Gil had his own TV and settled himself in for the night.
“I have a lot of paperwork,” Dan had told her, excusing himself after their late meal.
Lorrie completed several calls, reaching people she hadn’t been able to get during the day. It grew late and she tucked Autumn and the twins in and left Thad reading in his bed. Instead of going into her room, she went back downstairs and noticed the fresh pot of coffee Dan must have brewed.
She poured two mugs and carried them into Dan’s office.
He looked up. “Hi.”
She’d avoided him since last night, embarrassed by her weakness at wanting him. She placed a mug on the comer of his desk and held the other. “Hi.”
He laid his pen down and leaned back in his creaky office chair. “Thanks.”
“Get a lot picked today?”
“Yep. Those college kids are great workers. I’ve already asked them to come back next summer.”
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“Quarterly taxes.”
“Oh.” Lorrie knew other couples who operated farms. In many cases, the wife did the bookkeeping. She’d offered several times in the beginning, but Dan had insisted her time was best spent with the house and the children. Over the years it had become routine. Dan kept the books, did the taxes. She’d had so many things on her mind the past week, she hadn’t thought to wonder about the complexities of Dan’s deceit.
The legal ramifications struck her like a softball in the chest. She stared at him for several long minutes, gathering her apprehensive thoughts. “Are you going to be in trouble?” she asked finally.
“What do you mean?”
“With the IRS. What have you done? How could you have pretended to be Tom all these years and—”
“Lorraine."
She sat her coffee down. “What?”
“I’m not in any trouble with the federal government. Beckett Orchards is a corporation. I’m an employee, just like you and Dad and our pickers. I get a W-2 in my own name, all nice and legal.”
“But how?” she asked, incredulous.
“I pay quarterly, so I keep a close eye on the figures. I can usually work the withholding so I break even, no money due me, none due them. If occasionally I have to pay, I get a cashier’s check.”
“What about our personal income tax?”
“I figure it and you sign it before me.”
She thought about his reply. “I never realized. So you’ve used your own social security number?”
“Yes. It’s all legal.”
The knowledge was a great relief. But there were other considerations becoming apparent. “What about your driver’s license?”
“It’s in Tom’s name. I’m actually using Tom’s.”
She nodded. “What about our marriage?”
She suspected he’d dreaded the question. He forced himself to look her in the eye. “When we got our marriage license I used the new driver’s license for identification. That’s all I needed.”
“You married me as Tom. Our marriage certificate says Thomas Beckett.”
“That’s right.”
She waited for something more.
“We’re not legally married.”
Her supper sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach, and nausea rolled from her belly to her head. She found a place to sit beside a stack of sports magazines on the old sofa. “What about...” She looked up. “We’ve been living together for years. Aren’t we married by common law?”
Dan shook his head. “There’s no common-law marriage in Nebraska.”
“What could happen to you?” she asked.
“There’s no punishment, no jail time or anything. We’re simply not married.”
“You’ve checked into this, obviously.”
He nodded.
Lorrie’s neck ached with tension. She stood. “I’m really mad at you over this one!”
“A lot of people live together, Lorraine.”
“We have children!”
“A lot of people have children without being married. It’s not illegal.”
She stiffened. “Well, I’m not a lot of people. How can you gloss this over like it’s not important?”
“I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry. I can only say I’m sorry in so many ways and with so much feeling. I am sorry.”
Absently, she looked at the bank calendar on the wall, the framed photographs of their children on his cluttered desk, the etched glass apple she’d given him for their anniversary. Anniversary. Anniversary of what? “So.” She tilted her head away and then looked back at him. “You’re not my husband.”
The look that crossed his features told her she’d voiced something he’d hoped never to hear. He made no reply.
She didn’t want to hurt him. She really didn’t. Hurting him wouldn’t fix any of this. It wouldn’t make her feel better and it wouldn’t change anything. She hurt as fresh and as bad as she had from the first minute she’d known. Hurting him wouldn’t make her pain go away.
But if they were being honest, then let the chips fall where they may. Lorrie twisted her wedding rings from her finger. An empty glass dish which usually held pieces of hard candy sat on the desk. She calmly dropped the rings in. The sound of metal against glass rang in the silent room.
The muscles in Dan’s jaw clenched visibly. He set his mouth in a white line. He was too much of a gentleman to mention that she’d climbed all over him in bed the night before, but it was on her mind… in her fragmented, aching heart
She needed him. But she needed security. He loved her, but he’d shaken her foundation to the very core. Lorrie didn’t know what was going to happen. Somehow her mind didn’t move past this minute, past the hurt, no matter how much she willed it to. Her own helplessness angered her.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“They’re just a symbol.”
“Yes. Of what we’ve had all this time. That hasn’t changed.”
“They’re a symbol of something that never was,” she disagreed.
“Fine,” he said, pushing his chair back. “Have it any way you want.” It took him half a dozen good twists and finally a drop of oil from a small tin in his top desk drawer before his gold band unscrewed from his finger. He took Lorrie’s hand and placed the warm metal in her palm. “There. We’re not married. Feel better?”
The gold ring didn’t have a lot of shine left. It was scratched and scarred like their relationship. She stared at it with her vision blurring. “No,” she whispered, and left the room.
Chapter Eight
There weren’t enough words to fully describe Dan’s feelings. Regret didn’t begin to cover them. And sometimes, when he lay awake at night or when he paused over his work, he would wonder, if he had to do it all over again, how he would handle it. Would he do it differently? Tell Lorraine and Gil the truth and try to win her? Or would he take the years he’d had with her, regardless of the outcome?
Resignation came to mind most often when he tried to sort through his exhausting emotions. He’d dealt with nearly everything he could. There was still the question of telling Tom. Other than that, there was little he could do to fix what he’d done.
That Lorraine didn’t think of him as her husband weighed heavily on his heart and affected his every waking moment.
The following week, Dan used a morning to clean the huge vats in the glass-walled pressing room with the pressure hose.
After lunch Thad and Tom joined him in inspecting the motors that ran the conveyor belts in the sorting room. He had taken one motor apart and had grease streaked to his elbows.
“Was the armature burnt?” Thad asked.
Dan grunted a negative reply.
“See if that wire’s getting juice,” Tom suggested.
Dan gave them both a look to quell their suggestions.
“I could have had that thing apart and back together an hour ago,” Tom said.
“Yeah, well, now that your lily-white ha
nd’s out of that sling, help yourself,” Dan countered.
“Don’t want to get my nails dirty.” The good-natured ribbing had been going on all afternoon. “Cedra makes me glad I have two hands again.”
Thad laughed and Dan glanced up at his son, then his brother. “Watch it, those are adolescent ears listening.”
“Aw, Dad.” Thad and Tom watched Dan. “Did you two used to talk guy stuff when you were boys? You know, talk about girls and all that?"
“Sure we did,” Dan said.
“Like what? What did you talk about?”
“Oh, about who we thought was hot, that kind of thing.”
“You?” Thad laughed. “You talked about hot babes, Dad?”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Beverly Paulson,” Tom said out of nowhere.
Dan stared at him. “What?”
“Beverly Paulson,” he repeated. “She had a rack that—”
“You remember her?” Dan asked incredulously. “What else? What else do you remember?”
Tom shook his head. “That’s all.” He looked thoughtful for a minute. “I just got this picture of her and her name was right there. I don’t even know where I know her from.”
“Eighth grade,” Dan supplied.
Tom shrugged.
“That’s it?”
His brother nodded. “That’s it.”
“You can’t remember any of your family or where you went to school or anything about anything, but you remember Beverly Paulson’s boobs?"
One side of Tom’s mouth inched up. “They must have been some pretty remarkable boobs, eh?”
Thad laughed. “A blast from the past. Eh, Uncle Buzz?”
Tom hooked him around the neck with one arm and rubbed the knuckles of the other hand across the top of Thad’s head. “Where’d you get this kid?"
“His mom found him under a cabbage leaf one day and begged me to let her keep him,” Dan stated with a straight face. “So I did."
Tom released his nephew. “Do you believe that?” Thad shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’ve seen the pictures. Gross!”
Dan shook his head. “Hand me those pins that hold the electrical brushes.”
Thad obeyed. “Dad, how come you’re not wearing your ring?” he asked.
Dan’s hand paused only briefly. “It needed polishing. It’s pretty nicked up.”
A lie. He’d told his son a lie. What else could he have answered that wouldn’t have frightened him?
Thad seemed to accept the explanation and went on to his next subject. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something personal.”
Dan looked up. “We already had that talk about where babies really come from.”
“Not that.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Well, some of the guys were talking about girls, you know..
“Yeah?”
“And Jason Westfield said about this one girl that she stuffs it.”
“You mean she puts something in her bra to make her look bigger.”
“That’s what it means, Dad.” He rolled his eyes.
“Okay.”
“Well, how can you tell? I mean, can you tell by looking? Jason said he got real close. Pretended he wanted to see something she was holding and brushed the back of his arm across her.”
Tom chuckled. “Lucky he didn’t get knocked on his rear.”
Dan glanced at his brother. A couple of weeks ago he would have worried that Thad would turn out wild and unpredictable like Tom. But today he realized his son had the same healthy curiosity as any other boy his age.
“Well?” Tom grinned.
“That’s not a good suggestion, Thad,” Dan said. “You don’t touch a woman unless she invites you to. It’s a matter of respect.”
“Well, then how can a guy know?” Thad asked. “I don’t think this girl’s going to invite me any time soon.”
“I should hope not.” Dan fitted the motor into its housing beneath a conveyor belt and motioned for the nuts and bolts. “Whether a girl has a little or a lot is really unimportant. When you fall in love with someone it doesn’t matter. Besides, at thirteen, even if this girl does—um—enhance her shape with some padding, she’s still growing.”
“Yeah.” Thad fingered a bolt thoughtfully.
“I wonder if Cedra stuffed when she was thirteen,” Tom speculated.
Dan couldn’t help but join Thad in laughter. A part of Tom still existed, the part Dan loved and understood. Several times during the afternoon, it seemed as though nothing had changed, like goals and favoritism and years hadn’t come between them.
Dan reached for the socket wrench. Tom was already holding it out to him, the half-inch socket he needed in place. Could have been his ace mechanic brain one step ahead of Dan. But more likely than that, it was that “knowing” thing they’d shared ever since Dan could remember.
They weren’t mind readers, nothing as definite as that. It was more intuition than anything else. They picked up on each other’s emotions. They answered a question before it was asked. Time and again, Dan would be thinking about something and Tom would bring it up. Not weird or anything. That’s just the way it was between them.
And if that was still true, had Tom picked up on Dan’s turbulent feelings recently?
Tom had been remembering a little here, a little there, for some time. So far nothing important. But he would. How much damage would it do for Dan to tell him the truth now? He didn’t think it would make him remember. Nothing seemed to make him remember. Dan only considered telling him so that he’d be prepared when he did remember.
And he would.
Later, Dan scrubbed his hands at the metal sink in the tractor barn. He paused with the brush hovering over the back of his left hand and stared at the white band of skin on his ring finger. What did he care if Tom knew? How much more did he have to lose?
He finished washing.
“Mom’s gonna take me to ball practice!” Thad hollered from the front of the building. “She said there’s food in the oven.”
Dan acknowledged him with a salute. He stepped out of the barn in time to see the Explorer heading down the drive. He trudged toward the house. If Lorraine hadn’t taken Autumn, he’d need to keep an eye on her.
For most of the week, each step he’d taken, each thought he’d had, each chore he’d accomplished had meant nothing. If he wasn’t Lorraine’s husband, who was he? Somewhere in all of this mess he’d lost himself.
He was still Thad’s father. He’d done a pretty fair job of parenting that afternoon. He was still Bram and Jori and Autumn’s father, too. That was something he could take pride in.
He entered the kitchen to find the twins chasing each other around the table and Autumn fingerpainting the oak tabletop with melted red Jell-O.
“Did you eat yet?” he asked.
“Yep,” Bram answered.
“Are the dishes done?”
“Nope,” Jori replied. “It’s his turn."
“Is not, it’s yours. I did ’em last night.”
He was still a father. “Mom did ’em last night. Do them together,” Dan said, filling a plate from the dishes left in the oven. He sat beside his daughter. “Hi, munchkin.”
“Hi, Daddy. Wanna play Finding Dory with me?”
“Is that a swimming pool game, too?”
“No, silly, it’s a video game.”
“Oh, okay.”
He was a good father.
Did he have a hope of being a husband again?
The next night they all went to Thad’s ball practice and stopped for pizza afterward. Dan ordered and paid and Lorrie and Thad pulled tables together and arranged the chairs. “Where’s our drinks?” Bram asked.
“Cedra’s helping Dad,” Lorrie replied.
“Oh, man, she’s not strong enough to carry all those pitchers of pop!” Jori cried.
Everyone turned to look.
Cedra, in her short skirt and strappy high-heeled sandals, gracefully wound her wa
y through the tables with a tray of pitchers and glasses on one hand raised over her shoulder. Dan trailed behind with a tray of salad plates and silverware.
“She won’t drop it,” Tom assured him. “She can carry a tray of full pitchers in one hand, half a dozen beer mugs in the other, and dodge a bar fight at the same time.”
Dan and Cedra reached the table in time to overhear Tom’s comment. Cedra’s eyes widened and she sat the tray down.
Dan and Lorraine looked at one another.
The kids, not noticing anything, took their glasses and plates.
Tom’s eyebrows shot up as if he’d just realized what he’d said. “I knew that.”
Cedra plopped onto the chair beside him and laid a big kiss on his cheek. “Oh, sweetie, you’re getting better!”
Dan sat across from Lorrie. She distributed the plastic plates before looking at him. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off. He’d left his hat in the truck, but his dark hair still bore a ridge. She glanced at his hands, toying with a fork. Seeing the white skin on his ring finger filled her with a cold aching emptiness.
“Can Thad help me with my salad?” Autumn asked.
“Will you?” Lorrie asked her eldest son.
He agreed and they followed the others to the salad bar, leaving Dan and Lorrie alone for a moment.
“Shall I tell Tom?” Dan asked.
The thought gave Lorrie a panicky feeling in her chest. She didn’t want to be the one to make the choice. Sometimes she thought he should know. Most times she feared the results. The effect on the children terrified her. If her world had been knocked off kilter by the news, what would it do to theirs?
“I don’t think I’m ready,” she answered truthfully. “But do what you have to.”
He reached across the vinyl tablecloth and placed his hand over hers. To think that after all they’d shared, after all they’d done and been to each other, that that simple touch could make her heart skip a crazy beat amazed her. Lorrie refused to look at their hands.
“I don’t think I’m ready yet, either.”
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