The Nine-Month Marriage

by Christine Rimmer

  He took her back down the stairs and saw her settled in the big reclining chair he’d bought for her, in the nice little sitting area of her bedroom where she could look out on the box elder tree that grew in the backyard. Then he went outside to bring in the two small suitcases in the trunk.

  Abby had beaten him to it. She was trudging up the stairs when he got to the front hall.

  “Abby.”

  She stopped at the top and looked down at him, her straw-colored hair falling in her eyes, her mouth set in a defiant line.

  “I would have brought those in.”

  “Oh, I know you would.”

  He mounted the first step. “Abby…”

  She just looked at him, daring him with those eyes of hers to take another step. She was breathing a little fast. He could see her breasts, beneath the white shirt she wore, rising and falling.

  He knew what those breasts looked like naked, what they felt like in his hands….

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing,” He turned before she could look down and see that he hadn’t put that one night behind him—not by a long shot.

  “Cash.” Now she sounded sorry.

  He froze, looking away from her, a few steps from the front door, not daring to turn back on the chance that she might see his shame. “Yeah?”

  “She wanted a house…so bad. How did you know?” Her voice was soft.

  “Ty told me. A year ago.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then she sighed. “I’m mad at you.”

  “I know.”

  “You will not run my life.”

  “You’ve said that.”

  “But…thank you. For her.”

  “Welcome,” he muttered. And then he got the hell out.

  Cash returned on Thursday. He visited with Edna, and then he and Abby retreated to her office.

  Abby thought that he seemed edgy at first, once they were alone. He took pains to stay well away from her, on the far side of her desk. But she had decided dial she would really put some effort into getting along with him. After all, they did have to work together.

  And he was the father of her baby—which she intended to tell him about. As soon as she could reestablish some semblance of the old easiness between them.

  She’d set a goal for that day: to get their working relationship back on track. To that end, she stayed cheerful and professional and never once hinted that she sensed any tension in the air.

  She showed him how she’d started to pull his books back together and promised to have everything pretty much under control within a week or so. She smiled and sat back in her chair and asked him about his latest land deal.

  He seemed to relax as he talked about it. They discussed grain futures and the encouraging rise in uranium prices.

  Before he left, she brought up the subject of Josh DeMarley. Josh, an old high school buddy of Cash’s, always had some oil well that was supposed to make him rich. But he never got rich. Between loans and “investments,” Cash had passed a significant sum Josh’s way over the years—money Cash would never see again.

  Abby tried to sound stern. “I want you to promise me that the next time he comes to you with some crazy wild-catting scheme, you’ll tell him no.”

  Cash looked at Abby reproachfully. “You know I can’t promise anything like that Josh and I go way back. He’s got a wife and a little girl. And he’s had bad luck.”

  “He is bad luck,” Abby said.

  “It’s only money. And you know me. I can always make more.”

  That much was true. Money seemed to seek him out. It had been like that since he was a very small child.

  He had earned the name Cash at the age of seven when his parents, Johnny and Vivian, had taken him to Vegas. John-John, as Cash was known at the time, had begged to play the slots. Vivian had patiently explained that only grown-ups could gamble. But John-John had a few quarters tucked away in a pocket. And when his mother turned around, he stuck one in a machine and pulled the handle. He’d won ten thousand dollars—and Vivian had thought fast and pretended that the quarter had been hers.

  Later, when she and his father got him alone, they chided John-John for what he’d done.

  His father had announced, “But you know we’ll put that money away for you, son. When we get home, we’ll open you your own savings account.”

  This statement was considered humorous in itself, since Johnny Bravo had never saved a cent in his life. If he needed money, he made a deal or placed a bet, and somehow he always came out ahead.

  Seven-year-old John-John was a chip off the old block. He looked at his father levelly. “Thanks, Dad. But I’d rather just have the cash.”

  The way Abby had heard it, no one had ever called him “John-John” again.

  Cash got to his feet. “Next week all right? Say, Wednesday? We can go over everything then.”

  “Sounds fine.”

  He left, and Abby felt really good. Really positive that they would work through all their difficulties, eventually.

  Things weren’t going nearly so well with Edna. Already, after just a few days in the same house with her mother. Abby found herself longing to slam a few doors and say some rude things.

  It was the same old problem. Edna had been born to make a home. She baked biscuits that dissolved on the tongue and put little plastic sleeves on the pages of her recipe books so no unruly grease spatters would dirty them up.

  Abby couldn’t fry an egg without breaking the yolk. And her idea of hell would be somewhere that they made you separate the whites from the colors when you did the laundry.

  They had started to have their little nitpicky fights again. Edna wanted her new house kept up a certain way. But she wasn’t supposed to keep house; she was supposed to take it easy. Keeping house was Abby’s job.

  Abby tried. She really did. But she could think of a thousand more interesting things to do with herself than dusting the tables or separating the wash. Such as the work Cash had hired her to do. Or reading the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News and World Report, keeping up on events in the world. Inevitably, when she’d start to do some housewifely chore, she’d end up picking up a book or a calculator. She’d sit down for just a minute or two, perhaps to read about poultry futures; she and Cash had been discussing how much he should have tied up in poultry futures.

  The next sound she’d hear would be her mother’s querulous voice. “Abigail. Abigail! What are you up to now?”

  Her morning sickness, which had seemed to fade during Edna’s stay in the hospital, got worse. Her stomach constantly seemed on the verge of rebelling.

  Once it did rebel, right at the table, while she and her mother were eating and arguing. She’d had to run for the bathroom. Which had caused no end of questions from Edna when she returned.

  “What is the matter with you, Abigail? Are you ill? Is it something you’ve eaten? I don’t understand.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “What were you doing in the bathroom?”

  “Mother. I am fine. Let’s just drop it now. Eat your dinner. Please.”

  “This chicken is bloody. That’s probably your problem. E. coli. Or ptomaine.”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Just fine.”

  “It’s food poisoning. I know it. We should call the clinic right away.”

  Finally, with continued soothing and groveling, she got Edna settled down. But then, two days later, it happened again; she and Edna argued at the dinner table, and Abby had to run for the bathroom. After that, Abby realized she had to come to grips with her hatred of housework.

  She made an effort; she really did. And things started to smooth out a little. Edna found less to complain about. And Abby was scrupulous about not letting arguments get started.

  Cash visited on both Saturday and Monday, after that Thursday when he and Abby had met in her office. But those were strictly social calls, for Edna’s sake. He chatted with Abby’s mother awhile and then left. It seemed to Abby that
he avoided talking to her, which she didn’t really mind, as she still hadn’t worked up the nerve to say what she had to say to him.

  She knew she had to stop putting it off. She was in her eleventh week of pregnancy, not showing yet because her stomach was too queasy most of the time for her to put on any weight. She knew very well that she should have seen a doctor a month ago, in Denver. But she’d been walking around in a daze there, working two exhausting jobs, just trying to get through each day as it came along.

  She wasn’t walking around in a daze anymore. But here at home, she knew everyone at the local clinic. She felt certain they would try to keep the news confidential, but she couldn’t see herself showing up there for prenatal care without the word leaking out. And she couldn’t bear that: to have Cash or her mother find out the truth from someone else.

  They deserved to hear it from her. Cash first. And then Edna.

  So, at last, Abby came to a decision. Wednesday, when Cash came to go over the books with her, she would tell him that she carried his child.

  He arrived right after lunch and closeted himself with Edna for half an hour. Abby sat up in her office, trying not to bite her fingernails, wishing he would hurry up so they could get down to it.

  Then, when she heard his boots on the stairs, she reminded herself of how she was going to handle this: to be cordial and professional while they discussed business, and to keep calm and levelheaded when it came time to break the news.

  “Hi.” He was standing in the doorway, looking as if he wasn’t sure she would let him in.

  “Hi.” She smiled. He smiled back, cautiously. “Come on in.” She had the hard copy of his expense ledger in front of her. “I’ve got everything ready.”

  She’d pulled the visitor’s chair around to her side of the desk so they could look at the figures together. He frowned at the chair, as if it somehow displeased him. But then he came and dropped into it.

  For a few minutes, everything seemed to be going along just fine. They went over the entries, Abby pointing out the places where his natural extravagance should be curbed, asking him why he’d bought certain things at all—making notes as she went so she could move some of the entries to other columns later.

  She did find herself terribly distracted by his nearness, by the warmth his body generated, by the smell of his aftershave, which was very faint but nonetheless hard to ignore. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to sit next to him. But things had gone so well the week before that she’d become a little complacent about being around him.

  She was just nervous enough that she pressed too hard with her pencil when she pointed to a line in the “Travel and Entertainment” column. “What’s this?” The lead snapped.

  The noise seemed magnified, like a pistol shot in the room. They looked up from the spreadsheet and into each other’s eyes.

  And it was that night in April all over again. Her whole body leaned toward him.

  She knew she had to stop it. She rose from her chair.

  He stood, too.

  She couldn’t talk, couldn’t say a word. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. She saw in his eyes what she felt in her heart—and all through her body. A hunger. A yearning.

  Memories flooded her. Memories of the two of them. Doing forbidden things.

  The humid sweetness of hay was all around her. Zach’s favorite mare, Ladybird, snorted nervously in a nearby stall. The wind outside whistled a little as it found its way through the cracks in the walls. And Cash wasn’t standing there in front of her, staring into her eyes, but looming above her, his powerful shoulders cutting out the light from the fluorescent lamps overhead, casting the world into seductive shadow.

  She had cried out when he covered her, shocked at the heavy, hard feel of him, bewildered at the way he hurt her at first. But the hurt had quickly melted, becoming something altogether different, something wondrous, something frightening, something that lifted her up and turned her inside out. Something that made them more to each other than they had been before—yet less at the same time….

  Downstairs, a door slammed, yanking Abby rudely back to the present.

  Neither of them moved. They stared at each other, waiting, not breathing.

  No other sound came from below.

  Cash seemed to shake himself. “I…gotta go.” He reached around her, scooped up the papers from her desk. “I’ll look these over.” He backed away. “And we’ll get together again. In a day or two.”

  She remembered her promise to herself, took a step toward him. “Cash, I want to talk to you. There’s something I—”

  “No.” He held up the hand with the papers in it, warding her off. “Not now. Can’t talk now.”

  “But, Cash, I—”

  “Look. I mean it. Gotta go.”

  “Cash, please. Just listen. Just let me—”

  He backed another step, reached behind him for the door. If she hadn’t been so desperate, so in conflict within herself, she might have laughed. Cash Bravo was scared to turn his back on her!

  “Cash. I’m not kidding. It’s important—it really is.”

  “Not now. I can’t talk now. I can’t stay here. I have to get out.” He yanked open the door, spun on his heel and disappeared.

  She just stood there, listening to the heavy tread of his boots as they retreated down the stairs. She heard the front door open and close and then, within moments, his car starting up and driving off. She despised herself a little for not chasing after him. Because she knew he wouldn’t visit again for a while—and that until he did, she would put off the grim job of telling him he was going to be a dad.

  At his own house, Cash threw some clothes in a bag and left. He drove down to Cheyenne to meet with a few buddies of his. They went to good restaurants and they did a little business.

  He returned to Medicine Creek on Monday morning, July 3. He wanted to go over and check on Edna, see if maybe she felt well enough to head over to Ucross for a while tomorrow evening. A tiny town about eighteen miles north of Buffalo, Ucross always put on a nice Independence Day celebration, complete with music and fireworks after dark. He was thinking he’d ask Abby to come, too. There shouldn’t be any trouble between them out in the open with Edna along.

  Trouble between them. That was how he thought of this…problem he had when it came to Abby. Trouble. Because he couldn’t stop thinking about her, in ways that he had no right to think about her. It made no sense. It wasn’t like him. He adored women. But he never let himself get crazy over one. Until now. Now he was stark raving out of his head. Over Abby. Of all the women he might have chosen to drive himself nuts over, it had to be her.

  He just hoped that, over time, he’d get past it. Hell, he had to get past it. She was just an innocent kid and she had her whole life in front of her. And he was a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor, set in his ways. He wanted them to get back to the way they used to be with each other. And they would. Somehow.

  He was just reaching for the phone to call Edna, when it rang. He snatched it up and barked into the mouthpiece. “Yeah?”

  “Cash? Is that you, Cash?”

  The voice was familiar. “Yeah, this is Cash.”

  “Cash, this is Tess. Tess DeMarley?”

  Josh’s wife. He smiled into the phone. “Tess. How’s everything?”

  “Cash, I…”

  She hesitated, and all at once he knew she had bad news.

  “Tess, what’s happened? Is it Jobeth?” Jobeth was her six-year-old daughter.

  “No, not Jobeth. She’s fine.” Tess spoke very carefully. A woman picking her way over a verbal minefield. “It’s Josh.”

  Cash realized he was holding his breath, and let it out in a rush. “What about Josh?”

  “He fell from the rig. This morning.” She paused, as if composing herself. Then she said it: “Josh is dead.”

  For a moment, Cash’s mind rejected the information. He thought of Ty out under the stars, lifting his thermos of fortified coffee. And Edna
, still with them, thank God—but it had been pretty damn scary there for a while. And now Josh? It wasn’t possible.

  “Cash, I thought you’d want to know.” She sounded so calm. But Tess was like that. So young, but still a hell of a woman, one who always kept her head.

  He ordered his mind to function. “You sit tight. I’ll be there in a few hours.”

  “Oh, no. You shouldn’t…”

  He could hear her relief, even as she tried to protest.

  “That same apartment? There in Laramie?”

  “Cash, it’s not your—”

  “A few hours. Count on me.”

  “Where is Cash lately?” Edna asked. They were at the dinner table.

  Abby tried to make her shrug offhand. “I don’t know. He’s probably away on business.”

  “It’s been days since we heard from him.”

  “Mom, he has a life.”

  Edna frowned. “Did something happen between the two of you last Wednesday?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Well, he left without saying goodbye. And I heard his boots on the stairs. He ran down the stairs.”

  Abby sipped a little tea.

  Edna wouldn’t be put off. “Well, did something happen?”

  Abby set down her cup. “No,” she lied without remorse. “Not a thing. We went over his expenses. And then he left. He took his ledger sheets with him.”

  Edna stared at Abby’s barely touched plate. “What’s happened to your appetite?”

  “Mom—”

  “No, I’ve noticed that you’ve hardly been eating at all since you came back from Denver. And I know that sometimes you don’t hold your food down.”

  “Mom.”

  “Are you developing an eating disorder of some kind?”

  “If you don’t stop, I’m getting up and leaving this table.”

  Edna shook her head. “I don’t understand. Cash disappears. And you’re not…right. Something’s going on. I just want to—”

  Abby picked up her plate and started to rise.

  “Sit down,” Edna said.

  After a beat, Abby dropped back into her chair. They ate in silence for a moment.