REASONS

Tracy Fabre
StoneGarden.net Publishing, February 2009
Genre: Romantic Suspense

Delphi's ready to vacation with family friends when her parents confess that the driver of the car that nearly killed her long ago was one of the sons of the family she's about to visit.

Excerpt From REASONS

"What?"

I looked at my mother, interested in her tone of voice. "You find that odd?"

"That you want to spend the summer at the Laughlins? Yes, I find that odd." She pushed her gray-brown curls behind her ears, suddenly restless.

"Why? They're like family." My family and the Laughlins had been friends forever, and up until I was in my mid-teens, we used to make regular summer treks from Pennsylvania out to their Colorado horse ranch.

"What about your job?"

"What job? My position with Professor Nelson ends in two weeks, and I'm not leaving for Maine until late August. That leaves the whole summer free. You and Dad should come out sometime while I'm there." I'd been emailing Annie, her long-ago college roommate, and it had been Annie's idea that I come for a long visit.

"It just seems like an imposition," my mother said, somewhat unhappily.

I was finding this conversation very puzzling. "Mom, it's okay. Robert's secretary is about to take maternity leave. I'll be filling in for her until she gets back, so it's not like I'll be mooching off anyone."

"You've been making plans, then." Her voice was low.

"I told you I was in touch with Annie. I told you she was pushing me to visit. She wants you and Dad to come, too. Why are you acting this way?"

My mother stood up and went to the sink, spending an inordinate amount of time rinsing out her cup. "Delphi, I just don't think you should go. It's been a long time since we were out there, and things may not be as you remember them, and it would just be better for you to stay home. You said there were some openings for the summer term at the university. It makes a lot more sense for you to just stay here. Maybe you and your father and I can take a trip somewhere scenic before you leave for Maine."

I laughed. "How about Colorado? That's pretty scenic." She didn't answer, staring instead out the window at the back yard. "Okay, Mom, you're starting to freak me out. If you don't want me to go because I'm about to move to Maine for two years, that's one thing, and you should just say it. But if there's some other reason you don't want me to go visit the Laughlins, and I mean a really good reason, you'd better just cough it up right now. I told Annie I'd be out there next month."

She turned to face me. "Delphi, no. You can't."

I felt a chill at her horrified expression. "Why not?"

"Stay here," she commanded. "I'm going to get your father." She half-ran out of the room, leaving me completely bewildered.

The Laughlins operated a sprawling ranch in eastern Colorado. They were good, decent people. They'd had three sons, and two of them worked on the ranch, which focused on breeding, training, and boarding horses. Bobby, the eldest, was thirty-one, and helped his father run the business side; Tam was twenty-nine and provided veterinary services for the operation. The third son, Artie, the youngest, had been killed years ago in a car accident.

We hadn't been to visit the Laughlins for close to a decade, and although I had often inquired why, I'd never gotten a satisfactory answer other than ‘oh, but it's so far' and ‘we really don't have time.' Christmas cards and periodic newsy letters were exchanged, and I knew my parents always enjoyed keeping in touch, but I'd been the one to get hold of Annie's email address and start up a more regular correspondence.

When had we last been out there? I thought about it, listening to my mother clattering down the stairs to my dad's workshop. I'd been seventeen. How could I forget? That had been the year my life was derailed. But the boys hadn't been around during our visit; they'd been off working as camp counselors someplace else, and I'd had the run of the property on my own for a few weeks. It was beautiful, spreading out over hills, meadows and trees crisscrossed by horse pastures, and the Laughlins' house had been at the heart of everything.

My father came into the kitchen, his expression serious. My mother was right behind him, even more anxious now. "Delphine," he said, pulling up a chair to sit across from me at the table, "Adele says you want to spend the summer at the Laughlins."

"Yes." I opted not to point out the obvious, which was that I was an adult, self-supporting, living on my own and not required to ask for their blessing, let alone their permission.

"And while she'd prefer, I think, that I just tell you sternly you can't go, you and I both know it would be a waste of breath and an insult to your intelligence." He folded his hands, looking at me over the tops of his bifocals.

I was starting to feel more concerned than annoyed. "That's true."

My mother was pacing back and forth between the stove and the desk, arms across her chest. Anxious. Too anxious. He went on, "So I think we need to tell you the truth."

She stopped pacing, and got very still.

"I think that would be best," I said very quietly, but with a growing sense that this might be something I didn't really want to hear.

"We stopped going to see the Laughlins because the car accident which eventually killed Artie is the same one which put you in the hospital for several months when you were seventeen."

He might as well have said that a poodle was stuck in the flying toaster. "What?" I stared at him. "What?"

My father sighed, and took off his glasses. "What do you remember about the accident?"

What did I remember? We had been coming back from the Laughlins' that summer evening. We stopped for gas just past dark, not more than a hundred miles from our starting point, and I had crossed the street to pick up some burgers and fries for our dinner. "Hit and run," I said. "A little red car ran a light and nailed me. You said it went on to slam into a dump truck, and then it drove off." I remembered headlights, a flash of the car's red hood, fast food bags flying in weird slow motion through the air.

"Well, I saw the car. I saw the license plate. Robert Laughlin showed me photos of the car he helped Bobby buy that spring, including the vanity plate. LAUGH 3. That was the car that hit you, Delphine."

The clock ticked. No one seemed to be breathing. From somewhere, I managed to say, "You're telling me the Laughlin boys ran me down in the street and left me for dead."

My mother turned away suddenly, as if in pain.

He let out a deep breath. "Well, I don't think they knew it was you, of course, but essentially, yes." He put his glasses back on, and folded his hands again. "I thought they'd come back. When the police and the ambulance came, I thought, we know these boys. We know their parents. Of course they'll come back. So I didn't tell the police I'd seen the license plate, and then, you realize, we got pretty preoccupied with keeping you alive."

I had been in the local hospital for a few weeks, and when my condition was stable, they'd flown me back home to Pennsylvania and straight to another hospital, where I spent the next two months. The impact had done serious damage to my leg and for a while they thought I might lose it, but the doctors put it back together. I had a significant scar, I couldn't walk long distances without limping, and I set off metal detectors sometimes, but I was all right now. It had even been years since I'd had nightmares about it.

This was another kind of nightmare altogether.

Tracy Fabre Bio

Tracy Fabre lives in the mid-south, works with books, toils in relative anonymity, and you can read more about her on her website at www.tracyfabre.com.

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Reasons, Tracy Fabre
StoneGarden.net Publishing, February 2009

The preceding excerpt was taken from the book Reasons with complete approval by the author Tracy Fabre and/or the publisher StoneGarden.net Publishing. This information may not be re-used or redistributed in any manner.

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