Carry Me Home (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t. And now I see why you care so much about Amy.”

  “You can’t learn when you feel unsafe. And that’s not fair.”

  “Is it your job to keep them safe?”

  “Of course it is. At least to help.”

  “Ah. And see how we came around to it?” he asked. “That must mean it’s my job, too. To help Amy, and to help you. And can I say this one thing, Professor?”

  “Well.” She laughed a little, shook her head, and started walking again. “I guess you can, if you can get a word in edgewise. And you haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, you’ve done everything right. I do get that, by the way. I do. But go ahead. Please. Say your one thing.”

  “Here it is, then,” he said. “I think you’ve got all the guts those guys didn’t. I think you’re one hell of a woman. One hell of a teacher. One hell of a friend.”

  She stopped again, looked at him. “You do?”

  “Oh, Dr. Zoe. You bet your ass I do.”

  SOME OTHER GUY

  “Well . . . thanks,” she told him, looking surprised. “Thanks.”

  She didn’t even know it. She didn’t even know everything she was. He could swear that he’d been through every emotion there was in the past eighteen hours. And still, it was only a shadow of everything she’d felt, and look how she was holding up.

  He was impressed by her, yeah. You could put it that way.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, turned in at the mailbox, passed the shop, and started up the track they’d made beside the long drive.

  “Got you cold out here,” he said, looking down at the pink of her cheeks, the reddened tip of her straight little nose. At his gray watch cap, which shouldn’t have looked so cute over the swing of her dark hair. “But it was good. Thanks for going with me.”

  “No,” she said. “Thank you. Last night, I mean in the night—I thought I’d never relax again, and you’ve let me do it. Being out here, being with you, has helped. Even talking about it has helped. So—thank you.”

  “No problem. How about a cup of coffee before we head back to my folks’?” And maybe, in the warmth of the kitchen, they could have some more emotions. Some quiet time. Some good time.

  “Sounds good,” she said, stomping up the drive with determination, her arms swinging the poles.

  Junior had been trotting a little ahead of them, and now he barked, alerted by something up ahead. Cal looked up, saw the rear end of the car around the edge of the garage. A little black SUV.

  Nobody he knew, except it almost had to be. Nobody in it, nobody on the porch, so the person was either walking around, which wasn’t likely in the cold, or in the house.

  It was a Mercedes, he realized as they got closer. Who did he know with a Mercedes SUV? Nobody around here, that was for sure. Some football buddy, somebody in trouble. Not the time he would have chosen for them to show up.

  “Whose car?” Zoe asked, following his gaze.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. Guess we’ll find out.”

  “You don’t think it’s him, do you?” She was half-turned already, looking set to take off down the road, like she was going to snowshoe the whole three miles to Fulton.

  “No,” he said. “Can’t be.”

  “Why not?” She was still holding back, any ease she’d managed to find gone, and he hated that.

  “Not the right rig, for one. And Junior.” He pointed a ski pole at him. The dog’s tail was wagging, and he had jumped onto the porch, was letting go with another bark or two. “Whoever it is, he’s all right.”

  “How does the dog know?”

  “The dog knows. Besides, I’m here. Between me and Junior, you’re safe.”

  He bent to unhook his snowshoes, saw her hesitation before she crouched down to remove her own. He waited for her to finish, took her equipment from her, hung everything up in the garage, then walked with her around the side of the house, scraped the snow off his boots while she did the same.

  He opened the door to the mudroom, unlaced the boots and tugged them off, and was shrugging out of his jacket when the door to the kitchen opened, and he saw why he hadn’t recognized the car.

  “Hi, Cal,” she said.

  He froze with one arm in and one out of his jacket. Forced himself to move again, to finish taking it off, pulled his hat from his head, and hung them both up on the hook next to Zoe’s before he answered.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice flat as the prairie. “Jolie.”

  She looked perfect, as always. Gray woolen trousers, boots, some kind of sweater that he’d bet was cashmere, and designer, too, the way it wrapped around, buckled at the side to highlight her narrow waist, then spilled over the curve of her hips. In a shade of blue that matched her eyes and made a brilliant foil for the expertly highlighted blonde hair that fell in glossy waves to below her shoulders.

  Absolutely perfect, and like absolutely nothing he wanted to see.

  “I’d say come inside,” he said. “But you’re already there.”

  It truly hadn’t occurred to her, he could tell, that she couldn’t just walk right into his house and sit on down.

  “Zoe,” he said, “this is Jolie. My ex-wife.”

  “Oh,” Zoe said, the uncertainty right there to see in her eyes. She smoothed a hand over her hair, rumpled by the hat she’d pulled off, and he wanted to tell her not to worry. When it came to perfect, it seemed he didn’t care for it all that much anymore.

  “I could . . .” She looked around wildly.

  She could what? Nowhere to go.

  “Nothing Jolie has to say to me that you can’t hear.” He headed toward the kitchen door. Jolie stepped back to let them by, and Zoe padded in behind him in her stockinged feet, Junior bringing up the rear.

  The dog wagged a time or two, went to his bed in the corner of the dining room, and settled himself. His head was high, everything about him alert, sensing the tension in the room.

  “Sit down,” Cal said, indicating the round oak dining table that had belonged to his grandma and grandpa. The one he’d grown up with, that had expanded to fit everybody who could cram in around it at every holiday dinner. The one Jolie had wanted to replace with “something from this century, at least.”

  He’d put his foot down at that, one of his few hard lines, and she’d showed him the cold shoulder for a week.

  “I’ll just . . . go upstairs,” Zoe said. She didn’t wait for an answer, fled up the narrow staircase without so much as that cup of coffee. Hell of a way to get her up to the bedroom floor.

  Cal sat, waited for Jolie to sit, too, sighed, and looked at her. “You in trouble?”

  “What? Of course not.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Maybe I just wanted to see you.” She tried out her sweet, coaxing smile, the one that had used to work so well on him. “Is that such a crime? Maybe I missed you, and I wanted to see how you were doing. We were together a long time, weren’t we? You can’t just wipe that out like it didn’t exist.”

  “We’re divorced,” he said, his mouth barely moving. “You’re with Ray. You don’t get to see me.”

  She traced the grain of the wood with one perfectly manicured fingernail. “No. I’m not. With Ray.”

  “And see,” he said, “I don’t even care.”

  “Cal.” She put her hand on his sleeve, and he stared down at it, then up at her face. The blue eyes were beseeching now, a few tears shining in her eyes, one translucent drop sliding down a sculpted cheekbone. “I made a mistake. Didn’t you ever make a mistake?”

  He shoved his chair back, stood up, and leaned against the breakfast bar behind him. Got some distance. “Yeah,” he said. “I made a mistake.”

  “You mean marrying me. That wasn’t a mistake. We were in love.”

  “I thought so.�
�� All he wanted was for her to leave. “Until the day you took off and went to live with my teammate. What did he do? Cancel your credit cards?”

  Her face twisted. “That’s cruel.”

  “Yeah, right.” Like she hadn’t been. “So what did he do, that I finally look better to you?”

  “He . . . he hurt me.”

  “He hurt you? You mean he hit you?” The rage was there, just like that. Ray had stolen his wife, and then he’d hurt her? Cal didn’t love her anymore. But he couldn’t stand the thought of Ray hitting her. Of anybody hitting her.

  A few more tears were trickling down her cheeks. “No. Not that. But everything else he could do, he did. And it made me realize”—she took a deep, shaky breath, wiped away the tears—“that I hurt you, too. But now I know. I know how you felt. I get it now, and I’m so sorry.”

  She never got splotchy and messed up the way other women did when she cried. He’d always hated to see her cry, had been willing to do anything to make it stop. Now, he wondered if she’d known that.

  “He cheated on me on just about every single road trip,” she went on, her voice trembling. “He made sure I knew it, too, because I kept finding these receipts that he didn’t even bother to throw away. He wouldn’t call me, and then I’d find texts on his phone, and he took a call once, out in a restaurant. Stepped out and took a call from somebody else, right there. Can you believe that?”

  “Well, yeah,” Cal said. “He’s a cheater. He cheated with you. Why was it such a shock that he’d cheat on you?”

  “He barely even tried to hide it,” she went on, hardly listening, because she wouldn’t want to hear that. Ray hadn’t been the only cheater. “It’s like he thought he was entitled to it. That it was all right, and I should just put up with it because that was how it was.”

  “Yeah,” Cal said. “I’m sure he did. This something you’re just figuring out now? That not all pro athletes are upstanding citizens or great husbands?”

  “But you were,” she said. “You always were.”

  “And look how much good that did me.”

  You’re boring, she had flung at him, there near the end. I thought you were special, but all you want is a boring, ordinary little life. What’s the point of getting it all if you’re just going to be boring?

  He hadn’t known what to say. He’d wanted a bigger life when he’d had it. And then he hadn’t had it. He’d hit bottom during the worst year of his life, had come back up again and had figured out that he could be happy with the farm, and his wife, and, someday soon, kids. With working hard and having a family, people to love who’d love him, too.

  Maybe it wasn’t a big life, but it was a good life. But she hadn’t wanted it. She hadn’t wanted him.

  She was still talking. “He’s not . . . he’s not a nice person. He’s not who I thought he was. He was so cold, and I thought, what have I done? I had something so good. Can’t we get that back again? I know I made a mistake. But I hardly even knew what I was doing. It was too hard. The change . . . it was so much.”

  “You might have noticed that it was a bit much for me, too,” he said. “Being as how I was the one with the career-ending injury and all. The one who had to give up the dream. You might have noticed that. But you didn’t.”

  She didn’t acknowledge that. “But maybe now,” she said, “we could do it. It’s been such a long year. Such a hard year, and I’ve realized how much I miss you. You can’t just wipe out five years together, can you? And I thought . . . we’ve both changed, now. Maybe we could try again.”

  “You didn’t happen to notice that I walked into the house with somebody else?”

  “You mean . . . her?”

  “Yeah,” he said, not bothering to say that he’d barely kissed Zoe. It didn’t matter, because this wasn’t about Zoe, not really. “I mean her.”

  “Even so,” she said, because of course she wouldn’t think any other woman would stack up. Even now. “You and me? It was so good for those first years, Cal. It could be that good again.”

  He stood there, ankles and arms crossed, looked down into her beautiful face, and felt . . . nothing.

  “You know what’s crazy?” he said, almost to himself. “When you left, I would’ve taken you back. Even knowing what you’d done, I’d have taken you back and tried to work it out. But you know what I found out?”

  “What?” she asked, and he could see the confusion. She’d really thought he could just forget everything that had happened? Really?

  “I thought I missed you,” he told her. “And then I realized all the things I didn’t miss at all. I didn’t miss you sitting with me at a high school football game, hardly able to even pretend that you cared. I didn’t miss you not talking to my parents at Sunday dinner. I didn’t miss you looking at my old friends like they were some kind of ignorant hicks with dirt under their fingernails, just because they don’t play in the NFL, just because they drive pickups, when any one of them is worth ten of Ray McCarthy. I didn’t miss you hating my hometown, and my family, and my friends, and my job, and my whole damn life.”

  He forced himself to stop. There was no point.

  “I didn’t marry a farmer, though,” she said urgently. “Can’t you see?” She was standing up, coming to him, putting her hands on his folded forearms, and he went poker-straight.

  “Can’t you see how hard it was?” she begged, leaning into him, trying so hard to work it, to use it. “I married a pro football player. That’s the man I fell in love with. I married a star. And then you decide—you decide—that we’re going to live here, and you want me to be some farm wife? Drive a . . . truck or something? Can vegetables and plow the garden? What was I supposed to do?”

  He took hold of her upper arms, put her away from him, and took a step toward the door. “I had to have a job,” he said, keeping his voice even with an effort. “A man needs a job. And then I remembered I had one, and it was here. You could have gotten a job, too. You could have gone back to school, studied anything you wanted. You could have done just about anything you wanted, anything except what you did. You could even have had a baby. I was all ready to help you have your dream, whatever your dream was. That was all I wanted. But you didn’t have a dream. Nothing but . . .” He stopped. What was her dream? He didn’t even know. Or maybe he didn’t want to know.

  “A baby, right,” she said, the scorn right there for him to see. “I know that was what you wanted. That was all you wanted.”

  “So what’s the real reason you’re here?” he asked, feeling so tired. What did it matter? It was dead and gone. Not even worth talking about. “You spend all my money already? Can’t find anybody to support you?”

  “That’s not fair,” she whispered, looking so hurt again.

  Once, all he’d wanted to do was protect her. Once.

  “I think that’s just exactly fair,” he said. “You need a life? Go get a life. You need money? Go get a job. Maybe if you’d ever gotten up at six to drive a combine during harvest, around those fields until ten at night, day after day after day for weeks on end, you’d have a clue how to do that. It’s called hard work, and it’s what the rest of the world does.”

  “You were always so sweet,” she said, sounding genuinely sad. “Always. What happened to that? What happened to you?”

  “You burned the sweet right out of me,” he told her. “That’s what. You took my heart, you took my trust, and you ripped them up. I gave them to you, and you smashed them like they were nothing. That’s what happened to me.”

  He walked to the door, pulled it open, let the cold air rush in, then stood back and watched her get the message. Finally.

  “And now,” he said, “guess what? I’m over you. Got my heart growing back a little. Trying to find some trust again. Maybe even a little bit of faith. Maybe I’ll get there, one of these days. But I’ll get there without you. You want a better life?
Go look somewhere else. Go find some other guy.”

  COWBOY UP

  Zoe had wanted to listen, of course she had. The look on Cal’s face when the door had opened . . . she hadn’t been able to tell if that was pain, or anger, or just surprise and embarrassment. She could only think of a few reasons for Cal’s ex-wife to show up at his house, and none of them seemed like good news.

  She hadn’t known where to go, just that she didn’t belong there in the middle of it, so she’d gone upstairs. Now she stood in the hallway, irresolute. What now?

  She could still hear them, barely. “I made a mistake,” she heard Jolie say, and that was it. That was enough, and she started opening doors. She couldn’t stand here and listen to Cal . . . what? Whatever. Whatever he did. And she didn’t want to think about why.

  The first door was to a big bedroom at the front of the house, with windows looking out over the shop, the barn, the fields beyond. An old rocking chair in a corner, with another of those old quilts folded over its back. Double wedding ring, she thought automatically. A dresser, a king-size bed with heavy corner posts, a door that presumably led to a master bath. The bed was neatly made, but covered with nothing more elegant than a heavy brown bedspread. Cal’s bedroom, obviously, and she shut the door again hastily.

  The next room was an office. Desk, computer, printer, filing cabinets. Paperwork neatly stacked in a corner of the desk. Also none of her business, and she shut that door, too.

  At last, a bathroom. Guest bathroom, she guessed, since it looked unused. More high-end fittings, stonework and tile, the best of everything. Nothing on the countertop, no toothbrush by the sink.

  She glanced into the mirror, recoiled in shock, and began a hasty finger-comb of her hair. She’d looked like that, was wearing his mother’s sweater and stretch pants, and he was down there talking to a woman who looked like she could have gotten a modeling contract just by walking into an office and announcing that she was ready for one?

  Of course, there wasn’t much point in even trying, because she was never going to compete with that face, that body. She did her best anyway, though.