Beneath a Southern Sky by Deborah Raney Page A

to leave her alone when she gets like this, but thank you. I’ll tell her you were concerned for her.”
    Daria nodded numbly and thanked him for coming, then felt foolish for thanking a man for attending his own son’s memorial service. As if he’d had a choice.
    After an uncomfortable moment, Jack Camfield broke away. Muttering a stilted farewell, he disappeared through the door.
    Daria’s parents exchanged troubled glances, but her father took her gently by the arm and led her to the fellowship hall where the family was being seated.
    When the dinner was over, her parents stayed behind to help clean up while Daria caught a ride back to the farm with her brother. Jason and his wife, Brenda, farmed with Erroll Haydon and lived just a few miles down the road.
    “Do you want us to come in with you, Dar?” Jason asked as the car idled in the driveway in front of the Haydons’ farmhouse.
    “No, thanks anyway, Jas, but I-I’d kind of like to be alone for a while.”
    He nodded and swallowed hard, his eyes brimming with tears. Daria had rarely seen her older brother cry, and it touched her deeply.
    Brenda leaned over the backseat and touched Daria’s shoulder. “You call if you need anything, Daria. I mean that.”
    “I know you do, Brenda. Thanks. Thanks for everything, you guys. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She climbed out of the car, waved them off, and hurried toward the house.
    She went upstairs, changed into the one pair of jeans she owned, and pulled on a ratty T-shirt that had been Nate’s. As she passed the mirror on the antique dresser in her room, the college insignia on the front of the shirt caught her eye. Unbidden, the memories came crashing back.
    She flopped down on the quilt that covered the high, canopied bed, and a film began to play in her mind. There was a young Nate, smiling and carefree, standing in the hall outside the door to her dorm room at KU, ready to take her to a ball game. He walked toward her on a campus sidewalk, that trademark grin melting her heart. She could almost feel his arms around her, smell the briny, outdoorsy scent of his hair—pale, straight hair that was as fine and silky as a baby’s. She had always teased him about that, secretly wishing she could trade him her own coarse, wavy hair.
    Her throat filled with longing, and she gave in to the tears, railing at her loss, letting the sobs rack her body until there was nothing left to cry, crying out Nate’s name over and over, though she understood fully that he would never answer her again.
    She must have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes the sun was low in the sky and she heard her parents moving around in the kitchen downstairs. She climbed off the bed and went to the bathroom where she stepped into the shower and let the almost-scalding water run over her face, the sting of the hot water comforting.
    She turned off the spray and dried herself methodically. In the full-length mirror, under the bright fluorescent light of the bathroom, she noticed for the first time how thin she had become. In spite of the slightly rounded stomach the growing baby had begun to give her, her ribs were starkly outlined under her flesh. She told herself she must keep herself healthy. This baby was all she had left of Nathan.
    She pulled on the same jeans and T-shirt, swept her hair up into a careless ponytail, and went downstairs. The house was quiet again, and she found a note from her parents saying they had gone to her brother’s for a few minutes. She scribbled a message for them on the bottom of their note and headed for the pasture behind the barn. The man-made terraces unfurled in waves across the prairie in front of her. This had been her favorite thinking place as a teenager, and she was drawn once again to the peace the spot offered.
    The cattle in the neighbor’s field started a plaintive bawling when they saw her, no doubt thinking it was time for their evening feed. She smiled at this everyday sound