Through his bedroom window he could see the dark skeleton of his house and hear the breeze whispering through the beams as clouds scudded past in the gathering dusk.
He blamed McCall for his restlessness. The woman haunted his thoughts, making him ache with a need he hadn’t been able to fill with any other woman. Had he thought the years would have changed McCall’s mind about him? Or her feelings?
At times like this, he’d always turned to his work. He forced his thoughts to the poachers’ pickup and how close he’d come to catching them earlier. He’d only gotten a glimpse of the truck as it came flying out of the fishing access, dust billowing.
The pickup was somewhere between brown and a rusted red. A good fifty years old. Something from the late fifties, early sixties. A beater. If he had to guess, he’d say a ’62 Ford.
There were more than a few around in this part of the country. Hell, Buzz even used to own one.
Maybe he still did.
Luke sat up with a curse. He hadn’t seen Buzz’s old pickup for years. It used to be parked in the back of that old barn behind Buzz’s lake house. Hell, it probably didn’t even run anymore.
He swore again. He knew he wouldn’t get any sleep if he didn’t find out if that truck was still there. Buzz hadn’t driven it in years. But that didn’t mean someone else hadn’t.
It was crazy. Or maybe not so crazy. He thought about that night years ago when he and Eugene had taken the pickup on a joyride. Buzz always kept the keys in the truck’s ignition. Since the barn was a good distance from the lake house, they’d had no trouble taking out the pickup—and returning it—without Buzz being the wiser.
Luke had this crazy idea that someone might be using Buzz’s pickup to poach deer. The irony didn’t escape him. Nor would it have someone like Trace Winchester, who would have loved to rub it in Buzz’s face.
Irony? Or payback?
It was dark by the time Luke parked on the road behind his uncle’s old barn and killed the engine. He sat for a moment listening to the sounds of the night before he grabbed his flashlight and climbed out.
The moon was a sliver of white against the darkening sky. A few stars glittered through the veil of clouds. A breeze carried the distinct odors of the lake. Through the trees he could see the lake house. No vehicle parked next to it. Buzz wasn’t home.
He breathed in the familiar scents, asking himself what the hell he was doing here about to creep around like a cat burglar.
But as he neared the old wooden structure he knew the reason he hadn’t waited was that he didn’t want Buzz to know. No reason to set his uncle off when Luke was probably wrong about the pickup being the one he’d seen the poachers driving.
He reached the back side of the barn before he turned on the flashlight. The lake house was on the opposite side. Even if Buzz happened to return, he wouldn’t be able to see the light or hear anything from the house.
Luke slipped through the space between the two hinged barn doors. Dust motes danced in the flashlight beam that barely penetrated the dark, vast interior.
The barn still smelled of hay and manure even though it hadn’t been used for either hay or livestock in years.
At a rustling sound, Luke swung around, leading with the beam of the flashlight. A cat scurried out the gap in the doors. As the dust and his heart settled back down, he probed the dark recesses of the barn with the paltry beam of the flashlight.
Luke shone the light into the dark corner where the ’62 Ford pickup was always parked.
Empty.
He stared at the hole where the truck had been parked for so many years. He’d been wrong. Relief swept over him, letting him finally admit that he’d thought Eugene might have been using the old pickup.
But when had Buzz gotten rid of it? And maybe more important, whom had he sold it to?
As Luke ran the beam over the space where the truck had been parked, he noticed the faint tire tracks in the dust. The pickup hadn’t been gone that long. No, not that long at all, he thought as he squatted down to touch a dark spot on the dirt floor of the barn.
The spot where the pickup had recently dripped oil was still wet.
MCCALL LEFT SANDY’S, surprised how dark it had gotten. Clouds skimmed just over the treetops, the limbs whipping in the wind.
The air was damp with the promise of rain and the growing darkness heavy and oppressive. Her headlights did little to hold back the night as she left the lights of Whitehorse in her rearview mirror and drove toward her cabin on the river.
She was tired, bone weary and sick at heart. She’d forced her mother to bare her soul and found out things about her father that she’d never wanted to know.
He’s dead, McCall, why can’t you just let it go?
Because she couldn’t. Just as she couldn’t get over Luke Crawford. She’d never believed in all that first love stuff that made good television movies. But Luke had been her first love, her only love.
Sometimes she thought about what her life would have been like if things had worked out for them. They could be married now, might even be parents.
She had a sudden image of Luke holding a baby and felt her eyes blur with tears. She rubbed them, telling herself she should be watching for deer along this stretch of narrow two-lane dirt road that wound through the large, old cottonwoods along the river, instead of bawling over what might have been.
But the night reminded her of another night ten years ago, the night she gave herself to
