Free Coming Home to You by Fay Robinson Page A

Bridges. Your maternal grandmother.”
    “You’ve done your homework.”
    “Obviously not well enough. I didn’t trace your family history on your mother’s side beyond your grandparents.” She looked at the graves with renewed interest. “These people—Joshua and Elizabeth Satterfield—were your great-great-grandparents, weren’t they?”
    “Yes. The farm passed out of the family and became pastureland after Elizabeth died in 1915. I bought it back a few years ago. Most of it ended up as Pine Acres, but I kept fifty acres, intending to build a house for myself. I’d grown up hearing wonderful stories about the place from Granny Mag, and I got this crazy idea that I should settle on the same spot where Joshua and Elizabeth’s house had been and live a simple life like them.”
    “A return to your roots?”
    “Something like that.”
    So that was why he was living here, in Alabama. “Why didn’t you build a house here?”
    The shadow of regret for desires unfulfilled passed slowly across his face. She recognized it, having seen it in her mirror.
    “Dreams die, I guess,” he said softly. “People die. And what seems simple never really is.”
    His terse sentences said what poets have attempted to describe for hundreds of years—the ironies of life—but Kate heard no poetry in his words, only sorrow for the loss of a dream and the loss of a brother, who’d died much too soon.
    Unintentionally, Bret Hayes had also described himself—a man whose simple facade hid a soul of great complexity. In this respect, at least, the brothers were very much alike.
    Kate was beginning to understand him. And yet today he’d repeatedly surprised her. In bringing her here, in showing her this private place that meant so much to him, he’d given her an unexpected gift. The idea overwhelmed and confused her.
    Crouching at the foot of one of the graves, hepicked up a clump of dry pine needles and nervously twisted it with one hand. He didn’t look at her, never looked at her when the conversation grew serious. His face betrayed him when he tried to hide his feelings. She knew that embarrassed him, and so he glanced away or lowered his head, even turned his back to her so she couldn’t look into his eyes.
    “Thank you for sharing this place with me,” she told him.
    “You understand you can’t write about it, don’t you?” he asked, seemingly mesmerized by the circular movement of the brown needles. “If fans knew James’s ancestors were buried here, they might desecrate the graves in search of souvenirs, like they did at the family plot in Chattanooga.”
    “I understand. I was furious when I saw the damage they did to the headstones, and so thankful when your family built the mausoleum and moved the graves. It’s a beautiful resting place for James, don’t you think?”
    “I guess so.”
    Kate’s intuition kicked in. “You have seen it, haven’t you?”
    “Sure.” His tone was convincing, but something about his answer made her doubt the credibility of it. If she could catch a glimpse of his face…
    She dropped down in front of him and took the pine needles away. She held his hands within her own. Earlier she’d watched him lift a heavy saddle with one hand, as if it weighed nothing. Moments later that same hand had lightly, lovingly, rubbed across the head of a child. The hands were like theman, she decided. They possessed both strength and gentleness.
    He’d stiffened when she touched him, and he watched her in silence as she turned his hands over and lightly brushed her thumbs across his skin. Hands always told a story. His spoke of hard work outdoors. The palms were rough, as were the pads of his fingers. A ridge of tiny calluses marred the tips of the fingers on his left hand, and cuts, not quite healed, ran across the second joint of the two middle ones. The stained skin told her he often worked in the dirt.
    She had his attention now. She looked into his eyes.
    “You’ve never seen the