Midnight rainbow

In the distance loomed the mountains, the great, misty mountains where the ghosts of the Cherokee still walked. The vast slopes were uninhabited now, but then, only a few hardy souls other than the Cherokee had ever called the mountains home. Jane would like the mountains. They were older, wreathed in silvery veils, once the mightiest mountain range on earth, but worn down by more years than people could imagine. There were places in those mountains where time stood still.

The mountains, and the earth, had healed him, and the process had been so gradual that he hadn’t realized he was healed until now. Perhaps the final healing had come when Jane had shown him how to laugh again.

He had told her to let it be, and she had. She had left in the quiet morning, without a word, because he’d told her to go. She loved him; he knew that. He’d pretended that it was something else, the pressure of stress that had brought them together, but even then he’d known better, and so had she.

Well, hell! He missed her so badly that he hurt, and if this wasn’t love, then he hoped he never loved anyone, because he didn’t think he could stand it. He couldn’t get her out of his mind, and her absence was an empty ache that he couldn’t fill, couldn’t ease.

She’d been right; he was afraid to take the chance, afraid to leave himself open to more hurt. But he was hurting anyway. He’d be a fool if he let her get away.

But first there were old rifts to try to heal.

He loved his parents, and he knew they loved him, but they were simple people, living close to the earth, and he’d turned into someone they didn’t recognize. His sister was a pretty, blond woman, content with her job at the local library, her quiet husband, and her three children. It had been a couple of years since he’d even seen his nephew and two nieces. When he’d stopped by the year before to tell his parents that he’d retired and had bought a farm in Tennessee, they’d all been so uncomfortable that he’d stayed for only a few hours, and had left without seeing Rae, or the kids.

So he drove down to Georgia, and stood on the weathered old porch, knocking on the door of the house where he’d grown up. His mother came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. It was close to noon; as always, as it had been from the time he could remember, she was cooking lunch for his father. But they didn’t call it lunch in this part of the country; the noon meal was dinner, and the evening meal was supper.

Surprise lit her honey-brown eyes, the eyes that were so like his, only darker. "Why, son, this is a surprise. What on earth are you knocking for? Why didn’t you just come in?"

"I didn’t want to get shot," he said honestly.

"Now, you know I don’t let your daddy keep a gun in the house. The only gun is that old shotgun, out in the barn. What makes you say a thing like that?" Turning, she went back to the kitchen, and he followed. Everything in the old frame house was familiar, as familiar to him as his own face.

He settled his weight in one of the straight chairs that were grouped around the kitchen table. This was the table he’d eaten at as a boy. "Mama," he said slowly, "I’ve been shot at so much that I guess I think that’s the normal way of things."

She was still for a moment, her head bent; then she resumed making her biscuits. "I know, son. We’ve always known. But we didn’t know how to reach you, how to bring you back to us again. You was still a boy when you left, but you came back a man, and we didn’t know how to talk to you."

"There wasn’t any talking to me. I was still too raw, too wild. But the farm that I bought, up in Tennessee… it’s helped."

He didn’t have to elaborate, and he knew it. Grace Sullivan had the simple wisdom of people who lived close to the land. She was a farm girl, had never pretended to be anything else, and he loved her because of it.

"Will you stay for dinner?"

"I’d like to stay for a couple of days, if I won’t be messing up any plans."

"Grant Sullivan, you know your daddy and I don’t have anyplans to go off gallivanting anywhere."

She sounded just like she had when he had been five years old and had managed to get his clothes dirty as fast as she could put them on him. He remembered how she’d looked then, her hair dark, her face smooth and young, her honey-gold eyes sparkling at him.

He laughed, because everything was getting better, and his mother glanced at him in surprise. It had been twenty years since she’d heard her son laugh. "That’s good," he said cheerfully. "Because it’ll take me at least that long to tell you about the woman I’m going to marry."

"What!" She whirled on him, laughing, too. "You’re pulling my leg! Are you really going to get married? Tell me about her!"

"Mama, you’ll love her," he said. "She’s nuts."

He’d never thought that finding her would be so hard. Somehow he’d thought that it would be as simple as calling her father and getting her address from him, but he should have known. With Jane, nothing was ever as it should be.

To begin with, it took him three days to get in touch with her father. Evidently her parents had been out of town, and the housekeeper either hadn’t known where Jane was, or she’d been instructed not to give out any information. Considering Jane’s circumstances, he thought it was probably the latter. So he cooled his heels for three days until he was finally able to speak to her father, but that wasn’t much better.

"She’s in Europe," James explained easily enough. "She stayed here for about a week, then took off again."

Grant felt like cursing. "Where in Europe?"

"I don’t really know. She was vague about it. You know Jane."

He was afraid that he did. "Has she called?"

"Yes, a couple of times."