A Girl Named Grace

  A Girl Named Grace

  Taylor Hart

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  25. Chapter 25

  26. Chapter 26

  27. Chapter 27

  28. Chapter 28

  29. Chapter 29

  30. Chapter 30

  Newsletter

  31. Additional Works by Taylor Hart

  About the Author

  Copyright

  All rights reserved.

  © 2015 ArchStone Ink

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. The reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form whether electronic, mechanical or other means, known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written consent of the publisher and/or author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This edition is published by ArchStone Ink LLC.

  www.ArchStoneInk.com

  First eBook Edition: 2015

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the creation of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To my four awesome boys—Daniel, Grant, Jacob, Benjamin. This is the legacy I leave you—live each day as if it were your last.

  Chapter 1

  You better not tell anyone.

  The pit of my stomach erupted into something bitter and acidic. I stared at the text. What happened to radio silent? That’s what we’d agreed on.

  Grandpa’s brown 1960s Volkswagen slowed and came to a full stop.

  I ripped out my ear buds and looked around. Sugar Valley, Colorado. Most people hadn’t even heard of it. Small town quaintness taunted me like an angry older sibling. I squeezed my cell phone and searched the Main street shops, seeing everything and nothing. Seriously, Carrie thought she had to remind me not to tell anyone?

  “Are ya awake?” Grandpa asked without turning around.

  I texted Carrie back. I won’t.

  “Don’t ignore me.” Grandpa raised his voice.

  I stared at the red stoplight and focused on ignoring him. Stupid text. Stupid Carrie. Stupid town. My eyes connected with Grandpa’s in the rearview mirror.

  He lifted an accusing eyebrow.

  “Is this light on permanent stuck or something?”

  Grandpa let out a soft chuckle. “You got some place to be, Madds?”

  I gave him my patented eye roll. “Yeah, haven’t you heard? My Sugar Valley fan club has called a meeting? I’m late.”

  Grandma swung her overly died red hair between the seats, her buffer smile ready. The one she’d been using since they’d picked me up at the court house. “You’re gonna love it here, Sweetie. You’re home now.”

  Home.

  The word sounded wrong, the out of tune piano key that messes up the whole recital. I tried to give Grandma a half-smile but my cheeks wouldn’t comply.

  Grandma lifted her hand and waved across Grandpa. “Oh look, that Lockhart boy—he’s gotten so handsome.”

  Grandpa waved, too. “He’s had to grow up fast.”

  I followed their waves. Cowboy jeans. Red football jersey. Obnoxious grin.

  Our eyes met—the boy wonder smile vanished.

  My heart sped up.

  He flicked his dark hair away and anger flashed into his eyes. A dagger tooth swung around his neck and beckoned to strike.

  An electric burst scraped inside the back of my throat. “Just go!” The words came out loud and hostile.

  “Hold your horses!” Grandpa responded back in kind. “My word—you’d think someone’s died.”

  I glared up at the unchanging red light and tried to breathe. Who was he? “There’s no one around, do we seriously have to wait at this stoplight? It doesn’t matter.”

  “Everything we do matters.” Grandpa snapped back at me in a low growly growl. “That’s what’s wrong with kids these days. They think they can just run a red light and it doesn’t matter. It’s called breaking the law.”

  I peeked back out the window.

  He still stood there. Close. Too close. And even angrier.

  My mouth went dry. I wanted to yell. I wanted to jerk away. I wanted to bust out of the back seat. He knew something.

  The car eased forward.

  “Maddie?” Grandma’s worried voice. “Are you all right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Grandma glanced back at me for a second and then sighed when I didn’t look at her. She turned forward.

  I didn’t want to look again, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  Our eyes connected. His grin widened. He slowly pointed at me and started to cross the street. A silent challenge. A silent battle. A silent what?

  I slammed myself back into the seat. Did I know him? I thought of all the summers past. Did he know me?

  He hated me. I knew that.

  Grandpa thumped his fingers hard against the steering wheel to a rhythm I didn’t recognize and, after this trip, would never be able to get out of my head.

  I tried to calm myself down. Who was he? Even his conjured image made the back of my spine spike with unrest. Focus—this town. Focus—getting out. Focus—I silently begged the universe that Carrie would deliver on the money.

  “Have ya kept up on the football team?”

  Would the small, blue razor in my shower bag be capable of slitting the large artery under my throat or would I need something bigger? Football talk had never been my speed. When my father, Grandpa and Uncle Bill talked sports, the words turned fuzzy inside my brain like the teacher talking on Charlie Brown.

  He didn’t wait for my response. “I’d say this year’s team is better than your Daddy’s. Yep. It’s because of Chance. I’ll tell ya, Madds, he’s sure doing the Haven name proud.” Grandpa tsked in that reprimanding way that compared me to my cousin without actually making the comparison.

  I couldn’t resist. “I’ve heard that maybe, maybe four million times, but go ahead and tell me again about the football team. Maybe you could finish it off by reminding me about my dad—small town hero, went off to play on a football scholarship and married the wicked city girl and never came back.”

  My Grandma’s head flicked back, a troubled wince, but the pain never reached her eyes. “Maddie—” She let out another sigh, a sigh that said she would give up her buffer smile.

  Grandpa grunted. “You’ve changed the last year and it hasn’t been for the better.”

  “Frank, no.” Grandma put a hand over Grandpa’s forearm. “Don’t.”

  I tried to block Grandpa out and looked back down at my phone.

  Magically, it buzzed.

  Jimmy has a friend who will loan us the money.

  In the middle of my reply, Aunt Sylvie’s number popped up. I ignored it and finished my text. Soon!

  I erased Aunt Sylvie’s voicemail without even listening to it. She would feel guilty and she should. If she would have been home more none of it would have happened—at least that’s what the judge had speculated. He was wrong, but still. I accidentally looked at Grandpa’s face in the rearview mirror.

  His lips puckered around his mouth in that way of his. The way that told me he was jonesing to give me a lecture.

  “I loved your Mama.” Grandpa’s voice came out rough and reverent.

  His tone caught me off guard. I didn’t respond and tried to ignore the way my chest clamped down like a truckload of bricks had been dumped.

  “And, let me tell ya, young lady—”

  “Whatever.”

  Grandpa paused.

  It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because I didn’t need him. It didn’t matter because—I bit back a response and concentrated on the rectangular bundles of hay trapped in wire strait jackets.

  “Sometimes you think you know the truth about something, but you’re wrong.” He cleared his throat. “And you should know better than to think that your Mama didn’t mean the world to us. She and your Daddy meant everything to us.”

  He didn’t know I’d heard him at the funeral. Every. Single. Word.

  “That’s enough, Frank.” Grandma’s voice was soft and gentle and flowery.

  The gray eyes from the stoplight flashed back into my mind. I discarded Grandpa’s words and thought about shark-tooth guy. He knew something.

  Grandpa let out a long breath. “I’m glad you’re here, Madds. We can use the help.”

  “I don’t do farm work.” It came out before I could stop it. But,
there would not be any preconceived notions about that.

  Grandpa pointed into the rearview mirror. “Families help each other out, that’s just what they do.”

  I met his challenge. “Really, that’s what they do?” I paused and my throat involuntarily tightened.

  Grandma turned back. “Maddie, sweetie, are you angry at us?”

  Steel tongs squeezed my lungs like some bad science experiment performed on a wide-eyed dehydrated-looking frog. I tried to breathe lightly. Air in, blow out through the nose. The therapist said people had found this technique the most useful during duress.

  Grandpa let out a sigh. “Leave her be, Star. She thinks she knows everything.”

  Grandma reached out like she would touch me, but then turned back to the front.

  Another breath. Into the nose, down into the lungs, sit up straight and slowly out.

  The sound of gravel crunched against tires. The drive to my grandparents’ house had always been punctuated by the homestretch of crunching gravel. Everything eased. I used to look forward to the sight of my grandparents’ house. It had been the highlight of every summer for me.

  Before.

  Grandpa circled to the back of their faded, red brick house and stopped beneath the white painted gasoline barrel. He turned off the engine. “I’ll fill ‘er up and then go check on Chance.”

  Grandma flung her door open, gathered her red purse, and stepped out. I knew she would have a million things to do. She always had her lists and rewarded herself with the check marks. “Tell the guys I’ll have enough in the crockpot for all of us.”

  “Will do.” Grandpa let out a loud groan as he stood. “Sitting never suits old men.”

  I opened the door and the smell of diesel fumes filled me. All the anxiety shifted from my chest down into my stomach. I surveyed the premises and noted that everything looked exactly as it had the last time I’d been here—the brown shed that housed all of Grandpa’s tools and old saddles, my grandma’s clothes line that I’d followed her back and forth to a million times to hang laundry, her large garden that lined the edge of the chipped white fence and sprouted some very large pumpkins.

  The people. The people that littered the yard that day. The people I didn’t know, but knew me. The casserole dishes and the sad looks in their eyes. The people I couldn’t think about.

  Her perfume. My mother’s perfume.

  I reached back to steady myself on the car door. My hand scraped against the metal rim. Pain and blood. Wet, sticky blood.

  “Ya okay?” Grandpa stood to the side of the gasoline barrel, the spout extended in mid-air.

  I lifted my hand. The gash wouldn’t be that noticeable. I squeezed it into a fist. A breakdown would not be feasible at the moment.

  Then I saw it. The lilac bush sprouted against the gasoline pump, unmanaged and weed-like. Blood oozed from my palm like the trailing of a watercolor picture. Stupid. I pulled my hand into my chest.

  Grandpa didn’t move to fill the car. “Madds, let me look—”

  “Don’t.” I would not have a breakdown. I would not have a breakdown about a stupid clothes line and a chipped white fence. Or that lilac bush. I would not have a breakdown in front of him. I moved toward the house.

  “Madds—”

  Without preamble, loud music sounded and gravel exploded.

  I turned to the side of the house and looked for whoever would be coming down the lane.

  An overly large, neon blue pickup truck cruised around the corner. Chance leaned out the driver’s window and gave me his token tongue sticking out, rock and roll hand sign.

  Happiness surged inside of me like sprinklers on a hot day.

  Chance lurched to a stop next to Grandpa’s station wagon and pointed at me. “Madds!”

  I ran to the side of the truck as he opened his door. “You got it.”

  Since we had been kids, Chance’s only dream had been to drive a big, blue truck.

  He jumped down from the truck, the blond curls that had plagued him since youth, stuck against his neck and were drenched with sweat. His dimple deepened and he crushed me into a bear hug, lifting me off the ground and swinging me into a circle. “Spent all my savings, but it’s so worth it!”

  I giggled.

  “You’ve lost like a ton of weight. You’re like a paperweight now. Actually, it’s probably just my enormous strength.”

  I kicked against him. I estimated he now pushed six feet. He’d put on about twenty pounds of muscle. “Let me down you, Oaf.”

  He righted me on the ground and put his arm into a bicep contraction. “Check out the guns, I’m thinking about naming them.” He lifted his eyebrows up and down rapidly and poked me playfully in the shoulder with his other hand.

  I laughed and took a play jab at him.

  He started into his Rocky impersonation, dancing back and forth. “Yo, Adrian!”

  I laughed, again.

  “I’m the starting full back this year. And you get to watch every game.”

  I punched back with my non-bloody hand.

  Abruptly, he stopped. “Okay, I like the long hair. I even like the red highlights with your blonde. It makes you look,” he widened his eyes, “edgy, like one of those vamp chicks.”

  “Shut it.”

  He pointed to my boots and then my leggings and then my short skirt. “Really? Are you dressing all retro urban or something?”

  “Are you really criticizing the way I dress?”

  He snapped his head back to my face. “And your eyeliner is too thick! Are you going Goth? There’s a Goth chick that moved here last year, you could be friends with her.”

  I landed a harder punch into his shoulder.

  This spurned him on. “End zone, baby! You get to see every single catch.”

  Secretly, I looked forward to seeing him spike the ball all celebrity-like in the end zone. “Oh my gosh, could you please put on more cologne?”

  He went back to air boxing and cracked a grin. “You like it? Bonnie picked it out.”

  Bonnie. The girlfriend. I tried not to cringe. “Yeah?”

  “What?” Chance’s face fell to a frown. “What’s wrong with it?”

  I grinned and changed the subject. “I think I’ll be too busy to watch your games.”

  He wagged a finger in the air. “Oh whatever! You had a breakdown. Football is the best distraction ever!”

  Chapter 2

  “Breakdown?” I spit out the word like poisoned food.

  Chance landed a soft punch into my shoulder, unaware that he’d said anything wrong. “Remember that summer you gave me that shiner? What was that, like fourth grade? I bet you don’t hit as hard now.”

  I wanted to slam him. I swung back and gave Grandpa a traitorous look. To have Chance know I’d been in the mental made me feel—exposed.

  Grandpa let out an exasperated sigh. “You’ve gone and done it, boy!”

  “What?” Chance looked around like he’d missed a punch line.

  “C’mere, Chance. We need to have a talk.” Grandpa spoke in a tone that said, ‘now I get to finally give the miserable lecture that Grandma hasn’t let me give all day.’

  Chance resumed batting at me like the puppy my father had brought home for a week when I was ten. He puffed out his chest. “C’mon, Madds, punch me. Give me your hardest punch.”

  My mind whirled with questions.

  “C’mon, seriously! Punch me!”

  I blasted my fist into the center of his gut.

  “Ahh!” His eyes widened and he slouched.

  A wave of satisfaction rolled through me.

  “You asked for it.” The house gate clicked. Uncle Bill moved toward us. A low rumble of laughter escaped him. “Don’t ask Pippy to throttle you, ‘cause she just might.”

  Instantaneously, I relaxed. Uncle Bill.

  He wore his wide-brimmed Indiana Jones style hat that Grandpa always complained about. The side of his mouth tugged into a smile and he took me into his arms. “What did he say?”

  The smell of hay and earth and old spice clung to him like all things that never changed in Sugar Valley. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He clicked his tongue at Chance and released me. “You should know better than to challenge our Pippy. Remember when she laid you out flat that one summer?”

  Chance flashed an uber annoyed look to Uncle Bill. “Doesn’t anyone forget anything around here? It didn’t hurt. Just startled me. Do it again.”