Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy)

by Anderson, Sarah M.

  He and Lily—after a week, Mrs. Hofstetter had insisted on Lily—had been planning this for weeks. The ring had come in the mail last Tuesday.

  Her Granny’s ring.

  When he’d told Lily he wanted to marry Mary Beth one night after she’d fallen asleep, Lily had given him that hard look—the one she’d been wearing when he first met her in Mary Beth’s hospital room—for about a second before her eyes had started watering. She’d hugged him, and then hugged Kip, and then called Mary Beth’s uncle. Jacob had asked him for permission as well, but before he’d gotten much of an answer, Lily had snatched the phone back and began demanding her brother dig out their mother’s wedding ring and mail it immediately.

  “She always wanted Mary Beth to have it,” she’d explained in a hushed whisper as the shift nurse had glared at them.

  “Well?” Jacob had asked Kip.

  “She’ll shay yesh.” Kip had smiled before she frowned at getting the S sounds wrong again. “But where are we gonna all live?”

  It was a good question. As fond as they were of the little house on Beech, Kip couldn’t sleep on the couch forever. And there was no way the three of them could fit into the tin can of a trailer he’d lived in his whole life. Heck, now that Kip was reading and talking—moving in general—doing everything but sitting silently until she fell asleep, there was barely enough room for the two of them in there.

  That night, when he looked at the trailer with a calculating eye, he’d seen what Mary Beth would see—ratty upholstery from the 60s with stuffing poking through the threadbare parts, a kitchen that consisted of a hot plate and a coffee maker, and a miniscule bed crammed behind the bathroom that didn’t have a real door. No way she’d want to live there.

  It was no place for a wife. No place for a family.

  So he’d bought a doublewide trailer—“Manufactured home,” the salesman in Rapid City had corrected him, but still—and had it delivered a few weeks ago.

  The trailer had the best kitchen he could get, a full-sized bathroom, a roomy living/dining room—“a Great Room,” the salesman had crowed—and two bedrooms, one for Kip, and one for them. On opposite ends of the trailer.

  “A good starter home,” the salesman had promised. And it was. There was enough room for the three of them, and maybe a baby—if she wanted one. God knows, she was so good with Kip…

  But that would come later. First, Mary Beth had to say yes. And right now, she wasn’t talking to him.

  The truck left pavement behind as he headed up the new gravel road to the trailer. It skirted the edge of the valley where the wild buffalo roamed the untouched prairie. He’d thought she might like to see that again, but now he wasn’t sure. Her face was as close to blank as it had ever been, with just a hint of surprise widening her gray-blue eyes. Not excitement. Just surprise. Oh, hell, he moaned inside, she’s not going to ignore me for two months, is she?

  He scrambled to think of something to say that would get her talking again. “You remember? That was our first almost date,” he finally squeaked out as the road curved near the ridge.

  Slowly, she swung her head around as her mouth screwed down into an invisible knot. And she said nothing.

  “I, um, I was trying to flirt, but you know I’m not really good at it. But I, uh, thought you might have liked me,” he stuttered as her eyes narrowed into slits.

  Suddenly, the anger bled into something sadder as she turned her whole body away from him. He knew if she could have gotten out of the car, she would have. And fast.

  No wonder she was so mad at me, he realized. This silent treatment thing sucks, and she’s only been doing it for an hour. Somehow, it didn’t seem like they were going to make it to the sandwiches, much less the chilled champagne he’d thought she’d like. “Mary Beth?”

  “All we have is almost dates, Jacob,” she said, her voice already cracking. “Almost dates. Nothing more.”

  Even in his confusion, he could tell she was on the edge of a breakdown. She’d gotten close a few times while she was still in that awful brace, but that had been the brace.

  This was his fault.

  “Hon,” he whispered, reaching over to stroke her hair, “we’ve got a lot more than that.”

  She recoiled from his touch. “Kip doesn’t count.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this, but I don’t understand why you’re so upset. It was just a surprise.” The moment the words left his mouth, he knew he’d stuck his foot in it.

  She snorted in anger, but at least she didn’t look like she was about to start crying. “Just a surprise. My whole life has been a surprise since I showed up here. And not very many of them have been good.”

  That hurt. “This isn’t a good surprise?”

  “Jacob, after all we’ve been through, I don’t want another surprise as long as I live,” she muttered, her hands hovering near the foam brace. “Everyone seems to know what’s going to happen to me before I do, and I’m tired of it. I don’t feel like I’m in control of my own life anymore.”

  Oh, if she was tired of surprises, how was she going to take the trailer? “I should probably tell you that you’ve got one more coming today.”

  “Now what?” she moaned, the panic rising up. “Every guy I’ve ever dated waiting to gawk at the scar?”

  The scar. He’d caught a quick glance of it in the bathroom. And then she’d gotten all nuts on him. It’s the scar. The light bulb finally went off.

  He, of all people, should be able to understand how a scar messed with your mind and he’d completely overlooked it because it simply didn’t matter to him. She’d survived more intact than he had, and in his relief, he’d forgotten to consider how she felt. If she could love him with a mask, he could love her with a long, red scar. And he did love her, scar and all.

  Maybe she couldn’t see that. Maybe she needed him to show her. “I want to show you something I got for you. And you can do whatever you want about it.”

  “No ex-boyfriends?”

  He smiled, hoping she’d smile back, but it didn’t work. “It’s a good surprise. But you can’t be mad if I tell you Kip helped. Kip counts, you know.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another. “Yeah, I know. This better be good.”

  One more surprise. As the truck climbed headed south, away from the valley she thought of as her own, Mary Beth tried to calm herself down. He was trying to be romantic, and here she was, screwing it up by being a first-class bitch.

  So what if this wasn’t a candle-lit dinner in Rapid City? So what if, like usual, Jacob missed the finer points of dating interactions? So what if he’d seen the scar?

  He still wanted to be with her—or did, before she had seen red and blue all at the same time. Shouldn’t that be what she focused on?

  But somehow, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Mom—and Kip—had done more than just help today. Her life was beyond her control—again. The confusion threw her right back into a tailspin. She’d always been in control, always been in charge before, but now she was the last to know about everything. Or so it felt.

  She just needed to be in charge of something. What control she had of her neck still felt very temporary. Mom had decided what she’d eat, what they’d watch and what books Mary Beth would like. The only thing she had left was sex.

  And Jacob wasn’t getting any, no matter how pitiful he looked.

  After about fifteen minutes, Jacob turned east as the road that wound back up a gully. When they got to the top, she saw a junk trailer, the kind hippies might have lived in back in the sixties, off to one side. Then, up a hundred feet or so, backed against a stand of pines, there was a brand-new doublewide trailer with a stable peeking out from the back.

  They sat there for a moment. Mary Beth half-expected some angry homeowner to come busting out, waving a shotgun and shouting at them to get off his land, but then Jacob hopped out like he owned the place.

  “Where are we?” she finally asked as he lifted her out of
the passenger seat.

  “Home,” he replied, taking her hand and leading her up to the steps.

  We have a nicer trailer, he’d said months ago. At the time, she’d wondered. This was barely a trailer at all—this was a gleaming house on blocks. “You? You live here?”

  His face was inscrutable again. “I do now.”

  “Now? Where did you live before?”

  He nodded back to the junk trailer. “Kip needs more…space now. So I got a bigger house.”

  The two of them had been living in that piece of rust? Good lord, she thought as she tried—and failed—to shake her head. Poor Kip. Better than Tommy’s old heap, but still not a real home. “Jacob, is this the surprise? I don’t understand—”

  “I want to show you around,” he cut her off. “Come inside.”

  The door swung easily open, the whole house still smelling of newness. The furniture was sparse—just a beat-up loveseat that looked like it belonged in the old trailer and a card table and chairs off the kitchen.

  Something was wrong. Sure, the odd juxtaposition of the ratty furnishing with the freshly painted walls and sparkling clean kitchen didn’t help, but how was Jacob’s new trailer a surprise for her? “Jacob—”

  “I’ll show you Kip’s room,” he interrupted again, a nervous smile on his face. “She said I could.”

  Kip’s room looked more like a real room. A twin bed with a soft green coverlet embroidered with pink and purple butterflies and a matching pink butterfly pillow on top was tucked under the window with gauzy green curtains. In one corner, a white dresser stood with a framed picture of Kip and two people who could only be her parents on it. Next to her bed was a small white bookshelf with a lamp that had a feathered green shade on it. It was very much a girl’s room. Not a holy woman’s room but a little girl’s room, just like it should be.

  “She went a little overboard at J.C. Penney,” Jacob said with that shy half smile again, “but I did tell her she could get whatever she wanted.”

  “Wow. More green than I expected,” Mary Beth whispered. “Are you sure she said I could look?”

  “Positive.” He took her hand and led her to the kitchen. The new countertops shone as the filtered sun floated down past the towering pines just outside the window over the kitchen sink. It was bright and airy, with maybe enough room for one of those islands in it. A beautiful kitchen without an avocado green appliance in sight, she thought.

  “I got the one with the nicer Whirlpool stuff,” Jacob said.

  “And a card table? Your furniture is worse than mine,” she stiffly commented he pulled her down the other hall. Something was off and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Even though there was practically nothing in here, Mary Beth suddenly felt like it was too crowded.

  “I was going to talk to you about that.” He opened the door to a second bedroom. “I’m not much of a decorator.”

  “Clearly not your strong suit,” she said as she hesitantly peeked into the good-sized room that held a crisply made queen mattress on the floor and not much else.

  Trying not to smile, he headed back out to the living room. “I was hoping you could pick out what you wanted.”

  Her mouth flopped open, bouncing off the brace so that she almost bit her tongue. “What I wanted?”

  Jacob stopped in the middle of the living room, catching both her hands in his. “Yup.”

  She could actively see the walls marching in on her now, one determined inch at a time. “Jacob, I don’t live here.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small handkerchief with the ends knotted together. Carefully, he untied it, revealing a ring. “I was hoping you might want to.”

  This time her heart definitely stopped, at least for a moment as he got down on his knees again. “Mary Beth, will you marry me?”

  It was one of those old-fashioned rings with the diamond set deep in white gold, surrounded by delicate…little…flowers. Her mouth gaping, she snatched it out of his hand and flipped it over. And there it was.

  Rose My Love Always Billy

  She squeaked a tight little noise as she veered dangerously toward hysteria. “This…this is my Granny’s ring!” she finally choked out, caught somewhere between hopeless and out of control again.

  “I know. Your mom had your uncle mail it to me.”

  Heart pounding, her head began to swirl. “My mom knows?” she demanded, her voice shaking as much as her hands.

  He nodded, looking a little panicked himself.

  The walls moved again, giving her panic no place to go. It turned back on her, wrapping itself around her neck with a brutal efficiency. This was all wrong. Normally, this would have been a fight—a fight she would have won, because she was right. But her mouth wasn’t operating like normal anymore—nothing was.

  She wasn’t the same woman she’d been—the three-and-a-half-inch radioactive centipede she’d have for the rest of her live proved it. The old Mary Beth really had died on the floor of that little shack and she realized that there was no way Jacob could love the leftovers.

  Everyone knew leftovers were never as good as the original. Even Kip had to know that.

  “Did Kip tell you I was going to say yes?” she asked, feeling like a boa constrictor was just seconds from eating her. His wounded look said that she had, and Mary Beth officially lost it. He didn’t really want her—this sure as hell wasn’t convenient—but the tag-team of Kip and Mom was more than even Jacob could withstand. “You—you—you—” She couldn’t even talk. The boa constrictor was too tight, cutting off her air. Which was just as well, because the walls were so close that there wasn’t any air to be had.

  “You think that the only reason I’m asking you is because Kip told me I had to?” he coolly replied, seemingly unconcerned that the walls in this place were squishing him flat. “You think that the fact that I actually love you has nothing to do with it? The fact that I want to spend my life with you because you make me happy—damn it, actually happy—has nothing to do with it?”

  He loved the old, convenient Mary Beth. That woman made him happy—content. She knew that just as soon as he figured out that woman was dead and gone, he wouldn’t even be able to look at her, much less love her. The scar felt like it was trying to fight back against the boa constrictor, pushing out when everything else was pushing in. The pain was searing.

  The light flooding the living room began to pop in little flashbulbs of blue and green as her throat turned to solid stone and took her lungs down with it. Not a boa constrictor, her medical brain realized, but the brace. Gotta get the brace off. Only chance to breathe.

  All the blue and green lights began to merge into suffocating black.

  Jacob caught her as she collapsed, easing her down to the ground until her head was comfortably resting in his lap. “I’m sorry, babe, I’m sorry. Come on, Mary Beth, breathe,” he begged, kicking himself for pushing her over the edge. What the hell was he doing? She’d just gotten out of the hospital. He should have known she wouldn’t be strong enough for an engagement ring, much less a trailer. This was all his fault and it was up to him to make it right. “In through the nose, out through the mouth.”

  She made a gurgling noise as her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Shit, what was he supposed to do? She’d just crumpled like he’d hit her, but he hadn’t touched her. Somewhere from the back of his mind, he remembered that maybe he was supposed to loosen her clothes. “I’m going to take the brace off, okay?”

  “N-n-n,” she tried to choke out, pulling his hands away from her throat.

  Okay, that was a good sign. She hadn’t had a complete nervous breakdown. “Are you gonna breathe?”

  Her eyes shut tight, she winced as she gave a faint nod.

  God, he hoped her throat was okay. Please, let her be okay, he prayed as he said, “That’s good, babe. Just breathe. I’m right here.”

  The patches of light coming through the windows without curtains moved across the floor as t
hey sat there. Jacob gently stroked her hair, willing her to calm down with everything he had. Finally, her chest rose and fell evenly as her neck relaxed. A few minutes later, she opened her eyes slowly, and he flinched at the regret that spilled out.

  “Jacob,” she whispered, the tears running down the side of her face.

  “I’m sorry, Mary Beth, I really am,” he cut her off, caressing away the tears with his thumbs. “This was too much.”

  “A normal woman would be really impressed.” She hiccupped as her eyes raced around the trailer again.

  “You’re normal,” he reassured her.

  “I was, once,” she sobbed, curling away from him. “I’m not anymore.”

  God, it just about broke his heart. There was only one thing to do.

  When the first snap gave, she went stiff. When the second snap gave, she quickly flipped back over and grabbed his hand as it hovered near the final snap. The mask was barely clinging to his skin.

  “Don’t.”

  He smiled as a sense of peace filled him. “I want to.”

  A fresh panic seemed to take hold of her. “No, you don’t,” she insisted.

  “Yes, I do,” he said as he moved her hand and slipped the mask off. “Today’s the day. I’ve got nothing to hide from you, Mary Beth. I’ve got nothing I want to hide from you.”

  Her mouth gaped as she stared at the face Buck had left him with, but the dread he’d always feared didn’t materialize. The only thing he felt was that this was right.

  “This is what I am. This is who I am. You want to talk about not normal?” He smiled, never more sure of who he was. “I’m a Lakota warrior who sends others to fight in court. I’m the surrogate father to an albino girl who’s only seven. I’m an Indian missing half his face in love with a white woman. Nothing about me is normal, except when I’m with you.”

  “Me?” she squeaked, unable to tear her gaze away from the scarred skin that covered the place where his eye had once been.

  “You. When I’m with you, I’m normal. I’m just a man in love with you. That’s what you do, and not just for me. You give that to Kip too. She’s just a little girl with butterflies on her bed to you. You make us profoundly, deeply normal, all because you love us.”