Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            “See you later. I’m headed to work. When he wakes up, tell him that I changed my mind. I don’t want to talk,” Angel whispered and eased out the back door.

            ***

            Hilda counted to ten slowly, then went out to the front porch where Clancy was snoring loudly on the porch swing. So, this was the sorry bastard who’d caused her Angel to be single at the age of twenty-eight…who’d made her cry when she was younger, and who’d upset her today. He wasn’t a bad-looking fellow—tall, well-built, dark hair, dark stubble starting to show on his face where he needed to shave.

            Hilda loved Angel like a daughter, and it broke her heart to see her upset, especially on Sunday afternoons when she came home from her precious baby son’s grave. She hooked the broom handle in the back of the swing and shoved with all her might.

            One minute Clancy was dreaming of having the sweet angel he used to know in his arms beside the creek bank, and the next he was flying across the porch, grabbing at the air for something to hold on to. Then his eyes sprang open just in time to see the wooden floor as he landed facedown.

            “Why did you do that?” he sputtered as he sat up.

            “Me?” Hilda looked shocked.

            The old green pickup he remembered from high school roared around the end of the house and out onto the dirt road headed west. “Where’s she going?” He sat up, checking his nose to see if it was bleeding.

            “I wouldn’t know, you dirty scoundrel. She said to tell you that she’d changed her mind and she doesn’t want to talk. You’d best haul your butt on out to that fancy car of yours and get out of here.”

            “Kept my promise,” Hilda spoke to herself as she watched him leave.





Chapter 5


            “Good mornin’,” Patty greeted Angel when she opened the door to her office. “Have a good weekend?” She tossed her long, straight hair over her shoulder and opened another letter with a silver dagger.

            “Had a helluva weekend.” Angel took her sunglasses off, revealing red and swollen eyes. “I’ve cried buckets and buckets, and Hilda has used every cuss word she knows.”

            “What happened?” Patty’s brown eyes were round as saucers.

            “Call the rest of the girls for a meeting in my office,” Angel said, adding, “Just us, not the rest of the board.” She opened the heavy double doors into her private office and poured steaming hot coffee into a mug with the Conrad Oil Enterprises logo on the side. Bless Patty’s heart, she was more than the best executive assistant in the world. She was also a good friend.

            “Okay,” the five of them said in unison as they sat down around the table. “What happened?”

            “He followed me to the cemetery”—Angel leaned back and pinched the bridge of her nose with her finger and thumb—“and now he knows everything,” she told them. “I should have closure, but I don’t. I spent the whole weekend crying my stupid eyes out.”

            Angel looked around the table at the faithful friends who had stood by her all these years. They had come a long way since she’d met Allie in the university library ten years ago. Angel had been five months pregnant with Clancy’s baby and working on a geology assignment. The two young women became instant friends. Before long, Allie had introduced her to the rest of the gang, and every one of them had cried with Angel when the baby was stillborn.

            “Damn him!” Mindy swore. “Just when I thought I had you on the right track. Just when you were starting to do some serious dating. Why did he have to come back in the picture now? Lord, we haven’t got time for this. We’ve got a wedding to plan for Bonnie and a divorce for me to get through, and Lord knows Susan is going to wake up someday and say yes to Richie. Seems like he asks her to marry him at least once a week.”

            “And I’m pregnant,” Allie said bluntly. “Guess there ain’t no time like the present to announce it. We seem to be having a group confession.”

            “Well, hallelujah.” Angel smiled and her eyes began to twinkle. “I’m glad to hear that. You aren’t goin’ to quit work, are you?”

            “Hell no. Next to you, I’m the best damn geologist in the great state of Texas, and I’m not even thinkin’ about quitting work. I’ll strap my baby on my back and tell those drillers how to do their jobs, and my kid can grow up knowing everything there is to know about oil wells,” she said. “But what are you goin’ to do if he comes back again? He knows where you live and where your company is,” Allie said.