“Not that I’m arguing against it. Knowing Ida Mae, I doubt she’d ask if she didn't think it was serious.”
Em eyed Tilda, gnawing on her lip. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“I’ve got this,” he said. “Promise. Go ahead. I won’t take my eyes off her.”
She looked at him, looked at Tilda again, nodded. “It’s hard, leaving her.”
“Did you take her on all your calls back in New Mexico?”
“No. But I had a daycare person I trusted—not that I don’t trust you,” she added quickly. “I just…it’s new,” she finished, and it was lame and she knew it.
“Go ahead. She’ll be okay.”
She nodded and went to the craft table. Tilda had chosen an ornament shaped like a woman’s shoe, and was gluing tiny multicolored plastic jewels all over its heel. “Mommy’s going to go take care of a sick dog. You’re going to stay here with your dad and have fun, and I’ll be back in a little while. Okay?”
“Kay.”
She never even looked up, her focus on her task. Her little tongue was poking out in concentration.
“Can I have a hug goodbye?”
“How ‘bout a cheek kiss?” Tilda asked, eyes on the shoe, but tipping her cheek up.
“Grrr.” Emily bent and kissed her cheek, then wrapped her up in a big hug anyway. “You be good.”
“I will.”
Nodding, she straightened and turned to Joey. He was watching her, and there was a light in his eyes that touched her. He was happy, grateful, and directing all of it her way.
“She’s fast, Joey,” Em said. “She can be there and then gone in as long as it takes you to blink.”
“I’ve got it. I promise. Go, heal the sick puppy. I’ll see you when you get back.”
#
It was, he thought, the best hour of his life. Right up there on the same level with the first time he and Emily had made love on the soft green grass, concealed by fragrant blossoms in the poolside garden, long ago. He had his little girl all to himself. He helped her decorate her ornament, and let her pick out a wreath to hang on her bedroom door. He carried her around on his shoulders, and played with her in the play yard, and they took a hot cocoa break together when they got tired out.
He’d never thought all that much about fatherhood. But looking down at that little girl with her mother’s burnished curls and his own brown eyes, seeing the absolute love in those eyes when they gazed up at him, brought him feelings he’d never known. This was a whole new thing, a powerful thing.
They were on the Hayride-Sleighride, laughing and singing “Jingle Bells” with a bunch of other kids and parents. He was sitting in the hay, his hands at Tilda’s waist and she was standing, so she could see over the elaborately painted plywood sleigh cutouts attached to the sides, to see the rushing Cimarron river beside them. The path they took wound thrillingly close to the river’s edge.
And then something happened. There was a huge bang, the wagon dropped sharply to the right. Joe was slammed to one side, cracking his head hard, and Tilda was gone. Just gone. Kids were crying, parents were picking them up, brushing them off.
He sprang to his feet, frantically searching the wagon. “Tilda!”
She shrieked from too far away and his heart froze as he spotted her. She was in the river!
And within another second, he was too.
Panic was as icy cold in his veins as the river water was on his skin as he plunged in. Memories of being under the water, tangled in seaweed, unable to get up, running out of air, came rushing back, but his fear for Tilda was stronger, louder, and drove him on. He came up sputtering, and swam as best he could, toward where he’d last seen her, trying to keep moving while at the same time trying to spot her again. The current was strong and did most of the work. His flailing arms and kicking feet helped him steer, but no one would’ve called what he was doing swimming.
Someone shouted, “Sharp left, Joey!” It was Rob’s voice.
He obeyed and spotted her, bounding up and down, riding the current downstream and wailing in terror. He paddled toward her with everything he had, and within seconds, she was in his arms and she was hugging his neck so tight he could barley breathe. “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you. You're okay.” He held her head up above the water, and sought the bottom with his feet, but the current was strong and kept knocking them out from beneath him. He took the brunt of it as he slowly made his way to the shore, thirty yards downstream from where he’d gone in. His brother Rob was waist deep by then, reaching out a hand, getting hold of Joey’s arm, pulling him up onto the riverbank.
Kiley was waiting there, under a sprawling river birch with a big blanket, and as he staggered toward her with Tilda’s face buried in his neck. He realized he didn’t feel right. The ground was moving in waves. His legs were unsteady. He was having trouble putting one foot in front of the other.
“Jeeze, Joey—”
“My God what happened!” Emily’s shout cut Kiley off. Joe was wrapping his little girl in the big blanket when Emily suddenly tore her from his arms, arranging the blanket herself, holding Tilda, rocking her as she sobbed and shivered. “Are you okay, baby? Are you okay?”
“There was an accident—” Joey began.
“The accident was leaving her with you! What was I thinking? You’ve never even…”
He wasn’t hearing much, and he didn’t realize he was falling until he hit the ground.
“Joey!”
He heard that, and Tilda shrieking “Daddy!” Not much else, though.
#
Emily’s fury evaporated the instant Joey toppled like a felled redwood. A dark red pool spread into the grass where his head had landed. Tilda started howling and reaching and trying to twist out of Emily’s arms. Joey’s brother Rob fell to his knees beside him, and gently lifted his head, turning it so he could see where the blood was coming from. She could see, too, and hoped she’d covered Tilda’s eyes before she had. There was a gash in the back of Joe’s skull that looked like it had been made by an axe. She sucked in a breath, staggering backwards.
Rob looked up and said, “Get Sophie.”
“She’s already on her way,” Kiley said. Then she shot a hateful look at Emily. “It wasn’t his fault. The wagon wheel broke, no warning.” She nodded back at the tilted wagon. People were standing around it, talking and pointing. Joey’s brother Jason and his father were in between, keeping the crowd away from where Joe lay on the ground. “I saw it happen,” Kiley went on. “He had his hands around her waist, but she’s so light she just launched.”
A horn gave a staccato series of beeps, and a Subaru rolled through the parting crowds. Doc. Sophie got out one door, black bag in hand. Her teenage son Max got out the other door and came rushing forward. Sophie went straight to Emily, her hands quickly pushing wet hair up off Tilda’s face. “You okay, Tilda?”
“Daddy saved me,” she said, nodding. “But he got hurted. I think his head is broken.”
Sophie moved quickly to Joey, lying unconscious on the ground. She slid a neck brace beneath him and fastened it tight. Max knelt beside her, opened the medical bag and took out a soft plastic bottle of saline solution.
“Tell me everything,” Sophie ordered as she squirted saline into the wound to rinse the blood away. Max aimed a penlight at the injury while she did, even though it was daylight.
“He was in the wagon, watching his daughter like a hawk,” Kiley said, shooting another glare Emily’s way. “The wheel broke, and he was slammed against the back. There’s some metal trim along the back edge. I don’t know why the hell I didn’t covere it in padding. Tilda just shot up out of the wagon like she was launched from a catapult and landed in the water. Joe dove over the side and went in after her before her dress had a chance to soak through.”
“So he was walking, talking?”
“Carried her right up to her mother. Then collapsed when she started screaming at him like a freaking crazy person.”
The teena
ger shot his mom a look. Sophie was pressing clean white bandages to the back of Joey’s head and wrapping it tight with gauze. Pressure, Emily figured.
Sophie said, “Okay. Kiley, Rob, you should see to your guests. Make sure no one else got hurt. Assure them Joey and Tilda are fine.” She glanced up at Tilda who was hugging her mom and crying softly.
“Is he?” Emily asked.
“I am,” Joey said. It was kind of a moan, but he was trying to sit up between Sophie and Max and looking Tilda’s way. “You okay, honey?”
Tilda nodded. “You bleeded a lot, Daddy. But doctor Sophie put a Band-Aid on it.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t need a hospital?” Emily asked Sophie. Rob was leading his hot-tempered bride Kiley away, but they stopped when they reached Bobby Joe and Jason. Some of the teenage, elf-hatted helpers gathered around Kiley and she apparently gave them instructions and sent them back to work. The crowd started to dissipate.
“You should have an X-ray,” Sophie said. “Make sure you didn’t crack your skull. You need a pile of stitches, too. I can do both of those things at the clinic, if you prefer it to the ER at Tucker Lake General.”
He nodded. “I prefer it.” Then he nodded at Emily. “Bring Tilda. She needs an exam, too.”
“I’m okay, Daddy. You saved me.”
Jason and his father came over, then. Jason extended a hand to his injured brother and helped him to his feet.
Sophie got up, too, kept one hand on Joey’s shoulder. “Want a ride, Emily?” she asked. “You can pick up the van later. You look pretty shaken up.”
She shook her head. “We’ll meet you at the clinic. I need to get Tilda into dry clothes.” She carried her baby to her van, cranked the motor and turned up the heat. But the whole time she kept an eye on Joey as his brother helped him into Sophie’s car.
She used the blanket to rub Tilda down, looking her over head to toe while she quickly changed her clothes. You didn’t have a three-year-old and not carry a spare outfit or two wherever you went. Em peeled off Tilda’s pretty green dress and white tights and Dora the Explorer undies in the back of the van and checked her all over for bruises. There wasn’t a single one, but she was shivering like a dry leaf in a windstorm. Quickly, Em put dry clothes on her, a pair of red and white striped leggings and a blue sweater dress with a knitted rosebud at the waist. She topped it with Tilda’s spare jacket, pink with sparkles, which, she noted, was getting a little bit snug. Then she used the dry parts of the blanket to rub down her curls and buckled her into her car seat. The van was nice and warm, by then, and Tilda’s shivering seemed to be slowing. Her lips were pink again, not the terrifying blue they’d been at first, and her eyes were clear.
“Hurry up, Mommy. I want to see if Daddy’s okay.”
“He’s okay. Dr. Sophie’s got him. We’re going to him right now, okay?”
She nodded, then her eyes went wide. “My orange-a-mint!”
Someone tapped on the van door, and when she opened it, Emily saw Bobby Joe himself standing there, holding up a pretty little plastic, shoe-shaped ornament that was completely covered in glitter.
“I found this in the wagon,” he said.
“My orange-a-mint!” Tilda took it from him and said, “Thanks, Grampa.”
“You’re welcome, my girl.” Then he looked at Emily. “I’d like to ride to the clinic with you, if you don’t mind.”
Blinking, Em nodded. “All right.”
He kissed Tilda’s forehead, and then got into the front passenger seat. Emily double checked the car seat buckles, then closed the side door and got behind the wheel.
“I can’t believe how fast he went in after her,” Bobby Joe said as she pulled carefully out of the parking area, watching for children and driving slow. “Given his history with water.”
Her brain had been running at full tilt until he said those words. The myriad thoughts skidded to a stop, and she flashed back in her mind to the day Joey McIntyre had jumped from a very tall ledge into a very small coy pond, vanished beneath the water, and failed to come back up. He’d got his foot tangled in seaweed at the bottom. She was just a little girl, six years old at the time. And she’d seen the way the water churned as he struggled underneath. She’d screamed for help. His brothers had come running. They dove in and pulled him out.
She’d never seen anything so terrifying as Joey’s limp body, his closed eyes, and his big brother Jason blowing air into his lungs and pumping on his chest.
He’d nearly drowned. She didn’t think he’d gone swimming since. Until today.
Em quickly turned on the backseat DVD player for Tilda, so she wouldn’t overhear anything she shouldn’t.
“He’s had a phobia ever since that day at the coy pond,” Bobby Joe was saying. “That’s why you could never coax him into the pool with you all those times you snuck around out there with your girlfriends.”
She lifted her brows. “You knew about that?”
He nodded. “I didn’t mind at all. To tell you the truth, Judith and I always hoped the two of you would end up together. Did she mention that when you saw her?”
She shook her head.
“Well, it’s true. We talked about it all the time. What a perfect match you’d be for him, what beautiful babies you would make.” He glanced over his seat at Tilda, and his face went sappy sweet. “We were right.”
She turned a corner. The clinic was only a couple of miles away, but maybe it was time for her to take this particular bull by the horns. “I’d like to hear your side of it,” she said. “This thing that happened between you and my father. I’d like to know what he said to you, what you said to him.”
He sighed deeply, glanced into the back to be sure Tilda wasn’t listening. A glance in the mirror told Em she was completely involved in the DVD she was watching.
“I won’t speak ill of the dead,” Bobby Joe said at length. “Your father’s actions that day were completely out of character, and in hindsight, I wish I hadn’t fired him for it. He panicked, and he was doing what he thought was best for you. As a father myself, I can’t hold that against him.”
“He told you I was pregnant,” she said. “And that Joey was the father.”
Bobby Joe nodded. “And that you’d already made your decision. Were already in the process of carrying it out. He talked about you being the first member of his family to go to college, and your future, and your genius, and how the family name was on your shoulders.” He lowered his head. “I couldn’t tell Joey. It would’ve broken his heart. I should have known better. I knew you, had watched you grow up. I should’ve known. But I took Henry’s word for it.”
She nodded. “And the money?”
“He asked for it. I might have offered anyway, if he hadn’t. I don’t know. But not to bribe you or influence you. If it were left to me, I’d have tried to bribe you to keep her. Not the opposite.” Then he shrugged. “I don’t have any proof of that. I realize you have to choose to believe me or believe your own father, and I don’t blame you if you choose him.”
She nodded.
“I don’t blame him for trying to look out for you, Emily,” he said. “You were everything to him. He hung every hope he ever had on you. Judith used to say it was too heavy a load to put on one little girl’s shoulders. She always worried he expected too much from you. That you’d never feel you had lived up to his hopes and dreams for you, no matter how well you might do in life.”
She blinked and glanced sideways at him. “That’s exactly how I’ve felt since…since I can remember. That my father’s happiness was all up to me.”
“To Henry, the pregnancy threatened everything he had planned for you, every hope he had for your future.”
She nodded. “I believe that, too.”
Bobby Joe nodded. “Whatever you choose to believe about me, and what happened that day, Emily, I want to be very clear on this. Joey never knew. Not any of it. And that little girl back there means more to me than I can even tell you. I’d cut out my own h
eart out to make her well. That’s the truth. Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”
She looked over at him and was surprised to see tears pooling in his eyes. And then she was pulling into the driveway of the big old Victorian that housed the Big Falls Family Clinic.
Chapter Eleven
Two hours and thirteen stitches later, Joey was propped up in his own bed, in his room above the Long Branch, staring at the door and making escape plans. His brothers were downstairs, and so were his father and Vidalia. Bobby Joe was greeting the patrons personally tonight. Kiley, Rob and Jason were doing everything else. And Vidalia was, as far as he could tell, on guard dog duty. If he so much as put a toe out of bed, she was chasing him right back into it again. There was no escape.
And then there was a soft knock at the door. It couldn’t be Vidalia. She hadn’t knocked once.
“Come on in,” he called.
At first it was no one. The door opened, and there was only a view of the hallway beyond it. Then he sat up on his elbows and saw them. Tilda had a little wooden tray in her two hands. It had to be heavy, with its plate of goodies and steaming mugs and the little rosebud in a blue glass bud vase. He could see her innocent smile behind the rosebud, her dimples…even in her chin. The way her eyes smiled as much as her lips. And right behind her, crouching low, her hands over Tilda’s on the tray, Emily. Her eyes were on his, uncertain and worried. And maybe a little bit sorry. Her strawberry and honey hair cascaded right down to Tilda’s, whose head just reached Emily’s chin. You couldn’t tell whose curls were whose beyond that point.
Emily shuffled the two of them into the room, somehow maintaining her crouch, all the way up to the side of his bed. She helped Tilda lift the tray toward him, and he took it and settled it on his lap. “This looks amazing. Thank you,” he said to Tilda. He didn’t care what the tray held. He was just glad to see her looking so good. So normal. Like nothing had happened.
Tilda smiled and held out her arms. He reached for her, but Emily scooped her up first. “Ah-ah. Concussion protocol, Joey.”
Oklahoma Starshine Page 14
