A Texas Ranger's Family (6 page)

“Agreement?” Dana's voice climbed an octave.

“Yes, that's right.” Erin took the heat. “At eighteen I was not emotionally capable to care for you, but being a father was what Daniel wanted more than anything. I gave him full custody and he gave me anonymity. I know that sounds cold and businesslike, but we were young and it was the only thing I knew to do. Daniel went along with me and I have thanked God every day for sixteen years that he did.”

“Let me get this straight.” Dana's voice wavered with youthful indignation. She tugged her fingers but Erin squeezed to maintain the contact. “Having a daughter was so horrible that you ran away.”

Erin closed her eyes for long seconds. Daniel
prayed along with her.
Abba Father, if this is the time, give her the words.

“No, baby. My family background was so horrible that I couldn't risk exposing you to the person I was back then or the conditions I grew up in.”

“W
hen do you think Erin might tell us the rest, Dad?” Dana spoke above the music piped through her ear buds.

She perched on a tall kitchen stool, swirling the ice in her Coke with a plastic straw while Daniel dabbed butter on the top crust of his world-class cobbler. Okay, maybe he'd only competed once against the other men at Abundant Harvest, but he was proud of the blue ribbon taped to the refrigerator door.

He looked first in the direction of the sun porch and then the laundry room before he motioned for his daughter to turn down the volume on her iPod.

“That's up to her,” he replied, satisfied they couldn't be overheard. “Erin obviously had a tragic childhood and can't bring herself to talk about whatever happened. And if she wants to keep it that way, you're gonna have to respect her wishes.”

Dana nodded. “It must have been a drag growing up in foster homes.”

“And she was only a year older than you are right now
when she was out on her own. Erin was on a work-study program at Austin Community College when we met.”

He recalled how her eyes had caught his attention when she'd glanced up from a thick volume in the University of Texas library. He was nearly finished with his degree in criminology and she had victim's eyes if ever he'd seen them.

“Did you love her, Daddy?” Dana question was wistful, her amber eyes pleading for affirmation.

“From the first time we met,” he admitted, knowing he'd behaved both foolishly and sinfully. And sadly, he'd fallen for a woman who could not return his emotions. “But Erin was just a teenager. She'd already taken so many hard knocks that it was impossible for her to deal with motherhood and marriage.”

“Do you think it's possible, now?”

He wiped floury palms on a dish towel, slung it over his shoulder and moved around the granite counter to wrap Dana in his arms for as long as she'd allow it. He pressed a kiss at the edge of her pointy hair.

“Baby girl, don't fool yourself that Erin's gonna stay or even stay close. She has a life on the other side of the world and she's determined to get back to it. Just remember that in a couple more years, you'll go off to college. Then maybe when you're out of school, the two of you will have opportunities to spend time together. But right now, like you kids say, it is what it is.”

As expected, Dana ducked from beneath his arm, spun the volume dial on her iPod and grabbed her cell phone off the kitchen counter. Before the patio door closed behind her she muttered “Not till the fat lady sings.”

Daniel slid the cobbler into the hot oven and winced
for the hundredth time that morning as a muffled grunt of painful exertion came from the next room. The physical therapist had been with Erin for the past two hours, and she would repeat the visit six out of seven days in the coming weeks.

Having taken a Louisville Slugger to his knee during a gang fight years ago, Daniel knew something of the hard work involved in rehabilitating a limb. Even so, it pained him to hear the grueling regimen of stretches and weight-bearing exercises required for mending a pelvis and a nearly incapacitated arm.

He prayed constantly over the situation knowing God's answer, like the double-edged sword of His Word, could cut both ways. By the end of the summer, somebody in the house was likely to be hurting grievously, whichever way the Father willed.

 

Erin was nearly breathless but happy to be working her muscles and to finally be free of the IV. “I have never sweated so much this side of Greenwich Mean Time in my life,” she panted.

“Your effort vas commendable, Ms. Gray. Keep up zis pace und get plenty of rest between vorkouts and ve have a chance to meet your deadline.” Christina's reassuring manner was the only thing that kept her from seeming like a Slavic Terminator.

Erin's limbs were damp and trembling from the morning's labors. The PT in the hospital had been challenging, but it hadn't fully prepared her for today's experience. Christina Heutger was a drill sergeant with a charming accent, hired specifically for her record of producing fast results. The woman would live up to her
reputation or kill Erin in the process. Since she was willing to die trying, they were a perfect match.

“I go a little easier on you tomorrow?” Christina offered, wanting her client to decline.

“Don't you dare,” Erin wheezed. “There's a G8 meeting in the fall. If I'm not back in Iraq by then, I intend to be at that summit in Japan.”

“As you vish.” Christina turned away to pack a few items into her duffel, but most of the equipment she brought would remain at the house. “Eat often, conserve energy for our vorkouts and don't play tough by skipping ze pain medication. Cooperate and ve get you on your feet soon.”

“Any other instructions, Herr Commandant?” Erin teased as her new friend prepared to leave.

Christina turned back, compassion softening her intense blue eyes and square jaw.

“As a matter of fact, yes, zer is. Ve are in zis togezer, Erin. But even if ve do everyzing in our power correctly, zere is so much to healing zat is outside our control.” Christina pointed to the plaque above the window. “So zat is ze most important zing in my opinion.”

Erin had already committed the wisdom to memory.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who prays.

“In other words, pray that God changes my will in case I don't change His?”

“Prezactly.”

 

“LaVerne, how long can you afford to stay away from your ranch?” Erin asked.

Her head was bent forward in submission to
LaVerne's blow-drying skills. They were near the end of a string of embarrassing acts that constituted being groomed by another person. But LaVerne didn't seem to mind a bit so Erin went with the flow and covered the awkward moments with conversation.

“Well, that's the beauty of having a married son who lives nearby and works the place. Jake and Becky will have it all to themselves one day and this is good practice for when I go home to be with my Maker.”

“Did you always live in West Texas?”

“Goodness, no. I was a city girl. Grew up in Fort Worth and met my Percy when he brought a herd of Angus to the stockyard in '62. As tickled as my mama was to see me married off to a Christian man, she was not too happy about him carrying me almost four hundred miles from home. Even today, the coyotes, rattlesnakes and scorpions give me the willies, but it turned out to be a wonderful place to raise our two sons.”

“Does it bother you that Daniel didn't stay in Fort Stockton?”

“It did early on 'cause he's my baby. But from the time Percy took the boys to visit the Texas Ranger museum in Waco till Daniel was commissioned, he never wanted to be anything else. When Jake was ropin' and brandin' fence posts, Daniel had his nose in books about the early days of outlaws and renegades,” LaVerne reminisced. “My, how that boy dreamed of wearing the badge.”

She tossed the hair dryer into a laundry basket, finger-combed Erin's short bob and pronounced it cute as a bug's ear.

“Daniel's where he always wanted to be and Jake could run the Double-S in his sleep. We only work about
three hundred head these days. That's hardly enough cattle for a proper Texas cookout.” She chuckled. “Why, we make more money leasing land to mule deer and blue quail hunters than we do selling cows. With close to no rain for the last twenty-something years, everybody's just had to adjust.”

“I did a pictorial once on the drought in East Africa. The starvation and disease were horrendous.”

“Well, we're not that bad off yet, but all the ranchers are about in the same shape. We're prayin' for another big turnout at the Barbecue Bonanza. Folks all over Texas have to get in their cars and drive out there or we'll never make our goal.”

“Why not skip it altogether?” Dana suggested as she entered the room leaving the doors standing wide. She carried what looked like a huge T-shirt the color of red dirt. It had been split open all the way down one side. “Don't do the barbecue this summer. Give people a chance to miss it and then you'll draw an even bigger crowd next year.”

“Nothin' doin'. No matter what we have to climb over or run around, the cook-off happens or somebody at the boys' ranch may not get a nice Christmas.”

LaVerne accepted the garment and motioned for Erin to raise her left arm. Daniel's mama slipped the shirt over Erin's head and arm, whisked it behind her back and beneath her bandaged right side, finally snapping it shut down the seam.

“There, how's that?” LaVerne stepped back to admire her work. “I probably coulda done better with one of my caftans or even a bed sheet, but Daniel insisted I use this old thing of his.”

“I can't believe he actually parted with it, much less let you take a pair of scissors to it,” Dana added.

Erin ducked her chin to her chest to see down the length of her body. Even upside down there was no mistaking the Texas Longhorn mascot. Bevo exhaled puffs of smoke and raised his hoof in the Hook 'Em Horns hand signal that even college football fans outside of the Lone Star State generally recognized.

She looked ridiculous in the billowing jersey but she savored the glimmer of a memory it invoked of wearing Daniel's big T-shirts during her pregnancy.

“Dad is gonna crack up when he sees you in that thing.”

“In a good way, I hope,” Erin joked.

“Oh, for sure. One of these days when you're able to climb the stairs to his office, you can see the rest of his Texas memorabilia.” Dana grinned and rolled her eyes.

Erin had no plans to see the second floor of Daniel's home, but now her curious nature buzzed. LaVerne had said something else of interest that called for more detail.

“Tell me more about this barbecue.”

“It's lame.” Dana's smile disappeared as she crumpled into a chair as if her spine had just collapsed. “And it spoils the last two weeks of my summer every single year.”

“Don't listen to that one.” LaVerne waved away her grandchild's attitude. “It's a wonderful event to raise funds for the West Texas Boys Ranch. Barbecue champs drag their pits and smokers from all over the country for our three-day rib and brisket competition.”

“And Daddy uses me as slave labor.”

LaVerne narrowed her eyes and pointed an index finger minus the fake nail at Dana.

“For the eleventy-dozenth time, everybody on the Double-S works, no exceptions. And when you're there, that includes you, princess. It's not a bed and breakfast. It's a working cattle ranch that just happens to sponsor a big event one weekend a year.” LaVerne planted both fists on full hips and glared at her grandchild. “And the worst you've ever done is set under a tent in the shade and sell popcorn, so stop your whining or I'll give you something to whine about.” She turned to Erin and shielded her mouth as if pretending to be sharing something hush-hush.

“I think I'll put the country cousins in charge of Dana this year and they'll have her muckin' out stalls.”

“I am not going to shovel horse droppings!”

“Then stop actin' like the end of the horse that produces 'em.”

“Okay, ladies,” Daniel called from the kitchen. “As much as I'm enjoying the direction your conversation is going, I'd like to speak with Erin before her guest arrives. So, is everybody decent?”

“Sure, come on in,” the women chorused.

Erin glanced at the mantel clock. Two forty-five. Her stomach had only recently stopped quivering from the morning's physical exertion and now it began to quake for a different reason. What could J.D. possibly have that was so important he needed to deliver it in person?

 

“Wow!” Daniel didn't care that his outburst was loud.

He felt a grin split his face ear to ear. He stopped three steps into the room, pointed at Erin and then tipped his face to the ceiling to howl with amusement. The ladies in the room joined in his infectious laughter.

“Stop,” Erin cried as she caught her breath. “It's too painful to laugh that hard!”

“Oh, my stars, that was good.” Daniel reigned in the silly behavior, then dragged the heels of his hands across his eyes and cheeks to clear away tears. “I haven't laughed like that since I don't know when.”

“Was it worth two hundred and fifty bucks, Dad?”

“Every penny,” he assured Dana, touching his finger to his lips to hush her up about the item he'd won at auction.

“What's all that about?” Erin asked.

“Nothing important. May I get a close look at the finished product?” Daniel moved to the bed without waiting for a response. He bent low, reached for the shirt's seam lined with snaps, then turned to nod approval.

“Well done!” He gave his mama kudos. “I can hardly tell it's been cut.”

“You said to show Earl Campbell's jersey proper respect, so I did,” LaVerne huffed, as if insulted. She propped a laundry basket filled with damp towels and women's hair care stuff on her hip, and motioned for Dana to follow without argument.