Home by Nightfall (11 page)

“Anyway I thought we’d drop by Tilly’s after that. The boys will be glad to see Riley again.”

Susannah’s smile faded and her expression turned sour for a moment. “That Tilly’s—sometimes I wish a lightning bolt would hit the place.”

“Now Susannah, I don’t remember you being a teetotaler.”

She huffed out an irritated sigh. “You know I’m not, and in fact, I think Prohibition has made more trouble than it’s cured. But that slop Virgil Tilly sells is hardly better than straight poison. He’s going to kill someone with it.”

“Pop is the one who drinks Virgil’s brew. Sometimes Virgil mixes good whiskey with Jamaican ginger to stretch it out. That’s not dangerous, but I don’t like that medicinal taste. Of course, I don’t know what else he’s got behind the bar. I just buy plain Canadian Club from him. It’s expensive, but at least I know what it is.”

“Riley, are you sure it’s a
good idea
,” she addressed him, but bent a hard look on Cole, “to go into town and see all those people who knew you before the war, before things…
changed
?”

“I’d like to see the place I’m from and—”

“Don’t worry,” Cole interrupted meaningfully. “I won’t leave him somewhere with no way to get home. Stop fretting, Susannah.” She had her doubts but she knew they couldn’t keep Riley sequestered out here forever.

After they’d ridden off, Susannah made sure that everyone was busy with something—Riley and Cole gone into town, Shaw at Mae’s, and the boys in school—before she went to talk to Tanner.

She found him in the tack room mending a stirrup with a big curved needle. Sitting on a length of upended log, he glanced up
at her but didn’t say anything. She watched him work for a while, trying to think of a way to open the conversation. At last, she said, “Are you still speaking to me?”

He pulled the wicked-looking needle through the leather with a pair of pliers. “Yeah. I just haven’t had anything to say.”

“Why did you stop coming to supper? You told me you’d be at the table every night. I barely even see Josh and Wade anymore either. They were going to eat with us and sleep in the house. It was what you wanted.” She looked down at her lap, afraid of the answer she might see in his eyes. “Are you so angry with me that you can’t bear to be around me?”

He put aside the stirrup and sighed. Pushing some tools off a rough-hewn bench across from him, he patted the seat. “Susannah, come here and sit down.” She hesitated, then finally went to the bench. “I’ve stayed away because it’s hard for me to pretend I’m not your husband and, well, to see all the fuss you make over a man whose ‘death’ I didn’t mourn.”

She stared at him. “You always got along with Riley before he left. You worked well together.”

He shook his head. “I’m not saying he wasn’t a good man or a good boss. He was. But he had something I wanted so bad, it ate me up every single day that I knew I could never have it. So much did I want it that I had plans in place to take the boys and go to Texas before that war business got started and Riley enlisted. I couldn’t stand to be here one more day. Then he left and I stayed because I knew you and Cole would need help to get those horses overseas. I wasn’t at all happy about sending them—I hated the idea of it. But they weren’t my horses, and I couldn’t change that so I kept it to myself.”

Susannah closed her hand around an awl that was stuck in the end of the bench and pulled it out of the wood. Idly, she jammed
it back in. Trying to make sense of what he was talking about, she asked, “What could have been so important that you’d go all that way and take the boys?”

He took up the stirrup again and turned it in his large, capable hands. He gave her a rueful, exasperated smile that carried no humor. “I was in love with his wife. I had been since the first day I came to work here.”

Now she downright gaped at him. “I—I didn’t—I had no—”

“No, you didn’t know. Because I kept that to myself, like I did everything else. What good would have come of telling you, even after he left? He was still your husband and you were married. Most of the time I felt like a rotten bastard for loving you, wanting you. Especially after he went to war. The day that telegram came…I felt bad for you because I knew you were heartsick. Still, I couldn’t help but be glad for myself because I saw my chance. And I took it.”

“But you never told me, even after we began courting.”

“I thought that would have been bad-mannered, a low-down dirty thing to do. And I swear, I didn’t wish for anything to happen to him. I didn’t want to take advantage of you because you were hurting and lonely. I wanted to win you with what I had to offer.” He chuckled. “I admit it wasn’t a lot. Still isn’t.” He’d never revealed so much about himself to her. Ever. “You know about my life…I lost my family early on. I kind of felt like I had one here.”

“Oh, Tanner.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she felt a twisting pain in her chest that reached all the way down into her stomach. Was there anything about this miserable situation that didn’t involve heartache? Where was the happiness she’d finally known, the contentment? First it had been ripped away from her when Riley went off to that damned war and she thought he was dead.
Now he was back, and she was put in the middle of the worst dilemma she could imagine.

“When I won you, I thought I was the luckiest man on the face of the earth. All the waiting and hopelessness, and me never able to speak my heart because my conscience held me back—all that was over. We were married and nothing would change it. Or so I thought. Then Riley came back,
rose from the dead
, the last person I wanted to see.” In frustration, he punched the wall beside him, scraping his knuckles badly enough to make them bleed. “If the circumstances were any different, I’d fight for you—and win—without thinking twice. But how am I supposed to battle a man who doesn’t remember who he is? A man who isn’t legally your husband, who doesn’t remember what it was like being married to you, or from what I can tell, doesn’t remember
you
or anything about his life here except what he’s been told.” He looked down at the floor. “You might come home to me, and you might not.”

This was as frank and honest as he had ever been with her.

“You assume that I’ll choose Riley over you?”

He shook his head and laughed, but it was a bitter, anguished sound. “Well, you’re my wife, but I’m back where I started. Oh, fate must be laughing at me now.”

• • •

Virgil Tilly was polishing glasses behind the bar when Cole pushed open the swinging doors with Riley dragging up behind him. It had sounded like a good idea when Cole suggested it, but now Riley was feeling overwhelmed. Encountering more strangers who knew him while he remained ignorant of them seemed daunting. Some had known him since he was a boy, and they meant nothing to him.

The small saloon—now promoted as a soda fountain—didn’t look like any of the fountains he’d seen on the way out here, and he suspected it didn’t fool anyone either. He’d seen women and children in those other places, sitting at tables, sipping phosphates and spooning up sundaes. Here spittoons were placed in convenient locations around the sawdust floor, which had peanut shells mixed in. The bar was short and the air veiled in smoke and the smell of bacon. There were four or five tables in the place. The one in the corner by the woodstove was taken by a few customers who were busy with a card game. Between sips of some kind of liquor and adding to the peanut shells under their feet, they shuffled a grimy deck. Stuffed animal heads hung on the walls along with various signs advising customers
In God We Trust—All Others Pay Cash
,
No Spitting on The Floor
, and other sorts of warnings and advice.

Before Cole could say anything, Virgil Tilly spotted them.

“Flip my flap, if it ain’t Riley Braddock!” He stopped polishing the glass in his hand and whipped the bar towel over his shoulder.

Cole moved forward but Riley lingered near the doorway, fighting the urge to escape. As if sensing his discomfort, Cole reached out to put a guiding hand on his elbow and brought him closer.

The card players all crowded around. Introductions were made, but none of them really registered with Riley.

“It’s a miracle, that’s what it is!”

“Where have you been keeping yourself all this time, Riley?”

Shaking hands with these people, Riley started to sweat.

Cole eyed him. “Virgil, give us a bottle of the Canadian and two glasses. We’ll take a seat over by the window.”

“I’ve got something even better—I’ve been saving this for really special customers.” He handed Cole a bottle of Jameson
Irish whiskey. “This one’s on the house,” Virgil said. “Welcome home, Riley.”

“By God, now
that’s
a miracle. I never heard Tilly tell anyone that,” someone put in.

Virgil waved an impatient arm at the speaker. “
You
come back from the grave, Wilbur, and I’ll let you drink on the house too.”

Cole led them to a table beside a flyspecked window, but everyone came along with them.

“How was it in France? We heard some pretty bad stories about them Huns. Shaw said you’re a hero—that you saved thirty-two men. Everyone in here bought him a drink that day!”

“I knew we could lick them better’n the Frenchies or those Limeys. We won that war for them. And Riley, that wound you got and the cane, they’re like medals,” Virgil said.

An ember of anger began to sizzle in Riley’s gut. He kept his eyes on the whiskey bottle in front of him and his voice low. “I don’t want to talk about any of that.” He knocked back the drink Cole had poured in one hot swallow, then took another.

“All right, all right,” Cole said, “let’s not make Riley fight it all over again. We just came in for a drink.”

“Cole’s right. Back off, boys,” Virgil said. “Give Riley some air. Go back to your cards and drinks.” Then to Riley he added, “We don’t mean to give you a hard time. It’s just that—after what—we’re so glad to see you again—” The man broke off, red-eyed and clearing his throat, to take his place behind the bar again. A loud
honk
sounded as he blew his nose on the bar towel.

Cole watched him go and then raised his glass to Riley. “You mean a lot to the people around here,” he said in a low voice.

Riley took a deep breath and waited for his nerves to settle. He downed another shot, relieved by the pleasant, fuzzy blur that
ran through him and dimmed the constant questions that crossed his mind. “It’s good to know that I wasn’t a jackass.”

Cole laughed. “Only sometimes.”

They sat there drinking and eating peanuts, with Cole giving Riley a rundown about the businesses on the street and who ran them, passing an afternoon that seemed removed from the anxiety he felt at the farm. Then a ratty wreck of a man shambled in, bringing with him a foul combination of odors—an unwashed body, wet and dirty clothes, manure, mildew, stale sweat, and God knew what else. As familiar to Riley as was Susannah’s scent, so was this man’s stench. So very familiar, and yet as with hers, Riley did not know why.

The man shuffled around in place, as if looking to see who might be in here today. His bloodshot eyes fell on Cole’s table and he goggled at them, open-mouthed with surprise, revealing the few rotting teeth that remained in his head.

Riley heard Cole groan under his breath.

“By God, is that Riley Braddock?” He whooped soddenly and made his way to the table. “Cole, we been wonderin’ when you’d bring him by!”

“We’ve been pretty busy, Winks.”

Riley had heard about this man in passing. He was the town drunk and had been involved in some crime with another dodgy sort during the influenza epidemic. The other man was now in jail. The sheriff hadn’t charged this one with anything because he was generally regarded as so pickle-brained as to be almost feeble-minded.

Winks crowded closer—a stinking mess of dirty clothes and slow wits—nearly driving Riley back into the next table, chair and all. “I bet Susannah was surprised to see you! Seein’ as how she thought you was dead, and married Tanner an’ all.” His laugh
sounded more like a leaky steam pipe, coming from between his rotten snags of teeth. “
Th-th-th-th.
”

A dead hush fell over the group and Riley heard a couple of nervous coughs and throat-clearings.

“Winks, don’t—” Cole interrupted.

Riley felt the blood drain from his head. “What?”

“Oh, sure, she married that feller just about three, four months ago.”

A fine, red mist clouded Riley’s mind and vision, and a feeling of rage, hotter than the sun and as uncontrollable as the ocean, flew down his back and flashed out into his limbs. His hearing faded. Even the pain in his leg was forgotten when he shot to his feet and grabbed Winks Lamont by his greasy, threadbare shirt and nearly pulled him up off his feet.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded in a dead-flat tone. “What do you mean she married Tanner?” he roared. He closed his hands on Lamont’s grimy neck with enough force to make his eyes bulge with fear. The red mist in Riley’s mind became a dense fog.

Cole jumped out of his chair, knocking it over. He grabbed Winks by the arm and pulled at him while the card players tried to loosen Riley’s grip. A man who usually felt like an invalid, Riley suddenly possessed the strength of three men.

“Riley! Let him go! You’re going to kill him.”

At last his fingers were pried off Winks, who took to coughing and angry blubbering. In the scuffle, a table was overturned.

“He’s crazy! He
coulda
killed me, a lunatic like him! He needs to be locked up.”

Cole barked, “Goddamn it, Winks, you stupid rummy! Is there
any
brain in your head? You shut up, just shut the hell up
and be glad he didn’t pop your eyes out of your head like champagne corks!”

Winks started howling like a forty-year-old child, sobbing and demanding justice. “Are you just gonna let him get away with this? I’ll tell Gannon and see what he says!”

Chaos surrounded Riley. Flooded with adrenaline, he tore himself out of the grips of the men holding him and glared at all of them, breathing like a winded horse. Then he grabbed his cane and the whiskey bottle and stumbled out the swinging doors. He limped off as quickly as he could, both enraged and terrified, determined to escape, feeling as if the flames of hell were scorching his back.