Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

            Angel looked right into Clancy’s eyes and didn’t blink. “I was hoping all your questions would be answered by now.”

            “How did you get started in the oil business?” he asked, ignoring her remark.

            “When my great-grandfather died, he left us the farm, twenty acres of the prettiest green grass in the state. We left Tishomingo since we could live in Kemp rent-free and it was closer to Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. They had given me a grant and a scholarship. Guess you forgot about me telling you that,” she said. “Anyway, four years later Granny died, and I graduated with a major in geology and a minor in business right after I buried her. I had a hunch and drilled on the property. Everyone thought I was a fool, because there wasn’t an oil well anywhere around Kemp, Oklahoma, but it turned out right, and I was pretty well off overnight. Then I played a few more hunches, and everything I touched turned to gold. The girls helped me a lot. Allie is a geologist, Mindy is a lawyer, and Bonnie is a wizard at accounting.”

            “And Susan is great at PR, and Patty is a top-notch assistant who would like to feed my heart to the buzzards,” he finished for her.

            “You can’t blame them,” she said, defending her friends.

            “I guess not, if I’m telling the truth. And while we’re being honest, I’ve got a couple of things to tell you. That night you told me you were pregnant, I wanted to sit down and promise you the moon, but my mother and father would have died if I’d come home and told them I’d gotten you pregnant. My friends were waiting at the Dairy Queen, celebrating the last night before we all left for college. Melissa was there, and she started flirting. I was so mixed up that I didn’t know straight up from backward. Before long, we were dating, and we got married the week after we graduated from college. She taught school while I was in the air force. She didn’t make my heart do backflips like you did, but we got along pretty good until one fine day when she announced she wanted a divorce so she could marry the principal at her school.

            “I moved out, filed for divorce, and came home to Oklahoma as soon as my enlistment was up. I got my master’s degree and a job teaching chemistry in Oklahoma City. I felt like I deserved what I got after the way I treated you that night. End of story. I tried my best not to think about you, Angel. I was a young, stupid fool who handled things wrong. I was too proud to stand up to my family or even to all of my friends and tell them that I was dating you all summer, much less admit that you were pregnant.”

            Angel’s eyes shifted from one thing to another, never landing on him, but he had things to get off his chest, so he continued. “Melissa was the right girl from the right family who would know all the right things to say and do. It may be too much information, but she was cold in the bedroom, and sex was a bargaining tool, not something that was out of love. She didn’t make me feel like a million dollars the way you always did. At first, I thought I just didn’t know better because I’d only been with you and then her, but I’ve been with other women since then, and I learned better. They say you never forget your first love. Whoever said that was a genius, because it’s the truth. I’ve never had the same almost euphoric feeling I had when we made love on the creek bank. Not even close.”

            She locked gazes with him, but her expression was unreadable.

            Clancy wondered if he’d said too much, if maybe he’d done more harm than good with his admission. But the heaviness that he had carried around in his heart for years was gone, and he could breathe again without feeling as if his insides were twisted in a pretzel when he even thought about Angel.

            “Well, enough soul cleansing,” Angel said as the waitress put the hot platters of food in front of them. “You know my story and now I know yours. But there isn’t a future for us today, any more than there was that hot August night ten years ago. It’s over, Clancy. We’ve both grown up, and we’ve changed drastically. I’m not that same little poor girl who fell in love with you, and you’re not the person who was ashamed to be seen with me. It takes a good firm foundation to build a house, and a relationship is like that. Trust is the cornerstone, and I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you.”





Chapter 6


            On his way back to Tishomingo, Clancy stopped in Durant at a liquor store and bought two six-packs of beer and a pint of Jack Daniel’s. Then he headed northwest, meaning to drown his sorrows, even if that was childish and not one damned thing would have been accomplished when the sun came up tomorrow morning. It had been years since he’d been drunk, and tonight he intended to get so plastered that by morning his head would feel like a drum was keeping time inside it and then maybe he wouldn’t think about Angela.