Sliding down the wall to the bare floorboards, she opened the weathered book she’d found when she finally went through the boxes her brothers had sent her after Red’s funeral. The list of male names scrawled in her mother’s hand brought back fragments of memory Lucky had tried for years to suppress. Men, coming in and out of their ramshackle trailer while Lucky was small, ruffling her hair or handing her a shiny quarter. Men moaning behind the closed door of her mother’s bedroom.
Despite the terrible cold, sweat gathered on Lucky’s top lip. She wanted to burn the journal, obliterate the proof. But she couldn’t. Dave Small, Eugene Thompson and Garth Holbrook were all listed as having “visited” her mother twenty-five years ago, right around the time a man would’ve had to visit Red for Lucky to be born. Unless Red was seeing someone she didn’t write down, which seemed unlikely given her scrupulous records, one of these men was probably her father….
Lucky recognized Dave Small’s name, and Garth Holbrook’s, too. Both had been prominent citizens of Dundee, giving her some hope that she could identify with or admire her father at least a little more than she did her mother. They might have visited a prostitute several times, but Lucky knew from watching Red that being faithful wasn’t easy for a lot of people. It was even possible that they hadn’t been married when they’d associated with her mother.
She thumbed forward to the blank pages that represented the year Morris had come into their lives. He’d put a stop to the male parade going through Red’s trailer. For a while, anyway. Until Red forgot what it was like to scratch for a living and grew bored with being an old man’s wife. Then, while Morris was away on his many business trips, everything had started up again. Only now her mother didn’t keep a list, the men didn’t leave any money, and Lucky was old enough to have a clearer understanding of what was really going on when her mother said she needed to speak to Mr. So-and-So alone for a few minutes.
Briefly, Lucky closed her eyes, shaking her head at all the times she’d begged Red not to risk their newfound security. As Lucky grew older, Red had quit pretending that Lucky didn’t know the truth and started threatening her instead. You say anything, Lucky Star Caldwell, and I’ll kick your ass right out of this house.
Her mother’s voice came to her so clearly, so distinctly, that Lucky glanced up, toward the entrance of the room. But she saw nothing—nothing except herself as a young, insecure girl, peeking into the room in response to her mother’s shrill call, “Bring me some damn aspirin.”
When things at home became unbearable, Lucky would sneak over to the Hill brothers’ barn to be with their beautiful horses. There, for an hour or two at a time, she managed to forget the sick feeling that, by her silence, she was betraying Morris as badly as her mother was. Or the knowledge that, even if she’d had her mother’s permission to tell what she knew, which she most certainly did not, she wouldn’t have breathed a word of it because she couldn’t bear the thought of Morris disappearing from her own life.
Snapping the book closed, Lucky climbed to her feet. She’d tried so hard to distance herself from all that. Once she’d graduated from high school, she’d left Dundee and never looked back. Even when Morris had died and her brothers sent word of her inheritance. Even when, two years later, her mother had a stroke and passed away. Even when Mike Hill contested the will, forcing her to hire an attorney. She’d let the attorney go to court for her and when it was all over, she’d simply petitioned Mike, as executor of Morris’s estate, for the check he was supposed to send her each month and left the house to rot.
Until now. Now she realized she could never run far enough from the past and she’d come back do something about the house. But first she had to ask Mike for a favor before she froze to death. She doubted he was going to be very happy about it.
CHAPTER THREE
LUCKY SHIFTED from one foot to the other as she stood at Mike’s door. He might be chief among her rivals, but he was also one of the handsomest men she’d ever known and, without running water in the house, she hadn’t even been able to shower. She was soaked and shivering from wading through snow, and her nose and cheeks felt so raw she was sure they were bright pink.
Pink had never been a good color on her; pink wasn’t good for most redheads. But at this point, Mike Hill was her only option. No one else lived nearby.
A middle-aged woman came to the door. Her brown hair, full of gray streaks, was pulled into a bun with a pencil jammed through it. “You don’t have to stand out in the cold, honey. This part of the house is only offices. You can come in.”
“Th-thanks.” Lucky was so cold she could barely speak.
“You’re going to catch pneumonia if you don’t get out of those wet clothes and put on something dry as soon as possible,” the woman said, her gaze traveling over Lucky’s soaked jeans.
Lucky blinked the last vestiges of snow from her eyelashes and managed a smile. “I’m f-fine. Is Mr. Hill around?”
“Which one?”
“Mike.”
“He’s in his office. Can I tell him who’s looking for him?”
Lucky hesitated to state her name. She didn’t want to send shock waves through the community just yet. But Mike already knew she was back, which pretty much ruined her low-profile return. “Lucky Caldwell.”
The woman’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Did you say Lucky?”
Lucky clenched her jaw and nodded. Her hands, feet and nose burned as they thawed, but the prickling sensation was the least of her worries. How was Mike going to react to having her appear at his office?
“You’ve grown up,” the woman said. “I didn’t recognize you.”
Lucky didn’t recognize her, either, and it must’ve shown because the other woman frowned. “I’m Polly Simpson—Mrs. Simpson to you, at least in the old days. I used to work in the attendance office at Dundee High, remember?”
“Oh, of course,” Lucky said. But she still couldn’t recall Polly Simpson’s face. Probably because she’d never missed a day of school in her life. School had been her refuge. She’d rarely visited the attendance office and had probably only passed Mrs. Simpson in the halls.
“I’ll tell Mike you’re here.”
“Wait.” Lucky caught her arm. “Is there a Mrs. Hill I could talk to?”
“If you mean Josh’s wife, she’s out of town. Mike’s not married.”