Free Bleeding Heart by Liza Gyllenhaal Page A

signature. I drove it up to Mackenzie’s house on Saturday morning.
    “He’s at some hearing in town,” Eleanor told me when she answered the door. “I think he’ll be gone a while. I’d be happy to give that to him, if you want to leave it with me.”
    “Thanks. I think it’s self-explanatory. But ask him to call me if he has any questions.”
    I picked up my paper and muffin at the general store, and then dropped by the post office for my mail. I was climbing back into my Subaru when Tom Deaver called to me from across the parking lot.
    “Alice Hyatt! Wait up a minute.”
    I felt my pulse quicken. There was an eagerness to his stride that made it clear he had something he wanted to ask me. I watched him approach and thought, not for the first time, what an attractive man he was. The male of the species barely registers with me these days, so I took this opportunity to try to analyze what it was about Tom that made him seem different. He wasn’t particularly tall or broad or physically forceful, though he was pretty fit for someone who was probably hitting fifty. His dark brown hair was a little long for my taste, but his face was open and kind, his skin roughened from a lot of time spent outdoors. And there was something about the way hemoved—a kind of inner grace—that caught my attention when I saw him around town. I liked his voice, too. It was one of those melodious, self-assured baritones you often hear on public radio.
    “Wind power promises to be a great alternative to fossil fuels,” he’d said during a program I’d attended at the library a few months back. Tom was an environmental writer and activist who ran the Clean Energy Consulting Cooperative. The talk, titled “The Future of Wind,” was part of a regular series the library presented promoting local experts and authors. “And we’re in the perfect position right here in Woodhaven to test its tremendous potential to dramatically change our relationship to the planet. . . .”
    Tom’s proposal to mount several wind turbines on Powell Mountain had been causing a lot of local controversy. Some people were all for tapping the energy savings that wind power could generate. Others, mostly those who lived near the mountain, worried about the noise the turbines purportedly generated as well. I’d stopped by the lecture to try to get a better sense of what was involved, but Tom’s talk had run long and I’d had to leave before the Q and A session got under way. Still, I remembered feeling impressed by how impassioned and committed he was about the project. It occurred to me that, without really realizing it, I’d been giving Tom Deaver a lot of thought.
    “Hi, Tom,” I said, smiling as he came up to me.
    “I just don’t believe it!” His voice was shaking.
    “What?” I asked. Something was clearly wrong.
    “You’re actually
working for
Graham Mackenzie?” he said.
    “No, I don’t work for him—not for his company,” I said, thinking Tom must have been misinformed. “I’m just designing a garden for his new place.”
    “Where the hell do you draw the line?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “How can you in good conscience allow yourself to have anything to do with a man like that? Someone who destroys the land for a living!”
    “I . . . I’m running a business,” I began to say, but then I realized that Tom had repeated back to me almost exactly what I’d accused Mackenzie of at our first meeting. “Listen, initially I had some reservations, too. But once I got to know him better—”
    “No,” Tom said, shaking his head back and forth as if he couldn’t bear to hear what I was saying. “No—not
you
, Alice. I really thought better of you. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought you cared about the environment. I thought you had some integrity.”
    “I do care,” I said, stung by his indictment. “I care very deeply. The garden I’ve created incorporates solar power and recycled materials. All my