No sooner had the questions formed than their answers came, echoes of a summer and a passion that never should have been, Carla’s voice calling endlessly to him, haunting even his dreams: Remember what it was like to be loved by me. Then come to me, Luke. I’ll be waiting for you, loving you.
But he hadn’t gone to her. He had gone instead to the old harness room. There he had transformed his yearning, his pain and his futile dreams into gleaming curves of wood, pieces of furniture to grace the family life he would never have.
Wind curled down through the canyon, wind cold with distance and winter, wind wailing with its passage over the empty land. The overhang took the wind, muffled it, smoothed it, transformed it into voices speaking at the edge of hearing and dreams, a man and a woman intertwined, suspended between fire and rain, their cries of fulfillment glittering in the darkness.
Abruptly Luke knew why Carla hadn’t set up camp beneath the overhang. She could no more bear its seething not-quite-silence than he could.
It took only a few moments for Luke to find the tracks Carla had left when she headed up the canyon. Her footprints followed the trail markers she had left in August. All other signs of her previous visit had been washed away by rain. Luke walked quickly, fighting the impulse to run, to overtake the girl who had left nothing more of herself in September Canyon than a fragile line of tracks that wouldn’t outlive the next winter storm.
Filled with an anxiety that he neither understood nor could control, Luke scrambled up the narrow tongue of rock and debris that looked out over the canyon. There was no one waiting at the top, no girl with blue-green eyes and a smile that set a man to dreaming of marrying one special woman, having a family with her, watching their children grow to meet the challenges of the beautiful, unflinching land.
"Carla?"
No answer came back but the haunted wind.
Luke looked around quickly for Carla’s tracks but found none. Where the surface wasn’t gravel it was solid rock. He glanced up the canyon, then down, then up again. No one was in sight. He scrambled down the far side of the promontory. There were no rocks piled to mark the way, nothing to indicate which direction Carla had taken. If she had left tracks, the rich sidelight of the descending sun would have made them stand out like flags.
"Damn it, Carla," he muttered, scanning the view impatiently, "you know better than to take off without leaving any markers to – "
The angry words stopped when Luke’s breath came in fast and hard and stayed there. His head snapped around and he looked up canyon again. This time he saw nothing but rock, pinon, sunlight and shadow. Yet there had been something there before, a glimpse of right angles and rectangular shadows that were at odds with his expectations. Nature’s geometry was circular, curve after curve flowing through unimaginable time. Man’s geometry was angular, line after line marching through carefully divided time. He had seen a hint of man, not canyon.
Carefully be turned his head again. There, just at the corner of his vision, Luke glimpsed right angles and rectangular shadows tucked away amid September Canyon’s graceful curves. Only the unusual angle of the sunlight allowed him to see the cliff house, for it was screened by trees and nestled in one of September Canyon’s many side canyons. A chill moved over Luke as he realized that he was looking at the ruins of a cliff house that had been old when Columbus set sail for India and found the New World instead.
And within those stone ruins a hidden fire burned, sending a thin veil of smoke toward the cloud-swept sky.
As Carla had before him, Luke walked toward the ruins. Even knowing they were there, and having the richly slanting light as an aid, he found it difficult to locate the ruins once he looked away. He stopped, took his bearings from the canyon itself and walked toward the ruins with the confidence of a man accustomed to finding his own way over a wild land. He didn’t call out to Carla; wind and silence were the only voices suited to hidden canyon.
Luke found Carla at the very edge of the ruins, sitting in an ancient room that had no ceiling. Enough of the walls remained to give shelter from the keening wind. The small fire she had built burned like a tiny piece of the sun caught amid the twilight of the ruins. She was staring into the heart of fire, her right hand curled into a fist. Tears shone like silver rain on her cheeks, a slow welling of sadness that made Luke’s own throat ache.
"There’s a storm coming on," he said, his voice husky with emotions he couldn’t name. "You shouldn’t camp here. There’s not enough shelter. Why don’t you come back with me?"
Carla turned and looked at the man whose child was growing within her body, the man she loved.
The man who didn’t want her love.
"No, thank you," she said politely. "I don’t want to impose on you."
A coolness moved over Luke’s skin that had nothing to do with the swirling wind.
"That’s ridiculous," he said. "You know you’re always welcome on the Rocking M."
"Don’t."
"Don’t what?"
"Lie. I’m not welcome on the Rocking M and we both know it. You were relieved to wake up and find me gone."
"Carla – "
Luke’s throat closed and the silence stretched while Carla watched him with blue-green eyes that were darker than he remembered. Then her lips curved in a small smile that was sadder than any tears he had ever seen.
"Don’t worry, Luke. I’m not going to throw myself at you again. I’ve finally grown up. I’m as tired of being pushed away by you as you are of having to push me."
She laughed suddenly. The soft, broken sound made Luke flinch, but she didn’t see it She had opened her right hand and was staring at the fragment of ancient pottery that rested on her palm. Luke endured the silence as long as he could, then asked the only question he would allow himself.
"Did you find that here?"
A brief shudder went over Carla, but that was her only acknowledgment that she was no longer alone. Just when Luke began to wonder if she would answer, she spoke in a flat, colorless voice.
"You gave this to me seven years ago. I brought it back to the place where it belongs. Full circle."
Luke felt as though the world had dropped away from beneath his feet. Always in the past he had known with unspeakable, absolute certainty that Carla would come back to the Rocking M, to him, bringing sunshine and laughter and peace with her. He had come to count on that, hoarding memories of her like a miser counting jewels, knowing that one day he would look up and she would be there again, watching him with a love she had never been able to hide.
The realization of what had happened sank into Luke like a blade of ice, slicing through him even as it froze him, teaching him that he had never known pain until that moment. Carla had come back, but not to him. She would leave again.
And she would never come back.
"I’m selling the ranch."
Shocked by Luke’s words, Carla looked up, facing him again. The pain she saw in his golden eyes made her feel as though she were being torn apart.
"But – why?"
"You know why."
With a small, anguished sound, Carla turned back to the fire, knowing that there was no more hope. All her dreams, all her love, everything was destroyed.
"Cash shouldn’t have called you," she said hoarsely. "He promised me until Christmas."
Carla’s fingers clenched around the pottery shard. The pain of it reminded her of why she had come to September Canyon. She drew back her arm to hurl the ancient shard back into the fire.
"No!" Luke said.
He moved with shocking speed, closing his much bigger hand around her fist, forcing her to hold on to his gift. Slowly he knelt in front of her, bringing her right hand to his lips despite her struggles.
"Don’t leave me, sunshine." Luke said, kissing Carla’s slender fingers. "Stay with me. Love me."