The Parent Plan

by Paula Detmer Riggs

  “I’ll never love that new filly. Never, never, never!”

  Looking grim but determined, Cassidy leaned forward to knuckle away a few stray tears. “Just be glad you have the choice,” he said in a clipped tone before he straightened quickly and left the room.

  Vicki glared after him, then burst into tears as soon as his tall form was out of sight. With a sigh, Karen scooted forward to take her daughter’s small shaking body into her arms.

  “That’s it, honey. Cry it out. You’ll feel better afterward.”

  She wasn’t sure Vicki heard her. It didn’t really matter, anyway, she thought as she smoothed a hand over Vicki’s flyaway bangs. What mattered was assuring a scared and hurting little girl that her parents would always be there for her—even though their own lives were about to go in separate directions.

  “M-mommy?” Vicki’s voice was muffled and drenched with tears.

  “What, dear?” Karen asked quietly, her heart aching.

  “Will you stay here till I fall asleep, just like last night?”

  “Of course.”

  Silently, Vicki drew back, her dear, sad face ravaged by an inner pain that wouldn’t be wiped away so easily as her tears.

  “O-only for a little while,” she amended quickly, as though afraid her mother would think she was a scaredy cat. Or worse, a baby.

  Karen kissed the top of her head, then stood up and drew back the covers. “Snuggle down and I’ll just slip in here next to you for a few minutes.”

  “Just until I go to sleep, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Apparently satisfied, Vicki scooted sideways on her bottom, then turned on her side, facing the window.

  Karen bent to remove her slippers. “Do you want the light on or off?”

  “On, please. Just for tonight.”

  Karen removed her slippers and edged in beside Vicki’s small body. Looping one arm over Vicki’s sturdy little waist, she let out a long sigh. “Sweet dreams, sweetheart.”

  Vicki sniffled. “I hope I dream about Goldie.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  Silence settled around them for a few moments before Vicki asked quietly, “Did you dream about horses when you were my age?”

  “Only the one ridden by Prince Charming when he came charging up to sweep Cinderella into his arms.”

  “Except Cinderella was really you, right?”

  Karen smiled at the back of her daughter’s sleek, dark head. “Yes, I was Cinderella.”

  “I don’t believe in stuff like that anymore.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sweetie.”

  Karen felt Vicki stir a moment before she twisted to look at her mother. “You sound like you do.”

  “When I was just a few years older than you are now, I used to gather up the little bits of cotton fluff that fell from the trees outside Grandma’s house and put them under my pillow.”

  Vicki’s forehead pleated into a frown. “Why’d you do a silly thing like that?”

  “Because I thought it was magic fairy dust and it would make me dream about my own special Prince.”

  “Did it work?”

  Karen hesitated. “In a way, yes.”

  “You mean you dreamed about Daddy, right?”

  “Well, I didn’t know it was Daddy at the time, but, yes, I dreamed about a tall, handsome cowboy with black hair and a wonderfully shy smile who would carry me off on his big white horse and love me forever.”

  “Only Daddy’s favorite horse is buckskin.”

  “That’s true, but not everything in dreams comes true exactly the way you think it will.”

  Vicki eased to her back and regarded her mother with a thoughtful expression. “Is Daddy your really-and-truly Prince Charming?”

  Karen fashioned the smile her daughter clearly expected. “Really and truly.”

  “Forever and ever?”

  It was difficult to speak past the lump in her throat. “Close your eyes now, sweetheart. No more talking.”

  Vicki yawned, then drew a tired-little-girl breath. “I still think I’d rather dream about Goldie. Besides, Daddy says there’s no such thing as real magic—just pretend, like in books and on TV. He said I should never forget that, especially when I was all grown up and meeting boys.”

  “Meeting boys?”

  “Uh-huh. He said boys say stuff just to get a girl to kiss ‘em, and that I should be real, real sure I loved a boy before I kissed him back. He said a lot of people end up awful miserable if they’re not careful about stuff like that.” She gave a drowsy little blink. “But you let Daddy kiss you, right? And you’re not miserable.”

  “I said ‘no more talk,’ remember?”

  Vicki yawned again, her questions already forgotten. While the empty feeling inside her spread, Karen watched her daughter’s eyes close and her face relax. She didn’t realize she, herself, was crying until a tear slid down her cheek and onto the cheerfully striped sheets.

  Chapter Ten

  Karen gave the already spotless bathroom sink another swipe with the pale blue towel before returning it to the old porcelain rod she’d found buried under a pile of castoffs in the barn loft. Then, for the next few minutes, she made sure all the other towels were lined up perfectly.

  After leaving Vicki’s bedroom twenty minutes ago, she’d made one last tour of the house to make sure the doors were bolted, though she knew full well they were—Cassidy was meticulous about security for his family—and then she’d brushed her teeth until her gums were stinging painfully. She was stalling and knew it.

  Walking carefully, as though the colorful cotton hall runner was strewn with ground glass, she made her way down the short passage to the master bedroom. After switching off the hall light, she opened the door and slipped inside. Illuminated by only the small reading lamp on her side of the large Victorian bed, the room was shrouded in shadows.

  Cassidy was sitting up in bed with the sheet pulled to his waist, his reading glasses sliding down his nose, the way they always did when he was absorbed in something. He glanced up as she entered, watching her over the rims. It never failed to intrigue her at the difference those glasses made. He still looked ruggedly appealing, but his harsh features seemed gentler somehow when he was peering through horn-rimmed lenses—especially when he was reading to Vicki.

  “Is she asleep?” Though his gaze was direct, his expression was remote.

  “Yes, poor darling. She’s had a pretty rotten day, all in all.”

  One side of his mouth edged upward. “All in all, she’s not the only one.”

  “No, she’s not the only one.”

  He hesitated, then closed the stock breeder’s magazine he’d been reading and set it on the night table. His glasses followed. Though he always slept nude, even on the coldest of winter nights, she saw that he was still wearing the white T-shirt, and she suspected, his briefs.

  “Thanks for backing me up about school tomorrow,” she said as she went to the closet and slid it open.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” he said to her back.

  “I realize that.” She went to her tiptoes and reached to the second shelf for the spare blanket she kept there in anticipation of Colorado’s frequent sub-zero nights.

  “She’s my daughter, too, Karen,” he said as she slid the door closed again. “Don’t ever forget that.”

  “I don’t intend to. And if you’re suggesting I’d use her as a weapon against you, forget it. I wouldn’t do that.” Bristling at his arrogance, she turned to glare at him. “Like it or not, we have a responsibility to Vicki to be civilized about this separation.”

  “Separation?” One black eyebrow rose in a lazy arch. “Thought you intended to divorce me.”

  She told herself it couldn’t be pain in his voice. Not when his eyes were clearly rejecting her. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  “You had a choice and you made it.”

  Now live with it, she heard in the silence that followed. Her already raw emotions seemed to
bleed a little.

  “Get this straight, Cassidy. I do not intend to listen to one more snotty word about the choices I’ve made. Or my right to make them. Just as you’ve had the right to make yours.”

  “What choices, Kari?” His voice was silvered with sarcasm. “What kind of choice does a man have when a woman comes to him with his child in her belly and all but begs him to marry her?”

  Karen heard a gasp and realized it had come from her throat. At the same time she saw shame race over Cassidy’s hard features.

  “I think it would be best if I slept on the couch.” She didn’t care that her words were brittle or that her legs were shaking. No matter what happened later, she intended to get through this with her dignity intact. “I’ll set the alarm on my watch to wake me up before Vicki’s up. So you see, wearing armor to bed was totally unnecessary.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She meant to shoot a pointed glance at his chest, but somehow her gaze ended up lower, at the distinctive mound made by the sheet. Even unaroused, Cassidy was impressive.

  “Is that an invitation?” The angry red flush that appeared on his cheeks like the burn left by a vicious blow took her by surprise.

  “No. An observation.”

  Cassidy tossed off the covers and stood up. “Sure you’re not interested in one last time for the road?” he drawled, moving around the end of the bed toward her, his eyes glittering now with a barely controlled emotion she couldn’t have named if her life depended on it.

  “For Vicki’s sake I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” she said, dying inside.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Give the poor suffering sucker a break.” He reached out to take a lock of her hair between his callused fingertips. “I’ll make it good for you.”

  “Stop it.” She tried to pull away, but he simply moved his hand to the back of her neck. Though his grip wasn’t rough, she knew all too well the strength in those long, sinewy fingers. With one twist of that powerful wrist, he could snap her neck. No fuss, no muss.

  She refused to let fear take hold. Cassidy was responding to some inner need to hurt her. She could understand that. What she couldn’t do—wouldn’t do—was forgive him.

  “Let me go, Cassidy,” she said firmly, putting as much steel in her tone as she could summon.

  “I know what you like, Kari. All the places where you like to be petted, the spots where you want my mouth.” He brought his other hand up and used the pad of his thumb to trace her lower lip. His eyes glittered, and his breathing was ragged. “Lie down for me, Kari, and spread your legs.”

  She felt a killing rage and hoped it showed in her eyes. “I hate you for this.”

  “Go ahead and hate me. It makes it easier that way.” He bent his head, his intention to kiss her burning in his black eyes. She reacted instinctively, jerking backward and lifting her hand at the same time. Driven by fury, her palm hit his cheek with a loud crack, snapping his head back.

  He reacted like a wild man, his hand snaking out to grab her around the waist. “You…bitch,” he growled. “I won’t let you destroy me the way she destroyed my father, saying she loved him, saying she loved me…and all the while she was cutting my old man off at the knees. Emasculating him inch by inch—but I’m not my father!”

  Karen knew fear then, the icy, uncontrolled kind that took the strength from her bones and set her heart racing. She’d seen Cassidy angry before, but never like this. Never vicious. He was a man driven by something beyond his control.

  Tormented.

  “Let me go,” she ordered, trying to blank out her fear. “Or I’ll have you arrested.”

  He flinched, but his gaze bored into hers. “Go ahead, Kari. But I promise you’ll live to regret it.”

  “Nothing you could do to me would be worse than you’ve already done.”

  “No? How about suing you for custody of our daughter?”

  The room filled with a gray mist and began to revolve. She hauled in air and tried to force herself to concentrate. Dimly she was aware of Cassidy’s face twisting. Of his eyes changing, growing alarmed.

  “Oh, God, Kari, I didn’t mean—”

  “M-mommy?”

  With a low cry, Karen jerked an anguished gaze toward the sound and saw her daughter standing barefoot and trembling by the door Karen had neglected to close. Ignoring Cassidy, Karen jerked away and went to her daughter, who was now as rigid as a statue, her skin parchment pale and her eyes dull with shock. Karen was afraid to touch her. Instead, she knelt in front of her, bringing them eye to eye.

  “Vicki. Baby, it’s…it’s all right,” she managed to say with soothing calm despite the wad of remorse lodged in her windpipe.

  “I…I don’t like it when D-Daddy shouts at you.”

  “Daddy wasn’t really shouting, sweetie. We were just having a heated discussion.” She shot Cassidy a look. “Weren’t we, Daddy?”

  It seemed to take him a moment to find his voice. When he did, it came out ravaged and abrupt. “Yeah, a discussion. Nothing for you to worry about, peanut.”

  Vicki darted a stricken gaze back and forth between them several times, while her small white teeth worried her bottom lip. Karen had never seen her looking so desolate, not even in those sad hours after Goldie’s death.

  “T-Tommy Secord said that when mommies and daddies fight, it means they’re going to get a divorce,” Vicki eventually said in a tiny voice.

  “Sometimes, yes, but not always.” Karen felt her stomach begin to quiver, and she felt a vicious jolt of self-contempt. Thanks to her own selfish need to lash out and Cassidy’s outburst of rage, time had just run out.

  “Are…are you guys gonna get a divorce?” Vicki persisted in the way of unusually perceptive children.

  In the periphery of her vision, Karen saw Cassidy stiffen and swallow hard. “Yes, we are,” he said before Karen could force the words past her constricted throat. “But that doesn’t mean either of us will ever divorce you, sweetheart.” He moved then, going to kneel next to Karen. His body radiated tension, every muscle taut, every sinew lashed with restraint.

  “Daddy’s right, darling,” Karen added, desperate to make Vicki understand. “We both love you very, very much.”

  Vicki’s gaze mirrored a grief-stricken confusion that broke her mother’s heart. She looked so vulnerable in the fuzzy pink pj’s with her one rosy cheek still bearing the imprint of her pillow. “That’s what the daddies and mommies on TV say, and then they end up doing awful things to each other.”

  Like now, Karen thought as a tearing guilt settled over her like a thorny shirt. “Vicki, sweetie, listen—”

  “Tommy said his daddy went away because he didn’t love his mommy anymore. He said his daddy has a girlfriend who’s nicer than his mommy.” Her eyes pleaded with Cassidy an instant before she asked plaintively, “Is that why you were yelling at Mommy? ’Cause you don’t love her anymore?”

  Cassidy dropped his head for a moment before returning his gaze to his daughter’s pleading gaze. “That’s between your mom and me, Vick,” he said softly but firmly. “What’s important for you to know is that we intend to do all we can to help you get through this.”

  “But I don’t want you to get a d-divorce,” she cried, her voice soaked with the tears that were now streaming down her cheeks. “Please, Daddy, tell Mommy you’re sorry and you won’t ever yell again.”

  “Oh, baby, don’t.” Cassidy took in air, then reached out to draw Vicki into his arms. “We can’t always have what we want.” For the first time since she’d been old enough to control her own actions, their daughter resisted her father’s embrace.

  “Vicki, I know it hurts now, but it won’t always,” Karen ventured as she gently took one of her daughter’s hands in hers. The small fingers curled trustingly around hers, then gripped hard.

  “Wh-what will happen to me’n Rags?” she asked in a small voice. The tears were running down her cheeks now, but, when Karen tried to wipe at them, Vicki
flinched away.

  “You’ll live part of the time with me at Grandma’s until we find our own new house,” Karen told her gently, lowering her hand. “And part of the time you’ll live with Daddy here at the ranch.”

  “It’ll be okay, peanut,” Cassidy added, his voice thick. “Mom and I won’t ever walk away and leave you alone, no matter what.”

  Karen heard the rough emotion in his tone and realized that his need to reassure her had come directly from his own experience as an abandoned child. For a moment she couldn’t speak. When she finally found her voice, she had to pull the words from deep inside, one by one.

  “Vicki, listen to me. Daddy is telling you the absolute truth. We will never, ever abandon you.”

  Vicki glared at her father, her eyes blazing, and yet so filled with hurt Karen had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

  “I don’t care what you do!” she cried before wrenching her hand free and bolting back down the hall to her room.

  The silence that settled into the dimly lit room was painfully tense. Neither moved for a beat, then Cassidy slowly got to his feet. The athletic grace that had always characterized his movements was absent, and he looked older somehow, as he ran an impatient hand through his tumbled hair.

  “Kari, I know there’s nothing I can say—”

  “No, there’s nothing more either of us can say to erase the hurt we just caused an innocent child.”

  With the economy of movement so characteristic of a man who rationed out his life in patterns of his own, he turned his back on her and strode to his side of the closet, his bare feet making no sound against the carpet.

  “Why are you getting dressed now?” she asked as she watched him grab a pair of jeans at random.

  “I’m going to sleep in the barn,” he said, jerking on the old Wranglers one long leg at a time. “First thing in the morning I’ll make arrangements to fly to Stockton to pick up the bull.”

  Karen moved with stiff strides to the bed and sank down on the mattress. “I thought you were going to wait until the end of the month.” Not that she cared. It was just something to say. Anything to keep her mind from replaying the last few minutes.