by Deb Kastner
Could Rebecca fill the sudden chill that had settled over the fellowship hall because of her words?
It was time to fly to her rescue as he’d promised himself he would do. He shouldn’t have left her even to get donuts and coffee. What had he been thinking?
He placed the donuts and coffee on the table and moved around to stand behind Rebecca, gently massaging her shoulders to let her know he was there to support her.
She placed a hand over his and gave it a gentle squeeze, silently letting him know that she was aware of his presence and they were in this together.
He couldn’t protect her—not in the way he wanted to. People would think and say whatever they desired and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. But he would do what he could to douse the flames.
“Rebecca is getting reacquainted with her old life,” he explained. “Her doctor thought coming back to the ranch, where she lived—” He paused and coughed to clear his throat before continuing. “...during the majority of her adult life, might help jump-start her brain so she can regain her memories.”
“And you’re good with that?” the same nosy neighbor queried. “This doesn’t bother you at all?”
“Now, Elliott Jacob Myers,” Jo said, using the grown man’s full name in a voice that would rival any mother of a troublemaking child who’d climbed a tree and scraped his knee. “You know perfectly well that kind of talk is just plain rude. Apologize to the Hamiltons this instant.”
Tanner supposed he really shouldn’t have been surprised that Elliott immediately followed Jo’s orders.
The middle-aged man tipped his hat at Rebecca, looking chagrined. “Sorry, ma’am. Jo is right. Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” And then to Tanner he said, “I apologize. Sometimes my mouth goes faster than my brain.”
“That’s okay,” Rebecca replied magnanimously. “It’s nothing I haven’t thought of myself. It’s all rather confusing.”
“But it’s absolutely none of your business,” Jo reminded Elliott, although her gaze scanned the entire crowd in warning. Clearly, she was speaking to everyone, and from the expressions on the congregation’s faces, they understood the message. “It’s our God-given responsibility to hold up our dear brother and sister in the Lord as they work through this unusual trial. And not just in prayer, either, although of course prayin’ is a great place to start. Hold out your hand in friendship and see what you can do to help them along. God didn’t give each of you a unique calling and graces for nothing, you know.”
Frank Spencer, a crotchety old man who was the polar opposite of his wife, Jo, and yet who somehow managed to make their marriage work, snorted at his wife’s remark.
“We already had one sermon today, missus. We don’t need to hear another one from you.”
Jo chuckled. “Like you would know. You dozed throughout most of the service.”
Tanner couldn’t help but laugh. He’d give anything to have the kind of relationship those two feisty seniors shared. When he’d stood at the altar with Rebecca and promised his heart and his life to her, he’d thought that married life would be so much easier than it had turned out to be. Sure, he’d known there would be ups and downs, but he’d imagined that, like Frank and Jo, he and Rebecca would have been able to work out their problems in love.
That hadn’t happened.
And everyone in this room—barring Rebecca—knew they hadn’t ended up happily ever after. And even she suspected.
Which was why his fight-or-flight—preferably flight—instinct was raging inside him, screaming for him to take Rebecca’s hand and flee for the ranch.
He probably would have suggested leaving, but at that moment, Rebecca reached for his arm and asked him to help her haul herself to her feet.
“Goodness,” she murmured, placing a hand over her belly, “I never imagined it would be quite this awkward.”
“I’m sorry. I should have thought—” he started, before realizing she wasn’t talking about the awkwardness of being in the fellowship hall with dozens of people she should know but didn’t.
She was talking about her pregnancy.
Her gaze widened on him. “Sorry for what?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Good, then. Why don’t you be a dear and introduce me to everyone. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
* * *
It was rather overwhelming, trying to put names to faces when everyone knew you and you couldn’t remember anyone.
She was glad to have Tanner by her side, his hand linked with hers. His touch settled her nerves and made her believe in herself—her lumbering, awkward, big-bellied self.
“You were such a math geek in high school,” one of the five women in a group she’d gone to school with was telling her. Apparently, they’d all been close friends back in the day, but had drifted apart some as they’d gotten married and started families. They felt familiar to her, but they’d changed so much her mind simply wasn’t making the connections.
“And that was a bad thing? Being good at math?”
“You were—different,” admitted another of her friends, whose face she could not put a name to. There were simply too many people in this room to figure one from the other, so she’d quickly stopped trying. Right now her mind was tagging them Bleach Blonde, Blondie, Brunette and Silky Black based on their hair colors. She realized she rounded out the five with her fiery auburn locks. “The rest of us were cheerleaders or we marched in the band, while you tortured—I mean tutored—other kids in calculus. You’re a genius, you know.”
Rebecca’s first inclination was to snark back that she didn’t know, but she kept her mouth shut. It wasn’t her friends’ fault her brain was Swiss cheese. It was just that sometimes, like now, everything she didn’t know frustrated her to no end.
And they thought she was a genius. She couldn’t even remember what day it was.
“Do you remember that you were a middle school math teacher before you...left?” Silky Black stuttered a bit at the end of her question.
Rebecca nodded. “I understand they filled my spot without too much trouble. I don’t remember the particulars, but I know I wouldn’t have wanted to cause them any trouble. And I don’t blame them for finding someone to replace me. From what I hear, I left them in the lurch. And though at the moment I can’t imagine myself being that irresponsible, the facts speak for themselves.”
No one had anything to say about that statement and a sense of awkwardness settled heavily over Rebecca. Her mouth was getting her into trouble. Maybe she should just stay quiet until she could remember what, exactly, those facts were.
Tanner squeezed her hand and winked affectionately. “Breathe,” he mouthed, reminding her that she could only do what she could do.
She gave her best shot at a smile, though she knew her lips were quivering. “That’s okay, though. I really have a lot of work to do helping Tanner on the ranch. If I have time, I may think about taking in some high school students to tutor on the side.”
“You remember calculus?” one of the women asked in amazement. “No way!”
“You do ranch work?” queried another at the exact same time, with an equal note of astonishment in her tone.
“I—er—yes. Oddly enough, I remember everything about higher math. I can do complicated equations without second-guessing myself. I have no idea why or how I know. I just do. I also apparently know how to draw, which is something, according to Tanner—” she paused and tipped her head back to smile at him “—is something I didn’t do before I got T-boned by a truck.”
“Fascinating,” the brunette said.
“Strange is the word I think you’re searching for,” Rebecca said. “Weird.”
“We don’t think you’re weird,” Blondie assured her. “You’ve been through a huge ordeal with the accident and all. We’re all praying y
our memory returns soon so you can get on with your life.”
Rebecca felt Tanner’s hand tighten around hers—almost painfully—and she wondered if he even knew he was gripping her hand with so much force.
“Tanner is patiently helping me learn all the ins and outs of how our ranch is run. I want to contribute as much as I can to our bottom line.” She shrugged. “I find most of it fascinating, and I wouldn’t be able to do any of it without him.”
She gently removed her hand from his. He grimaced as he belatedly realized he’d had a death grip on her hand.
“Really?” asked one of the women. “You are seriously spending your days out working on the ranch and getting your boots muddy?”
“Boots, jeans, shirt and hat,” she assured her friends. “One thing that’s firmly in my shiny-new memory—ranching is a dusty business.”
“Yes, but, Rebecca—you’re...um...very pregnant. And still recovering from the accident. Do you think it’s a good idea for you to be out doing heavy labor?”
“Oh, it’s not like that. I’m careful. I’d never do anything to harm our baby. But the fresh air does the baby and me good. And trust me—Tanner watches me like a hawk. He’s always making sure I don’t overdo it. He treats me like glass, as if I’m going to break at any moment.”
That statement caused a strange reaction among her friends. Wide-eyed, they surreptitiously glanced at each other—and at Tanner.
He set his jaw and moved closer to Rebecca, resting his palm on the small of her back. His message was loud and clear—they were a couple. And if anyone wanted to argue the point they would go through him.
Rebecca wasn’t sure how she felt about that. There were too many variables she had yet to discover. But for the moment, she appreciated Tanner’s gesture so she didn’t feel quite so alone in her awkwardness.
“Hmm,” Brunette said, shaking her head. “I can’t see it.”
Tanner frowned. “Can’t see what?”
“You may not know this about her, Tanner, since you moved to Serendipity as an adult, but back in high school, Rebecca was the one voted to be the most likely to really make something of herself.”
“She has,” Tanner stated in a flat voice.
Bleach Blonde waved away his protest. “That’s not what we mean at all. It’s obvious she’s happy with you and Mackenzie and a baby on the way. And—from what we hear—doing ranch work.” She chuckled at her own joke. “But you well know Rebecca didn’t grow up on the land, with her parents being teachers and all. She was a walking, talking advertisement for women in STEM. We all thought she was going to leave Serendipity to go study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology or somewhere and never come back.”
“But then I met Tanner, right?”
“Then you met me,” he agreed. “And apparently, I changed the whole vector of your life.”
He sounded miserable. Could this be part of the reason they had separated? Had she resented him for not allowing her to pursue her passion—whatever that was? She couldn’t imagine anything that would be more fulfilling than loving on Mackenzie and feeling her son kicking within her womb.
And that was nothing to say about how her congested mixture of emotions for Tanner grew with every day they spent together.
“Granted, the five of us grew up together and we all married ranchers, too,” Silky Black said. “That’s kind of what women do in Serendipity. But, Rebecca, I don’t recall you ever having any love for the great outdoors, especially when it comes to chores with smelly animals. I know I, for one, stay out of the pigpen and let my husband, Chris, do all the dirty work at our ranch.”
“I think our pigs are kind of cute,” Rebecca said with a chuckle. She was teasing, of course. They didn’t even have pigs. But it was totally worth it to see her friends’ reactions.
Her friends might be thinking she was kind of strange, but she, in turn, thought Silky Black was the weirdest one of the five. If, as she’d said, they had all grown up expecting to marry ranchers—and not only that, but she suspected most of them had been raised on ranches themselves—one would think they would be more than prepared to be ranch wives, ready to pitch in and help their husbands find success on the land. She knew that’s what she wanted to do for Tanner.
And though they hadn’t actually sat down and talked about it, she expected their son to do his fair share of ranch chores when he was old enough to do so—to learn the business from his father. To learn to love the land and the animals.
Tanner had already made it a point to include Mackenzie in ranch work, and she was only three. He was going to be an amazing father.
“Our son will grow up working the ranch beside his father,” she said, catching Tanner’s gaze.
She didn’t have a clue what he was thinking, but he pulled the brim of his hat lower and swallowed convulsively.
“Our niece, Mackenzie, is three, and she absolutely loves doing ranch chores—feeding the goats, gathering the eggs from the chicken coop. We even sheared the alpacas.”
“Now, I do remember your obsession with alpacas,” Bleach Blonde said. “If someone wanted to get you talking, that was the way to do it. You called them your babies.”
Rebecca felt as if Bleach Blonde’s sentence had skidded to a halt, even though she’d finished it. Her pale skin definitely colored a bright red and Rebecca wondered what she was thinking about.
Tanner didn’t seem to notice. “They’re still very much her babies. Although with us taking care of Mackenzie now and with our son arriving soon, I suspect she has other babies on her mind, as well.”
He placed a protective hand on her belly and their son walloped him with a good, swift kick. Tanner looked at Rebecca and they broke out in laughter.
“He’s moving around a lot,” Tanner said. It sounded to Rebecca almost as if he was reassuring himself. She supposed that was the great thing about being the mother—she could always feel her unborn baby. But Tanner had no reason to worry.
“He’s practicing to play sports with his daddy,” she said, her heart swelling with warmth. “Or maybe he’ll be a black belt in karate. He’s definitely got his kicks down.”
Rebecca didn’t miss the way the ladies shifted and glanced at each other.
What had she said?
Every time she started to feel comfortable in a situation, something like this would happen and her awkwardness and stress would return in spades.
“It’s past Mackenzie’s nap time, so we’ve got to run,” Tanner said, sliding a firm arm around Rebecca’s shoulder. “We’ll see you all next Sunday.”
As they made their exit—or rather, their escape—Tanner tilted his head down and whispered in her ear, his tone laced with concern. “Too much?”
She thought about it for a moment before shaking her head. “No. It might have been, but I was fine since you were there with me.”
And that was the truth. Alone, she would have been lost.
But she felt safe with Tanner beside her. She was beginning to rely on him to be her rock and her shield.
Even so, she still didn’t know what she didn’t know.
And that scared her now more than ever, now that she knew how very much she had to lose.
Chapter Eight
Tanner had always been an early riser. Ever since he was a kid, rushing off to do chores for the neighbors so he could bring in a little money, he would pour himself a bowl of cereal, douse it in milk and make quick work of it so he could get outside. He’d never liked being cooped up inside. It made him antsy not to be able to breathe fresh air and see the sky above him.
He didn’t know who his father was and Lydia’s father had skipped out as soon as he’d heard Tanner’s mom was pregnant. After she’d had Lydia, she’d turned to drugs to get through her days. His mother had never been a strong woman. Tanner had tried to protect Lydia, but he’d just been a young boy himself an
d felt he’d failed her—which was one of the reasons taking care of Mackenzie was such a priority for him.
He would not fail Mackenzie.
He decided against cold cereal and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He had changed in the past few weeks that Rebecca had been here. Suddenly, he wanted to be wherever she was. He hadn’t been this twitterpated since the time he’d first met Rebecca at the state college, where she was getting a degree in higher math and education and he was learning agribusiness.
Tanner had wanted to be a rancher ever since he was a little boy, but she was the reason he’d bought a ranch in Serendipity. His life had all come together when he’d met Rebecca. He loved Serendipity and having his own ranch.
It was their home.
Tanner opened the refrigerator and pulled out eggs, bacon and Texas toast. He was going to surprise the family with bacon, scrambled eggs and French toast this morning. It was Rebecca’s favorite—or at least, it had been. She’d even make it for dinner sometimes.
Now—it was hard to say. He supposed this was yet another kind of experiment, to see if her tastes had changed along with her sudden ability to draw. She’d liked maple donuts just as she had way back when, so he thought French toast was probably a reasonable choice.
He was humming to himself when Rebecca entered and brushed her palm over his shoulders.
“Smells delicious,” she murmured, pecking his scruffy cheek.
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply—partly because of her familiar sweet scent and partly because, probably without realizing it, she’d just performed an intimate, loving action she’d done hundreds of times throughout their marriage. Or at least, before things had gone sour between them.
He wondered about her perfume. Had she brought it with her in the small backpack she’d carried in that first day? Or had she bought it somewhere along the way, instinctively knowing it was her—and his—favorite?
“Sit down and relax,” he said, reaching for a mug to fetch her a cup of coffee. “Breakfast will be ready soon.”
