"I have a feeling that if your mother hears you saying 'ain't' every other word, she'll change her mind about the schoolwork."
He grinned up at him. "I already told ya, I don't say it around Mom."
"So you did."
"Besides," Jake added thoughtfully, "maybe she wouldn't care so much. She's actin’ kinda different here lately."
"Hmm? Oh, you mean about letting you spend more time with your friends?"
The boy shot him a covert look from underneath a hank of hair. "Yeah, but not just that."
"What do you mean?"
Jake shrugged his narrow shoulders and dipped his brush again. As he lavished white paint onto the thirsty wood, he mumbled, "She's kinda sad."
"Sad?" Gabe backed up and sat down on the bottom step. Propping his wrists on his updrawn knees, he ask “What do you mean, sad?"
Again Jake shrugged and again he mumbled his answer. "She told me that you're going away soon!”
Ah, hell. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again to find Jake staring directly at him.
"Are you?"
“Yeah," he said and noticed the word left a bitter taste in his mouth.
"Why? Don't you like us?”
"Sure I like you, Jake."
"How 'bout Mom? Don't you like her?”
Like Maggie? With her long, wild hair, deep brown eyes, and too wide mouth? His insides burned into life at the thought of her.
“Yeah," he said in the understatement of the century. “I like her too."
"Then why don't you want to stay with us?" His eyes went all teary before he blinked furiously to stem the rising tide.
Gabe took a long breath and sighed, knowing that this conversation was about to get a lot more difficult "I just have to go."
“But grown-ups don't have to do anything they don't want to."
Gabe chuckled wryly in spite of the situation. It must look that way to kids, he thought and only wished it were true.
"You could stay," Jake said, shooting another sidelong look. "If you wanted, you could maybe even be, well, my pa, sort of."
Damnit.
Jake must have seen the disgust on his face and assumed it was meant for him, because the boy started talking even faster than usual.
"I'd be real good, Gabe. I swear I would. And you'd never have to tell me to do my chores or nothing. I’d always do 'em." He dropped the paintbrush onto the half-finished sign and threw himself into his argument. “And you and my mom could get married and then I'd have a pa like everybody else instead of just being that no-account Kersey's boy."
“Where'd you hear that?” Gabe interrupted the flow of words and latched onto that last phrase.
Jake didn't answer, just ducked his head again and started smearing paint with the tip of his finger.
It didn't matter really. Gabe had a pretty good idea where the boy had heard such talk. Sugar Harmon, no doubt. The damn woman needed to be muzzled like a wild dog.
"Don't you pay attention to what folks say, Jake. Some people have nothing better to do than talk about other people."
"But he was a no-account, wasn't he?"
Well, he had two choices here. He could lie to the boy to try to ease his feelings. Or he could tell him the troth and help him to accept that he wasn't responsible for what his father had done. Or didn't do.
"Come here, Jake," Gabe said and patted the step beside him.
Slowly, the boy walked toward him and sat down. He made a big show of studying the paint-stained tips of his fingers, but Gabe knew he would be listening not only with his ears, but with his heart.
And what he would say in the next few minutes was more important than anything he'd ever said before. So he'd better damn well get it right.
"I never knew your father," he said softly and reached out to smooth the kid's hair back from his face. When Jake scooted close him on the step, Gabe's heart cracked a little around the edge. Nodding to himself, he draped one arm across the boy's shoulders and continued. "But from what your mother's told me, I figure your pa was just confused."
"'Bout what?” Jake tipped his head back to look up at him.
"About a lot of things," Gabe mused. "But mostly, I guess, about what was important."
"Huh?"
Chuckling, he shook his head slightly and told him, "Sometimes grown-ups don't really know what they want, Jake."
“How can you not know what you want?" Clearly, he was astounded at the thought. Jake, like every other little boy, knew just what he wanted. To be grown-up.
"Too many choices in life, I guess,” Gabe said and remembered all of the bad choices he'd made during his lifetime. But then again, every one of those poor choices had led him to this precise moment. To this town. To Maggie and Jake. So how could he regret even one of them? "Sometimes," he went on, "folks choose the wrong thing and don't even know it until it's too late to get the right thing."
"That don't make much sense," the boy said softly.
“No it doesn't," Gabe agreed.
Jake tossed his hair back out of his eyes again and said solemnly, "My pa didn't leave my mom until I got born, you know. So I figure he must have been some disappointed in me.”
"No," Gabe assured him and silently hoped he got to meet up with Kersey Benson in Hell one day. Because he dearly wanted to pound on that man's face for a while. "Him leaving had nothing to do with you!”
"How do you know?”
Gabe smiled at him. "Because I know you. And any man would be proud to have you for a son, Jake."
The boy's bottom lip trembled and Gabe prayed silently that he wouldn't cry. His prayer was answered when the child sniffed, rubbed one fist across his nose, and nodded. "I could be your son…if you wanted," he said a moment later.
Now Gabe was afraid he would be the one to cry.
Heart aching, he forced himself to look into the eyes that were so much like Maggie's and deliver more pain. "I'd like nothin' better, Jake," he said and realized that he meant every word. The boy gave him a teary smile that slowly faded as Gabe kept talking. "But I can't stay here with you and your mother.”
"But why not?" Anger and hurt colored the boy's voice and Gabe felt like a bastard. Maybe Maggie had been right. Maybe he wasn't so very different from Kersey after all. Hell, at least the boy's father had just left. He hadn't stuck around to twist the knife in the kid personally.
"Remember I told you about choices?"
"And making bad ones?"
“Yeah." He pulled in a deep breath and blew it out again. "Well, I made some bad ones, too, and now it's too late to change 'em."
"Make new ones."
"I wish I could," Gabe told him, feeling that heartfelt wish to the bottom of his soul. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Wishing had never made a thing so and it wouldn't change now.
Jake studied him for a long minute and Gabe never looked away. It cost him some, because watching the boy's pain and knowing he was the cause wasn't an easy thing to face. But he wanted to make sure that Jake understood he didn't want to leave him. He didn't want the boy to feel abandoned again.
“When are you leavin'?"
"A few weeks," Gabe said softly.
"Are ya ever coming back?”
Tickets to Hell were never round trip. Gabe shook his head. "No."
The boy nodded thoughtfully then asked quietly, "Do ya think it would be all right if I sorta pretended that you was my pa. Just for a while? I mean, until you have to go away and everything?"
Jesus.
The pain in his chest blossomed and swelled until Gabe was sure his heart would simply explode and still it grew. The trust and love in the boy's eyes staggered him. No one had ever looked at him quite like that before. It was a gift. And a responsibility. And Gabe hoped he was up to it, even temporarily, because this was too important to mess up.
Tightening his grip on the boy's shoulders, he gave him a hard squeeze and said gruffly, "I think that'd be fine."
Jake's smile was damn near
bright enough to read by. "I won't tell Mom though," he said. "She wouldn't understand.”
"All right," Gabe told him conspiratorially, and stood up, drawing the boy with him. “It'll be our secret.”
"Thanks, Pa."
#
Standing in the kitchen, Maggie caught her bottom lip with her teeth and bit down hard. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop at first. But when her son had started questioning Gabe about his father, she'd had to hear. Now, she wished to heaven she hadn't.
Listening to Gabe's gentle reassurances had tugged at her heart until the effort to hold back her tears had nearly choked her. Knowing that Jake had been suffering silently, wondering if he was the reason his father had left, only gave her cause to heap more curses on Kersey Benson's head.
What had she done in her life to account for this? She'd had one man who could've stayed, but chose not to. And now she'd found one who said he had to leave, but would have stayed if he'd been able.
Maggie pulled the edge of the curtain back with her fingertips so she could look out at the two men in her life. Gabe had such an easy way with Jake, she thought, and her son responded to him as he had to no other man except his grandfather.
She looked at Gabe then and felt her heart turn over in her chest. Why wasn't she put off by him? An admitted gambler, he'd even been hanged by outraged townsfolk. But then, Kersey Benson hadn't been any damn good and she hadn't seen it. Was she making the same mistake with Gabe? Was she only seeing what her heart wanted her to see?
No, she decided a moment later. There was a kindness in Gabe that Kersey had never had. No matter what he'd done in the past, she knew instinctively that he was a good man at heart…where it counted.
And just for a moment, she let herself play Jake's game of pretend and made believe that Gabe loved her and that the three of them were a family.
Chapter Thirteen
"Quite a boy." A short man in a dusty black suit and a white clerical collar stood near the corner of the building, watching Jake sprint off to find his friends.
Gabe spared him a quick glance, then turned his gaze back to the boy, just scampering out of sight. Two hours they'd worked together, side by side, preparing the restaurant sign. And for two hours, Gabe had listened to the kid's steady stream of chatter without once wishing he'd be quiet. If nothing else, that fact said plenty about his affection for the boy.
“Yes, he is."
The preacher strolled toward him and Gabe looked him up and down, taking his measure. He had pale blue eyes that shone with a sort of wise innocence and a kind face that looked as though it smiled often. Apparently he was no fire-and-brimstone preacher. Gabe had had plenty of run-ins with those kind of churchmen, and he'd learned to recognize them when he saw them. Saved him riding a rail out of town more than once. Since the preachers were usually trying to shut down the very places Gabe spent most of his time in, he and men of the cloth rarely saw eye to eye.
Which was pretty much why he'd been so successful at avoiding Regret's preacher. Until today.
“I’m Reverend Thorndyke,” the man said and held out his right hand.
Gabe wiped his right hand down the front of his shirt, then accepted the handshake. "Reverend. What can I do for you?"
"Strange you should ask,” the man said with a smile. "I usually like to come and meet the new people in town straight off, but well…I've been busy. We've a new baby in the house and my wife and I aren't getting much sleep these days."
"Congratulations."
“Thank you." The preacher looked down at the stark white sign and said, "What are you doing here?”
Gabe reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. The hours spent sanding and painting were beginning to make themselves felt in his muscles. “Making a sign for the restaurant.”
The other man looked at him and grinned. "You think a sign's going to help folks find their way to the place?”
"Couldn’t hurt."
"No, but Maggie's food can."
Hmm. Even the preacher, a man who made his living giving succor to the people, was used to ignoring Maggie's place of business.
"There've been a few changes," Gabe told him. All right, not many. But at least when Maggie cooked now, she rarely incinerated things. Most of her food was only scorched these days. Surely that was an improvement.
"I've heard," he said and shrugged. "Small town. People talk."
"Yeah?" Gabe cocked his head and looked at the man, waiting. There was more coming, he was sure of it. The good reverend hadn't come to just talk about the menu.
“And you've been listening."
Nodding, the preacher said, "Yes, that's why I'm here.”
"Gossip?" A spurt of anger jumped into the pit of his stomach. "Doesn't the Bible disapprove of gossip, Reverend?"
The man colored a bit and stretched his neck as if his collar were suddenly too tight. "Yes it does," he said. “And so do I."
“But?”
"But,” he said, admitting there was a 'but.’ "I prefer to think of this more as a general…concern for Maggie's welfare, rather than simply gossip."
Gabe laughed shortly.
The reverend cleared his throat and frowned slightly. “One or two of the women in town have expressed certain, well, concerns about Maggie to me and—“
"One or two, huh?" Gabe asked. "I'm betting it's just the one. And you and I both know her name. Sugar Harmon."
"Sugar is a…difficult woman," the preacher allowed.
"Difficult?" he repeated incredulously. 'That's like saying the Grand Canyon's a little deep."
Reverend Thorndyke nodded glumly. "I will admit to having my patience sorely tried a time or two by her."
Reaching up, Gabe shoved one hand through his hair and too late remembered the still-wet white paint clinging to his fingers. Well, perfect. Now his head would look like the wrong end of a skunk.
"You know, Reverend," he snapped, "I'd think you'd have better things to do than jump when Sugar shouts."
"And I'd think if you're as fond of that boy and his mother as you appear to be," the preacher said, not a trace of temper in his voice, "you'd want to do what you could to help this situation."
Caught. Damned if the preacher wasn't a fine fisherman. He'd laid out the bait, tugged at the hook, let his prey swallow it good and deep, then reeled him in.
He gave the other man an admiring smile, then asked, "And what did you have in mind, Reverend?"
The shorter man smiled broadly. "I think if the townsfolk were to see you at Sunday services with Maggie and Jake, they just might stop listening to Sugar.”
"You want me to go to church?”
Reverend Thorndyke laughed. "The tone of your voice tells me it's been a while since you've attended."
“Let's just say inviting me into your church is like praying for the walls to come tumbling down."
"I'll risk it," the preacher said.
Risk it? He looked well pleased with himself, Gabe thought. Nothing a preacher liked better than to drag a sinner back into the fold. Only problem here was, it was a little late for the man to be worrying about the state of Gabe's soul.
The Devil had a prior claim.
But this didn't have to be all bad. As an idea glimmered in the back of his mind. Gabe spoke up. "All right, I'll come to services."
The man smiled victoriously.
"On one condition."
The smile faded just a bit.
"What's that?"
"You and your wife come have supper at the restaurant.”
"Oh," the man said, already shaking his head and taking a mental step or two backward. "I don't know if that's a good idea."
"Preacher," Gabe said, reeling in his own fish, "if the folks in this town see you and your wife come here to eat, they might try it themselves."
"But my wife is nursing our son. I don't think it would be wise to—“
"We won't poison her, I promise."
He didn't look convinced.
"Reverend," Gabe said,
"you're getting me into church, for God's sake, and all I'm asking in return is for you to have a nice meal here at the restaurant. I'd say you're still getting the biggest piece of the pie, here."
He was thinking about it, Gabe could see that much.
If the little preacher only knew, he thought. Why, there were churchmen all over the west who would count it a real coup to get him through their doors and into a pew.
“When?” he asked on a sigh.
Gabe smiled. "I'll let you know."
"All right, then,” he said, lifting his round chin and trying to look courageous, "it's a deal."
“Deal."
“But," the little man added slyly, "I think eating at Maggie's is worth at least two Sundays. In a row."
Hell, if he was going to go to church, what difference did it make if he went once or twice? Gabe nodded and grinned at him. "You sure don't look it, but you're a hard man, reverend."
He grinned right back. "My appearance is a bit deceiving, isn't it?”
Their bargain struck, Gabe pointed at the restaurant and offered, “Care for some coffee?"
The preacher's eyebrows lifted and he slid a slow, wary glance at the restaurant. "Coffee?”
"Not afraid," Gabe teased. "Are you?"
Reverend Thorndyke inhaled sharply and briefly lifted his gaze heavenward "'The Lord is my shepherd."
"You shall not want,” Gabe finished for him, then asked again, "Coffee?”
The other man nodded, though he didn't look happy about it. "Daniel was forced into the lion's den. Seems the least I can do is drink of cup of Maggie's coffee."
As they walked up the steps, Gabe muttered, "I made the coffee."
"Oh, thank God."
#
Maggie heard the men talking in the kitchen, though she couldn't quite make out what they were saying. Heck, she wasn't even sure who it was in there with Gabe. And she didn’t care, she told herself firmly. Of course, she'd been telling herself that for the last few days and she still didn't believe it.
Grasping the handle of the paintbrush tightly, she climbed the ladder again and carefully applied another coat of lavender paint. She smiled to herself as she worked and glanced back at the portions of the ceiling she'd already finished. She still wasn't sure if this was a good idea or not, but she couldn’t help admiring how the quartz crystals shimmered and shone in the afternoon light.
Catch a Fallen Angel Page 15
