Reason To Believe (5 page)

In this case, of course, she did, and he wasn't attempting to persuade her otherwise, nor was he granting her an excuse to distract herself with some fussy little hospitality chore. He felt sick, and so did she, even though she had let him deal with the worst of tonight's incident, telling herself it was long past his turn.

But that, too, worried her. She knew she had shirked her motherly duty.

"I went to the window when I heard you talking, but then..."
Then I backed away. Then I chickened out.

She dismissed the notion with a curt gesture. A father had his duty, too. "I didn't want to interfere. You handled it well. Anna, the boy, the whole thing. I would have been—" Paralyzed and utterly useless, probably, but she refused to say such a thing aloud. With a nervous laugh she shrugged off candor in favor of hyperbole. "—a raving madwoman, no doubt."

"She's safe now. She's home."

And yes, that was a relief. The simple act of assenting with a nod instantly engorged her throat with embarrassing, burning emotion. God, more stupid tears. She turned away from him quickly, but he caught her shoulders and pulled them back against the wall of his chest.

Which felt, for the moment, like blessed support.

"I'm not ready for this." She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.
This,
she guessed, referred to more things than she cared to recognize. "It scares me."

"It scares me just as much," he said quietly.

It was hard for Clara to imagine what he meant by the word. He never
sounded
scared.

But he always seemed to know when she doubted him.

"Maybe more," he professed. "I thought Annie would stay away from it. She hated it so much when I was boozin'."

"It's one thing after another." She wanted to delineate each and every one for him and let him carry at least half their weight. "I can't even catch my breath. It's like she wants to try everything all at once. Everything dangerous. Everything..."

"Bad?"

"If
I
say it's bad, it's on her list to try."

"Have you tried any reverse psychology? Tell her milk is bad and sugar's good."

"You already told her that. I lost the battle against sugar when you dumped it all over her cereal and gave it your stamp of approval. Reverse psychology would never work on any child of ours, Ben." She sighed and tipped her head back, letting it rest briefly against his shoulder. She'd missed his strong shoulder, the warmth of his body, the spicy scent that was his alone. Some things hadn't changed. Particularly the bottom line. "We
are
reverse psychology, you and I."

His low chuckle rumbled close to her ear. "You're everything I'm not, that's for sure."

"How do I differ from thee?" She stiffened and shook her head, dismissing her moment of weakness as she drew away from him. "Let's not count the ways just now. I'll get you some bedding."

"I'll do that myself. Later." He grabbed her arm and made her turn around and face him. "I make my own bed these days, and then I lie in it. Sometimes for hours before I can finally fall asleep."

"That's not surprising." It was easy to steel herself against any attempt he could possibly make to gain sympathy on
that
particular account, if that was what he had in mind. All she had to do was look him straight in the eye and remember. And let the chill claim her body. "You used to lie a lot when you slept in my bed."

He didn't flinch.
"Our
bed."

"It's mine now. And I don't have any trouble sleeping, except..."

"Except?"

Except when the dreams come.

Forget dreams, she told herself. Stick to the cold, hard facts, the unfair reality.

"Except when Anna's had a day like this one."

He released her, and she turned away, taking quick refuge in tangible worries. "We have to see the probation officer tomorrow. I don't know whether I should tell her about this incident." She wandered into the kitchen, and he followed, trailing the bits and pieces as she parceled them out. The new adventures of Anna Pipestone, complete with new players. "The probation officer, I mean. I hate the look that woman gives me sometimes. It's like, 'What's the matter with you? Can't you handle your own daughter?'"

She lowered the dishwasher door, opened a cupboard, and started putting plates away.

Poor Clara, Ben thought. She always claimed not to care what other people thought. But she did. She cared plenty. At the very least she wanted them to respect her for her ability to keep all her ducks in a row. She had never quite understood that most people didn't give a damn about the order, as long as all the ducks were the same color. And Clara, for all her fastidiousness and all her ability to organize, was genuinely, guilelessly color-blind.

He opened the cupboard next to his shoulder and signaled for her to start handing him the glasses. "Maybe it's time this cop met Annie's father. She'll be so busy givin' me the evil eye, she won't have time to look down on you."

"Really." She slapped the bottom of a juice glass into his palm. "Knowing you, you'll win her over before we even get through the introductions."

"Naw, I gave that up." He held out his other hand. "I used to buy charm in a bottle. Now I'm just wingin' it through life on straight talk and hard work." With two glasses shelved, he turned, smiling, offering his hands for more. "Following your fine example, Clara."

She refused to crack even a slight smile. "Too bad you didn't start out with that philosophy fifteen years ago."

"Sixteen years, four months, and some odd days," he averred, and her puzzled expression was his reward. "That's how long we've known each other. Thing is, Clara, most of us don't start right out knowin' it all."

He smiled boyishly.

She glared and handed him two more glasses.

He shrugged. "Besides, I'd 'a never won you over without a little of the cowboy charm that comes in that bottle."

"Like fun." She took out the silverware basket, then swatted the dishwasher door shut.

"Like fun is right." He could tell he was making some headway. She was putting the knives into the drawer without giving him any purposeful looks. "C'mon, now, be honest with yourself. We did have fun."

"Really? When?"

"Right from the start." He smiled wistfully. "You always liked to get out on the dance floor and make all the other cowboys wish, and I couldn't dance worth a damn unless I had a couple shots under my belt."

"That isn't true. You're a wonderful dancer. You always were."

"I've never danced sober." She looked incredulous. "You didn't realize that?"

"I think you're exaggerating." She glanced away, her lips pressed tightly together. Then the words came in a quiet rush. "You must be doing it now."

"Doing what?"

She lifted one shoulder. "Dancing sober."

"You're the last person I danced with." He caught her chin with his workingman's fingertips and turned her head until their eyes met. "Like I said, straight talk and hard work is all I've got time for these days."

She closed her eyes and held her breath for a moment, as though the smell of his hand offended her.

The hand pained him suddenly. Its joints seemed suddenly aged. He withdrew it slowly, awkwardly clearing his throat.

"And Annie," he said quietly. "I've always got time for Annie."

Her eyes expressed doubt, which didn't surprise him. And a trace of regret, which did.

"Why didn't you call me about this sooner?"

"I didn't want to call you at all."

"You've been cashing my checks."

"Only for Anna. When we..." She braced her arm on the edge of the counter, steadying herself. "When this is all settled, there'll be some sort of child support anyway." She risked another glance, but it ricocheted off his. "It's kind of remarkable that you're so good about providing that without—"

"She's my daughter." He wondered if
settled
meant the same as
over.
Again he cleared his throat as he patted his breast pocket, searching for cigarettes. Even if he couldn't smoke in the house, it was a comfort to know he had a pack on him. "Have you, uh... filed for—"

"No. Not yet. I haven't had time." Then, quietly, "Did you want me to...?"

"I'm in no hurry."

"Well, right now I think we need to concentrate on Anna's problems," she said with a sigh.

He sighed, too. And they stood there, close, but not too close. Disjointed, but not completely severed.

Then, unexpectedly, Clara brightened. "There was a nice piece in today's paper about the Wounded Knee ride. Did you see it?"

Ben shook his head.

"They interviewed your father." She started toward the living room doorway, then stopped, disconcerted by a change in the order of things. "I think I saw the paper in Anna's room, come to think of it."

"She'll probably show it to me tomorrow," he said, and she nodded, dutifully deferring to her daughter. He thought he detected a little disappointment in her eyes, as though she actually liked the idea of showing him something that might please him. Which pleased him more than she knew.

More than reading about that damned ride would.

"Must be what started her thinking about making the ride herself. The ol' man's been after me to go, but I don't..." He shook his head again. "That's not for me."

"He still wants you to become a pipe bearer?"

"The
pipe bearer. I don't know where it's written that the next one has to be his son."

"It probably isn't. If it's in print somewhere, then it's dubious, according to your father."

"Probably made up by some white anthropologist," he said, imitating his father. "And if we don't watch out, the sacred pipe's gonna end up in a museum somewhere."

"He was always willing to share his stories with me, though. I learned so much from him." She shrugged the whole matter off. "Until we were married. After that..."

Some small guilt brought him to his father's defense as he followed her into the living room. "In the old way, it's not right for him to talk directly to his daughter-in-law. Hell, you know all that better than I do. It's his way of showing you respect."

"I liked it better when he'd tell me stories by the hour."

He flopped into his chair and smiled, remembering. "With you filling up notebook after notebook, and me sittin' outside, goin' through half a pack of cigarettes while I waited to take you out riding."

She took a seat on the sofa and set about straightening magazines—a perfectly neat stack of three—on the coffee table. "Have you been riding a lot lately? I mean, now that you're..."

"Some. I've got a couple of horses out at Dad's place. Took 'em in trade for some work I did. You fix cars for a living down on the rez, you never know what you might get paid with."

"I remember."

But not happily, he thought. They had lived there for a while after they were married. She'd taught high school history, and he'd rodeoed in the summer and fixed cars all year long.

"But you're your own boss again." She made the observation ungrudgingly. "You always preferred it that way."

"Yeah." He'd gotten a job as a mechanic at a car dealership after the Historical Society had offered Clara her dream job and they had moved to Bismarck. He hadn't minded the work so much, but he'd hated punching someone else's time clock. "I've even got a guy working for me now. He's got a lot to learn, but..."

But it felt good to be able to put Darrell Takes The Hat on his payroll, if you could call paying yourself and one other guy a payroll. Darrell had a wife and kid, too. Only he lived in the same house with them.

"How's your job going?"

"Fine. I'm curator of the Indian collection now."

"That sounds real good. You're takin' good care of our stuff for us, huh? The ol' man'll be glad to hear it's in good hands."

She winced at that.

"I ain't kiddin' you. He will. He always said I got the best end of the deal when we got married."

"I'm glad
he
thought so."

Ben thought so, too, even if he hadn't always shown it. Not that she was a princess and he was a total bum, but she'd always had a lot going for her. And she'd loved him once. The silence between them felt heavy, and he knew it was the weight of regret over the loss of that love. Maybe she'd stopped grieving over it by now, but he hadn't.

And there was nothing to break the silence but talk of the most important concern they had left to share. Their child.

"That ride goes on for two weeks, and it can get damn cold during those two weeks." He could feel it now, just as surely as he felt the heat and the goddamn pressure gradually being turned up on him. He was one cowboy who did not ride well under pressure. "I don't think Annie could hack it, do you?"

"I doubt if she's serious," Clara said absently, intent on brushing something hardly visible off her wool trousers. "Just a whim. A test, maybe, to see what we'd say."

"A test," he echoed hollowly.