Have a Little Faith

by Kadi Dillon

  Lane finished his notes and closed the book. Noting the time was nearing five, he knew Alex would be home soon. He had moved his things into her room the day they returned from their honeymoon. They had spent every night together since making love and learning about each other. Lane had told her about his own parent’s estranged relationship with him and knew she not only sympathized, but she understood.

  He’d even told her about his first marriage. He still remembered the way she crinkled her nose in distaste when he described the type of woman Roxanne was.

  They were complete opposites, he mused as he made his way downstairs. He had assumed a woman like Roxanne was what he had needed but once he had her, his life had become dull.

  Or maybe it had never been anything but dull and he was just being sucked into the same cycle over and over. Alex brought color to his world. She was simple, yet complicated enough to keep him guessing. Her beauty wasn’t sophisticated or polished at all, but he found her the most desirable woman he knew.

  She’d had a hard past, but was strong willed and independent. Her spirit had never been broken.

  And she loved him.

  She had told him so the first night they were married. At the time, he had been overrun with emotions to return the words. And since then, it hadn’t been the right time. He had ordered a wedding ring for her the day after they were married and had received it that morning. He wanted to give it to her tonight, but he hadn’t decided where.

  He had realized he was in love with her while riding in the bed of a pickup. He hadn’t realized it was love at the time. But after their wedding night when she had given him the words, he had realized that was when everything had changed. He wanted to ask her when she had taken the fall for him. And maybe he would when he gave her the words she needed to hear.

  Linda was downstairs looking out the window in the kitchen. The sun was just starting to make its way to setting so she was outlined in shadows.

  Lane wondered again how any mother could allow her husband to torment her child. He wanted to ask her, but Alex wanted it left alone. She was healing, he knew and he would do anything to help her be whole again.

  “Hello, Lane.” She hadn’t even turned around so Lane sat down at the table beside her chair. She looked older, he thought studying her profile. Tired.

  “Hello.”

  “Someone from the retirement home is coming tomorrow to pick me up. You and Alex will have the house to yourselves until you move on to build the park.”

  “Actually, we won’t be leaving.” Since he would be telling Alex that evening, Lane decided to reveal his plans to her. “I bought the six-hundred acres back from the city. I’m going to invest in creating a rustic getaway. We’ll build cabins and a real corral. Our guests will be able to ride horses, attend lessons, fish, and just enjoy country living.”

  “What you do with the ranch is your business now.”

  “And Alex’s. I’m doing this for her. She’ll be able to keep these six-hundred acres as is. She can make it better if she likes. She can keep the house the same, her horses. The employees can stay. Everybody wins.”

  Linda’s breathing had gone ragged. Her face was pinched and pale. Lane mistook her anger and continued in a soothing tone. “I’m sure she’ll be glad for you to stay here. We’ll have to travel some for Tanner Enterprise, but Alex would let you live with us if that’s what you want.”

  “Oh, sure. Alex get’s a happy ending, is that it?”

  Lane was taken aback. He looked at this pale, furious woman and for the first time in his life, he wanted to strike a woman. “Yes, Mrs. Morgan. Alex gets a happy ending. She deserves one.”

  “She deserves nothing.” She turned her chair to face him. “She killed her father. Did she tell you that?”

  Lane didn’t even blink. “No. She didn’t kill him. He died when his liver gave out on him. He died because he drank every day of his life.”

  “Because of her! She caused him so much grief. First, she never respected him. She always thought she was better than him. Then she disgraced him and shamed us all by getting pregnant with a bastard child!”

  Lane had turned to leave until that last sentence had him gaping in shock.

  “She has a child?”

  “No. It died. But she had one and brought shame on herself and her family. She still carries on to this day on its birthday. She doesn’t even realize God took it away because it was her sin! So, Mr. Tanner, don’t tell me what that girl deserves. She deserves nothing.” Linda turned her chair and wheeled out of the room.

  Lane finally sat down. He was numb and still trying to process everything Linda had just said. Pregnant. She’d had a child. Why hadn’t she told him? Slowly, the wheels that were turning in his head clicked into place. Faith.

  She had been heartbroken when she had mentioned her to him. He had assumed Faith was a horse and she hadn’t corrected him. Seven years, he remembered her telling him. More things fell into place. Her father had stopped beating her when she was sixteen; because she had gotten pregnant?

  “My father found out and it was the worst it’s ever been in my life. I thought I was going to die.”

  He couldn’t be too angry with Alex. She had come a long way since he had met her and was slowly coming out of her shell. It was taking more time than he would have liked but he was waiting for her to give him all the answers. Now, he found that he couldn’t wait.

  Tonight, they were going to stay somewhere away from Linda and away from distractions. She was going to open up to him and then they would begin their lives together.

  Alex paid the tab for the rest of the feed and thanked Conner Abbot for loading it for her. Her back was still a little stiff, but a few good rides on Joy had made the pain endurable. She drove slowly down the highway with the windows down. The air had taken a dip in temperature within the past week. They were supposed to be getting rain soon.

  October was beautiful in Oklahoma. Faith’s birthday had begun with a magnificent sunrise and was ending with colorful sunset. Alex had ridden Joy to Little Blue Mountain and poked her stain glass flowers into the earth. She’d talked to Faith as she always did.

  She’d talked of Lane. She’d told her she would be telling Lane about her soon. And she had every faith that her husband would respect her wishes to leave Little Blue Mountain untouched.

  The grief was easier to bear now, Alex had realized as she adjusted her dark tinted glasses over her nose. She knew she had Lane to thank for that. He hadn’t told her he loved her, but Alex knew that he cared for her. Care was more than she’d ever had from someone who had meant so much to her and she clung to that.

  She wondered if Lane wanted to have children. She certainly hoped so. She could even be pregnant now. The timing was chancy, but possible. If they had a daughter, she would name her after Faith. If they had a son, then she would gladly let Lane chose.

  Lane would make an excellent father. Alex smiled at the thought as she turned onto Highway 17. She rarely took the new highway since it was only built after they had sold half the land.

  Alex looked to her right and said a silent apology to the six-hundred acres she’d forfeited. Guilt swelled like it always did when she saw the land she had loved being untended and neglected. If she had the extra funds, she would take care of it whether she owned it still or not.

  Maybe she could now, she mused. Lane would understand and want to help her preserve it. Maybe she would bring it up. But she needed to tell him about Faith and about Sam. He had given her so much in the past few weeks that he deserved all the truth.

  She pulled up to the house and made short work of unloading the weekly supply of oats and grains. It was dark outside by the time she finished. She was a sweaty mess when she walked into the house and went straight upstairs for a shower. When she walked into her bedroom to get her clothes, she saw Lane calmly packing a suitcase. Everything in her froze. His eyes met hers and she saw his anger.

  “What’s going on?” She was almost a
fraid to ask.

  “When were you going to tell me about your daughter, Alex?”

  Alex bit her bottom lip as she struggled with her shock. “Who told you?” The look on his face told her it was obvious. Her mother had probably told him her version of what happened instead of the truth. “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  “Are you angry because I had a baby or because I haven’t told you yet?”

  “I’m not angry, Alex.”

  “That’s why you’re packing your suitcase? You’re just going to leave because it hurts me too much to talk about my baby? That’s why I haven’t told you, Lane; because I don’t feel like being ripped open again right now.” The damn tears were coming and she couldn’t stop them.

  “Alex.”

  “You want to go? That’s fine. But don’t ever think I was deliberately keeping things from you. I was going to show you. I was going to tell you everything.” With a sob, she turned and fled.

  Linda was sitting in the den when she ran down the stairs. She didn’t hesitate. She turned and faced her mother. “Damn you, why do you have to ruin everything?”

  “Calm down, Alex. Speak to me like an adult or don’t speak to me at all.”

  “You just couldn’t stand it, could you?” She spoke quietly now, letting the pain wash over her. She wanted to be numb. She wanted to never feel anything again. “You couldn’t just leave knowing I was happy. You had to make sure I’d be as miserable as you are.”

  She drew in a breath and studied her mother. She had seen the woman nearly every day of her life, but she didn’t know her at all. “What did you tell Lane? Did you just tell him about Faith? About how your whore of a daughter got herself pregnant and refused to get married?”

  “I told him what you should have told him.”

  “That I had such a perfect example of marriage that I wanted to jump on the band wagon?” She was shouting again but didn’t care. “Did you tell him the truth about your husband, Mother? About how he chose the bottle over both of us every night? Did you tell him how I used to cry at your feet on the floor and beg you to make him stop hurting me?”

  “You’re being dramatic.”

  “Really?” She responded to her mother’s lifeless tone with venom. “Because I remember the only time I ever went to sleep without an aching backside was the few months I stayed with the Preston’s. And I remember you always turning your eyes away when your husband beat me bloody.”

  Linda’s eyes were spitting fire now. “You were always such a burden to your father. You never gave him an ounce of respect.”

  “I agree. I didn’t respect a man who drank our money away. I didn’t respect a man who never once told me he loved me or even liked me. I have no respect for either of you.”

  Alex walked to the bookshelf and pulled a thick book out from the shelf. She opened it up to where Faith’s picture was holding her page in her Bible. She’d always kept one in her room and one in the den. Both had pictures of her baby in them.

  Tears were falling down her face when she turned to her mother holding the picture of the bright eyed baby girl. “You never once held your granddaughter.”

  Linda remained silent.

  “You never once acknowledged her even though when I was so out of it in the delivery room, I saw you crying for me.” She had been in too much pain at the time, but later remembered her mother’s tears and how her fingers had wrapped around hers. “You wasted your life and mine for a man who didn’t give a damn about you, Mom.”

  Linda glared at her daughter then turned her face away from the picture of Faith. “Your child died because she was a sin, Alex. I knew it would happen, so did your father. Bad things happen to bad people.”

  “It took a while for bad to happen to Joshua Morgan.”

  “Don’t you speak of him that way!”

  “Oh, but you can speak of my baby that way? She was innocent! She never did a damn thing to earn your hate or his. This baby loved me more in the three months I had her than you did my entire life. I hate you for that, Mom. I hate you.”

  Still clutching her daughter’s picture to her breast, Alex ran out into the night. She ran blindly, not even seeing her husband standing in the shadowed kitchen with tears in his eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  She wept shamelessly once she reached Little Blue Mountain. She’d run on foot and was now thoroughly exhausted. Years of pent up anger and hurt had all come out tonight and her mother hadn’t even blinked.

  Alex wished she could be that unfeeling.

  As for Lane, it hurt to lose him. She loved him more than she’d ever loved another person besides Faith and she had ruined everything by not telling him about the most important thing in her life. She didn’t know if she could recover from this.

  What would happen if he were to divorce her? Would she get any part of her home back? She didn’t want his money. She just wanted Little Blue Mountain. Nothing else would really matter to her if Lane left.

  She didn’t know how long she lay on the cool grass beside Faith’s grave, but the running creek and crickets lulled her to sleep like they always did.

  Lane tied Joy’s reins to a tree and walked slowly up the hill. He saw her then, sleeping deeply beside a tiny stone. Careful not to wake Alex, Lane walked over and sat in front of the grave. He read the name over and over and felt grief for the life that had been so brief. He didn’t know the child, but knowing Alex still ached for her left him aching too.

  He’d heard every word Alex had said to her mother when he had followed her downstairs. He was going to tell her he wasn’t packing to leave her, but to leave with her. When she had run out of the house, he had looked in at Linda who had sat rigid as ever in her wheelchair with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  He didn’t know what to make of it, but he knew his wife needed him. It took him forever to find out where she would have gone. Finally, he had called Jack and had gotten it out of him.

  He’d followed the directions he had gotten, but Joy knew exactly where she was going. That told him Alex had made the trip often.

  So this was why she was desperate to keep the ranch. Had he known at the beginning, he would have left this spot alone. It was close to the edge of the property line and would have been only the matter of some minor changes to the contract. It didn’t matter. She was keeping all of it now.

  She came to wake slowly and looked up at him. He saw the confusion in her eyes before he saw the pain. Without speaking, he reached down and gripped her arms, bringing her up for a kiss meant to soothe and comfort her.

  She melted in his arms before he pulled back. He pulled her more securely in his lap and kissed her temple. She rested her head against the hollow of his throat and sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  “I wasn’t leaving you, baby. I was packing us both some clothes. I was going to whisk you away for a night so we could have privacy. I wanted to tell you some things.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “Don’t be. I know what it looked like. And I handled it wrong.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment and he was content just to hold her. He looked out at their surroundings and watched fireflies dance in the dark. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the picture she held clutched to her chest.

  “Is this Faith?”

  “Yes.” She handed him the photo.

  The chubby little face smiled back at him. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black, but otherwise she was the spitting image of her mother. When he saw her eyes though, he knew without a doubt who the father was. “She’s beautiful, baby.”

  “I know. I miss her so much.” She took the picture back and traced Faith’s fuzzy head. “She died in a car accident. The same one that paralyzed my mother.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “She was a little over three months old. Sam and I—” She paused and looked up at him realizing she was getting ahead of herself. “Sam was the father.”

&nb
sp; “I figured it out.”

  “Oh. Well, we never split custody. He just came over every day or I would come by every day. He tried to get me to marry him, but my parents would have never allowed it even if I agreed. I would have when I turned eighteen had Faith still been alive.”

  “You loved him.”

  “Yes. He was my best friend. We’re still best friends, but we never loved each other like that. We were both drunk when I got pregnant, but we didn’t regret it. Faith was a blessing.”

  “Of course she was,” he murmured. He wouldn’t be jealous of the love and discovery of two teenagers. She was his now and he knew it. He stroked her hair and encouraged her to lean back against him.

  “You know everything else then.”

  “I guess I do.”

  They were quiet for a long time until Alex spoke again. “This is the reason I need to keep this part of the ranch—just this hill. I don’t want to move her.”

  “You don’t have to. I was taking you away tonight to tell you what I’ve decided.” He felt her stiffen in his arms. “I bought the other six-hundred acres back from the city.”

  “You did what?”

  He smiled at her bewildered tone. “I still want to open a resort of sorts. But I want the theme to be a rustic getaway. We could have trail rides and put a pond in for paddle boating and fishing. I’ve gotten bids on the lumber and labor for thirteen cabins. And we’ll use those six-hundred acres. This six-hundred is ours.”

  “Ours.” She twisted around to look at him with her heart in her eyes. “You mean…”

  “Nothing has to change, Alex.”

  Her eyes filled. She threw herself against him and held on tightly. “Do you mean it?”

  “Of course I do.” He hugged her to him. “We’d have to travel some. But I have my penthouse in L.A. Otherwise we can live right here.”

  “I can’t believe it. Can we really do it?”

  “Have a little faith, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, I do. I love you, so much.” When she wrapped her arms around him, his heart simply soared.