Country Bride

by Debbie Macomber

  Thirteen

  He ought to be shot for ever thinking this idea had any semblance of sanity attached to it.

  His stomach muscles were taut with tension as Brodie pushed Taryn’s wheelchair out of the elevator to the courthouse floor where Charlie Beaumont’s hearing was set. He wanted nothing so much as to turn right around and go back downstairs, out the door and up the hill to their house, away from what he very much worried would be a complete disaster.

  The wooden floors of the old courthouse that had once played host to horse rustlers and claim jumpers seemed to echo with each step he took toward the courtroom and his head pounded in unison.

  In contrast to his own apprehension, Taryn was calm and composed. She rode with her hands folded neatly in her lap and looked around with interest at the high ceilings and the old-fashioned moldings around the doorframes.

  He wasn’t being biased about it when he thought she looked lovely. Her hair, growing out now from where they’d had to shave it during her numerous operations, was pulled back from her face with a beaded headband his mother had fashioned. Her features looked delicate and pretty and she had even applied her own makeup, with the help of Stephanie Kramer.

  If not for the ever-present wheelchair, she would look like the high school cheerleader she had once been.

  Pride for her and the young woman she was becoming burned in his chest. She had more courage and grace than most women twice her age. That didn’t mean he thought she was at all ready for the coming ordeal.

  “You don’t have to do this, kid.”

  “I want to.” Her voice was clear and firm, with no trace of hesitation.

  He still wanted to tuck her away, take her somewhere safe. How could any responsible father allow her to go through this? He stopped outside the door, fiercely wishing he could put his foot down and forbid this. She was still a minor. As her parent, he was well within his legal rights to put a stop to something he couldn’t support.

  But Evie was right. Taryn had earned the right to make her own choice about this. She had traveled a long, hard road these last nearly five months and had miles yet to go. If she really wanted it—and she had made it abundantly clear the last week that she did—he couldn’t deny her.

  That didn’t mean he had to like it.

  With a heavy sigh, Brodie pushed her through the open doorway. Immediately the buzz of conversation inside the room from onlookers waiting for the judge to appear seemed to cut off in midflow. Yeah. Taryn’s appearance, wheelchair and all, created just the stir he’d expected.

  The courtroom was packed. Since the district attorney’s office had chosen to file charges in adult court because of the severity of the incident, the hearing was open and plenty of people in town seemed to feel they had a vested interest in the outcome. Many did. Several of the business owners who had been robbed in the initial crime spree had shown up. Maura McKnight-Parker and several members of her family were seated in one entire row.

  Much to his surprise, he suddenly spotted Evie seated near the aisle on one of the benches near the back. She gave him a tentative smile and slid over to make room for him.

  Since he knew she wasn’t the voyeuristic type, as he imagined many of the onlookers to be, he assumed she must be here to provide moral support for Taryn. Just seeing her—lovely and cool and surprisingly constrained in a navy blazer and plain white-silk blouse, seemed to calm him.

  He didn’t understand it but he was deeply grateful anyway. He needed a little calm if he was going to make it through this without dragging Taryn back through the doors.

  After he parked the wheelchair in the wide aisle, he sat down in the space she had cleared for him. The scent of her, sweet and clean and indefinably Evie, stirred softly in the air and he was fiercely happy to see her.

  He knew it made no sense. The tenderness of those kisses the other night seemed a lifetime ago, though he had relived those moments over and over. He had wanted to call her a dozen times while he was in California meeting with suppliers, just to hear her calm voice of reason. He’d even dialed the number a couple of times but had ended the calls before they could go through, hating that he felt like a stupid, unsure teenager around her.

  She had made it clear she didn’t want to take the risk of being involved with him and he needed to respect that, as difficult as he found it. “Thank you for coming,” he said, when the silence between them had stretched out far too long.

  She shifted and looked down at her hands. “Don’t thank me yet, Brodie.”

  “Why not?”

  Before she could answer, the generalized buzz in the courtroom cut off again as Laura and William Beaumont entered the courtroom, along with their son and the team of attorneys Brodie had seen at every court appearance.

  The Beaumonts looked like a unit, solid and unbreakable. Charlie, far from being happy to see Taryn, frowned fiercely in their direction.

  Brodie did his best to analyze that reaction as the Beaumonts moved toward the front of the courtroom. Mrs. Beaumont stopped when she reached their aisle. She looked aristocratically bored by the whole proceeding, though Brodie thought he saw a shadow of nerves in her eyes.

  “I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said. He thought for a moment she was talking to him, then realized her comments were directed toward Evie.

  “I said I would,” Evie answered rather stiffly.

  “Thank you,” Laura murmured, then moved up to sit beside her husband and son.

  He frowned. “Why is she thanking you?” he asked. “Why are you here?”

  She met his gaze, her fingers curled in her lap. “I’ve been asked to make a statement about Charlie.”

  For a moment he could only stare, a mix of hurt and anger and a deep sense of betrayal settling in his gut. She wasn’t here to support him and Taryn. She was here to speak for Charlie freaking Beaumont. That warm calm that had washed over him at the sight of her was now lost in the sucking whirlpool of his anger. “And you agreed?”

  She seemed to be steeling herself for his fury, as if she had fully expected it. Of course she must have. Yet she was going to do it anyway and that hurt more than anything else.

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “You and your damn bleeding heart. It’s bad enough you’ve convinced me to let Taryn speak today. Now you’re going to get up there and talk about how he’s just some poor, misunderstood kid with a heart of gold who’s filled with remorse and has suffered enough. That little punk you think is some kind of damn angel took my daughter’s future.”

  “Wrong. She still has a future,” Evie said quietly. “A very bright one, in part because that little punk helped her believe in it again.”

  He wanted to yell and curse and generally vent this hot, jumbled mess of emotions in him, but before he could, the bailiff stepped to the front of the courtroom.

  “All rise for the Honorable Judge Kawa.”

  Everyone in the courtroom except Taryn stood up and then Ivy Kawa walked in, slight of stature but tougher than any Wild West judge who had ever sat on that bench.

  He knew her socially, of course. At heart, Hope’s Crossing was really a small town, despite the sometimes overwhelming tourist numbers. Theirs was only a casual relationship, though. If he remembered correctly, her husband golfed with William Beaumont. He doubted Judge Kawa would let that sway her opinion on Charlie’s sentencing either way.

  The judge’s instructions to the courtroom were terse as she explained that the purpose of the hearing was to ascertain proper placement for Charlie after his guilty plea of the week before. “No dramatics and no hysterics. This is a legal proceeding.”

  Taryn fidgeted a little in her wheelchair. “If you change your mind just say the word, honey,” he said in a low voice. “We don’t have to be here.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I
’m just saying, if you do.” Though he didn’t look at her, he was aware of Evie seated beside him, tense and silent and the hot ache of betrayal in his gut.

  * * *

  She badly wanted to touch him—a hand on his arm or even a shoulder nudge. Anything.

  He wouldn’t appreciate it, she knew. With the anger she could still feel radiating from him, she didn’t want to think how he might respond if she tried, so she kept her hands carefully folded on her lap while she listened to several business owners read their impact statements about the crime spree Charlie had been involved with the night before the accident.

  Mike Payson from Mike’s Bikes talked about the loss of business he had sustained and the generalized feeling of invasion.

  Claire spoke about the accident and the strain of her injuries and how Macy and Owen still tensed every time they had to drive up Silver Strike Canyon for any reason.

  Through it all, Evie wondered how she could possibly withdraw her name from those speaking and sneak away. She was still trying to come up with a way when, after about forty minutes of testimony, the bailiff called out her name.

  Nerves fluttered inside her as she rose to take her place behind the podium set up at the front of the courtroom. At least she wouldn’t have to sit in the witness box for this.

  “Please state your full name and occupation for the record,” Judge Kawa instructed.

  Evie drew a deep breath. “My name is Evaline Marie Blanchard. I am a...” She paused here for only an instant. “I am a licensed physical therapist,” she said firmly. “For the last month I have been working one-on-one setting up an intensive rehabilitation program for Taryn Thorne in her home.”

  “And you have a statement on behalf of the defendant?” the judge asked.

  “No,” she said and was vaguely aware of the low stir of surprise in the courtroom. “When I was asked to make a statement, I clearly indicated I was only willing to provide information about my dealings with the defendant over the last month and allow the court to interpret that information, not offer my opinion as to proper sentencing.”

  “Proceed,” the judge said, a furrow of confusion between her eyebrows.

  Evie clutched the paper with the few short paragraphs she had agonized over for the last two days. “Several weeks ago I encountered Charlie Beaumont on a hiking trail in the mountains. In the course of our conversation, he discovered I had been working with Taryn Thorne and he expressed concern for her condition. Believing Taryn might find interaction with young people motivational to her therapy—and knowing Charlie and Taryn were friends prior to the accident—I invited him to visit her. This was without the knowledge or approval of her father, let me add, and was a completely unilateral decision on my part. Taryn seemed to enjoy his visit and she responded better to her regular therapy than she had done previously. When Charlie asked if he could return another day, I agreed, though I had reservations as to whether it would be beneficial.”

  She looked up and found Maura watching her with eyes that were solemn but dry. Brodie was looking somewhere over her shoulder, not at her, and her insides clenched with regret. Too late to get out of this now. She was stuck, like it or not.

  She cleared her throat, anxious only to finish now. “Over the past three weeks, Charlie has become a regular visitor during Taryn’s therapy sessions. He visits as often as four times a week, for an hour at a time. To my great surprise, he has displayed remarkable calm and patience with her and Taryn has made great progress in that time. She can stand for longer periods of time, she is taking more steps on her own and her core strength has improved. Whether that is because of Charlie, I cannot and will not say. Thank you.”

  Brief and to the point, without embellishment or elaboration. She had told Laura she would only relay the information about Charlie’s visits to Taryn, not color it with her opinion. She had to hope she had accomplished her goal. Whether the judge would give any weight to the information was now out of her hands.

  She left the podium, more than a little tempted to push through the doors and keep walking out of the courtroom. That would be cowardly, though, and she couldn’t leave before she heard what Taryn wanted so strongly to say.

  She would have vastly preferred finding another seat, but every spot in the courtroom seemed full except where she had been sitting before, next to Brodie.

  With no small degree of reluctance, she returned to her seat and felt the heat of his disapproval like a sunlamp beating down on her.

  She wanted to tell him she was sorry but the impulse itself annoyed her. She hadn’t done anything so terribly egregious, only presented the basic facts about what had transpired the last three weeks in therapy. None of it was a lie. If he still couldn’t accept how much Charlie had helped with Taryn’s therapy, that was his problem, not hers.

  After one of Charlie’s Sunday-school teachers gushed on and on about what a good boy he was and his high school soccer coach spoke about how hard he worked for the team, it was Taryn’s turn.

  Beside Evie, Brodie seemed to brace himself. Despite everything, she again wanted badly to touch him, to offer some sort of physical encouragement, but she didn’t have the chance, even if she had been able to find the nerve. He rose and pushed his daughter’s wheelchair to the front of the courtroom, then set the brake so that Taryn could laboriously pull herself to her feet.

  Judge Kawa watched this with confusion at first and then surprise. “Young lady, there is no need to stand. You may certainly remain seated.”

  Taryn shook her head, gripping the edge of the podium. “No. I want to...stand,” she said.

  “If you’re certain. Of course, you may be seated at any time.”

  Taryn nodded, then angled around to look at Brodie, behind her. “Dad. Go sit down,” she said, to a nervous little titter from the courtroom.

  Brodie looked as if he wanted to argue, wanted to stay there behind her through her entire statement, but after an awkward pause, he returned to sit tensely beside Evie.

  “My name is Taryn Thorne.” She spoke clearly and concisely and Evie glowed with pride in her at how very far she had come from those early days when no one was sure she would even survive.

  “I was hurt in the accident. I still can’t walk...very well and I talk a little f-funny. But I—I’m getting better. Charlie is my friend. He helps me with therapy, even when it’s boring.”

  She was quiet for several beats, so long that Evie could feel the leashed tension in Brodie and knew he was about a heartbeat away from jumping out of his seat and returning to her side.

  “Judge, I want to tell you,” Taryn finally continued, “Charlie shouldn’t go to jail. He shouldn’t. It’s wrong. None of it...was his f-fault.”

  “Yes it is!” Charlie suddenly jerked to his feet. “Don’t listen to her.”

  “Young man, this is a court of law. You can’t just shout things out. Please be seated,” the judge said sternly.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She doesn’t remember!”

  “Yes. I do. I...remember. All of it.” Taryn gripped the podium tightly. “We were so stupid. Just...messing around. It was never Charlie’s f-fault. It was all...my idea. To rob those stores, I mean. I was mad at my dad. He was going to make me quit...cheerleading because I broke curfew a lot and my grades were bad. I wanted to hurt him.”

  Brodie’s jaw tightened and he drew in a ragged-sounding breath and Evie couldn’t simply sit beside him and do nothing. His hand was a tight fist on his thigh and she covered it with her own hand. After a startled moment, she could feel some of the tension seep away. He relaxed his fingers and turned his hand over to clasp hers, though he still didn’t look at her.

  “It was me and Layla and Charlie and Jason and Aimee. Jason Hoyt and Aimee T-Taylor. Jason knew...how to shut off the store alarms and unlock the doors. He broke into his dad’s security
company or something. I don’t know how. But it was...too easy. After we took stuff at my dad’s store, we decided to do others. Just for f-fun.”

  Taryn looked guilty and small standing behind the podium. Her lip trembled as she spoke but she was still holding on tightly and remaining upright. “It wasn’t for the money. Not really. We...were stupid and...and bored, I guess. Jason and Aimee were high. I wasn’t. Neither were Layla or Charlie. At String F-Fever, we accidentally knocked a box of beads in the... dark and Jason thought it was so f-funny. He knocked over more and then we all...took turns dumping stuff out. We made...a big mess. I felt really bad afterward and sick to my stomach. I like Claire. But then I made it worse.”

  She shifted her gaze to Charlie, and Evie saw something she had missed all this time. How could she not have seen it? Taryn’s feelings for the boy were obvious all over her face. Though she might say she and Charlie were only friends, Taryn’s emotions ran much more deeply than that.

  “I grabbed...some scissors and cut up his sister’s wedding dress. It was dumb. I don’t know why I did it. But Charlie’s parents ignored him all the time. It hurt him. All they cared about was his sister’s stupid wedding. He was sick of it and I...wanted to help him.”

  She was beginning to look shaky up there and Evie wasn’t sure Taryn would be able to stand much longer. She wanted to go and hold her up but didn’t think the judge would appreciate the interruption.

  “The next night, Jason said he knew an empty cabin where we could hang out and watch a movie, with lots of...beer in the f-fridge. Charlie didn’t want to have any. He was driving.” A slow tear dripped down the side of her face, and beside Evie, Brodie made a low growling sound in his throat she doubted anyone else could hear. “We...we made him. We teased him until he had some beer with us.”

  “Taryn, shut up.” Charlie jerked to his feet, his fists clenched at his sides. “It doesn’t matter now. None of it matters.”