Sneaking Suspicions (The Tharon Trace Mysteries Book 1) (4 page)

CHAPTER 3

Helm sat in his bedroom whittling over the wastebasket.  The dog figurine he’d been working on for over a year was nearly done.  He’d started it before Tharon’s mother asked him not to see or talk to her.  He kept working on it because it helped him still feel linked to her.

He smiled as he put the finishing touches on the figure—an exact replica of Shep—he finished it in time for her birthday the next day.  It had saddened him to watch Tracy and Veronica monopolize her time and try to turn her into a clone of their personalities.  He wondered if she’d really been happy or was she just pretending to be?  All he knew for certain was that for the first time since May, she seemed like his Tharon again.

His Tharon.  When had he started thinking of her as if she belonged to him?  No.  He didn’t feel like she belonged to him.  He felt like he belonged to her.  He shook his head, if Kaid ever had any idea he thought things like that, he’d never hear the end of it.

Helm remembered how miserable he’d been all summer and fall.  It was a good thing he’d kept busy with baseball and football otherwise he’d have gone crazy.  His heart ached that she hadn’t seemed bothered that he wasn’t around.  He missed her.  Had she missed him too?

In that one unguarded moment when he caught her staring at him from the football field, their connection flowed back into place, like a current drawing them together.  He hadn’t imagined it either.  He saw it in her eyes on the bus.  Nothing on heaven or earth would take her from him again.  Not if he could help it.

Angela Harris knocked on her son’s open door.  Her short brown hair curled in an unruly mass to frame her oval face, which was creased with concern. “Lista Trace just called.  Tharon was upset when she got home and ran off into the woods.  Her mother wanted to know if you have any idea where she’s going.”

Helm closed his pocket knife and shoved it in his jeans pocket.  “She’s probably gone to the climbing tree.  I’ll go find her.”

Angela’s hazel eyes opened wide. “It’s freezing out.  I’ll just call her mother, I’m sure her parents will find her.”

Helm fumed. “No!  I’ll dress warm and take my bike.  She needs me.  I never should have agreed to stay away from her.  I haven’t been much of a friend this year but I’m going to make up for it.”  He looked at his mother with defiance in his eyes.  “No one is ever going to keep me from being her friend again.”

Angela blinked at her son’s anger.  Helm almost never raised his voice. “I’ve got some hot cocoa on the stove.  I’ll put it in a thermos for you.  She’s probably cold out in the woods.”

Helm put on a hooded sweatshirt and dressed as warm as he could while still keeping his clothes loose enough to climb the tree.

By the time he got his coat on, Angela was fussing with the cap to the thermos as she hustled from the kitchen.  “I’m sorry you and Tharon are upset.” In her own defense she added, “I was trying to be a friend to Lista at the time.”

Helm dumped the contents of his back pack on the floor and shoved the thermos inside.  He opened the door and stopped long enough to say, “I know you all meant well.  But none of you give Tharon enough credit.  She didn’t need to change for me.  I like her fine the way she is.”  He hesitated a moment, sorry he’d snapped at his mother.  He kissed his mother on the cheek, “I’ll call you from the Trace’s when I get her home.”

He pedaled down the gravel road as fast as he could.  The cold bit into his face and he ducked his chin as far into his collar as he could.

Kaid must have gotten the same message because Helm caught up to him by the time they passed Maisy Baker’s cottage.  Maisy rushed towards Tharon’s house, her black hair whipping out of the frayed ponytail streaming behind her.  “Find her, boys!  Bring her home!”

“We will,” they shouted in unison.

Helm and Kaid were neck and neck.  They exchanged a worried look as they crossed the concrete bridge over Little Sandy Creek.  During most of the year the stream was low enough to cross on stepping stones they’d placed across its path.

They’d never seen the water that high so late in the year before.  The muddy water flowed angrily under the concrete bridge before it curved and cut through the woods parallel to the road.  The tree covered hillside on the other side of the stream sloped up gradually near the farm but grew steeper farther into the woods.

Helm hoped the current wasn’t higher than the footbridge Tharon’s father had helped them build three years ago to provide them a safe place to cross the stream after storms.  He sighed in relief when they came to the bridge and found it above the current.  He gripped the brakes and dragged his foot to steady himself as the rear wheel skidded to the side on the gravel.

Kaid mirrored his stop.  They carried their bikes across the bridge and leaned them against a tree on the other side.

Helm tried to look through the trees to the oak at the top of the hill but the trees at the base were too dense to see the crowns near the top of the ridge.  He ran up the gradual slope to the clearing of what they called their climbing tree with Kaid close on his heels.

Shep barked before Helm saw the tree and his tension eased.  If Shep was there, Tharon was safe.

Shep raced down the slope to meet them and urged them to follow him back to the oak which towered in a clearing filled with a tangled patch of black raspberry canes.  The tree’s large branches angled out almost perpendicular to the main trunk like arms beckoning to cradle them; dead branch stubs stuck out from the trunk providing one-sided rungs up to the larger branches, whose tips still gripped dried cinnamon colored leaves.  Tharon sat in the middle of the crown with her back to the trunk.

Helm called up to her, “Are you all right?”

She leaned forward and grabbed the massive branch while bracing her feet against the main trunk and locked eyes with him.

When he saw her sorrow it cut him to the quick.  He jumped for the lowest branch stub and swung his weight from branch to branch until he was even with her.

She choked, “How could you agree to not be friends with me?  How could you not tell me?  Am I that bad of a friend?”

“No.  I made a terrible mistake,” he glanced up at Kaid who climbed up and perched on the other side of her.  “
We
made a mistake.  Our moms made us promise to leave you alone so you could make friends with the girls.  I didn’t like it.  I never liked it.  I told my parents if I ever saw you unhappy, or if you wanted to still be friends, the deal was off.” He struggled to not look away.  “But you didn’t seem to miss us.”

With her eyes focused on the limb holding her she said, “I thought you outgrew me.  That’s what Veronica and Tracy kept telling me—that I was just a little girl and now that you’re in the seventh grade, you were ready for someone better than me.”

Kaid snorted. “And they thought it would be them?  Don’t ever listen to those two, they’re wacked.  As if we’d like them more than you.  They don’t hold a candle to you.”

Tharon leaned back against the trunk and tilted her head at Kaid in disbelief.  “Oh, please, are you kidding?  They are both so much prettier than me, and they know how to dress nice and style their hair.  I’m just,” she made a sweeping gesture from her head to her toes, “plain old me.”

Helm straddled the thick branch she was on to face her and steadied his balance with one hand on a branch above them.  He said, “I don’t know what mirror you’re looking at, but there’s nothing plain about the girl in front of me.  You’re smart and funny.  You work hard.  You’ve got a great imagination and you’re very pretty.”  He took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “Have I ever lied to you?”

She held Helm’s hand and looked him in the eyes.  “No.  But neither of you said a word to me?  You just dumped me?  Didn’t you like the person I was either?”

Kaid shrugged his shoulders. “You know my mom.  What else could I do?  Besides, you never called to ask us to come over anymore.”

She looked up at Kaid in disbelief. “But I did.  For weeks I called you but your mom always said you were too busy.”

A flash of anger lit in his eyes. “My mom never told me.”

She turned her attention to Helm. “What about you?”

His face turned crimson. “You never called me, or I’d have come.”

She gripped his hand tighter.  “I wish I would have called you.  I’ve missed you both so much.”  She looked from Helm to Kaid, “Let’s make a pact here and now; no one will ever break up our friendship again.”

Kaid’s dimples punctuated his smile. “It’s a deal.”

Helm’s hazel eyes looked deeply into hers and his heart pounded in his chest.  “Agreed.”

A burst of wind rushed through the crown and the branches danced in celebration.

Helm let go of her hand to grip the branch. “Are you about ready to go down?  It’s freezing up here.”

She swung her foot up and pulled herself to stand on the branch. “Honestly, even as cold as it is, this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.  We probably won’t be able to climb again until spring.  Are you up for going a little higher before we go back down?”

Kaid and Helm looked at each other and shrugged.  Kaid said, “I guess we owe you at least that much.”

***

As she climbed she paused to look at the Miller’s now empty cornfield and beyond it to their house and barn.  It hadn’t been bad, having friends who were girls.  She felt a stab of regret and wondered if Veronica meant what she said about never wanting to be friends with her.  She hoped not.

She wished she could say she didn’t care what Veronica and Tracy thought, but that wasn’t true.  She did care.  The thought that all these months they’d been pretending to be her friends gave her a new icy ache that gnawed at her chest with a chill colder than the wind that whipped through the trees.

The breeze tossed strands of her brown hair as they escaped her braids and twisted about her face.  Her cheeks stung and she was glad her pride and anger hadn’t stopped her from grabbing a warmer coat before she stormed out of the house.  She suffered a pang of guilt for the way she’d treated her mother.  They rarely had cross words between them and she knew her mother had good intentions, even if she was wrong.

Shep sat beneath the tree watching her.  Occasionally he circled the tree, whining and barking nervously; or stood on his back feet, pressing his front paws against the tree trunk and yowling at her as if chiding her to come back down.

The knot in her stomach unclenched and she relaxed into the climb.  All her senses fell into the automatic rhythm of climbing; her cold ungloved hands gripped the rough fissures of the bark, testing each handhold and foothold for soundness; she hefted herself higher and higher, unified with the tree and the sky and her friends.

Helm followed her in a counterclockwise movement until the branches became thinner and bent slightly beneath their weight.  The wind picked up and swayed the crown, rocking them back and forth in a circular bouncing motion.

All three clung to the tree trunk.  Kaid’s arms ringed the tree and Tharon around the shoulders; Helm’s encircled the trunk and her waist.

Tharon wrapped her arms around the trunk and one of Kaid’s arms.  Though she was frightened, she felt exhilarated and free as she swayed, one with the tree.  There was nowhere else she’d rather be and no one else she’d rather be with.  She hugged the trunk in gratitude.  “This is so much fun!” she squealed with delight.

Kaid glanced down, then squeezed his eyes shut. “Can we go down now?”

Helm clenched his teeth and said, “I think I’ve got my fill of tree climbing until spring.  Maybe fall.”

Tharon looked down at Helm.  Her face beamed at him and he couldn’t help but return her radiant smile.  She took in all the view she could before they climbed down.  To the north she saw her home; the house, barn, chicken coop, pigpen, and even the scarred outline of the workshop cut into the hillside behind the barn.  A thin plume of black smoke floated up from the chimney of Maisy’s cottage before the wind caught it and swept it away.  Farther down the road she saw the rooflines of the Walker farm.  “Kaid, I can see your house.”

Kaid opened his eyes to gaze down the road.  “Hey, yeah, I see it too.  This is kinda cool.”

A white van drove toward them and stopped directly below them in the middle of the road.  From their vantage point they could see down the steep hillside to the gravel road.

Two men got out of the front of the van.  The man who emerged from the passenger side was big and burley.  It was hard to tell if he even had a neck.  The driver was shorter and thinner and wore a purple baseball cap over his dark stringy hair.  They opened the back of the van and pulled a third man out.  His hands and feet were bound and they dropped him onto the gravel road.  He wore no coat, just dark blue work pants and a matching shirt.

They were too far away to hear what the men were saying.

Helm’s fingers dug into Tharon’s waist.  Kaid held her tight and they watched in silence.

She glanced down at Shep who growled low; the fur stood straight up on his back from his head to his tail.  She prayed he wouldn’t bark but knew the odds of that happening were slim to none.