by Janet Dailey
That was too much for Dawn. She was shaking with rage. “Do you want another gesture?” she hurled. “Try this!” She pointed a rigid finger in the direction of the front door while she glared at him. “Get out!”
His long strides carried him past her and out the door. The glass rattled in the window panes from the force behind the slamming of the door. Dawn glared after him, hating him at that moment as passionately as she had ever loved him.
The roar of the sportscar reversing out of the drive finally broke her anger-stiffened stance. She turned away from the door and started to lift a hand to her forehead in angry despair. Her glance fell on the paper money of various denominations in her hand. Her fingers tightened on it, crushing it more.
“You think it’s your money I want,” she caustically informed an absent Slater. “I’ll show you what I think of your money!”
Driven by an anger that cloaked a pain too excruciating to be exposed, Dawn swept across the room to the cypress-topped coffee table. She dumped the bills into the large glass ashtray sitting on it. She grabbed a matchbook and ripped out a cardboard match, striking it and holding the flame to the money.
It licked greedily at a corner, then jumped quickly from one paper bill to another. Soon the whole crumpled mass of wadded bills was consumed by fire. Dawn sank onto the edge of the couch to watch it burn with bitter satisfaction.
“That, Slater MacBride, is the grandest gesture of them all,” she murmured with a twisted slant to her mouth.
As quickly as the fire had taken hold, it burned itself out. All that remained of the money were black strips of brittle ash. Yet a distinctly smoky smell continued to taint the air she breathed—like something scorched.
“The sausage!” She bolted for the kitchen.
She waved a hand at the smoke-filled air as she entered the room and hurried to the stove, coughing and choking from the smoke invading her lungs. Her eyes smarted. She had to keep blinking as she turned the burner off and slapped a lid on the smoking skillet. After switching on the overhead exhaust fan, Dawn ran around opening all the windows and fanning the air to hurry the smoke’s departure.
With disjointed logic, she blamed it all on Slater. Of all times to start an argument, he had chosen when she was fixing Randy’s breakfast. She would never have burned the sausages if it weren’t for him. She went back to the stove to survey the damage.
“Gee, Mom.” Randy came in the back door and stopped, wrinkling his nose at the burnt smell and wispy bits of smoke in the air. “What are you trying to do? Burn the place down?”
Dawn was too upset and angry to answer, but it was a question that didn’t need an answer. When she lifted the lid of the skillet, there were four charred-black sticks encrusted in a sticky black mess of burned grease and sausage juice. She poked at the hard stuff with a spatula as Randy came over to take a look.
“Where’d Dad go in such a hurry?” Uncertainly, he peered sideways at her.
“He had business.” The words were clipped short as she moved away from him to carry the skillet to the sink. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed he’d left the back door standing open. “You forgot to close the door.” It was an absent reprimand, too preoccupied with her own private turmoil.
“Did you and Dad have an argument?” Randy trailed after her to the sink, pausing just a little bit behind her.
“We disagreed on certain matters,” Dawn replied stiffly, preferring to keep from her son how bitter the quarrel had been.
“You had a fight,” he concluded with a sinking look. “Are you going to make up?”
“I don’t know.” She ran water in the skillet and stabbed viciously at the black crust.
“Is he coming back?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice became more clipped and more emphatic as she repeated the same answer.
“Are you going to get a divorce?”
“I don’t know!” The word scraped over her strained nerves.
Dawn swung around to face him, angry with his hurting questions until she saw the frightened and lost expression on his young face. Something crumpled inside her, letting all the pain and remorse through. The skillet and spatula were dropped in the sink as she reached for him.
“Randy, I’m sorry. I’m upset, but not with you,” she assured him. “You aren’t to blame for what’s happened. You had nothing to do with it.”
His head drooped, and she knew he was trying to hide his tears. “I wish I could help. I wish—” His emotionally taut voice didn’t finish the sentence as he compressed his lips together to hold back a sob.
“Oh, Randy, you do help.” Dawn cupped his cheek in her hand and turned his face up so she could see it. The loving stroke of her thumb wiped away the tear that had been squeezed out of his lashes. “You don’t know how much I need you just to be with me. I hate to think what kind of selfish and self-centered person I might have become if you hadn’t come into my life so I could finally learn the responsibilities that go along with loving someone,” she explained. “You’ve been more help to me than you’ll ever know. And even if you can’t help solve the problems your father and I are having, just having you here makes it a little easier. Okay?” Her voice wavered on an emotional note as she forced an encouraging smile on her lips. Randy nodded a hesitant understanding and scrubbed a tear from his other cheek. “Then go close the door before you let in all the flies,” she urged in an attempt to instill some reassuring normality to the scene.
Her hand slid off his cheek as Randy turned to obey. Her gaze started to follow him, then leaped to the opened door where Slater was standing. There was a gentleness in his expression, a light in his gray eyes that seemed to be studying her for the first time.
“I heard what you told Randy,” he said. “You weren’t faking.”
“That’s big of you.” Hurt, she swung away and gripped the edge of the sink an instant, then reached for the skillet to begin jabbing at the crust again. She shut her eyes briefly when she heard his footsteps approaching her.
“Will you listen to me?” Slater requested and started to turn her chin toward him with his hand. “I’m trying to tell you I was wrong.”
Dawn jerked away from his touch and walked swiftly to the wall calendar by the phone to elude him. “I’d better mark that down.” She picked up a pen and began writing on the date. “‘Today Slater Mac Bride said he was wrong.’ There!” She flashed him a challenging look.
“I’m sorry,” he insisted with persuasive sincerity. “What more do you want me to say? I misjudged you—your reasons—everything.”
“I tried to tell you that but you twisted my words up and used them against me.” Her anger was weakening but the deep hurt from his accusations wouldn’t allow her to easily forgive him.
“I was wrong,” Slater admitted again. “I realize that I was more willing to believe the worst than to trust you. I was scared of being hurt. It all seemed too good to be true so I tried to find something wrong with it. I let my suspicion feed on itself and never came to you with it. That was my biggest mistake.”
“And I should have told you about being left out of Simpson’s will from the start,” she sighed, because the omission had eventually compounded the problem. “But I knew you’d take such delight in it,” Dawn accused with a brief flash of her old fire.
“I probably would have,” he agreed with a hint of a smile.
Randy watched them both cautiously. “Does this mean you aren’t mad at each other anymore? You won’t be getting a divorce?”
“Does it?” Slater quirked an eyebrow and silently appealed for her answer.
To be forgiven, one also had to be able to forgive. That was one of the responsibilities of loving. And she loved him. A smile slowly lifted the corners of her mouth as she held his gaze.
“Yes, that’s what it means,” she said softly. As Slater started toward her, she came to meet him. Randy discreetly wandered to the window while they embraced, arms tightly holding each other. It was a rawly sweet ki
ss that healed the hurt they had inflicted on one another and gave birth to a stronger love. It shone in their eyes when the kiss ended and they gazed at each other.
Slater enfolded her more lovingly in his arms and nestled her head on his shoulder. They swayed slightly to the tempo of their fast-beating hearts. His hand rubbed over her hair in a caressing fashion.
“What I said about a leopard not changing her spots?” he murmured, tipping his chin down so he could have a glimpse of her face.
“Yes?” She glanced up, now able to wait for his explanation without jumping to a conclusion out of self-protection.
“They’re born without spots and acquire them as they mature,” he said.
He was blaming her youth for her actions all those years ago. She felt like crying out of sheer happiness because that tragic episode seemed finally behind them.
“Dad?” Randy had heard their murmuring voices and thought it safe to intrude on their conversation. “Where’s your car? It isn’t in the driveway.”
Still holding Dawn, Slater turned his head to look at their son. “It’s parked a couple of blocks away. I ran out of gas,” he admitted with a wryly chagrined expression. “I meant to fill it last night and forgot.”
“Why didn’t you walk to the gas station and have the empty gas can in the trunk filled?” Randy frowned.
“There was a slight problem.” He glanced down at Dawn, amusement glittering in his eyes. “I didn’t have any money on me to pay for it. And the only station open on Sunday that’s close by doesn’t accept credit cards. So I had to come back to see if I couldn’t persuade my wife to part with some of the money I’d given her. Do you suppose that could be arranged?”
“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “I burned it all.”
“You did what?” He drew his head back, eyeing her skeptically.
“I was mad so I put it in the ashtray and set fire to it,” Dawn admitted.
There was a stunned moment of silence before Slater tipped his head back and laughed heartily. “What kind of woman did I marry?” he declared with a shake of his head. “She has to have money to burn.”
“I’m sorry.” It seemed so childish now. “Living with you isn’t going to be easy,” he said.
“We’ll make it,” Dawn asserted confidently.
“Of course,” Slater agreed. “You know what they say—the third time’s a charm.”
JANET DAILEY is the author of scores of popular, uniquely American novels, including the bestselling The Glory Game; Silver Wings, Santiago Blue; The Pride of Hannah Wade; and the phenomenal CALDER SAGA. Since her first novel was published in 1975, Janet Dailey has become the bestselling female author in America, with more than three hundred million copies of her books in print. Her books have been published in 17 languages and are sold in 90 different countries. Janet Dailey’s careful research and her intimate knowledge of America have made her one of the best-loved authors in the country—and around the world.
