One Track Mind (7 page)

Fenneman said she no longer lived in the house she’d shared with Scott Garland; she’d sold it and lived on Lark Street, the other side of town. The location was ironically close to where Kane, his mother and sister had lived. Even a town as small as Halesboro had its wrong side, the place where the losers and the luckless dwelt.

Kane told himself maybe Lark Street had changed for the better. Be realistic, he told himself cynically.
Nothing
in Halesboro had changed for the better—except his mother was gone, completely disappeared.

But he had to know about Lori. He looked up her address again in Fenneman’s notes. He could see the neighborhood in his mind’s eye.

With a jolt he realized she lived on the same block that Rome McCandless had lived as a kid—Rome, his first client.

When Kane had left Halesboro, McCandless was hardly more than a toddler. He was so tall and gangly for his age that other kids tormented him and adults sniggered at him. He had hair as orange as a carrot and the biggest feet Kane had ever seen on a child.

He seemed destined to grow up to be every bit as much an outsider as Kane, but fate dealt Rome a wild card. He would grow into his feet, his tall body would shoot even taller, and he would have perfect control over it.

Sports had a place for a kid like that, and that place was the basketball court. Rome became the state’s outstanding high school basketball player, then its outstanding college player, then a pro with Kane as his agent.

Rome McCandless, child geek, had become “the Roman Candle,” sports hero, and ultimately a very wealthy hero. Kane and McCandless, boys from the wrong side of Halesboro, helped each other make fortunes.

Now Lori, once the town’s princess, was reduced to living on Rome’s old block, not far from where Kane himself had lived. Time had been like a Ferris wheel, moving those at the bottom to the top and vice versa.

But how unlikely that the three of them were bound together by this obscure neighborhood, unknown to the world outside Halesboro. It was ironic. And eerie.

L
ORI TRIED
not to visit the past too often and then to be selective. She made herself remember all the good things about her parents, none of their flaws. What good did it do to list grievances against the dead? Anything they’d done that had hurt her they’d done out of love, or what they believed was love.

Her parents, of course, had wanted a perfect daughter who would grow into a perfect lady. She would be a gracious hostess, a skilled household manager and a strong yet ornamental pillar of the community. She would marry one of her own kind, and she would live among her own kind, and she would think like her own kind of people thought.

Neither of her parents had expected disobedience or non-conformity of any kind. But then, they hadn’t expected Kane Ledger, either.

Both her parents were horrified by her rebellion when they discovered it, and both were grateful that it was cut so short—it lasted only months that had been, her father thought, mercifully secret. Shamefully secretive and devious, her mother had accused.

But Lori still wondered, how else could it have been except secret?

Two Saturdays after she and Kane first talked, her mother mentioned that Mr. Merkle was again sending over someone to tend the roses. Instinctively, Lori was certain that someone would be Kane.

She schemed to stay home again and station herself poolside. Sinfully, she wished her green swimsuit was skimpier, her skin less freckled, her chest larger, her hips more curvy.

She put up her hair again, studiously making it look unstudied. Makeup would seem phony by the pool, so she allowed herself only lip gloss. She stationed herself under the green and white NASCAR umbrella again, and tried to read the book she’d borrowed from Aileen.

At exactly ten o’clock, Kane came through the back gate again. This time they gave each other curt, cursory nods and immediately began to pretend the other wasn’t there.

But she watched him, how she watched him. He wore another pair of tight, faded, low-slung jeans. His T-shirt was plain, gray, and the cloth, even from a distance, looked thin with wear. It quickly darkened with sweat, but he waited until he was nearly drenched to take it off.

Her heart quickened and her breath stuck in her throat. She thought he was the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen. His brown body wasn’t heavy with muscles, as her football playing brother’s was, but it had a lean perfection of form.

His tattoos no longer looked barbaric to her; they looked
exotic. They somehow fit him and went with his long dark hair. His hair hung to his shoulders and gleamed blue-black in the sunshine. This time he hadn’t tied it back, but he pulled out an old blue bandana, folded it the long way, and tied it around his head for a sweatband. It made him look like a pirate.

Once she caught him stealing a glance at her, and when their eyes met, a tingle ran through her stomach and quivered down clear to her thighs.

He was far enough away that she couldn’t see any signs of his scratches, but he had a flesh-colored Band-Aid that looked pale against his tanned side. Noon passed, the heat felt blistering, and she took a quick dip in the pool.

She went back to her lounge chair and read until her stomach growled. Surely it was one o’clock by now, she thought. And he hadn’t stopped for lunch. From time to time, he took a swig of water from an old plastic bottle with the label half peeled off.

Finally, she could stand it no longer. She went into the house and came out with a tray she set on the white table that supported the umbrella. She’d brought a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of cheese and crackers—a big plate.

She took a deep breath, and then marched with determination to the rose garden. “Hey,” she said. “You didn’t take a lunch break.”

“I didn’t bring a lunch,” he said, barely looking up. “I’d rather work.”

“Mr. Merkle takes a lunch break,” she said silkily. “A half hour. And we still pay him for his time. It’s like an employee right or something.”

He eyed her suspiciously. She’d forgotten how dark those eyes were, and how expressive. What they expressed was suspicion. “I never heard of that,” he said.

“Well, it’s true,” she said, hoping it was. “Come have a lemonade and some crackers.”

He squinted at her in disbelief. “What?”

“Yes,” she told him. “The heat’s terrible, you’re not eating and you could pass out.”

“I never passed out in my life,” he said indignantly.

“Besides, I want to ask you about something.”

The suspicion glittered in his gaze again. “What?” he repeated.

“Come sit down. I’ll tell you then. Otherwise I’ll have you go home early. I’ll tell Daddy I was worried about you.”

She turned, knowing he would follow her. And he did, although she could feel intense reluctance radiating from him. She pulled up a smaller chair beside the lounge and made sure it was in the shadow of the umbrella. “Please sit,” she said.

“You’re uppity,” he accused, but he sat.

“You’re intractable,” she said. She said it as a test, to see if he knew what she meant.

He did. “That,” he said with irony, “is the pot calling the kettle black.”

She smiled inwardly. Yes, she was being stubborn and difficult. So was he.

She poured two glasses of lemonade and slid one toward him. She piled crackers on a paper plate and put a handful of cheddar cheese cubes beside them. She set the plate in front of him and filled her own.

He hesitated, then took a cracker and a cheese cube and popped both into his mouth. He ate with apparent hunger. He did the same thing again. Then he regarded her with one dark eyebrow cocked. “So what do you want to ask me?”

She nibbled a cracker with a daintiness that would have made her mother proud. “You got all cut up last time,” she said. “How are you?”

He held out his bare arm. Traces of the scratches were faint. “Fine. I heal fast.”

“You must,” she said softly. The long shallow cut along his throat was barely visible. But the one beside his mouth was going to leave a scar, she could tell.

He reached for another cracker. Between bites, he surprised her by saying, “You were right about the graphic novel. It’s not a comic. It’s serious. I liked it.”

“You read it?” she asked in amazement.

“Yeah,” he said, reaching for more food. “Sometimes I hitchhike over to Asheville. I found it in a used bookstore there.”

“Hitchhiking’s dangerous,” she countered.

“I can take care of myself,” he muttered, then took a large swallow of lemonade. He licked his lips. They were perfect male lips, she decided. Strong, firmly cut, neither too thin nor too full. With a shock, she realized he was staring at her mouth, as well.

They both straightened up and looked away. “I better get back to work,” he said. “Thanks.” He stood and walked, straight-backed, toward the garden again.

He was still working at four-thirty, when she heard the phone ringing from the kitchen. She ran to answer it.

Her mother was calling from a service station outside of Charlotte. The car had broken down, and she and Lori’s father and A.J. wouldn’t be home for another two hours.

Two hours,
she thought, drifting back outside. She sat again in the lounge chair, partly reading her book, but mostly watching him.

An hour later, when the sun was starting to ride down the sky, she saw him strip off his gloves and stuff them into his back pocket. He must be making ready to quit. But then she heard him laugh and whoop. She looked up sharply, straight at him, no subterfuge.

He’d caught something, some kind of animal, and it seemed to delight him.

Telling herself she was merely curious, she rose and strolled to his side. “What do you have?” she asked.

He crouched, his hand covering something. “Littlest frog I ever saw,” he said.

“Really?” She knelt beside him. He smelled of earth and roses. “Let me see.”

“You’ll have to look fast,” he warned her. “He’ll probably hop away.”

“I will,” she said, and the breeze ruffled through the garden
until the scent of flowers half-intoxicated her. She felt slightly dizzy, as if she were too close to him.

He raised his bare hand from the grass. There sat a tiny frog, brilliant green, a perfect little thing that looked as if it had been carved from a living jewel.

She caught her breath. It was a lovely little creature with small golden eyes. It seemed to look back at her. It blinked.

“I thought he’d split,” Kane said. “Maybe he likes you.”

She smiled and kept looking at the gem-like frog. She was suddenly afraid to look at Kane. She found herself speechless.

Kane said, “Want to kiss a frog? Turn him into a prince?”

For some reason, that embarrassed her, made her heart hammer strangely and her voice go shaky. “No,” she said.

A moment of silence hung heavily between them. He leaned closer. “Yes, you do,” he said, and laid his hand on her neck, drawing her nearer. “You have the power. I’ve known it from the first.”

His mouth lowered to hers. She put her hands on his bare shoulders and kissed him back. In that kiss, she felt that she had both lost herself—and found herself.

K
ANE FINISHED
the gin and fell into an uneasy asleep. His dreams were erratic, and images of Lori and him, both young again, drifted in and out of his mind. Yet these dream people, while both young, also seemed their true age, too, and at the same time ageless, beyond the touch of time.

Although the images were disjointed and herky-jerky, Lori seemed to hold them together in some order far stronger than logic. Her—and the feeling he’d had for her then.

Before her, he’d been a loner, sworn never to be dependent on anybody. And after it was over with her, he became more of a loner than ever. He “made love” to women. But he didn’t love them. He’d loved once, and it had hurt like hell. It was enough to almost kill a man.

He woke up wondering why he was back in Halesboro, why he was getting himself tangled up again with the girl who’d betrayed him years ago, and he was no longer sure.

Shaving that morning, he looked in the mirror and saw a man with startlingly regular features and unhappy eyes. He’d told her he’d meet her again this morning, and he would. And then he needed to go back to Charlotte.

And he needed to keep as much distance as he could from this place. And from her.

As for the speedway, he’d find somebody else to battle its multitude of woes. What another guy from this region had once said was all too right: “You can’t go home again.”

L
ORI HADN’T
slept well, either. The rude-sounding shrill of the telephone woke her. She answered sleepily, but her aunt Aileen’s voice immediately jolted her into wakefulness. “Lori, why didn’t you
call
me?”

Aileen was in her seventies now, but there was no tremor of age in her voice. It was strong, feisty and sure of itself, just like its owner. She gave Lori no chance to answer.

Aileen said, “I heard Kane Ledger’s back. Is it true?”

“Y-yes,” Lori stammered. “It’s true.”

“Ha!” Aileen said triumphantly. “He came back because of you. I knew it as soon as I heard he was here.”

Lori blushed. She caught a look at herself in the bedroom mirror. Her face was creased from being pressed into the pillow. Tousled hair hung in her sleep-drugged eyes. Her old white nightgown hung down, wrinkled and limp. It looked like the shabby garment of a down-on-its-luck ghost.

Who’d come back because of me?
she wondered, looking at her wan image. “He’s not here for me,” she protested.

“Then why is he here?”

“I don’t know,” Lori stated with emphasis.

“I think he wants to impress you, show you how successful he’s become,” Aileen said in her husky voice. “And the town. Are you seeing him again today?”

“He’s supposed to drop by the speedway,” Lori muttered, exhausted. She’d had a night filled with dreams mostly about Kane, disturbing ones she didn’t want to admit to anyone, even herself.

“Ask him to give me a call,” said Aileen. “I’d love to hear from him, see him. Maybe he’d come for a visit.”

“He asked about you. He said he wanted to get in touch.”

“Then tell him I’d be delighted.” She paused, as if for dramatic effect. “But now, about you. Have you asked him the big question about the speedway?”

Lori’s body stiffened with wariness. “What big question?”

“You know what. He’s supposed to have connections.
Could he help you get a NASCAR-sanctioned race again at Halesboro?”

Lori gave a short, mirthless laugh. “I don’t think so. I’d say that it’s next to impossible.”

“And I’d say, my dear, that there are some men who don’t know the meaning of the word
impossible.
”

Lori’s muscles stiffened. “Maybe some men,” she said, “have to learn it the hard way.”

L
ORI WENT
to the speedway early, the Mustang acting up all the way. It labored to take off and then shifted roughly, clunking into gear. The ominous noises multiplied and grew even more ominous, and a rancid odor began to float up from underneath the floorboards.

She told Clyde when she reached the speedway. He shook his head and said he and the mechanic from the driving school should get started on it today. The thing might break down on her at any time.

She thanked him and patted him on the shoulder, keeping up a facade of stoic good cheer. But when she got to her office, she locked the door, turned off her cell phone and pulled the plugs on the two phones that sat on the desk. She felt a primal need to be alone.

She’d agreed verbally to Kane’s offer; she’d made up her mind she had to take it. She couldn’t live with accepting the Devlin bid.

But she hadn’t yet signed Kane’s document. She wanted to be alone, no one looking on, when she did that. She opened the leather folder and read all the offer’s paperwork again. Then she simply stared at the document for a long time.

At last, she took her father’s Waterford pen from its holder and numbly, her hand moving like that of an automaton, she signed and dated all of the lines of her agreement. She would give it to Kane, and soon they’d be in the title office, signing over the final transfer, him handing her the check.

She signed the last line and put back the pen and sat, no
longer really seeing anything before her. The end had truly begun. She’d wondered what to wear to the speedway today when she handed over the papers.

She’d toyed with the idea of wearing the dark dress she’d worn to her father’s funeral but dismissed it as melodramatic and self-pitying. So she’d dressed as she usually did on an ordinary summer day—plain green cotton shorts and a green and white Halesboro Speedway T-shirt.

She started going about her tasks, working on another publicity release for the Stang Fest, getting the payroll checks ready and, finally, starting to put the books in some kind of final order.

At ten sharp, a knock rattled her door, and the sound pierced her heart like a nail being driven through it. Kane was here, as hellishly punctual as he was yesterday.

She sprang out of her chair and unlocked the door. He stood there, casually, one hip cocked. He was in jeans again, and this time a blue cambric shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the forearms. They were seemingly ordinary clothes, but he looked extraordinarily handsome and at ease in them.

His expression was so blasé. “May I come in?”

“Certainly.” She gestured at the empty guest chair.

He sauntered in and sat, crossing his ankle over his knee. “I can’t stay long. I’ve got an engineer and an architect coming up from Charlotte. I need to show them everything. You got an extra set of keys?”

She opened the desk drawer and extracted a large key ring. It had been her father’s backup set and still had his silver fob hanging from it with his engraved initials, AJS. She thrust it at Kane and he took it casually, letting the keys jingle. Perhaps their tinkling sounded lighthearted to him. It didn’t to her.

How would Andrew Jackson Simmons feel? she wondered bitterly. He’d come to despise Kane, the common laborer with the gall to try to corrupt his daughter. What would he think if he knew now that Kane held not only the keys to the speedway, but to Andrew’s very lifework and legacy?

She forbade herself to think of it—yet. “Clyde can help show you around,” she said.

“Fine. I’ll have to spend all day with these guys. They need to get back to Charlotte by seven. Then I need to talk to you some more. Meet me at the café again. Seven-thirty’s a good time. The rush’ll be over by then.”

They both realized that he wasn’t asking her, he was telling her.

“Sure,” she said with a toss of her head. “By the way, what about this office? Will you want it? It’s always been the owner’s. It’s the biggest. I’ll move down the hall.”

He glanced indifferently around the room, its chipped paint, its old awards, old clippings, old photos. “If you don’t mind,” he shrugged. “But none of that stuff. That can go. Well, except the desk. It’d be a nice desk if it was refinished.”

Her heart clenched painfully. This desk had been in her family for years. But she wouldn’t ask Kane for any favors, not a single one.

“Certainly. I’ll clear everything else out. When do you want to move in?”

“I don’t intend to actually move in,” he said. “It’ll just be handy to have a place when I drop by from time to time.”

“Of course,” she said with false cheer.

A silence weighed between them, and she felt its heaviness, bearing down, swinging the balance of power forever, from her past to his future.

She tried to disguise any such feeling. “Oh. Aileen phoned this morning. She said she hoped to see you.”

He smiled, his eyes on her tightly controlled lips. “I’ll do that. Maybe she and I can have breakfast tomorrow. I have to get back to Charlotte by noon.”

“Oh, right,” Lori said. “You do have a business to take care of.”

“No,” he corrected, one corner of his mouth turning up. “Now I have two businesses.” He held up two fingers so they resembled a victory sign. “The agency—and Halesboro.”

“Yes,” she said, resenting what that victory sign implied. “You’re a busy man. Don’t let me keep you. I’ll give Clyde a call and tell him to be on the lookout for you and your…consultants.”

He stood, but didn’t move away; he just looked down at her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Am I?” she asked.

“The offer. You signed it?”

He embarrassed her because he’d clearly rattled her. But she only gave a little laugh. “The offer. Of course. Here it is. Everything in order, I hope.”

She handed him the leather folder, and he took it from her, his fingers almost, but not quite, touching hers. “Thanks,” he said. “It’s official now. And I’ll see you tonight. Do you want this door closed again?”

“Yes. Please.” She used all her control to keep her voice steady. “That would be lovely.”

“Fine,” he said. With the folder under his arm, the key ring in his hand, he stepped out, easing the door shut behind him.

She sat very straight in her chair, listening as the sound of his confident footsteps faded away. The speedway was his now. She put her elbows on the old desk, her face in her hands, and she cried like a child.

K
ANE ARRIVED
at The Groove Café at exactly seven-thirty. She wasn’t there yet. A few patrons lingered, most of them nursing their drinks, and he recognized some of them, and he knew some of them recognized him.

Their eyes followed him as he crossed the room, and they didn’t smile, although two gave him a curt nod. He nodded back, just as curtly. Only Otis Jr. spoke, saying, “Hello. Take a seat, any seat.” They hadn’t much liked him when he was poor. And they seemed to distrust him and perhaps resent him now that he was rich.

He took the booth farthest in the back corner next to the jukebox. Clara came out of the kitchen and heavily set down
a glass of water. She alone seemed friendly. Being tipped well obviously brought out her congenial side. She welcomed him back and asked if he was expecting anyone else. He saw a slight but sly glint come into her eyes when he answered yes.

He asked for ginger ale and nursed it. Lori came, five minutes late. She still wore her green shorts and green and white speedway T. The customers watched her, too, but most of them also greeted her, asked her how she was. She smiled, she nodded, she greeted them in return. She belonged here as surely as he did not.

She sat down, tossing her red-gold hair and pushing it back from her brow. “Sorry I’m late. Clyde gave me a ride. My car won’t be fixed until tomorrow.”

“Now that you’ve sold the place, you ought to get a better one,” Kane told her. “That one’s at the stage where everything’s going to have to be replaced.”

“I don’t want a new one,” she said. “I like the one I have.”

“Any particular reason?” he asked, conscious that people watched them from the corners of their eyes. He took a sip of his drink.

“It was my brother’s,” she said matter-of-factly. “He left it with me when he went to war.”

The drink seemed to stick sideways in his throat. He wished he’d kept his stupid mouth shut. For years, he’d despised A.J. for a lout and a muscle-bound coward. But A.J. was dead now, and Lori, in the complicated way of families, might not have liked her brother, but she’d loved him.

“Sorry,” Kane said.

“You couldn’t have known,” she said, then quickly changed the subject. “Clyde said you and ‘those city fellers’ have got some fancy ideas about the speedway.”

“Fancy to Clyde, maybe,” he said. “Pretty basic, really. Changes are needed. And I hope Halesboro can change, too.”

“Change back to what it was?” she asked. “No. I think that Halesboro’s gone forever.”

He nodded, feeling an odd nostalgia for a place that had
never welcomed him, that still didn’t seem to welcome him. “This,” he said, with a gesture indicating the café, “seems the one thing that hasn’t changed.”

Clara, putting down the menus and a water glass for Lori, had overheard him. “Otis is too cheap to change,” she said sotto voce. “The same music’s on the jukebox as twenty years ago. Oldest jukebox in the state, I bet. Still plays 45’s.”

Kane gave her a disbelieving smile. “Go on.”

“I’ll prove it,” Clara said. The jukebox stood next to their booth. She took three quarters from her apron pocket and began to drop them in and punch buttons.

A moment later, Kane heard Randy Travis’s voice, as he’d heard it here two decades ago.

The song was “Always and Forever,” and when he’d been seventeen, he’d thought of Lori every time he heard it.

Sometimes he heard it when he was in the kitchen, up to his elbows in dishwater and she was sitting in one of these booths with her girlfriends. He could see her when he passed the porthole-like windows in the kitchen doors.

He was so conscious of her out there that he ached, and he knew she was conscious of him, as well. Back then, the world seemed suffused by incandescent romance.

He was a would-be Romeo, scraping plates and scouring silverware. And she’d been his Juliet, dipping her French fries in ketchup and drinking her cherry-lemon-lime cola. After all this time, it should seem merely ridiculous.