Home by Nightfall (6 page)

“And?”

“I moved my stuff out to the bunkhouse.” They called it a bunkhouse, but really, it was more than that, something like a utilitarian cottage that had a kitchen area, a room with bunks, and another that was a small, plain room with an iron bed in it.

Susannah stared at him. She’d begun to reach for the knife again, but stopped. “What? Why? I thought you were just going to move into the boys’ room down the hall.”

He wouldn’t look at her. He just kept his eyes fixed on the potato and took a long time to answer. “You said yourself that we might not be legally married. Besides, I’m a hired hand. A hired hand wouldn’t be sleeping in the house. And I figured you need to sort out who your husband is. If it’s not me, I’ll have to step aside. If it’s not him, he needs to know. Either way, I’ll stay out there until you decide.”

An icy chill began in the pit of her stomach and spread to her limbs. “It’s not my decision. I,
we
, have to talk to a lawyer.”

“It’s yours. The law doesn’t have a say-so over what’s in a person’s heart.”

“But—” She realized she had no answer to this. Not yet, but it bothered her that he’d abandoned her in arriving at the solution to this horrible dilemma. Would he not step in to defend his place as her husband? “What will we tell Josh and Wade?”

Now he lifted his gaze to hers. “Can they stay in their room upstairs?”

Susannah felt her heart wrench again. She’d never had her own children, and she adored those boys as if they were her own. Did he really suppose that she would make them leave the house? “Yes, of course. But what shall we say?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Maybe that there’s a wolf pack that’s been coming down and pestering the horses, and that I need to be on the lookout.”

They all had to think of something. How to treat Riley, what to tell Josh and Wade, how to get through this.

“I still expect to see you at the supper table,” she said. “Every night.”

His smile was so brief, she wasn’t sure she’d seen it. “Yes, ma’am.” Then he rolled the potato across the table to her and went back outside.

• • •

The man everyone called Riley sat on the edge of the big bed in his room and looked around. His small suitcase stood by his foot, still packed, and his cane was propped against the mattress. He hadn’t changed from his uncomfortable suit, although Cole had opened the doors of the wardrobe to show him clothes that had belonged to him before. Jeans, boots, shirts, a set of dress clothes—they were his to wear, and since he had little else, he supposed he would try some of them on. He found it strange that they had kept them all this time, even though he was believed to be dead.

Despite the circumstances, everyone in the family had been painfully polite to him, treating him with anxious courtesy. Well, everyone except the evil-humored troll who was his father.

This was a nice room, too. The quilt on the bed was clean and whole. A colorful, oval braided rug covered part of the floor, and the furniture all matched. The creamy plaster on the walls wasn’t missing big patches from barrages of repeated shelling—it wasn’t even cracked. A framed print of a waterfall hung over the bed and a hairbrush, comb, and razor were neatly lined up on the top of the dresser. There was even a bedside table with a clock on it. But he saw no arrangement of perfume bottles or jewelry boxes or other feminine paraphernalia to indicate that Susannah slept here. There were no women’s clothes in the wardrobe. This was a man’s room.

She was as beautiful in the flesh as in her photograph. But in person, her eyes were shadowed with worry and apprehension when she looked at him. He understood that—he felt the same.

Guilt nudged him like a bony elbow. Leaving poor Véronique had been very difficult. They both had known she’d be left alone
to fend for herself with nothing but her unproductive farmland and a crumbling house, yet she’d urged him to go. She had practically insisted upon it. He had a wife who would welcome him with open arms, she’d said, and would weep with joy that her husband had been restored to her. She’d said this as tears streamed down her own face.

But Susannah’s reaction to him had been somewhat different than Véronique predicted.

Who could blame her?

With the flat of his hand he grazed one of the pillows, smooth and cool to the touch. Would she—his wife—would she sleep here with him tonight? Probably not. He
hoped
not. He thought they needed the chance to get to know each other again. In his case, though, he would be starting from scratch if his memory did not return, as the doctors had suggested that it would.

He hoped to God the doctors were right. If not, how would he learn to live in this alien place? And yet…when his memory did return, what might come with it?

A sharp knock on the door startled him. Cole poked his head around the door and grinned at him. “Riley, come on. Supper’s on the table. If we don’t get down there, those kids will gobble up everything.”

“Oh—yes.” He fumbled for his cane and struggled to his feet. Cole rushed forward to help him, but he held up a hand. “Not to worry. I’m not agile, but I manage.”

He felt his brother’s speculative, baffled gaze resting on him as he passed him and limped out into the hallway.

“Thank you again for seeing me, Mr. Parmenter.” Susannah rose from the chair on the opposite side of his desk.

The graying lawyer stood up as well, looking very formal in his dark suit. Behind him, the rows of bookshelves filled with large, leather-bound volumes seemed to add to the heavy solemnity of the situation. The low-slung clouds beyond his window weighed it down even more. She almost felt as if she were talking instead to Fred Hustad, Powell Springs’s undertaker, to arrange a funeral. “You are welcome, ma’am. I hope I’ve given you the information you were looking for.”

She gave him a faint smile and stood aside as he opened the door for her. “Yes, well…as you said, I have a lot to think about. And I can count on your discretion?”

“Absolutely. The attorney-client privilege guarantees confidentiality. If I can be of further help, just come by.”

Susannah nodded and crossed the sidewalk to untie her horse. She’d always faced her responsibilities head-on without flinching. But now she wished she could climb into the saddle, give Sally her head, and gallop for miles with the brisk wind burning her face, across the open pastures away from the farm, away from the problems and obligations that waited for her there. Right now, knowing the identity of her legal husband made nothing easier.

The law doesn’t have a say-so over what’s in a person’s heart.
So Tanner had told her.

He was right.

Nor could the law change the yearning pulling at her with the strength of a mule team.

Just as she turned Sally around for home, one of the last people she wanted to see rode up alongside her.

“So, Mrs.
Braddock
. Been to see the lawyer, have you?” Shaw said, looking her up and down.

“Wh-what—” She felt as if she had no privacy at all anymore. The fumes of Virgil Tilly’s cheap rotgut wafted to her with his words.

“There’s no sense denying it. I just seen you outside his office. And I know what he told you, too—that I’m right. You’ll have to send that Grenfell and his boys packing now that your rightful husband is home. Too bad. He was a good wrangler but we’ll find someone else to fill in for him.”

She glared at his smug face, with its small, shoe-button eyes and lines drawn by a lifetime of weather and a sour, ill-tempered nature. Once, years ago, she’d hoped that Shaw Braddock would be the father she’d lost. She’d catered to him and spoiled him and put up with his cranky outbursts and limitless, carved-in-stone opinions. Now she wouldn’t wish this man on anyone, not even his own sons. And she wasn’t about to discuss personal business out here on Main Street.

“I will do no such thing.”

He stared at her, gawping like a landed salmon while a canyon-deep frown clenched his forehead.

“You keep your mouth shut about this unless you want to cause more trouble than you have already. If you want lunch, it will be on the table in an hour.”

His expression changed from anger to long-suffering vexation. “Forget it. I’m stopping at Mae’s.
She
might have something special cookin’ up for me in her kitchen.”

Susannah hoped it was a first-rate case of indigestion. “Fine.” She dug her knees into Sally’s sides and urged her into a trot, knowing that neither Shaw nor his horse would be able to keep up.

The hard-won peace she’d found after learning of Riley’s death and marrying Tanner was gone again. She’d slept very little for the past two nights since Riley had returned, and the bed she’d shared with Tanner seemed vast.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that her father-in-law was now just a speck on the landscape in front of Granny Mae Rumsteadt’s café, and she let the mare slow down. Sally plodded along, as if sensing her mood. Once outside of town, Susannah could see farmers in the fields harvesting vegetables and fruit that would provide food and income through the winter. Along the edges of the road, robust Canada thistles, dandelions, and poison hemlock choked out the last of summer’s wildflowers.

How would she handle this? There were no easy answers to this problem—she couldn’t begin to guess its outcome. She owed both Tanner and Riley the truth of what she’d learned, and she hoped to talk to Tanner before the rush and bustle of supper this evening ate into her time. Tossing and turning all night—or for several nights—just wasn’t an option this time. There was no running away from this. She had to face it.

“Come on, Sally, we’ve got to get back. I have hungry people to feed.”

When she reached home, Tanner was working with a two-year-old filly in the corral. Cole sat on the top rail with one boot heel hooked on a rail below. Riley, wearing jeans and a shirt and
vest that had come from the wardrobe in his bedroom, leaned on his cane and watched the proceedings from a greater distance. Those clothes were too big for him now. The vest hung on him as if he were just a wire coat hanger. At first glance, he made her think of an easterner who had come here to experience life on a ranch. The man she remembered would have been sitting on the fence rail, tossing off good-natured ribbing to Tanner or discussing the cost of training the horse with Cole. Or he might have been busy at his desk in the house, surrounded by ledgers and his fancy Burroughs adding machine. This man was frail and uncertain. A stranger who looked out of place.

She felt all eyes turn toward her.

Tanner acknowledged her with a nod and she tried to catch his eye with a meaningful look. But before she could send any more signals his way, Cole jumped down from the fence and came to take Sally from her.

Riley turned to look at them, gave her a tentative smile, and lifted a hand in greeting. Her smile in return was as hesitant.

“Are you okay?” Cole asked quietly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She shrugged. “I have, sort of, haven’t I?” As they walked toward the stable, she could feel Tanner’s and Riley’s eyes on them. “I saw Shaw in town. He’s stopping at Mae’s.”

“I guess that’s a blessing. He’s giving both Riley and Tanner a going-over.” Susannah sighed, and he tipped his head to look into her face. “You too, huh.”

“Yes. Will you and Jessica come for supper? It would make things less, well, awkward.”

He led Sally into her stall and took her saddle off. “Okay. I know Jess will appreciate it. She’s had some long days and nights lately. Since the boys came home from the war, she’s delivered
a lot of babies. She finally agreed to let me buy her a car to get around in—I’m going to pick it up next week.” Looking at her across Sally’s back, he asked, “Did you have fun in town?”

“No. I went to see Mr. Par—”

At that moment, she heard the sound of uneven footfalls on the stable flooring. She turned and saw Riley standing just inside the wide doorway.

“Hello,” he said. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. I thought maybe I could help you.” He nodded at Sally. Cole had already taken off her saddle.

“Sure, Riley,” Cole said. “Come on in. I’ve got to give Tanner a hand with that filly.”

Susannah swallowed. She pasted on another smile, trying to smother the nagging wish that she could just leave. She hadn’t spent many moments alone with him. “You’ve been here a few days, now. What do you think of the place? Does it look the same as when you left?” She feared it might be an unfair question, but she was tired of asking him how he felt and imagined he was tired of answering it.

He gave her another smile, this one rueful. “It’s nice, but I don’t remember it. Perhaps the doctors were too optimistic about my condition.”

She reached for a brush on the shelf and began pulling it through Sally’s chestnut mane. “Maybe not. A few days aren’t enough to know. Things can still change.”

He took the brush from her and automatically began running it over the horse’s sleek coat in long, familiar, and efficient strokes. Though he leaned on his cane, he handled the brush with a confidence that she hadn’t seen in anything else he did. When he neared Sally’s head, she turned and bumped her nose gently against his chest in recognition.