Fallen Hearts (Casteel 3)

Dear Pa,

Despite all the sadness and hardships of the past, I am ready to forgive and to ask forgiveness, Pa. It has been almost two years since Tom's death--two years during which not a day has gone by I haven't missed Tom, and Grandpa, too. But now my time for mourning is over and my time for happiness and love and life is beginning. For I have wonderful news. I'm getting married. To Logan Stonewall, who you may remember was my childhood sweetheart. I've been living here in Winnerow, fulfilling my dream of being a teacher just like Miss Marianne Deale, who inspired me so to read and learn and dream and always to believe I could be whatever I wanted to be. It seems all my childhood dreams are finally coming true--all, that is, except my relationship with you. I want you and Drake and Stacie to come to my wedding, Pa, Pa, I would like you to walk down the aisle with me as my father and give me away to my husband. I am so happy, Pa, I want to put away all the bitterness of the past. I want to forgive you, and I want you to forgive me. Maybe now, at this long late date, we can act like a family should. Fanny will be my best lady. I hope you will, at last, be my father.

Love, Heaven

ONE Promises of Spring

. I SAT ON THE LONG FRONT PORCH OF THE CABIN, READING and rereading my letter to Pa. It was a warm May morning, spring already ripened into hot summer. It seemed my Willies world had awakened along with me--from the cold dark winter of death and mourning, gradually_warming with the promise of spring, finally bursting into warm, burgeoning summer. The sparrows and robins were singing, flitting from branch to branch, gently shaking the leaves. Sunlight wove its way through the woods, threading strands of gold from birch to hickory to maple, turning the leaves transparent where the light bathed them. The world looked glorious and alive.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet, fresh perfume of blossoming flowers and rich green leaves. Above me, the sky was deep cerulean blue and the little candy cotton puff's of clouds stretched and curled in delicious shapes, like babies stretching in sleep.

Logan had been there from the day I returned to Winnerow. He had been there through the terrible days after Tom's death, while Pa was in the hospital. He had been there after Pa had returned with Stacie and little Drake to his own home in Georgia. He had been there when Grandpa died, leaving me alone in the cabin of my childhood, now rebuilt and refurbished into a cozy home. He had been there on the first day I began teaching my dear students at the Winnerow Grammar School. I laughed to myself now, recalling that first day, getting ready to test my competence, to see if I really could be the teacher I'd always dreamed of being.

I had come out of the cabin, just as I had this morning, intending, as I did most every day, to take a moment's pause to sit in Granny's old rocker and look out through the Willies before starting my journey down to the school. Only on this first morning, when I opened the door, there was Logan standing by the steps, a wide, happy smile on his face, his dark sapphire eyes brightening in the morning sun.

"Good morning, Miss Casteel." He performed a grand bow. "I have been sent here to escort you to your classroom. It's a fringe benefit of the Winnerow School System."

"Oh, Logan!" I cried. "You got up so early to walk up here."

"It wasn't so early. I get up this early to open the drugstore. It's three times the size it was when we were high school students," he said proudly, "and demands a lot more work. Miss Casteel," he added, holding out his hand. I walked down the steps to take it and we started down the mountain path, just the way we had when we were high school sweethearts.

It seemed so much like the old days----when Logan and I trailed behind Tom and Keith and Our Jane, with Fanny taunting us, trying to provoke and tease Logan away from me with her lewd and lascivious behavior, finally giving up and running off in a sulk when she saw that he wouldn't divert his attention from me. I could almost hear my brothers' and sisters' voices ahead. Despite how hard our lives were then, the memories brought tears to my eyes.

"Hey, hey," Logan said, seeing my eyes begin to fill with tears, "this is a happy day. I want a big smile and I want to hear your laughter echo through the Willies, just the way it used to."

"Oh, Logan, thank you. Thank you for being here, for caring."

He stopped and turned me toward him; his eyes were serious and full of love.

"No, Heaven. It's I who should thank you for being as beautiful and as lovely as I remember you. It's as if"--he looked around, searching for the words--"as if time stood still for us and everything that we thought happened since was only a dream. Now we are waking up and once again you are here, I am here with you, and I have your hand in mine. never let it go again," he vowed.

A tingle traveled through my fingers laced through his, a tingle of happiness that reached my heart and set it pounding the way it had that first day we kissed, when I was only twelve years old. I wanted him to kiss me again, I wanted to be that same innocent girl again, but I wasn't. And he wasn't, either. Why, only a few months ago rumors were flying that he intended to marry Maisie Setterton. But Maisie seemed to have disappeared from the picture of Logan's life as soon as I returned.

We walked silently along the wooded path. Red cardinals and brown speckled sparrows followed along, flitting through the shadows of the forest, moving so quickly and gracefully we barely saw a branch shake.

"I know," Logan finally said, "that both our lives took strangely different directions since the days when I walked you home from school, and all the promises we made to each other then might seem more like foolish dreams. But I would like to think that our love for each other was so strong that it has outlasted all the tragedy and all the hardship since."

We stopped to face each other again. I knew he could read all the doubt in my eyes.

"Logan. I'd like to believe that, too. I'm tired of dreams that die, dreams that were really too airy and weak to last or grow stronger as we grew older. I want to believe in someone again."

"Oh, Heaven, believe in me," he pleaded, taking my hand into both of his now. "I won't disappoint you. Ever."