<- Back

Leave The Light On (Excerpt)
© 2005 Melissa McKenzie Francis

Prologue

     When I was sixteen, I met my destiny. His name was Darrell Singer and the connection we had could only be explained as something like fate, or physics, or reincarnation.

     He’d moved to Brindle, Arkansas from Boston our junior year and we were like magnets from day one. Even stupid Crislee Holliday couldn’t lure him away with her glittery eye shadow and big boobs in her tight little cheerleader sweater. Darrell only had eyes for me.

     Looking back now, I know it was more than raging teenage hormones that left my skin buzzing every time he came within a hair’s breadth of my person.
I know this, because even though I was forced to move on, I never really got over him.

     A breakup, though devastating, is usually surmountable. Cancer, however, isn’t always something one can overcome.

     I wanted to marry him the day he was diagnosed and spend the rest of his life loving him as his wife.

     But he refused to leave me a widow. Of course, that didn’t make me any less a widow when he did die.

     I consider myself lucky to have found a love like that—a connection so great there are no words in this world to truly describe the feeling. It took a lot of tears to find this sense of peace; yet I have it. How many others can boast of actually finding their soul-mate? Did I expect to find another one? Hah. Wouldn’t even dream of looking. Once you reached the top of Mount Everest, all the other mountains were molehills.

     Six years after Darrell’s death, imagine how surprised I was to have that same feeling slide over me while standing in the middle of aisle nine at Stout’s Ace Hardware.

 

Chapter 1
 

Brindle Post
Community Matters
Until yesterday, the Lassiter house on Blue Bird Lane was most well known as the location of Brindle’s only murder/suicide. But that grisly history is sure to be forgotten now that Cate Charles has taken possession. She’ll turn that lump of coal into a shiny diamond before you know it. And, like she did with the Peabody place, the Martin house, and the Cooley home she’ll turn around and sell it for a bucket of cash to some idiot outsider who won’t appreciate the true value of the diamond. This reporter means no offense to any idiot outsiders currently residing in Brindle.

     “Excuse me,” he said. His arm brushed against mine as he reached past me to grab a hammer off the shelf.

     When his skin touched mine I gasped as a sense of history slid through my flesh and into my bloodstream.

     I looked up from the box of nails to see the cause of my déjà vu. When he smiled at me, my mouth went dry.

     “Hi,” he said.

     My response was the picture of grace and composure, of course. I grimaced. It was supposed to be a smile, but I know damn well it looked more like a facial groan.

     Then I looked behind me, because I knew he couldn’t possibly be talking to me.

     The only thing behind me was the paint display.

     He was talking to me.

     I picked up a handful of the four inch galvanized nails, turned on my heel and high-tailed it the hell away from aisle nine of Stout’s Ace Hardware.

     Since I’d already had my historical connection with Darrell Singer I wasn’t prepared to feel that familiar hum under my skin again. And I didn’t like it one bit.

     Well, I liked it—but really, how could I feel such a strong sense of providence with a dark-haired stranger with silver eyes in aisle nine of Stout’s Ace Hardware? That was crazy. Maybe I needed to be medicated.

     So, I decided to blame this hum on hormones. It had been a shamefully long time since I’d gotten laid. The stranger was handsome, probably in his mid-thirties with dark curls and liquid gray eyes. He had a peppery 5 o’clock shadow, even though it was just after noon.

     Yeah. Hormones.

     I took my nails to the check-out and smiled at Al as he counted them out, one by one.

     “Still working on that house?” he yelled. Al had a hearing aid he was always forgetting to turn on.

     I signaled to him that his ears were off and he nodded, as he reached up to flip the switch.

     “Yes, sir, still working on the house. She’s getting there.”

     “Can’t believe you took on the old Lassiter place.”

     I just smiled. Not surprised he didn’t understand. Nobody else understood either. “I just fell in love with it, Al.”

     “So you gonna keep this one?”

     “Yeah. I think so. This is the one.”

     “You said that about the last house, dear.”

     “The last house didn’t speak to me. This one does.”

     “That’s not the house you hear, that’s the ghosts.” He chuckled and finished ringing me up.

     I paid for my nails and started toward the door as the hair on my arm prickled. The stranger was behind me. I didn’t have to turn and look; my stuttering heart told me he was there.

     “See ya ‘round,” he said to the back of my head.

     I couldn’t answer because my tongue had swelled up like road kill.

     Damn. I needed a date and quick.

     I piled into my work truck, dug my cell phone out of the crevice of the seat and dialed my best friend.

     “Hello,” she answered.

     “Lydia—“

     “Cate, hey! What’s up?”

     “Get the gang together. I need a night out.”

     “Tonight?”

     “Yes. Absolutely. Happy hour drinks then a night of honky-tonkin’ at Doolie’s.”

     “Okay, but you’re gonna have to fill me in when I get to your house.”

     “Just need a night out, that’s all. See you at five.”

     I flipped the phone shut, cranked the motor and started to back out.

     The tall dark stranger stood directly behind my truck, smiling.

     He nodded, stepped out of my way and waved as I pulled out of the parking lot.

     I caught a glimpse of him in my rearview mirror and my stomach took a dive to my toes.

     Hormones.

     It had to be hormones.

#

     Beau watched the beat up sea-foam green Chevy pull out of the parking lot and turn right into the traffic.

     So that was Cate Charles.

     That little bitty blonde thing was the girl who stood between him and his past? She was no bigger than a buttercup and about as cute as one with that waist length near platinum mane she kept in a pony tail. If that was a dye job, she owed her stylist a huge tip.

     His hip buzzed. Beau unhooked his cell phone, flipped it open and answered. “Beau Woodbridge.”

     “Mr. Woodbridge, this is Rick with Turner Realty. I have the keys to the house if you’re available to sign the lease this afternoon.”

     “You bet. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

     Beau snapped the phone shut and climbed into his new silver fully-loaded-with-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Ford F-150 that he had splurged on as a consolation prize. He’d wanted the house. But she’d outbid him.

     How had she done that? He’d offered twice its value.

     That was just one more thing he’d add to his list of mysteries to solve.
He started the truck and some sad sap of a song began to wail from the radio. “Goddamn country music.” Beau hit the seek button until the familiar and comforting croon of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb sounded. Thank God for classic rock stations.

     Beau drove through the small downtown area of Brindle, Arkansas and parked in front of Greene’s Super D. The realtor was just a couple of blocks down, on the square.

     Brindle was a quaint little town, just thirty minutes from the capital city of Little Rock. Beau would’ve been more comfortable in Little Rock. He was raised in Baltimore. There was noise in Baltimore. He liked noise. The only real noise in Brindle was the birds. Oh, and the crickets. He’d take the hum of traffic over the chirping crickets any day.

     Three kids walked along the sidewalk and one skateboarded toward him. All of them looked like they hadn’t seen the inside of a working shower in a year. They carried fishing poles, a tin full of minnows, and their catch of the day.

     “Hey, mister. You new ‘round here?” the boy on the skateboard asked as he scraped to a halt.

     “Yeah. What gave me away?”

     They all laughed, like they had a secret he couldn’t possibly understand.

     “We don’t know you and we know everyone,” they said in unison.

     And with that, they went on their way.

     Beau walked past the combination police department/ mayor’s office/post office. He turned onto what was called the square, though it was more like a circle and found the realtor’s office on the right side. A dainty bell tinkled as he pushed through the door. The receptionist looked up from filing her nails and smiled. She had from-the-bottle orange hair, full red lips and big brown eyes hidden beneath a lot of blue eye shadow. Beau glanced at her name plate: Tonya Jordan.

     “Hello, Tonya. I’m Beau Woodbridge. I’m here to see Rick.”

     She smacked her gum and swiveled in her chair to the open door behind her, “RICK! The yank’s here.” Tonya swiveled back and smiled again. “You don’t look like a yank. You sure you ain’t got a little southern in ya, somewhere?”

     “You can’t inherit southern.”

     Tonya’s laughter bubbled around him. “Oh honey, you most certainly can inherit southern. If you got southern in ya, we’ll pull it outta ya. You’ll see.” She swiveled to the door again, “RICK! Don’t be rude! You’re keeping the man waiting. Yanks don’t have the patience of us gentler folks.”

     Beau laughed. Rick was being rude?

     Just then, a man a little shorter than Beau appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Woodbridge, please forgive Tonya. She hasn’t learned to use the phone to buzz me yet. We’ve been working on that.”

     Tonya smiled. “He’s crazy in love with me. I keep telling him I’ll start using the intercom when he has the nerve to ask me out. So far, nothing.”

     “And how long have you been waiting?” Beau asked.

     “Six years,” Tonya said with a wink. “It’s a slow process. But good things take time, you know.”

     Rick’s face was the color of cranberry sauce. “This way, sir. And Tonya, quit telling people that. Geez.”

     Rick led Beau into what would’ve been a spacious office if every inch hadn’t been cluttered with books and papers. Rick moved a pile from a chair and offered it to Beau. “Please, have a seat while I grab the file.”

     Beau sat and looked around. “How do you find anything in here?”

     “I know, it’s chaos,” Rick replied pulling out a manila folder from a teetering tower of papers on his desk. “But it’s an organized chaos. I know what each pile is. One of these days, Tonya will file these for me.”

     “Let me guess, after you date her for a while.”

     “Nope, after I marry her.”

     “Are you serious? Isn’t that a little on the stalking side?”

     “I dunno. I’ve never had anyone interested in me before. I don’t know what to do.” Rick grinned at him sheepishly and plucked at his right eyebrow.

     Beau figured Rick was probably in his late twenties; maybe early thirties. With thinning, mousy hair and tortoise shell glasses, Rick probably wasn’t considered a 1st place catch by many women. He was more like the Bream they used for bait.

     “So what do you want to do?” Beau asked as he signed the lease and took his keys.

     Rick blushed again. “I wanna marry her.”

     “Well, man, it seems you better get on the stick then, and at least ask the woman out. She might give up on you one day.”

     Rick plucked at his eyebrow again. “You’re right. You’re right.” He heaved a heavy sigh. “Oh! I almost forgot. I’m sorry the deal on that house you wanted fell through, but bigger house that needs much less work was just listed today. It’s a great deal and it’s only a couple of blocks from Blue Bird Lane.”

     “Thanks, man. But I’m not interested.”

     “But, I thought you wanted to buy—“

     “Yeah, I did. But only on Blue Bird Lane. I just really liked that street.” And specifically, he liked the 600 block of Blue Bird.

     “Okay. Well, I’ll just keep that in mind for future reference.”

     Beau said his goodbyes to Rick and Tonya as he walked through the front office. He pushed on the door to leave, then stopped himself, turned around and asked them both, “Where’s the night life around here?”

     Tonya’s face lit up. “The best place to go is Doolie’s. You got pool, darts, a dance floor, and if you’re feeling real adventurous, they’ve got a mechanical bull.”

     “Seriously?”

     “Yeah. It’s a blast. If you got any southern in ya, you won’t be able to resist that thing. It’s like a beacon to us rednecks.”

     Beau thanked her and walked up the street to his truck. God he hoped she was wrong about that. Beau Woodbridge just wasn’t a mechanical bull kinda guy.

<- Back