The Truth About Love and Lightning (24 page)

Mystical enough to make the woman he loved love him back?
Sam wondered and stared at the turquoise beads that snaked across the leather cord. His first thought was that the blue stones were the very color of Gretchen’s eyes.

Then he noticed something else, how his hand warmed where the beads touched his skin, a heat that slowly spread up his arms and through the rest of him.

The room was not cold—and neither was he—but still Sam shivered.

“Know that Hank’s spirit is always with you,” Lily said. “Even before you were born he was watching out for you. Everything will be as it should be.” She rose from the sofa and set her hand on his damp head. “Give it time. That alone can make all the difference.”

“I’ll try,” Sam said and curled his fingers tightly around the old choker.

Time was all he had.

Faith

Faith is an invisible and invincible magnet,

and attracts to itself whatever it fervently desires and calmly and patiently expects.

—
RALPH W. TRINE

Nineteen

April 2010

By the time she herded the sheriff out the door for the second time that day, Gretchen was exhausted. Between the tornado, finding an injured man in the walnut grove, a pregnant Abby dropping in, and Frank Tilby turning up twice, she had nothing left to give. She certainly had nothing left to say to the sheriff, no more theories or conjecture. The Man Who Might Be Sam had done nothing wrong, and neither had she by taking him in. At this point, she’d had enough.

“He’s been through the wringer already, don’t you think? So why don’t you leave us in peace to figure things out for ourselves?” she had suggested before she’d shut the door in his face.

“He’ll be back, you know,” Bennie said, even as Gretchen went to stand beside Abby at the window overlooking the front porch, making sure the sheriff really left the property. “He’s a persistent cuss.”

“That he is,” Gretchen replied, watching as Frank Tilby walked away from the house, shifting the metal case from hand to hand, glancing back a time or two as he lumbered up the gravel drive.

“I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you.”

Gretchen turned her head at the masculine voice, tinged with equal parts frustration and contrition.

The Man Who Might Be Sam ran fingers through his newly clipped hair. His sturdy features showed agitation in the set of his chin and twitch of muscles at his jaw. “Maybe I should just go and save you the trouble of another of the sheriff’s visits.”

Abby voiced a panicked “No, you can’t leave!”

Gretchen more sensibly asked, “Go where?”

He shrugged, his slim shoulders lost within the oversize plaid shirt. “You’re right. I don’t have a wallet so I don’t have a means to pay for a room in town. I have no car to drive there besides. And I don’t know anyone else who’d take me in the way that you all have.”

Crossing the kitchen toward him, Gretchen said, “You’re welcome to stay for as long as it takes.”

“Thanks for that.”

She thought she saw a blush in his cheeks and was tempted to hug him but touched his arm instead, allowing her hand to rest there a minute if only to reassure herself for the umpteenth time that he was real. No matter how the sheriff pushed or how many questions still hung overhead, she wasn’t about to let him disappear from her life as easily as Sam Winston had.

“You
will
remember what’s important soon enough,” she assured him. “You just need a chance to heal. Until then, you’re our guest, and we want you here.”

“Yes, please, stay,” Abigail echoed, pushing dark hair behind her ears, an angry frown on her face. “As far as I’m concerned, Sheriff Tilby can stick his field kit up his fat—”

“
Abs,
” Gretchen hissed her name, cutting her off, and Abby sighed and crossed her arms.

“As long as you’re sure.” The Man Who Might Be Sam shifted on his feet, the rubber soles of the borrowed duck shoes squeaking. “I don’t want to disrupt your lives any further.”

“Disrupt away,” Trudy trilled, patches of rose on her smiling cheeks. “It was awfully quiet around here before the storm.”

Bennie nodded agreeably. “I find it preferable to have a house filled with noise.”

“So it’s unanimous.” Gretchen patted his arm. “And that’s that.”

The man set his hand atop hers to still it, such gratitude in his gaze. “Whoever Sam Winston was, he was certainly lucky to have inspired such devotion.”

Gretchen wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She just stood there, sensing something true passing between them, something too real to be imagined.

Perhaps her sisters sensed it, too, as Bennie cleared her throat, her chair creaking as she rose and reached for her sister. “Come on, Trude, let’s go out for a bit. Abby, join us, won’t you? I’d like to find out how far the sheriff’s deputies have gotten chopping up that old oak.”

“That’s a grand idea, Ben,” her twin said, arms outstretched to feel her way, their shoes clip-clopping across the planked floor as they scurried out of the kitchen, calling out, “Abigail!” in their wake.

“Okay, okay!” Though Abby dragged her feet a bit, she tagged along behind them.

Gretchen drew apart from the man and busied herself by making them each a cup of tea. “Let’s go into the parlor,” she suggested, and there they went, settling on the claw-foot sofa.

But he seemed unable to sit for long. He got up almost immediately and headed straight for the fireplace. He skimmed his fingers across the framed photographs lining the mantel as he’d done that very morning. On occasion, he leaned nearer to study one of Abby riding a pony on her eighth birthday or a teenaged Gretchen with a swaddled Abigail in her arms. He paused the longest on the faded black-and-white shot of Hank and Nadya Littlefoot holding Lily.

“I feel as though I’ve seen this man before,” he said and picked it up, turning around so that Gretchen could watch the struggle of emotions on his face. He went a few steps closer to the lamp, shedding more light on the grainy details. “Who is he?” he asked. “He looks a bit like me.”

“His name was Henry,” she told him. “Henry Littlefoot, but he was called Hank. He was”—she hesitated—“Sam Winston’s grandfather.”
Your
grandfather, she had nearly said.

“So this was his house once upon a time?”

“It was.”

“I see,” he replied, still gazing at the photograph. “Was Hank a Native American?” he asked, pointing out Hank’s dark, braided hair and the strength of his features.

“He was descended from the Otoe-Missouria tribes, although he left the reservation when he was very young. He had to follow his own path,” Gretchen told him, just as Lily had once told her.

“He looks so much older than his wife, or is that his daughter?”

“His wife. Her name was Nadya. The baby is Lily Winston, Sam’s mother. She was like a mother to me in so many ways. My own left a lot to be desired.” Gretchen held the cup of tea in her palms, grateful for the warmth seeping through the china to her skin. It made her feel far calmer than she actually was.

“What happened to this Hank?” The man glanced up from the photograph. “Was he ill?”

Gretchen wasn’t certain how to answer that except to explain what she knew of Hank Littlefoot. “He used to perform some kind of rain-making act on the vaudeville stage and then ended up going from drought-stricken farm to farm, enacting his ceremony to save the crops in the fields. Apparently, he had the magic touch. Only each time he succeeded, it beat him down physically. So that by the time Lily was born, he looked more like her grandfather than her daddy.”

“He really made it rain?” The man returned the framed picture back to the mantel. “So it wasn’t some kind of trick?”

“Nadya swore to Lily that Hank single-handedly brought the walnut grove back to life by causing lightning to strike,” Gretchen continued her story, setting her teacup into its saucer with a gentle clink. “The trees were barren when they took over the farm back in the late 1930s.” Her eyes met his. “As dead as they were before the storm that brought you here.”

He touched his bruised brow and blinked. She could see so many things sifting through his mind, and she wondered if any bits and pieces were coming back to him. Or if he was just as confused as ever.

“So what about this Sam fellow,” he remarked, looking at Gretchen so seriously. “What kind of person was he?”

“A very good man,” Gretchen said without hesitation. “The best.”

“Was he kind?”

“I’ve never met anyone kinder,” she replied, hoping he couldn’t tell that his nearness made her breath quicken and her hands tremble the tiniest bit.

“You were in love with him?” he asked suddenly, seeking truth in her eyes.

Gretchen blushed. “That’s not fair,” she said, shifting in her seat, her skin so warm she felt feverish. “What Sam and I had was very complicated.”

“Why?” He cocked his head. “Either you loved him or you didn’t. It seems pretty straightforward to me.”

She nervously reached for her teacup, then reconsidered, clasping fingers in her lap. The question wasn’t tricky to answer because she hadn’t loved Sam but because she
had
loved him in so many different ways throughout the years, until what she felt for him comprised so many layers that it went beyond any simple definition.

“Sam and I began as friends,” she explained, avoiding his eyes. “We used to play together when we were children. My father was a veterinarian, and he tended to the Winstons’ farm animals. He’d bring me out here with him so I could run around with Sam. It was the most wonderful part of my growing up.”

“So were you in love with him?” the man repeated, soft but insistent.

Beautiful memories engulfed her, and Gretchen smiled, looking up from her hands. “He was the first boy who ever said he loved me.”

“I hope you said it back.”

Gretchen laughed, but it was strained. “Spoken like a man.”

He rubbed a palm over his craggy face, shaking his head. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Yes,” she said, and even more honestly, “I loved Sam Winston. I still do, perhaps more now than ever.”

His taut expression relaxed. “Not sure why that was so hard to admit.”

“You don’t understand,” she started out, surprised by the catch she felt in her chest. “I didn’t say the things he wanted so badly to hear. I think I broke his heart, maybe more than once. He’s probably never forgiven me.”

The man grunted. “You were young and foolish. Time can make all the difference.”

“I just wish I’d had more of it with him,” Gretchen added wistfully. “Time, I mean.”

How strange it felt, saying those words aloud. How she wished she’d stopped Sam from leaving all those years ago! Why hadn’t she asked him to stay? He would have done anything for her, she was sure of it. But she’d been too blind, too flighty, too wrapped up in her own melodrama. She hadn’t realized until he was gone just how insanely she loved him. He was her other half, her better half, the only one who understood her, who saw her flaws and adored her regardless.

A tiny sob escaped her, and strong hands quickly covered her own.

“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” the man said, his graveled voice incredibly tender.

“I don’t like looking back,” she confessed, and weary tears fell unguarded.

“You can’t beat yourself up over choices you made so long ago.” He squeezed her fingers, catching them up in his.

“It feels like I was the one who was lost, even though I stayed behind. Sam’s the one who traveled halfway around the world.” She brushed at the tears, tasting salt on her lips. “I wish I could talk to him, find out what happened, where he was all that time, how he died.”

“Would it change anything to know those things?” he asked, rubbing her hand, the scars on his palms rough against her softer flesh.

“I’m not sure,” Gretchen said, her mind spinning. She’d never thought about it like that. She’d always assumed that having answers would make it better somehow, would give her some kind of closure. But would it?

“So much of the world is illogical,” the man went on, impassioned. “Take the salmon who kill themselves swimming upriver to spawn in the same spot every year, or dragonflies with their gossamer wings whose lives span only a matter of months. Does either make sense?”

“What?” Gretchen stared at him, her own world screeching to a sudden halt. “What did you just say?”

“About the salmon spawning or the dragonflies?” he asked, salt-and-pepper brows furrowed.

“The dragonflies,” she told him, barely breathing.

“Let’s see what I recall.” He cleared his throat, squinting up at the ceiling. “The adult dragonfly only lives an average of two months. Although if you count the nymph stage, it’s more like a year.”

Dear God.

Gripped by a fierce wave of déjà vu, Gretchen tugged her hand from his, setting it against her heart, feeling the wild palpations.
Does it make sense that a dragonfly only lives for a few months?
a teenaged Sam Winston had said to her ages ago. She’d been crying then, too, upset over her parents’ divorce, and he’d talked off the top of his head, trying to calm her down.

“Did I say something wrong?” the man asked her.

“No,” she told him, but she looked at him differently, sure that a part of him was starting to remember even if he didn’t realize it yet. He had been out to the grove, had meandered by the barn, had touched the arrowheads in Sam’s old room—he was wearing Sam’s father’s old clothes! Surely some of who he was had sunk in by now.
You’re in there, Sammy, aren’t you?
“I’m just wondering how you can recall such odd facts without remembering other things.”

More important things,
she almost said.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s a bit like chasing fireflies. Some light up in the dark, and those are easy to catch. Others flicker and fade before I can get near them.”

“Aren’t there any memories you can catch? Any faces you can see?”

His gray eyes filled with frustration. “I know what you’re thinking, and I wish so badly I could say what you want me to say, that I remember being on this farm, that I’m the man you loved and not a stranger. But I can’t lie to you, Gretchen. I won’t do it.”