Sinking Suspicions

Chapter 2

15 Chapter 2 Lance stood next to his truck and searched the simmering horizon for some kind of a sign that Sadie’s neighbor Buck Skinner was still alive. If he was, he wasn’t moving. Not that Lance could see, anyway. On the northern slope, a small herd of white-tailed deer entered the pasture . One by one, they bounced over the fence and congregated. From his position, Lance could distinguish four does and two fawns. They gathered near a bare spot in the tall grass and began to eat. Lance shook his head and chuckled when he realized Buck must be providing corn for the deer. Only someone with too much time on his hands would indulge in such a pastime in northeastern Oklahoma, where natural food for animals was plentiful, thought Lance. A large buck bounded over the fence and cautiously approached the herd. One of the does faced the intruder and stomped her front hooves on the ground. The male obliged and retreated to the edge of the fence, as if waiting for the females to finish eating before approaching again. Suddenly, the entire herd scattered in two directions and disappeared before Lance could see what had startled them. He retrieved his binoculars from the front seat of his truck and searched the area. He could see nothing unusual, but that was more movement than he’d seen since he and the others had started this search. 16 Lance wished Sadie was there. She would know exactly where to look. In his mind he could see her jump on her paint stallion and ride off in a gallop with her wolf-dog Sonny running out front as point. Her property joined Buck’s, and she probably knew every hill and valley as well as she knew her backyard vegetable garden. But she wasn’t there. Not even close. He had dropped her off at the Tulsa airport earlier that morning for a flight that would take her thousands of miles away, across the Pacific on an unnecessary trip he was still unhappy about. He couldn’t imagine why she wanted to be a travel agent, but he wasn’t surprised. Right after college, she’d started out in the banking business. After she quit banking, she’d decided to go into business for herself and ended up buying and selling a restaurant in less than a year. Here she was, once again, searching for a new direction in life. She danced to her own drum, and he supposed that was why he was so crazy about her. They had both been hurt, suffering in their own way. He had never been able to completely silence the crashing sounds of artillery that took his lover ’s life in Vietnam. It would have been so much easier if he could have died with her. But he didn’t. Instead, the smells, the sounds, the feelings of utter helplessness from that awful night frequently came to him in the dead of the night. He hoped someday the memories would subside. He knew Sadie had her own nightmares. He had met her right after she’d survived a deadly bank robbery where her coworker had been killed. It wasn’t long after that he learned of the mental and physical abuse she’d endured from her jailbird ex-husband, a drug dealer who had died a violent death not far from her property. Then she’d been deceived by a man she thought loved her, a man whose whole existence was nothing more than a lie, including his love for her. All this had made Sadie as leery of men as he was of women. Even so, they both waltzed around their anxiety and misgivings, trying to build a trusting relationship. Everyone has baggage, he thought, but he didn’t want a little unfortunate history to ruin their future together. He wanted to be the man who could convince her to overcome her fear. If she could do it, then he could, too. Sometimes he thought she just wanted to assert her independence, push him away. He had felt the strain between them when he kissed her good-bye. 17 He wanted to marry her, something he was sure she knew, even though he had never actually uttered the words. And now that he thought about it, that’s probably why she had fled like a hummingbird, zipping...