Lindy propped both elbows on her knees and rested her chin on her hands as she stared at her sister. “Are you mad at me ’cause you got hurt?”
“No.”
“You never want to play anymore.”
Kayla sighed. “Cheryl needs me because she’s so sad. We can play tomorrow.”
“Okay.” With that problem solved, Lindy turned to another. “Dad’s mad at Cheryl because we don’t talk the same anymore,” she decided at last. “Cheryl won’t stay and be our mommy if Daddy’s mad at her.”
“So?”
“So, we got to talk the same again.”
“Okay,” Kayla agreed with a shrug.
“And Daddy’s mad cause he thinks we’ll be sad if Cheryl goes away like our real mom did.”
“Then we just gotta make her stay.”
“I know, but how?”
“I could hide her wallet again.”
Lindy shook her head. “No, Dad would know it was us.”
Kayla patted her sister’s shoulder. “You’ll think of something.”
“Maybe. But we got to pretend we don’t care if Cheryl’s gonna leave, then Dad won’t be mad, and they won’t fight. Can you do that?”
“Sure. I can pretend better than you.”
“Cannot.”
“Can, too.”
“Cannot.”
“Last one to the bed is a monkey’s uncle,” Kayla cried and raced down the stairs with her sister in hot pursuit.
Free to go. I’m free to go. The phrase echoed over and over in Cheryl’s mind as she lay in the darkness. If she was free to go, didn’t that mean she was also free to stay?
Don’t be stupid. It meant Sam wanted her to leave. And it was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Yet, lying in bed, she found it impossible to imagine what her life was going to be like after she left here. It would never be the same again, of that much she was sure. Before, her heart had belonged only to dancing. Now, she was very much afraid it belonged to Sam and his children.
She stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t possible, but even if she chose to stay with Sam, it would mean the end of her career. Half her life had been spent in the pursuit of one goal—to dance professional ballet. She couldn’t picture her life without it. A life without grueling practices and constant pain? A life without reaching that special moment when the music swept her along like the current of a river and carried her twirling and spinning as effortlessly as a piece of driftwood. It was her gift. How could she give it up?
She turned over in the bed. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t free to stay even if Sam asked her to. She was only here on borrowed time. It had been a mistake to stay in the first place. If Sam found out who she was now he wouldn’t want her anywhere near his children. Maybe he was right. The sooner she left, the better off everyone would be.
The next morning, Sam and Walter sat drinking coffee in the kitchen when Cheryl came out of her room. She cast Sam a wary glance, but he avoided making eye contact. She filled a cup for herself and sat down at the table. Suddenly, the pounding of feet broke the uneasy quiet as the twins erupted from the stairwell and streaked into the kitchen. They skidded to a stop in front of their father. “What’s for—”
“—breakfast?”
“I’m—”
“—starved.”
Mischievous eyes glanced at each other, and Cheryl was suddenly positive they could read each other’s thoughts.
“I’m so hungry—”
“—I could eat—”
“—a cat!” they shouted together. With a fit of giggles, they darted out of the kitchen calling, “Here kitty, kitty,” as they pounded down the stairs.
Sam raised an eyebrow at Cheryl, and she sputtered out a sip of coffee as she began to laugh.
“They’re back,” he said, giving her a sheepish smile.
Cheryl’s heart lightened at the sight of that familiar lopsided grin. “Do you think we’ll live to regret it?”
“Only if they catch the cat,” Walter said dryly.
Cheryl giggled. “Yum, kitty catatori, my favorite.”
It was good to see Sam smile again, Cheryl thought, as her traitorous heart soared.
Bonkers wisely remained out of sight until after breakfast. The twins settled for pancakes. Sam and Cheryl both watched with relief as they put away enough to feed a small army.
“Can we play outside?”
“Can Cheryl come with us to see Grandma’s garden?”
“Before she goes—”
“—back to New York?”
“Maybe after lunch,” Sam told them. They agreed without argument, then began to gather up the dishes and load the dishwasher without being reminded. “We’re going—”
“—to clean—”
“—our room,” they announced and left the kitchen.
Sam shot Cheryl a suspicious glance. “They look like—”
“—your children, and they sound like—”
“—my children, but I wonder—”
“—whose children they really are—”
“—and what have they done with mine?”
He grinned, and Cheryl burst into laugher. “That’s not as hard to do as it sounds,” she said between giggles.
“All you have to do is think alike,” Walter said, rising and putting his plate in the sink.
Her smile faded as she and Sam stared at each other across the kitchen table. He waited until Walter had left the room.
“Cheryl, I’m sorry about last night.” He hesitated a moment, then continued, “I didn’t mean the things I said. I was tired and worried. I guess I’ve been burning my candle at both ends trying to run the ranch and trying to prove I’ve still got what it takes to be an architect.”
“It’s all right. If I thought I would hurt the girls by staying, I’d be gone in a minute.”
He nodded. “I know. I overreacted,” he conceded. “They seem to understand about your leaving. I just didn’t want them to get hurt again.”
He stared down at the cup in his hand. “They weren’t even three when their mother left, but they cried for days.”
He was silent for a long time as he stared into his cup, and Cheryl saw the twins hadn’t been the only ones hurt by their mother’s desertion. Sam had been hurt, as well. He was still hurting, and Cheryl wanted nothing more than to ease his pain.
Reaching across the table, she touched his arm. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked gently.
He gave a weary sigh. “I don’t know where to start. We met in college, and it was love at first sight, or so we thought. We were married before we even knew who the other person really was. My parents had always talked about their whirlwind romance, and I thought it would be the same for me.”
With a sad shake of his head, he continued. “It didn’t take long for the new to wear off. We should’ve called it quits then, but I kept thinking we could make it work.”
Gazing into Cheryl’s sympathetic eyes, Sam felt a lump rise in his throat. It was hard to put into words how much his wife’s desertion had cost him, but he wanted her to understand.
“She hated living on the ranch. Like a fool, I believed that if she loved me enough, she’d come to love the ranch, too. When she told me she was pregnant, I was ecstatic. My mother tried to tell me Natalie wasn’t happy, but I blew her off.”
He shrugged. “Anyway, the twins were born eight weeks prematurely. They were in incubators the first four weeks of their life. You’d never know to look at them now, but they were so tiny it scared me to touch them. Natalie became sick and ran a high fever after the delivery. She didn’t want to see the girls. She said she was afraid she might make them sick, too. At the time, I thought she was right, so I spent every minute I could with the babies in the nursery. I knew that they needed me, needed to know that someone loved them, and I felt so bad that their mother couldn’t be with them.”
He moved to pour himself another cup of coffee. He hadn’t been blind. For the first time, he’d admitted to hims
elf that he’d seen all the signs of her discontent, but he had ignored them. He had been as much to blame as Natalie for the failure of their marriage.
Cheryl said, “I’ve seen what a good father you are. It doesn’t surprise me that you spent time with them in the hospital.”
“I should have spent more of that time with my wife. Anyway, once we finally got the twins home, things were better for a while, but as the girls got older, I could see Natalie was growing more and more unhappy. She said she needed to work again, so I proposed we build our own house. The money was needed to get this ranch back on its feet, but I thought if she had a home she’d designed herself, maybe she’d be more content.”
“Did it help?”
“We worked on the plans together and it was like old times for a few months. Then, after one trip she made to Kansas City, everything changed. Nothing we could get locally was good enough. She had to have special tile for the kitchen, special drapes, a dozen things that required her to travel back to KC. I never suspected she was seeing someone else.
“She filed for divorce two weeks before the girls’ third birthday and gave me full custody. She said she wasn’t cut out to be a mother.”
“Sam, I’m so sorry.”
“Now you know why I’m overprotective of them sometimes.”
“I think I do.”
“It took a lot of soul searching to get through that time.”
Cheryl looked down and rubbed her palms on her jeans. “After I lost my mother I didn’t understand how such a bad thing could happen. I was angry. Silly, wasn’t it?”
“No. It was human.”
Sam reached across the table. Cheryl laid her hand in his, welcoming the strength that seemed to flow from him.
“I do need your help for a bit longer. I have to be in Kansas City tomorrow. If I miss another meeting, my client will start looking for a new architect,” he admitted.
“I can stay a few days longer.”
But not forever, Sam thought as he studied her delicate face. And that was what he really wanted. Forever.
That afternoon, Sam announced his plan to ride out and check the pastures. “I need to see if they’re dry enough to start the range burning. It’s got to be done soon. The grass needs at least a month of growth before the cattle are moved out onto it. That late snow has put us behind.”
While he was gone, the twins insisted Cheryl spend the afternoon with them in their grandmother’s garden.
“It’s the prettiest place—” Kayla began.
“—in the whole world,” Lindy finished.
Cheryl agreed to go with them, but she was dismayed when she saw the path they took away from the house. Narrow and steep, it curved downward around the face of the bluff, and she eyed it with unease. Getting down it on crutches might not be a problem, but getting back up could be. The girls were already skipping down ahead of her, so she gathered her nerve and followed carefully.
The path ended at a doorway in an old stone wall. It had once been a small rock house, but as Cheryl peered through the doorway, she could see the wall with the door was the only one left standing. Tall cottonwood trees shaded the ground beyond, and Cheryl followed the twins through the opening.
Twin stone benches sat on either side of a large sundial in the middle of a shady glade surrounded by masses of nodding yellow daffodils. Hyacinths in a rainbow of colors clustered close to the paving stones around the benches and added their irresistible sweet fragrance to the air. Pointed blades of iris leaves clustered along a small stone wall that ran a dozen yards out from the corner of the old house and enclosed the glade on three sides. In one corner, the long canes of a rose bush arched in budding green sprays.
Cheryl sat down on the bench and watched the girls as they gathered flowers in the dappled shade. Their arms were loaded with early-spring blooms when they came and sat down beside her at last.
“Grandma Eleanor says this is her favorite place in the whole world,” Lindy told her.
“’Cause this is where she can close her eyes and hear the sounds of happiness,” Kayla added.
Both girls squeezed their eyes shut tightly and listened. Cheryl watched them with amusement. They were quiet only a few moments when Lindy shook her head. “I don’t hear anything. Let’s go throw rocks in the water.” She took off toward the creek bank. Her bouquet lay forgotten on the bench.
“Okay,” Kayla jumped up, but handed Cheryl her armload of flowers. “You listen for it. Grandma says you have to have your eyes closed.”
Cheryl smiled, but she closed her eyes obediently and listened.
The warm, spring wind brushed past her cheeks like the touch of soft silk and sent the cottonwood leaves rustling overhead like the petticoats of a dozen dancers crammed into one small dressing room. Birds chirped gaily, the wind sighed through the long grass on the hillside behind her, and the sound of little voices came to her.
“I see a frog.”
“Where?”
“By that log.”
“Oh, I see it.”
“You better go kiss him.”
“Yuck! Why?”
“He might be a prince.”
“I don’t want a prince that bad.”
“Me, neither.”
“Hey, you should kiss Jimmy Slader.”
“Double yuck! No way.”
“Yeah, then maybe he’d turn into a frog.” Girlish giggles filled the air.
Cheryl smiled to herself. Happiness did indeed reside in the garden. The sounds of it were everywhere.
Opening her eyes, Cheryl leaned forward to study the old copper sundial aged to a deep green. She ran her finger over the raised words that circled the rim.
A time to weep,
And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn,
And a time to dance;
Eccl. 3:4
It was as if someone had written about her entire life in those four short lines.
Kayla came to sit beside Cheryl on the bench. “I like the sundial, don’t you?”
“It’s very pretty.”
A second later, Kayla took off in pursuit of her sister.
Cheryl’s fingers lingered on the worn words that rang so true to her life. “‘A time for everything,’” she whispered.
Was that true? Was this a time for her with Sam and the children? If Sam hadn’t been on the road that night she never would have known him or the twins. If she hadn’t been beside the corral that day would Kayla be alive now? The idea that she might somehow be part of a greater design gave her pause.
The twins played until they grew sleepy in the afternoon heat, and Cheryl decided it was time to head up the hill. As they emerged from the stone doorway, Sam sat on his horse waiting for them on the other side. Cheryl’s pulse jumped into double time at the sight of him.
“Afternoon ladies,” he drawled and tipped his hat. “That’s a mighty tall hill for a gal on crutches. Care for a lift?”
“Thank you, kind sir,” she drawled in an imitation of him.
He swung down from the horse, took her crutches and laid them on the ground. She rested her arms on his shoulders as he grasped her waist and lifted her into the saddle.
His strong fingers gripping her waist sent a tingling straight down her spine. Cheryl glanced at his face as his hands lingered. What was it that she saw in those hazel eyes? She couldn’t be sure because he released her abruptly and turned to swing the twins up, one in front of her and one behind her on the horse.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yup!” the twins said.
“I think so,” Cheryl answered dubiously as she looked up the steep, narrow path.
Sam picked up her crutches and handed them to her. “Courage is its own reward, New York.”
“That’s virtue, cowboy.”
“What’s virtue?” Kayla asked.
“You explain that one,” he suggested. He turned and started up the hill leading his horse.
“Thanks, cowboy. It means being very
good, Kayla.”
Lindy leaned around Cheryl. “Grandma wants us to be good, doesn’t she, Daddy?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m good,” Kayla declared.
“You are not,” her sister stated. “You wanted to turn Jimmy Slader into a frog. That’s not nice.”
“Oh. I forgot that.”
“You better say you’re sorry.”
Kayla raised her face to the heavens and called out, “I’m sorry I wanted to turn Jimmy into a frog.”
What about omissions and half-truths, Cheryl wondered. Would Sam be forgiving if he ever found out?
At the front of the house, Sam stopped the horse and handed the twins down. He took the crutches from Cheryl and gave them to the girls.
Cheryl wished she could get off by herself, but before she could think of a way, his hands gripped her waist again. When her feet touched the ground, she found she couldn’t move away from his touch. She avoided looking at him, afraid he would read the longing in her eyes.
He reached up to gently brush a strand of hair away from her face. “I don’t know why I try to resist you,” he whispered.
Her glance flew to his face. Her breath seemed to stick in her throat. He was going to kiss her. A small sound reminded her of the children staring with rapt curiosity.
“Ah, Sam,” she said leaning back.
“Hmm?”
“We have an audience.”
He turned his head and leveled a stern look at the twins. “Don’t you two have something to do?”
Each twin held out a crutch. Cheryl reached over and took them. The girls scooted for the house.
Sam removed his hands from Cheryl’s waist with reluctance. He hated to let her go. It felt so good when she was close to him. Maybe he was playing the fool, but did he care? Just to touch her made him feel alive in a way he’d never known. He shoved his hands into his pockets. He was letting his heart rule his head. That was a sure ticket to disaster.
“I need to go to Kansas City tomorrow. Will you be okay with Walter and the girls while I’m gone?”
“I can manage without you.”
He sighed and led Dusty toward the barn. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he told the horse.
Balancing Act Page 11
