Spring at Saddle Run

by Delores Fossen

  “About six months after the car wreck, I had sort of a meltdown,” he said. “I’d been carrying Ella’s rings in my jeans pocket, and I hit the brakes when a deer ran out in front of me. The diamond cut into my leg, and when I took it out—” He stopped. Had to. Because the emotion of that day was swallowing him again. “Anyway, I took off my ring and put both it and hers in the glove compartment. I figured one day I’d take them out and give them to Dara.”

  He sure as hell hadn’t forgotten about them. The rings were like the memories of Ella. And Royce. They just stuck and stuck and stuck.

  “I threw mine in Royce’s office. Threw them,” Millie emphasized. “As in I opened the door and tossed them in. I have no idea where they landed.” She paused. “I understand meltdowns.”

  Yeah, she did. It was that common ground again. Of course, the biggest common ground was that he wanted to throat punch the guilt and haul Millie off to bed.

  She took out a few tissues, handed a couple to him. Then, as if the glove compartment door was as fragile as a soap bubble, Millie eased it closed.

  “And FYI, that whole ‘out of sight, out of mind’ thing is total horseshit,” she added.

  Hearing her curse made him smile. “Horseshit, huh? That’s not very Millie Vanilla of you.”

  “Horseshit,” she repeated, and she dropped a quick, playful kiss on his mouth.

  Joe liked this moment almost as much as he had the real kiss in the rain. Almost. But it wasn’t wise to push things between them. Both of them could be broken—again—so he needed to take this slow. Maybe his idiot body would let him do just that.

  While Millie used the tissues to dry herself, Joe drove to Old Sawmill Trail. As expected, the rain had made the dirt surface slippery, but he plowed through it about a half mile before the old house came into view.

  Emphasis on old.

  Joe had to pick back through his memory, but he recalled this had once been Lou’s grandfather’s house, and Lou had inherited it about thirty years ago. Joe was betting the man hadn’t done many repairs or much upkeep in those three decades.

  There were scabs of white paint on the exterior, and the metal roof had wide streaks of rust. Weeds, some hip high, sprouted over the yard that might or might not have had grass or flower beds. Nothing about the place, including the owner, was anywhere close to being welcoming.

  “How the heck did Lou come to own clocks made by Hezzie’s husband?” Joe asked.

  “Apparently, he found them in the attic last year, and he called me, asking if I wanted to buy them. I’m not a clock expert so I hired someone from San Antonio to come out and take a look at them. He said they were the real deal.”

  Millie searched through the pictures on her phone and came up with a shot of two clocks. They were plain looking but in far better shape than the house.

  “Will you resell them in your shop?”

  “No, I’ll donate them to the Last Ride Society. They already have a stash of Hezzie’s things, but Alma’s been salivating for the clocks since she first heard about them.” She paused, looked at him. “And yes, it is a lot of money, but you probably already know I have a trust fund. I don’t spend any of that for my personal expenses. I live off the profits from the shop, and I use the trust fund for things like this.”

  He nearly said “admirable,” but it would have possibly come out sounding snarky. Which he didn’t mean. It was admirable, and it shot to hell the original image he’d had of her being a pampered, sheltered rich girl. Of course, the kiss had played into shooting that image to hell, too. Millie was still rich, but he was considering a whole new list of adjectives to describe her.

  Like hot.

  And tasty.

  Joe could have added other things. Naked things. But he was already uncomfortable enough so he pushed as much of it aside as he could.

  “I’m going to go ahead and write the check and the bill of sale,” she said, doing that while the rain battered the truck. “I want to be able to hand it to him when we go in so he doesn’t try to jack around with the price.”

  Jacking around was something Lou would probably try to do. Especially since the man was probably hard up for money.

  Joe rummaged around under the seat and came up with an umbrella that he handed to Millie. He didn’t bother looking for one for himself since he was already wet, but Millie got out, opened the umbrella and hurried to his side to share it with him. Of course, that put them arm to arm and side to side, but Joe figured this was mild contact compared to what had gone on by the wildflowers.

  The moment they stepped on the porch, the front screen door creaked open, and Lou stepped out. Joe had been a teenager the last time he’d seen the man, and like the house, the years had not been kind to Lou. His beer gut strained against the piss-colored T-shirt he was wearing, and his graying scruff had gone well past any fashionable stage.

  Lou licked his cracked lips when he eyed Millie, and Joe thought he might indeed have to kick the man’s ass before this visit was over and done. Lou shifted his attention to Joe. Scowled. Then, his dull dust-colored eyes went a little wide with recognition.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Lou said, his words slurring more than a little, and his breath was boozy enough to kill small critters. “You’re Hardy’s kid. Boy, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  A while that wasn’t nearly long enough. “Mrs. Dayton is here to get the clocks,” Joe said to hurry this along. He kept the umbrella open but set it on the porch.

  Joe’s reminder caused Lou to turn back to Millie. And he licked his scabby lips again.

  “We’re in a hurry,” Joe added to stop Lou from trying to undress Millie with his eyes.

  Lou nodded, scratched his head and smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “I didn’t know you’d taken up with the likes of Mrs. Dayton,” Lou said. “You’ve come up in the world. I recall you getting the crap beat out of you plenty when Hardy was around.” The smile faded. “I also recall you beating the crap out of him.” He looked at Millie. “Mrs. Dayton, you’re in the company of a man with a violent streak.”

  Joe gave the man a stare that could have frozen every level of hell, but Millie spoke before he could say anything.

  She showed Lou the check. “Here’s the payment. You can have it and then sign this bill of sale when you bring out the clocks and give them to me.”

  Lou didn’t budge, but he did take a long look at the check. “I figured we could all visit first.” He pointed to some broken down rocking chairs on the porch. “Joe and me can do some catching up, and you can tell me more about yourself.”

  “We don’t have time to catch up,” Joe snarled. “Just get the clocks.”

  Lou huffed, made a tsk-tsk sound. “It don’t cost anything to be friendly.” He looked at Millie again. “Did Joe tell you about kicking the shit out of his old man? Hardy was tough, but there’s that whole ‘honor your father’ deal.”

  Millie must have sensed the anger building inside Joe because she angled her body between Lou’s and his. “The clocks,” she repeated. “I’m not here to discuss Joe or his father.”

  “Well, that’s too bad.” Lou scratched his gut, and his eyes turned mean. “Because Hardy was my friend. My best friend,” he added, “and he had to leave because of his good-for-nothing son. Oh, yeah,” Lou said, flicking his gaze back to Joe. “He came out here and told me all about it. His face was messed up. Bruised, cut. And your mama was in the car crying. You did that to them.”

  Millie made a sound that was part huff, part groan. She ripped the check into pieces and threw it up in the air. She took hold of Joe’s arm and got him moving.

  “Keep the clocks,” she snapped to Lou.

  Then, Millie finished that with the very word that had shocked the drawers off the ladies from the Last Ride Society.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “IS FROG POOP GREEN? And are you reall
y kissing Uncle Joe?” Little T asked.

  Millie blinked. She’d been prepared to give her nephew a final “It’s your bedtime and you have to go to sleep” warning. Her eighteenth such warning of the night. But those questions sure stopped her. Especially the second one.

  “I’ve never seen frog poop,” she said. “And why do you think I’d be kissing your uncle Joe?”

  “Because Daddy said you were probably kissing him,” Little T answered without hesitating.

  Millie opened her mouth to demand why Tanner would say something like that, but she decided this was a good time to hold her tongue. Tomorrow, she could blast her moronic brother for blabbing personal stuff about her around his son.

  Even if it was true personal stuff.

  Well, true-ish, anyway.

  Joe and she had indeed kissed at the old drive-in, but that’d been a week ago, and he hadn’t made himself available for more mouth to mouth. Just the opposite. He’d made himself scarce when Millie had gone out twice to the ranch for her riding lessons with Dara. Also, when Dara had invited him to go look at some scenery from some of the local paintings, Joe had bowed out, saying he had some work to do in the barn.

  Millie had gotten the message. Joe was done with kissing her. But what she couldn’t figure out was why. He’d obviously enjoyed their fooling around, and she’d felt the proof of that when he’d pressed against her. So, maybe he just wasn’t ready for feeling the effects of being with her. She understood that. But Millie worried that his avoidance was also in part because of the things Lou had said.

  There’d been plenty of rumors about Joe’s parents, about some possible abuse, about them being dirt poor, but she had no idea what was truth and what was gossip. If she was to believe Lou, then Joe had gotten in a fight with his dad. Lou had made it sound as if Joe had been to blame for that, but she had to consider the source. Lou was a scumbag turd and Joe was a good man. So, anything the scumbag turd said was suspect.

  Millie looked down at Little T and saw that he’d closed his eyes. Finally! She still waited a full five minutes, and then she tiptoed backward out of the bedroom she’d set up for him. Holding her breath, she went into the hall and eased the door shut.

  She went straight to the kitchen and poured herself a big glass of wine. She loved her nephew more than words could ever say, but the kid was a pill when it came to getting him down for the night. It’d taken four stories and the promise of chocolate chip pancakes when he woke up in the morning from his sleepover.

  It was only eight fifteen, but she was bone-tired. And yet somehow still wired. Not a good combination. A familiar one. She felt a bad night of memories coming on.

  Sipping her wine, Millie went back through the house, picking up the books and toys scattered around. She left the train wreck though.

  A literal one.

  Little T had taken apart his Polar Express train set and had arranged it as a derailment scene, complete with an overturned Matchbox Corvette and a mini Harley-Davidson on its side. He’d added some dirt and leaves he’d plucked from one of her house plants so there’d be some debris from the wreckage. For even more effect, he’d duct-taped a jagged piece of a Pop-Tart to the railroad track so that it appeared the pastry had been the cause of the derailment. Little T had insisted on the tape because the Pop-Tart “had deserved it.”

  Millie wasn’t sure if that was creative or disturbing.

  She frowned when she looked at her own scattering that she’d left on the coffee table in the living room. Her laptop and the notes she’d taken for the research on Ella. She’d been going through the latest round of stories about Ella that Dara had given her, but she’d stopped when Tanner had dropped off Little T.

  It’d been a month since Millie had drawn Ella’s name, and that meant one third of her research time was over. She’d made progress. Step one of taking the picture of the tombstone was done, but she was stuck on step two—collecting the personal accounts. So far, the only info she’d gotten had been from Dara, and the instructions had spelled out to get them from as many sources as possible.

  Those instructions, however, hadn’t taken into account that she’d be researching her husband’s lover.

  Still, Ella had probably retained some social media pages. Most families didn’t think to take those down after a loved one died. She could also search Ella’s mother on the web. Even though the woman didn’t live in Last Ride, it was possible she’d posted something somewhere that Millie could add to the research report.

  Frowning and feeling that wired wave of memories breathing down her neck, she went to the front window and looked out. This street was a little like a Norman Rockwell painting meets Beverly Hills. The houses were large. Very large. But there was enough Victorian and Edwardian architecture to keep them from getting dubbed with the estate or cookie-cutter labels. It was one of the “in” places to live in Last Ride.

  At the moment, it also felt like the loneliest.

  That was one of the reasons Millie had jumped at the chance to have Little T for the night, but she couldn’t expect her six-year-old nephew to help her fend off a bad mood.

  She took another gulp of wine and was about to force herself to go back to the research, but she caught some movement on the sidewalk. A man walking in front of her house.

  Joe.

  Her heart did a little leap. Other parts of her did, too, but the leaping did a crash and burn when he walked right on past her house. She leaned closer, pressing her face right against the glass to see where he was going. He went a few yards, turned around and walked past her house again.

  Millie hurried to the front door and threw it open. “Are you lost?” she called out before he got out of earshot.

  Joe stopped, and thanks to a whole bunch of streetlamps, she saw him shake his head. Just when she thought she was going to have to head across the yard to him, he turned and started toward her.

  “Not lost,” he grumbled. “Just batshit.”

  Millie smiled. Yes, he probably would think of coming here as a totally stupid thing to do, but she was so glad to see him that she had to stop herself from throwing her arms around him.

  “I parked up the street,” he added as he made his way to her porch. “I didn’t figure you’d want your neighbors to see my truck parked in front of your place.”

  At the moment, she didn’t give a rat about the neighbors, about the gossip, or about the fact she was still smiling at him. Joe probably thought she’d gone batshit, too.

  “Come in,” Millie insisted when he hesitated in the doorway. “I’m having wine, but I’ve got beer if you’d like one.”

  “You drink beer?” he asked, and it sounded more like curiosity than mere small talk.

  “Every now and then, but I keep some in the fridge for Tanner. This way.” She closed the front door and led him toward the kitchen. “Little T is sleeping over,” Millie added when Joe spotted the train wreck. “But he’s already gone to bed.”

  Even though she’d kept her voice low, that had sounded like a shouted invitation for Joe to have his way with her. But judging from his expression, he hadn’t come here for kissing.

  “Nice house,” he muttered once they’d reached the kitchen. Now, that was small talk and probably something he felt he should say.

  She avoided mentioning that it had been Royce’s grandparents’ home. Avoided, too, that she wasn’t happy here. That would only lead to a discussion of why she didn’t move, and Millie didn’t want to get into the complications of selling a Dayton “legacy” or why the Daytons insisted that only Daytons live in them. Unfortunately, there was a Dayton who didn’t already own a house they seemingly loved.

  “The kitchen sort of reminds me of a morgue.” She followed his gaze around the room. “I’m considering putting a gnome or something in the window just to loosen it up a bit.”

  Joe eyed her, then the window. “Or you cou
ld just redecorate.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to have to think that hard about colors and surfaces. A gnome is easy. I could just plop it right there.” She pointed to the wide sill just above the sink. “Go ahead, you can tell me I’m probably going through some sort of early life crisis.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. If a gnome makes you happy, then go with it.”

  She would and Millie made a mental note to order one first chance she got. For now though, she was far more interested in why her hesitant visitor was here.

  “So, are we about to have the talk?” she asked. She handed him a cold Lone Star that she took from the fridge and then leaned against the kitchen island. Joe leaned against the other side, facing her. “The talk where you tell me you shouldn’t have kissed me?”

  He frowned, twisted off the top of his beer. “No. We both know it shouldn’t have happened. I’m here to apologize for what went on at Lou’s last week.”

  Of course Joe would feel the need to do that, but she felt the need to roll right over that apology. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It was Lou who was being a dick, not you.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted just a little and for only a blink. “I’m not sure why a small part of my brain thinks it’s funny to hear you curse. Maybe because it doesn’t go with the rest of you.” His gaze dropped to her belly, specifically to her navel ring. “Well, it doesn’t go with some parts of you.”

  He stopped, groaned and did some whispered cursing of his own in between two long sips of his beer. “Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry that I was the reason you didn’t get those clocks.”

  “You weren’t the reason,” she quickly pointed out. “Lou and only Lou is responsible because of his dickish behavior.” Millie paused long enough to see if Joe would smile. He did. “Besides, all’s well that ends well. Lou sold them to Clem and Sheila Parkman, and they’re donating them to the Last Ride Society.”

  The relief relaxed the tight muscles in his jaw, and she hated that for one second he’d felt any guilt over what had happened at that horrible man’s house.