EMMETT (The Corbin Brothers Book 3) (12 page)

“I tried to leave that man,” Mary said, looking at the horse that grazed out the window like she wished she could trade places, be put out to pasture like Peyton had idly threatened earlier. “It was a mistake, being with him. When I realized what he was, when he let his true self show to me, the one that bruised and bloodied, I tried to leave him.”

Peyton held herself so still that I was afraid to look at her, afraid that a tiny gust of wind that might winnow its way into the trailer would shatter her and blow the pieces of her all away. I’d never be able to put her back together again, and if she tried to do it for herself, it would end up wrong, or backwards, and the Peyton I knew and loved would be gone forever. What could I do to keep her strong? I was in no way capable of forcing Mary Crow to halt whatever tale she was intent on passing down to her daughter. All I could do was keep quiet and bear witness. I wasn’t even sure either of them knew I was there anymore.

“He didn’t like that.” We all watched the horse outside try to nose away the dead grass to try and find some goodness hidden somewhere beneath it. “That man really showed me how he used his hands and his fists. They weren’t for hard work. They were for causing pain. That was his favorite way to use them. And when he got tired of using his hands and feet to hurt me, he used his other limb to hurt me. And that’s how you were conceived.”

Peyton didn’t make so much as a sound, but I felt like I was going to be sick. I couldn’t go on hearing this, but the harder thing to do would’ve been to try to leave that trailer. I was half convinced that the door wouldn’t budge if I tried to get outside right now. I couldn’t believe this was happening, and a surreptitious look at Peyton told me that this was the first she was hearing of this origin of her own life.

“When I found out you were inside of me, I told that man to give me money for an operation,” Mary continued. “He gave it to me. He didn’t want a child from me any more than I wanted one from him. But I took that money and bought this trailer. And I decided to try the operation myself. I knew how to help horses give birth. I was pretty sure I could take care of something inside of myself that I didn’t want there anymore. Just a little matter of anatomy.”

Peyton had slowly clasped her hands together in front of her and gripped her fingers tightly, her knuckles turning pale. I was gritting my teeth so tightly that it hurt my jaw, every muscle in my body taut with tension. Was this really happening? Had this really happened? It was too hard to tell. All I could do was watch and listen, just like Peyton.

“You resisted, of course.” Mary cut her eyes slyly. “If you hadn’t, stupid girl, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation. So spare me any tears. You were born after all. Obviously.”

“Does it look like I’m about to burst into tears?” Peyton asked, but she bit off every syllable like they hurt her inside her mouth. I took her statement as an invitation to look at her, to see how she was coping with this verbal assault. It was true — there weren’t any shimmery, unshed droplets in her eyes at the injustice of her origins, even if she had every right to want to cry. But she didn’t look well. She looked like she needed to sit down. I would be the last person to actually suggest that to her, though. Peyton was ensconced in her own sphere of emotions that was somehow keeping her upright — regardless if it might burst later. For the moment, and this was only moment to moment, she was still standing.

“I didn’t want you because I couldn’t look at you,” Mary said after what felt like ten minutes of silence. “I saw him in you — more him than me. I had you here, in this trailer, by myself, and then put you outside, so unable to look at you. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought something or someone would spirit you away and I wouldn’t have to look at you ever again.”

This trailer was remote. I understood that it was on the reservation, but I couldn’t even see the nearest neighbor abutting Mary Crow’s land. The thought of a newborn Peyton, alone and wailing into the Texas night, was an image I couldn’t easily shake from my mind.

“And when I did come to my senses, there you were.” Mary looked directly at Peyton. “Still there. Still insisting on being there. I guess I was relieved. I don’t know. I’m not really sure what I was, looking at you and seeing nothing but him. I picked you up and rode the horse into town. And I turned you over to the police, told them who your daddy was, and that’s the end of that.”

The horse whinnied outside and we all looked to see what it was doing, but there was nothing molesting it except for the occasional fly, which it flicked at with its tangled tail. Maybe I was in shock at everything I had just heard. But all I could think about was what I could do to make that horse look healthy again — a good grooming, trimming the hooves, untangling the tail and mane, and getting it a companion so it didn’t have to graze alone. Horses got depressed just like people did. They needed attention beyond simply seeing that they survived on a day to day basis. They needed love. They needed someone to care.

“You know,” Peyton began, but absentmindedly, as if she wasn’t completely aware of her words, “the story doesn’t end there.”

“Oh?” Mary fidgeted with her pipe.

“No.” Peyton slowly managed to make eye contact with her mother. “There’s thirty more years to that story.”

Peyton could have done literally anything at this point and I would have supported her with every fiber of my being. She could’ve slapped her mother, and I would’ve cheered her on. She could’ve dissolved into tears and collapsed into her mother’s arms, and I would’ve hugged them both. Life could sure be some shit sometimes. I knew it as well as most people, and Mary and Peyton knew it better than all of us combined. Dax Malone was a piece of shit, but Mary didn’t do Peyton any favors except boot her back to her father, a confirmed asshole.

I waited for Peyton to do or say something — Mary waited, too, still playing with her pipe but not lighting it — but we were both disappointed. Peyton turned and stomped out of the trailer, and the strange atmosphere that I’d felt earlier, like I wouldn’t have been able to make a run for it even if I tried, dissipated as the wind took the door and smacked it on the side of the trailer, leaving a gaping hole to the outside, letting the hot summer light in.

“That girl’s a survivor, you know,” Mary said. It should’ve been a compliment, but the way the old lady said it belied some sort of disgust.

I itched between wanting to stay and listen, hoping to squeeze out some more understanding about Peyton from her mother, and wanting to follow Peyton outside to soothe whatever feathers Mary had managed to ruffle. Peyton had been right. This had been so much worse than talking to Dax Malone. Her father might disrespect us and cuss us out and maybe even level a shotgun, if provoked, but her mother’s form of warfare cut far deeper than a bullet was capable of. Mary Crow was terrifying. I kind of understood, for the first time, why she and Dax had fallen together in the first place — as horrible as the circumstances had ended up. They were uncannily suited for each other, both of them broken human beings capable of inflicting immense pain on anyone they chose. The fact that their onetime coupling had resulted in someone like Peyton was … well, improbable.

“Peyton’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met,” I said, starting for the door. “She had to be, I guess, looking after herself all these years.”

“There are some things you can never really understand,” Mary said. “You’re trying to understand those things right now, but you’re just wasting your time.”

“I understand that Peyton hasn’t ever had the support of either of her parents,” I said flatly. “She couldn’t help the actions of her father any more than she could help you abandoning her.”

She shrugged off my rebuke easily. “You came with a question about horses.”

Had we? That seemed like so long ago already, whole ages prior to that awful truth Mary had decided to unburden herself of.

“We did,” I said. “Well, originally. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“Ask your question.”

It was disorienting trying to wrap my mind around horse rehab again after all of that, but I tried. Otherwise, coming out here would’ve been worth nothing but a terrible shock and lasting heartache for Peyton. We might as well get what we came for, at least.

“Most books and veterinarians discourage any hope of recovery for a horse with a broken leg,” I said. “But Peyton seems to think that you know something about that.”

“I do. But it depends on the break — how bad it is, where it is on the leg. Not every horse needs a bullet for medicine.”

I listened as carefully as I could, making frequent notations on a pad of paper so that Peyton could give them a glance later, when her head was clearer. I wished we could’ve talked about the horse rehab before the answers Peyton didn’t want to hear, but it was what it was. It was my turn to be the good listener, the good business partner, to at least glean this knowledge in the hopes that it would heal our problem horse, and the wounds Mary had inflicted on Peyton, as well.

“And you’ve successfully treated horses with breaks and fractures using this method?” I asked, underlining a point Mary had emphasized herself.

“Treated that one out there,” she said, jerking her thumb at the horse grazing in the yard. “If you don’t mind a few scars here and there on the horse, it works. It wouldn’t be ideal if the horse was used for racing or for show. Too unsightly. But if you needed the horse for riding, for work, it would be fine. If you loved the horse, even better. You wouldn’t mind the marks that would mean its life was saved.”

“That’s what we came here for,” I said, capping my pen. “Thank you.” The gratitude tasted like ash in my mouth, thanking the woman who’d cut Peyton to the quick with her stories. Mary could smell it.

“You’re in love with her.” It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t something I could dodge away from. I was surprised to find that I didn’t want to worm my way out of the truth.

“Yes. I’m in love with her.” I drew myself up to my full height and looked down at Mary Crow. I didn’t know why I did it, couldn’t explain my own actions to myself. I didn’t know if perhaps I was trying to prepare for some other onslaught of psychological warfare from this woman, or whether I was readying myself to defend Peyton’s character from her own mother. My gut just told me to look big, look impervious, and get ready to weather whatever storm Mary Crow was about to throw my way.

But if it had been a storm she was considering, it sputtered and dried up. She relit her pipe and enjoyed a nice, long toke before exhaling the fragrant cloud at me.

“Good luck,” she said, coughing. “Love’s a son of a bitch. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

“Do you think your mother needs help with anything?” I asked after we had driven so long in silence I didn’t think I could last another second. Peyton was like a thundercloud, ominous and building, but there hadn’t been any sort of rumble yet. It was starting to worry me. I expected that maybe she’d cry, or shout, or curse, or beat her fists against the dashboard, but she did none of those things. She only looked out the window, across the rolling hills, or the far-off horizon, whenever there was a flattening in the terrain.

I couldn’t guess what her thoughts might be, but I couldn’t get my own brain off of Mary Crow. I didn’t know whether she was the villain of the story or the victim. It was probably some blend of both, but I couldn’t help pitying her. She’d been so wounded she was delusional enough to think that Dax Malone would help heal her. And then by the time she realized her terrible mistake, he dealt a devastating blow — something that would link them together forever.

Peyton was the biggest victim here, sure. She didn’t ask for any of this, didn’t ask for her parents to hate each other or hate even the idea of her. She was here in spite of them, doing what she could to pull herself through life without the help of either of them.

It was just … I couldn’t shake Mary Crow. I couldn’t forget the way she looked at that horse, refusing Peyton’s money, knowing that she was of an age that she could start liquidating what few assets she had for cash. She couldn’t take that horse or trailer wherever she ended up once she stopped waking up. She was a woman ready to go, but she was still there.

“I noticed that there were several things that needed attention in your mother’s trailer,” I said. “That leaky faucet, for one. I’m handy with tools. I could fix that. I could probably even figure out how to level everything out so it doesn’t bounce around when someone moves in there. What do you think?”

If Peyton had heard me, she gave no indication. She just crossed her arms over her chest and settled deeper into her seat.

“Does your mother live all alone?” I tried again.

“I don’t know.” Her response was short, the words bitten off, but I was encouraged. Maybe Peyton wanted to open up. I decided to continue to ask questions.

“How old was she when she had you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Um … so, how old is she now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she would let me help her, if I asked? If you asked? We could see if there’s anything else that needs to be done with the trailer. Any work that she hasn’t been able to do herself or hire someone to do. And if she doesn’t have anyone, what about a caretaker to check up on her? Do you think she would appreciate that? That it would help at all? Or maybe a grocery delivery?”

“She’s not an injured animal, Emmett,” Peyton snapped, though her anger was tempered with a good dose of what sounded like exhaustion. “You can’t just take her under your wing and nurse her back to health. That one bites. Stay away from her.”

“How can you say that about your own mother?” I asked her. Had she heard the same thing as I had? Mary had made mistakes, sure, but she had been beaten down.

“Because she is my mother and she never did any mothering,” Peyton said, fixing me with a stare that could only be described as murderous. “Because not everyone was fortunate enough to be born into the illustrious Corbin family. Because the state of Texas couldn’t compel her to give a shit about me, and that’s why I ended up with my father instead. And because he wanted to raise me even less than that.”

I was hearing what she was saying — and was pained by guilt and sorrow over it — but an errant thought flitted through my head: How could a woman so deep in despair look so beautiful? Even as her dark eyes studied the horizon, teeth gently gnawing on her bottom lip, Peyton made my heart hurt. She hadn’t wanted to hear about my heart before, and I knew she’d want to hear it even less now, so I kept the sentiment to myself. It didn’t matter how I felt about her. Now wasn’t the place or the time. There probably wouldn’t ever be a place or time for that kind of chatter, not with the way things were going.

“I’m sorry you had to see all that,” she said slowly, seeming to think carefully about each word before it left her mouth. “I don’t think you should’ve come.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad I was there,” I said.

“Why?” She looked at me, her glare sudden and sharp, those brown eyes transforming at once from liquid depths to hard rock. “Why are you glad you witnessed all of that? To gossip? To hold it over me? To take advantage of what you know now?”

How could I make her understand that it wasn’t like that? Not every relationship she experienced had to be about business, even if this one had started off like that.

“I would never tell anyone what I saw,” I began, but those weren’t the right words, either.

“Because you’re ashamed to know me, to know my family’s secrets?” she demanded. “Because you pity me?”

“Who could pity you?” I asked, holding my hands out like I did sometimes with the horses when I was trying to calm them. “There isn’t a single person in this whole town — no, the entire world — whose family situation isn’t complicated.”

“You don’t know the first thing about just how complicated my family life is,” Peyton said. “You know how complicated it is? I don’t even consider ‘family’ a part of my vocabulary. I probably don’t even use the fucking word five times a year. That’s how complicated it is.”

I knew she was reeling from what her mother had told her about her father, and that it had hit even closer to home because of Peyton being relatively closer with Dax Malone than Mary Crow. My heart went out to her — mainly because of what a mean bastard Dax was — but I wasn’t sure how to try and talk to her about it without sounding like I really was pitying her, which was the opposite of what she wanted.

“You know, just drop me off here,” Peyton said, making me squeeze the brake briefly.

I looked out her window. “Here? But this is …”

“My father’s horse farm. I know.” She refused to look at me. “I guess I want to talk to him about all of this.”

“Peyton, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” In fact, I knew it wasn’t a good fucking idea. Not after everything I heard, everything we both now suspected. This was the worst idea in the history of ideas. Nothing good at all could come of this.

“If you don’t stop the car, I’m just going to open the door and roll out. It’s your choice.”

I still didn’t have a grasp on Peyton’s sense of humor, on whether she was exaggerating or perfectly serious about throwing herself out of my moving vehicle, so I stopped.

I really didn't want to, but I pulled the truck over for Peyton to get out, just a little beyond the entrance.

"It's a long walk to the barn," I warned her as she stepped out. "Can I drive you there?” What I really wanted to know was whether I could come with her. I was still operating under that strange notion that I was supposed to protect Peyton — even if I couldn’t block the venomous facts of her heritage, or the casual hatred and apathy her mother exhibited toward her.

"I think a long walk is just what I need," she said, glancing back at me for the briefest of moments before shutting the door. I struggled to try to read her expression, but she had closed herself like a book, shoving her fists into the pockets of her jeans as she walked up the road leading to the barn. Mary Crow had told her long-estranged daughter some pretty disquieting things — perhaps even things that Peyton didn't really need to know. I didn't think it was a good idea for her to talk to her father right now — or, if I was being honest, ever. Dax Malone was good with horses, maybe, but he failed at people. He failed hard.

Peyton shouldn't talk to him. Not now. Maybe not ever.

That thought kept me rooted in place, the truck still braked, pulled over on the side of the road. A sense of unease that had been present from the moment we'd pulled up in front of Mary Crow's trailer built in my chest, making it hard to breathe. Call it a gut feeling, or intuition, or anything you want, really. I just knew, in that moment, that this wasn't a good idea.

Was it too late to catch up to Peyton and stop her? Would I be able to stomach the rage she'd have for me interfering in her personal affairs? I had to stop and assess my motivations. I was privileged, and I'd enjoyed much more of a happy and secure childhood than she had — minus my parents dying, of course. But before then, they'd loved and supported me.

It was becoming clear to me that Peyton had never enjoyed that kind of relationship with anyone. But who was I to attempt a rescue mission? Did she even need to be saved, or would she only lash out at me for trying?

I searched my heart. I wasn't trying to be a hero. I just couldn't stand to sit by and do nothing again and let Peyton get hurt any more.

Mary Crow had already fractured her daughter's heart. Would Dax Malone put the final nail in the coffin?

Steeling myself for a nasty confrontation, I threw the truck into gear and motored up the drive. Peyton was nowhere to be found, choosing not to dawdle like I had. Shit.

I pulled up to the barn and got out, hoping the old motherfucker had left his shotgun out of reach somewhere, hoping against hope that Peyton was getting some closure or shouting at him or doing whatever it was she needed to do to come to terms with the very sad reality of her parents’ meeting.

I expected the sounds of a fight, or, at the very least, voices, some of them raised from time to time, but there was nothing. I poked my head into the barn cautiously, afraid I’d find a gun pointed at it, but the barn was empty. Maybe it was Peyton rubbing off on me, but my first inclination was to snoop around. She’d already combed through her father’s things, divesting him of his ledger of contacts and a good deal of the knowledge he had unknowingly imparted to her. I was curious myself, until I remembered the very reason Peyton had come up here in the first place: Dax Malone was a piece of shit. I had to find them. Ideally, I would find Peyton before I found her father, or before she found him.

I hopped back in the truck, my pulse elevated, and took the road to the house. No one. Peyton’s little cottage was empty, too.

Then, I had a nasty thought that made my heart race even faster. I gunned the engine to the truck and took it bouncing down the rutted road we hadn’t dared to repair, out to the project Peyton and I had been working on in secret for all this time. In spite of our resistance to smoothing out the way back there, the rutted cow path had gotten more tamped down, more trafficked since we’d set up shop. It was out of the way, and Peyton had assured me that her father never came to this end of the property, but where else would they be? I’d checked everywhere. Peyton didn’t just vanish into thin air.

My worst fears were confirmed as I saw Dax Malone stomping around, swinging a sledge hammer at the corrals, then dashing over to the little office we’d worked so hard on, full of the equipment we’d invested in, breaking everything with wild arcs. He was furious and frightening, red in the face, spittle flying as he shouted things I couldn’t yet hear. But where the hell was Peyton?

I barely had the presence of mind to throw the truck into park before leaping out of it and running toward the scene. It struck me that I didn’t have a weapon, didn’t have any way to defend myself against that devastating swing, but it didn’t matter.

“Peyton?” I bellowed, looking around before I even addressed the problem of Dax Malone on the other end of a sledge hammer.

But then she sprang out of the office, where she’d been hiding or taking shelter or trying to save some vestige of our work together, and took her father by surprise, sending the sledge hammer spinning across the corral. He got a good punch in on her face before she sagged to the ground, holding her wrist in a strange way.

I ran faster than I’d ever run in my entire life, Dax so intent on inflicting harm on his daughter that he didn’t see me until it was too late. He was yelling things — terrible things — but I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t hear anything except for the pounding of my own heart in my ears.

I didn’t remember much after that, but it was as if a veil descended in front of my eyes, obscuring the majority of things. I realized I was hitting Dax, driving him away from Peyton, that I was yelling at him, things about Mary and Peyton and the quality of his character. I couldn’t say that I was an inherently violent person. Ranching is a tough life, and I grew up with four other brothers. I was used to roughhousing, I knew my way around a fist fight, I’d been in a shootout. But this was different. I’d never been as angry at a person as I was in this moment, and I realized it was because he’d been hurting Peyton. I couldn’t stand that. I couldn’t stand that at all. It made me completely lose my mind.

“Emmett, stop.”

Her voice was the only thing that got through to me. I let my fists drop down to my sides, realizing belatedly that the knuckles hurt, that I’d been walloping an old man who was mean as all get out but no competition for me. That Peyton was lying injured on the ground, her wrist twisted, her breathing hard, tears and blood running down her face.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey.” I knelt beside her. “What hurts? Tell me. Can you get up? I can get you to the hospital.”

“I already called the cops,” she managed to say, wincing at the words, grabbing at her ribs. “Well, I dialed 9-1-1 and slipped the phone back in my pocket when I realized just how bad this was going to be.”