Heart to Heart Read online

  Heart to Heart

  by

  Saxon Bennett

  &

  Layce Gardner

  This is a work of fiction; names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product oftheauthors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Square Pegs Ink

  Text copyright © Saxon Bennett & Layce Gardner

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without the authors’ written permission.

  Editor: Kate Michael Gibson

  Katemichaelgibson.com

  Cover designed by Lemon Squirrel Graphics

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  Synopsis

  Who says you can’t go home again?

  Amy's fast paced New York City life is interrupted by her mother's illness. She returns home to Fenton, Missouri after many years to find her her childhood home on fire and her aging mother in need of long term care. It's more than she can handle, but with the help of her new found friends, she finds a life—and love— she wasn’t expecting.

  Parker is a self-made woman and owns her own carpentry business. She has had plenty of girlfriends in her life. The only problem is none of them seem to stick around for the long haul. Parker is tired of rejection and has reconciled her fate to being alone. Until the new girl in town hires her to renovate her burned house. Parker is torn between falling for Amy or guarding her heart and playing it safe.

  Heart to Heart is an emotionally charged novel that explores loss, friendship, and a love that is discovered where you least expect it.

  This is book one of the True Heart series.

  Dedication

  For our good friend, Virginia Wiswell, who makes us look a helluva

  lot smarter than we really are!

  Chapter One

  Amy Warner slowed the car and turned off the radio. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. A column of smoke was rising above the skyline of Fenton, Missouri. It seemed to be coming from the vicinity of her mother’s neighborhood. The sound of sirens rang in her ears. She was in her rental car, telling herself the whole time that it wasn’t her childhood home that was burning, it couldn’t be. What were the odds, she thought, that she would be coming home to take care of her aging mother and arrive only to find her mother’s house burning to the ground?

  About the same odds, her mind responded sarcastically, as Trump winning the presidency.

  Amy turned the car around the corner and what she saw made her slam on the brakes.

  It was her childhood home that was burning.

  She parked the car, half on the street, half over the curb. She jumped out, leaving the door open with the alarm pinging, and ran toward the house. A wall of heat stopped her from getting too close.

  A kaleidoscope of colors danced over Amy’s childhood home. Two fire trucks, an ambulance, and three police cars were crowded onto the small street and had their lights flashing. Amy felt like she was trapped in a nightmare. Surely, she would wake up any minute now. Her alarm would go off and she would wake to yet another day in New York City.

  But there was no alarm.

  This was real.

  Amy watched unbelievingly as black smoke boiled out of the house and orange flames hungrily licked the roof. The pale yellow paint blistered and peeled off the wood siding. A window bulged, then burst outward, shattering, leaving the house with an empty eye socket staring blindly. Firemen swarmed the yard. Two hoses poured water onto the roof and through the empty window while police held back curious onlookers.

  “Mom! Where’s my mother?” Amy asked a fireman as he ran by. He didn’t answer.

  At that moment, a woman screamed. The front door of the burning house burst open and thick smoke belched into the front yard. Two firemen emerged from the cloud of smoke. They carried a screaming woman out of the burning house. The woman flailed her thin arms and kicked her bare feet, fighting the firemen every inch of the way. Her long, stringy, gray hair flew about her face as she whipped her head from side to side.

  “Stop! Somebody help me!” the woman screamed. Her frail body convulsed with sobs and she continued in a voice raw with emotion, “I didn’t do it, I swear. Somebody, please, help me.”

  Amy watched in shock as her hysterical mother was handed over to two EMTs and strapped onto a gurney. She ran across the yard to the gurney and forced her way in between the EMTs. She tried to take her mother’s hand, but her mother was still struggling and thrashing despite the restraints. She placed both hands on the side of her mother’s face and said, “Mom, it’s me. Amy. I’m here now. I’m home.”

  At the sound of Amy’s voice, her mother quieted. She whispered hoarsely, “Make them go away. Make them leave me alone. I didn’t kill him. I swear I didn’t. Tell them, Jean. Tell them I didn’t kill him.”

  Amy flinched. Her mother had called her Jean. Jean was her mother’s sister who had died over twenty years ago. Amy leaned in closer and said, “Mom, I’m not Jean. I’m Amy, your daughter. Remember?”

  “You know her?” asked a fireman with black soot smeared across his cheek.

  “She’s my mother. What happened here?”

  “Let me go,” her mother sobbed. “Jean, make them stop. Please, please, make them stop.” Her mother’s sobs turned to wails.

  The fireman said, “From what we can tell, she left the gas range on and something in the kitchen caught on fire. When we got here, she was wandering around in the front yard. She said she was trimming the roses,” he said.

  Amy looked over at the rose bushes that lined the side of the house. They had been hacked and sawed down to their roots. It looked like something straight out of the movie Mommie Dearest.

  “When we tried to remove her from the yard, she ran back inside the house. She was headed straight for the burning kitchen. I caught her just in time,” the fireman said.

  “Leave me alone! Why can’t you just leave me alone!” Amy’s mother screamed.

  A female EMT said, “Mrs. Warner? Mary, honey, we’re not trying to hurt you.”

  Amy realized the EMT knew her mother’s name.

  “Mary, calm down. We’re trying to help you,” the female EMT soothed.

  Amy’s mother locked eyes with Amy. “Make them stop,” she whispered. “Please, Jean, make them stop.”

  Amy took a good look at the mother she hadn’t seen in years. She wore a dirty, tattered nightgown that was streaked and stained with food and blood. Her hands and forearms were covered in bloody scratches. Her bony feet were chapped and dirt-streaked.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Amy asked.

  “She’ll be okay,” the female EMT answered.

  Amy backed away as the EMTs rolled the gurney to the waiting ambulance. Her mother wailed in protest. The female EMT stroked her arm and tried to comfort her, but Mary Warner spat in the woman’s face. It didn’t seem to affect the EMT. She wiped her face on her uniform sleeve and helped her partner load the gurney into the ambulance.

  Amy checked her watch. It was 2:15 p.m. The firemen had managed to put out the fire. Water flooded the front lawn. It looked as if they had saved most of the house. The kitchen was a goner, but the rest of the house was still standing.

  The female EMT came over to talk to Amy. “We’re taking Mrs. Warner to the ER and then you’ll need to make arrangements,” she said.

  “Arrangements? What do you mean?” Amy asked.

  “Ma’am, are you aware of your mother’s mental condition?”

  “Not real
ly,” Amy said. “I mean, I was told she had Alzheimer’s, but nobody told me it was this bad.”

  “This isn’t the first episode,” the EMT said.

  “She’s done this before?” Amy asked, shocked.

  “Well, she’s never burned down her house, but she has wandered off and required medical attention,” the EMT said.

  “I didn’t know,” Amy muttered. “I didn’t…”

  But the truth was Amy had known. She had denied it as long as she could. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Fitzsimmons, the next-door neighbor, Amy wouldn’t even be here now. Mrs. Fitzsimmons had called and told her she needed to come home. That it was time to make some decisions about her mother’s care. If it weren’t for that phone call, Amy would be in her tiny New York apartment banging away at her computer writing an article about the vagaries of being a housewife. The amusing part was that Amy was anything but a housewife. Still these kinds of magazine assignments paid the bills, so she churned out them out. Such was the life of a freelance writer in the big city.

  “Hey, there, Barb, who we got here?” A police officer came up behind them. She had an olive complexion and raven black hair that gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Hi, Rosa. This is Mrs. Warner’s daughter,” Barb, the EMT, said. “You need to talk to her about her mother’s condition. I got to get back.” She turned to Amy. “Your mother will be at the ER.” Barb walked to the ambulance and climbed in the back.

  The firemen were rolling up the hoses and making ready to leave. The police-woman smiled kindly at Amy and said, “Why don’t we go sit in my cruiser and I’ll bring you up to date? I’ll turn up the air.” She led Amy to a police car. “I’m Officer Garcia, but you can call me Rosa.” She held out her hand in greeting.

  “Amy Warner.” She shook Rosa’s hand.

  Rosa opened the passenger door for Amy and she climbed inside. She had never been in a police cruiser before. She sat stiffly.

  Rosa walked around the car and climbed in behind the wheel. “Ms. Warner…” Rosa started.

  “Call me Amy, please.”

  “Okay, Amy, I’m not going to mince words with you. You deserve to know what’s been happening. Your mother has taken to wandering a lot lately. She gets lost. We find her. We take her to the hospital. She comes back home. A social worker was brought in, but without a signed consent form from a family member about the only thing we can do is keep an eye out for her. And as you can see, it’s not good when she’s left to her own devices.” She gestured to the suburban holocaust Amy’s mother had created.

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve come sooner. I knew she was getting forgetful but…I just thought she was doing what all old people did.” Amy knew she sounded lame.

  Rosa nodded sympathetically.

  Amy continued, “You see, my mother and I… we don’t exactly… we’re not close. We’ve never been very close.”

  “She needs full time care,” Rosa said.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Amy asked. Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them away. “I don’t live in town.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “New York City.”

  “There’s a facility here. It’s fairly new—Brookside. It’s just for Alzheimer patients.”

  Static came over the radio. Rosa turned it low, but Amy could still hear the call for officers in a domestic over on Third Street.

  At that moment, there was a rap on the cruiser’s window. Rosa powered it down. It was one of the firefighters who had carried Amy’s mother from the house.

  “Hey, babe,” the firefighter said, taking off her helmet. Amy was surprised to see that it was a woman. She had short, dark hair. Black soot smudged her handsome features.

  “Hey babe, yourself. You about done here?” Rosa asked.

  “Yeah, we’re heading out now.” The firefighter leaned in and looked at Amy. “You the daughter?”

  “Yes, I’m Amy.”

  “I’m Steph,” the firefighter said. She cocked her thumb at Rosa, saying, “I’m her better half.” Her eyes were full of teasing.

  “Says you,” Rosa said.

  Steph looked back to Amy. “You got a minute so we can talk?”

  “Sure,” Amy said.

  Steph stepped away from the car and motioned for Amy to join her.

  “Go ahead and talk to her, Amy. I’ll drive you to the hospital when you’re done,” Rosa said.

  “That’s okay, you don’t have to do that. I rented a car,” Amy said.

  “Humor me,” Rosa said.

  Amy figured she had some big emotional moments coming up and Rosa was concerned. She was a nice woman.

  “All right,” Amy said and got out of the squad car.

  Steph led Amy toward the house. They stood in the soaked front yard—once pristine, it was now a mess of torn up grass, over-grown flower beds, and the massacred roses. Amy stared wide-eyed. Things sure had gotten out of control. She could only imagine what the inside looked liked.

  “It’s a mess, but it can be repaired,” Steph said. She’d evidently registered Amy’s dismay.

  “What am I going to do? I don’t want my mother to see this. This will kill her.”

  “She won’t be coming back, Amy,” Steph said gently. “She could’ve burnt down the neighborhood. We can’t have that sort of safety risk to herself or others.”

  “What if I get a caregiver for her?” Amy knew she was grasping at straws.

  “Not a good plan. She’s stage four.”

  “Which means?” Amy asked.

  “If I were you, I’d spend what time you have left with her. But that’s just my opinion. Alz people are difficult. They can become violent and they wander. It’s the disorientation that gets them. It’s terrifying for them. They go to the store and all of a sudden they have no idea where they are. You think they’re all set and then you’ll go shower and unless you remove all the door knobs, which people have done, she might think that she needs to go to the store. She can’t drive, but that doesn’t mean she won’t find the car keys. Believe me, I’ve seen it all. You’d be doing her a favor by getting her the care she needs.”

  Amy nodded. Part of her was relieved. It was all right to put her mother somewhere safe. “I don’t know what to do,” she waved her hand around, “about any of this.” Despite her resolve, she started to cry.

  Steph put a big arm around her shoulder. Amy felt the fire jacket’s rough canvas on her skin. “Hey, one step at a time, okay? Your mom’s safe for now. Then, you’ve got to make some decisions about this house. It’s not as bad as it looks. Your neighbor saw the fire and called before it got too far. Most of the damage is in the kitchen area. It’s very unstable back there. You have to stay out of it. The rest of the house suffered smoke and water damage and is by no means habitable. And it won’t be anytime soon. So don’t even think about it.”

  Amy closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “This is all too much for me. I can’t handle it.”

  “You can. You’d be surprised. I’ve seen people come back from a lot worse. Can you get time off from work?”

  “I’m self-employed. I’m a freelance writer.”

  “Which means you can work from anywhere, right?”

  “More or less.”

  “You’re golden then. The La Quinta over on Willis Street is decent. And they’ve got a pool,” Steph said.

  “She’s not staying at some scummy motel. She’s staying with me,” a voice behind them said.

  Amy turned. It was Mrs. Fitzsimmons, the next-door neighbor. The red lights of the emergency vehicles fluttered across her aged face, making her look like Dr. Faustus after a conference with the devil. She was not, of course. In fact, she was the nicest person Amy had ever known. She was more like a mother to her than her own mother had been.

  Relieved beyond words, Amy grabbed the older woman in a hug. “You don’t have to do that. I can stay…”

  “Nonsense. I won’t hear of it.” Mrs. Fitzsimmons pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Amy
. “Dry your eyes, girl. Crying won’t help things right now. There will be plenty of time for tears later.”

  Amy dabbed at her eyes. Mrs. Fitzsimmons patted her arm and said, “After you return from the hospital, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and we’ll get you settled in.”

  “Can I go now?” Amy asked Steph.

  “Sure. I’ll come by tomorrow morning and take a look at what we’ve got,” Steph said. “Remember, stay away from the house. We’ll deal with everything in the morning.”

  “I have no desire to go inside that house,” Amy said. What she didn’t say was that she had never wanted to be inside that house.

  ***

  Amy was shaking as they pulled into the ER parking area. Rosa must’ve noticed. “Want me to go in with you?” Rosa asked.

  “You don’t have to,” Amy said, staring at the front of the Ray S. Fenton Hospital.

  “I know I don’t have to,” Rosa reached over and touched Amy’s arm. “I want to. Listen, I know this is really hard. You need someone with you right now. Do you have a friend here in town to call?”

  “I don’t have any friends here. I haven’t been back—other than my father’s funeral— in a long time.”

  “Then let me help.”

  Amy nodded. “Thank you.”

  Rosa parked the cruiser and led Amy to the hospital entrance. They entered through the emergency room doors. Someone was yelling. People in light blue scrubs rushed toward one of the cubicles. Amy knew that scream. It was her mother’s.

  Rosa went to the desk and had a quick conversation with the admitting clerk whom she seemed to know. Amy stood paralyzed in the middle of the waiting room listening to her mother scream. She had an overwhelming urge to cover her ears. Thankfully, the screams suddenly stopped.

  Rosa took Amy by the elbow. “Come with me.”

  Amy didn’t move. Rosa quietly said, “It’s all right. I’ll be with you. Okay?”

  Amy nodded. She allowed Rosa to lead her down a short hallway and to a curtained cubicle where a doctor and two nurses stood over her mother. Her mother’s eyes were closed and her jaw was slack. Her chest rose and fell in long, shaky breaths.