Autumn Leaves

  Autumn Leaves

  A Pies, Books & Jesus Book

  Club Novella

  Kathleen Y’Barbo

  Copyright © 2015, 2019 Kathleen Y’Barbo

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means - photocopied, shared electronically, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, or other - without the express permission of the publisher. Exceptions will be made for brief quotations used in critical reviews or articles promoting this work.

  The characters and events in this fictional work are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is coincidental.

  To Bailey Turner, my inspiration and the strongest woman I know who wasn’t actually born in Texas.

  To Mrs. Thomas, my second grade teacher at Ridgewood Elementary in Port Neches, Texas, who told me I had a talent for stories and would someday amount to something. In Southern-speak that is about as high a praise as someone can receive, at least where I’m from. And for the record, I was the valedictorian of the second grade, so there’s that. You could say my educational career peaked early, but I’m glad Mrs. Thomas was right about the stories thing. I certainly enjoy writing them.

  And as always, to the real Bonnie Sue, who has provided more than enough material for a library full of books. Much love, Mama.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter One

  Galveston, Texas

  Autumn Skye Hudson found Jesus three weeks before she gave birth to her daughter and lost Him two summers ago. No, she amended. That wasn’t true. Hard as she tried, she had never managed to lose Jesus. Just like the lady at the teen moms’ group said, He was always there, whether she liked it or not.

  She steered her bicycle around the pothole at the corner of Galveston’s Thirty-Fourth and Seawall Boulevard and thought about the time she’d almost taken a job as an exotic dancer. Not that it was her first choice, but she had to manage the payment on the car she should never have bought. But there was a pesky whisper in the back of her mind. She knew that was Jesus.

  The whisper became a shout when Skye slipped back into Sugar Pine, Texas, under the cover of darkness on her daughter’s fourth birthday with plans to take her away to someplace neither of them could be found.

  Instead of snatching her sleeping little girl, she settled for watching her from the window and then disappearing into the night. Each mile she put between her and Pansie Chambers felt like another nail in a coffin she wished she could crawl into. Yet she couldn’t escape the certainty that Jesus had again saved her from doing something very wrong.

  Each time she thought of her daughter’s thick lashes dusting cheeks sprinkled with freckles—fairy kisses, one of her many foster care moms had called them—she wondered. Did Jesus really love her, or did He just love Pansie enough to keep her mama at a distance?

  Even now as she dodged a pair of tourists strolling along the seawall and pedaled toward the gift shop where she worked, the question bothered her.

  Especially since it wasn’t her first time to abandon Pansie. Nope, she’d already walked away from Sugar Pine without her daughter twice. Another time and Skye would be straying dangerously toward becoming her mama, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

  Better Pansie live without Skye than learn what it felt like to lose her parent. After all, she’d already lost her daddy.

  And as for Jesus, if He was as real and omnipotent as His followers made Him out to be, then He could easily prove that to her.

  Skye lifted her eyes to the bluebonnet blue sky, allowing her gaze to study the strings of white clouds that floated lazily by. All right, Jesus. If You’re up there, speak to me. Or do something to let me know you’re there and can hear me.

  Her attention returned to the boardwalk in front of her just in time to collide with something that felt like a brick wall. Her bike went one way, and she went the other.

  As she reeled backward against the wooden rail, an arm shot out to snatch her back from falling over and onto the rocks below. “Are you all right?” a man’s voice asked.

  The horizon tilted yet again, and her sandaled feet left the boardwalk. Her rescuer turned sideways to dodge a pair of fishermen and a sign for this weekend’s Galveston Surf Safari. At the door to the gift shop, he set her on her feet in the shade of the porch.

  She swiveled around to see who’d been carrying her, putting inches between them. The man was tall and had short hair that was spiked with sunshine and seawater. His board shorts and flip-flops made her immediately think surfer.

  “I think I know you,” she said. Yes. He looked just like guy who’d moved in next door. She’d ask just as soon as she could gather her wits enough to form the question.

  “Hey,” he said with a crooked grin. “I thought you’d fainted.”

  “No.” Her voice was weak, and she blinked and tried to focus. “I wasn’t looking where I was going and then . . .” She read the words written in big blue letters on the front of his T-shirt. It was the logo from the Christian radio station up in Houston.

  God listens.

  Oh.

  She swayed, and that same muscled arm snagged her around the waist.

  “Look, something’s wrong. How about you sit down?” He nodded toward a bench in the shade of the gift shop. “I’ll grab some water and be right back.”

  “No.” Her voice was stronger now, and things were coming back into focus. “That’s not necessary. Really.”

  And it wasn’t. What was wrong had nothing to do with her health. She was perfectly fine. Healthy as a horse, as her last foster mom would have said.

  The only thing wrong with her was her shock that God had listened. Or so it seemed.

  Skye backed away from the bench and straightened her spine, determined to manage the distance between where she stood and where she needed to go, namely inside the gift shop to take her place behind the cash register, without anyone’s help. The last thing she needed was to give Myrna a reason to fire her.

  And yet there was something familiar about this guy. Something very familiar.

  “Do I know you?” she managed, and then thought better of asking the question she’d been pondering. To inquire whether he lived in a duplex on Fourth, she’d have to tell him she did.

  And she didn’t tell anyone where she lived. Not that she’d lived anywhere long enough to worry about talking about it.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said to her relief.

  “Look, sorry. I’m late for work.” She removed herself from his grasp. “Thank you for . . .” It was her turn to nod, this time toward the direction of her near-fall. “I don’t know what happened.”

  He eyed her with no small measure of suspicion. “I really think you ought to get yourself checked out. You don’t look like you’re feeling well.”

  She wasn’t, but that wasn’t his business.

  God listens.

  Skye looked away. “Well, thanks.” She trekked toward the shop’s back door.

  “Hey,” he called as she yanked on the knob. “I’m Nate.”

  Skye turned in his direction but held tight to the door. To turn loose now would likely require another rescue, and she’d had her fill of them this morning.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Autumn.” She gave him the name she’d decided fit her best for this new life she’d chosen.

  Autumn.

  As in autumn leaves.

  Or in her
case, Autumn leaves. Because just like her mama, she always seemed to.

  Chapter Two

  Autumn.

  Interesting. Especially since, according to the records he’d found, her name was Skye.

  Nate Donahue watched the woman with the auburn ponytail wobble inside and disappear behind a door that closed too quickly for him to follow. But then he’d been following her for the better part of two weeks, so he knew where she was going, what she was doing, and when she’d finish her job and go home.

  And home she’d go, this woman-child whose habits he had studied as closely as he’d once studied case law. That dream gone, he now got paid to find people. Watch them. Stay in their lives but out of their lives until the assignment was complete.

  And this assignment was complete. He could have sent the report a week ago. All he was supposed to do was run a skip trace to find out where she was and then make visual contact to confirm her identity matched the description Stan had taken from the client.

  Something Nate had done so often, he could practically do in his sleep. But he’d grown intrigued with the woman, and for the first time since he started working for Stan, he didn’t want to let the assignment go.

  Nate retrieved the bike she’d nearly run him over with when she’d collided with the wooden support that held up the side of the pier. He found the front tire flat and the chain hanging. Not good.

  A check of the time on his phone told Nate his target wouldn’t need her chief mode of transportation for another six hours. That left him plenty of time to make the repairs on the bike and disappear back into the anonymity he’d so carefully maintained.

  Or had maintained until today, anyway.

  Even if the job didn’t require him to blend into the background, Nate liked living where no one knew him. Where no one cast glances as he walked by and wondered—aloud or to themselves—what had happened to the Donahue kid.

  Surely you’ll be going back to SMU to get that law degree soon, won’t you?

  All that potential, and you’re going to use it for this?

  And those were just the questions his family asked. Who knew what everyone else in Sugar Pine, Texas, wondered?

  Because everyone in Sugar Pine knew about his association with Ross Chambers. Thanks to a lawyer well worth the fortune Dad had paid him, his part in Ross’s crime spree had never been publicized outside of the courtroom.

  Ironically the last thing of value he had to offer the law community wasn’t his own law practice but rather a signed confession against Ross Chambers and his accomplice. Ross hadn’t survived his last burglary, but Nate’s confession had righted one wrong for Trey Brown.

  And because SMU Law had access to his newly acquired criminal record, Nate hadn’t survived law school. But at least he was free to walk around and make better decisions. Ross would never have that chance.

  Nate settled the bike in the back of his rusty Ford truck and then climbed in and rolled down the windows to let the heat out. One thing about Galveston’s constant sea breeze was that it made a decent substitute for a working air conditioner.

  And in Texas, that was saying something.

  He pulled up at the open back door of Stan’s Bail Bonds and jumped out. Before he’d wrestled the bike out onto the pavement, he could hear Stan shouting at someone on the speakerphone. Stan loved to shout. Happy, sad, angry, whatever. Stan experienced all emotions at high volume, and when forced to take a call it was always on speaker.

  Sully, the only other employee Stan hadn’t run off over the years—five decades and counting—said Stan talked so loud because Stan’s second wife was hard of hearing and refused to wear hearing aids. Martha, the home health nurse who came to check on Stan every Tuesday and Friday, said it was because Stan lost his hearing in Vietnam and read lips to hide it.

  Whatever the reason, neither Nate nor Sully cared to ask. In fact, nobody asked anything personal at Stan’s Bail Bonds. Not about the employees, anyway. Stan was happy to provide all sorts of personal information about anyone else. For a fee, of course.

  That was what they did.

  Nate leaned the bike against the cinder block wall at the back of the strip center, where the bail bonds business sat between Than’s Seafood and the Minute Mart. Around here, windows were usually open year-round to allow the sea breeze in and someone had turned Mr. Than’s transistor radio to the Astros baseball game. A commercial for a local car dealer reminded Nate to hurry down to the lowest prices in town.

  The door opened next door, and Mr. Than stepped out, holding a bag of potato chips.

  “Nice bike.” He nodded in Nate’s direction. “A little girlie for you, though, Nick.”

  “Nate,” he said, just as he did every time the nice old guy called him by the wrong name.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Stan’s voice rose over the sound of the next commercial, a catchy jingle about promptness from a plumbing company, and Mr. Than shook his head. “Too much stress, that one.”

  Now there was another voice, distinctly female, matching the bail bondsman in pitch and tone. He knew that voice from somewhere. But where?

  The older man settled in his rickety lawn chair with the missing straps and pulled out a single potato chip. The transistor radio crackled with the sound of ball hitting bat and the excited announcer claiming a foul ball.

  “Me? I take it easy. You ought to do the same, Ned.”

  “Nate,” he said as Stan’s voice rose again.

  “That’s what I said. So why do you have a girlie bike?”

  “I’m fixing it for a friend.”

  Mr. Than grinned. “A pretty friend?”

  He thought a minute and then nodded. “Very. Kind of early for the Astros,” Nate said as he studied the damage on the bike.

  “East Coast time,” he told him. “Double header. Say, are you going to surf this year? Mrs. Than, she loves to come to the beach and cheer for you.”

  “Not this year. I got wrangled into helping to organize the event, so that doesn’t leave me time to surf.”

  “Sort of like Mrs. Than running the kitchen here. Doesn’t give her time to cook for me.” He shrugged. “So you like organizing?”

  “No,” Nate said. “I like surfing. But it was my turn.”

  The war of words went silent inside Stan’s Bail Bonds, a fact more worrisome than any noise he’d heard before. Nate waited a moment more before deciding to go and see which, if either, of the combatants had survived the skirmish.

  He left Mr. Than to his ball game and chips and slipped in the back door. He heard his name and stopped short, half-hidden behind a wall that separated the public part of the storefront from the Employees Only area.

  From where he stood, he could see Stan sitting at his desk with an unlit cigar in his mouth, but the chair across the desk was out of Nate’s line of sight. Sully watched from the desk next to Stan’s. Nate picked up the scent of some kind of flowery perfume, which competed with the smell of boiling shrimp from next door.

  Sully spied him and shook his head. Apparently the war of words was sufficient to pull Stan’s sidekick from his usual morning activity of working at least two crossword puzzles before checking the racing reports.

  “I don’t believe you understood me, sir,” the indignant female said. “I cannot believe for a minute that a man of your intelligence and entrepreneurial abilities would not know where your best operative was. Now please do whatever it is you do around here to locate him.”

  “Look lady,” Stan said, “I am the boss around here, and what I say goes. Now—”

  “I must speak to Nathaniel at once, so please do make that happen.”

  Nathaniel. Only one person called him that.

  It couldn’t be.

  He let out a long breath and stepped around the corner into the office. “Nana? Has something happened to Grandpa?”

  Bonnie Sue Easley, Nana to everyone under the age of forty, crossed the room and enveloped Nate in a perfumed hug. She backed up a
nd held him at arm’s length to give him her customary looking over.

  She’d worn pink today, a vibrant shade that matched the hibiscus shrubs that grew along the back fence of his cottage and the cottage next door where Skye lived.

  Or rather, Autumn.

  Nana shook her head and pursed her pink lips as her perfectly styled blond hair shone in the morning sun. “You’re too skinny and too tanned, and you’ve been away from Sugar Pine far too long.” She turned to his boss. “Please write up an invoice, and I’ll see that it’s paid.”

  Stan reached for his invoice book. “It’s gonna cost you, Miz Easley.”

  His grandmother by marriage—his grandfather’s wife of a few years, though she’d acted in that capacity long before Grandpa made it legal—leaned toward Nate as she rolled her eyes. “He’s impossible. How you can stand to work for him is beyond me.”

  “I heard that,” Stan bellowed, shattering the theory that he had a hearing problem. Apparently, the guy just liked to shout.

  Nate shook his head. “Nana, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m hiring you,” she said.

  “You mean you’re hiring him again,” Sully corrected. “How long did you say you needed him?”

  “Wait a minute.” Nate caught Sully grinning and scowled, but that just made the old man laugh. Nate returned his attention to Nana. “What does he mean, again? And why would you hire me in the first place?”

  “Nobody said she’s hired you before,” Stan bellowed. “Ain’t that right, Sully?”

  Sully shrugged.

  Stan cleared his throat and sent a look in his direction.

  “Yeah, right,” Sully finally said.

  Nana grasped Nate’s hand and led him toward the front door. “Don’t pay any attention to those two. They’re just giving you a hard time. Let’s have an early lunch. It’s a long drive down here from Sugar Pine, and I’m starved for some more of those shrimp nachos. What was the name of that place you took me to?”

  Nate halted at the door. “What’s going on here?” He looked at Nana, then back at Stan and Sully, who were watching with amused looks. He turned back to Nana. “You hired me once already? For what?”