One From The Heart (10 page)

I love to look at him
, she thought crazily, the thought presenting itself even though she knew perfectly well she couldn’t afford to indulge in that kind of wistfulness.

He glanced at her. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Have you seen Rick what’s-his-name since Petey’s been staying with you?”

“Archer,” she supplied, wondering where that question came from. “No. Why?”

“Talked to him?”

“No. Why?” she said again.

“I was just wondering.”

They were on the road nearly an hour before he asked what was really on his mind, driving in a heavy downpour on the nearly desolate stretch of road outside Sherman.

“Hannah, how … involved were you with Archer?”

“None of your business,” Hannah said quietly, because it wasn’t and because she didn’t want to answer him.

He was about to say something else, but she looked at him hard over Petey’s head.

“Okay, fine,” he said a little shortly. “Then you can tell me why you didn’t get married to that guy you were supposed to marry—the one
before
Rick what’s-his-name. Libby told me one time her baby sister was getting married. Why didn’t you?”

“Don’t you think you’re getting a little personal here?”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet, Hannah Rose,” he advised her, looking at her long enough to make her worry about his driving. “And I told you before: I don’t waste time working up to something.”

“Will you look where you’re going!”

“I am looking where I’m going. Why didn’t you marry him? You find out you didn’t care anything about him or what?”

She didn’t answer him.

“What was his name—Williamson?”

She looked at him for a long moment. Elizabeth had told him more about her than he’d ever said. “Yes,” she said finally. “Williamson. Nathan Williamson.”

“Libby said he broke your heart. Did he?”

“Yes, Ernie, he broke my heart. We wanted different things. I had a career. He wanted a housewife. I loved him; he loved me, but somehow we missed knowing that about each other until it was nearly time for the wedding. He couldn’t believe I wouldn’t give up my job and be just Mrs. Williamson, the mother of his children. I couldn’t believe he’d ask me to do it. I thought we could work it out—compromise. I thought that right up until the time he married somebody else. Okay?”

“That’s why you got so caught up in your job at the big station downtown,” he said perceptively.

“That’s why,” she agreed. “It was the least I could do, considering my degree of sacrifice and personal pain.”

“And you regret it?”

She thought before she answered. “No. There were other differences, things I thought wouldn’t matter then, but they probably would have eventually.”

“What things?”

“Ernie—”

“Hannah, I want to know. Tell me.”

“He grew up in a stable traditional family. I didn’t. And I don’t think he would have ever let me just up and throw the kids in the car and drive them to the Mississippi River so they could spit in it.”

“No?” he asked, grinning.

“No,” she assured him.

“Hannah, about last night,” he said abruptly. “It didn’t come out the way I meant. I said it all wrong—”

“I don’t want to talk about that, Ernie. I mean it.”

“Hannah—”

“Ernie, it doesn’t matter! Elizabeth is my sister. I love her.”
We both do
, she thought. She was afraid he was going to insist, but he didn’t, probably because Petey chose that moment to interrupt her chat with Cowpoke and look up at them. The conversation turned to lighter things, to more about Little Girl Hannah and to how long it would be until they could stop for a brown milk shake. Hannah could feel that Ernie was only postponing his explanation of his abrupt departure last night. One of life’s little quirks, she thought resignedly. When they’d first met, she’d given him the chance to tell her about his commitment to Elizabeth. He hadn’t taken it, and now, when she didn’t want to hear it, he was going to insist on telling her.

They stopped along the road for something to eat, Petey and Hannah waiting in the truck while Ernie dashed inside a place with a flat roof and chipping paint and a neon name, Starlight Café, in the big front window. He was a regular, she could tell by the big hug he got from the woman in pink hair curlers at the cash register. He brought the woman closer to the window and pointed at his pickup truck. The woman smiled and waved, and Hannah and Petey dutifully returned the silent greeting. And the Starlight Café—as Ernie had promised—served excellent hamburgers and brown milk shakes. The cab of the truck was filled with the wonderful aroma of toasted bread and onion-flavored meat.

“Come here often, do you?” Hannah asked, because the entire staff was now in the window waving as they pulled away.

He grinned. “I’d take you inside if we had the time. That’s Ozelle—the one with the curlers. The woman’s crazy about me.”

Hannah grinned in return, relaxing a bit in the truce they were enjoying. She had no idea where they were—somewhere between McAlester and Muskogee to the best of her calculations. They’d passed all those bodies of water—or perhaps it was one large and irregular body of water. She really couldn’t tell in the rain with the daylight nearly gone. Petey remained chipper and wide awake, much to Hannah’s relief. As long as she was awake, Ernie wasn’t likely to insist they talk about last night.

It was dark by the time they neared Muskogee, and Ernie pulled off on the side of the road.

“How about driving for a while, Hannah. My knee’s killing me.”

She gave him a worried look, one he couldn’t see in the darkness of the cab. He got out and limped around to the other side while she climbed over Petey.

“Are you … okay?” she asked as he got in on the passenger side, the worry he couldn’t see now perfectly audible in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m okay. It just hurts. I got the clamps out today. We’ve got about thirty more miles. Just go into Muskogee on 69 here, and come out of it on Route 62.”

That seemed to be the extent of his directions, because he pulled his hat down over his eyes and slid down in the seat.

“Are you sleepy, Ernie?” Petey wanted to know—a very timely question in Hannah’s opinion. He was supposed to show her shortcuts, not sleep. He certainly seemed to put a lot of stock in her claim she could read a map—if she had a map.

“Yeah, Pete. I am,” he said, looking out from under his hat.

“I’m not,” she assured him.

He laughed. “Yeah, and green vegetables look like marshmallows. How about leaning back here and singing me a song. Sing ’Honky Tonk Man.’”

Petey sang with great enthusiasm, and Ernie again disappeared under his hat. Hannah drove carefully into the rainy night, following Route 69 the way he’d told her, and both he and Petey were fast asleep before they reached Muskogee. She found Route 62 to Fort Gibson with minimal bother, and she didn’t wake him until they were a few miles out of Tahlequah.

“What?” he murmured at the pressure of her hand on his arm.

“We’re almost in Tahlequah,” she said.

He sat up and looked around. “Are we? Okay—drive straight through town. On the road going out, look for a mailbox with the name Swimmer. Less than a mile out, on the right.”

“Swimmer,” she repeated.

“Right. Have you ever been in Oklahoma before?”

“Not awake,” she said, switching the heater to defrost to clear the fogged-up windshield.

“So what do you think of it?”

“Well, I think it’s dark and wet. And flat.”

She could feel him grin, and she turned her head to look at him.

“Look where you’re going, Hannah,” he chided her, and none too soon. She drove intently now, not wanting to get them lost when they were so close to their destination. She could feel Ernie’s eyes on her, feel exactly how far away he was from her in the darkness of the truck’s cabin. Petey slept sprawled between them, and Ernie swung his arm across the back of the seat. His fingers were only inches from her shoulder. She could feel them so acutely that she drove past the Swimmer mailbox and had to back up on the dark road to make the turn.

Ernie said nothing as she turned into the long, muddy drive that led to the house. She could make out very little—the lights of the house in a grove of trees in the distance. And she was suddenly apprehensive—which was ridiculous. Either her troubles with Elizabeth were about to end, or they weren’t, and there was no use fretting about it.

“Park over there,” Ernie said, pointing out a spot in the side yard.

Hannah parked the truck, but she sat gripping the steering wheel after she’d turned the engine off, peering out the rain-splattered windshield for who-knew-what in the darkness. The house was small and symmetrical, with a centered front porch and a swing that had been raised high to protect it from the coming winter weather. Leaves from the surrounding trees fell with the rain, sticking to the wet windshield.

“Elizabeth’s car isn’t here, is it?” she asked as he opened the truck door. She moved Cowpoke aside so he could pick up the still sleeping Petey.

“No,” he answered, covering Petey with her yellow poncho. “Hannah?” he said just as he was about to get out into the rain. “I think I’m in love with you.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Y
OU WHAT
?”

“You heard me,” he said over his shoulder, and he kept going, leaving her sitting there alone.

She scrambled out of the truck, trotting along after him in the rain. “Ernie—”

“Not now, Hannah.”

Not now?
she thought incredulously.
He casually throws out a statement like that then says
, “Not now?”

He slowed down enough for her to catch up with him, but as she walked along beside him, he deliberately bumped her with his shoulder, making her falter, then grinned from ear to ear because she was ready to punch him in the nose for it. “I just thought you ought to know.”

He just thought she out to
know?

“In case I get busy and I don’t get to tell you,” he added over his shoulder because Hannah was lagging behind again. “And quit looking like Bambi,” he said as he stepped up on the front porch.

“I feel like Bambi,” she said.

“Come on, Hannah,” he prodded her, because she’d stopped walking and was standing in the rain. She looked up at him with a start and followed him onto the porch. He
thought
he was in love with her. What was that supposed to mean? Besides the fact that he’d just made a difficult situation impossible?

She was about to ask him, but the front door opened and Ernie caught her by the hand.

“Hey, Mim,” he said to the woman who opened the door. “Look what I brought you.”

“Elizabeth?” Mim said expectantly, flinging the door open wide. “Elizabeth?”

“No,” Hannah said. She stood awkwardly for a moment and then extended her hand. “It’s Hannah—Elizabeth’s sister.”

“Hannah,” Mim said. “I thought maybe—” Disappointment filled her voice, but she squeezed Hannah’s hand warmly. She was a petite woman, a bit plump, with salt-and-pepper hair that hung down her back in a long braid. She was wearing a white dress and a blue checked gingham apron with the bib and pockets decorated in intricate cross-stitching. Hannah remembered Elizabeth’s assessment of Mim Swimmer: “She’s like Mammy in
Gone with the Wind
.” Hannah had no doubt it was true. Mim had taken upon herself the hopeless task of trying to instill a sense of responsibility in Elizabeth Browne, yet her devotion knew no bounds, nor did her forgiveness. She had paid off Elizabeth’s traffic tickets to keep the family from knowing about them, hidden her from irate husbands and lovers, held her hand through three divorces and the birth of a child. And she quite obviously still loved her unconditionally.

Now she looked at Hannah closely, then abruptly hugged her and kissed her cheek. A bit bewildered, Hannah could only hug her in return, her mind identifying Mim’s pleasant scent as one she had always associated with her mother: Camay soap and Cashmere Bouquet bath powder.

“Come inside,” Mim said. “Come in out of the rain. You don’t remember me at all, do you?”

“No. I’m sorry,” Hannah said truthfully. “I wish I did.”

“Ah, well. You were hardly more than a baby the last time I saw you. Nearly two. You’ve grown into a beautiful woman. Isn’t she beautiful, John Ernest? Such beautiful gray-green eyes—”

“Yeah, she’s beautiful,” Ernie said quietly. “Inside and out.”

Hannah glanced at him, thinking that it was kind of him to be so uncharacteristically tactful in the face of a head-to-head comparison between her and Elizabeth, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Let me see your other treasure,” Mim said, lifting the yellow poncho off Petey. Petey was awake and waiting.

“Boo!” she said as the poncho came off. “I can’t find my mommy,” she told Mim immediately. “I can’t find her, and Ernie can’t find her, and Anna-Hannah can’t find her.” It was more a statement of fact than a prelude to more emotional distress—Petey’s news report for Mim on the current status of things, Hannah thought.