Chapter 1 : Part 3

The You I Never Knew
by Susan Wiggs

(Page 3 of 3)

"Nice move, Mom," Cody observed from the back-seat. She gave silent thanks for the Rover's four-wheel drive. The tires gripped the sand-sprinkled snow. Forced to a Sunday-drive crawl, she saw everything with crystalline clarity. Open rangeland and broad meadows flowing past. A ring of mountains surrounding the valley like the walls of a mythical stronghold. Every tortuous inch of this road was familiar to her, so familiar that it made her eyes ache.

The valley slumbered in midwinter splendor, as if the entire landscape was holding its breath, waiting for the far-distant springtime.

She read the names on every rural mailbox they passed - Smith, Dodd, Gyenes, Bell, Jacobs. Most people who settled in the area seemed to stay forever. Each farm lay in perfect repose, a picture waiting to be painted: a white house with dark green shutters, a wisp of smoke twisting from the chimney, windowpanes glowing at the first touch of twilight.

There was a time when this sight had pierced her in a tender spot. She had painted this very scene long ago. Her brush had given life to the hillocks of untouched snow, to the luminous pink of the sunset, and to the fading sky behind alpine firs with their shoulders draped in white and icicles dripping from their branches. On a poorly prepared canvas with second-rate paints, she managed to convey a sense of soaring wonder at the world around her. It was a good painting. Better than good. But young. Impossibly, naively young as she had never been since the day she left this town in anguish and disgrace.

She wondered what had become of that painting. A part of her insisted that it was important to know. Creating that picture had been a defining act for her. It had opened a window into her future and sent her dreams off in a direction that would bring her joy and heartbreak for the rest of her life.

She peeked at Cody to see his reaction to their arrival. He stared out the window, his hands playing the air drums in his lap. His narrowed eyes were filled with nothing but indifference. She shouldn't be surprised. Indifference and contempt were the only emotions he exhibited these days.

A fading Rotary Club sign marked the city limits.

I'm back now, really and truly back. She knew it was just her imagination, but she heard a rush of wind as she felt herself going forward ...into the past. Across the Lions Club sign stretched a banner announcing the WINTER ROUNDUP - MARCH 2-3.

Great. That meant she wouldn't find her father at home. As the leading rodeo stock contractor in the state, he was bound to be at the arena. She punched his number into her cell phone - Lord, did anyone but her father keep the same number for twenty-five years?

"Blue Rock." A young voice, not her father's, answered. One of his personal assistants, she supposed.

"Is Gavin in? This is... his daughter, Michelle Turner."

A pause. "I'm sorry, he's out for the evening. He was expecting you tomorrow, ma'am."

"Is he at the arena?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

She supposed she could go to his place, sit, and wait for him, but she was too edgy to put the meeting off any longer. The entire town would witness their reunion. Would anyone remember her, and what had happened that year? Would heads shake and tongues wag? Would they look at her son and exchange knowing glances?

The next road sign posted a greeting from the Calvary Lutheran Church: YOU'RE ENTERING GOD'S COUNTRY.

"I'll find him there, then." She hung up the phone.

Main Street stretched before her, cold and straight as the barrel of a rifle. She passed the saddlery with its false log fa?ade, Ray's Quik Chek, the Northern Lights Feed Store and Caf?, the Christian Science Reading Room, LaNelle's Quilt and Fabric Shoppe, a bank, and a picket-fronted bar that hadn't been there seventeen years ago. Blue-and-white signs pointed out the turns to the county hospital and the library.

On the other side of town was a flat-roofed restaurant hunched atop a knoll and surrounded by eighteen-wheelers with their running lights on - the Truxtop Café. She winced, recalling the last time she had set foot in that place.

Crystal City was a part of Michelle Turner, no matter how hard she tried to forget that fact.

Every once in a while she used to fantasize about coming back, but in her mind it was always a triumphant return. Not like this. Not with her heart frozen, her world in disarray, and her purpose to save the life of the father she hadn't seen in seventeen years.

Copyright © 2001 Susan Wiggs

About the Author

Susan Wiggs is the author of the bestselling historical romance novels The Mistress, The Hostage, and The Horsemaster's Daughter. She won the Romantic Times career achievement award and the Romance Writers of America's RITA Award for best historical romance. A dramatic departure from her critically acclaimed and highly popular previous novels, THE YOU I NEVER KNEW is her first full-length work of contemporary fiction. A Harvard graduate and former schoolteacher, she lives on an island in Puget Sound with her husband and daughter.