Deep in the Heart (42 page)

“
Oh, okay.” Maggie sat down in the chair. “Umm, I was wondering. How formal do you want me to be for the wedding? I imagine I’ll just be working with the kids, so…”

Patty Ann exhaled harshly. “Let me guess. You don’t have anything formal.”

“
Formal?” The word leveled her. “Uh, no. Not really.” She pushed her glasses up nervously. “I just have my work clothes pretty much.”

“
Terrific.” The secretary thought for a moment. “Well, if I advance your pay and give you tomorrow off…”

“
Oh, I have money from before, but I don’t… Umm, who will take care of the children?”

Patty Ann looked like she might hit overload at any second. “We have yet to find a suitable replacement for Mrs. Haga. With the wedding preparations and Mrs. Ayer’s current schedule, there just hasn’t been time for interviews or even applications.”

Maggie was twisting through the situation as much as Patty Ann was. Then a thought occurred to her. “You know, there’s a girl that helps out at the stables. Jamie something. She’s Tanner’s girlfriend.”

Patty Ann stared at her clearly having no idea who she was talking about.

However, Maggie knew for her own sanity that solution was better than hiring someone she didn’t know. “Jamie was really good with the kids when we were down there. Maybe she would be interested in babysitting.”

“
Under normal circumstances I would have to check this Jamie person out, but…”

The phone rang. Patty Ann looked at it and then glanced at Maggie. “If you can get her, do it.”

The house was quiet. Blessedly, thankfully quiet. Knowing he needed more than his own wisdom for this one, Keith had spent 30 minutes when he got off work reading the Bible. All day long his mind had been twining through the possibility that he was right, but while he was reading, it was as if the rest of life dropped away. There was something so comforting about reading those words.

If he could just stay here and never go back to the real world, he would have. However, there were answers he needed, and so at just after seven, he put the Bible in the little compartment and went to the office where he clicked on his computer and set to the task at hand.

With everything in her Maggie fought calling him to find out about Jamie. She didn’t want to disturb him. Moreover, she didn’t want to get Dallas and have to explain why she needed to talk to Keith. Something in her told her that if she didn’t keep her distance, Dallas would figure out what Maggie wouldn’t even let herself admit. So, one excuse after another she whittled away the evening, hoping the world would mercifully come to an end and she wouldn’t have to make that call.

Three Dead in Two-Car Crash. Dateline: Midland, Texas

It had taken almost two hours of searching, but when Keith read the headline, he knew this was it. Just before he could read into the story, however, the phone rang at his elbow, and he picked it up. “Hello?”

“
Keith. Hi. This is Maggie.”

Breath slid from his lungs, and he turned his chair from the computer’s glare. “Maggie? What’s wrong?”

“
Oh, uh. Nothing. Really. Umm. I was just calling to see if you might have Tanner’s phone number.”

Nothing in him liked how strained her voice sounded. “Tanner’s? What do you need his number for?”

“
Oh, well. Umm. We’re needing a babysitter for the kids for tomorrow, and I mentioned Jamie might be interested…”

“
Why do you need a babysitter?” The thought of her leaving and never coming back smashed into him.

“
Well, Greg and I were talking, and I realized I don’t have a dress or anything for the wedding, and…”

The sentence continued, but Keith’s brain had stuck at the words
Greg and I
. After a moment, he realized she had stopped talking.

“
I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have called. I know you’re busy.”

“
No!” The word jumped from him. “No. That’s fine. I’ve got his number. Hang on.” Keith stood on shaky legs and walked out to the kitchen. The fading twilight was not enough to read by so he snapped on the light. “So how’s everything up there?”

“
Okay. Good,” she said. The words sounded rushed and thrown into the silence between them. “How are the stables?”

“
Pretty rough. The whole Saturday thing really threw everybody for a loop.”

“
I bet.”

“
But they had insurance on him, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Insurance doesn’t bring him back.”

Keith wasn’t at all sure if it was the softness of the words or the words themselves that ripped the façade of Keith Ayer from his guard atop his heart, but in one breath he was gone. He sat down heavily on the barstool. “I know, but they all make it sound like it should.”

“
They all?”

The name hacked through his heart. “My dad. He said it was pointless to save Dragnet because he’d never race again, and what was the point of having a loser around?”

“
He said that?”

“
In so many words.” Keith exhaled as all the heartache from the last week surfaced. “He’s so smart in business, how can he be so clueless about life?”

Maggie didn’t answer right away. “How about you?”

“
What about me?”

“
Do you buy into the idea that if there’s insurance, life doesn’t really matter all that much?”

His spirit sunk. “I don’t want to, but everybody else makes it sound like that’s the only way to think. What am I supposed to do, swim upstream my whole life?”

“
Well, I think that depends on if you want to look rich or to be rich.”

“
Huh?”

Maggie laughed softly. “Oh, it’s something Mrs. Malowinski used to tell me. ‘Maggie, there are people in this world who look really rich, but they are so poor you should feel sorry for them because they are poor where it counts—in the heart, in the places only God and love can fill. And then there are those who don’t look rich on the outside, but they are because they know what’s important, and they center their entire lives on it.’

“
So I guess the question is: Do you want to look rich or to be rich?”

No one had ever asked Keith that question, and although he knew what he wanted the answer to be, he couldn’t let himself believe that was the one that could be. “I’ve got Tanner’s number here.”

“
Oh, okay. I’m ready.”

When she hung up with Keith, Maggie placed the call to Tanner and then to Jamie. In a matter of minutes, she had Jamie lined up, and the world itself seemed to line up right behind her.

In the dark room Keith didn’t bother to turn the light on. He sat down in the office chair and spun it slowly. The screen was black for having been neglected too long. He swept the mouse to the side, and the screen blinked to life. He closed his eyes, knowing and yet still hoping.

The story was still there when he opened his eyes, and one slow word at a time, he let it seep into him.

“
A Midland couple and a Houston socialite were killed Friday night in a two car collision on Rural Route 72. James Montgomery and his wife, Christina, both of Midland, were pronounced dead at the scene. Bonnie Ayer, wife of Houston oilman, Conrad Ayer was airlifted to Midland Central where she later died of massive internal injuries.

“
Conrad Ayer was also airlifted to Midland Central and remains in stable condition.”

The chair back caught Keith as his hand went to his mouth. His father was there? His father was there. Somehow, in every single thought he had ever had about the accident, he had never once had his father in that car.

“
The cause of the crash remains under investigation although authorities said that alcohol was a factor.”

Disbelief, shock, horror doused Keith’s spirit, dragging it down, pushing it down, scratching huge holes all the way through it. That’s why they wouldn’t tell him what happened. They were protecting his father. Anger flashed through all the other emotions. Ike knew. All these years, Ike knew, and he had never said anything. Inez knew too. The names slashed one after another through his consciousness. It was possible everyone in the world knew—except him.

And then one name crowded the others out. It was a face so gentle, it brought a moan of anguish up with it. “Maggie…”

The barn door was much easier to open now that she knew the secret. Carefully, Maggie drove the little Chevette out into the sunlight, threw it into park, and climbed out to close the door. Patty Ann had added a few items to her list—a “decent outfit for the rehearsal and shoes that don’t look like they’re from the dollar store.” Where she was going to find anything like that, she had no idea.

Just as she made it back to her car, she heard the unmistakable rumble of the Dodge. Her gaze went to the trees. The pickup didn’t break through, so she got in her car and drove up to them. At the trees she stopped, noticing the pickup sitting in the garage parking place. The garage was opened, but no one was around.

Next to the pickup sat the pewter Jaguar, and Maggie knew what that meant. She turned her gaze to the drive and purposely didn’t look back.

“
Who’s that?” Dallas asked as the navy car went by the front window.

Keith looked up from his sandwich, and his heart fell into his shoes. “Probably Ike.” He didn’t want to think about who it really was. He didn’t want to say her name or hear her voice or so much as see her face even in his dreams—although it was there in every one. As much as that hurt, Maggie Montgomery was better off without Keith Ayer or anyone else in his disgustingly wretched family. They had wrecked her life, and now she was scraping by, trying to prove to them she deserved to work in their mansion.

If life was fair, it would’ve been the other way around.

Sunday morning Keith had a plan. Dallas might never want to go with him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t go. He got up early, showered, and dressed. He wasn’t out to impress anybody, but he needed some sanity in his increasingly insane existence. Easing out of the house lest he wake Dallas, Keith got into his pickup and made his way down the driveway and past the mansion. If he was lucky, Dallas would think he’d gone to work.

Work. The word itself was kind of funny in a parallel universe kind of way. He showed up every day, fed the horses, fixed what needed fixed, but he wasn’t really a part of it anymore. Hodges had wiggled and strong-armed his way back into the feed contract, and although Ike ranted and raved about it, Keith knew it was he that had signed the final order.

The other side of work was the question of what he would do when all this was a memory. Dallas was pushing him to get a desk job. Mr. Henderson had offered him a job with his re-election campaign. His father’s Galveston branch had called three days before requesting an interview. However, nothing in Keith wanted anything to do with any of them. His heart said they were all wrong, and so he did nothing about them.

The Dodge rounded the last corner in Pine Hill and slid up into a parking space outside the little church. This was it. If God couldn’t help him make sense of this, no one could.

Maggie’s thoughts traveled down the little trail to the beautiful guesthouse beyond. Dallas was the luckiest girl in all of Texas if not the world. To be one week away from being Keith’s wife, it must be Heaven on earth.

“
Gie. Gie,” Isabella said as she fell into Maggie’s arms.

“
Oh, I love you, baby girl. You know that?” Maggie buried her face into the little curls, fighting not to cry. If it wasn’t for the kids, she would’ve already turned in her resignation. This next week was sure to kill her. Watching them get married. A front row seat just in case she had any thoughts of skipping out. Why did Patty Ann and everyone else insist on smearing her face in the coming heartache? They with their schedules and their seating charts and their reminders about how important this is to the Ayer family’s standing in the hierarchy of Texas and the nation.

As if she needed any more pressure.

“
There is a hole in each and every one of us,” the preacher said as Keith sat in their normal spot, feeling the emptiness of the space around him. “A hole that only God can fill.” He paused. “I picture this hole as a kind of vertical pipe that goes from our head to our heart and all the way through us. This hole is not something we created but rather something God created in us.

“
The purpose of life, the journey of life is meant to show us that nothing other than God can ever successfully fill that hole. Not money, not things, not ourselves, not our work or our accomplishments. Not our success or our awards. Nothing else can fill that hole.

“
When we try to fill it with other things, we put them in the hole, but they slide right back out again, and we know we must fill it with something else. So we find another goal, another thing that’s out there, and we think, ‘Yeah, that’s it. If I can just get
that,
then I’ll be happy.’ But it doesn’t work that way. Because stuff is not what will fill the hole.

“
It is just as Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well. ‘He who drinks of this water will get thirsty again and again, but he who drinks from the water that I give will have a well-spring arising from his very being.’”