A Love to Call Her Own (8 page)

The injustice of it made his head throb.

The mower came closer as Joe Cadore continued the back-and-forth swipes. The name sounded Italian, but the hair sticking out underneath an orange-and-white OSU ball cap was blond. Being Osage on his father's side, Ben knew better than to stereotype. Every ethnicity had its diversities.

“How—how
are
the girls?”

“They're fine,” he said stiffly, then forced himself to go on. “Brianne does consulting with oil companies and runs marathons. She's dating a guy who plays for the Oilers.”

“I know the Drillers are baseball. Is that a basketball team?”

“Hockey. Sara's husband is in the oil business, too, and she stays home with the kids. She's homeschooling Matthew and Lainie—they're eight and six—and Eli's four.”

“Wow.” The near-whisper was less an exclamation of surprise than a lament. She'd missed out on a lot, and she was right that the little ones wouldn't know her. Sara didn't have a single picture of Patricia in the house. It wasn't that his kid sister held a grudge—that was his job—but Sara excelled at writing off disappointments. She didn't keep unnecessary people in her life.

Sara's kids weren't missing out, either. They knew their grandpa had died a long time ago. Despite the formal titles their paternal grandparents had chosen—Grandmother and Grandfather—they had a great relationship with them. They adored their aunt Brianne and their uncle Ben and didn't yet equate having a grandpa with also having a grandma.

“George warned me,” Patricia continued, her voice softer, distant, as if she were thinking aloud. “It was the only thing we ever really fought about it. I gave up so much—threw away so much—and then I kept putting off trying to fix it. I'll think about it tomorrow, I used to tell him. I'll do something next week. And before I knew it, twenty years had passed and now…”

As Ben looked away from the tears welling in her eyes, the lawn mower out back shut down. A moment later voices reached the patio, one male, the other higher in pitch, rounder in tone. Lucy was back from her widows' thing.

Her timing couldn't have been better.

Dalton stood at the porch railing, one shoulder leaning against a solid post that had supported the roof since the house was built over a hundred years ago. Oz curled at the top of the steps, so relaxed his body was limp but always ready to leap off at the sight or sound of any critter brave enough to encroach on his territory.

The sky was darkening, and the pole light near the barn buzzed as no-see-ums swarmed around it. The front door stood open behind him, and so did the kitchen door, the screens allowing the evening breeze to drift through the rooms with its cool night scent.

It was quiet—no neighbors, no traffic, no planes overhead, the stock settled in the pastures. It was one of the things he loved about the place, and one that sometimes drove him crazy. Depending on his mood, it was the most peaceful place on earth or the loneliest. Tonight he felt lonely, and it was Jessy's fault for leaving memories of herself everywhere.

No, not Jessy's. His fault for bringing her here. Sandra's fault for leaving him here.

She'd broken every promise she'd ever made him. She'd said they would be together forever. She'd said she would always love him. She'd said she trusted him more than anyone else in her life. She'd said they would have kids and teach them to ride and rodeo and ranch and live, that they would watch them grow up together, watch their grandbabies and great-grandbabies grow up.

She'd sworn they would be happy every day of their lives.

It was easy to be happy when everything was going their way. Even her deployment to Afghanistan was just a bump in the road. She'd been to Iraq, and she'd compared it to playing baseball: long periods of boredom broken up by sudden bursts of adrenaline. Another tour was nothing, just a minor delay in the long, wonderful life they had ahead of them.

Opening the door to two Army officers on his porch had been bad enough. Like anyone else married to someone in the military, he'd known instantly what that meant. All the life had drained out of him in that instant—all the hope, all the good things. His heartbeat had slowed, and filling his lungs with a full breath became impossible. He'd thought he'd been hurt when Dillon took off, but hell, that was nothing—a scratch on a callused finger compared to someone ripping his chest open.

Then it had gotten really bad.

To this day, he remembered only words:
sorry, inform, dead.
He'd been in a curious place, between so numb that nothing made sense and feeling as if his skin was being ripped off, one small strip at a time. Then a word or two began to penetrate his brain.
IED. Alert. Awake. Legs gone. Pleading. Loosened tourniquet.

He had to ask them to repeat the last part. What they said couldn't possibly be true. Sandra was smart and determined and strong. If things didn't go the way she wanted, then she changed what she wanted to make them fit.

But there had been no mistake. She had unfastened the tourniquet on her right leg and bled to death before anyone realized it. She had chosen to die. Had chosen to stop loving him, to stop trusting him, to give up the babies and her family and their happily ever after. She'd chosen suicide over all the people who loved her.

It had been a terrible choice for her and a terrible burden for him. Once he'd seen firsthand how the knowledge sliced through every nerve, how it burned and stung and filled a man with questions that ate at his soul, he'd sworn their families would never know. Let her parents see her as a hero. Let her sisters adore her. Let them believe she'd died doing what she loved—instead of killing herself because she couldn't accept what she'd become.

Does the pain ever go away?
he wanted to ask someone—Jessy, Dane's fiancée, any of the margarita club women.

Another question: If he
wanted
it to go away, didn't that mean she'd been right not to trust him? That he hadn't loved her enough?

The sigh that should have been frustrated was lonesome instead. It made Oz lift his head and stare at him, his blue-brown eye in shadow, the other reflecting light from the window. He whined and stretched on his side, his signal that he'd accept scratching if it was offered. Dalton sat down on the top step and obliged him. The dog all but groaned with pleasure.

“A full belly, shade for a nap, a good scratch, and a bed to sleep in. That's all it takes to make you forget the tough times. I envy you.” He'd spent a lot of years living the tough times, pissed off, pitying himself, pushing away his family and friends.

And then he'd met Jessy.

Maybe the tough times were on their way out, and just like her and her widow friends, he was going to start living again.

She wasn't his type. He liked quieter, more thoughtful women, while Jessy was flashy and brash and overtly sexy. She liked to have a good time and good friends, while his only regular company was Oz and, on weekends, Noah. Partying and shopping were an art for Jessy, while he hardly remembered how to talk to anyone besides Oz and Noah.

But he'd had a good time in her bed. She'd been through the same loss as him, though she was handling hers a hell of a lot better. She liked his dog, his horses, and his cattle. She'd gotten under his skin the first time they met, and she made him want more.

He hadn't wanted anything but numbness for so long.

The wind quickened, ruffling his hair, bringing with it the sweet promise of rain. A rancher succeeded or failed based on the weather. The best skills, management, planning, and breeding in the world were all put to the test by brutal summers, drought, tornadoes, or frigid winters, and nature dealt Oklahoma all four on a pretty regular basis. He never wished rain away, but prayed for it—when he remembered to pray—to refill the stock ponds and nourish the bluestem, Indian, and switch grasses that kept his animals fat and happy.

Then thunder rumbled across the prairie, rattling the floorboards beneath them. Oz heaved a sigh as if to say,
Not again.
Springtime, summertime, storm time.

“Come on, buddy.” Dalton pushed to his feet and stretched to work out the kinks in his back. “Let's go in.”

The dog did the same, then trotted to the screen door, waiting for Dalton to open it before clicking his nails across the wood floor on his way to the stairs.

Dalton wondered idly as he followed what Jessy thought about sharing her bed with a dog.

Jessy had turned down offers of a ride home from every one of the regulars except Lucy—who'd been quick to leave the restaurant when dinner broke up and to get back to Patricia Sanderson's house…and Patricia's son. In all the time they'd known each other, Lucy hadn't gone out on one date, not even with the good-looking football coach who lived next door. Jessy didn't care for sports, but she would have taken Joe Cadore for a spin in a heartbeat if she'd ever had occasion to meet him away from Lucy.

“If he'd ever shown the least interest in you,” she added tartly as she stepped up the curb onto her block. Then she glanced around to see if anyone was close enough to have seen her talking to herself. With the last of the downtown businesses in the process of closing up for the night, the street was pretty much deserted. A foam drink cup, flattened by a passing car, scooted along the pavement ahead of the wind, and she bent to gingerly pick it up, then tossed it into the next trash can she passed.

She'd made it through the entire evening without taking a sip of the margarita, and if any of her girls had noticed, they'd kept it to themselves. She'd done a lot of worrying for nothing.

So that was one meeting down. The questions, the wondering, the whispers, could come next time.

She was only yards from her door, passing Serena's, when Miss Patsy rapped on the plate-glass window, gesturing. Jessy obediently went to the door, where the old lady met her, a large foam box in hand. “What's this?”

Patsy gruffly pushed the box at her. “Got three pieces of pie left over. You might as well take 'em.”

When Jessy lifted the lid, the incredible aromas of butter, sugar, and pastry drifted to meet her. One pecan, one coconut cream, and one strawberry with a thin drizzle of bittersweet chocolate over the top. Despite her promise to start eating healthy, the sweets-loving devil rose inside her, licking its lips and anticipating the first calorie-laden bites. “Aw, Miss Patsy, my favorites. Let me pay you—”

“Serena already closed out the register. Besides, if you don't take them, I'd just have to eat them myself.” Patsy tapped her solid belly. “You need the calories way more than I do.”

“You're a sweetheart.”

Predictably the woman got huffy. She was brusque and short with everyone, but Jessy had long suspected she was softer inside than she wanted people to know. Making shooing gestures as if Jessy were holding her up, Patsy closed the door, locked it, then…Was that a wink, or had her eye merely twitched?

Raindrops were falling with heavy plops as Jessy walked the last few feet to her door. She let herself in, then turned to watch as thundering wind chased debris down the street, following it with the heavy kind of rain that ran off before it could soak into the dirt.

A long flight of stairs led to her second-floor apartment. No fan of shadows, she had 300-watt bulbs screwed into the fixtures at the foot and the top of the stairs. After securing the dead bolt, she trotted up the steps, having to catch her breath at the top. “Yeah, like you need a million calories of pie tonight,” she grumbled as she walked into the large living room/dining room/kitchen.

The blinds were open on the windows that gave her a good view of the courthouse across the street and the branches of the tall oaks on its grounds whipping back and forth with the storm. She'd once seen high winds blow through—no thunder, no lightning, minimal rain—and leave the flagpole on the courthouse lawn bent in two, like a giant inverted V.

Restlessly she put the pie in the refrigerator, got ready for bed, then wandered through the apartment. One bedroom, one bath, one tiny balcony over the alley, not much to wander. Drawn to the couch, she turned on the television for company, but not a single channel of the way too many offered interested her.

In the weeks after Aaron died, she'd found herself turning to alcohol too often to cope. She had no family to help her; he'd had no family, period; she hadn't met her girls yet. She'd just wanted to take the edge off her sorrow and guilt, just until she was strong enough emotionally to deal with it.

Of course, there were consequences to taking the edge off.

Her usual nighttime routine was simple: something sweet to eat, something distilled to drink. She had the sweet, thanks to Miss Patsy, and the Patrón was in its usual place in the kitchen. How easy it would be to walk in there, feel the cool heft of the bottle in her hand, remove the cap, catch the first whiff of tequila wafting out the narrow neck into the air, watch the overhead light play on the lovely amber as she poured just a drink, a tiny sip, into a glass.

Just a sip. Just enough to savor the flavor, to send a little liquid sunshine into her bloodstream and warm all the chilled places. It was okay to have a sip, wasn't it? After all, when Lucy began each of her diets, no one expected her to give up all her favorite foods cold turkey. No one would expect Jessy to, either.

A shudder rippled through her, turning the craving building inside her upside down and tumbling her stomach with it. No sip. No, no, no. Not at night. Not when she was restless. Not yet.

“Yeah, let's wait until you're desperate.” The shaky sound of her own voice sent her roaming again, away from the kitchen and its temptations. She considered a warm bubble bath, downloading a book and actually reading it, standing still as a statue at the window until the storm passed—