Homecoming (Sweet Hearts of Sweet Creek Book 1) Read online

  Mark couldn’t imagine that. Driving anywhere back in the valley took time and the only thing that broke the monotony was the radio. Market reports, weather, news, music. Didn’t matter much. It was noise and company, and the way things were going he would need both.

  Sheryl turned away again.

  With a sigh Mark leaned forward, resting his forearms on the steering wheel as he watched the road flow past. One part of his mind on the work that waited back home.

  He and Nate had cut the hay before he’d left. If it didn’t rain today it would be ready to bale. He was glad Nate had managed to get hold of a haying crew. They were going to need all the hands they could get. Square bales were labor intensive, but the price had gone through the roof for good hay. The buyer from the lower mainland wanted only hay baled in manageable square bales. The money would help nudge the ranch out of the hole it had been languishing in since the drop in cattle prices.

  They headed out on Yellowhead Trail connected with the Henday, then took the turnoff to Calgary. All the time, Sheryl said nothing which was fine with him. He hated driving in the city, freeway or not.

  Finally they were past Leduc, the speed limit increased and Mark leaned back feeling a bit better on the open road.

  “Do you have to drive so fast?”

  Mark jumped at the sound of Sheryl’s voice. He assumed she had fallen asleep. Instead she sat rigid, arms clasped across her stomach, face pale.

  “This isn’t fast.” He glanced at the speedometer— only ten clicks over the speed limit which was about ten clicks slower than he wanted to drive. He just wanted to get away from the congestion and back to Sweet Creek.

  “I’m not comfortable with speed.”

  “Well we’ve got over 600 kilometers ahead of us and the only way we’re going to get anywhere is to step on it.”

  Mark waited for a response, but she only bit her lip and settled back, rubbing her palms over the legs of her jeans.

  “You’ll just have to trust my driving,” he added.

  “I don’t know you well enough to do that.” She pressed her hands between her knees.

  She didn’t look like she could, either, thought Mark. Her pale face and white lips showed him clearly how uncomfortable she was. Biting back an impatient sigh, Mark slowed down and set the cruise at 105. Guess they would get there when they would get there.

  They drove over the interchange for Ponoka an hour later, and Mark switched the radio off.

  “Are you warm enough?” he asked Sheryl, taking another stab at conversation.

  “I’m fine.”

  He decided to press on. It felt unnatural to share a vehicle with someone without even commenting on the scenery.

  “How long has it been since you were in the valley?”

  “I left eight years ago.”

  “With Jason?”

  Sheryl only nodded.

  Five words. Three more than the last sentence. At this rate she might be up to a paragraph by Calgary.

  He hadn’t perfected the outright nosiness of his mother and sister but he was persistent. One way or another he meant to find out something about this enigmatic girl even if all he got was yes and no answers.

  “How long ago did Jason die?” He glanced her way, trying to gauge her reaction.

  “Eight months.” She blinked but continued staring out the window.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Sheryl shot him a glance and then looked straight ahead again, not replying.

  Mark tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Nate always complained that Sheryl would talk his ear off with her constant chatter. He hoped he was taking the right person back.

  “What happened?” he finally asked.

  “Car accident.”

  Well that explained her dislike of speed.

  “And you’ve been on your own since then?”

  “If you mean living on my own, yes. If you mean boyfriends, you’re right as well.”

  Two sentences. Disdainful sentences but at least things were picking up. “So what do you plan to do once you’re back in Edmonton?”

  “I don’t plan that far ahead.” Sheryl leaned over, unbuckled her backpack and pulled out a book.

  Mark glanced at the cover. Paradise Lost.

  “Don’t tell me you’re reading that for pleasure?” he asked, ignoring her signal. He kept his tone light, hoping she would warm up to his irresistible charm.

  “Actually it’s for a course I’m taking.”

  “College or university?”

  “I wish.” She opened the book but didn’t look at it. “Correspondence course.”

  “That’s pretty impressive.”

  She frowned at him as if she sensed ridicule.

  “Seriously,” he protested. “I spent four years getting my MBA, and got away from classes as soon as possible. I couldn’t imagine the discipline required to struggle through Milton on your own.”

  “I like learning.”

  “What’s the course for?”

  She shrugged, riffling the corners of the pages with her thumb. “Bachelor of Education.” Her voice held a note of deprecation.

  “Any specialty?”

  “High school English.”

  “Then you have my prayers. Anyone wanting to try to instill in teenagers an appreciation for Shakespeare and poetry will need them,” Mark said with a grin.

  “You can save your breath. Prayers are a waste of time.” Sheryl paused, a hint of pain crossing her face, then she bent her head to the book, eyes narrowed as if concentrating.

  That brief look of vulnerability caught Mark by surprise. He glanced at her again, his eyes following the clean line of her features, the smooth curve of her neck. He had seen pictures of her as a young girl, but most of them were amateur and blurred. None of them had even begun to capture her good looks.

  Mark jerked his head back to the road, staring out the window with determination.

  They also didn’t give a hint of how cold and self-possessed she could be.

  Sheryl twisted her head around, trying to ease the crook in her neck. From Lacombe to Calgary, she had alternately dozed and read and from Calgary to the Crowsnest Pass she merely stared out the window, trying to keep her mind off what waited for her at the end of the journey. The basic fact of the here and now was that she was in a truck with a man who looked like he preferred to be anywhere else.

  After his few attempts at conversation, the ride had been painfully quiet. Sheryl found it difficult to ignore him, however. He exuded a quiet strength that made his presence known with no effort on his part.

  She felt tense and saw how rude she’d been. It wasn’t Mark’s fault that Ed had felt sudden remorse or whatever emotion it was that had sent Mark up from the Pass. So she swallowed her pride, her antagonism to men in general, and asked a few questions herself.

  Mark told her about Ed and his stroke—how, during the course of the tests, they had found the fatal aneurysm.

  It was inoperable and now only a matter of time.

  She also discovered that Nate had met Elise, Mark’s sister, a few months after Sheryl and Jason had left Mark’s parents had bought the Simpson ranch five miles down the road from the Krickson place. Three years later Mark sold his real estate business in Vancouver and joined up with Nate and Ed.

  The conversation had wound down after that, and they were back to the radio and strained silence.

  Sheryl found it difficult to maintain a polite interest in her stepfather and stepbrother’s life, and after discovering that Nate and Elise also had three children, she didn’t want to talk anymore.

  Sheryl had opened her book again, trying to follow the unfamiliar cadence of words and phrases from another time. But they dealt with the justice of a God she neither trusted nor wholly believed in. If it hadn’t been required reading for the course, she would have thrown it out months ago.

  The words on the page blurred, and she drifted back in time, remembering life in the valley, recalling
working on the ranch, fighting with Ed and Nate. Whenever she pulled herself back to the present and the book on her lap, Milton’s words echoed her life too closely, its laments of brokenness struck too near her pain.

  Giving up, she straightened, glancing at Mark as she did so.

  He lounged against the seat, steering one-handed, his fingers resting on the bottom of the wheel. He looked tired and bored, his finely shaped mouth pulled down at the corners, his thickly lashed eyes, heavy-lidded as he stared with disinterest at the road ahead of him. His hair was long, flowing well past his collar, hanging almost in his eyes. He had pulled off his jacket halfway through the trip and rolled up the sleeves of his denim shirt, revealing muscular forearms. He was a very attractive man, she gave him that. He carried himself with a quiet strength that she wouldn’t want to have to face down.

  She was glad he hadn’t pushed her harder, inquired any further into her own life. She meant nothing to him, he nothing to her.

  They were approaching the British Columbia border, and Sheryl sat up, struck by an unexpected jolt of familiarity at the sight of the mountains crowding in.

  They rounded a corner, and a lake came into view below them, its waters sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. The hills were staggered against each other, and tapered down toward the lake, surrounding it protectively. It looked like home.

  Sheryl bit her lip as she shook that particular feeling off. There was no home waiting for her. God and home were a small part of other memories better left buried.

  “We’ll be there pretty soon now,” Mark said. “Do you want to go straight to the hospital, or did you want to head to your brother’s place first?”

  “May as well get this part of the trip over and done with,” she said with a sigh. She felt a nervous clenching of her stomach at the thought of finally facing Ed after all the silent years.

  Against her will she relived the weeks after she sent her letter five years ago. She had set aside her stubborn pride and written, pleading for sanctuary. She had no other place to go. Each time she picked up the mail it was with shaking fingers and fear that Jason would find out. Then the one and only time Jason picked up the mail, the letter came.

  Only it was her own—resealed and marked “Return to Sender.” She never wrote another one and heard nothing from Ed since.

  He slowed as they approached Sweet Creek. Before they got to the main part of town, he turned off, slowed down and a few minutes later pulled into the parking lot of the Kootenay Memorial Hospital. Then Mark shut off the truck’s engine. He leaned back, pulling his hands over his face, blowing out his breath. He looked tired, Sheryl thought, feeling a faint pull of attraction. Understandably. His even features and thickly lashed eyes had made women’s heads turn each place they’d stopped.

  Sheryl shook her head, angry with herself for even acknowledging his good looks. Men were nothing but trouble and heartache. She should know that by now.

  “So, ready to go in?" Mark asked, slowly opening his door.

  Sheryl shrugged in reply, slipping her book into the knapsack and buckling it shut. She opened her door just as Mark came around the front of the truck.

  He frowned at her as she stepped out, slamming the door behind her. “I was going to open it for you,” he said.

  “Are you kidding?” Sheryl almost laughed. “That went out with feathered helmets and armor.”

  “No it didn’t,” was his quiet response.

  Sheryl raised her eyebrows at him as she stepped away from the truck, and without a backward glance, she walked down the sidewalk, effectively cutting off the conversation.

  A few strides of his long legs put him ahead of her and, reaching around her, he opened the hospital door. “You’re going to make me hustle to prove my point, aren’t you?”

  “What point?” Sheryl squinted up at him against the bright sun.

  “That some mothers still raise their sons to be gentlemen.” Mark smiled down at her, his one hand shoved in the pocket of his coat, the other still holding the door.

  “Trust me, mister, the words gentle and men do not belong together,” Sheryl replied, a mocking tone in her voice.

  “My name is Mark.”

  His voice was quiet, but Sheryl sensed the light note of rebuke in it.

  He may be a man but he had done nothing to deserve being addressed so impersonally. She paused. “I’m sorry.. .Mark.” Their eyes met, and it was as if a tenuous connection had been created by her using his name.

  He only nodded, his expression suddenly serious.

  Sheryl looked away, took a breath and stepped into the hospital. All thoughts of gentlemen and chivalry were abruptly cut off as the nauseatingly familiar smells of the hospital wafted over her.

  The hallways were hushed, the aroma of disinfectant stronger now. Sheryl fought the urge to turn and run, to forget about Ed. But Mark strode inexorably on, boot heels ringing out on the polished floor. Sheryl followed him.

  Mark paused at the doorway to a darkened hospital room, knocked lightly on the open door and walked in. Sheryl wiped her damp palms on the legs of her denim jeans, took a steadying breath and followed him inside.

  She didn’t recognize the figure lying on the bed. The sheets outlined a body that had hollows instead of muscles. The once-black hair was peppered with gray and visibly thinning. His eyes were closed, the lids shot with broken blood vessels.

  His skin had an unhealthy grayish pallor and one side of his face was pulled down in a perpetual frown. Tubes and lines snaked out from his body, connected to an IV and monitors that bleeped from a shelf above his head.

  Mark bent over and shook Ed’s shoulder lightly. One eye opened fully, the other drooped. Even with Mark’s warnings, Sheryl still felt shocked at how his stroke had felled this proud man.

  “I’ve brought Sheryl, Ed.” Mark’s voice broke the silence of the hushed darkness of the room.

  Ed blinked and stared past Mark, squinting with his good eye. Then he struggled to sit up, using only one arm, the other falling uselessly to one side, bandaged and connected to an intravenous machine.

  “Sheryl? You brought her?” One corner of his mouth lifted in a parody of a smile, the other stayed resolutely where it was. “Come closer.” His slurred speech made him sound drunk, a condition scrupulously foreign to Ed Krickson.

  Sheryl unclenched her rigid jaw, struggled to still the erratic beating of her heart. Anger, guilt, frustration, sorrow all warred within her, each trying to make a claim.

  Blindly she took a step past Mark, almost tripping over the base of the IV stand.

  Mark caught her, his hands warm through the thin material of her jacket. Sheryl flinched and pulled away. She took a steadying breath, her iron control over her emotions slipping.

  “Hello, Ed,” was all she could manage to say as she faced her stepfather.

  “Sheryl.” Ed reached out to catch her hand, but she drew back. “You.. .came. Need to see you.. .to talk to you.”

  His halting expression of concern was in total opposition to the Ed she remembered. She had been prepared to face a strong adversary, but this man was not the Ed Krickson she had yelled at and fought with as a willful teenager.

  “How.. .are.. .you?” He took a breath, swallowed. “Are you...happy?”

  What should she say? she thought, clasping her waist with her arms. Did he want to hear about the past eight years, would it vindicate everything he had ever told her? Could she tell this broken man about her pain? Did she want to give him that kind of ammunition?

  She settled for the superficial, the inane.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are.. .you?” His one eye, as blue as the Chilcotin skies, seemed to pierce her, to bore into her very soul.

  Unnerved, she took a step back almost bumping into Mark in the close quarters of the hospital room.

  Ed lifted a hand to his head as if it pained him. “Sheryl.. .I’ve had.. .burden for you.. .needed to.. .see you.” The words came out slowly, tortured, and for a mome
nt Sheryl felt pity for him. Until he spoke again.

  “I.. .do.. .love you.. .I need to tell...”

  Sheryl swayed, his words echoing in her ears. He couldn’t mean it. Did someone who loved you push you and force you to become someone you weren’t? Did someone who loved you ignore a cry for help?

  His words created a hunger for something that had been missing so long from her life—family and a family’s love. A home.

  His paltry offering was too little too late.

  The ceiling pressed down to meet a floor tilting beneath her feet. The echoing became a roar, and she took a halting step away from the bed. Only a few minutes had elapsed since she stepped into this room, but she felt as if she had lived through a lifetime of emotions. She couldn’t stay.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, turning. “I’ve got to go.” Surprisingly Mark stepped back, giving her room, and without looking back, she stumbled out.

  Once out in the hallway, she turned, not sure of her direction but aware of a need to escape, to leave behind Ed’s empty words spoken from some need to fix what could never be repaired.

  The double doors loomed ahead, and she pushed them open, slipping between them. Forcing down a rising wave of panic, she slowed her steps and walked through the entrance and out into the blessed fresh air and warmth of the parking lot.

  She found Mark’s truck easily and leaned against it, soaking up the warmth it had absorbed from the sun, trying to dispel the chill deep within her.

  Slowly the emptiness became smaller, more manageable. Sheryl inhaled. Vulnerability was weakness. She could depend on no one. Love was a word, only a word, she repeated to herself like a litany.

  “I’m sorry Nate isn’t here. He had to go up to Cranbrook area today to pick up a bull,” Elise, Nate’s wife, apologized as she led Sheryl down an overgrown path to the cabin tucked away behind the ranch-style home.

  Sheryl was relieved. To face Nate so soon after her visit with Ed would have been too hard on emotions still raw from that afternoon.

  When Mark had driven up the driveway to the house, Sheryl experienced a sense of deja vu. She was again fifteen years old, coming home from another day at school in Nate’s truck, looking forward to a quick ride on her horse before chores needed to be done.