Page 31 of Lightning in a Mason Jar
He answered with a tight nod, never looking away from the two-lane road.
Bailey Rae tapped the edge of the computer, the radar covered in bands of the downpour. “The weatherman really let us down with the forecast earlier.”
“Agreed,” he said, his grip on the steering wheel turning whiter. “It’s just as risky to turn back as to forge ahead. Or we could pull over and wait it out.”
Since Skeeter had a dog door to get in and out, she had nothing else pressuring her to return home. No one to worry if she didn’t arrive on time ... Depressing. “We should probably—”
Lightning split the sky, the crack of thunder so close the storm must have been right over them.
Martin winced. “Right. I’m pulling over.”
He put the truck into reverse, arm across the seat until they reached the top of the hill, where he shifted into park. The hammering rain on the roof and hazy interior seemed to shrink the space, leaving her fidgety from adrenaline letdown and needing to fill the awkward silence between them.
“We have a healthy respect for thunderstorms around here. Did you know that lightning struck Winnie’s barn years ago and burned it to the ground?” she babbled. “The red barn that’s there now is a rebuild. Folks say lightning doesn’t strike twice, but I’m not sure I believe that. I think there are places in the world that have these negative gravitational pulls that attract bad luck. Is that silly?”
“Not at all.” He shifted sideways, toward her, his elbow resting on the back of the seat. “Back home in Arizona, there are vortexes—or the more proper term is vortices. Anyway, these sites are believed to have healing energy. So it only makes sense that if there are these positive vibes, there would be places with negative ones as well.”
She hadn’t expected an answer like that from him, but then perhaps she’d been so busy paying attention to the rule-following military side of him, she’d missed the nature-loving warden side. “Do you miss Arizona?”
“Not particularly,” he said, taking off his hat and placing it on the dash. “I was a military brat, so I grew up all around the world. Dad’s last station was in Arizona while I was in high school. He and Mom decided to stay.”
“Any siblings?” she asked, pressing for more from him. Curious if he had any more surprises locked behind that handsome face.
“One sister. She’s in the air force, married with two boys. They get Mom and Dad at holidays since I’m childless. The grandkids are a big draw.”
How . . . sad. “I’m sorry.”
“I could always buy a plane ticket and join them,” he said practically, without a hint of hurt or anger. “Maybe if I’d lived in Arizona longer, I would have felt differently.”
“I’ve been in Bent Oak since I was six, and I can’t wait to leave.” The beach was calling her name. Less forest. Fewer negative force fields of memories to flatten her.
Martin stretched his arm ever so slightly and brushed back a lock of her hair. “No high school beau holding you back?”
“A beau?” She laughed, lightly punching him on the arm. “Who says beau anymore?”
He grinned, rubbing the top of his arm. “I thought it sounded Southern. I guess I missed the mark.”
“Well, bless your heart,” she said with a wink.
The air crackled in the minuscule space between them. Maybe it was all the talk about a positive vortex. “I didn’t have a boyfriend until the twelfth grade.”
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Were the boys at your school idiots?”
“You sound like Aunt Winnie.” The highest compliment she could pay anyone. “Anyhow, my newbeauseemed so nice, almost too nice. I figured there had to be a catch.”
“Ah, man, I get the feeling I’m going to have to kick some ass after this story is finished.”
“Actually,” she said, angling to face him more fully, her knee hitched on the seat, “he turned out to be every bit as nice as he seemed the first time he sat beside me at lunch. I thought he felt sorry for me because I was alone that day, thanks to the resident mean girls, Sissy and Missy.”
He shook his head. “Some people don’t change.”
She laughed and he joined in, their sounds twining. The rain on the roof softened until she could hear only the two of them. A monthago, she wouldn’t have expected to find an ally in Martin, but then he’d surprised her these past couple of weeks.
“My ‘beau’ was one of those super-religious guys who walked the talk. I hadn’t met many of those sorts.” In her early days in Bent Oak, she hadn’t been able to envision what a “good guy” would even look like. “Beau—for the life of me I can’t recall his name now ... Anyhow, Beau and I had been dating for about six months when he invited me to his youth group at church. I was so nervous. I put on my best jeans—no holes in the knees—and I buttoned up my shirt all the way to my neck.”
Martin laughed softly with her, not at her.
Encouraged, Bailey Rae leaned closer. “By the time I got there, my nerves were chewing me up alive. It didn’t help that Sissy and Missy belonged to the same youth group. But this was important to Beau, and he was important to me. So I decided to bite my lip and stay quiet.”
