Leland Stuart, christened Lucky by his friends, gladly and unselfishly shared.
Boot heels clattering in the silence, Lincoln climbed the rest of the stairs and crossed the porch. When he tried the door, it opened. Not surprising, for he couldn’t recall a time it had ever been locked. Ducking beneath the door frame, he stepped inside, into memories of the boy who had stood where a man stood now. Memories so vivid he could hear Lucky’s cry of welcome and smell Frannie’s cookies baking. Cookies meant to be snitched by hungry boys who had slipped away from chores to fish or hunt and play Tarzan in the swamp.
Drawing himself to his full height, Lincoln looked around him. There were cobwebs and dust everywhere. The musty scent of neglect mingled with a lingering hint of flowers. But nothing had been touched. Frannie and Lucky could have just stepped out intending to return, yet never had.
Wandering through the house, Lincoln paused at the door of the smallest bedroom. The trophies Lucky won in baseball still lined a single shelf. One of his own was there. So was a lure he’d made, and a photo taken when both he and Diablo were young. As if blinders fell from his eyes, Lincoln realized how much a part he’d been allowed to play, welcomed to play, in the Stuart home.
Lucky had no father, nor any recollection of ever having one. Lincoln had no mother. Perhaps that had first drawn them to each other. But the bond of affection and shared interests that made them friends and blood brothers, was much stronger.
From grade school, through Belle Terre Academy and the university, he and Lucky had been inseparable. Evidence of their friendship still lived in a simple farmhouse on a rich piece of land lying between a creek and the plantation called Belle Reve.
Like the Cades, the Stuarts were an old family, prominent in South Carolina’s lowcountry. And like the Cades, their early wealth had long been lost. By the time Frannie made her debut, little more than respect filled the Stuart coffers. They were an aging but cordial and modern-thinking people. She was their adventurous darling with places to go and things to do. Frannie was a few months past forty, with her daring adventures behind her, when she returned to Belle Terre with Lucky, a babe in arms.
Undaunted by the scandal of bearing an illegitimate child, she settled on the farm, living quietly, meagerly, as was apparent in her bedroom, which Lincoln realized now was pitifully lacking in the feminine pleasures that would have become her. Frannie might have been reduced to creating her own unforgettable fragrance of wild roses and dried flowers, but her capacity for love, her courageous sense of adventure, never faltered.
It was, instead, bequeathed to Lucky. And, as he stared at a photo, encased in a tarnished silver frame, Lincoln realized both had been Frannie’s ultimate gift to him, as well.
Caught up in recollections of two wide-eyed boys sitting before a fire, listening to stories of where she’d been and what she’d done, Lincoln continued his sentimental passage. As he came full circle, his lips tilted in a poignant smile for old memories and old friendships that could never be again.
When he returned to the porch, the last rays of the sun had painted the sky a deep vermilion, seeming to set the world ablaze. Lincoln hadn’t meant to stay, but, wrapped in light so familiar, he found himself drawn to the steps.
To sit where he’d sat with Lucky. To remember the dreams they’d dreamed on days like this. The days when they were so sure they would live forever and be friends forever and share every great adventure the world had to offer.
“Every great adventure, planned right here.” Lincoln looked at the photograph still clutched in his hand. “Even the last, the one that would destroy our friendship as we knew it.”
Wearily Lincoln stood. Making note of the step in need of repair, he crossed the overgrown yard to Diablo. Speaking quietly to the grazing horse, he mounted. Hesitating, he watched as light warming the walls of the house faded and darkened, leaving it in shadows. A lonely derelict, waiting.
“For what?” Lincoln wondered aloud. But he didn’t need to wonder. He knew.
“For want of love and laughter, a home becomes a house,” he whispered, quoting his beloved Frannie. “For want of life, a house becomes a hovel.”
Frannie Stuart had been dead nearly seven years. Lucky, for three months. He couldn’t change the past, but as he turned Diablo from the Stuart farm, Lincoln vowed that no matter how long it took, he would repay a debt incurred six years before.
A debt called in today, by a letter from the grave.
“Let’s go home, Diablo,” Lincoln murmured hoarsely. “I have work to do, a lady to find, and promises to keep.”
Two
“Special delivery.” Basket in hand, Haley Garrett stood in the open doorway, waiting for Lincoln to abandon his intense study of the evening sky. As she’d spoken, his shoulders tensed. When he turned, a pallor lay over his sun-darkened face.
“Lincoln?” Alarm threaded through Haley’s voice. “Is something wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Blinking, clearing his vision, Lincoln denied her concern. “Nothing’s wrong. My mind was wandering, I thought…”
“That I was her?” Troubled by his mood, Haley stepped into his office uninvited. “Yes, Lincoln, her. Linsey Stuart, the woman for whom you’ve searched for weeks.”
“How do you know about Linsey?”
Setting the basket laden with food on his desk, she smiled ruefully. “It would be hard not to know, since your search has been conducted by telephone and our office isn’t exactly soundproof.”
Lincoln moved to his desk. “I never meant to disturb you.”
“You didn’t. I haven’t said anything before because it was none of my business.” Haley tilted her head, negating the great difference in their size as she held his gaze. “As your veterinary partner and friend, I’m making it my business now.”
Lincoln grasped a pen, tapping it on his desk. “I haven’t held up my end of our agreement?”
Catching his hand, she stopped his drumming. “Just the opposite. You’re driving yourself. Take today, for instance. You were called to Petersens’ to deliver a breech colt at 3:00 a.m. To Hank’s dairy at 6:00 a.m. to deal with a sick cow.”
Releasing him, she ticked off more stops. “You admitted skipping breakfast, then lunch. If Miss Corey hadn’t worried and sent this basket, I suspect you would skip dinner.”
“How does skipping meals affect our partnership, Haley?”
“Partnership.” Haley emphasized her point. “That’s the key word. I could have made some of those calls. Given how hard you’ve been working, I should have made all of them.”
“Today was too much for me,” he drawled. “But not you?”
“Yes. Because I’m not consumed by a problem.” Taking a tarnished frame from his desk, she asked, “Is this Linsey Stuart?”
Lincoln’s gaze turned to the photo plundered from the Stuart farm. Where a step awaited repair. “Linsey, Lucky and me. In Montana, our last year at smoke jumpers annual training.”
“Linsey Stuart parachuted into forest fires?”
