As a youth, he'd spent many a summer night there at the Hollister ranch. Sometimes the boys all slept in the barn, or in one of the old bunkhouses. As he grew older, Cale recalled, sleeping in the bunkhouse had held a lot less appeal than sleeping in the ranch house, where he could, if luck was with him, run into Sky's sister. All of the Hollister girls had been knockouts, from CeCe, the oldest, right down to Liza, the baby. But as a young boy growing up, there had only been one girl who had caught his eye and fueled his adolescent fantasies.
Cale could not recall a time in his life when he had not been in love with Quinn Hollister. In his eyes, she had been the most beautiful girl in the world. Tall and exotic, with long dark auburn hair and eyes the same pale, luminous green as the piece of sea glass an aunt had sent him from Florida one year, Quinn had been his first love, his only love. Even now, so many years later, Cale could close his eyes and see her riding that big palomino mare of hers across the hills, her bright hair glowing like a halo and flowing like a river behind her. Beautiful. Beautiful as the pastel glow of the sun he now watched slide that last notch behind her family home.
And the wonder of it had been that Quinn had loved him, too.
If he had worked hard to achieve honors status in school, it had been to prove to Quinn that he was worthy of her. If he had spent hour after endless hour practicing hitting and catching to perfect his skills, it was as much to secure his future with her as it was to fulfill his dreams of being a star outfielder in the majors. He had even forgone his last two years of college to accept an offer from the Baltimore Harbormasters professional baseball team so that he could support her in style.
Cale had been convinced that he was the luckiest guy in the world back then, when, on his twentieth birthday, he had signed his first major league contract and proposed marriage to the then seventeen-year-old Quinn and she had thrown her arms around his neck to accept. Coach and Mrs. Hollister, however, had taken a dim view of their daughter skipping college and jumping into matrimony. Despite Quinn's promise to her parents that she would attend and complete school in Maryland where Cale would begin his major league career, the elder Hollisters were adamant. As much as they cared about Cale, there would be no wedding until the bride had graduated from college.
Quinn had argued and cried, but had been unable to convince her parents to permit her to marry at so young an age. And so, Quinn had told Cale, they would have to take matters into their own hands. Chart their own course. Follow their own star.
On the day she turned eighteen, they would elope.
It never failed to amaze Cale that, so many years later, the pain had barely diminished. His heart still hurt, his head still pounded, every time he thought back to that day, when he'd waited for her right here, in the very spot where he now stood on the porch of the old cabin where they had agreed to meet. And waited. And waited until the sun had begun its soft descent into the pastel hills and he knew there was no longer any reason to wait. Had he really believed that a girl like Quinn would give up everything that she had for the son of a hard-drinking truck driver from the wrong side of town? Cale had taken the plane ticket from his pocket--the one he had bought for his bride--and ripped it into a hundred pieces before climbing into the cab of his old black pickup and slamming the door. The truck had screamed down the gravel road and past the Hollister ranch as he had fought the tears of loss, of humiliation, and headed for the Gallatin Field about eight miles west of Bozeman. If he drove fast enough, he'd still make his flight to Denver, and from there, he'd fly to Baltimore. Alone.
Cale had gone on to fame and glory in the majors, but he never went back to the Montana hills or the cabin where he'd left his dreams of happily ever after with the only woman he'd ever really loved. Until now.
Cale rubbed his shoulder, as if to rub away the injury that plagued him, the injury that had, on a hot August night in Cleveland, ended his career. He had watched the film of the midair collision of the two men in the outfield almost dispassionately, as if it had been happening to someone else. Over and over he had played it, hoping against hope that the two bodies would not crash into each other, would not fall, one badly angled, to the earth. But each time it ended the same way. Each time he watched, he could feel the ground beneath his shoulder, could hear the crunch as bone gave way to turf. Two surgeries later, he had begun to regain his strength, but not his mobility. He would never play ball again, and that was that.
So here Cale stood, on the porch of an old mountain cabin, looking off into the dark night, wondering if it had been such a good idea to come here after all. Over the past year, his sister had hired a crew of contractors to rebuild the structure that had been for so long little more than an abandoned shell. The renovations having been completed in the fall, Val had spent two months here alone, escaping from the big city life she had never really adjusted to, seeking a haven from the demands of her modeling career that sometimes threatened to overcome her.
Although Cale and Valerie had grown up in town, they had spent many a summer day in the hills, and had been as proud of their connection to the old, dilapidated cabin as they had been of the legends that had grown up over the years surrounding its original inhabitant, Jed McKenzie. Surely the changes Val had made to the cabin would have mystified and amused their bachelor great-great-uncle, an early conservationist, who had spent most of his adult life here alone, and had died here alone years ago. Valerie had discovered that nothing really restored her the way a trip back to the hills could do, and this year she managed to convince Cale that some time up in the hills, would be as good for his soul as it had been for hers. She had stocked the freezer and the pantry before leaving right after Thanksgiving, and had planned to meet her brother and his sons here for Christmas.