Soon the leaves would flame into a witch's brew of bright colors, and autumn would flare briefly in the mountains. Down in the valley where the wind didn't blow, two Stonewall parents would resent this Casteel girl who wasn't worthy enough for an only son. I reached for his hand, loving him as only the very young can love. Instantly he smiled and stepped closer. "Must I say I love you ten million times before you believe me? Should I go down on my knees and propose? You can't tell me anything that would make me stop loving and respecting you!"
Oh, yes, there was something I could say, and everything would change. I held his hand tighter, leading him on, always ascending, curving around tall pines, thick oaks and hickories, until all the trees turned to evergreens . . . and then we were there, in the cemetery. Room for only a few more now. Newer, better graveyards down lower, where it wasn't so much trouble to haul up machines to mow the grass, and men to dig the graves.
No one mowed the grass where my young mother lay, all alone and off to one side. Just a narrow mound that was beginning to sink, a cheap headstone in the form of a cross.
Angel
Beloved wife of Thomas Luke Casteel
I released Logan's warm hand and sank to my knees, and bowed my head and said my prayer that someday, some wonderfully kind day, I would see her in paradise.
Along the way here I'd plucked a single red rose from the garden of Reverend Wayland Wise, and this I put in a cheap glass jar I'd buried at the foot of her grave years ago. No water nearby to put in the jar to keep the rose alive and fresh. A red rose left to wither and turn brown. As she had withered and died before I ever had a chance to know her.
The wind whipped up and lashed the long arms of the evergreens as I knelt there and tried to find the will to say what I had to.
"Let's go now," Logan said uneasily, glancing up at the late-day sun that began a swift descent behind the mountaintops.
What was he sensing?
The same thing I was?
All the little evening sounds bounced back and forth, echoing across the valleys, singing with the wind through the canyons, through the summer leaves, whispering the tall grass that hadn't been cut in years.
"It looks like rain . . ."
Still I couldn't tell him.
"Heaven, what are we doing here? Did we come just so you could kneel and cry, and forget the pleasures of being alive and in love?"
"You're not listening, Logan. Or looking, or understanding. This is the grave of my real mother who died when I was born, died at the tender age of fourteen."
"You've told me about that before," he said softly, kneeling beside me and placing his arm over my shoulder. "Does it still hurt so much? You didn't know her."
"Yes, I do know her. There are times when I wake up and I feel as she must have felt. She's me, and I'm her. I love the hills, and I hate them. They give so much, and they rob you of so much. It's lonely here, and beautiful here. God blessed the land and cursed the people, so you end up feeling small and insignificant. I want to go, and I want to stay."
"Then I'll make up your mind for you. We're going back to the valley, and in two years we'll be married."
"You don't have to marry me, you know that."
"I love you. I've always loved you. There's never been anyone but you. Isn't that reason enough?"
Tears were streaking my face now, falling to make raindrops on the red rose. I glanced up at the storm clouds swiftly drawing closer, shuddered, and started to speak. He drew me against him. "Heaven, please don't say anything that will spoil what I feel for you. If what you're planning to say is going to hurt, don't say it, please don't say it!"
And I went and said it, as I'd planned all along, to say it here, where she could hear.
"I'm not what you think I am--"
"You're all I want you to be," he said quickly.
"I love you, Logan," I whispered with my head bowed low. "I guess ever since the day we met I've loved you, and yet I let another--"
"I don't want to hear about it!" he flared hotly.
Because he jumped to his feet, I jumped to mine, and then we faced each other. The wind snapped my long hair so it brushed his lips. "You know, don't you?"
"What Maisie's been spreading around? No, I don't believe anything so ugly! I can't believe gossip! You're mine, and I love you . . . don't you try to convince me there's a reason I can't love you!"
"But there is!" I cried desperately. "Candlewick wasn't the happy place I wanted you to believe when I wrote those letters. I lied about so much . . . and Cal was--"