He shook his head and looked at the floor. “I’m going to talk to him.” He held up a hand. “I’ll be nice. I promise. All I’m going to do is find out where he’s been the past twenty years while you were working and raising your daughters.”
“Collin—”
“No, let’s say you’re right, and this man is your husband. Maybe he had a brain injury. Could have happened. Or maybe, Kate, he didn’t. He was a teenager working two jobs and still you were barely making it. I know what that feels like. It makes a person desperate. So maybe he saw an opportunity to walk away.” Earl Ray had said the same thing. “How are you going to feel about him if that’s the case?” She met his gaze, her eyes brimming with tears. He swore. “Are you seriously still that much in love with him that you’d take him back even if he did walk out on you all those years ago?”
She’d once dreamed of finding him, of bringing him home. She’d known that he could have walked away. It hadn’t mattered. Did it now? For so long, she’d told herself he had to be dead, otherwise he would have found his way back to her.
“I don’t know how to feel about any of it,” she said. “I’d given up hope of ever seeing him again.”
“Well, I’m going to find out what his story is.” Collin grabbed his coat and was out the door before she could stop him.
She thought about going after him but could just see the two of them busting into the woodshop, making complete fools of themselves. It was bad enough that Collin was going. She picked up a book but couldn’t concentrate. Instead, she paced the small motel room, wondering what Collin was saying to Jon. More importantly, what Jon was saying. She thought about getting in the shower to warm up when the door opened and to her surprise he’d come back.
“He’s not there,” Collin said. “Apparently, he’s taken off. I found the cabin he lives in out back. His truck is gone, and his landlady said he drove off a few minutes before I got there. She checked his cabin. What few belongings he had were gone. He left rent money and a note thanking her. He’s gone, Kate. He isn’t coming back.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JON HARPER PARKED his old pickup in the lot and limped inside the bank. He’d driven the fifty miles to the nearest town of any size through a blizzard, even though his landlady Mabel had tried to talk him out of it.
“Lordy, Jon, have you noticed the weather?” Mabel had asked. “Now’s not the time to be going to the big city.” Lewistown was hardly the big city. “Can I loan you whatever you need and save you the trip?”
He shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Mabel. Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
She’d looked worried, but not as worried as she would be when she found his few belongings missing from the cabin she’d rented him the past five years. He’d left an envelope on the table in the cabin’s kitchen with the money he owed her and a thank-you note. He figured she wouldn’t find it for at least a few days, maybe more. It would take that long before she’d know that he wasn’t coming back. Then the whole town would know. Including the woman staying at the motel.
At the bank counter, he asked to get into his safety-deposit box. A clerk took his key and, using the bank’s key as well, pulled out his large box and handed it to him along with his key.
“Just let me know when you’re finished,” she said and stepped from the room.
He realized that his hands were shaking as he opened the box to see the stacks of bills he’d accumulated. Not nearly enough to disappear. He’d told himself that he needed at least one more good summer before he could move on. Now he realized that had been a lie. He’d liked Buckhorn. Even though he’d known it was dangerous, he’d stayed.
For years, he’d made a point of never staying long in any one place. But he’d made a mistake in Buckhorn. He’d been content there, and he’d let himself believe that no one was still looking for him. He’d lived on the run for so long, always looking over his shoulder, always moving on before he got too settled and people started asking too many questions.
Pulling out the duffel bag he’d brought to carry the money in, he knew this was his fault. He’d stayed too long. He’d got to believing that he was safe. In the middle of nowhere and miles from the interstate, only a few tourists wandered through in the summer. Not that he saw them. He let Bessie sell his wooden products so he never had to deal with the public.
The last thing he’d ever expected was a beautiful green-eyed woman to walk into his shop and turn his world upside down. Clearly, she had the wrong man. That man she told him about was long buried. But he knew Earl Ray was right. She wouldn’t stop digging into his past and worse, he didn’t know how to convince her that he wasn’t the man she was looking for. But she’d certainly reminded him why he needed to keep moving.
He thought of the look on her face when she’d opened her eyes after fainting in his workshop. He hadn’t understood it at the time, but now after what Earl Ray had told him... His heart ached for her. She was chasing a ghost, whether her husband was alive or dead. The man was gone. She was never going to find him and bring him home, that much he knew. People changed. They disappeared into someone unrecognizable.
He should know. He’d been running from the past almost as long as she’d been looking for hers. His heart went out to her and the pain he’d seen mirrored in those amazing green eyes.
His first instinct was to run and get as far as possible from Buckhorn and this woman. He had nothing to offer her and wasn’t sure he could convince her of the mistake she was making.
But what had made him realize he had to leave right away was what Earl Ray had told him about her having a second chance for happiness. He’d seen the big diamond on her ring finger and glimpsed the man a couple of times in town. He looked decent enough. She’d be a fool not to take hold of this new life she was being offered and not let go. He certainly didn’t want to be the one to stand in her way. Once he was gone...
Jon began to stuff the money into the bag. Running was the only choice he had, he told himself. He couldn’t look back. It was best for all of them, especially for her. He stopped loading the bag as he thought of what she would do when she found him gone. When she pushed open the workshop door, when she asked his landlady, when it was discovered that he’d run without a word. He imagined the look on her face, what he would have seen mirrored in her eyes.
With a curse, he slowly began to put the money back. He couldn’t do this to her. Not after listening to her story about her husband and their daughters. He couldn’t just disappear like her husband had—because she would keep looking for him or someone who resembled him. She would keep chasing a ghost.
Worse, she might give up her chance for happiness because of him. He didn’t need that on his conscience. He had enough as it was. But staying in Buckhorn any longer had become dangerous. If he wanted go on living, then he had to convince her to move on.