is different. I went after the Tom Brandon memoir because it had Tom Brandon’s name attached to it. When I opened the envelope with that partial in it a couple weeks ago
 
—your partial
 
—I didn’t know who wrote it, but from the first page I felt a connection to that girl under the cabin. It’s really good.”

“It’s long gone. Who knows where by now. Probably down at the bottom of the county landfill. I had some of my writing stuff stored in the cabin at one time
 
—I used to work there occasionally
 
—but we cleaned it out years ago when Aunt Helen and Granny Vi started offering the place for rent. I bagged the old junk up myself and tossed it on the dump trailer. The partial you have is all that’s left of the original eight or so chapters.”