A Love to Call Her Own (4 page)

If he was smart enough to recognize the chance, and willing enough to take it.

With three arthroscopies behind him, Ben left the hospital for the clinic across the street, jogging the four flights of stairs to his floor. He got a quick look at the patients in reception, a fair number of their faces familiar to him, then ducked through a door into the treatment area and into his office. He so rarely spent time there that it was the last place anyone trying to find him would look.

He hadn't slept well the night before. He'd ignored a number of calls from Lucy Hart, presumably another friend of Patricia's, and he'd had to tell his sisters, Brianne and Sara, about George. Like him, they'd been bemused.
I'm sorry Colonel Sanderson died,
Brianne had said.
I'm sorry when any of our troops die. But he wasn't our father. He wasn't even our stepfath
er. We never knew him.

Sara had been blunter.
Like we're supposed to care about her loss?

Ben hadn't been able to force himself to offer their dad's usual advice:
She's your mother. Naturally you love her. She divorced me, not you kids.

But Patricia had, in effect, divorced them. She hadn't raised them, hadn't been there for them, hadn't even bothered to let them know she was back in Oklahoma. Their love for her had fled the state not long after she had.

He opened an energy bar and ate a chunk of it before scanning his schedule for the day. It was busy, as always, and no matter how much time was allotted to each patient, he always found himself needing more. Sawing off femur heads, hammering in titanium appliances, and screwing pieces of a joint back together were the easy part of his practice. Remembering to take time to really listen was something he struggled with. The clinic was chaos from the moment the first patient walked in until the last one left, and it was seriously tempting to give in to the urge to go go
go
. Especially when something was on his mind that he didn't want there.

The ring of his cell brought that particular
something
right back to the forefront. Every time it had rung since Jessy Lawrence's first call, he'd flinched. Considering he paid for the damn phone and the damn service, the flinching had gotten really annoying really fast.

Lucy Hart. Again. Scowling, he answered curtly. “Hello.”

“Oh, hi. Hey. I wasn't really expecting…” A deep exhalation. The accent wasn't Southern, like Jessy's, or the voice husky. This could be any woman from anywhere. “I'm Lucy Hart in Tallgrass. I'm a friend of your mom's. Is this—this is Ben, right?”

He could lie, but that would only get him off the hook for the moment. Apparently, Patricia's friends were persistent, so he'd still have to deal with the matter. Though he'd thought he'd done that yesterday. “Yes.”

“Look, Ben, I know you're busy, and your relationship with your mom hasn't been good for a while, and you're thinking you hardly knew her husband and certainly aren't mourning him.” Another long breath. “But we all make mistakes. I'm guessing your mom's were pretty significant. But she's in a really bad place right now, and it would mean the world to her to see you and your sisters. You know, when you lose someone you love, it makes you think a whole lot about the other people you love, especially the ones you're disconnected from. Please, Ben, she really needs someone here.”

She should have thought about that before she ran out on us. You screw people over, you can't expect them to be there for you when you need them.

“What about her brother and sister?” He sounded cold and didn't care. None of what had gone wrong between him and Patricia had been his fault. None of what was going on now was his concern.

“They'll be here for the funeral.”

“When will that be?” He wasn't interested. Just the sort of questions people asked.

“We don't know. George's body will be shipped back to the States and—and prepared, then he'll be escorted to wherever she chooses to bury him. It can take a few days or up to a week and a half. It just depends.”

Lucy's voice quavered, turning thin and reedy, and damn it, he had a soft spot for quavery voices. He'd yet to see the patient or family member who didn't need reassurance before heading in to the OR. Unlike the listening, that always came easily to him: a pat on the arm, a moment's conversation, a promise that he would take care of them, the comfort of a familiar face.

Days alone, waiting for her husband's body to come home. Ben couldn't imagine Patricia holding up that long without someone to lean on. Lucky for her, she had Lucy Hart and Jessy Lawrence, and surely the Army had some sort of support system in place. But not him. He had patients and surgeries and a life of his own.

“People change, Ben.” Lucy's voice was softer. “They regret things they did. They regret things they didn't do. I'm not asking you to make up with Patricia. I just think if you show her compassion now when she really needs it, it'll mean something to you later.”

Forgive,
his dad had often preached.
Not for the person who wronged you, but for yourself. You deserve better than to waste time and energy on resentment.

He had a lot of resentment. Would forgiving his mother ease some of it? Could he do that for her? Or at least, like Dad advised, for himself?

Grudgingly he said, “I'll think about it.” Before Lucy could do more than inhale sharply in surprise, he warned, “But don't keep calling me. I'll let you know when I've decided.”

Jessy awoke bleary-eyed around eleven, her head aching, her mouth dry and gross, her eyes puffy. One glance at her pillowcase confirmed that (a) she'd forgotten to take off her makeup the night before, and (b) she'd cried herself to sleep.

After the long, sad, awful afternoon with Patricia Sanderson, she hadn't been able to keep memories and images out of her mind. Her own notification call, knowing what LoLo was going to say before she opened her mouth, the sorrow, the shock, the guilt. Aaron's dignified transfer by private jet from Dover Air Force Base to Tulsa, then by hearse to Tallgrass. Choosing flowers, arranging the service, clasping the flag presented graveside by the post commanding general.

The overwhelming sadness and guilt.

Other people claimed tears were cathartic, but not Jessy. They made her feel like she was drowning in sorrow long after the last one had fallen. She never felt better after crying. It was torture, one drop at a time, and required a recovery period, best accompanied by a bottle of Patrón.

Steadfastly avoiding the kitchen, she showered, dressed, and put on makeup. Her wardrobe ranged from girl-next-door to serious professional to sex-on-four-inch-heels. Today, with a light hand on the cosmetics, orange cargo shorts, and a striped shirt, she was in girl-next-door neighborhood. She wasn't sure what she was dressing for, other than
going out
—feeling the way she did, she wasn't staying in the house with the Patrón—until she went to the closet for shoes.

Her gaze caught on the camera bag on the shelf. Now, taking pictures was cathartic. She'd learned with her first camera, when she was fourteen, that the world was safer when she looked at it through a lens. She could capture the stark, lush, harsh, kind beauty in any single instant. If ugliness managed to intrude, she could Photoshop it out and create perfection. Ilena Gomez, her preggers margarita doll, had called her photos haunting and majestic, a compliment that had lingered for weeks in Jessy's heart. Still did.

Even so, she hadn't picked up the camera in a month. There wasn't a lens long enough to distance her from the mess of her life.

After pulling on a pair of sandals with thick rubber soles, she picked up the bag, retrieved the battery that was always in the charger nearby, then her purse, and left the apartment. When she pulled out of the alley a few minutes later, she headed north. She didn't know where she was going, but out of town sounded good.

The Oklahoma countryside always seemed peaceful, except when storm clouds hurtled across the sky, and even those had incredible beauty. In her four years there, Jessy had gotten only one photo of a tornado, but she hoped for another chance someday, preferably an impressive one that formed quickly and broke apart just as quickly without doing any damage.

Not today, though. She just wanted to feel the camera in her hands, to look around her with that protective distance in place, to enjoy the sun and breathe the fresh air, and to hopefully get rid of a bit of the ugliness inside her.

Seeing a pasture with cattle ahead, she slowed and turned onto the dirt road that fronted it. A few hundred feet down, she parked at the side of the road, right wheels close to the bar ditch, took out the camera, and crunched over gravel on her way to the pasture fence. The boards, though worn gray with weather and time, held securely under her weight, so she climbed to the top, balancing carefully as she focused the lens on the nearest cow. Deep red and white, it chewed lazily, methodically, its huge eyes watching her with disinterest.

“I'm just another two-legged oddity in your world, aren't I?” Jessy murmured, snapping off pictures, close up and from a distance, cows and babies, trees and fence and sandstone boulders and sky. Something unwound in her gut, so slowly that it took her a while to realize it was tension seeping away. She'd missed this feeling of capturing a perfect moment in time, of preserving the scene, of creating something that would long outlast her. She'd needed it, needed something that wouldn't leave her feeling ashamed as so much of her life did.

Traffic passed on the highway, but she ignored it as she turned to face the opposite direction. The field across the road was overgrown, enclosed with rusty barbwire that sagged between ancient wooden posts. Though it had once been cleared, red cedars were taking over again, along with sumac seedlings that would provide gorgeous splashes of color come fall. Wildflowers grew in patches: Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susan, purple coneflower. Clumps of iris spread in straight lines about thirty feet from the road, bearing a few blooms among the spent flowers that had already faded.

Jessy crossed the road again, racking up pictures from every angle. She was crouched next to the ditch, lens directed to the irises, when fine vibrations transmitted from the ground to the soles of her feet. A pickup truck was coming down the road, a dust cloud trailing behind it like a balloon bobbing after a toddler. She glanced at the dust, then the camera, and stood, folding her arms against her chest and over the camera to protect it.

The driver stopped well short of the stop sign, waited a beat, then eased forward until the truck was even with her. Oklahomans were friendly, she reminded herself. A quick hello-how-are-you-doing, and he would leave her in nondusty peace.

Then she saw him, and peace was the last thing on her mind.

Memories assailed her—a sunny afternoon, the sweet fragrance of flowers filling the air. A little conversation, an ill-advised invitation, and a much-needed distraction on a tough day. She had suggested a beer and a burger at Bubba's and he'd agreed. She'd made the drive to the bar knowing she would drink too much, get too bold, wind up in bed with him, then regret it forever, but she'd gone anyway. At that moment, filling the emptiness inside her, even just for a while, had seemed worth the shame and disgust that would follow. She knew the pattern; she'd gone through it countless times before.

But Dalton Smith had disrupted the pattern. Unlike the men before him, he hadn't been anonymous. He hadn't disappeared from her life as abruptly as he'd entered it. She'd seen him again, and again, and she'd felt…something.

Jessy was afraid of feeling that something.

He studied her much the way the cow across the road had—brown eyes, impassive expression, no sign of interest—except little lines crinkled the corners of his eyes, and his fingers were tightening around the steering wheel. He hadn't expected to see her out this way, and it wasn't a pleasant surprise. He didn't think much of her—only fair since she didn't think much of herself.

The dust settled as he looked at her and she looked back. Fighting the urge to move—fleeing to her car seemed a good idea—she waited for him to speak, remembered he could be very slow about that, and blurted out the first words that bypassed her brain and reached her mouth. “Why are those irises growing like that?”

His gaze shifted from her to the flowers in the field, then back again. “This is the old Jefferson place. A tornado took it out about twenty years ago, but left the irises in the front flower beds.”

She looked at the flowers again, imagining a snug little house behind them, white with a broad porch, maybe a swing, and curtains fluttering in the breeze. A home destroyed in a matter of seconds, lives changed. Her own familiarity with instant disaster sent a shudder through her and led to her next inane question. “How many tornadoes have you seen?”

“None.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “The Smith family knows how to take shelter.”

“I don't know where I'd take shelter. I live downtown, second floor of the Berry Building.” Lord, she was babbling now. This was no conversation to be having with a man who'd seen her at her worst in their first-ever encounter and hadn't been impressed in their subsequent meetings.

“That building has a basement. Underground is always good.”

“And maybe wind up with the entire building collapsed on top of you?”

His mouth quirked again. A person who didn't know better could be forgiven for mistaking it for a smile trying to get free. “Better than getting blown away at two hundred miles an hour.” After a moment, he added, “In a corner or under the stairway.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” Her rent included a storage area in the basement, so she had access. She just had trouble picturing herself down there in the middle of an unholy storm with no lights, probably no cell phone service, and who knew what kind of little skittering, slithering creatures. Her bedroom closet, though not as safe, was clean and comfy, and if she did get blown away, at least it would be with her cameras and her shoes.