Unexpected Family (13 page)

“You know, Annie didn’t even tell me she was sick until it was too late.” His pain was obvious, needles buried deep under his skin that were painful to pull out. “It’s not like I could have done anything, but…you know, I could have been there. Supported her and the kids. But that’s the way she was. It’s the way we all are.”

“Maybe the boys need something different?”

“What if I don’t know how to do that?” he asked.

“Then maybe you need to learn.”

He sighed deeply, as if sucking down all these thoughts, burying them back where they’d come from. Obliterating them as if they’d never been.

Don’t,
she thought,
you need to deal with this stuff.

But then he smiled and the moment was over.

“Thanks for coming out,” he said. “The boys appreciate it.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” She laughed, pointing to the empty seats.

“Well…I appreciate it.”

His knee pressed hers under the table and they were curved toward each other, two parts of a circle connected at knees and hands. The other night rushed back in sensory bites, the rough warmth of his hands on her stomach, the sound of his zipper in the quiet, his voice groaning “Baby” in her ear.

Her heartbeat pounded between her legs.

“My question,” Jeremiah asked, cocking his head, studying her, “is for a woman who has only dated three men, what were you doing flashing your breasts at Reese McKenna?”

She laughed, not breaking contact.

“It was the state championship, Jeremiah. I had to do my part.”

“How…how is it a woman like you is single?” He said it as if he were truly mystified and she preened under his compliment. She was quite a catch if she did say so herself.

“I’m driven. Or was.” She pulled her hands away. “Once it got to a certain point, no matter how hard I fell in love, it always felt like I had to make a choice. My career—my work—or marriage. I couldn’t be fully committed to both of them.” The flirtatious gleam in his eyes had vanished and her stomach dropped. “Too deep for you, Stone? You hyperventilating?”

“No, no…I was thinking I know exactly what you mean. With the boys. I could have a relationship, or I could be there for the boys. I can’t have both. I can’t be pulled in two directions.”

Funny, but when he said it she saw the ways in which that wasn’t totally true. How the right person, the right relationship, wouldn’t make him feel like he had to make a choice. The right relationship would feel like support. A team.

She’d never seen it that way in her own life. And it felt as if someone had turned on a light in a room she’d never realized was pitch-black. Before she could make any kind of response, Ben came up to the table. “I need more quarters.”

“Hello to you, too,” Jeremiah said.

Ben glanced sideways at her. “Hey.” He turned back to Jeremiah. “Can I have more quarters?”

“I told you when we came in that roll was all you got.”

“That sucks.”

“Ben.” Jeremiah didn’t yell but his tone was stony. Implacable. She wondered what Jeremiah would do if he knew how Ben had been swearing at her the other day.

“Sorry,” Ben muttered, and slid down in the seat opposite her. His eyes on the edge of the table. Utterly and totally disengaged.

What will bring you back?
she wondered.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask how things went last Friday,” Jeremiah said, stretching his arm out across the backs of the seats, his fingertips inches from Ben, as if he wanted to touch him but knew what the reception would be.

You should tell Jeremiah,
she thought.
Tell him the truth.
That it was awful. That Ben wasn’t doing anything she’d asked. That she was failing, even at this. That things weren’t better, not like he thought. Not like he wanted.

But Jeremiah was looking at her, the creases between his eyes gone, the heavy weight of responsibility off his shoulders. He was relieved things seemed to be going well between her and Ben. She couldn’t burst that for him, not yet.

But after the things he’d told her, what happened between them, lying to him felt…utterly wrong. They could be the bad guy together, maybe. Share this load.

Telling him was the right thing to do.

Inwardly, she braced herself. “Jeremiah—”

“Fine.” Ben lifted his eyes and looked right at Lucy, as if daring her to contradict him. Daring her to tell the truth. “We worked in the garden and stuff.”

What is this kid doing?
she wondered, trying to find his angle.

“Yeah?” Jeremiah asked, looking pleased.

The silence stretched and she found herself too intrigued and maybe too cowardly to set things right.

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed, and Ben grinned at her. “Things are going fine.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
HROUGH
THE
KITCHEN
WINDOW
on Thursday morning
,
Sandra watched Mia and Carla, the latest applicant for housekeeper and nurse, approach Walter where he sat in the sun near the barn doors.

If you asked Sandra—and no one ever did—after Walter chased away the last two, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Carla looked mean. Looked like the kind of woman who overcooked meat and didn’t like kids. Might pinch her mother when she moved too slow.

Maybe that’s the kind of person Walter needs,
she thought. Someone who wouldn’t care what he thought of them. Would only care about him as long as she was paid. Would let him sit out there and whittle all damn day. Turning big sticks into little sticks.

The interview was brief. Mia said something, smiling in that big way of hers that meant she was trying real hard to be pleasant when pleasant didn’t taste good.

Walter didn’t look up, but seemed to be saying something. Mia hung her head, defeat in every line of her body, and after a second Carla made a vulgar gesture, turned around and walked to her car.

Mia was saying something to Walter, who only shrugged, like some kind of spoiled, surly teenager. Mia threw up her hands and left, getting into her truck and driving away, kicking up dust. Walter looked up, watching Mia drive away, and then as if he knew she was watching him, he looked at the house. Right at her.

Like a schoolgirl caught peeping, she whirled and ducked out of the way.
Ridiculous,
she thought, her hand on her hammering heart.
You are ridiculous.

Since the touch of his lips on her wrist, she’d been rattled around him. As if a layer of skin had been removed and every glance, every breeze, made her all too aware of her nerve endings.

Sixty-two years old and she felt like a girl.

She used to feel this way about A.J. before they got married. Every touch of his hand as he passed her the hymnal at church would send her into ecstatic contemplations. Fevered daydreams.

Before it all went cold.

Stupid,
she told herself. It was a kiss. On her wrist. From a man she didn’t much like. Had she totally lost her mind? But it wasn’t just the kiss. Not totally. “I will fight,” he’d said in that detox-induced nightmare. And her spirit, wayward and sleeping since childhood, liked that.

I will fight.

And he was making good on that promise. He wasn’t going to be cared for and tended like a child. He made his own breakfast these days and forced her out of the kitchen when it was time to do the dinner dishes.

“You’ve done enough,” he’d said quietly last night, loading the dishwasher.

All these housekeepers coming to apply, he was chewing up and spitting out. And it was rude, but he was not going to be pushed around and she respected that. Liked that. Was…proud of him.

And what are you doing?
she asked herself.
Hiding like a girl scared of her shadow? What happened to your fight?
Earlier this morning, she’d been thinking about A.J., lying in bed counting her lonely moments like a rosary.

With the kind of belligerence born of being thwarted and embarrassed, she threw some ham and cheese between two pieces of wheat bread and slapped it on a plate.

It’s not like she knew what she was angry about. Or what she wanted to fight for; she just knew she was angry. And that was enough to send her outside and across the parking area to stand in front of him, scattering stones with the heels of her boots.

He glanced up at her and his knife slipped.

“Damn,” he muttered, and lifted his thumb to his mouth.

“Did you cut yourself?” She put the sandwich down on the ground and reached for him but he shook his head.

“I’m fine. Just a knick.” He smiled around his thumb as if to convince her.

Her heart thudded hard in her chest at that sweet smile of his and she dropped her hands.

“Didn’t mean to spook you,” she said.

“Don’t worry none.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes, furtive and searching all at the same time.

She liked it.

All of those men at her church in L.A.—widowers and divorced men, asking her out for coffee or ice cream after prayer group—handsome men, devout and reliable, some of them were even rich. But they left her cold. Unmoved.

Why this man?
she wondered.

“I brought you a sandwich.” She pointed to the sad sandwich beside his foot.

“It’s 9:00 a.m,” he pointed out, and she actually willed herself not to blush.

“Thought you might be hungry.”

He pulled his thumb from his mouth and she saw the thin trickle of blood from the pad of his thumb. “You don’t have to do that.”

“You need a bandage.”

“I’m fine, Sandra. I’ve had worse cuts in my life.”

The silence stalled and sputtered around them. “What happened with Carla?”

“She left.”

Sandra laughed before she could help herself. “Any idea why?”

“I told her to.”

Sandra nodded as if that made sense. As if that were the wisest course of action. “They’re running out of people willing to come out here and meet you.”

“Good.”

“You mean to make it hard on them?”

“I mean to not have a babysitter.” He went back to his wood, the knife in his hand, despite the fact that he was bleeding. Despite the fact that his hands trembled half the damn day, despite the fact that she was standing right in front of him. Itching. Absolutely itching for a fight.

“It’s so simple for you, isn’t it? Damn what everyone else wants or needs.” She was nearly yelling and Walter gave her one astonished look before glancing back down at the wood in his hands.

The impulse to rip that wood out of his hands startled her.
I’m so damn tired of being ignored by the men in my life.

“I don’t want to fight you, Sandra.”

“Then what do you want?”

His eyes glittered, hot and then cold, and she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even begin to talk.

Yes,
she thought,
this is it. The beginning of something. Anything.

“Thank you.” He attacked the wood as if it had attacked him. “For the sandwich, for taking care of this ranch like you have all these years. We are in your debt. I…am in your debt. But please…” His eyes held worlds of sadness. “Leave me alone.”

You said you were going to fight, but you avoid me. You love me and you can’t even look at me. I don’t know how to do this. How to feel this way and not be ashamed.

But I am not going to leave you alone.

“No.”

“I hurt you, Sandra. Put hands on you.”

“You thought I was Vicki.”

“Doesn’t matter. A.J. would skin me alive.”

A.J. A.J. It always came back to A.J. For her, for everyone around her, and she couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t keep up the act anymore. Years of being the dutiful wife and she was sick to death of it.

Enough,
the tiger of her temper roared,
enough.

“A.J. didn’t love me.”

Walter nearly dropped the knife. “What…what are you talking about? Sandra, you were married for thirty years. He worshipped you.”

She laughed, unable to stop it. “Worshipped? What a funny word to use.”

“Sandra. You’re confused, you’re—”

“Do. Not. Tell me what I am,” she said. “He didn’t love me. Not…not like a husband should.”

“He was a hard man, quiet.”

“It was more than that, Walter.”

“What…what are you talking about?” He stared at her, a lost kid confused.

Oh, what was she doing? Why was she going to inflict this secret on Walter?

Because I am stuck behind it.

Lost behind it.

Tired of carrying it.

She couldn’t admit she wanted this man, this damaged but determined man. She certainly couldn’t fight for him when the whole world believed she and A.J. had been happy.

“What are you saying, Sandra?”

She’d never said it. Not out loud. Didn’t actually have proof other than years of observing a man who was constantly repenting something. And suddenly looking at Walter she couldn’t do it.

She turned to flee back to the house, but Walter stood, grabbed her hand. She gasped at the touch, the heat of his skin against hers. The size of his hand, the strength. She closed her eyes in surrender to it. In longing for it.

“Sandra—”

“He loved me as a friend,” she said.

“Was it an affair?”

She shook her head. “I…think he was gay.”

Walter dropped her hand, his face red. “Nonsense.”

“He was my husband, Walter. He had secrets.”

He stepped back. And back again. “You’re wrong.”

“I spent years praying that was the case, but…I don’t think I am. I think there was someone before we were married. He hated himself for it. I think—secretly—he hated me for it.”

Walter stared up at her and, in an instant, all that anger was gone. And she was left cold and guilty. So cold.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” she murmured, and walked away, ashamed that she wanted him to stop her and then more ashamed when he didn’t.

* * *

L
UCY
MET
B
EN
AT
THE
BUS
stop again on
T
hursday afternoon. Gray storm clouds clung to the mountains, sending thick feelers over the peaks. The whole world looked dark and fierce. Exactly like she felt.

“What are you doing?” she asked once the bus was gone. She crossed her arms over her chest determined not to be undermined by a kid.

He’s a kid. You’re an adult. Act like it.

“It’s Thursday, I’m coming to your house.”

“Yeah, but why did you tell Jeremiah that everything was going fine. Why did you lie?”

“Why did you?”

“Ohhhh, no.” She took a step back. “What are you after?”

He shrugged. “I like it here.”

“Sleeping in the barn?”

“I’m not sleeping.”

She had visions of matches and dry hay, the ranch on fire. “What do you do?” she asked in a hard voice.

“Talk to Walter.”

If he had said “talk to the chickens” she wouldn’t have been any more surprised. “Walter?”

“The old guy. Yeah.”

“What…” She didn’t even know how to compute this. “What do you talk about?”

Ben shrugged, lifting his backpack over his shoulder. “Stuff.”

“That’s…crazy.”

Ben didn’t like that and he turned, stomping toward the ranch.

“Ben, I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. I thought this would be good for you. You get to be the hero with my uncle and you don’t even have to deal with the screwed-up kid—”

“You’re not screwed up,” she said after him.

“That’s all you’ve been calling me since we met.”

She gasped, stopped in her tracks.
Oh, no. Was that…was that true?
“Ben…I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.” He sneered over his shoulder and just kept on walking toward the barn.

She’d hurt him. When she’d meant to help.

Walter wasn’t at his seat and she watched Ben disappear into the shadows at the back of the barn. Ben wasn’t going to talk to her. It wasn’t a matter of letting him cool down, she’d crossed a line with him. Crossed it nearly the first time she opened her mouth.

With her heart like lead in her chest, she realized that she had to go ask Walter—of all people—to look after Ben.

She’d blown all her fresh starts.

* * *

W
ALTER
PACED
THE
HALLWAY
, the thump and slide of his crutch loud in the silence. He knew Sandra could hear him in her room, but she wasn’t coming out. In front of her door he lifted his hand to knock but found himself unable to do it.

Good Lord,
he wanted a drink. He wanted a whole damn bottle. He wanted to drown himself in whiskey.

A.J. Gay?

What a secret. And the real ache—the real pain—was that it didn’t matter if it was true or not; Sandra believed it was and she lived her life with that doubt.

Beautiful Sandra pretending for all those years that her marriage was perfect. And his friend. His best friend, A.J., living a lie.

Gathering his ragged courage he knocked on the door and waited. She didn’t open it, but he could feel her on the other side.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the wood. “I…didn’t do that right. If…you… Ah, Christ, Sandra.” He thunked his head against the door. “If you want to talk…or whatever…I’m here. I’m…yeah. Here. For you. If you want that.”

Why would she?
he thought.
You desperate old drunk.

He waited one more second, the silence pounding and pulsing in his head.

“Walter?” Lucy’s voice flooded the hallway and he turned as quickly as he could with his gimpy foot and headed toward the kitchen. Not wanting to be caught outside Sandra’s door.

They met in the foyer. There was something in the air for the Alatore women today. Lucy looked as shattered as Sandra.

Did Lucy know about her dad? Did anyone? Had Sandra carried that all alone?

“You okay?” he asked, and she stopped in her fancy boots, her feather earrings lifting in the breeze she’d created.

“No, Walter. I cannot believe I’m about to say this—” She shook her head like she just couldn’t believe what was happening. “I need you.”

“Me?”

The big breath she sucked down shook at the bottom and he realized she was far more upset than she appeared. “It’s Ben.”

“He in the barn again?” He leaned sideways to look out the glass surrounding the front door.

“He says…he says you talk to him?”

“Well, I’d hardly call it talking.”

“Then what do you call it?”

“I didn’t kick him out of the barn. He told me he gets in trouble and I could relate. That’s about it.”

“Whatever it is you’re doing—” she was getting shrill, accusatory “—it’s certainly better than whatever I’m doing. I’m totally failing… .” She stopped herself, swallowing her wild emotions, and Walter, without the cushion of being drunk, felt scraped raw just being near her. He wasn’t sure what to say, what she needed him to say.