Home by Nightfall

by Alexis Harrington

  “I will do no such thing.”

  He stared at her, gawping like a landed salmon while a canyon-deep frown clenched his forehead.

  “You keep your mouth shut about this unless you want to cause more trouble than you have already. If you want lunch, it will be on the table in an hour.”

  His expression changed from anger to long-suffering vexation. “Forget it. I’m stopping at Mae’s. She might have something special cookin’ up for me in her kitchen.”

  Susannah hoped it was a first-rate case of indigestion. “Fine.” She dug her knees into Sally’s sides and urged her into a trot, knowing that neither Shaw nor his horse would be able to keep up.

  The hard-won peace she’d found after learning of Riley’s death and marrying Tanner was gone again. She’d slept very little for the past two nights since Riley had returned, and the bed she’d shared with Tanner seemed vast.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that her father-in-law was now just a speck on the landscape in front of Granny Mae Rumsteadt’s café, and she let the mare slow down. Sally plodded along, as if sensing her mood. Once outside of town, Susannah could see farmers in the fields harvesting vegetables and fruit that would provide food and income through the winter. Along the edges of the road, robust Canada thistles, dandelions, and poison hemlock choked out the last of summer’s wildflowers.

  How would she handle this? There were no easy answers to this problem—she couldn’t begin to guess its outcome. She owed both Tanner and Riley the truth of what she’d learned, and she hoped to talk to Tanner before the rush and bustle of supper this evening ate into her time. Tossing and turning all night—or for several nights—just wasn’t an option this time. There was no running away from this. She had to face it.

  “Come on, Sally, we’ve got to get back. I have hungry people to feed.”

  When she reached home, Tanner was working with a two-year-old filly in the corral. Cole sat on the top rail with one boot heel hooked on a rail below. Riley, wearing jeans and a shirt and vest that had come from the wardrobe in his bedroom, leaned on his cane and watched the proceedings from a greater distance. Those clothes were too big for him now. The vest hung on him as if he were just a wire coat hanger. At first glance, he made her think of an easterner who had come here to experience life on a ranch. The man she remembered would have been sitting on the fence rail, tossing off good-natured ribbing to Tanner or discussing the cost of training the horse with Cole. Or he might have been busy at his desk in the house, surrounded by ledgers and his fancy Burroughs adding machine. This man was frail and uncertain. A stranger who looked out of place.

  She felt all eyes turn toward her.

  Tanner acknowledged her with a nod and she tried to catch his eye with a meaningful look. But before she could send any more signals his way, Cole jumped down from the fence and came to take Sally from her.

  Riley turned to look at them, gave her a tentative smile, and lifted a hand in greeting. Her smile in return was as hesitant.

  “Are you okay?” Cole asked quietly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  She shrugged. “I have, sort of, haven’t I?” As they walked toward the stable, she could feel Tanner’s and Riley’s eyes on them. “I saw Shaw in town. He’s stopping at Mae’s.”

  “I guess that’s a blessing. He’s giving both Riley and Tanner a going-over.” Susannah sighed, and he tipped his head to look into her face. “You too, huh.”

  “Yes. Will you and Jessica come for supper? It would make things less, well, awkward.”

  He led Sally into her stall and took her saddle off. “Okay. I know Jess will appreciate it. She’s had some long days and nights lately. Since the boys came home from the war, she’s delivered a lot of babies. She finally agreed to let me buy her a car to get around in—I’m going to pick it up next week.” Looking at her across Sally’s back, he asked, “Did you have fun in town?”

  “No. I went to see Mr. Par—”

  At that moment, she heard the sound of uneven footfalls on the stable flooring. She turned and saw Riley standing just inside the wide doorway.

  “Hello,” he said. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. I thought maybe I could help you.” He nodded at Sally. Cole had already taken off her saddle.

  “Sure, Riley,” Cole said. “Come on in. I’ve got to give Tanner a hand with that filly.”

  Susannah swallowed. She pasted on another smile, trying to smother the nagging wish that she could just leave. She hadn’t spent many moments alone with him. “You’ve been here a few days, now. What do you think of the place? Does it look the same as when you left?” She feared it might be an unfair question, but she was tired of asking him how he felt and imagined he was tired of answering it.

  He gave her another smile, this one rueful. “It’s nice, but I don’t remember it. Perhaps the doctors were too optimistic about my condition.”

  She reached for a brush on the shelf and began pulling it through Sally’s chestnut mane. “Maybe not. A few days aren’t enough to know. Things can still change.”

  He took the brush from her and automatically began running it over the horse’s sleek coat in long, familiar, and efficient strokes. Though he leaned on his cane, he handled the brush with a confidence that she hadn’t seen in anything else he did. When he neared Sally’s head, she turned and bumped her nose gently against his chest in recognition.

  “I guess you remember how to groom a horse. And Sally seems to remember you.” A faint wave of hope washed over Susannah. When she looked into his eyes, she saw they were still hazel but they had an empty, haunted appearance.

  Riley slowed and then stopped. He looked at the brush in his hand and it seemed as if it were an alien thing he’d never seen in his life. “I don’t know why…where…I don’t know how to do this.”

  Riley lifted his gaze to Susannah’s. She was so lovely to look upon, but he had no clue, no instinct, about her personality beyond what he’d witnessed in the last few days. “I lived on a farm in France, but it was a small place with poor soil and only a few chickens. The house was built of stone but it had been shelled, and only half of it still stood. This is much grander. The pastures are so green and vast, the trees alive and beginning to turn color with the season…” He closed his eyes for just a moment, taking in the fragrant, earthy scents of horses, wood, and hay. Then he thought of Véronique working beside him to plant a few handfuls of seed in the bomb-cratered earth they had managed to level out—and the skeleton of a mule at the edge of the property, killed by the same shell that had destroyed the ambulance where Véronique found him. “You have so much here—land, horses, food, even an automobile.”

  “You and Cole worked hard for all this. France went through combat. In America, we fought the war, but differently. And you do know how to groom a horse—you learned it here, years ago. You have your own horse, too,” she said, turning to point to a stall farther down the row. A narrow beam of sunlight cut through the gray sky and across her thick braid of curls, revealing subtle shades of mahogany and blue.

  “I do?”

  “You named him Kuitan. It’s Chinook for horse.”

  “Chinook?”

  “That’s an Indian tribe who live up here in the Northwest. Would you like to see him?”

  “Yes, of course.” He returned the brush to the shelf.

  She led the way past other stalls, slowing her pace to allow him to keep up. She stopped in front of one, and a beautiful buckskin horse with a dark mane poked his head out. “Kuitan, look who’s here to see you. Riley has come back.”

  He thought he saw a spark of recognition in the animal’s eyes, but he couldn’t return the greeting. He reached out and patted Kuitan’s elegant neck. “Maybe we’ll become friends again.” He spoke to the horse but he looked at Susannah. A rosy glow suffused her face and she began twisting the slim gold band on her left ring finger. He dropped his gaze and then looked up at her again. “You are as pretty as your photograph. I thought about that all t
he way here—would I have a wife so pretty?”

  He gave her a brief smile and extended a hand to touch one of her curls, but he let it drop.

  “Those two young boys I’ve seen here, Joshua and Will… Warren—”

  “Wade,” she supplied.

  “They are not ours?”

  Her eyes widened. “Did you think—oh goodness, no. Tanner is their uncle and he’s raising them, although we’ve become their substitute family.”

  “We have no children of our own?”

  Her blush deepened. “Um, no. We—I—that is, we were still hoping for that to happen when you left.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll have the chance to make it happen now.”

  She dropped her gaze and then she looked over her shoulder at the big doorway at the other end of the stable. The hired hand was leading the filly to an empty stall at the far end of the stable. Turning back to Riley, she said, “I’ve got to put lunch together. You’ll probably want to get washed.”

  She turned and walked toward Tanner, faster this time, and didn’t bother to see if Riley could make his way back to the house. Sighing, he leaned on his cane and stumped his way across the yard to follow her suggestion.

  • • •

  Tanner caught a few isolated words of the conversation between him and Susannah, but it didn’t sound like anything important. Still, it gave him that old feeling he’d once had, before Riley Braddock went to war—like a trespasser, as if he’d eavesdropped on something he wasn’t meant to hear, no matter how insignificant. He’d felt like a lousy bum for coveting his employer’s wife, though he’d always been careful not to reveal his feelings. But she was his own wife now. At least she was supposed to be. The last two nights he’d stayed in the bunkhouse had been lonely ones. He couldn’t help but glance across the yard at the window of the bedroom they’d shared, looking for silhouettes on the curtains. He hadn’t seen any, but his imagination had played out dramatic and emotional reunion scenes in his mind’s eye. Despite Riley Braddock’s wasted appearance and uncertainty, Tanner knew what he would do if he’d returned to Susannah after being gone for over two years.

  She approached the stall and put her elbows on the chest-high door to watch while he went about the business of unsaddling the filly and grooming her. He felt her eyes following his movements, but he avoided crossing gazes with her. If he just didn’t look, if he didn’t ask questions, somehow everything would be all right. He knew it wasn’t logical but that was his flimsy defense against bad news.

  “I went to see Mr. Parmenter this afternoon,” she said.

  Now he looked up from currying the horse, his breath stopped in his chest, but he didn’t respond.

  “He said that since the army declared Riley dead, you and I are legally married.”

  Tanner let his hands drop to his sides, not sure if this information was good enough to untie the knot in his gut. She didn’t look happy or sad. She could have been quoting the price of a bolt of fabric at the dry goods store, her voice was so flat. “Did you tell Braddock?”

  “No. You’re the only person I’ve told.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  She pulled off her gloves and tucked them into the waistband of her split riding skirt. “Well, yes. But not yet. I’d like to wait until his state of mind is more…settled.”

  He stared at her across the horse’s back. “You mean until he remembers who you are? Don’t you think that would make it harder for him?”

  “That’s not what I mean—but Tanner, he just got home.” She glanced around helplessly, as if looking for an answer in the rafters or a feedbag hanging on a post. “If you were in his spot, is that what you’d want to hear? ‘Welcome back, and by the way, I’m not your wife anymore’?”

  He sighed and swore, knowing she was right. “No. I didn’t want to hear it either.”

  “No one needs to know yet. For now, this is just our business, between you and me.” Then, in a barely audible voice, she looked at him with those expressive dark eyes and asked, “Anyway, didn’t you tell me I’m the one who has to make the decision, and not the law?”

  That was true too, and he felt as if that knot in his stomach had just pulled itself tighter.

  • • •

  That evening, everyone was seated at the dining room table when Susannah brought in a flowered platter steaming with roast beef and vegetables. She was grateful for Cole and Jessica’s company but disappointed that Shaw had come home for supper.

  He piled vegetables and meat onto his plate, then looked up at Riley, who sat to her left. “Well, son, now that you’ve had a look around the place, you must be glad you’re home with your own kin. No more of that Kree-stoff bullshit, right?”

  Jessica winced.

  Cole lowered his brows and glared at his father.

  Susannah’s fingers interlaced and she clamped her hands together in her skirt.

  Across from her, Tanner kept his eyes on his plate.

  Briefly, Riley touched the scar on his temple and glanced at the old man, giving him a small, apologetic smile. “I—I have not really become accustomed to it yet. Not to any of it.” He rested his right hand on the table and began opening and closing his fist as if he considered punching the old man in the nose. She almost wished he would.

  “We’ll give it a few days yet to get you right-minded again.” Shaw handled the silver awkwardly in his arthritic hands, but managed to spear a carrot with his fork. “How do you like that ambulance losin’ one of our boys like that? Didn’t they know what they were doing?”

  Riley’s fist continued to open and close, now with more urgency. “The ambulance didn’t lose me, it was shelled. I’m told I was the only one who survived.”

  “Sure you were! No son of mine would let a little thing like one of those Huns’ shells get you. Let those other boys fall like wheat grains in a flour mill. I’ll bet they gave you the Victory Medal. It must’ve been a hell of a fight—damn, I wish I coulda been there! We saw a few photographs one of the local boys sent home. Up to his knees in water in those trenches, he said, with rats as big as shoats swimming by, but—”

  With growing alarm, Susannah watched Riley’s reaction to Shaw’s thoughtless yapping. His expression changed to one of glassy-eyed terror. He reached out with his right hand as though he were straining to grab something, opening, closing, opening, closing.

  “Whip! Whip, come on!” he screamed. With his napkin still tucked in his shirt collar, he jumped up from his chair, tipping it over, and leaned forward, as if seeing something beyond the table that wasn’t there. He held the napkin over his nose and mouth. “Damn it, Whippy, hang on! Viens maintenant! It’s just a little farther—grab my hand. Don’t you worry, I won’t leave you out here!”

  Suddenly, his body jerked as if he’d been struck by an invisible force and he flung up both arms with the impact. He dropped to the floor and slumped against the china cabinet behind him. The dishes in the cabinet clattered and something fell off one of its shelves. Riley looked stunned and puzzled. Then his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness, falling to his side.

  “Oh, my God,” Jessica said, leaping from her own chair. She flew to his side and Susannah knelt across from her. Between the two of them, they straightened him out on his back.

  Around the table, the boys, Cole, Shaw, and Tanner sat staring, slack-jawed, frozen in horrified surprise.

  Jessica grabbed Riley’s wrist to feel for a pulse and put her ear to his chest. “His heart is racing like a rabbit’s.” But his face was drained of color, and except for his labored breathing, he looked dead.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Jess shook her head. “It looked to me like he was reliving a bad experience in battle. He even spoke French.”

  Cole, stirred from his initial shock, scrambled to join them. “What did he say?”

  Jess shook her head. “I only know a few words, just enough to recognize the sound of the language.”

  “What the hell
is this all about?” Shaw demanded, revived enough to speak. “I thought he couldn’t remember anything. It seems to me he remembers just fine!”

  Susannah couldn’t hold back her frustration any longer. “Old man, for the love of God, just shut up and eat your supper!” she snapped, glaring at the crabbing patriarch at the end of the table. “You’re the one who probably brought this on.”

  “I did! I was tryin’ to help, to cheer him up.”

  How did he dare wear such an indignant look? “You can see how well that worked.” Acid laced her words. “Don’t ‘help’ anymore.”

  “All right, all right, can we please have some order here?” Jessica interrupted with a stern tone. “We need to take care of Riley.”

  Cole lifted his head. “You boys take your plates and eat in the kitchen. Pop, you go with them.”

  Wade and Josh, eyes still as big as saucers, grabbed their food and ran through the kitchen and out the screen door. But Shaw held fast. “I have as much right to be here as any of you do, sonny boy.” He struggled to his feet and stumped over to them.

  After several minutes of the women patting his face and slapping his wrists, Riley came around, looking groggy and disoriented. He tried to focus on Susannah. “L’étrangeté?”

  She took his hand. “What? Riley, I don’t understand French.”

  Jessica interjected, “Did you hurt yourself? Hit your head?”

  “Non…c’était l’étrangeté.”

  “Oh, Riley.” Susannah lowered her head and pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. A flood of compassion and remorse filled her. To be lost in a world where nothing was familiar—how terrifying it must be. She lifted her face again and saw Tanner watching her with an assessing expression.

  “Do you know where you are?” she asked. It was so difficult to see this once strong and capable man flat on his back, almost as fragile as any convalescent she’d ever seen.