The You I Never Knew

by Susan Wiggs

  He could hear the lazy slide of liquor through her voice. Jesus, five years. She’d been sober five years, and now this. “Mama, slow down. What happened?”

  “That old cow LaNelle fired me from the shop.”

  “LaNelle Jacobs fired you? Why?” From the corner of his eye, Sam could see Cody edging toward the door. He pinned him in place with a fierce stare. The boy flattened his lips and squinted defiantly, but he didn’t leave.

  “They said I stole all the money from the cash register. All forty-two bucks of it. A staggering fortune. Jussst… staggering.”

  “That’s absurd, Mama. LaNelle knows you wouldn’t steal from her shop.”

  “Someone saw my car parked there last night. ’S’morning, the cash was gone. ’Course she’s gotta blame me. Who else could it be, son? Who the hell else could it be?”

  “Mama—”

  “You never really outgrow what you are, do you son? Folks’ opinions of you never really change.”

  “I’m coming to get you,” he said. “Don’t move. Get a cup of coffee and sit tight.”

  She wasn’t listening now. He could hear someone asking her if she wanted another tequila sunrise, could hear her cackle with harsh glee. Oh, Mama. Not again, Mama. He slammed down the phone.

  “What’s going on?” Cody asked, his face strangely still. “Someone’s saying she stole from the shop?”

  “When I find the son of a bitch who did, I’ll kill him, swear to God I will.”

  Cody paled. “Hey, it’s not the end of the world, man.”

  “I don’t have time to deal with you now,” Sam snapped. “I have to go.” He grabbed his parka and his keys. “Tell your mom I can’t make it tonight. Tell her—” He broke off. “Ah, hell. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  Chapter 49

  How was school today?” Michelle’s hairbrush hit the carpet with a thunk. Klutz, she thought. She was a bundle of nerves.

  “Okay,” Cody mumbled into the refrigerator. He stood in the white glow of the interior light, scanning the contents.

  Michelle picked up the brush and studied her son. He wore his black jeans and leather jacket, and she felt a frisson of unease. For some reason, it struck her that he looked exactly as he had when they’d first come to Crystal City. He wore gloves, concealing his bandaged hand. A knitted hat covered the scar on his head, so there was no evidence of the wound Sam had mended.

  She walked toward him. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  He twisted away from her, ducking his head as if to avoid getting an unwanted kiss. “Just the usual.” He dropped his backpack on the floor and took out a carton of milk.

  “Uh-uh,” she said automatically as he put it to his lips. “Use a glass.”

  He eyed her over his shoulder as he got a tumbler from the cupboard. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, Cody.”

  He sloshed some of the milk on the counter. Without thinking, she grabbed a paper towel. Annoyed, he took it from her and wiped up his own spill. “I was wondering. Did you… want me? I mean, did you ever think of getting rid of me?”

  He had never, ever asked her before. Michelle wondered how long he’d held the question inside him, unasked, festering. Tears gathered thickly in her throat, and she touched his cheek. “Oh, Cody. Not for a single second. You were so wanted. You were my life.” She swallowed and hoped she wouldn’t cry. He had almost never seen her cry. She remembered, with startling clarity, every sensation of being pregnant, and pain was no part of that sensation, no part at all. She had gone for natural childbirth, and she had felt his entire journey from her womb into the world, and seeing his tiny face for the first time had filled her with a fierce sense of purpose. “Having you saved me,” she said. “You were the best part of my life, and you still are.”

  He seemed a little embarrassed by the display his question had incited. “Cool,” he said, and took a deep gulp of milk. “What’re you all dressed up for?”

  She laughed, wanting to hug herself with glee. “Well, I’ve got some news.”

  He narrowed his eyes in distrust. When had he learned to do that? To conclude that her good news meant bad news for him? He leaned against the counter, drinking his milk, waiting.

  “You know I’ve been painting lately.” It felt good to voice the notion that had been at the back of her mind for days. Saying it aloud made her heart soar. It was impractical, impulsive, but she was determined to reclaim herself. “Like I used to, years ago. I’ve been thinking about making some changes. Gavin and I are looking into opening an art gallery in Crystal City.” She felt almost fearful about how badly she wanted this. How much it meant to her.

  His gaze flicked over her—black cashmere trousers, black angora sweater, her good pearls. “So what’s with the outfit?”

  “Sam’s coming over for dinner.” She tried to keep the tremor from her voice as she told him the real news. The one thing she wanted more than the next breath of air. “Sam asked me to marry him. I haven’t said yes yet, but I’m going to. Tonight.”

  “Shit.” He set down his glass and brushed past her, flopping down on the sofa.

  She tasted lipstick as she bit her lip. “I was sort of hoping for a more supportive reaction from you.” Don’t do it, she wanted to beg him. Don’t take this happiness from me. But on the heels of that thought came the thoughts any mother was conditioned to think: How can I do this to my child? How can I rip him out of the middle of his life and plunk him down amid strangers? Isn’t there some compromise? Can I have what I want and keep him happy, too?

  He was quiet for long, long moments. She was dying to know what was going on in that head of his. Finally, he took a deep breath, looked her square in the eye, and said, “Don’t bother waiting for Sam to show up. He took off.”

  “What do you mean, he took off?”

  “He’s gone, scram, vamoose.”

  A chill of disbelief snaked through her. “Gone where?”

  “Out of town. He said to tell you…” Cody hung his head.

  “What? What did he say? What happened?” Disbelief hardened into a horrible dread. She had to know. She needed a reason. She was inches from shaking this kid’s teeth right out of his head.

  “I guess he didn’t want to be my father after all.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, that’s ridiculous. Sam loves me. He wants to love you, Cody—”

  “Not anymore.” His head hung lower. “Something, um, happened.”

  She pressed herself against the counter until she felt her surgical scar. What occupied the space where the kidney used to be? she wondered irrationally.

  “Talk, Cody,” she said, fixing her attention on him with a will. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Molly and I were hanging out at his place this afternoon, and he… he acted like I was molesting her or something. We weren’t doing anything much, Mom, we weren’t.”

  Michelle took a deep breath, trying to assimilate everything he’d just told her. “Let me get this straight. You and Molly were at Sam’s.”

  “Yeah.” He glowered at the toes of his shoes. “I was riding a horse, and it was great, and then we went into the barn office. We were like, fooling around a little bit, no big deal—”

  “Fooling around.” Her stomach knotted.

  “No big deal,” he repeated sullenly. “We’re not babies. We know the score. We were fully clothed, Mom, every second. But Sam scared Molly off and started yelling at me.”

  Overnight, she thought. Overnight her son had changed from a little boy with grass stains on his knees to practically a grown man… with a man’s desires. “Look at it from his perspective. She’s a neighbor. The daughter of a friend. Can you blame him?”

  “I should’ve known you’d take his side.”

  “I’m not taking sides—”

  “But you don’t believe me. You didn’t hear the things he said, Mom. He went into this big insane lecture about safe sex and unwanted babies.” Cody folded his arms across his chest. “Then he said
he… he doesn’t want me for a son.”

  The pain was sharp, hot. “He can’t have said that.”

  “Call him. Just try it. He won’t answer. Swear to God, he doesn’t want me, and good riddance, I say. I don’t want him either.”

  She studied his pale, worried face. And deep in the center of her, a core of ice formed, grew bigger, colder. “Why would you say a thing like that?”

  “Because I mean it, Mom. Sam has the hots for you, but that doesn’t mean he gives a shit about me.”

  * * *

  Michelle went through the motions even though her horrified certainty hardened with each creeping moment. She called Edward, who had been in the city all day and had seen neither hide nor hair of Sam. She called Sam’s service only to be told Dr. McPhee would return calls when he checked in for his messages. No answer at his mother’s. His partner Karl was brusque, telling her to try the service or, if it was an emergency, to go to County.

  Her hand was ice-cold and shaking as she hung up the phone for the last time. A terrible sense of déjà vu broke over her. She remembered exactly how she had felt that long-ago night, sick and exhilarated with the knowledge of her pregnancy, rushing over to Sam’s house only to discover that he’d left without a word.

  He took off. He took off. He took off. Disappeared into the night just like before.

  Friday

  Chapter 50

  Almost dizzy from lack of sleep, Michelle dressed in the gray quiet of the dawn. Cody’s bedroom door was firmly shut, and not a sound came from within. She wondered how well she knew her son anymore. She could only guess at what was going through his head. The emotional roller coaster of finding his father so unexpectedly, then having the big quarrel with Sam, was a lot for a kid to handle. A lot for anyone to handle. Yet beneath the hurt and anger, she had detected something a little harder to put her finger on. Evasiveness. Shame, perhaps.

  Resolving to talk to Cody about it when he got up, she put on a pair of boots and went over to the main house. She walked into the great room, stood before the fire, and thought of that first night when she and Gavin had sat together in this room. It seemed long ago that they had been so awkward with one another. She’d gone to him because, at long last, he needed her. The irony was that she had needed him just as much.

  She pressed a wadded Kleenex to her cheeks. Her father came in, took one look at her, and opened his arms. It felt so right to collapse against him, and the tears spilled again. She knew her father now, and she needed him in a way she never had before. “Sam’s gone, Daddy. He and Cody had a fight last night,” she said. “It was bad. Cody thinks Sam doesn’t want him.”

  “Cody’s wrong. Sam wants his kid. Trust me,” Gavin said, bringing her to the sofa and sitting down.

  “How do you know?”

  Lines deepened in his craggy face. “I did a stupid thing years ago, letting you leave. Before you came to me when your mother died, I didn’t think I wanted a kid. I didn’t know how to be a father. I sure as hell wasn’t much good at it. When you left, I convinced myself it was for the best. But I was wrong. I wanted my daughter. I just didn’t know how to bring you back. Anyway, that’s how I know Sam wants his son. Whatever went on between them won’t change that.”

  “But if Cody doesn’t believe Sam wants him, then we’ve got problems. And something tells me they won’t just blow over.”

  “If he’s gone, there’s bound to be an explanation. He’s not some no-account drifter. He’ll be back this time.”

  “True. But how can I get Sam’s side of the story if he simply takes off at the first sign of trouble? He should have called me.”

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions.”

  “I’m trying not to. But I just feel so… stood up. Maybe I’m not cut out to be with a guy like Sam. People don’t really change, Daddy. He took off seventeen years ago, and he’s done it again.” She felt the chilly ghost of the old feelings of abandonment. In different ways and for different reasons, she had lost her mother, her father, Sam… and now she felt Cody slipping away from her. “Maybe,” she admitted, “I don’t have it in me to love them both in the way they need.”

  Gavin turned to her on the sofa. “You know better than that. You have the most generous heart of anyone I’ve ever known, Michelle. You came to me in spite of my failings. You came even though you knew it would be hard for you. Things turned out to be even harder than you imagined, and you stayed, honey.”

  A long silence stretched out, and the sun broke over the mountains. Michelle turned to her father. “The first time Sam took off, I never even tried to find him.” She took a deep breath and finally admitted something about herself, something she wasn’t proud of. “There was probably a part of me that saw him as a delinquent, no good, a guy who would never amount to anything. I was wrong back then. The failing was mine, not his. That’s what I don’t know, Daddy. I don’t know if I’m better than that now.”

  “About the first time.” Gavin put his hand on her arm.

  His touch made her pause. She looked up into his face, a little puffy now from the meds, but still so expressive, so anguished.

  “He and his mother left town because I arranged it,” Gavin said quietly.

  Michelle stared at him. Her fist tightened around the Kleenex. “I don’t understand.”

  “There was money missing from the foreman’s office. Maybe Sam took it, maybe he didn’t. I wasn’t really thinking about that. I was thinking about you, Michelle. I’d just found out you were seeing Sam, and I wasn’t thrilled with the idea. I thought the boy and his mother were trouble, and I didn’t want you hurt. So Deputy O’Shea and I confronted him with the missing cash. He denied taking it, of course. For good measure, O’Shea also reminded Tammi Lee of her rubber-check habit and several outstanding warrants. She was given a choice. Disappear, or do time. Sam really didn’t have a choice.”

  “My God.” She drew away from her father.

  “He never told you about that, did he?” Gavin asked in a pained voice.

  “He never said a word.”

  “I’m sorry as hell, honey. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid you’d go running off with him.”

  “And I did run off. Only not with him.” She pulled her knees up to her chest.

  “I wish I could undo what I did. But I acted out of desperation because I loved you, and I was so damned scared.”

  Her throat stung. “Why—” she said, and had to pause. “Why didn’t you just say so? Why didn’t you tell me you loved me? You never said it.”

  “I thought you knew.” He was silent for a long time, staring down at his hands. “You’re a parent yourself now. The love happens whether you talk about it or not. You’ve made choices for Cody—some good, and some bad. But you always acted out of love for him.”

  The stark truth struck hard. He was right. She didn’t approve of Cody hanging out with Claudia Teller. Every once in a while, Michelle would “forget” to pass on a message that Claudia had called. Or manage to schedule Cody for a dental appointment when she knew he and Claudia had plans. Michelle was uncomfortably certain she would resort to devious means if she thought she could keep them apart.

  “Sometimes a parent does the wrong thing for the right reasons,” Gavin pointed out. “I’m so damned sorry, Michelle. I should have trusted your judgment.”

  “Are you saying I should trust Cody’s?”

  “Maybe. Yeah, I am. Look, I failed with you. But you have a chance to succeed with Cody.”

  “Right now it’s Cody’s judgment that he doesn’t want Sam in his life.”

  “I suspect he’ll come around. He’s a kid, thinking about himself first and foremost. He doesn’t want to move in the middle of high school—what kid would? But he’s also your son. He wants you to be happy, Michelle. Do what’s right for you. He’ll come around.”

  “I can’t do it, Daddy. I can’t force the two of them together and pretend it will be fine.”

  “You don’t know how it will be. May
be it won’t be fine, maybe not all the time. But what is? What the hell is in this life?”

  Restless, she got up and opened the doors to the front porch, feeling the harsh chill of the morning air on her face and hearing the sounds of the ranch coming to life—diesel vehicles firing up, the foreman’s whistle, the hydraulic hiss of a dump truck. Horses blowing and stamping, the tinny sound of the farm and ranch report on someone’s radio. She needed to clear her head, had to think about what it would really be like to marry Sam—a man who had just taken off without a word of explanation.

  It scared her when she considered how hurt she was by that. How vulnerable she was when it came to Sam. “I’d better go wake Cody for school,” she said.

  Returning to the guesthouse, she knocked lightly on Cody’s door. No response. “Cody?” she said, and pushed the door open.

  Reality registered slowly. The bed that hadn’t been slept in. Closet door carelessly open to empty space. The big duffel bag gone.

  Terror broke over her in a dizzying wave. Gone.

  Her son was gone.

  It was every mother’s nightmare. She tore out of the room, screaming for her father, her mind filled with visions of Cody broken, bruised, abused by someone who had picked him up hitchhiking.

  Gavin met her halfway across the yard, holding out the cordless phone. “It’s okay,” he said.

  His words barely penetrated her icy, heart-freezing terror.

  Her father closed her hand firmly around the phone. “It’s okay. He’s in Seattle. Here, let Natalie tell you.”

  Standing in the blanketed yard, her hand shaking, she put the phone to her ear. Natalie was calm, uncharacteristically subdued, as she explained that Cody had taken the all-night bus from Missoula. Dear God. Her son had run away from home last night. No, he’d run away to home. He had run away from her.

  “Let me talk to him,” Michelle said. Tears threatened to melt the ice of terror, but she held them in, afraid that if she started to cry, she’d never stop.

  “He’s on his way to school. He wanted to get there early to re-enroll.”