Double Wedding Ring (17 page)

“Don't encourage him,” Malorie said, peeved that she seemed to be the only one who saw the darkness waiting to ruin their lives.

“Why not? Maybe he needs a break from Betsy's brand of vigilance.” Sam touched her again, tracing the pale veins on the back of one hand. It felt just as it had before, soft and warm and comforting. She wanted to shrug off the touch, but found herself frozen. “Maybe he isn't the only one.”

“Don't touch me like that.” She heard the quaver in her voice and hoped it didn't rob her words of all conviction.

He kept touching her, tracing her fingers until he gave her goose bumps. She should have run when she first thought of it, because it was too late now.

“Are you cold?” His voice was teasing.

“No, I—I mean, yes. I am. We should go back.”

He put one hand on the back of her neck. He was almost close enough to kiss her, and she was still paralyzed by feelings she was too confused and fearful to name. “You can't keep running away, Malorie.”

“I don't want this,” she whispered.

“Yes, you do.” He clasped her head in his hand, letting his fingers tangle in the soft waves of her hair. “You can't run away forever.”

“I'm not running away,” she said.
But I should be.

“Then kiss me.”

“I don't want to kiss you.”
Liar.

He laughed softly, and she knew he, too, could see straight through her to the truth. And that, after all, was the danger, wasn't it? That he would get to know her too well, see too clearly all the things she had to keep hidden?

Then he dropped his hand. She faced him uncertainly. What would a normal person do now? she wondered.

“It was good to see the change in your mother today,” he said, his voice still intimate. “It's clear she's decided she isn't going to let her injuries rule the rest of her life. She'd going to grab hold and take what she wants. You should look for a little of your mother's courage, Malorie.”

The words hurt. There was too much truth in them. But for the life of her, Malorie didn't know what to do about it, didn't know how to steer away from this course of fear and deception.

Before she could reply, Cody dashed up and dropped something into her lap.

“Sissy, a fwog! Can I keep the fwog?”

Malorie couldn't even look down at the rambunctious little boy and his prize. Her eyes were still on Sam.

Sam's smile was no longer teasing when he said, “Even Cody is braver than you.”

And now that she was pushed to the wall, no one knew that better than Malorie.

B
ETSY
F
OSTER TESTED
her daughter's determination daily for the rest of the week.

“Why is she doing this to me?” Susan asked Tag as he installed a new cord for the computer. The original had turned up missing after Betsy's intensive cleaning of Susan's room.

Tag pushed the Power button and shook his head. “All I know is, sometimes I tried punishing the people I blamed for making me miserable. I think I've finally figured out the one I was punishing most was myself.”

The computer whirred to life. Susan closed her eyes and squinted, focusing her thoughts on what Tag had said, trying to reason out what he meant. “Does that mean she's unhappier than we are?”

Tag leaned closer and kissed her tightly shut eyelids. They fluttered open and Susan looked into his gently smiling face.

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

Susan tried to reconcile that thought with her ever-worsening opinion of her mother. She tried to feel grateful that her mother was willing to take care of her while she recovered. But it was so hard to feel anything but impatient to get out of here, to get well enough to begin her own life again.

Sometimes, that day seemed so far away.

Glancing down at her hands, Susan said, “Do I sound...dumb sometimes?”

Tag lifted her chin. “No, you don't sound dumb. You'd sound dumb if you pretended to understand everything everybody said. Or if you didn't care enough to try and figure things out.” He leaned closer yet and whispered, “Or if you acted like you thought for one single moment that anything you could do would keep me away from the woman I love.”

Susan laughed softly. “Like Mother.”

He nodded and kissed her again, this time softly on the lips. “Exactly. Now, are you ready for Advanced Kitchen Vocabulary?”

Shaking off the way his touch tingled through her, Susan sat up straight in her chair and faced the computer. “Ready.”

Concentrating on the daily lessons was extra hard with Tag so close. Sometimes Susan had to use every bit of her concentration to pay attention to the words spelled out on the computer screen, because Tag's nearness distracted her so. They hadn't made love again since that first night. Tag hadn't even brought it up, although he told her with a million little looks and touches that it wasn't for lack of wanting to. And all those little messages kept Susan atingle. When he was with her, she wanted Tag to touch her again far more than she wanted to match the icon of the stove with the squiggles that spelled out the word.

And at night, when she was alone, she longed for him. Longed for his hands, stroking her body in a way that made her feel far more than whole. She came alive to his touch; she felt young and beautiful and perfect again. She longed to feel him moving inside her, longed for the heart-stopping shudder of his body as he climaxed. Longed to rest her head on his shoulder and fall asleep to the rhythm of his breathing.

“Do you still want me?” Even she hadn't expected the question. She wished she hadn't asked and wondered why, this particular time, it had been so easy for her brain to find words for the feelings inside her. She squinted at the screen and tried to pretend she hadn't said a word.

“Look at me, Susan.”

She shook her head. “No. That was a silly question. I want to learn some more now.”

Tag reached out and turned the screen on its swivel base so she could no longer see it. Then he picked her up and drew her onto his lap. She let out a startled cry.

“I want you every minute,” he said, softly touching her hair with his fingers. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me, Susan.”

“You won't make love with me again,” she whispered.

“This is Betsy's house,” he said. “I won't risk any kind of ugliness with her, not about that. Move out, Susan. Come home with me.”

She shook her head again, this time more forcefully. “Not now, Tag. I won't come until I'm...better.”

She wanted to be able to walk and talk and drive and take care of his house and Cody and everything, just the way she had before. She would accept no less, no matter what Tag said.

So, every morning, they plugged away at her reading and writing while Betsy plugged away at blocking Tag's visits. She clipped the wires to the front doorbell. She kept the double doors to Susan's room flung wide open whenever Tag came over and commenced her vacuuming or any other noisy activity to thwart their conversation. She sent Cody in to play while Susan and Tag tried to work. She opened the door leading from the kitchen to Susan's room and rattled pans for hours on end. She invited Addy to come over an hour earlier, until Addy figured out what was going on and resumed the previous schedule. She even started inviting Bump Finley to bring his nephew over in the mornings so Cody and Jake could play their rambunctious games on the side porch.

The only thing she didn't do was speak—to either one of them.

Susan's concentration suffered. So did her emotional state. Some days she desperately wanted to pull the covers over her head and avoid the hostility that emanated from her mother. But that way, she knew, lay defeat. And she refused to be defeated by her mother.

“Not again,” she would whisper to herself, then begin the painstaking process of dragging herself out of bed and bathing and changing clothes. “Never again.”

Some days the strain gave her headaches. Some days she was so weary from it all, she could barely keep herself moving for late-afternoon therapy.

“Is something wrong, Susan?” Sam asked one day when she felt too weak to drag herself out of the wheelchair.

Afraid to tell him for fear he, too, might ban Tag from the house, Susan shook her head. “I'm fine.”

“No, you aren't. Is it Tag?”

“No!” She tried to swallow back the panic. “No, really. I...I don't sleep well. That's all.”

“Why not? What's on your mind?”

Frustration welled up in Susan. Sometimes she felt badgered on every front.

“Malorie,” she said, wondering where that had come from.

“What about Malorie?”

She saw the interest in his eyes and felt guilty for the fib. Except, as she thought about what to tell him next, she realized it was no fib at all. She did worry about her daughter. On top of everything else, she saw how wan and edgy her daughter seemed these days. She had seen her daughter sink into that state before. If only she could remember when and why, perhaps she could prevent it from happening again.

“I don't think she's happy.”

“Do you know what makes her unhappy?” Sam settled onto the floor, hooked his arms around his knees and looked up at her.

Susan shook her head.

Sam seemed engrossed in the subject. “She seems afraid of something to me. I wish I knew what.”

“I keep thinking I should know. But I can't remember.”

He put a reassuring hand on her knee. “Don't worry. It will come to you. And, Susan? When it comes to you...will you tell me?”

“Why?”

“Because I like Malorie. I might be...I might like her a lot.”

“That would be nice.”

“So you'll tell me? So I can help?”

Memories tickled the back of Susan's mind and she hesitated. But in the end, the look of genuine concern in Sam's eyes won out over the uncertainty of what the past held and how that might affect the future. Susan nodded.

* * *

B
UMP
F
INLEY FINALLY
caught on.

This past week, he had grown fond of sitting in the wicker rocker on the side porch at Betsy's, tuning out the shrill bickering and giddy fun of the two young'uns, Jake and Cody. Although he had occasionally come over so Jake and Cody could play in the weeks after Susan came back to Sweetbranch, Bump's spat with Betsy at church a few weeks back had brought that to an end.

That's why Betsy's call inviting him to bring Jake over in the mornings had taken him by surprise at first.

“Now, you must be sure to come in the morning,” Betsy had insisted, sounding far more cheerful than he'd heard her sound in a coon's age, “because things get hectic around lunch, what with Susan's therapy and all.”

So Bump had taken to coming. Tuning out the young'uns was no trouble. He could sit for an hour or more and hardly notice as they rammed their plastic trucks into one another or battered each other with ragged-eared stuffed rabbits or created the sounds of battlefields with their little toddler voices.

He pondered, one morning, how it was that Susan and her feller, Tag Hutchins, got much studying done on that computer right inside the door. They'd told him that first morning what they were up to—computer reading lessons for Susan.

It came to him finally. Betsy, the old cuss, was up to her tricks again.

Swearing a blue streak under his breath, Bump struggled up out of the chair, gave his trick knee—aw, hellfire, it wasn't trick at all, just crippled up with arthritis, was all—a chance to straighten out, then stuck his head inside the door.

“‘Scuse me, Mizz Hovis, Tag,” he said, and waited for the two to look over their shoulders. “It's just occurred to this old, befuddled brain of mine that these young'uns must make it right hard for the two of you to concentrate.”

Susan and Tag exchanged glances, and Bump knew all he needed to know.

“Blast it all!” he said. “Beggin' your pardon, Mizz Hovis. Let me get these two noisy whippersnappers out of your hair right now. Come on, Jake, Cody. Pick up them trucks and we'll take ‘em over to the park for a while. How's that?”

While Tag helped retie shoelaces and snap the two little boys into their jackets, Bump went into the yard in search of Betsy. He found her at the clothesline. Two blindingly white sheets already billowed in the November breeze, and a row of pink-and-white towels snapped as the wind whipped them around.

“Betsy Foster,” he said, and took a perverse delight in watching her start. “You're just a black-hearted, mean-spirited old woman. How in the devil I ever figured to be sweet on you, I'll never understand.”

Hands on her hips, Betsy glared at him. “I didn't invite you over here to remind me that never for one single minute of your sorry life did you regret giving me up without a fight, Jacob Finley.”

Not to be distracted, Bump said, “No, but I know why you did invite me over here.”

With a huff of frustration, Betsy turned back to the clothesline and snapped a pin onto the corner of a green-sprigged housedress. “What are you ranting about, Jacob?”

“You're still thinking to run Susan's life, aren't you.” He walked up, plucked a bibbed apron from the clothes basket and handed it to her.

“I don't have any earthly idea what you're talking about.”

“Oh, I b'lieve you do. And I ain't gonna be part of it anymore. I'm taking the boys to the park, Betsy. Givin' those young people a little peace and quiet for those lessons.”

“You're an old fool if you think he's here to give her lessons!”

Bump chuckled. Couldn't help himself. Some cantankerous part of him delighted in spats like this. “And you're an old fool if you think you can stop him.”

Betsy whipped a towel in the breeze to snap the wrinkles out of it. “Get on out of here, Jacob.”

“I'm gettin', I'm gettin'.” But before he got far, he turned and looked back. Still a fine-looking woman, Betsy was. “Sometimes I almost wish things had turned out different, Betsy. Maybe I wouldn't be such an old grump.”

“That would be a blessing.”

He chuckled again. “And maybe you wouldn't be such an old busybody.”

Her outraged muttering set a swift rhythm for his stiff-legged retreat across the leaf-strewn lawn.

* * *

T
HANKSGIVING
D
AY
at the Foster house proved to be as bleak as the weather. Beyond the off-white lace curtains at the dining room window, Susan could see the ledge of dark gray clouds hanging low over near-bare trees. The drizzle had stopped midmorning, just after her brother and his family arrived. But the clouds continued to look ominous; Susan's heart felt the same.

Steve and his wife, Debbie, had brought card tables and set them up in the dining room where Susan usually worked out. Chatting cheerfully about their jobs and their grandchildren's forays into kindergarten, they covered the ugly metal tables with festive paper tablecloths trimmed with cartoons of pumpkins and turkeys in Pilgrim hats. They set out paper plates and napkins in the same motif. And by noon the five adults silently passed the platter of turkey and the bowl of corn bread dressing and a small serving tray of cranberry sauce. Cody sat in a high chair between Malorie and Betsy, gaily splattering giblet gravy all over his plate.

Susan felt bad for Steve and Debbie, who both looked uncomfortable as the strain in the air dampened the festive mood they were trying so hard to generate.

“So, Susie-Q, how's the therapy going?” Steve asked. “You look great.”

As she often did, Susan wondered just how great she looked. In honor of the holiday, Malorie had helped her dress in a soft rayon skirt and a cranberry-colored tunic instead of the comfortable fleece workout clothes she usually wore. Susan felt pretty. She wished she could look into Tag's eyes and see his approval. That often made her feel pretty, even in gray fleece.

But Betsy had made it clear. Tag Hutchins was forbidden to ruin her family holiday. Tag had said it didn't matter, had assured Susan he had other plans, anyway. But she had seen the bleakness in his dark eyes when he'd left yesterday.

He sat in that house alone, she was certain of it. Contemplating the possibility, Susan was not one whit grateful for her mother on this day of gratitude.

“She still can't walk,” Betsy said into the silence.