care of everything beforehand, but Rye had kept an eye on the house until Austin could get find a couple of weeks to come to Terral to sell the watermelon farm. Maybe that was why her stomach was tied up in knots. She had to meet the elderly gentleman sometime and he’d be disappointed that he wasn’t asked to come to the river.
“My cell phone number is on the front of her refrigerator. She could spout off my regular old phone number from the first time we got party lines, but this newfangled cell phone stuff was almost too big of a trick to teach us old dogs. You take all the time you need here, Austin. I’ll be in the truck.”
A thousand memories flooded Austin’s mind all at once, none of them more than a brief flash. Granny Lanier in her jeans and boots making biscuits before daylight or thumping the end of a watermelon to see if it was ripe or demanding that Austin make her bed every single morning when she came to visit for two weeks in the summer. When the memories played out and there was nothing but the cooing sound of mourning doves in the distance, Austin looked out at the Red River and couldn’t see the faintest bit of ashes left. She brushed the tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her black suit and headed toward the pickup truck where Pearlita waited.
That sinking feeling in her gut said there was more trouble hiding nearby and in the distance she heard the engine of a truck.
***
Dust boiled up behind Rye O’Donnell’s truck like a billow of red fog. He pushed down harder on the gas pedal, fishtailed the truck when he made a hard right, then another quick turn to the left, sliding into the driveway and throwing gravel everywhere. He bailed out of the truck, slammed the door, bypassed the porch steps with one leap, and shed his dirty work clothes on the way to the shower.
Every time Granny Lanier got a new picture of Austin she’d hauled it out for him to see. He’d talked to her once a week the past six months on Thursday night. After he’d assured her that the house and land was fine, the conversation had usually centered on Verline Lanier. He’d missed the old girl horribly and looked forward to talking to her granddaughter but seeing her on that riverbank had been… well, hell, it had knocked his socks off.
He took a fast shower, lathered up his face, grabbed his razor, and nicked the dent in his chin. Grabbing a small piece of toilet paper and plastering it down on the blood bubble, he kept shaving, but he couldn’t erase that shit-eating grin looking back at him in the mirror.
He finished shaving and peeled the paper from his chin, slapped on his best shaving lotion, and even used a comb rather than his fingers on his black hair. It only took a few minutes to jerk on a pair of starched jeans, a fresh shirt, and his Sunday cowboy boots.
From the time he’d parked the truck until he was back in it ten minutes had elapsed, but she’d already be at the Peach Orchard. He and his one hired hand, Kent, had been working on a tractor all morning. The only thing that held it together the previous summer was baling wire, cheap used parts, and cussin’ that would fry the hair out of a frog’s nostrils. There didn’t seem to be any more cheap parts and the baling wire had all rusted. The only thing left was cussin’ and even that wasn’t working that day. He’d been hot, sweaty, and hungry when he went to the river and had no intentions of cleaning up in the middle of the day until he saw Austin. Seeing her in person made his heart do crazy things in his chest. Things he’d never felt before.
He hit the speed bumps in front of the school too fast and thumped his chin on the steering wheel. The nick started bleeding again and he’d forgotten to put a clean handkerchief in his pocket. He slowed down to a crawl and pulled down the visor to look in the mirror. Luckily, there was a paper napkin from the last Dairy Queen trip in the console, so he dabbed at it while he drove to the highway and turned south toward the Peach Orchard.