McKettricks of Texas: Tate

by Linda Lael Miller

  Altar boys appeared, carrying lighted candles, followed by Father Rodriguez, a slight, trundling man who moved like one carrying an enormous weight on his narrow shoulders.

  A pregnant woman toward the front fainted, and there was a brief flurry while she was revived with smelling salts and led out of the sanctuary by a side door. Esperanza, who had been weeping for days, sat dry-eyed now, all cried out except for the occasional sniffle. Although she had liked Pablo, as had everyone else for miles around, Tate knew the bulk of her grief was reserved for Isabel, left a widow with two children still at home.

  Esperanza had lost a husband, too, before she left Mexico as a relatively young woman, but if she had kids of her own, she had never mentioned them to Tate. A woman of benevolent and unflagging faith, she believed both her own lost love and Pablo Ruiz were safe in heaven, and that those forced to go on alone were the ones to be pitied.

  Although Tate wasn’t sure there was such a place as heaven, he hoped so. Hoped his folks and Pablo and Crockett, his old dog, were all together somewhere, in some bright and painless place where there were horses to ride and plenty of green grass for their grazing.

  Father Rodriguez conducted Mass in solemn Latin—no doubt Pablo, an old-fashioned Catholic, had wanted it that way—and then various people took their turns going up front to say a few words about Pablo. Tate was among them, as were Garrett and Austin. He was never able to remember, after that day, exactly what he’d said—only that he’d gotten through the brief speech without losing his composure.

  It had been a close one, though.

  After him, Libby rose, made her way to the microphone, and told the sweltering congregation, her voice trembling, how Pablo had come to the Remington house faithfully, every single week after her father got sick, how he’d mowed the lawn and weeded and raked the flower beds and fixed whatever needed repair, from the rain gutters to the washing machine. She honestly didn’t know, she said, what they would have done without him.

  The story stung Tate in some deep and tender place, one he’d never explored.

  The townspeople had rallied to help the Remingtons in every possible way. Had he done anything?

  His gut roiled with the guilt he’d never been able to shake.

  Oh, yeah. He’d done something, all right. Far from home, overwhelmed by the demands of law school and, most of all, missing Libby, he’d gotten drunk at a party and wound up in bed with Cheryl. Gotten her pregnant, for good measure.

  Tate lowered his head.

  Garrett, sitting beside him, nudged him back to the here-and-now with a motion of one elbow.

  Having completed her short eulogy, Libby returned to her pew and sat down, and someone else got up to speak.

  The service ended after two full hours, and Tate, Garrett and Austin joined Pablo and Isabel’s nephews up front.

  The coffin’s bright brass handles gleamed. The lid was lowered, and one of the Ruiz women cried out then, a piercing, anguished sound—and the organist began the recessional.

  Red, yellow and blue light from the stained-glass windows played over the mounds of white flowers draped across the top of the casket as the six men carried it down the aisle, toward the dazzle of afternoon sunshine at the open doors.

  The casket, surprisingly light, was loaded carefully into the back of the hearse. People streamed out of the church, milled in the yard and on the sidewalk, talking in quiet voices, some of them wiping their eyes with wadded handkerchiefs, others hugging, consoling each other. Some smiled through their tears, perhaps remembering how Pablo had loved to tell stupid jokes, or share the produce from his garden, or drop off a pan of Isabel’s fine enchiladas when they were sick or out of a job or mourning the loss of a loved one.

  Isabel, Nico and Mercedes and the boys accepted hugs and handshakes and exhortations to call if they needed anything at all, and looked profoundly relieved when the funeral director steered them toward a waiting limousine. They were settled quickly inside, and then gone.

  Tate looked around for Libby, the way a man might look for water when his throat was parched, found her standing under an oak tree, dappled in sun and shadow, Paige and Julie close by as always. They spoke quietly to friends, and though they bore little resemblance to each other, Tate knew it would have been clear even to a stranger that they were related. Something indefinable bound them together, made them a unit.

  The heat was oppressive, but somehow, Libby looked cool as a mountain spring in that dark blue dress. Once in a while, her gaze strayed to Tate, only to bounce away again when their eyes met.

  By tacit agreement—because that was the way things were done in places like Blue River, Texas—folks waited and foot-shuffled and fanned themselves with their simply printed programs, giving Isabel and her brood plenty of time to get home and get settled before they began stopping by with the ritual salads and spiral-cut hams and bakery goods. Personal condolences would be offered and graciously received, along with sympathy cards containing checks of varying size.

  However much Isabel and the others might have preferred to be alone with each other and their memories of Pablo, the gathering at the modest house beside the winding creek was as important as the funeral. There would be a guestbook, and sooner or later, when she’d emerged from the haze of bereavement, Isabel would examine it, page by page, taking in the names of all those who’d cared.

  With the throng still clogging the path between himself and Libby, Tate saw no way to get to her without shouldering his way through. So he shook hands with neighboring ranchers, kissed the cheeks of his mother’s friends, and waited.

  Finally, when he’d decided that enough time had passed, Father Rodriguez got into his dusty compact car to drive out to the Ruiz house, with Esperanza to keep him company on the way.

  Maybe, Tate thought, he’d get a chance to talk to Libby over postfuneral coffee and a paper plate heaped with food he didn’t want. On the other hand, she might have written their encounter off as a lapse of judgment and decided to steer clear from there on out.

  Nobody would have blamed her for that, least of all Tate himself.

  JULIE TOOK THE WHEEL of the pink Cadillac, while Libby claimed the passenger seat and Paige slipped into the back.

  “For God’s sake,” Paige said distractedly, “turn on the air-conditioning. It’s hot as hell’s kitchen in here.”

  Julie complied, casting a brief glance in Libby’s direction.

  An understanding passed between them, no words necessary.

  Paige, as upset over Pablo Ruiz’s death as any of them, had spent most of the service trying not to look at Austin McKettrick and failing visibly.

  Libby rolled down her window and fluttered the church bulletin under her chin. “Austin looks good,” she commented, keeping her voice light, “for somebody who tangled with a bull not all that long ago.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Paige said, with a dismissive tone that didn’t fool either of her sisters. They well remembered that, although Paige had been the one to end things with Austin, she’d grieved for months afterward.

  Libby and Julie exchanged glances again, but Julie had to navigate the after-funeral traffic, so she quickly turned her attention back to the road.

  “If only all idiots were that good-looking,” Julie contributed. “How many guys have a whole calendar devoted just to pictures of them?”

  “Shallow,” Paige retorted, though she owned the calendar in question. “A Year of Austin,” it was titled—she kept it pinned to the laundry room wall at her place, even though it was out of date, open to July and the image of her favorite cowboy riding a wild bull and wearing a stars-and-stripes shirt. “Austin McKettrick is shallow. And he’ll never grow up.”

  “He looks pretty grown up to me,” Libby observed, with a slight smile.

  Julie made an eloquent little sound, part growl and part purr.

  “Shut up,” Paige said, peevish. “Do we have to go out to the Ruizes’ place? It will be jammed, and it’s so hot. I’d rather g
o back to your house and keep Calvin and the dog company.”

  “Of course we have to go to the Ruizes’,” Julie answered, in her big-sister voice, waving to people walking along the sidewalk. “How would it look if we didn’t at least stop by? And it isn’t as if Calvin and Harry are home alone. Mrs. Erskine is looking after them until we get back.”

  Paige sighed. She could be dramatic at times—especially when she knew she might come face-to-face with the man she’d dumped before starting nursing school. “I can’t believe Pablo is gone,” she said. “I just saw him at the post office a few days ago. He told me some silly knock-knock joke.”

  The caravan of cars and pickup trucks wound out of Blue River into the countryside; Libby imagined how it would look from high overhead—like a big metal snake.

  She shifted in the seat, rolled her window back up when the AC finally kicked in. A sort of delicious unease stirred in her as she recalled making love with Tate—she both dreaded and anticipated seeing him again, up close and personal. Which meant she had no business remarking on Paige’s reluctant fascination with Austin at the funeral.

  “Why do things like this happen?” Libby asked, knowing there was no real answer.

  “Good question,” Julie said, with a little shudder. “What an awful way to die.”

  A silence fell, and a replay of their dad’s lingering death flashed in Libby’s mind. He’d been heavily sedated, in no physical pain to speak of, at least toward the end, but he’d suffered just the same, she’d seen that in his eyes. A proud man enduring the indignities of a failing body.

  Her own eyes burned, though they were dry, and her throat tightened until it ached. Julie, who always seemed to know what she was thinking, reached over to pat her arm.

  It wasn’t far to the part of the Silver Spur where Pablo and Isabel had made their home for so many years, but the ride seemed interminable that day. Dust boiled up off the winding country roads, sometimes rendering the vehicles ahead all but invisible.

  No more was said about Pablo’s death, or about unfortunate romantic attachments to certain men. Of the three of them, Julie was the only one unscathed by the legendary McKettrick charm, though, of course, she had demons of her own.

  Gordon Pruett, Calvin’s biological father, for instance.

  Julie and Libby talked about the pros and cons of going into business together, turning the Perk Up into a café, but the conversation was dispirited, stopping and starting at odd times, when one or the other of them remembered why they were driving to the Silver Spur.

  They were neither the first nor the last to arrive—there were cars and trucks everywhere, parked at strange angles at the edges of the Ruizes’ expansive lawn. Julie found a place for the Cadillac, wedged it in and thrust out a sigh of resignation.

  “Here goes,” she said, shutting off the engine and shoving open her door.

  The engine went through the usual sequence of clicks and clatters as it wound down.

  Libby unsnapped her seat belt and climbed out, too, teetering a little because the ground was uneven and she wasn’t accustomed to wearing high heels—she owned exactly one pair, relics of her high school prom—but Paige didn’t move at all.

  Bending her knees slightly, Libby rapped on the car window.

  “I’m coming,” Paige called testily, but she remained still.

  The yard was crowded with people, most of them helping themselves to bottles of water jutting from metal tubs full of ice or food set out on long, portable tables tended by ladies from Isabel and Pablo’s church.

  Libby followed her sister’s gaze and spotted Austin at the center of things, shaggy-haired but clean-shaven, and spruced up in a suit he probably wore as seldom as possible.

  “Come on, Paige,” she urged, growing impatient. She wanted to get on with it, so she could go home, peel off her sweaty clothes and the pantyhose that were chafing the insides of her thighs and take a long, cool shower, and the only way to get there was through the next stage of the ordeal. “Austin isn’t going to bite you.”

  “That,” Julie remarked, just loudly enough for Paige to hear her through the car window, “might be the problem.”

  Paige’s pale, perfect complexion pulsed with pink. She thrust open the door and got out, glaring at Julie, who was characteristically unfazed. She linked arms with Paige, Libby taking the other side, and the three of them forged ahead.

  They found Isabel first, and offered their condolences.

  They signed the guestbook, and then joined the crowd on the lawn, accepting plates brimming with food they would only nibble at.

  They would circulate, like the well-mannered Texas women they were, and make their escape at the customary signal from Libby. She was and always had been constitutionally incapable of standing in green grass without taking off her shoes; when she slipped them back on, everyone would say their farewells and converge on the car.

  Libby couldn’t have missed Tate, even if she’d tried. He towered over almost everyone else gathered in the Ruiz yard, his hair blue-black in the afternoon sunshine. Aware that he was making his way toward her, pausing to speak to this one and that one, Libby surrendered to the inevitable and waited, her shoes dangling by their narrow straps from her left index finger, her plate sagging in her right hand.

  “Pretty good turnout,” he said, when he reached her. Tate had never been good at small talk.

  “Yes,” Libby agreed simply, not inclined to make things easy for him.

  Color flared up in his neck and under his jawline, then subsided. “About what happened—”

  Libby raised both eyebrows, pretending confusion. As if she hadn’t practically dragged the man to bed and then carried on like a she-wolf in heat while he did all the right things to her.

  “Dammit, Libby,” he muttered, onto the game, “knock off the deer-in-the-headlights routine. This is hard enough.”

  The phrase hard enough made an inappropriate giggle bubble into the back of her throat. She barely swallowed it in time.

  “I assume,” she said, with false ease, “you’re referring to our having sex?”

  “Will you keep your voice down?” Tate said, on a rush of breath.

  “If I remember correctly,” she continued, in an exaggerated whisper, having already made certain no one was close enough to overhear, “we did have sex.”

  “I’m not denying that,” Tate snapped.

  “Why bring it up?” Libby asked mildly, knowing full well why he’d mentioned the tryst. He wanted to make sure she understood that the encounter had been meaningless, a fling. She mustn’t expect anything more.

  “Because,” Tate said, leaning in close, his forehead nearly touching hers, “things have changed.”

  The statement took Libby by surprise, and when she widened her eyes and raised her brows this time, she wasn’t pretending. “Changed?” she echoed stupidly.

  Tate took her by the elbow, the one on the left, with the shoes dangling from the corresponding finger, and hustled her away from the gathering to stand in the small orchard, under one of Pablo’s cherished apricot trees. She looked around, spotted Julie arguing quietly with Garrett, and Paige and Austin standing with their backs to each other, not a dozen feet apart, both of them stiff-spined.

  Clearly, neither of her sisters would ride to her rescue.

  “Tate, what…?”

  “Stop it,” Tate rasped. “Something happened, Libby, and I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.”

  Another giggle, this one hysterical, tried to escape Libby, but she dropped her shoes and put her hand over her mouth to keep it in.

  Tate let out his breath, and his broad shoulders sagged a little under the fine fabric of the tailored suit he was sweltering in. Once again, Libby imagined a cold shower, but this time Tate joined her in the fantasy, and the resulting surge of heat nearly melted her knees.

  “I want another chance with you,” he said, stunning her so thoroughly that he might as well have aimed a Taser gun at her and pulled the trigg
er. Shoving a hand through his hair, he sighed again. “I know I don’t deserve it,” he went on. “But I’m asking for another shot.”

  The plate fell from Libby’s hand, potato salad and cold chicken and something made with green gelatin and sliced bananas plopping at their feet. Both of them ignored it.

  “What?” Libby sputtered, amazed.

  An expression of proud misery moved in Tate’s strong face, was gone again in an instant. “A simple ‘no’ would do,” he said. Maybe the misery had gone, but the famous McKettrick pride was still there.

  “You—you mean, it wasn’t—well—just one of those things?” Libby managed.

  “‘Just one of those things’?” His tone was almost scathing. “Maybe you have that kind of sex all the time, Lib, but I don’t.”

  This round, the giggle got past all her defenses. It was a shaky sound, a little raspy. “You think I have sex all the time?” she asked, only too aware that she was prattling and completely unable to help herself. Whenever sex and Tate McKettrick occupied the same conversation, or even the same thought, her IQ seemed to plummet. Incensed by this sudden realization, she raised both hands, palms out, and shoved them hard into Tate’s chest. “You think I have sex all the time?”

  Through the haze surrounding her, Libby sensed that heads were turning.

  She caught a glimpse of Julie hurrying in their direction. Paige was probably on the way, too.

  “Dammit, Libby,” Tate almost barked, “this is a wake.”

  Libby shoved him again, and then again. Enjoyed a brief mental movie in which he tumbled backward and landed on his fine McKettrick ass under Pablo’s apricot trees.

  Tate proved immovable, though, since he was so much bigger than she was. Just as Julie reached them, he grasped Libby’s wrists to stay the blows.

  “Look,” he ground out, “that didn’t come out right. I meant—”

  Libby felt dazed, literally beside herself. Her heart pounded, and she was sure she was hyperventilating.

  Julie stooped to snatch up Libby’s shoes. “Time to go,” she chimed.