And I’m happy, she thought fiercely. Turning, she climbed into the truck.
“Mercedes,” Brandon said again.
She looked at him from behind the wheel, simply waiting.
“I’d like to drop by, if I may. Meet your husband, talk about old times.”
“You’ve met Wayne before. He worked for my father.”
He looked puzzled. Likely he remembered Wayne as old enough to be her father, though he was only fifty-two to her thirty-nine.
“Anyway,” she continued, “you’re welcome to come out, but we’re still getting in the spring wheat.” What she wanted to tell him was to go back to wherever he’d come from and leave her family alone. The way he pushed told her he wanted something from her. She could only pray it didn’t involve Darrel. Yet what else could it be? “That means we’re not at the house much.” Or at least Wayne wasn’t.
He nodded. “Well, it was nice to see you.”
Mercedes shut her door, put the truck into gear, and drove away. She could see him in the rearview mirror watching her go. The scene brought back memories of when he had left and she had stayed behind. Her heart felt tight.
Thirty miles outside Riverton, she pulled off the highway and leaned her head on the steering wheel. She was shaking so badly that she felt ill. “Wayne,” she whispered. She needed Wayne.
Forty minutes later, she was in the barn saddling Windwalker, her white stallion. Di and Thunder, her red retrievers, watched patiently, wagging their tails with excitement. But only Thunder followed as she galloped from the barn, Di choosing to stay back with her new litter of puppies. Always the good mother, watching over her babies. That’s what mothers did.
Wind beat into her face, flattening the tears down and over her cheeks until they seemed more like a sheen of sweat than tears at all. Windwalker, a surprise present from Wayne last year, was her most prized animal. He had traded three calves to their neighbors down the road for the young horse, and Mercedes believed he was worth far more. She loved the power in his limbs and the elation of moving so fast over the ground that time didn’t seem to matter. Today was no exception. Hunching over his mane, she urged him onward. He flew like the wind. And for those few minutes, she was safe.
She came upon the west fields too quickly for her state of mind, but seeing Wayne and Darrel on the tractor and the younger boys, Joseph and Scott, playing in the back of the seed truck gave her a rush of belonging. These were her men, her place, and even the heartrending mound of dirt in the family cemetery past their small fruit orchard was a part of who she had become.
“Hi, Mom.” Joseph and Scott waved her over.
“Can I have a ride back?” Scott added. “I’m bored.”
“I’ll take you both home in a minute. First I need to talk to your father.”
Wayne had spotted her and opened the tractor cab, leaping down and leaving Darrel to operate the machine alone. He loped toward her in his customary gait, which was strangely graceful. Wayne was a tall man, built as strong as an old tree. At fifty-two, he had the strength of a much younger man, but his face was worn and weathered by the sun, and his red hair had gone an orangey white. His blue eyes were kind, and the wrinkles in his face were as much a part of him as the furrows were a part of the fields. Not for the first time, Mercedes understood that Wayne was the farm. He was as constant as the earth, as tender as the plants he coaxed out of the soil, as forgiving as a thirsty stalk of wheat after a spring rain.
“What’s wrong?” he said as they met halfway.
She looked to the right and to the left, unwilling to meet his eyes.
“Mercedes.” He spoke in almost the same way as Brandon had, but then he added, “Honey, I’m here.”
She took a breath and looked into his eyes. “I was at Safeway. He’s back in Riverton. He came to teach a seminar or something. I—I’m afraid.”
He didn’t ask her who “he” was. “He” was the only person who had stood between them all these long years, the one with the power to change their safe world.
Wayne made a noise of dismay in his throat and pulled her into his arms. Besides galloping on Windwalker’s back, this was the only other place she felt completely safe, where nothing could touch her. Even as a child when he’d protected her from her father’s wrath or her mother’s indifference, she had felt safe with Wayne.
“I love you. It’s going to be all right.”
She dropped her head to his shoulder, wiping her wet cheek against his dusty shirt. “He wants to come by. What if he knows?”
“What if he doesn’t?”
She pulled back slightly to look up into his face. “Then why come? After all these years?”
“Maybe he’s finally realized what he lost.” Wayne’s eyes were sorrowful, and Mercedes wondered if he thought such a thing would change her life—knowing that Brandon might have come back for her.
It wouldn’t, of course. Yet just for an instant, she remembered how she’d felt the day Brandon left. The certainty that he would be back for her, the belief that he couldn’t live without her as she couldn’t live without him.
He hadn’t come back.
Until now.
Mercedes swallowed hard. “He never loved me, not the way you do.” She said this with a surety born of long years of knowing. Sometimes Wayne’s love weighed heavily on her, as though it were a burden, because she knew that everything she could give him could never possibly equal what he gave her.
Chapter 2
Diary of Mercedes Walker
May 19, 1994
I’m supposed to be analyzing cases for an upcoming test, but I don’t feel the least bit clinical today, though my studies are fascinating as usual. I can’t believe how much better psychology is than all the other dozen things I’ve studied, even animal medicine. I should have tried this first. The human mind is so . . . incredible. Still, my thoughts keep wandering.
Is it possible to fall in love, really in love, in less than two weeks? It must be because I am in love. I met this guy, Brandon Rhodes, barely two weeks ago after a lecture in the hospital. He’s a resident from Boston and will be here for another year. He is perfect in every way. I know it sounds silly, but he seems to be my soul mate. I never believed in soul mates before, but I do now. Brandon knows what I’m thinking and feeling almost before I do. With him, I forget Daddy’s abandonment and Momma’s betrayal. I feel renewed. We are going out again tonight, as we do almost every night that he’s not working at the hospital. I can’t wait to see him.
Brandon Rhodes stared at the wall in his room at the Alpine House. Confusion filled his heart, making him doubt his purpose for being in Wyoming. Seeing Mercedes again was like returning to his own home—good and comfortable and right. Yet he also felt a great sense of loss that threatened to overcome him. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He wanted to hate her. He wanted to rail on her for not telling him the truth, and yet at the same time he was afraid the truth he had come to find was not the same one that awaited him.
Closing his eyes, he could see Mercedes in his mind: beautiful, fierce, vulnerable. Her figure was fuller from childbirth and the passing years, but she was still an attractive woman. Perhaps more attractive than before.
She went back to the farm. The thought boggled him. The one thing he’d known for sure about Mercedes during their time together was that she hated the farm and all it represented—her father in particular but also her mother and the way she’d been raised. It wasn’t a place of good memories. Why, then, had she remained?
The baby, of course. That was the only explanation. Yet by her own words, the child had not come until later. Or had she actually said that?
Brandon stood, purpose filling his mind. At the hospital he could find answers. He had enough influence there to get to the records he’d need. Of course, that still didn’t explain the feeling in his heart.
Mercedes. So much the same and yet so different. The old longing hit him, and he fell to the bed, arms folded across his chest, ho
lding himself, holding in the pain. I shouldn’t have come, he thought. Tears wet his face, blinded his eyes.
From the moment he’d overheard Mercedes’ brother tell the director of the hospital in San Diego about his nephew, Brandon’s plan had been to come for the boy by whatever means possible. To plead, threaten, bribe. That is, if he turned out to be who Brandon suspected. According to Austin, the boy was twelve, and that could mean, depending on the date of his birth, that Brandon had a right to know him.
Yet he hadn’t anticipated what seeing Mercedes again would do to his heart. I didn’t know I would still care for her. He’d thought too many years had passed for him to feel anything but a mild remorse for the way things had ended. But this blinding sadness, the ache. These belonged to the old days.
Gradually, the attack subsided, and Brandon wiped his face across the pillow before going to the door, his jaw clenched. He would see this through, Mercedes or no. He had no other choice, really. This was his last hope.
Chapter 3
Diary of Mercedes Walker
May 30, 1994
Today is Memorial Day, and I visited the farm so I could put flowers on Momma’s grave. Part of me wonders if I’m so fascinated with psychology because of my mother and what she did. What was she thinking? How could she not have thought about her children before she committed such a permanent act? It’s been two years. How could it have been so long? Sometimes I feel as if it happened yesterday.
If Momma had been stronger, maybe my father wouldn’t have overwhelmed us all. Maybe she would have been able to survive. Not to excuse him in the least. I honestly don’t believe there is much to redeem the man—and yet he is my father. My father.
On Tuesday morning Mercedes strained the milk Darrel had left for her on the counter before he headed to the bus stop. One gallon she set aside for her neighbor Geraldine, to trade for remnants from her sister’s fabric store in Casper. With these leftover bits, Mercedes made the quilts that gave her so much peace and joy. Something about the weave of the fabric, the design, the neat stitching helped her focus on what was important in life.
From her childhood, Mercedes had made quilts, first for her dolls and then for her own bed. It was the one thing her mother had passed on to her. Those hours working together when Daddy and Austin were away in the fields had been precious, though far too fleeting.
She’d kept some quilts over the years, hidden away, those that meant something no one else could share: the first quilt she’d made for her mother, the one she’d started for Brandon and never finished, the smaller one she’d made while pregnant with Darrel. Many more she’d given away or sold at shops or at the county fair. Or they were used at home with her family. Each night her three children went to sleep tucked under a quilt made with her love.
Mercedes went out to her garden. For miles there was nothing but the house, the barn, the small fruit orchard full of new leaves, and the rows of growing wheat, sugar beets, and alfalfa. After she finished here, she’d go up to the west field where Wayne was working, taking him lunch and staying to help a while before the children returned home from school. Then she’d do the washing while the boys set to their chores.
The sun was warm, not too hot, and the deep blueness of the sky took her breath away. She felt the urge to go into the fields and lie down in the alfalfa to look for marshmallow figures in the few puffy clouds overhead. But the alfalfa in the closest field wasn’t quite tall enough to hide her from view—and that was part of the fun. Besides, she had work to do. Hunkering down next to her pea plants, she began to coax the weeds from the earth. The plants were tall already, signaling an early June harvest.
Feet crunched over the grass in the yard, so quiet the sound would have been lost in the city, but she’d been expecting it since hearing the car a few seconds earlier. Everything in the country had a distinct sound, even in nature, a sound that inevitably called for a response, if only to admire the maker’s industry or beauty.
Anticipating new remnants for quilts, Mercedes rubbed her hands over her jeans and stood ready to greet her visitor as she came around the house.
Brandon emerged into view.
Her smile froze on her face, and his movement ceased as they stared silently at each other. She became aware of the way she was dressed: the long-sleeved ocean blue T-shirt she wore on May mornings to stave off the chance breeze and too much sun, loose jeans falling over old white tennis shoes that were stained from the dirt, no socks, though he wouldn’t be able to see that, and the wide-brimmed hat that kept the sun off her face. Her dark hair snaked in a thick braid to midway down her back, grown out during the past winter. She knew she looked exactly what she was: an aging farmwife. Not yet old but with youth somewhat behind her. She’d be forty later in the year. Too old to try for another baby. That hope had been abandoned.
“You’re here,” she said, experiencing a tremor of fear. Had he picked this time because he’d known she’d be alone? Known that Wayne would be planting and the children in school? She glanced around to find something to make her less alone, but even the dogs were off exploring for the moment.
“You knew I would come.”
She made her face impassive. “I hoped you wouldn’t.”
“I checked the hospital records. Your son Darrel is twelve, almost twelve and a half. Don’t you think I know what that means?”
She took a deep breath before replying. Years of being with Wayne had taught her to think before she spoke. Words could wound too deeply for later repair. “What I know is that you left to work in Boston where your parents lived. I know that I stayed here and married Wayne.”
“He’s not the father of your child.”
There. It was out in the open, though she hadn’t expected to feel the words so forcefully. She had made her peace with God and with herself and even with Brandon’s memory. She had paid the price of security. She had made a promise to Wayne.
“And you think you are.” She made the words flat, a statement, not a question, and was pleased to see him flinch.
“The timing’s right. We were together then.”
“We made a terrible mistake. You have no right to come back now.” She hoped he didn’t notice the trembling in her voice or the way her fist clutched the gardening spade.
“No right?” He flushed, his nostrils flaring. “You should have told me.”
She studied him, eyes wandering over the familiar planes of his face and investigating new ones. The angles were sharper now, harder looking. It was a face that had seen trials. Had they been as severe as hers?
Wordlessly, she turned and began walking to the covered back deck that Wayne and Austin had built for her after she’d given birth to Scott. She’d wanted to be able to sit there rocking her new baby while watching the other boys play in the yard.
Brandon followed her. “This isn’t going away.”
She whipped around to face him. “Would it have made a difference? Would you have stayed if I’d told you?”
“I had a right to know!”
“You should have known it was possible. You were a doctor, for crying out loud. And for all that I was twenty-six, I was as innocent as a teenager. You knew what my life was like growing up! How my father controlled everything. You knew me and my dreams and what I’d hoped for us. The fact is, you didn’t care, and now you have the gall to come back after all this time and tell me I should have told you? Well, you know what, I probably should have. But what would it have accomplished? You left! You left me. It was your choice.” She was breathing hard, barely able to hold back the emotions and memories. How dare he come to her like this? How dare he confront her when she was alone and vulnerable!
Then again, he had always been a master at using her vulnerability and aloneness against her. She took the two deck stairs in one leap and turned again to face him, glad to have the advantage of height but unable to look him in the eye. She gripped the spade in her hand more tightly.
“I thought you’d call,” he said aft
er a pause. “I thought you’d come to see me.”
She gave a derisive laugh. “Without an invitation? I was pregnant, Brandon.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You should have figured it out. Why didn’t you call me?”
“Your number was disconnected. If you’d called me . . .”
So he had at least called, though weeks too late to catch her at the apartment. “What would that have done? Forced me into your life? If you think I could do that, then you never knew me at all. My mother wasted her life following my father like a puppy dog. I would never let myself fall into that trap. What happened between us was wrong, and I wasn’t going to make it worse.”
“I loved you!”
“Not enough.” She folded her arms, hating the pleading, piercing way his eyes met hers. Go away, her mind screamed. Go away and leave me alone. Leave us alone.
“I heard you were married. I couldn’t believe it.”
“I waited six months, and every day my stomach grew bigger. I had to hide out here on the farm.”
“You waited?” That seemed to puzzle him. What did he think, that she’d gone out the week he’d left and started dating again? As far as that went, he was the one who’d seemed to go on so easily without her.
He started again. “If you’d told me, things might have been different.”
Could he really believe that? “Not a chance,” she retorted. “You made it clear you weren’t ready for marriage, much less a child. How can you think otherwise? You would have wanted me to take care of it.”
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