2. What I Carried Home #3
"Because Clara is buried out there, Nora," he croaks, his voice breaking completely on her name. "Clara is right there by the creek. And I know… I know how much you love her. I know you would do anything… anything to protect her resting place."
He tries to lean forward and gives up. "If I told the son… if I went to him after the lease died… he would have looked at the land. He might have told us to clear out."
I go completely rigid, the anger in my chest hardening.
He is right. I would do anything. I would tear this county apart brick by brick before I let some stranger bring a bulldozer near the oak grove where my daughter's bones are buried. Clara is the only piece of me that didn't get broken by Stanley or ruined by time. She belongs to that creek line.
"But why didn't you even try, Daddy?" I ask. "Why didn't you try to make the land yours legally after all these years? Why didn't you offer him market value before the stroke hit?"
My father looks away from me, his gaze returning to the window where the light is beginning to turn amber-orange as the sun drops toward the coastal horizon.
"Because I was scared, Nora," he confesses, the words thick and slurred. "I was terrified. The son… he isn't like his mother. He doesn't care about old agreements. If he found out that a family had been sitting on his mother's land for a year without paying a dime… he wouldn't sell."
"He might have filed a reclamation filing immediately. We would lose Clara's grave. I was… I was trying to buy us time. Until I can find a solution."
I take a deep breath through my nose, forcing the panic down into the soles of my feet, my mind switching back into the controlled, precise executive mode I use when a commercial construction project goes sideways.
"Who is he? What's his name, Daddy?" I ask. "What is the son's name?"
My father clears his throat, his hand trembling against the quilt. "Rowe. Jackson Rowe. But… but nobody in this county calls him that. Everyone calls him Jax."
The name lands like a stone dropped into still water.
I don't move. I don't breathe.
Jax.
The man from the bar. The scar on his left wrist. The way he'd looked at me like he already knew something I hadn't figured out yet.
I think about the way he went quiet when I went sad.
Like he recognized it.
Like he'd been carrying something too.
I set the deed down on the bedside table before my father can see my hands shaking.
"Where do I find him?" I ask, my voice coming out steadier than I have any right to expect. "Does he stay in Moonrise?"
My father lets out a dry, raspy breath and shakes his head, his right hand pointing toward the eastern wall of the bedroom, toward the window that looks out past the overgrown garden.
"You don't… You don't have to look too far, Nora. His land… it starts right beyond our eastern fence line. The old timber mill, the salvage yard down by the water… that's his. We are practically neighbors."
Practically neighbors.
The man I gave everything to in a single night.
The man whose name I never asked.
He owns the ground my daughter is buried in.
I nod once and look down at the blue cardstock deed on the bedside table, the legal descriptions and the red cross over Clara's grave burning through the paper and into my skin.
"I'm going over there tomorrow," I tell him, my voice leaving no room for an argument. "I'll handle Mr. Jackson Rowe. I'll find out what his price is, and I'll secure the title to this house. You don't worry about it anymore, Daddy. Do you hear me? I'm here now. I'm handling the blueprints."
He doesn't answer. He just closes his eyes, his breathing flattening out into the heavy, rhythmic drone of sleep, his face looking small and gray against the pillow.
I walk out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, the blue cardstock deed back in my fist. I walk over to stare out the kitchen window at the dusk settling over the coastal prairie. The sky is the color of a bruised plum, the first evening stars cutting through the low humidity rising off the Gulf.
Somewhere out past the eastern fence line, in the dark beyond the oak grove, a light is on in the salvage yard.
I don't know why I notice.
I notice.
Just then, my phone buzzes in my linen trouser pocket, the vibration breaking the silence in the house. I pull it out, my eyes dropping to the glowing screen.
The screen displays a number I don't have saved in my contacts. But I don't need a contact name to know who it is. The ten digits start with a Houston area code.
My stomach drops instantly. My hand goes entirely weak around the blue paper deed, the cardstock slipping through my fingers to hit the linoleum floor with a soft, hollow thud.
My skin turns ice-cold, a cold sweat breaking out along the back of my neck despite the heavy, oppressive heat of the Texas night.
Stanley is calling.
For seven years he had been the thing I ran from.
Tomorrow I was supposed to walk onto Jackson Rowe's land and fight for Clara.
Tonight the past had found my number.
Again.
I let the phone ring.
Tonight I was done running.