The Nine-Month Marriage

by Christine Rimmer

The hurt in her eyes, hazel eyes like Abby’s, broke his heart.

  “Cash?”

  “I…told her to get home to see you, as soon as possible.”

  “Did she say that she would?”

  He couldn’t bear to give her the truth. So he didn’t. “Uh, yeah. She did. You know she did.”

  “Oh, I don’t understand.” Edna shook her head. “I just don’t understand. She could at least return my calls.”

  Zach spoke softly. “She’s twenty-one. A grown-up. Maybe we have to let her do things her own way now.”

  Edna pressed her lips together, collecting herself. And then she gave Zach a brave smile. “Yes. I know, I know.” She turned her smile on Cash. “Thank you. For going. For checking to see that she’s all right.”

  “Damn it, don’t thank me!” The words exploded out of him, harsh and angry, full of all the frustration he was trying so hard to control.

  Edna’s smile wavered. “Cash?”

  He sucked in a long gulp of air. “I’m sorry. I’m…a little on the edgy side, I guess.”

  Edna nodded sadly. “Yes, I know. I understand.”

  There was a long, heavy silence, which Zach ended by asking, “Was that apple pie I saw on the kitchen counter?”

  Edna put on her brave smile again. “It certainly was.” She pushed back her chair and stood. And then, for a moment, she wavered and leaned on the table.

  Both Zach and Cash jumped to their feet.

  “Edna?” Zach asked. “You all right?”

  She pushed away from the table and smoothed her hair with a shaky hand. “Fine.”

  “You look pale,” Cash said. “Maybe we should—”

  “I said I’m fine. I simply stood up too fast, that’s all.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Both of you sit down.” She was already in motion, gathering up their empty plates. “I’ll just go and see about fresh coffee and that pie.”

  Cash stayed after dinner to go over the accounts with Zach.

  The ranch, which covered roughly a hundred square miles and was home to around twelve hundred head of cattle, belonged jointly to the three Bravo cousins: Cash, Zach and Nate. But in an era when beef prices never went high enough and one drought seemed to follow another, it was Zach who made the Rising Sun Cattle Company a going concern. For years now, both Cash and Nate had pretty much gone their own ways. Neither of them would have minded at all if Zach just took care of the place and let them show up when the urge struck—or gave them a call when he turned up shorthanded during calving season or at branding time.

  But Zach took his stewardship seriously. So whenever Cash or Nate came out to the ranch, they always seemed to end up crowded around Zach’s computer, staring at columns of numbers that proved Zach was doing one hell of a job.

  By the time they finished that night, eleven o’clock had come and gone. Cash decided against driving back to town.

  “You know your room is always ready for you,” Edna told him fondly. Though it had long ago been done over into a guest room, Edna still called it his room. She always put him there whenever he stayed the night.

  Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that he could see the barn from the window of that room. So instead of going to bed, he ended up standing in the dark, looking out at the silvery light of the full moon reflected off the barn walls.

  And remembering what he had no right to remember…

  Hearing again the sound of Abby’s sobs, which had led him to her, in one of the vacant stalls. Smelling the humid, pungent odors of hay and animals. Feeling once more the sudden, shocking, incredible caress of Abby’s mouth against his throat; her sweet, ragged breath across his skin. Seeing the absolute trust in her eyes when he looked down at her—and covered her mouth with his own….

  With a low oath, Cash turned away from the window. He threw himself on the bed fully clothed, not even bothering to pull off his boots. He ached for a cigarette. Just one.

  But he’d given them up again, this morning, after smoking a whole pack in the bar of his Denver hotel last night.

  He closed his eyes. He started counting oil wells, which was his own private joke on himself. His daddy, Johnny Bravo, had made it big on an oil well that came in a gusher down in Carbon County. Cash had invested in an oil well or two himself in his time. So when he couldn’t sleep, he didn’t count sheep. He counted oil wells.

  Somewhere around three or four thousand, he must have dropped off.

  He dreamed of things he had no right to dream of. Later, he awoke and found himself staring at the ceiling, remembering those dreams, hard as some randy kid. He lay there, hating himself some more, not only for what he’d done but for the fact that remembering what he’d done had the power to arouse him. On top of hating himself, he tried to figure out what in the hell he could do to make things right again.

  He couldn’t come up with a damn thing. And he couldn’t get back to sleep, either. He glanced at the clock on the bedstand to his right. It was nearing 5 a.m. He’d slept longer than he’d thought. Soon Zach would be up. A rancher to his bones, Zacharius Bravo. He never took a vacation and rarely gave himself a day off. Three hundred sixty-five days a year, he was up before dawn, whether there was any reason to be up at that godforsaken hour or not.

  Edna would be up shortly, too, banging those pots and pans, getting breakfast ready for Zach and the three hands out in the trailers next to the foreman’s cottage. If Cash wanted to sleep in, she’d always fix him something special later on.

  Well, this was one day when he wouldn’t put Edna out. He swung his boots to the floor and sat up with a groan. He raked his hair back with his hands. As he rubbed his gritty-feeling eyes, it occurred to him that he should probably hit the shower. But he wanted coffee first.

  Downstairs, he stood for a minute in the doorway to the kitchen. Edna was there, at the table bent over some papers. He waited for her to look up and see him.

  And when she did, he had to stifle a gasp. Her face had a bluish cast and the skin around her lips was dead white.

  “God. Edna…”

  She smiled, a death’s-head grin, and gamely held up a pen. “I was trying to write to her. I thought maybe a letter would make her see—”

  “Edna, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  She waved the pen, as if his question meant nothing. “I just want her home. I want to see her. I need to see her. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I wonder if there’s anyone left for me. Without Ty. Without my little girl…”

  “Edna, what is wrong?”

  For a moment, she kept smiling that scary smile, and then she frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve been up all night.” She put a fist against her chest. “This crushing pain. Like someone dropped a boulder on me, right here. All night long.”

  He was already at the phone, dialing 911.

  “I kept thinking it would go away,” he heard Edna murmuring as he waited for someone to pick up the damn phone on the other end. “I didn’t want to wake you or Zach. You boys need your sleep….”

  Chapter Three

  “We should call Abby,” Zach said hours later.

  Cash and his cousin sat in the small waiting room of the hospital in Buffalo. The doctor had just been out to explain to them that it looked as if Edna had had a heart attack—but they couldn’t be sure yet. Half of her heart had stopped working, the doctor had said, but they were confused about her blood test results. A helicopter would take her to the big hospital in Billings right away, where they would learn more.

  “Do you want me to do it?” Zach asked.

  Cash blinked and tried to stop worrying about Edna. “What?”

  Zach sighed. “Do you want me to call Abby?”

  “What for?”

  “Because she should know.”

  Cash stared at his cousin. Then he nodded. “You’re right. And she should be here.” He stood. “I’ll go get her. Right now. Can you hold down the fort on this end?”

  “Hell, Cash.”

 
; “What? You know she’ll get to Billings one way or another. Might as well fly her myself.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Cash saw something in Zach’s eyes he wasn’t sure he liked. All at once, he wondered how much his cousin knew. “But what?”

  “Maybe. she’d like a little warning.”

  “Warning? What for? She doesn’t need a warning. She needs to be with her mother.”

  Zach shook his head.

  “What?” Cash demanded again. “You got something on your mind, you better say it.”

  Zach shrugged. “No, you’re right. She’ll want to be with Edna, pronto. So go get her.”

  One by one, Abby set three longnecks in front of three thirsty urban cowboys, then she scooped up the icy mugs from her tray and plunked them in the middle of the table. “Enjoy.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” The tallest of the three customers pushed back his white Stetson and tossed some bills on her tray.

  “I’ll be right back with your change.”

  “You keep that.”

  Abby murmured her thanks and turned for the bar. She got about two steps before she saw Cash standing over by the door, scanning the club and looking break-your-heart handsome.

  Her mouth went dry and her pulse went crazy. Before she could move another inch, he saw her. She felt pinned to the spot by those eyes of his.

  But she didn’t stay pinned. She marched to the bar, set down her tray and muttered to Mac, the bartender and owner, “I need a break.”

  Mac, who saw everything, was looking at Cash. “Ten minutes. No more.”

  “No problem,” she said, with more assurance than she felt.

  She approached Cash. “This way.” She led him through a side door to another room furnished much like the main bar, with small round tables and bentwood chairs. Mac called it the party room and rented it out to groups.

  Abby flicked a wall switch. The overhead lights came on, harsh and much brighter than the dim lights in the main bar behind her. She closed the door and gestured at a chair. Cash dropped into it.

  She looked at him in the brighter light—and felt the first stab of alarm. Until that moment, she’d imagined it was just going to be more of the same: he demanding she come home and she insisting that she wouldn’t.

  But something else was going on. He was too quiet. He looked exhausted. And the shadow of worry in his eyes seemed so deep, so very dark.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  He closed his eyes. “Abby…”

  She sat in the chair opposite him, leaned across the table and put her hand over his. He stiffened, and then he turned his hand, enclosing hers. At that moment, they were what they had once been: Cash and Abby. Comrades. Family.

  “Tell me,” she said, willing strength into his hand, drawing strength from him at the same time.

  “It’s Edna….”

  “God.” The single word was a prayer. She squeezed Cash’s hand, and felt him squeeze back.

  “Something’s happened,” he said. “They think a heart attack, but they’re not sure yet.”

  “She’s…?” Somehow Abby couldn’t make herself say the word dead.

  Cash hastened to reassure her. “She’s alive. I swear to you. I called Zach just a few minutes ago, before I came in here, so I could tell you for certain. They say she’s stabilized. But something’s wrong. Only half of her heart is working.”

  “Where is she?”

  “They took her to Buffalo first, and then put her in a helicopter and flew her to Billings.”

  “You flew your own plane here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll take me to her?”

  “You know I will.”

  She pulled her hand from Cash’s grip and pushed back her chair. “Let’s go.”

  Mac muttered a few choice epithets when Abby said she had to go. But then he wished her Godspeed and called his wife, Millie, to come in and finish out Abby’s shift.

  Abby returned to her apartment just long enough to throw some things in a suitcase. She didn’t have time to think about the recently sensitive state of her stomach until she was strapped into one of the seats in Cash’s little plane. But she needn’t have worried. She’d never been sick before in small planes, and she wasn’t this time, either.

  It was nearly dawn by the time they got to Billings, Cash had a rental car waiting. He drove them straight to the hospital.

  They found Zach in the little waiting room outside the intensive care unit. He stood when he saw them. Abby rushed to him, and he enfolded her in his arms.

  “Good to see you, Pint-Size,” he whispered in her ear.

  She held on tight. “Same back to you.”

  Zach was actually younger than Cash by a couple of years. But to Abby, he always seemed older, so mature and settled down. He possessed a deep calm that never failed to soothe her.

  She stepped away and mustered up a smile. “So. How is she doing?”

  Briefly, he brought them up to date. The doctors had run more tests. Evidently, a certain enzyme always showed up in the blood when a heart attack had taken place. Edna’s bloodstream had no trace of it. Still, half of her heart wasn’t functioning. So they’d gone in through an artery in her thigh and inserted a device that would help her heart to beat regularly until they could figure out what the hell was going on.

  “She has to lie completely still,” Zach said, “so they’ve got her pretty doped up.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Come on.” He led them through a pair of swinging doors and past a large central nurses’ station. He waved at a nurse and she gave him a nod, so he moved on to one of the rooms.

  In the room, Edna lay faceup on a metal-railed bed. Tubes seemed to be everywhere: they emerged from the back of one hand, the crook of an elbow and also from the sheet that covered her thin chest. Around her were way too many machines and monitors, each one ticking or bubbling or beeping or making strange breathing sounds.

  Cash and Zach hung back as Abby walked around the far side of the bed. At the metal railing there, careful of all the tubes and machines, she stood looking down at her mother.

  Edna’s eyes were closed. Her eyelids looked paper-thin and bluish. And her face looked…so old. Her hair was all smashed down, too. Abby hated seeing her like that. Because she knew how her mother would hate looking like that. Edna always took care to keep herself neat and tidy. And she wore a little mascara and lipstick, too, as a rule—applied with a very light hand, of course.

  The paper-thin eyelids fluttered open. “Abigail.” There was such relief on that old-looking face. “You’ve come.”

  “Mom.” She wanted to touch the thin hand, but she feared she might disturb all the tubes stuck in the back of it. “How are you doing?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  Abby nodded in understanding.

  “I must remain very still. But it’s not hard, with whatever it is they’ve been giving me. So tired….” Her eyelids fluttered down again.

  Abby didn’t move. She watched her mother sleep, thinking of all the battles they’d fought with each other over the years. Sometimes Edna drove her crazy. But still, there was love between them. Right then, Abby felt that love as a physical force, deep, fierce and true. Death might have snatched away her father, but death could not have her mother. Not for years yet. Abby wouldn’t let it.

  Edna opened her eyes again. “You’ll come home now?” she asked in a thin, plaintive voice.

  It was blackmail, pure and simple. Emotional blackmail. And Abby knew it.

  She thought of the baby growing inside her, but instead of feeling overwhelmed as she had for so many weeks now, she felt energized. It came to her: she wanted the baby, really wanted it, with no doubts and no ambivalence. She had never been a girl who’d played with dolls, who’d dreamed of a husband, babies and a home to keep. But now, at last, she truly understood that she would be a mother, like her own mother. And that she would give herself heart and soul to the tas
k.

  “Abigail?”

  She thought of Cash, not ten feet away, watching. All she had to do was turn her head to see him. It had finally become real to her: he would have to know. Somehow, she would have to tell him.

  And he would want to take over. He’d insist on marriage. At first.

  But she would just have to be strong enough and sure enough of herself that she could tell him no and mean it. She wouldn’t marry any man just because they had made a baby together, he’d have to accept that. They’d learn to work together to raise their child, with respect for each other as independent adults.

  “Abigail.” Edna’s reedy voice was petulant now. “Will you come home?”

  Abby smiled at her mother. “Hush. Settle down. You know I will.”

  Except to go to the bathroom and grab a few bites in the cafeteria, Abby refused to leave her mother’s side through that entire day. Finally, around seven that night, after a lengthy consultation with a doctor who insisted that Edna would not expire if Abby took a break, Cash convinced her to check into a hotel.

  But she would only stay there long enough to shower and change. And then she made him drive her back to the hospital.

  “Now,” she told Cash and Zach, “I want you both to get out of here. Get a good dinner and get some sleep.”

  They tried to argue, but she held firm. At last, they gave in and left. The ICU nurses, seeing how tired she looked, took pity on her and had a bed rolled into her mother’s room. She fell into it gratefully and closed her eyes.

  “Abigail?”

  Her mother’s voice sought her out through the darkness and the beeping and bubbling of all those lifesaving machines.

  “Umm?”

  “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “You know.”

  Abby smiled to herself. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good night, Mom.”

  Instead of saying good-night, Edna murmured dreamily, “Your father always promised me my own house, did you know that?”

  Abby opened her eyes and stared into the darkness. She didn’t speak.