Why didn't she ask? She already knew the answer: She had been afraid he would tell her something about Sam that she didn't want to hear.
If she could take back words, she'd swallow whole those last ones: "You're not worth it."
Everything could have been patched up right until that moment.
Oh, Billy, what have we done? What have I said? I didn't mean it. You know that, don't you?
If only the whole world hadn't been listening, if only his pride hadn't been involved. If only.
Now there was one thing she could do. Oh, Papa, why couldn't you just leave us alone?
She confronted her father the next morning.
In the huge, gleaming kitchen he sat alone at a table, eating and turning the pages of a highly colored sales booklet from a local hardware store. The rustling of the pages was the only noise in the lonely, beautiful room.
Watching him, Shiloh wondered if he knew how isolated he looked. And as he peered over the top of his reading glasses to gaze down at his plate, she remembered him doing the same thing every night for years as he read tales of Richard Scarry and Judy Blume to her before she went to sleep.
He'd started that habit after Caroline left, and he had done it until Shiloh was twelve. Part of his attempts to give her the perfect childhood, part of his fight to keep her from noticing that her mother had abandoned her without a single glance back.
She loved him. She didn't want to hurt him. But it had come down to her marriage—if she had one left.
"Hello, Papa."
He jerked so hard that his hand hit the china coffee cup and its hot brown liquid splashed on his wrist. He never noticed.
"Shiloh!" And for a dazzling, unguarded moment, there was a blaze of welcome in his face before he remembered and tamped it down.
"I didn't know if you would even admit to knowing my name or not."
He looked around, toward the door. "How did you get here? I didn't—"
"I spent the night with Laura. And no, Billy Bob's not with me. We had a fight, a horrible fight, and most of it was over you."
Sam pushed back his chair, stood, and reached for a napkin to wipe off his hand. "Over me! Well, I'm flattered. It does me good to hear I've caused Mr. Walker some misery. You've been gone a long time, girl. Five weeks and a day."
"You told me I couldn't come back, that you didn't have a daughter anymore."
The delicate line of blood crept from his high cheekbones up to his temples. "That was pride talkin'. You know that. If you want to come home, you can. I'm willin' to forgive, Shiloh."
She laughed a little under her breath and took a step toward him. "Thanks. If I ever do anything that calls for you to forgive me, I'll remember. But I'm not slinking home just yet. I want to know what it is that's going on between you and Billy."
Her father's momentum toward her stopped; his keen blue eyes sharpened and his face went blank. "So that's what you've come for, to run interference for him. Well, what's between me and him is between us, Shiloh. If he can't play the game, he shouldn't have stepped into the ring. And that's what he did when he took you. All the plans and dreams and opportunities—"
"You planned. You dreamed. Me, I got what I wanted."
"Billy Bob Walker? He's what you wanted? Then you're a fool. But I already knew it. Any woman who lets a man talk her out of thirty-five hundred dollars before they're even married—"
Shiloh sucked in her breath sharply. "So I was right. You did talk about it with him. Well, I know he didn't tell you, so I will. I went to that jail and begged him to take it." She couldn't tell it all; she couldn't give Sam another weapon against them. "I wanted him out, I wanted to be married to him—because I was afraid of Michael. I wanted to get away from you. And mostly—" she could see it so clearly now—"I wanted to be Billy's wife."
"To get away from me!" His face was blood-red now as he came around the corner of the table toward her. "I gave you everything."
"That you wanted me to have. But we've been through this before. So again, I'm asking you. What's between you and Billy?"
"Ask him."
"I already have. I dragged a little of it out of him. Now I'm giving you a chance to tell me all, and you won't. You know why? Because what you're doing is wrong, and you know it. You're breaking a good man just because I married him."
"I'm breaking him because he's using you. I know what he is, an opportunist pulling himself up any way he can. First, all that college work, now you, with your money. Well, he can climb up on somebody else's back. I cut the legs right out from under him twice before, and I'll do it again."
He might have been taking an oath, he was so passionate.
As she stared at her furious father, Shiloh knew only one thing: He wouldn't stop until somebody made him.
"Why do you hate him so much? If I'm happy, why can't you leave us alone?"
"You don't know what's best for you. You're like a wild teenager who runs away from home because she's mad at her parents. I know exactly why you're with him," Sam answered violently, his face mottled with anger. "You're out on that old farm because you're rebelling against me—and because Walker is a good lay." He spit the words out, crude and vicious. "I'm speakin' it plain, girl. You're ruining yourself—just like your mother did—just so you can crawl in bed with a man who's good between the sheets and between—"
"Shut up!" Her hands flew to her face, and behind them, her cheeks flamed and blistered with shocked, outraged embarrassment.
"I'm only tellin' the truth." But his voice shook.
Lowering her hands slowly, Shiloh stared at him through tears, her heart twisting. "You've spent years expecting me to be like Caroline, hiding me from men. And I've spent years trying to prove I wasn't and paying for her sins. Billy is my husband. What I do with him in our bedroom is our business, and it's right. I thought I could talk to you, beg you to make your peace with him—"
"There isn't any peace."
"No. I see that now. You're wrong, but it makes it easier to tell you something that I should have told you years ago." Funny how nothing in her seemed to be working; she couldn't feel her heart or even the rise of her diaphragm. Everything had just shut off, except her tongue. "All this time, I've been your everything. Your family when Caroline left. Your top scholar at school. Your dutiful banker. Because I was trying to be your daughter. Your real daughter. But I'm not. I'm not."
He put his hand to the collar of his soft golf shirt, as if it choked him. 'What are you talkin' about?"
"I'm not your daughter. You should have suspected it, knowing Caroline." Her teeth were chattering a little. "Laura told me that Caroline came here. It was the year I was fifteen, the year you sent me to the girls' school. She told you she knew where I was. But she didn't tell you that she'd already come to me, several times. She told me how much she missed me, how girls my age needed a mother, how she wanted me to forgive her and let her be with me. She wanted me to leave the school and go with her. Now I know it was so she could hit you up for money to get me back. She always needed more cash. But she got the money a different way, didn't she? I realized that the other day when Laura and I talked. Even though I wanted Caroline to want me, 1 couldn't leave you—and when I wouldn't go with her, she turned into a petty, spoiled—" Shiloh shuddered. "Then she told me. I wasn't yours."
"You don't know what you're—you're saying." Sam's words were broken, his face shaded gray, his hands reached like claws for the back of a chair to support himself as he hung to it, sick. "I don't believe this pack of . . . lies! You can't do this to us, you can't."
"I didn't believe her, either, for a long time. I just . . . hate her," Shiloh said somberly. "I told myself over and over that she'd done it to hurt me. And then she died. Remember the funeral? You made me go. I didn't want to look at her, to ever think of her. And I thought, she's going to hell because she lied. But I couldn't forget what she had said. And one day I decided to disprove her if I could. I had my blood typed. It took a while for me to figure how to
get the information I needed about you . . . and her. I'm B positive. Not her type and—and not yours, ei—then" The word broke as she struggled to tell it all. "But his. His name was David." She made herself look right into Sam's staring eyes. "He was your brother."
Sam flinched. "My God—oh, my God—dear God—"
"And when I was twenty-one, an attorney came to Evans to see me. He'd been holding a little money and David's personal belongings for me for years, since David died. There was a letter. He said since I was the only Pennington in the next generation, he was leaving these few things to me and hoped that I sometimes remembered him. Nothing at all to betray the truth. But I knew."
"She would have . . . told . . . me. She would have—" He moaned.
"I don't know why she didn't, except I think she thought you would kill her. And there'd be no more money from you, ever. As for me, Caroline never thought much about me at all until I became her means to an end. I was born; she handed me to Laura. She ruined his life, and yours, but I won't let either of you ruin mine."
He fumbled for the chair, falling into it, his face beaded with sweat, breathing in dry, hard heaves.
"I'm sorry," she whispered painfully. "I never meant to tell you. But you've got to see now that I never was what you wanted me to be. None of your money or your rules will ever make me into it. I tried. I wanted you to be my father so much . . ." The taste of salt was bitter in her throat. "I love you. But then I began to love Billy, too. And finding out finally that he was in public what I was in secret—to me, it felt as if there was always a link between us. For a while, I told myself that was why I couldn't forget him. He doesn't know, not yet."
"What will I do?" Sam's face was wet with tears as he looked up at her dazedly.
She wanted to put her hand on his arm, but he made no move at all toward her, just sitting there like a toy that somebody had forgotten.
"I'll give you the letter if you want to see it. It's innocent enough. But David was sorry, I know. It's why he left." Tears blurred Sam's papery, crumpled face in front of her. "I took all your rules and your strictness because doing it made me your daughter. You loved me so much—the rules were part of the love. And I was afraid that if you knew the truth, you wouldn't love me anymore. Well, now I'm Billy's wife. Your rules don't hold for me now, but the love does, if it's given without them. Without the conditions. You have to love me the way I am, and take everything else along with me—your brother's mistake, Caroline's weaknesses—and Billy Walker. He ought to be the easiest of them all for you to swallow. Let us be happy. If you can't, then let me go. I never was yours, except by love. Because I chose to be. It was a strong enough link for me. Is it for you?"
He never answered, staring at his own hands on the table.
When Shiloh tried to move to the door, her feet stumbled along like wooden blocks.
"I love you, Papa," she told him quietly before she shut the door behind her.
She couldn't go back to the farm, not in this condition, not until she found some peace of mind. So she walked along the sidewalks of the little town, never noticing whether she was in shade or light.
She had been a liar on her wedding night. "We're free to find out who we are and what we can be," she'd said. But she hadn't really been free; she'd just been approximating it, trying to salvage Sam's love at the cost of Billy's.
Today was total freedom, and she didn't like it much, afraid of its price tag, torn apart by the agony it brought. The only compensation was that she felt washed clean. Honest. At last.
Four years ago, Papa thought she'd made her final choice. Billy thought she'd made it on the Fourth of July.
But Shiloh knew: she'd made it today. Two loves pitted against each other—the decision had come down in Billy's favor.
Billy Bob was gone, without a word to her.
"He left this morning with Harold Bell," Willie told her, trying to restrain his curiosity. "He's done it before, but not in such a hurry. I don't know when he'll be back."
"But the farm . . . the nursery . . ."
"It's late in the summer for there to be too much. The next big season is fall, when we gather pecans."
"How—how long will he be gone?" It was hard to ask, to admit that Billy had told her nothing.
"Who knows? He took Chase with him. When he does that, he means to be gone awhile. They change towns— even states—ever' day or two. He rode with Bell—put the horse in one of his trailers. He's not got any way to come home until Bell's ready. He said you'd gone home to your daddy."
"But I came back!"
The bedroom was sunny and bright on this Saturday morning—and completely forlorn without Billy. She felt as empty and confused as she ever had in her life as she lay down on the quilt.
She'd faced Sam, torn herself apart, and for what? Billy was gone. He hadn't cared enough to wait.
Beside her on the table, something shone golden in the rays of sunshine. A ring. It was a wedding band, wide and smooth. And inside, their initials, wrapped together by a fleur-de-lis. Her heart eased a little. When had he gotten it?
He should have put it on her; instead, she slid it over her own knuckle.
Looking at it, she remembered Papa's words: "all those classes at the university."
They'd nagged at her, and now she remembered the books, too. Everything began to fit.
Upstairs, in his old bedroom, she touched the volumes on the shelves, then reached for a notebook, full of scrawled notes. His handwriting. Microbiology.
My God.
Ellen was in the door when Shiloh turned, a flicker of pride in her eyes.
"He's studying to be a vet, isn't he? Why didn't he tell me?"
"I guess for the same reasons he won't tell anybody yet. Only a few know. Most just see him around with Dr. Sanders, and think, there's Billy, hangin' around the vet like he always has. They don't know how hard he's worked to get through the prevet program at Ole Miss. He's almost got it made. Now he has to try to get into a vet school, if he can. He's done it one or two classes at a time. When his grandpa got sick, there was no money for months. He couldn't go at all. It's been nearly five years since he started. Most people do what he's done in two or three."
"Most people give up," Shiloh murmured.
It was frightening, this knowledge about her husband. When he was just Billy, it was easier to put a fence around him.
But then she wouldn't have this surge of pride, the same one Ellen felt.
"He didn't give up on you, either," Ellen returned. "I never told him, but I once found a letter he wrote you and never mailed while you were off at college. I didn't know who Shiloh was then. And it was four years ago, after you left, that he went crazy. Broke out, his grandpa called it. I never knew why, until I found out about you."
"We had a fight last night, right in the middle of the Palace."
"Any fool can see that. It was all over Will when he tore in here. He walked the floor waiting for you. But I've got no sympathy for him. He knows better than to hang around that joint."
"I said some things I shouldn't have."
"You're thinkin' he won't come back. But don't worry, he will, if for no other reason than to tear a strip off of you," she said dryly. "He's not much of one for layin' down and takin' it. And I don't think you are, either."
"I used to be."
"Well, see what a good influence he's having on you?" Ellen said soothingly, laughter in her green eyes. "But look at it this way. Today people figure it's a love match between you two. You don't fight like that unless you care."
"Or you're on the verge of divorce." Shiloh could hear her fatal words ringing between them still.
"Which you are not. He'll be back."
It was awkward without Billy at her in-laws that Sunday, and Shiloh veered between worry over her father and despair over her husband, spending the day silent and alone.
On Monday, Laura came after her while Ellen and Willie were out at the fruit stand.
"It's Papa." Shiloh spoke
the two words as soon as she opened the door. Laura's face was worn and a little frightened.
"He won't let me in, Shiloh. I went over yesterday afternoon after church to see if he was sick. I knew he didn't go to the golf course. The door was unlocked and the family room was torn to shambles. Pictures burned, lamps broken. He was shut in his study and he told me to go to hell." Laura's mouth trembled. She grasped the door frame so tightly her knuckles were white. "In twenty-five years, in all of our arguments, he's never talked to me that way. Shiloh, what have you done to him? What did you say when you left my house to talk to him?"
"It was something ... I had to do. I called him yesterday. No answer," Shiloh told her painfully.
"He didn't go to the bank today. The house is locked up this morning completely, but I know Sam's in there. I heard him ranting and raving at dawn. If you don't come, Shiloh, T-Tommy's gonna break in."
"I'll come, now."
She should have stayed Saturday. No matter how cold he seemed. No matter what was going on with her and Billy.
"I don't know when I'll be back," she told the silent Ellen and Willie. "Papa needs me."
T-Tommy had to break the doors down, anyway. Sam had locked and dead-bolted all of them.
He was upstairs in his bedroom, still in the same clothes he'd worn on Saturday. But the once-white golf shirt was wrinkled and splotched brown, his hair was in wild disarray, his face was rough with the beginnings of a silvery beard, his eyes were bloodshot.
Shiloh had never seen him in such a state; he frightened her as he glared at them from the Windsor chair in the corner of the bedroom as they burst in.
"Get the hell out of my house," he shouted hoarsely. "You-—and you—and"—he shuddered as his eyes fell on Shiloh—"you."
"Papa—"
"Don't. Not now."
"Why not now? I always think of you as that. I called you 'Sam' because I was angry with you. It's the same reason I wore the clothes you hated, drove the car too fast. Because I was a rebellious daughter. Yours."
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 34
