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Sweet Hope

by Deborah Smith 

My name is Hope Bailey Stanton, and I'm the reason part of Mossy Creek no longer flows to the sea. When I was seventeen years old my father, Lucas Bailey,  climbed into our farm's bulldozer, drove it through the back woods to a beautiful, fairytale glen just above the old Bailey Mill Road and Bailey covered bridge, and there destroyed the God-given Mossy Creek tributary our Bailey ancestors had named Bailey Branch. Until then Bailey Branch flowed south to southeast through the mountains of the Bailey Mill community before merging again with its mother, Mossy Creek, just past the Mossy Creek town limits at  Hamilton Farm.

"That branch is nothing but a lure for the innocent," Papa announced when he sent the waters of Bailey Branch off into a wooded hollow to form Bailey Swamp. He hoped the branch would just fade into the earth, but it wept into that hollow with endless grief. Marle Settles and I had found each other and lost our hearts in its waters. In my mind, Bailey Branch cried for us.    

Just as Bailey Branch is a defiant sister of Mossy Creek, the community of Bailey Mill is to the town of Mossy Creek as Brooklyn is to Manhattan—the no-nonsense cotton panties under a silk skirt. Like other Creekite burbs--Over, Yonder, and Chinaberry—Bailey Mill has its own mindset, its own culture and traditions. Say ‘I'm a Bailey Millite' and people know you'd rather chew your own hand off than hold it out for help. Only a few hundred hardy, apple-loving souls are tucked into our ridges and hollows. Newcomers, like Ida's ‘friend,' retired Lt. Col. Del Jackson, move here for the challenge and the mountainous beauty. Apples like cold, high views from majestic hillsides, and so do Millites.

What's not to love?

The Bailey Mill community includes our famous Sweet Hope Apple Orchards, Inc., several fancy ‘barns' where we sell apples and apple products to thousands of visitors each fall, the historic Bailey grist mill, what's left of Bailey Branch (a trickle through a swampy pond behind the big earthen dam my father built,) Bailey Mill Road (a fading pioneer wagon trail,) and finally, most notoriously, the Bailey Mill covered bridge, a fantastic local landmark the Mossy Creek Historical Society lists on its tour route. The bridge is more of a notorious curiosity than a dignified historical site, since it's sat high and dry, a marooned ship on a dry mountain sea, for more than two decades.

Thanks to me and Marle Settles making love beneath its sweet old timbers.

"Bailey Mill Bridge has gone unwatered for twenty-two years," I said today, then marked off the early September date on the calendar in the farm office overlooking the orchards. Shaking a little, I put my head in my hands. A plaque on my desk, given to me by my college-student twins, Joel and Samantha, and my late husband , Rev. Charles Stanton, swam in my vision.

Hope Bailey Stanton
President of Sweet Hope Orchards.
The apple of our eye.

The apple of their eye. Respected mother, wife, apple farmer. (And devoted daughter of Lucas Bailey, despite his stern control over my life after my mother died young.) A year ago Charles had turned to me in our front porch rockers one evening, put a  hand to his chest, and said in a pained voice, "My heart, Hope, my heart," as if I held it, had always held it. I tried to save him, got him to Doc Champion's over in town, then to the hospital down in Bigelow, but he was gone. Only in his early forties, and gone. I mourned him. I'd come to love Charlie, though not as much as he loved me. He was the best husband, the best father for her children a woman could want. I hadn't wanted him, at first, but that had been my mistake, not his. Whether it's people or apples, we Baileys have a history of loving slow and forever.

I'm the fourth Hope Bailey named after the Sweet Hope apple since 1895, when my great-great-great grandmother, the first Hope, crossed a luscious Sweet Hush Apple from our McGillan kin's famous orchards, up in Chocinaw County, with a hard, tart Mossy Creek Thunker. The nationally famous Sweet Hush is a wonderful lady of an apple, while the  Mossy Creek Thunker is the wild frontiersman of fruit—more than friendly with the wild mountain crabapples, and, according to proud Creekites, only good for two things: making apple liquor and throwing at somebody.

"You want to know how to knock a grown man down with a Thunker?" my grandfather, Albert Hope Bailey, was fond of telling reporters from the regional travel magazines who came to write articles on Sweet Hope Orchards. "Give him a pint of Thunker brandy, or--" Grandfather Bailey would rear back with a sly twinkle in his Bailey blues--"hit him right between the eyes with the apple itself."

Like most unlikely but destined matings, the Thunker and the Sweet Hush mingled the best of themselves to produce the sturdy, delectable Sweet Hope, and the rest, as they say at the National Society of Apple Growers, is history. Generations of Sweet Hope apple harvests have made the Bailey orchards and mountain farm one of the most prosperous businesses in all of Bigelow County, and the weekend festivities at Sweet Hope Orchards draw thousands of free-spending tourists to greater Mossy Creek every fall from September to after Thanksgiving. Ida has threatened to shoot me if I ever close the orchards. Seriously, she knows I never would. No Bailey has ever been accused of deserting the Bailey legacy of Sweet Hope. Even if it meant giving up the boy she loved. As I did, twenty-two years ago, when Bailey Branch went dry.

After I marked the dark anniversary on my desk calendar I bent my head lower and whispered the prayer I'd spoken at the end of every summer since I was seventeen.

Please God, take care of Marle Settles and forgive me for still loving him.  But this September I added a new line. And after I see him today please make him leave forever, this time.

*

I opened my eyes every morning for twenty-two years knowing that one day I'd go home to Hope. Not that I expected her to welcome me back, and I wouldn't have blamed her if she told me to go fly my Piper Cub into the side of Mossy Creek's Colchik Mountain. There were more than a few people in greater Mossy Creek who probably wished I had died along with my brother, Creighton, and more than a few who'd have trouble believing yours truly, Marle Settles, was now Lt. Col. Settles, decorated vet and newly retired fighter pilot, USMC. 

But here I was, standing in the shadows of the Bailey Mill covered bridge where a 19 year old boy with a bad past and a shaky future had made love to the only person who'd never doubted him -- Hope Bailey, named after a famous apple, the pride of the famous Baileys, an apple-pie girl. That boy—me, Marle Settles—thought giving her up had been the right thing to do. Looking back on it, I still say I did the right thing. Helluva note, being right but miserable for two decades.

Now I listened to the dry silence, the rustle of ferns and weeds growing where the creek had once whispered to us. Water always finds its way back where it belongs, I told myself. And so will we.

I heard footsteps in the leaves of the forest floor. A tall, auburn-haired woman stepped out of the woods and stood, silhouetted, framed by the trees, the mountains, the arching timber roof of the old bridge. An incredible sight. Hope Bailey Stanton--Charles' widow, Joel and Samantha Stanton's mother, my childhood love--was dressed in thigh-hugging faded jeans, a soft red sweater, and an aura of September sunshine. She took a few halting, weak-kneed steps toward me.

I took the same toward her. We stopped at the same time.

"Let's keep some root room between us," she said in a shaky voice.

She still talked in apple metaphors. All Baileys did. I slid my hands in the pockets of my khakis and tried to look like a man who'd flown in battle many times without breaking a sweat or rattling words. "Your voice is the same."

She put a hand to her heart. "So is yours."

"I hope not. I sounded like a hillbilly when you made me read books out loud to you." 

"You had a deep, beautiful drawl and a way with words that had nothing to do with good grammar. You spoke from the heart. And I loved--" She stopped. Her hand clenched over her heart, squeezing my heart along with hers.  

We looked at each other in the pieces of light and shadow that made the old bridge feel like a doorway between this world and memories. She was nearly forty and still the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in my life. I was just over forty but felt nineteen, again.

"I spent years wondering how this would feel," I said finally.

"So did I."

 "I was sorry to hear about Charlie. I swear to you. Sorry."

"It's been a year. How long have you known?"

"A year."

Silence. With two words I'd exposed the fact that I'd kept close tabs on her life. Her expression froze. "I should have known Ida would let you know."

"Incredible lady. I stayed in touch with her—and she let me."

"I know. I asked her to send you things."

Now the surprised silence belonged to me. I had scrapbooks full of mementoes Ida had mailed to me wherever I was stationed over the years – articles from the Mossy Creek Gazette about Hope Bailey Stanton, CEO of Sweet Hope Orchards, Inc., pictures of Joel and Samantha when they won some award or trophy at school, and casual snapshots of them grinning alongside Hope as she and they worked in the orchards during the colorful fall apple season. My throat tightened. "Thank you," I finally said.

By then, Hope was knotting her hands in her sweater, as if holding onto her control for dear life. "It was only right. And Ida was glad to help. She knew you weren't to blame for what Creighton did to her husband."

Inside, deep down where the boy who had been Creighton Settles' younger brother still lived, I flinched. Creighton had gone down in local history as the reason Ida Hamilton Walker's legendary husband had died in a helicopter crash up on Colchick Mountain. And I had gone down in local history as the boy who tracked his own worthless brother down and brought him to justice.

More silence. One heartbeat, then two. Hope studied me with tears in her eyes. I nearly moved toward her again, but she stood at attention, warning me off. "Why have you come back now?" she whispered.

"I want to make my family's name good here, again." I took my eyes off her long enough to indicate the majestic bridge of chestnut logs and creek stone. "When my great grandfather was hired to build this bridge for your great grandfather, the Settles name was respected."

"You have nothing to prove. I always told you that. Families fall on hard times. People understand that."

"Not the people who warned me to leave the county after Creighton--"

"Those people don't matter. There are always a few rotten apples, even in the best barrels."

"Your own father was one of them. And he was right to want me gone."

 "Marle. Marle." She said my name for the first time in twenty-two years, once with soft rebuke, the next with a harder tone. Regardless, the sound of my name on her lips made me dizzy. I held out a hand. "I want to buy this piece of land from you. The bridge, the old creek bed, a few acres around it. I want to build a house here. I want a home, here. But it's your decision."

"You're asking me to make an impossible choice."

"I'll give you as much time as you need to decide. And if the answer's No, I'll leave without an argument."

She made a hoarse sound. "I've left this bridge the way my father wanted it, high and dry for a reason. No amount of water can wash away the consequences--"

"I'm not asking you to baptize me in Bailey Branch so I can start over as if nothing else mattered."

Hope studied me with an intensity that made my knees weak. "You'll leave if I tell you I believe it's best?"

"Yes."

She held onto the creek stone piling, braced her legs, sagged a little. "You don't deserve to be cast out again--"

"Consult with your children about it. Tell them an old friend of yours and Charlie's wants to be your neighbor again. That's the truth."  

She shut her eyes for a moment. "I'll talk to them."

I turned to leave. Hope spoke very quietly. "Because they're your children, too."

I took a second to make sure my voice was okay. I have this stupid thing about upholding the tough-ass image of the military. "That's one of the secret joys of my life," I said finally. "But I never want them to know it."       

She began to cry. The Hope Bailey I remembered would rather be barbecued than seen crying.

I left before I cried, too.

*

That night, tossing in the big applewood bedstead Charlie carved as a gift for our twentieth anniversary, I pressed the sweet, raw cider from memories of Marle I had tried to forget.    

We were no more than ten years old, laying flat on our stomachs on the floor of the covered bridge, watching through a crack as the silver water of Bailey Branch swirled below us. ‘I'm gonna follow the water all the way to the other side of the world some day," Marle drawled. Bold talk for a poor boy who lived in a rusty house trailer with his mean, sleazy teenage brother and a half-crazy old grandma who drank too much. But I believed in him. I was bound to earth. He had the sky in his eyes.

"You're not going anywhere, " I announced firmly. "you pick apples for my daddy and that means you belong to me, and when we grow up I'll marry you and you'll stay right here."

He turned somber, silver-blue eyes on me beneath golden brown hair. "I ain't no apple farmer. I'm going to fly planes. Mr. Walker down at Hamilton Farm says he'll teach me. He's gonna take me out to his air strip and teach me to fly crop dusters and Pipers and even his helicopter. So someday I'm gonna fly along the path of this here creek all the way to the ocean, and out to the great beyond." He took a deep breath, then finished, "And you'll belong to me, and you'll sure enough have to come along wherever I say."

"I can't leave my apples! I'm named after them! I'm Sweet Hope Bailey!"

"I'll marry you and then you'll be Sweet Hope Settles. So you can sneak off and your apples ain't gonna know it was you that left."

That argument made no sense, but I was flattered anyway. I punched him on one shoulder like a kiss. We grinned and went back to watching the creek.        

Another memory: I was seventeen and he was nineteen. We were naked and wrapped in each other's arms on an old patchwork quilt. Overhead the mossy timbers of the covered bridge made a bower of spring shadows. The bridge had been our sanctuary and secret meeting place for so many years it seemed only right that we should make love there the first time. I was scared and happy and full of plans for the future. Marle held me tightly against his chest and whispered, "You okay? You sure?"

I looked up at him and smiled. "I'm a woman now. You're a man. We're together. I feel perfect."

"Good. Will you marry me?"

I sat up, hugging a corner of the blanket over my breasts, suddenly shy, then smiling. "We've been engaged since we were kids. Of course you'll marry me!"

 He feigned a frown. "Now, hold on, you've got that backwards. I do the asking and you do the accepting. I don't pick apples for your pa anymore. I am a certified pilot and a newly accepted college boy, going to Georgia famous Tech to be an aviation engineer, AND I DO THE ENGAGEMENT ASKING."

I punched him on the shoulder, and he laughed. I kissed him. "You belong to me and my apples," I whispered, "and that's all that matters."

Giving a dramatic sigh that became a soft, deep sound of pleasure, he made love to me, again. It was one of the happiest days of my life, his life, our life.

Another memory.

"Hope! Hope, where are you!" Charlie Stanton yelled like a Banshee as he leapt out of the Stanton family van and ran inside the apple barns later that same summer. I was knee-deep in empty apple baskets, counting the supply and trying to decide how to tell Marle my period was two weeks late. Not to mention telling Pa. No, Marle and I would get married, first, then tell Pa. Problem was, Pa didn't realize Marle and I were more than princess-and-the-peasant friends. Bailey girls didn't marry the hired help. Even the former hired help who was going to college. Thunder rumbled outside the big barn, and a high wind raked the orchards. The air smelled of tornadoes. I looked up weakly, feeling a little sick at my stomach. "Hi, Charlie. What's up?" Charlie, Marle and I had been friends since first grade at Mossy Creek Elementary.  I couldn't muster much curiosity about his harried entrance. Charlie was always intense.

Charlie slid to a stop, breathing hard. "Gimme. . .a second." He pulled an asthma inhaler from his jeans' pocket and took a quick drag on it. Charlie was tall and gawky, the only son of a smart, thoughtful family over in town. His father  was the minister of Mossy Creek Methodist, and Charlie was headed for Methodist college to follow in his father's footsteps. The second the inhaler took effect, he leaned down and grabbed me by the shoulders. "About an hour ago Creighton robbed Hamilton's Department Store."

I dropped an apple basket. "Oh, no." After years of trouble with the law, serving time in juvenile lock-ups before graduating to state prisons, Marle's older brother had finally hit the big-time. "Has Chief Royden caught him?" Battle Royden would make Crieghton wish he'd never been born.

"No. Hope, he stole a car down in Bigelow and two county sheriff's deputies chased him up on Colchick. They ran off the road up there at Big Sky Overlook. Their patrol car was totaled. They were hurt bad. Creighton got away. They say he's hiding somewhere up on Colchick."

"Oh my God."

I stood. "We have to find Marle. Jeb Walker sent him down to Bigelow to pick up a part for one of the planes. He's probably almost back to Hamilton Farm by now."

Charlie trembled. "Listen to me. You don't understand. Chief Royden needed help getting those injured deputies out of the ravine. Jeb Walker flew his helicopter up there in a thunderstorm. He airlifted the deputies to the road. They're going to be fine. But. . .but Hope…the wind caught his helicopter. It crashed. He's dead. Jeb Walker is dead. Because of Marle's brother."

I swayed. My cousin Ida's husband, the handsome and beloved and respected Jeb Walker. Dead. Because of Creighton Settles. Jeb Walker had been Marle's idol. A combination of father-figure and adopted big brother. The news swirled in my head, making me dizzy. Jeb Walker was dead, and Marle's brother was the reason.

"I have to find Marle," I said.

Charlie shook his head. "I'm trying to tell you. Marle got the news already, and he's gone into the mountains to track down Creighton. He said he's going to kill him."

By the time Charlie and I got up to Big Sky Overlook—a wide parking area along the sheer edges of a two-lane that wound up and over Colchik Mountain – two dozen police cars, ambulances, and forest ranger trucks lined the high mountain road. Gusts of wind bent the fir forest and twisted the old hardwoods. Massive, dark clouds scudded through the peaks, and silver mists filled the valleys below. Somewhere deep in the fog along the boulders and laurel of the ravine below us lay the pieces of Jeb Walker's helicopter.

I saw grown Creekite men crying, tough men I'd known all my life. "Ida got here before he died. She kissed him while he took his last breath," one of them told the others. "She said she could breathe for him if he'd just let her."  

"Little Rob's only ten years old," another said. "He'll never get over losing his daddy this way. He saw him. Saw him on the stretcher all. . .broken. Poor little feller nearly went crazy. Held onto Ida like he was protecting her from the sight, and all the time she was trying to cover his eyes with her hands."

I threw up in the roadside bushes then staggered to Chief Royden's squad car. Marle, bloody and bruised, sat in the back with his head bowed and his eyes shut. Creighton had nearly beaten him to death when Marle tried to bring him in. I knelt in the open doorway beside him. "Marle." He opened his eyes as if he couldn't quite focus on me. I took his bloody face between my hands. "Marle."

He pulled my hands into his, curled them away from him. "Stay away," he said hoarsely. "Get away. I mean it. You can't be seen with somebody like me. A Settles."

"Don't talk crazy. I don't care what anyone thinks. You're not to blame for what happened." 

"I took a pistol away from Creighton. I shot him."

A  big, gentle hand clasped my shoulder from behind. Dazed, I turned and looked up at Chief Royden. To me he had always been a John Wayne kind of man. My father lived by the books—the Farmer's Almanac, the accounting ledger, the family Bible. But Chief Royden didn't do anything by the book. Any book.  There was a little bit of larceny in him. "What Marle did was self defense," he said. If Battle Royden said one brother was justified for killing another in Mossy Creek, it was so.

I felt a temporary rush of relief. "Sir, I want to go with Marle to the hospital. There are some things I need to tell my pa, and tell Marle--"

"I have a bad feeling whatever you have to say ought to wait a year til you're eighteen and legal." He pulled me out of the way and shut the patrol car's door between Marle and me.

I looked back at Marle desperately. I was his girl. His woman. He'd get out of the car and fight for me and his own self-respect, the right to have Hope Bailey believe in him. So what if he'd shot his own brother for being a no-account? So what if Creighton was responsible for injuring two Bigelow County Sheriff's deputies and causing Jeb Walker's death in a helicopter crash?

I loved Marle and Marle loved me. We could still have a life among Creekites who revered Jeb Walker. We could still tell Pa we were getting married. We could still birth the next generation of Bailey Mill's Sweet Hope apple farmers. The creek waters still ran under our sacred bridge.

"Marle," I called, crying.

He stared straight ahead, bloody and beaten up by his own brother in a fight to the death, having served justice, but at a terrible price. He didn't lift a finger to stop Chief Royden from leading me away. I knew why, and so did he. No Settles would be welcome in Mossy Creek or Bailey Mill after that day. Marle  believed that, and there was nothing I could do to change it.

I should have told Marle I was pregnant. But he couldn't stay and I, being a Bailey, couldn't leave.

You have a twin son and daughter, I wrote to Marle a year later. He'd given up on college and joined the marines. I tracked him down at a base on the west coast.

I named them Joel and Samantha. He has your eyes. She has my hair. I have married Charlie and we let everyone believe they're his children. Papa figured out the truth and I confessed to Ida, but no one else knows. Charlie loves them and me but we've agreed on what's the right thing to do. Say the word now and we'll tell Samantha and Joel who their father is as soon as they're old enough to understand. We'll tell everyone in Mossy Creek and Bailey Mill and the whole world, too. Say the word. They're your children. I wanted to tell you before you left, but I knew you couldn't stay and I couldn't go. Papa is having trouble with his heart again and I'm managing the farm.

Marle wrote back. His letter was this short.

Our kids deserve better than my name. And so do you. Tell Charlie I'll never try to take his place. I love you and I love the babies without even knowing them, but that's how it ought to stay until some day when I can just be their friend, and yours.  

Just their friend. And just mine. To me, the world is one big apple tree and every one of us is trying hard to bloom. Either we grow an apple or we shrivel up and die. You harvest your love, or you don't. And there is no such thing as just friends.

Memories. Miseries.  I finally fell asleep in the bed Charlie made for me. But I dreamed guilty dreams of Marle, of making love to him beneath the covered bridge at Bailey Branch, and I dreamed of lost hope and of lost Hope, the naïve girl I had been. My conscience whispered to me as I slept.

Send Marle away for the sake of your kids, who don't suspect the truth. You're the apple of their eye but so was Charlie. You owe it to Charlie to let them go on thinking he was their father.

But Marle deserves a chance to know them. They'll accept him as just a friend of this family.

Too risky. You're being selfish. You want him to stay because you still love him.

Shut up, you apple-worm of a conscience.

Just after dawn I got dressed and went to see Ida.

She was the only living person in greater Mossy Creek who knew my twin apples hadn't fallen far from Marle Settle's tree.

*

Most women my age would be happy to look like Ida Hamilton Walker at her age, which is nearly twenty years older than me. It's almost unnerving the way she looks at almost sixty; there have been more than a few whispers over the years about hunting for shriveled-up portraits of her in her attic. The Hamilton clan have auburn-haired good-looking genes like their Bailey cousins, but maybe it's something about living in Mossy Creek, too. Something in the water, so to say. Or maybe it's her timeless talent for keeping the rest of us invested in life.

"You're got a tough Thunker-apple soul," Ida said as her housekeeper, Jane McEvers, ushered me into the study at Hamilton Farms. "I wondered if you'd come to see me yesterday, after meeting Marle. But no, you sweated out the night, thinking about what's the right thing to do before you came to ask me for my opinion. You have Thunker strength of character. That's why you're my favorite baby cousin."

"You say that to all your baby cousins."

"Yes, but in your case, I mean it." Ida smiled beneath somber green eyes. Her auburn hair was pinned up in a swoop of tortoise-shell combs and her tall, curvy body seemed both stately and alluring in a silk kimono Del Jackson had given her. I suspected the retired army colonel had given her other bedroom-related gifts, but she'd have threatened to shoot me if I asked her to confirm that. Rumors of his sleepovers were legend; so were whispers of several torrid  vacations in Europe and the Caribbean. I sank down in an overstuffed leather chair,  hugged a soft tapestry pillow to my stomach, and shook my head when she offered me a shot of bourbon with my tea. "Not before breakfast."

"Then I'll tell Jane to bring you a biscuit and sliced ham. Voila. Breakfast."

"Okay, so I'll have the bourbon. I was only trying to feign  respectability."

"Naturally. You're a Bailey." 

"That feels like an insult."

"No, just a warning. A person should always celebrate her family's best traits but never forget their worst ones. You Baileys tend to be prudish, then overreact and throw out the babies with the branch water."

That remark hit below the belt. After a quick, tearful blink or two, I inhaled sharply and recovered. "I took care of my children the best way I knew how. By keeping them at Bailey Mill. I wanted Marle to stay, too, but he felt he had no future there. Maybe he was right. What should I have done differently? And don't say I should have followed him, because he didn't want me to follow him. He had to go off and prove his worth all by himself."

"You think I don't understand that? Hah. You've just identified the best and the worst trait of the Hamiltons as well as the Settles family. Pride. But what do you really know about Marle's people?"

"I know his great grandpa was the only special one. At least that's what Marle always said when we were kids. He didn't like to talk about it." I paused. "To me, Marle was the special one, but I never convinced him to believe that."

"Well, let me tell you, then. Marle's great grandfather was a Cherokee Indian. His family stayed in these mountains despite all the government's efforts to send them out west when the rest of the Cherokees were driven away. Like the Halfacre family over in town, they ‘sat down' on their native land and wouldn't budge. They'd been settled here forever, they said. Half of them died fighting the army during the removal and a few, I'm sorry to say, were killed by white pioneer families around here.

"My great grandparents knew Marle's great grandfather as Settin' Down Joe. His Cherokee-white name. Settin' Down Joe was a master carpenter and it was him who turned the big log cabin here on this spot--" Ida jabbed a long, clear-polished nail at the Turkish rug—"into the Victorian showplace it became by the turn of the century. By then Settin' Down Joe was known as Joe Settles, a Creekite of means and respect. He built most of the bridges in Mossy Creek, including yours up at Bailey Mill. He owned a fine home, property, the Settles saw mill. He had a beloved wife from a good family—who happened to be white. No one threatened him or his mixed-race children. It took a will of steel and more courage than most of us will ever have for Joe Settles to stay here and fit in and prosper."

Ida sighed. "But it was that same tough pride that led his son, Marle's grandfather, Payson Settles, to reject anything that smacked of ‘charity' after he lost a leg in a sawmill accident in the nineteen twenties. That wonderful, terrible Settles' pride ruined their family. Marle's grandfather wouldn't accept help so he lost the sawmill, lost all his money, lost the family homestead, his wife left him, his children began to run wild—everything went wrong. That was the beginning of the end for the Settles' dynasty in Mossy Creek. Hard times bring out the worst in people, and the Settles became a perfect example of that."

"Until now," I said quietly. "Marle intends to redeem his family name."   

"Yes. And he will. I don't doubt it."

Jane delivered sliced ham and a biscuit the size of my hand. Ida doused my steaming cup of tea with liquor the color of old wood. I sipped the potent brew in silence. After Jane left us alone in the study behind discreetly closed double doors Ida ordered, "Eat, drink, be merry." Then she moved around the elegant office as if she'd forgotten I was there. She straightened paperwork for Hamilton Farm's dairy operation atop a gilt-edged desk and flicked dust motes off a wall filled with framed commendations from various civic groups for her work as mayor of Mossy Creek over the past two decades.

I was dutifully swallowing a bite of ham washed down with bourbon tea  when she stopped before a large, framed, black-and-white photograph from the late 1960's. A handsome, dark-haired man in khakis and a black aviator's jacket smiled at her. The jacket hung around his shoulders with one sleeve free for the white sling that held his right arm. He smiled despite the injured arm and the fact that he was standing among the wreckage of his favorite small plane. In the background, several hundred fat dairy cows grazed the pastures of Hamilton Farm, and Colchik Mountain towered in the distance.

The cocky, injured pilot was Jeb Walker, and he was smiling at 25-year-old Ida Hamilton, who had found him and his downed plane in her cow pasture the day after she graduated from college and returned home to take charge of the Hamilton businesses. Her father had just died. Her mother was long dead. Ida was whispered to be too young and reckless to run the farm, the department store, and the Hamilton real estate holdings. The last thing she needed was public consternation over her private life.

That fact never stopped her from loving Jeb Walker the second she pulled him from the wreckage and he kissed her as a thank-you.

Jeb, the notorious, 30-ish son of a wealthy Savannah family down on the Georgia coast, had been an Air Force pilot and was a decorated vet of the Korean War. He owned five high-powered stunt planes and was on his way to yet another air show or wild adventure who-knew-where. Then the sky bluntly dropped him into Ida's hands, and she refused to give him back.

Ida had already proved her ability to get what she wanted and protect what was hers. She'd bested her graspy, brilliant, much-older sister, Ardaleen, for control of the family's Mossy Creek legacy—no small victory, considering that Ardaleen had married into the powerful Bigelow clan and was already the mother of a a smug little baby boy named Hamilton Bigelow, the future governor of Georgia. The Ida-Ardaleen war had raged through the courts, the newspapers, the whispered waterfalls of local gossip—in essence, through the heart, soul, and divided loyalties of every related Hamilton/Bigelow family in Bigelow County. But finally Ida had come out on top—to the joy of Creekites who detested Bigelowans. Her fellow small-town citizens immediately began to refer to her as "Big Miss Ida," the title her legendary grandmother had worn as a title of respect.     

Jeb Walker, with his courage, his money, his charm, and his utter devotion to passions he embraced—which immediately included Ida and her entire realm—was no less and no more than a perfect match. That first Creekite-kingdom photograph of him said it all: The intense expression in his eyes showed he'd found where he belonged and who he belonged to, and that ‘who' was only a few feet away, in jeans and a tie-dyed silk blouse, flirting with him from behind the camera.

Ida married him two weeks later. For more than a decade they ruled as the the royal couple of the mountains—not just Mossy Creek, but all the southern mountains, from Georgia to Virginia. Ardaleen and no other Bigelow even came close in terms of sheer popularity and personal charisma. Rob was their crown prince, their darling; with baby Rob in tow Ida ran the businesses while Jeb flew everything from crop dusters to experimental gliders to rescue helicopters. He saved at least a dozen Creekite lives over the years—helping the forestry service search for lost hikers, airlifting the sick and injured to the hospital down in Bigelow. No man was more willing to fly into a bad situation if someone needed his help. He always made it back to Ida's earth-hugging arms, until Marle's brother robbed Hamilton's, two county deputies crashed in a ravine up on Colchik, and Jeb flew his helicopter there to help them. Creighton Settle's crime brought Jeb up the mountaintop on a day full of storms and fate. It was as if the sky had always planned to take him back from Ida.

And it did.

After Jeb died, we all feared she'd kill herself within the first year. If she hadn't had Rob to think of, I believe she wouldn't be here, now. In a way, Mossy Creek helped save her. In the middle of her worst grief our high school burned down. As everyone knows, the circumstances were bizarre and there were wild rumors attached. The loss of the school threw the whole town into civic chaos. There was dire talk of no one running for mayor that next year; of the town's franchise being revoked by the state legislature, of The Creek, as people called Mossy Creek combined with its four outlying communities, being dis-incorporated to await a terrible future when its big, bloated sister-city of Bigelow would annex the unallied Creekites like a snake eating scattered chicks.

Ida stood up at a town hall meeting and said, to put it simply:

Not as long as there's breath in my body.

She pulled us all together. She ran for mayor and won the election with 97 percent of the vote (one percent went to Elvis, and two percent went to Jesus. A Creekite electoral tradition.) Ida had found a calling big enough to keep her focused on living. She made Mossy Creek her lover, husband, and second child. Rob made the town his mission in life, too, though I have never understood why salvaging Hamilton's Department Store helped him cope with his father's death. It was as if he had to take charge of the place that had played a part in the crime that led Jeb into the stormy sky above Colchik.

The swirl of memories made me dizzy. I finished choking down a section of breakfast biscuit and ham, took another deep swallow of liquored tea, and blinked back tears. Over by the photograph of Jeb, Ida stood as if held by his spell. Maybe that's why she didn't seem to age like normal women. Maybe love can hold us still in time. One way or the other, for good or for bad, I believe that's possible. 

I shifted miserably and gave a polite cough. Ida moved away from Jeb's photograph, took and released a deep breath, fluffed her sofa pillows, adjusted a crooked rose in a vase, and trailed one hand along a sleepy gray housecat stretched across an antique English side table. Every move was a symphony of sensual restoration.

Suddenly I understood. She mourned, but she lived.

She was giving me a good long look at her serenity and strength. At her life two decades after losing the man she had loved more than life itself. At how well she had survived. That she was no victim, and neither was I.

"I'm about to get drunk and philosophical," I announced.

She turned slightly and nodded, regal and wise and smiling with just the slightest bawdy humor. "That was the point of giving you bourbon at seven a.m." 

"You didn't fall into grief and bitterness when Jeb died. You never stooped to taking revenge on Marle for what his brother did. You kept your principles and your priorities straight. So you're telling me that now I have to do the same thing. That I should welcome Marle home even at the risk of our children learning that I hid the truth from them about their real father, because it's the right thing to do."

Ida froze. The sassy, sly woman was gone. In her eyes was the young widow who had buried a dearly loved husband. "You're wrong. I was bitter. I did fall into grief and revenge. Do you think I'd have let poor Marle –just nineteen years old and not to blame for his brother's crime--be driven out of town if I'd been in my right mind? No. At the time, I was glad there were no more Settles in Mossy Creek. I wanted Marle gone." She flung out an angry hand toward the photograph of Jeb. "Even now I still miss Jeb, and I'll always be bitter over losing him. And I'll never forgive Creighton Settles for being the cause—even indirectly—of his death."

My tea cup rattled as I set it down. "So how can you help Marle? If you can't forgive his brother and you hate--"

Ida said a few disgusted words I won't repeat. Let's just not forget that she is an educated woman with a wide vocabulary that includes language mountaineers use when they're wrestling bears. "Don't be ridiculous," she summed up more politely. "I don't ‘hate' Marle and have never hated him. I've told him so. Don't you understand what I'm saying to you? We use every crude and not-necessarily noble method we know to keep ourselves alive after we lose someone we love? We fight the loss in pathetic and sometimes destructive ways, but we go on breathing and we learn to love again. It's never the same kind of love but it's love. You loved Charlie, even if it isn't the same wild feeling you had for Marle. You mourned Marle but went on living. That didn't mean Marle was dead to you—and it didn't mean you could or should forget him, anymore than he forgot you."

She rushed over to me, grabbed me by the shoulders, and practically forced me to my feet. "He's a good man and he deserves to be where he belongs, and he belongs here. Jeb would want me to welcome him back. This is one of the few ways I can keep Jeb's memory alive. By doing the right thing."

"Ida, I'm honored that you've taken this fight as your own, but--"

"It's not my fight. It's yours. It's Marle's. It's a fight for the children you have together. For the future of Settin' Down Joe's descendents." She shook me lightly. "Don't deprive your kids of their family heritage. Don't deprive them of their father. Yes, Charlie loved them and he was a father to them and you don't ever want them to think of him as less. But they need a father for the rest of their lives, too, and Charlie's gone. Listen, my father died young and that changed me forever. Then my son's father died young, too—and it has changed Rob forever. He's decided to live his life based on some warped notion of how a man takes care of his family—by not taking any risks, not ever taking the chance that they might lose him. I cannot get across to Rob that life is a balancing act and Jeb would want him to risk falling off the edge of the sky. Don't deprive your children of that risk, either—the risk of loving—or even hating--Marle. Give them an opportunity to make the choice themselves. If you're lucky, they can love Charlie and Marle, too. They can love two fathers—and if they're smart they'll come to understand how much they need Marle now that Charlie is gone. Trust me. Trust them. Trust your own heart. You realize why, don't you? To put it in terms you Baileys love--you're as tough as a Thunker but your heart is a Sweet Hope?"

I held onto her, shaking. "I hate when my heart talks to me like an apple. Don't you understand my point? My heart is telling me to throw caution to the wind and say ‘Yes, Marle, stay. Yes, we'll tell the kids the truth about us.' Because my Sweet Hope heart says ‘You grew these kids from good stock. They'll give you good fruit.' But Ida, Ida. . .my heart can't promise they'll give Marle unconditional love and forgive me for letting them believe Charlie was their biological father all these years. What if they hate us both and turn their backs on us? What if I lose my children? What if Marle and I plant a Sweet Hope tree but get a Thunker harvest?" 

Ida rolled her eyes at yet another apple metaphor. "Spoken like a true Bailey. Look, there are never any guarantees in life and certainly no promises that you'll get the harvest you want from your personal orchard. But there is one thing you can count on. That you're doing the right thing for the man you love and the children you created together. Just as I'm trying to do. I can't bring Jeb home, and I can't stop Rob from living his life in Jeb's shadow, but I can help you bring Marle home and keep your children in the light." 

She hugged me.

I cried my Sweet Hope heart out.

*

There's something about a twenty-foot granite statue of a Confederate general that makes a man a little defensive. General Hamilton, Mossy Creek's Civil War symbol of stone cajones, stared down his granite nose at me as if I was a traitor who'd escaped a good old fashioned firing squad. I stood there in the center of the town square as the first fall leaves drifted down, pretending to scrutinize the old Rebel but in fact just letting every Creekite on Main Street take a long, hard look at me. And they did.

Mossy Creek. After living all over the world, I could have laughed at my hometown, but the joke would be on me. The town was still a beacon for quirky mountaineers, loners, lovers, and people who liked giving the rest of the world the old five-fingered nose-thumb salute. Mossy Creek was a place I had loved, and still loved. My great grandfather built the town hall and the row of shops on the west side of the square, where a coffee shop called The Naked Bean now shared space with Beechum's Bakery. 

I glimpsed people craning their heads to stare at me from the doors and windows of  those shops and everywhere else around the square--in front of Mama's diner, the town hall, the pub, the jail, and even peering at me from behind the gazebo on the other side of the park from General Hamilton--men, women, and children, old and young, black, white, pink, brown and everything in-between, they were all Creekites United In Eyeballing.

Did I look that threatening? Big and lean and hulking, maybe, but I'd deliberately dressed friendly in hiking boots, khakis and an old chambray shirt—the uniform of every Creekite mountain man old enough to ditch his diapers and young enough to well, ditch his adult diapers. But all right, I knew what everyone was thinking: There he is, a damned troublemaking Settles. Creighton's brother. Six-foot-one-inches of Settles-without-a-cause. A man without a Creekite country.

I squinted up at General Hamilton as I tossed the butt of a chewed cigar in a nearby trash can. I didn't even have to look to see I'd made the pitch.  Instinctive aim. Great reflexes. A fighter pilot forever. In my retirement, I might take up precision cigar-butt tossing for fun and profit.

I gave the general a casual salute.   

 Settles, here. Lt. Colonel Settles. Formerly of the Union-Yankee Air Force. Want to fight, you old Reb? No? All right, then does anyone else around here want a piece of me? They're watching me like kittens watching a spider. Bring it on. 

I sank my hands in my trouser pockets and debated going over to speak to Ingrid Beechum, an older cousin of mine, four times removed or something like that. A Settles girl had married a Beechum boy about a hundred years ago. Ingrid must be about Ida's age now, sixtyish going on thirty, hell on men of all ages. I remembered as a kid watching a teenaged Ingrid yelling "You damned worthless Settles are no kin of mine," as she chased Creighton out of her parent's bakery because he'd tried to steal another donut.  He was maybe eight at the time, but already filching anything that wasn't tied down.

Speaking of which. . .in my shirt pocket was a long list of Creighton's debts to pay back. First I'd walk into Beechum's and hand Ingrid a hundred dollar bill. "For all the donuts," I'd say. Then I'd hand another C-note to Dempsey at the I Probably Got It Store, because Creighton pilfered tools from Dempsey's father, and next I'd give several hundred-dollar bills to Rosie at Mama's All You Can Eat Diner, where Creighton had bashed out the windows one night after Rosie's mother fired him from his dishwashing job—because she caught him stealing tips off the tables. I'd work my way down the list from there, until no one in Mossy Creek could say the Settles hadn't settled up, at least in terms of money. The other debts – Jeb Walker's death, Hope's life without me, our kids never knowing I was their father -- could only be paid down, never worked off completely.      

"Get going," I said aloud. I rolled my shoulders to ease the tension. Put me in a jet flying over enemy anti-aircraft sites and I'm as calm as a cat in the sun. Put me on the Creek's square with every eye on me and I feel like a human tourniquet.

"Well, it's about time you showed back up around here, Marle Settles," a little-old-lady voice said behind me. I turned and looked down at, well, a little old lady. After mentally erasing twenty years off her, I realized she was Millicent Hart. Crazy-sweet Mrs. Hart had been the only person in Mossy Creek who stole from more people than my brother did. At least she hadn't done it out of meanness, and she'd never deliberately hurt anyone. 

"Mrs. Hart," I said gruffly. "I'm glad you're still roaming free."

She snorted, then held out a blue-veined hand, palm up. On it lay a small wood chisel, the handle pockmarked with termite damage, the blade coated in decades of dust and rust. "This belonged to your great grandpa," she announced. "When his son went bankrupt after the sawmill accident the bank sold off all Joe Settles' tools. I stole this from the auction. I was just a little girl at the time. I liked old Joe. He built my parents' house, you know. Now my daughter Maggie runs an herbal shop there. She's sleeping with a blue-haired sculptor, you know. They have sex in the very house your great grandpa built. So I thought you should have this chisel."

After a moment, I gave up on logic and said quietly, "I want to buy that chisel from you, Mrs. Hart."

"Buy it? Son, you can't buy what the heart loves enough to steal. No, you have to take the heart's gifts as a gift. A gift from Mrs. Hart to your heart." She pressed the chisel in my hand. "Welcome home. Now settle down and make old Joe proud. Go build yourself a life."  

She scooted away with the agility of an eighty-something-year-old kleptomaniac who plans her get-aways as carefully as her targets. I took a step after her, then realized people were heading towards me from every side.

It was as if Millicent Hart's defection with polite staring had broken some spell, and now I was fair game. I slid the heirloom chisel inside my trouser pocket, then waited, heads up, legs braced, arms hanging quiet but ready by my sides, ready to stay by my sides, that is. Like most men who've been trained to fight, I never forget how easily I can hurt people. Unlike most men who've been trained to fight, I also never forget that I was capable of wrestling a gun away from my own brother and shooting him. Whatever happened next wouldn't happen because I started it.    

"Marle Settles."

"Marle Settles."

"Marle Settles."

My name was spoken by each person as he or she arrived in the inner circle of my homecoming--Ingrid Beechum and Rosie from the diner, Dempsy, Dan MacNeil from the fixit shop (I owed his old man a hundred dollars to cover a carbureator Creighton had stolen,) Pearl NAME from the bookstore, Rainey Cecil from Goldilocks, who had been a feisty, red-haired little girl who aimed hairspray at Creighton every time he tried to sneak in her mother's beauty salon. And finally here came ancient NAME, who had quietly fed me dinner on her back porch when I was a kid wandering around town without a meal but too proud to ask for one; and ancient Zeke Abercrombie, who had been mayor of Mossy Creek back then, and who now kept up the flower beds around General Hamilton's granite, fergit-hell feet.

Like worried ghosts they closed in on me, a little nervous, frowning, throwing me off for a minute until I realized they'd spoken my name without anger, and in fact, were only watching me for a reaction before they moved in any closer. I held up both hands, palm out, like Millicent Hart offering to return the goods. "I don't understand."

"We know you don't, Marle," Ingrid said. "Because you never came back to ask how people really felt about you."

"I don't expect a welcome mat--"

"Looks like you expect to be tarred and feathered, instead," Mr. Abercrombie said. "Marle, we can't promise you that everyone in Mossy Creek is thrilled to see Creighton Settle's brother come home, but we do want you to know you've got friends here."     

"You always had friends here, Boy," NAME intoned in a voice as old as parchment. She wrapped her dark, bony hands around my forearm like the talons of a bird coming to roost gently. "You think Creekites forget their own? You think what your brother did is what you did? Last year I turned a hundred and I thought I was ready to die, but then I saw all the folks who didn't want me to die and I said, Well, I'm just a plain fool if I don't stay around a while longer. The way I see it, you looked death right in its face a long time ago, but you haven't yet seen why you got the right to live. Well, I teetered over here today to tell you. You got the right to live, Boy. Welcome home."

Okay, now most of the women were crying and even Dan MacNeil, who looked like he could bite nails in two, was snuffling. A tight spot grew in the back of my throat and couldn't come up with any words to get past it. How in the hell had I forgotten that Creekites are always surprising and never take a backseat when it comes to plain, bald-faced, public displays of intent? I'd just gotten the equivalent of a group hug from some of the most important citizens in town, and all under the stony eyes of a Hamilton who'd fought for the wrong side and maybe, just maybe, wanted me to realize what side I belonged on, now.

"I…have a list, here," I said gruffly, then pulled out my notepad of Creighton's petty crimes. "It's something I wish I'd taken care of a long time ago. Things my brother did. If I've forgotten anything my brother stole, or broke, or vandalized, I want you to tell me, because I'm going to do everything I can to repay--"

"Then go down to Hell, drag your brother back, and let me have five minutes to kill the bastard myself."

Rob Walker finished that entrance by stepping through the startled crowd. I would have recognized Jeb and Ida's tall, dark-haired son anywhere, even after twenty-two years. But it caught me off guard to see him in a pin-striped blue suit and silk tie--the president of Hamiton's Department Store. I'd heard about his likable lawyer wife and nice little daughter. I envied him, but then again, I didn't. One look at the fury in his face and the fists he clenched in front of him told me this was payback day for him. I'd known hardened soldiers in the field with kinder eyes. He didn't see me. He saw my brother.

"Take your best shot," I said quietly.

And he hit me.

It's one thing to be noble; it's another to be laying on the ground feeling as if your jaw just bounced off the inside of your skull, tasting your own blood—and sensing—I have some military experience with the sensation—that the earthquake in your brain is not going away in the next five minutes, because you probably have a concussion. I raised myself to my elbows and became dimly aware of various people shrieking around me. Rob bent over me and wrapped one hand in my shirt. "You're not welcome in my town, and you never will be," he said. "To me you'll always be Creighton Settles' brother, and nothing else matters. Get up and fight like a man--the way your brother never did."

I grabbed him by the wrist, twisted expertly, and popped his hold on me. "One free punch is my limit," I said between bloody lips.  Pain whitened his face but he refused to back off. Likewise, I refused to let go of his hand so he could pound me again. We began a free-form arm-wrestling match, me still on the ground and him leaning over me, barely moving but straining every muscle. I was 41 and could still knock down my weight in marines, but he was most of a decade younger and looked like he spent his time in Hamilton's sporting goods department punching a boxer's bag.

It was no fun.

Someone loomed over us both. Amos Royden, Battle's son and heir to the title of Mossy Creek Police Chief, pulled Rob up by the back of his fine suit. "Take a stroll over to my office," Amos said to Rob. Not a suggestion, the way Amos put it, and the look on Amos's face said he was ready to add another arm to our arm-wrestling match.   

Unfortunately, Rob still wanted to kill me. He never even looked at Amos. Didn't seem to hear him. Never took his eyes off me. "Get up," he repeated through clenched teeth. "It's an insult to my dad's memory for your or any other Settles to come back here expecting to stay. This isn't over."

But for me, suddenly, it was.

I remembered the day Jeb took me and Rob up for our first wild-ass, free-form, trick-diving plane ride. I was a dirt-poor kid who hung around his airplanes absorbing aviation trivia like a sponge, and Rob did the same. The kid was Jeb's proud little lookalike shadow. Jeb loaded us into his restored WW II fighter plane for a hair-raising series of twists and dives over Colchik Mountain.

"Hold onto your lunch, men," Jeb yelled around the unlit butt of a fine cigar. "Marle, after the first roll I'll let you take the controls."

"Yessir, Captain Walker!"

"Rob, you make it through without losing your lunch and I'll let you help land this tub!"

"Yessir, Captain Daddy!"

Jeb never even broke a sweat. He'd flown fighters in Korea as a young honcho straight out of the Air Force academy. He had the first small jet trails of gray at his temples, but he was a legend among mountain pilots. I wanted to be Jeb Walker. Rob, like most little boys, worshiped the ground his daddy walked on. Or flew over.

Rob and I grinned like idiots when we climbed out of the vintage fighter plane. We staggered around then sat down hard on the dirt of the Mossy Creek air strip. But we didn't toss our cookies. To toast our non-puking victory, Jeb stood at attention and saluted us.  "You'll both be ace pilots one day," he said. "You've got the stomachs for it."

We saluted back.

Twenty-plus years later, that's what I remembered when I looked up at Rob. I saw a kid who had been more like me than not. A boy who I'd wished had been my baby brother. A kid who'd been grounded by his father's death like a bird who'd lost a wing. Rob had never set foot inside another small plane after Jeb died. It wasn't fear, according to Ida, but some brand of responsibility he'd adopted. He wouldn't risk dying the same way; wouldn't risk hurting his mother again, and later, his wife and kid. Especially his kid. Jeb Walker's son refused to learn to fly. Or forget. I wanted to help him, not hurt him.

I turned my head enough to spit blood, then wiped one hand across my mouth. The world swam in lazy circles. "If it would bring Jeb back I'd let you beat me to death," I said to Rob. "But it won't, and I'm not."

"I just want you out of my town." He strained to get the words out, since Amos was now patiently twisting Rob's arm behind his back. "I mean it. Get up. This isn't over."

I took a slow breath. My head throbbed. There were three Robs, now. I heard an ambulance siren somewhere in another universe. "It won't be over," I told him, "until you have the guts to live the way Jeb wanted you to live. Learn to fly."   

Rob made a hoarse sound then lurched toward me with his free hand drawn back in another fist. Thankfully, the maneuver helped Amos jerk him off balance. Amos spun him around then calmly pushed him through the crowd.  "We'll take that stroll, now," Amos said quietly. Rob looked shaken. All the fight drained out of him. I'd hit him where he lived, without lifting a finger. He let Amos pull him away.

Good. Time to collect a few lost brain cells. I shut my eyes. The Creekite world whirled around me without my participation. Now everyone in town could stare at me while I dozed off in a nice, undignified little faint.

"Did you see the look on Rob's face?" someone whispered in the crowd. "It was like Marle ripped his heart out and handed it to him."

"Well, Marle isn't Creighton, and Rob is just a fool for looking at him that way. Rob Walker's been walking around with his heart on his sleeve for twenty years. Nothing new about that. He needs to have some sense knocked into him."

"Don't you talk about Rob that way!"

"Rainey, we all know you think Rob's perfectly fine since last fall when the reunion mystery was resolved, but he's not fine and he never will be--"

"He went into a rage just now, Rainey. Admit it—there's a dark side to Rob even his wife and his best friends—like you--can't fix."

"Ingrid, I will never perm you again, I swear,  if you keep talking that way about one of the most responsible, good-hearted--"

Amidst this weird bickering I heard the soft scuffle of running feet. Someone knelt beside me. Hands curved around my face gently. I smelled an apple scent mixed with cinnamon and sugar and bourbon, sweet but sexy, clean but not shy. Hope.   

"Stand back and stop staring at him, please," I heard her say. "He did the right thing and I'm taking him home."

A man can tolerate hard choices, loneliness, and a concussion when the woman he has always loved says that.

*

I knew a fact about Marle few other people remembered: His jaw was his Achilles Heel. Creighton had broken it badly during one of their boyhood fistfights, and it hadn't healed quite right, despite Dr. Champion's expert care. So when Rob slammed a fist into Marle's chin he did more damage than anyone would have predicted. In a way, he did bring Creighton back from the dead for a vengeful beating, because he proved Marle could never escape the taint of his brother's crime and violence; the memory lived in Marle's bones. 

Marle spent the rest of the day and then the night with his face draped in an ice pack, resting uneasily under warm Bailey-grandma quilts in a guest bed at my farm. I woke him up every few hours and made him count my fingers.

"Four," he said the first time I did it. "And you're not wearing your wedding ring."

"I took it off while I was working in the apple barn yesterday. The season is about to start and. . .oh, go back to dozing in a coma."

I held up my right hand only, after that.

"Check his vision regularly," Doctor Champion ordered, "and talk to him to make sure he's coherent--just to be on the safe side, after a smack in the head that would have put most men in the hospital."

Oh, Marle was coherent. His vision might be a little fuzzy, his jaw swollen, his tongue raw where his teeth had snapped into it under the force of Rob's fury-fueled punch, but there was no doubt in my mind that he knew every move I made. The mere passage of my hand across his bare chest to smooth the apple-print bedspread drew his half-shut gaze like a magnet. He inhaled deeply every time I bent over him. When I sat in a chair beside the bed and talked to him to help him drift off to sleep, he kept his eyes shut but gingerly angled his head toward my voice. I wrapped an apple-print throw around my jeans and sweater and sat beside him all that night, even when he slept.

"The world is clear again," he said as he walked into my big, marble-countered kitchen the next morning. "I only see one of you. Too bad." He latched the buttons on his blood-speckled shirt. I glanced at the disappearing sight of his bare stomach and darkly haired chest, then looked away with misery. I wanted him just as recklessly as I had when I was a teenager. If love can turn back time then I would always be seventeen, in Marle's arms. 

"Most people will tell you that one of me is more than enough," I said quickly. "I'm picky, demanding, strict--you name it. According to the kids and my employees I'm about as fun-loving and spontaneous as a squirrel hiding nuts for a hard winter." I kept my back to him and finished filling a percolator. "I sent one of my farmhands to fetch a gallon of water from Bailey Branch Swamp this morning. So when you drink this coffee you'll be getting a dose of the old creek. I believe there's still potent magic in the water. Hmmm, I guess you can add ‘silly' to those other descriptions of me. Silly and sentimental and--"

He stepped up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. I stiffened and relaxed at the same time, lost my breath, felt every inch of my skin blush like the pink-veined flesh of a peeled Sweet Hope. Marle was close enough for his warm breath to touch the back of my neck. "You're still the Hope I remember," he said gruffly. "And that girl was perfect, to me."

I pivoted on weak knees, my throat aching, and looked up at him. "If she'd been perfect, she would have followed you. She'd have gone wherever you went, even if you rejected her, and she'd have told you she was pregnant."

"That boy she loved—that boy I was--never gave her a chance. He did the right thing—for that perfect girl, and for the children we made." He held me by the shoulders, pulling me toward him, then holding me still, me with my hands reaching for his shirtfront, to pull him close, to keep him at a distance. There were so many obstacles in the thin air between us. "What happened yesterday wasn't good," he said. "If I stay, there'll be more trouble."

"Oh? I saw plenty of good. I saw people who cared about you, people who made an effort to welcome you back."

"None of them were named Rob Walker."

"Rob needs to fight you. He needs to deal with the past. You're the key to him doing that. Ida knows that—it's one reason she wanted you to come back here. Sorry, but you're stuck--it's messy business, being an icon of redemption. Isn't it?"

"An icon of redemption." He gave the words a sardonic twist and added a mountaineer term or two to seal his disgust. But all the while he searched my face. "Are you trying to tell me," he said slowly, "that you've decided you want me to stay?"

Silence. We looked at one another in electric sorrow and desire and fierce self-restraint. "We have children to think of." Children to think of.  "I've called Joel and Samantha at the university. I've told them you're here…Lt. Col. Settles, our old friend, their father's and mine. Old childhood friend. That you want to buy the bridge and a few acres around it so you can build a house. They both immediately said they'd drive home today and meet you."

"They know my history."

"Of course. Everyone knows the story of--" I halted, wincing.

Marle nodded stiffly. "Everyone knows the story of the trashy Settles family."

I lifted my chin. "They know you were and are considered a good soul and that I have always spoken of you as a dear friend. And they know Charlie felt the same way."

Marle relaxed a little. "All right, then I'll go back to my room at Hamilton Inn and get cleaned up, and you let me know when they get here. I'll come back looking decent, and we'll do the whole ‘old friend' scenario and see what they say about me being their family's next-door neighbor."     

 I uttered a soft sound of defeat. "It's not going to be that simple. Marle…we have to tell them the truth. That you're their father."

Stunned silence. Marle's eyes bored into mine, his expression dark, angry, incredulous. "No. Not just No. Hell, no. I won't do that to Charlie, to you, to them. No. I didn't come back to hurt them with the truth. It's not your decision to make alone, Hope. I don't want them to know--"

"How can you be a father to them if they don't know you're their father?"

"By being their friend. By being your friend. By developing trust and respect and. . .Hope, I want them to like me, for God's sake. That's more than enough for me. I admit I've daydreamed that some day, with luck and a small miracle or two, there might be a way for you and me to tell them. But not now. Not like this."

I shook my head wearily. "If you stay and they find the truth by accident, they'll never forgive either one of us."

"Ida's the only one who knows I'm their father."

I smiled thinly. "No, Ida's the only one who knows for certain. Trying to keep a secret in Mossy Creek is like floating on a sponge. If you stay and we're seen together. . .the rumors will sink us. Joel and Samantha will hear something. We can't let them find out that way."

"Then I'll leave. Now. I'll get back in my Piper and fly out today and you tell them I've changed my mind about making a home here." He dropped his grip on my shoulders and took a step back.

Misery and grief and rage and longing rose up inside me and spewed out. "Don't you dare be noble and try to desert me again," I hissed. "I'll come after you this time. I swear it."

 He pulled me into his arms just as I jerked him into mine. We kissed ferociously, him not caring about his bruised mouth and me not letting him care. The kiss quickly began to sink into something far more painful--tender and urgent and filled with memories, then gentle and loving and very, very seductive. He sank a hand in my hair and gently pulled my head back enough for him to look down into my eyes. "I can live the rest of my life alone," he whispered hoarsely, "remembering you right now. I am leaving, Hope. And you're staying. I know you better than you know yourself. You're not going to ruin their lives by telling them who I really am.  I won't let you."

Two pairs of footsteps thudded on my front veranda. Marle and I traded a startled look. "Joel and Samantha are here early," I said hoarsely. "This is meant to be."

"I want your word. You won't tell them."

The front door opened with the swoosh of oiled hinges and the slightest melodic jingle of a tiny wind chime dangling from a wooden apple. "Mom?" a strong male voice called, followed by a lilting female voice singing out, "Mother? We're here."

The agony on Marle's face tore me apart. "Give me your word," he repeated.

I clutched a hand to my throat to ease the knot there. "I can only give you my love and hope I'm doing the right thing."  

He looked as if I'd stabbed him. I turned away. Moving like old people whose bones refuse to bend, we went to meet our children--our harvest of mistakes and love and redemption--together.

*

Our son, Joel Stanton, is a lanky, dark-haired future astronaut. He's finishing a degree in science at UGA but has already been accepted at Ga. Tech, down in Atlanta, where he plans to get a second bachelor's degree, in engineering.

"Mom, I'll wave to you from Mars someday," he likes to tell me.

"I'll be out in the orchards, and I'll wave back," I always say.  

Our daughter, Samantha Stanton, is a tall, sturdy, redheaded farmer. She's finishing a degree in horticultural at UGA, with a minor in business. After that she'll go down to Atlanta and study more business, at Georgia State. After that she'll become my junior partner in Sweet Hope Farms.

"We need an expanded, year-round, commercial kitchen to produce Sweet Hope apple pies and jellies, Mom," she tells me. "And an on-line catalog with credit-card ordering."

"I'll be out in the orchards," I always repeat. "Waving at Mars." 

By which I mean that I'll be content to work my earth and nurture my trees as long as my children are happy in their own orchards, whatever those may be. They are the fine harvest of my heart, and Marle's heart, and Charlie's, and all three of us did well by them. I'm so proud of Joel and Samantha I could cry.

Crying was uppermost in my mind all morning, as they politely chatted with Marle, the man they didn't know was their father, the man who gave Joel the heart of an eagle and Samantha the dark, visionary eyes of a Cherokee medicine woman. Sitting on a stiff wicker chair across from them on the back veranda, his stoic expression crystallized in the autumn sunshine, he made nice in return, gruff and formal and straight-backed, a man of means and honors, a military officer of no small rank. I was so proud of him I could cry, too. He kept glancing my way like a condemned soldier waiting for the firing squad to pull the trigger. Our unsuspecting children saw a strong-jawed, notorious man of the world; I saw a vulnerable soul depending on me for his future.    

Finally, Joel and Samantha traded one of those portentous, semi-psychic looks shared by children who shared a womb. My skin tingled. Charlie and I had had a saying for moments like this. "Look out," one of us would whisper. "The wolf puppies are about to team up for the rabbit hunt." 

"Now, hmmm, Lt. Colonel," Joel said in his deepest, most solemn voice, "Let's get down to brass wing nuts and talk about your request to buy property from our mother. You realize, I know, that every acre on this mountain has been in the Bailey family for over one hundred and fifty years. Baileys don't sell their land. Ever. Mother has explained that you're a special case, and of course, we understand that your great-grandfather built the bridge over what used to be Bailey Branch. But still. . .we have some things to say to you."

Samantha nodded like the CEO of an inquisition. "Yes, we need to  ask you some hard questions, if you don't mind, Lt. Colonel."

Marle leaned forward in the wicker chair, his elbows on his knees, his face  calm, ready, slightly sad as he looked at them. "Go ahead. Nothing's off-limits.  There's no question I won't answer. I respect your loyalty to your heritage."

"No, it's my turn to talk, now," I said. I stepped forward from a tense spot beside the veranda's railing—no way could I have spent that morning sitting calmly in a chair. "Y'all's questions won't matter—or won't be the same questions—after I say what I have to say."

"What we both have to say," Marle corrected gently. He stood and stepped over to stand beside me. "If it has to be said, I want Joel and Samantha to hear it from me. I want all the blame on my shoulders."

I put a hand on his arm. "If we're going to tell them the truth together, then we'll share the blame together, too."

Sorrow and love and regret moved across his face. I nodded. We looked down at our children, who had been perched on the edge of two old wicker rockers all morning, not rocking at all. They were even stiller, now, on alert.

"First," Marle said quietly, "I want you two to know that I'd rather die than hurt you or your mother. That you have to believe that, if nothing else. I've loved your mother as long as I can remember, and I will always love her, and I've always wanted what's best for her. And for you two. Everything you're about to hear…well, please believe what I just said."

I tightened my hand on his arm. "Y'all know I have a tendency to put things bluntly when need be, and so--" my voice broke, but I gritted my teeth and went on—"so I'm just going to tell you--"

"Mom, don't."

"Mother, it's all right."

Joel and Samantha stood. Both of them were misty eyed, and both looked at us with a kind of poignant understanding. When I glanced at Marle he was frowning, bewildered. So was I.

"Mom," Joel said hoarsely. "Lt. Colonel." He nodded to Marle as if greeting him for the first time. Re-introducing himself.

"Mother," Samantha repeated, tears sliding down her cheeks. "Lt. Colonel." She nodded to Marle, too. She and Joel looked at each other, communicated some silent, obviously well-rehearsed signal, then looked at us again. Samantha said simply, "Lt. Colonel, we'd never agree to sell the land at Bailey Branch to anyone outside our family." She paused. "But we'd be honored to give that land to our own father."  

My knees went weak. I looked at Marle. Amazement softened his face. He snared me around the waist as my legs buckled a little. He held me up, and turned to look at me with tears in his eyes. I shook my head. "I had no idea," I said brokenly.

 Joel cleared his throat, tried to speak, couldn't, and so, to my astonishment, simply smiled at us. Samantha put a hand to her heart and smiled at Marle tearfully. "Dad told us about you and Mother a few years ago. Everything. He made us promise never to tell her we knew. He said when Mother told you about our birth, and told you that she'd married him, you swore to him you'd never come back and try to take his place. He told us you started sending money every month, even though Mother had told you not to. Dad invested all that money over the years in our college funds."

Marle's throat worked. He finally said, "Money was all I could give. But I know every award you've won, every good report card, every time you got your pictures in the Mossy Creek Gazette. It would take a cargo plane to carry all the scrapbooks I have about the two of you."

Samantha sobbed softly. Joel scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "We have scrapbooks about you, too. Things Dad collected for us. Everywhere you were stationed, every mission you flew in the Gulf War, every medal you won."

I bowed my head. Charlie, God bless you. I'll always love you, too. 

"He wanted us to know about you in case anything happened to him," Joel went on. "He said if you ever came back here we should be grateful. And that we should try our best to make you feel you have a home, here—for your sake, for our sakes, and most of all, for Mother's."

Joel and Samantha eased toward Marle, who looked at them with an expression I can't describe other than to say the condemned soldier had been set free, cleared of all charges, his honor and his heart safe inside an embrace he'd been fighting to earn all his life. He could not move, he could not breathe, he could only look at his children in wonder. I inched away just far enough to let his arm slide, distracted, back to his side. He needed to stand free and clear so his children could have him to themselves.

Joel and Samantha each held out a hand to him. Slowly, as if in a dream, he reached in return, took his son's hand and his daughter's.

"Welcome home," Joel said hoarsely.

"Welcome home," Samantha whispered.

*

A man doesn't recover from a total transformation overnight. In fact, I'm sure it'll take a lifetime. I'll never be the same, thank God.

"Look at you, just look," Ida Walker said when she came by the farm to see if her son had done any permanent damage to my jaw. "You look new."

"Happiness will do that to a face," I said.

"How about me?" Hope asked in exasperation. "How do I look, Ida?"

Ida put an arm around her shoulders, and smiled. "In language Baileys can appreciate, let me put it this way: You've come into bloom."

It was true. 

I checked myself in one of Hope's apple wood mirror's and, for the first time since I was kid, didn't see Creighton Settle's brother. Instead, I saw Joe Settles' great grandson. Even better, I saw Joel and Samantha Stanton's father.

And I saw Hope Bailey's future husband.

But there was something I had to do alone.

I drove one of the farm's pickup trucks up to the Jeb Walker Memorial Air Field, which consists of a small office, a few privately owned hangers, and two paved runways. I've rented space for my Piper. The tiny airport is built on a broad, flat ridge top overlooking Mossy Creek. There's no better place to go for a Creekite perspective on life; the view is anchored by the security of the pretty town in the valley below, protected by the mountains all around, and yet the sky spreads over you like an open invitation.

You stay or you go, but you never forget to come back. 

A broad gold sunset was shooting streaks across the mountaintops when I got there, and the light had dimmed to a blue-gray mist.  Rob stood at the end of a runway, legs apart, hands hanging in fists by his sides, silhouetted against the incredible sky.

I walked toward him not knowing what to expect, only that I wouldn't take another punch but I wouldn't hit him back, either. In the low light, I couldn't read his expression until I was close enough for him to charge me. I halted an arm's length away, balanced on the balls of my feet, ready to wrestle him if I had to. That's when I saw the mixture of determination and gut-jerked unhappiness in his eyes. 

"I've been waiting for my father," he said in a low voice, "to come back from the dead and teach me to fly a plane. In my mind, he's been the only man who could do it."

I nodded. "I have a son and a daughter who'll always put their Father's Day cards on Charlie Stanton's gave. With my blessing. But if I could turn back the clock I've save your father's life and save my life as a father, too. So I'm waiting to be a father."

Rob bowed his head for a moment, then said quietly, "But your kids learned to fly without you."

I nodded, again. Couldn't speak. Whether they'd climbed behind the controls of a plane in fact or in spirit, Joel and Samantha had learned to navigate the skies of life without my help. "I wish I'd been there for them," I finally said.

Rob studied me hard as the last of the sunset drew the sky down in dark shades of blue, leaving just a halo of gold to show us the dawn that's always waiting on the far side of every night. "Will you teach me to fly?"

I was so surprised I faked an interest in the sky, as if gauging the diameter of a huge harvest moon that had begun to edge over the mountains. In the air there was the good scent of kindling burning in Creekite fireplaces, and the ripe, cold smell that to me would always mean Hope's apples. I would be working with her in the orchards this year, getting to know our trees and our children, growing a new life. Harvest time had come, and all I had to do was welcome it. Welcome the opportunity to plant friendships on fertile ground.

I held out a hand to Rob. "I'd be honored to teach you," I said. "In your father's name."

We shook on it.

Somewhere beyond the gold sunset, I believe Jeb Walker saluted us.

*

It was the last day of summer in The Creek. Greater Mossy Creek, that is. The town and its happy little solar system of outlying communities settled down  under a crisp blue September sky, resting at the end of a long, hot, funny-sad Creekite season. Friendships had been formed, lost, or refound;  feuds had begun or been resolved; joy and heartache had grown into wisdom across the lattice of our joined lives. In other words, it had been an ordinary but extraordinary Creekite summer.

Now Marle and I stood--muddy, sweaty, scented with the diesel scent of a bulldozer, but holding hands happily--in the shallow channel of ferns and shrubs that had once carried the waters of Bailey Branch. We riveted our eyes to a curve in the deep shade of giant hardwoods, where the old creek bed twisted out of sight. Behind us, afternoon sunlight dappled the magnificent covered bridge.

Autumn spiders spun huge webs under its protective eaves. Chickadees and sparrows flitted among its rafters, planning their winter havens. They and the spiders had always known the old bridge would outlast even the longest dry spell. Marle and I waited, barely breathing. We heard the first soft, unmistakable whisper of life.

The water.

Set free, the old creek crept back toward its ancient path like a kitten full of wary awe. For a few minutes we only noticed the ground turning dark and damp beneath our dusty shoes; then the ferns of the lost creek bed began to move gently as if a breeze had come up, but there was none. They were moving with the slightest pressure of water trickling past, no more than an inch deep.

With a soft sigh of trust, the old creek surged around the bend. A moment later the cold gray-green waters of Bailey Branch surrounded our shoes, our ankles, and rose halfway to our knees. Marle and I began to laugh. We turned to watch the water rise around the bridge's stone posts.

Water has a voice, an echo, a soul. Bailey Branch's song became a throaty laugh as it passed beneath the hewn chestnut logs and mortared stone Joe Settles had built across it. The Branch knew, and remembered.

And so did Marle.

When I looked at him he had tears like mine in his eyes, but he was smiling. The water would find its way back to the sea, just as we had both come home to ourselves. We held each other, standing there in the happy, flowing branch, and we kissed like young lovers, again.

Summer in Mossy Creek was ending, but the rest of our lives had just begun.

 Copyright © 2006 Deborah Smith