“Psychological abuse can be almost as bad,” Anne said. She had firsthand experience with Robert before she kicked him out of her life.
“When we were growing up, Gran stood between us and Daddy as much as she could. She gave me the strength to run away from home.” He shrugged. “And the money. It’s easier to have principles when you’re not looking starvation in the face. I always intended to be a vet. I’d have made it happen, but it might have taken me years.” He closed his eyes momentarily and yawned. “I shouldn’t have had that second brandy. I don’t drink much as a general rule, and I’m tired. What kind of brandy was that?”
“French. I should have stopped you. I don’t think you should try to drive home.”
“Just feed me a couple of cups of coffee. I’ll be fine.”
“Fine does not pass breathalyzer tests. Take Becca’s room. The sheets are clean.”
“I can’t...”
“Sure you can. I’m a horse show person, remember. When I was showing Trust Fund regularly, I never knew who I’d find sleeping in my guest room or on my living room floor whenever there was a horse show in the area.”
“What will Victoria think?”
“That it’s none of her business.”
* * *
ANNE FOUND HIS note beside the kitchen telephone when she came in to start the morning coffee.
Thanks, it said. You make a great omelet. I owe you dinner.
She’d collect, too. She looked out her front window. There was no vet van in the parking lot. Six thirty in the morning, and he was already on the road. Away from her. Away from the revelations about his family.
Her upbringing had been so different from his. Her college professor father seldom so much as raised his voice to her and Elaine. Her mother never did. They’d adored one another. When her mother died, it darned near killed all of them.
Anne remembered her mother as perfect. She wasn’t, of course, but when she got sick, she suffered with grace. Losing her nearly killed all three of them. Her father practically disintegrated.
But his marriage had proven to him that lifelong love existed, that families could be happy most of the time, that they generally supported one another and apologized when they disagreed. When Barbara Carew came into his life, he was primed to believe that he could love again, because he knew what love felt like and had instilled in his daughters the same faith he had in love and fidelity.
Eventually, Barbara had come around to his way of thinking.
Anne supposed that was why she herself had never married the men who wanted her as a wife. What she felt for them was not deep enough to last a lifetime. She would marry for lifelong love or not at all.
Now that Robert was out of her life, it looked like not at all.
She grumbled while she stripped the sheets and remade Becca’s bed, tidied her room and bathroom, then did the same with her own.
Becca was coming for the weekend. Anne prayed that in the time she’d been gone, the teenager had reconnected with school and horse friends and had a couple of doting young men panting after her.
She’d keep Becca occupied, practicing old behaviors with the minis and learning new ones. They’d take trips to shops, with the horses, find stairs and escalators to attempt, confirm the signals that the mini needed a bathroom break. They’d harness Molly and Grumpy to the carriage, and start getting Harriet used to harness. Plenty to do without Vince.
If would be helpful if Calvin and Darrell got crushes on Becca. Even better if she were smitten with them.
Anne dressed for the day in jeans and paddock boots. No sense in pulling on britches and tall boots for work sessions in the heat. She fixed herself a glass of iced tea and poured her thermos full, toasted a biscuit in the microwave and ate it as she strolled down to the barn.
Walking into a barn where contented horses munched good oats and sweet hay always improved her mood. One thing about horses—they had no hidden agendas. Almost everyone else she knew, including Vince, did. She called Trusty out of his paddock and gave him a good groom and a handful of treats. “Maybe we can take a trail ride today,” she said as she caressed his neck. “If not, then tomorrow. I miss you, big guy.”
Trusty nickered. Anne was well aware that affection ran second to more treats, so she gave him a carrot, then turned him back out into his pasture with the other full-size geldings.
* * *
BY SKIPPING LUNCH, Anne fit in a leisurely trail ride with Trusty. She gave the minis a holiday.
Driven up by both her parents, Becca arrived Sunday afternoon. Her first greeting was, “Where’s Vince? Is he coming to swim?”
“Not here, not expected, on call,” Anne said.
Becca whined, “I wanted Daddy to meet him.”
I’ll bet you did, Anne thought.
Mr. Stout fitted his name. He looked sleek, prosperous, and would be healthier if he dropped fifty pounds.
“My wife, here, says I’m supposed to take us all out to eat before we drive home at something called the café in Williamston,” he said. He didn’t look overly delighted at the prospect.
Not fancy enough for you, Anne thought.
“Becca says wait ’til you taste their cooking,” Mrs. Stout told him.
Anne might be wrong about his being snobbish just because he hesitated about dining at the café.
“Daddy’s scared of horses,” Becca said. She punched her father’s arm lightly. “Never been on a horse in his life.”
He put his hand over his daughter’s.
“Scared I’ll ride again, aren’t you, Daddy. He always tried to be there when I rode, and put up a big ole shelf in his den to show off my trophies, didn’t you, Daddy?”
“I’ll admit I didn’t want her to come up here, Mrs. Martin, Miss MacDonald.”
“She swears she won’t get on a horse,” Mrs. Stout said.
“But she’s a teenager. They think they’re immortal. I worry.”
Anne could see the edge of anxiety in the way he looked at Becca. He loved his daddy’s girl the way Anne’s father loved her. That he could not have prevented Becca’s accident by sheer force of will must gall him. He seemed like a man used to winning.
Becca wanted to show off the minis, so Victoria set out canvas captain’s chairs beside the arena and Edward brought down a cooler of soft drinks.
“Watch what I can do,” Becca said. “This is Tom Thumb. I haven’t worked him for over a week, so we may be a little rusty.”
“That is one small horse,” Stout whispered to his wife. “Doesn’t look very sturdy.”
“Daddy! You’ll hurt his feelings.”
He rolled his eyes. “How can he possibly help you?”
Becca strode off with Tom close by her side. “Right now, I’m going to fake a fall, and you’ll see.” A few steps more and she began to list, then stumble sideways. Tom braced himself and stood still as she leaned her weight against his withers.
Richard Stout came to his feet and shouted Becca’s name.
She laughed, righted herself, and gave Tom a minicarrot. “I’m fine, Daddy. But when I really start to fall, he does the exact same thing. He keeps me up until I get my balance back. One of the others, Harriet, is going to train to work with the blind. She’s really young, and not perfect, but she’ll eventually be great. Then Molly and Grumpy are learning to pull teeny little carriages.”
“Hmm... Well I’m glad it’s working for you, sweetie.” Richard said.
“Why don’t we get ready to go to dinner,” Victoria said. “Becca, help Anne feed and water. After we clean up we’ll be ready to go to the café.” She turned to Richard Stout. “It’s ten miles away, so take your own car so you won’t have to come back here on your way to Memphis. Becca, do you need a hand taking your stuff into Anne’s?”
“Daddy can carry it, can’t you, Daddy?” She slipped her a
rm through his. “Since I don’t have my horse to save me, he can keep me from falling over.”
* * *
ANNE KEPT A wary eye on the door of the café as they ate. On Sunday evening a great many customers came out to avoid cooking at home in the heat, so they had to wait ten minutes for a table. The café had only begun to open on Sunday evening a few months earlier but had been busy ever since.
One part of her hoped to see the silhouette of Vince’s broad shoulders outside the café door. The other part hoped he wouldn’t come. After last night’s confessions, their working relationship might need a readjustment that she couldn’t make in public.
Anne listened to the others with one ear. Every time the chime over the front door dinged she had to make a conscious effort not to check who was coming in. She would know the timbre of his voice even if she was too far away to understand his words.
If he was a grown man who could look after himself, she was a grown woman. Grown women did not check out doorways in public places for familiar faces or scan for familiar vans in the parking lot like a prepubescent girl with her first crush.
She’d never dived to answer the phone in hopes that a boy was on the line, or checked for a familiar male silhouette in whatever shadowy horse show barn Trusty was stabled in.
She did not feel empty when Robert flew off on business trips for a week at a time, or stay up half the night waiting for him to call her from whichever resort where the meeting was being held.
“I’m sorry?” she said. She had no idea what Richard Stout had asked her. Paying too much attention to her internal Vince-alarm and not enough to the other people at dinner.
“How come some of those minis look like small horses and some look like that...Tom Thumb?”
Anne and Victoria launched into an explanation on dwarf genes in minis. They probably bored him and made him wish he’d never asked the question.
After dinner, they said goodbye to the Stouts and went to bed early after a blessedly Vince-free dinner. Who was she kidding? An evening without Vince did not seem like a blessing at all.
* * *
ANNE INTRODUCED BECCA to Calvin after breakfast on Monday. Becca treated him with complete disdain, and walked away from him with her nose in the air.
“Perfect,” Victoria whispered. “She likes him.”
“How can you tell?” Anne asked.
“Watch her hips. If that’s not a strut, I don’t know what is. Darrell will be coming after lunch to mow the paddocks close to the barn. Should be interesting with both of the boys flexing their muscles to impress her. By the way, I start with my summertime lesson schedule for the big horse owners tomorrow afternoon.”
“We have to share the arena? You and the big horses, Becca and me with the minis?”
“You can work first thing in the mornings. Then I thought you might scout some places in Williamston that have stairs and escalators to practice on. Maybe a field trip to the grocery and the farmer’s market. That way we won’t get in one another’s hair.”
“We’ll put Molly’s harness on and take her on a trail ride in the carriage.”
“You think she’s ready?” Victoria asked.
“We won’t know until we try. Once I’m certain Becca can handle the driving reins I may send her out with Calvin or Darrell.”
She called to Becca, “Go get Grumpy and set him up on the lunge line in the arena before it gets too hot.”
They worked flat-out all morning, then had sandwiches with Victoria. After lunch Becca went to take her couple of hours’ siesta. She was much stronger, but she still had to replenish her energy.
While Becca slept, Anne drove to Sonny Prather’s automobile dealership to ask where they could find stairs and escalators.
“Stairs, yeah. Escalators? Don’t know. Williamston is a small town,” Sonny said.
“We want to take the minis to the fairground,” Anne told him. “I’d like to let them pull the carriage on the roads in town, but the way people drive, I’d be scared a car would run over them.”
“Tell you what, Miss Anne. You let me know when you want to drive downtown. Do it early in the morning before the traffic gets bad, and I’ll dispatch a sheriff’s deputy in a squad car with his lights on to follow the cart, keep folks from riding up your backside.”
“Mr. Mayor, is that legal?”
“Do it for funerals, don’t we? You’re training these squirts to help the disabled. Say, you don’t want to drive in the parade on the Fourth of July, do you?”
Anne shook her head vigorously. “They don’t react well to thunder and lightning yet. I doubt they’d take to firecrackers. By next year they should be desensitized. This year—not so much. Speaking of desensitization, when we get to it, can we borrow a couple of mounted policemen to teach us how to handle crowds?”
“Sure. I’ll even furnish the crowd. Anybody gives you grief, you tell ’em to call me,” Sonny said and patted her shoulder. “Don’t nobody turn me down when I put on the charm.”
She was backing out of her slot in Sonny’s parking lot when Vince’s van pulled in behind her so that she couldn’t leave.
Vince climbed out, left his door ajar and came to lean in the window of her truck.
“Been lookin’ for you,” he said. “Victoria said you’d be at Sonny’s, so I took a chance. How about a piece of pie and some iced tea at the café. I haven’t had lunch.”
“It’s three o’clock and I have.”
“Then join me for some empty calories. My treat.”
She knew she should get back. Instead, she shrugged and said, “I’ll follow you.”
Velma gave both of them extra-large pieces of Mississippi mud pie, a lusciously sinful combination of chocolate, eggs and whipped cream.
“If I can’t zip my jeans after this, it’s your fault,” Anne told him.
“Lie down flat on your back, then zip,” Velma said. “That’s what I do.”
“Becca’s back?” Vince asked Anne.
“Last evening. We had dinner here. I thought you might show up.”
“Nuh-uh. Emma and Seth fed me. I got to play with Diana. Child’s gonna be walking before she’s a year old the way she’s going. Already trying to pull up.”
“You actually like babies?”
“You don’t?”
Anne waggled a hand. “I’m used to babies that outweigh me at birth and have four legs. Don’t have much experience with human ones. Whenever I pick them up, they invariably squall until I hand them over to someone competent. I was the baby in my family. Now that my sister is pregnant, I suppose I’ll have to learn to change diapers.”
“That’s the one thing I miss about not being home. My brothers have two sons apiece. Good kids. I don’t get to see as much of them as I’d like. They’re playing soccer these days. I’ve never seen them play. When Cody and Joshua and I were in school, we and everybody else we knew had basketball nets on their garages. We shot baskets every night after chores. Now it’s all soccer.”
“Big as you are, I assume you got a basketball scholarship?”
“Nope. The operative word is ‘big.’ Too bulky for basketball, not bulky enough for football. Too clumsy for soccer.”
“You’re not clumsy.” Anne felt herself blush and changed the subject. Vince was one of the most graceful men she’d ever met, not just for his size. She was certain that was one of the reasons the animals trusted him. He didn’t blunder all over them and hurt them.
“Why don’t you drive down home and visit one weekend?” Anne asked. “Barbara would be happy to give you the time off. You never seem to take any as it is.” She caught his wry expression and dropped her eyes. Dumb, Anne.
“Come with me.”
“What? Why?”
“The other day you were talking about how much you missed your mother, plus Cody and Josh have been calling me a
sking me to visit. If you were along, maybe Daddy would behave himself. It’s a nice drive and a pretty area. You say I should try to mend fences with my father. Having you along might keep me from killing him. I’d like to show you the place. Introduce you to the few sane members of my family. I guess that’s a dumb idea. Forget I mentioned it.”
Seeing he avoided her eyes, Anne was aware how much his invitation had cost him. “When?”
“I was thinking the Fourth of July weekend,” he continued. “We always have a big barbecue to remind folks we’re Yankees. Kind of a reunion for folks who’re remotely kin to us. That’s nearly everybody for fifty miles around. Daddy stays pretty much on his good behavior, although there’s no guarantee of that.”
“Will there be fireworks? I adore fireworks. In Memphis I always went down to the big fireworks display down on the river, crowds and all.”
“Daddy pays the local vendors to handle the fireworks. Safer than having one of us boys do it. One Fourth when Cody was about sixteen, he shot off a big rocket and started a grass fire in the pasture. That fire started a stampede that cost Daddy over a thousand bucks in fines. He’s hired ’em done ever since.”
“Good grief. Was anybody hurt? Did you lose any cows?”
“Nope, although we all figured Daddy would finally break his ‘no spanking’ rule.” His shoulders began to shake with silent laughter. “There were too many people there to tell on him, but it was as close as I’ve ever seen him come to hitting one of us.”
Neither of them mentioned her driving home with him again. She figured she’d heard the last of that. Staying in an unpleasant home with ill-tempered strangers sounded like a quick trip to hell.
So, he seemed to be actually considering making nice with his kinfolk. Introducing her to his family and showing her over his home place was a big step. An attempt to change the way he dealt with them. Had he actually been listening to her when she talked about her own family? Did he have the faintest inkling that his own relations with his father might get better?
Tennessee Reunion Page 18
