Cowboy Sing Me Home (28 page)

            “But we want to do something now. 
Tonight.”

            “I know you do.  And I have an idea.  You
have an excellent choir.  You already know the songs.  Why not just get your
choir back together as you originally planned?  You’re much more prepared for
that.”

            “We don’t have a piano player,” someone at
the back of the room said.  “Dolores is the only one who can play worth a flip,
and she’s next on the quilting list and her daughter’s getting married this
fall.”

            “Oh,” Dusty said, as if this made any
sense at all.  “Well…”

            “What she means is, Dolores is afraid of
making Mavis mad, ‘cause Mavis is the head of the quilting club.  Dolores won’t
play with us because Mavis could blackball her and make sure she doesn’t get
her daughter’s quilt in time for her – “

            Dusty held up a hand, not willing to get
dragged into any more of the convoluted Aloma society entanglements.  “That’s
okay, that’s not a problem at all.  We have the piano here to practice with,
and I have portable keyboards that will work just fine for tonight.  I will be
happy to stand in for Dolores.”

            “Great idea.  Let’s get started.”

            The women stacked their things against the
wall and lined up in front of the piano so quickly that Dusty was left standing
alone in the middle of the room.

            “Come on,” Louise said.  “We’re burning
daylight.”

            “Yes, great.  Let’s get started.”  Feeling
a little off-kilter at how easy that had been, Dusty sat at the piano bench.

            Louise pointed to the open hymnal on the
stand.  “This is the first song we’re gonna do tonight.  Keep the tempo up,
because the Catholics tend to drag us down.”  She looked toward the back of the
group.  “Don’t y’all take that personal.”

            Then she clapped her bony hands together
and counted them down.  “One two three four!”

            Dusty jumped in, barely keeping up with
the exuberant choir.  Once Mavis was out of the way, Dusty thought, they
weren’t half bad.  They blended well and had a great range.  To be from so many
different churches, she realized they must have spent a lot of time practicing
to work this well together.

            She had expected to do some heavy
negotiating to get to this point, and she hadn’t been in the church twenty
minutes when it looked like things were going to be just fine.  What a relief
that it was all going so smoothly, she thought as Louise told her what the next
song was.

            She was halfway through the second song
when she began to grow suspicious.  It really
had
gone smoothly.  A
little too smoothly.  She didn’t know Louise that well, but she felt sure that
the old woman didn’t normally let go of an idea unless there was a crowbar
involved.

            Dusty’s suspicions were confirmed when she
looked up to see Louise winking at Helen Tanner.

            She finished the song, then closed the lid
on the piano.  She turned to Louise.  “You set me up.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “You lied to get me down here, and you had
all your friends in on it.”

            “I never lied –”

            “Louise, forget it.  She knows.”  Helen
placed her hand on the piano.  “I’m sorry, Dusty.  This is my fault.  I should
never have started this.  I knew you were going to figure it out.”

            “I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t
like being used.”  The fact that Helen Tanner had been the one to do it felt
like a bitter betrayal.

            “We weren’t using you.  I mean, we never
meant to, we just wanted you to be a part of our choir.”

            “If you needed a piano player, all you had
to do was ask.”

            “And you would have said no,” Helen said. 
“You never would have done it.  Even Luke said you would turn us down unless we
guilted you into it.”

            “Besides, we don’t need a piano player,”
Louise said.  “Three different women in this room are great piano players, and
another one thinks she is.  We wanted you to be a part of the group, and we
knew this was the only way to get you up here.”

            “Luke said I would do it if I was guilted
into it?”

            “I told him we wanted to include you in
the choir, and he said you would never do it unless we played on your
sympathy.  Dusty, don’t be mad.  We just…well, I wanted you to be a part of our
group.  And I didn’t know how else to do it.”

            Dusty told herself she was insulted that
they’d lied to her.  She told herself she had other things to do besides kill
time in the Baptist Church choir room and baby-sit a bunch of old women. 

            Any second now, she was going to leave in
a huff, as she had every right to do.

            Instead, she sat frozen at the bench,
hearing Helen’s words over and over again. 
“I wanted you to be part of the
group.”

            Good grief, Dusty thought as her throat
grew tight once again.  Was she premenstrual or something?  Every time she
turned around today, she was fighting back tears.  It was irritating as all
hell. 

“Come on,” Louise said, thumping her on
the shoulder.  “Don’t be a sorehead.”

            Dusty scowled at both Helen and Louise. 
“Don’t lie to me again.”

            “We won’t,” Helen promised.  “Just stay.”

            “Of course I’ll stay.  I said I’d stay,
didn’t I?”  She flipped open the hymnal.  “Well?  Come on.  You may sound
decent, but you still need the practice.”

            Just to get even, she made them practice
the same four songs until Louise’s stomach growling drowned out the music, and
the old lady claimed she was about to faint.  Dusty was hungry herself, and
exhausted from lack of sleep.  She stifled a yawn as she told them they were
through for the day.

            “Wait!” Helen said.  “I forgot – Nelda,
grab my camera out of my bag and call Brother Mark.”

            When Brother Mark got there, Helen
instructed him to take a picture of them all together to commemorate this
special occasion.  She wanted Luke to know that some good had come from his
getting shot.

            Dusty shook her head and stood to move to
the side of the room so they could get their picture.

            Helen grabbed her wrist.  “No ma’am. 
You’re in this, too.”

            “But I’m not really –”

            “Yes, you are.  Now face the camera and
smile.”

            Dusty didn’t know what else to do, so she
faced the camera, and smiled.  Right before she saw the flash, she felt Helen
Tanner’s warm hand on her shoulder, welcoming her into their group.

            It took some doing, but Luke convinced his
doctor he was ready to go home the next morning.  He promised on his honor to
go straight home and get some rest.

He felt bad for lying to the doctor, and
he knew he should do exactly as he’d promised he would.  His leg ached and he
had very little energy.  He should at least go to his parents’ house and break
the news to them.

            He wasn’t sure how his mother was going to
react when she learned she wasn’t going to be a grandmother after all. 
Probably the same way he was reacting: a confusing mixture of relief,
disappointment, and anger that left him feeling off-balance. 

            One thing he knew for sure, though.  He
needed to see Dusty.

            He
wanted
to see Dusty, he amended
silently.  Need implied things he wasn’t prepared to deal with yet.  His heart
still ached for her, and what she’d told him in the hospital, and he wanted to
see her.

            He drove straight through town and out the
other side, until he pulled up the hill into Trailertopia.  The lot was full,
thanks to the Rain Fest, and he drove slowly along the dusty road to her
trailer.

            She was outside, wearing denim shorts and
sleeveless button-down top, bent over the open storage bin along the bottom of
the trailer.  Her long legs were tanned against the faded denim of her shorts,
her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

            She didn’t look up until he pulled in
front of her trailer, but he was certain she was glad to see him when she
straightened and saw it was him. 

            He opened his door, swung his legs out so
his left could take the weight, and slid from the seat.

            “The hero returns,” she said.  She smiled,
though, as he limped toward her.  “I didn’t know you’d been released.”

            “Just half an hour ago.”

            Her eyebrows rose.  “And you came here
first?  Probably not a wise move, considering.”

            Considering.  The word was a loaded one,
and there was more than one question in her voice. 

            There was more than one question he wanted
to ask, too.  It was 10:30 in the morning, and already the sky was white and
the air so hot it hurt to breathe.  He felt sweat pooling in the small of his
back, and saw the shiny drops of it at her brow.  All he could think was how
much he wanted to just be here with her, just sit with her and be alone
together, and not think of anything else.

            “Melinda lied.  There’s no baby.  There
never was.”

            He’d meant to handle that much better, of
course.  But standing within two feet of her, he couldn’t think of anything but
her soft skin, the curve of her jaw and the way the tiny green earrings she
wore matched her eyes. 

            He’d expected her to say something, of
course, to at least be as shocked as he’d been.  Instead she stood silently
across from him as she digested the news.  He searched her face for a sign of
what she was thinking, but as usual her countenance was a carefully neutral
mask.  He thought he might know her well enough by now, though, to guess some
of what she was thinking.

            They could pick up where they’d left off. 
Except they weren’t in the same place they’d left off, not by miles.  He’d been
shot, and thought he’d lost her forever.  He didn’t feel like the same person
he’d been a few days ago.  That man had given little thought to the precious
gift of time, of life, and how quickly it can be taken away.  He’d given only
casual consideration to what a miracle it was to find the one person you really
click with, can feel instantly comfortable and whole with.  The man who took
that for granted was gone.

            And she’d confided in him, her own tragic
secret that he knew she would never have shared if she had thought she’d be
standing across from him like this, now.  She’d opened herself up to him in a
way neither of them planned or knew how to deal with.

            Because of all that, he expected her to
turn him away.  Still, he held his breath and searched her face for some clue,
waited while his heart thudded for her to make some indication. 

            His heart thumped painfully, and at first
he blamed that on the weakness left over from the shooting, but he realized he
was terrified.  Terrified that she would tell him to go.  Terrified that she
would ask him to stay.

            “You’re pale.  Come in out of the heat.”

            Not exactly an invitation that answered
the burning question, but still he followed her up the foldout steps one at a
time.

            Inside, he leaned against the counter,
because he didn’t feel comfortable enough to sit and didn’t feel strong enough
to stand.

            She pushed him gently into the booth at
the table, though, and opened the miniature refrigerator to pull out two
bottles of water.

            He drained half of his in one gulp, and
still came away dry-mouthed.  He watched as she closed the fridge door with her
hip and leaned her back against it.  She twisted the cap off her bottle and
drank, never taking her eyes off his.

            “So,” she said as she brought the bottle
down.

            “So.”  He attempted a smile and wished his
heart would slow down; the rush of blood was making him dizzy.  “So I’m not
getting married, obviously.  And I came here to see –”

            That was as far as he got before she was
on him, her lips on his, her hands in his hair.  He roped his arms around her
and held on desperately, only pulling away when he was so starved for air he
thought he would pass out.

            He gasped air into his lungs as he tugged
her hair free of the band that held it back.  “I was sure you were going to
tell me to leave.”

            “So was I,” she said against his neck, and
her tongue did amazing things that sank through his skin and had him instantly
ready.  “I guess I surprised us both.”

            He laughed and threaded his hands through
her hair, pulling her mouth back to his.  “Come here,” he said gruffly.  He
stretched his wounded right leg out before him, and lowered her to straddle his
left knee, pulling her as closely as he could get her.