by Linda Berry
“How’s Gunner?” Joe asked, holding a half-eaten drumstick. “The brood mares? They should be coming into foal.”
Sully’s heart skipped a beat. He didn’t have the heart to dump the heavy news of theft, murder, and financial gloom on his parents. Not during their happy reunion, not when he had witnessed both of them stressed to the max and in tears today. A lie rolled smoothly off his tongue. “A bull got out of the pasture this morning. He was heading down the driveway toward the highway.”
“How’d that happen?” Joe asked.
“Pistol opened the gate.”
His parents laughed heartily.
“That mule’s name should be Houdini,” Ronnie said.
Joe wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Pistol’s got twice the smarts of most people.”
Sully took a controlled breath, released it, felt his muscles relax. Pistol’s exploits were legendary. The mule had an instinct for freeing himself from every gate he’d ever been placed behind, sometimes liberating the donkeys and chickens too. After successfully skirting the topic of Gunner, Sully proceeded to update his parents on the state of the ranch and the list of repairs needing attention. Joe asked pointed questions and to Sully’s surprise, assigned several jobs to himself. No way, Sully thought. His father, weak as a newborn colt, thought he could chop firewood.
After dinner Ronnie put on her reading glasses and examined Joe’s bag of meds. “They really go overboard with all this stuff. Antidepressants, sleep aid, stool softener, bladder control. It’s a wonder your body can function on its own at all.”
“I didn’t take nothing but what you told me,” Joe assured her.
“Good. These you need tonight.” She put three containers aside. “These we ease you off of over time. These we throw out.”
Sully felt relieved that his dad was in good hands. “I’m calling it a night. I still have chores to do. Dad’s okay here for a week, Mom?”
She and Joe exchanged a look. Sully could almost see sparks fly. “Don’t worry, dear. I’ll take good care of your father.”
Joe smiled expectantly. Sully guessed he was getting his hopes up for nothing. Ronnie hadn’t told him yet that he was staying in the guest room.
Sully stood and stretched. “I’ll call in the morning, Mom. Night, Dad.”
Joe nodded. “Son.”
Ronnie walked him to the door. She touched the opal pendant and smiled. “I love the necklace.”
“A jewel for a jewel.”
“Here, keep this in your truck.” She folded his fingers around a bottle of skin sanitizer. “Use it liberally. Germs are everywhere.”
Sully looked at it dubiously, thinking of every shithole he’d crawled through in the last four years. Now he should be afraid of germs? To appease her, he tucked it into his shirt pocket.
Butch started pawing his leg.
“He wants to go with you. Can you take him?” she asked. “I can’t walk him.”
“Sure, Mom.”
“And please, take him to the groomer.”
“How ’bout if I just get out my tree clippers?”
“Just don’t prune him into a Chihuahua.” She laughed. “Your dad would have a fit.”
Sully gave her a peck on the forehead and stepped outside into the frigid night. The sky was studded with stars and a sliver of moon was tangled in the bare branches of a tree. Snow had transformed the landscape, burying everything familiar under mounds of white. While Butch rummaged in the undergrowth, Sully reflected on the day’s strange turn of events. He’d discovered both his parents were a bit unhinged. His dad had become a needy invalid and his mom was a hostage in her own home. The ranch was skidding toward bankruptcy and Sully didn’t know how to put on the brakes. On the positive side, he had busted Joe out of the Gulag nursing home, his parents still loved each other, and no one had shot at him today. Tonight he would sleep in a warm bed under his own roof. All in all, not too bad a day. Butch resurfaced from beneath a bush covered in snow. “Let’s go, runt.” Sully brushed the light powder from his tangled coat and tucked him inside the warmth of his jacket.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A week had passed peacefully since Justin met Avery. He found her to be a generous, tenderhearted woman, content with the small niceties of life. She wasn’t looking for a man to take care of her. She had an education, a good job, and was taking care of herself just fine. She didn’t mind taking care of him, either. At least for now.
Steering a shopping cart down the brightly lit aisle of the grocery store, Justin smiled as he replayed their first morning together. He had feared she might throw him out when she woke up sober, but to his relief she woke up as sweet and soft as a kitten, practically purring. They made love in the dim morning light, showered together, then cooked breakfast. Or rather, he cooked. She sat at the table sipping coffee and just looking pretty. Over a mushroom and cheddar cheese omelet, she invited him to stay until he was well enough to rodeo. He showed her his gratitude in the bedroom. Life was good. They settled into a congenial living arrangement. She paid for groceries. He cooked the meals and did the housework. His smile broadened as he made his way to the frozen food section and added a package of chicken breasts to the cart.
It was tax season, Avery’s busiest time of year. Every morning at the break of dawn, she tromped off to her accounting job at Acorn Trucking Company. Justin appreciated that she was smart with money, ran the finance department, and authorized every expenditure down to the penny. While she put in a grinding sixty-hour week, he limped around her house doing yard work, handyman chores, and laundry. Every night, Avery came home worn and frazzled. They migrated outside to the shaded patio and ate dinner in the dry desert heat.
He stopped in the produce section and lightly squeezed tomatoes, then avocadoes, and added a couple of each to his cart. Whistling, he picked up a six-pack of Corona and strode up the aisle to the checkout counter.
“These enchiladas are delicious,” Avery said, red hair glowing in the waning light.
Sitting close together at the patio table, they watched the sun melt into the rooftops beyond the fence line of her small backyard. He was keeping cool in cut-offs and flipflops. She had changed from work clothes to a little gauzy summer dress. Avery, he happily discovered, was a free spirit, confident in her femininity and sexuality. She felt comfortable enough in his company to not fuss with makeup, her hair, or underwear. He loved seeing her nipples pressing against the thin cloth of her dress, and he loved knowing he could touch her whenever he wanted, where he wanted, and she would respond playfully, and sensually. He pushed her fragrant hair aside and kissed the nape of her neck. They shared a lingering gaze, her cheeks flushing prettily, brown eyes shining. “Where’d you learn to cook?” she asked, tucking a strand of hair behind an ear.
“Here and there.” Along with chicken enchiladas, he made Spanish rice, refried beans crowned with melted cheese, and spicy guacamole. “I just make simple stuff.”
“Yeah, but everything has flavor.”
“Fresh herbs. That’s the secret. In this case, cilantro and jalapeño peppers.”
“So really, Justin, who taught you?”
He took a long chug of his cold Corona. “A summer camp I went to as a kid had a big commercial kitchen. All the boys learned to cook.”
“Boy Scouts?”
“Something like that.” St. Teresa’s Home for Orphaned Youth was a far cry from Boy Scouts, but it was the closest he’d ever come to realizing a safe, secure environment.
“Was your mom a good cook?”
“So-so.” He had no idea.
She looked at him over her beer mug. “Why are you so vague about your family?”
He felt his shoulders tense. “I had an ordinary, middle-class upbringing. Boring.”
“Where’re your folks?”
He usually kept on lying when people asked these questions, but he didn’t want to lie to Avery. “Mom died when I was three.”
Her face showed surprise, then sympathy, and she co
ntinued in a gentle tone. “I’m so sorry. So your dad raised you.”
“He’s dead, too.” As far as he was concerned, the bastard father that deserted him as an infant was as good as dead.
“Who raised you?”
He saw she wasn’t going to let it go. This was exactly why he traveled alone. People by nature were nosy. “What’s with the fifty questions?” he asked, his tone sharpening.
She sat back, startled. “Hey, I’ve been an open book all week. I’ve told you everything about my ex.”
Yeah, the guy was a jerk. But the hardships Avery had encountered in her life wouldn’t fill a novella. His would fill a whole goddamned library.
“I just want to know a little about you,” she said.
“No one raised me.”
She looked puzzled. “Are you going to give me a straight answer?”
“Too many foster parents to count,” he said in a rough voice. “I lost track after the first five.” Not really. He knew exactly. Thirteen foster families in fifteen years, with trips back to St. Teresa in between placements.
“Foster parents? You were an orphan …”
He felt his face tighten.
“You must have had a few nice families …”
They sat in strained silence.
“Every nightmare you ever heard about foster parents is true,” he finally said.
The look that washed over her face made him cringe. Pity. Which he found intolerable. Instantly, his anger sparked. He wasn’t a victim and wouldn’t be treated like one. He wouldn’t answer any more questions either, and allow painful, barbed memories to surface. “Excuse me.” He scraped his chair back from the table and carried his half-full plate into the kitchen. After scraping his food into the trash, he twisted the cap off another Corona, chugged half of it down and started cleaning up. He needed to calm down. He didn’t need to have a row with Avery and jeopardize his living arrangement. He was desperate and would be homeless if not for her. He swallowed the other half of his beer.
Avery had the good sense to give him space. When she came in he wouldn’t look at her, just stood furiously scrubbing a stubborn yellow stain in the sink with a scouring pad. She came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. He felt the soft warmth of her body pressing against his back, her breath on his neck.
“I’m sorry I questioned you, Justin. Forget the sink. Let’s go to bed.”
“Go on in. I’ll finish here and then get cleaned up.”
When he came out of the bathroom the lights were out and she lay waiting for him. He eased into her arms, felt her smooth hands travel the length of his back, both soothing and arousing. Her touch jolted loose an old memory of Jessica, a foster mother who made a habit of slipping into his bed at night when her husband was out of town. Skipping foreplay, Justin entered Avery abruptly and moved roughly inside her, losing himself, riding a wave of urgent, irrepressible pleasure until he fell back spent and sweating next to her, his thoughts filled with Jessica. He could even smell Jessica. That’s how they’d had sex. Primitive. Wham bam.
Avery lay motionless beside him. He reached for her but she turned her back to him. He felt a sudden rush of shame and was catapulted back through time to his bedroom in the McKinley house. After sex, Jessica hurriedly escaped his bed, wrapped herself in a kimono and disappeared into the house leaving him alone sweating in the dark, feeling like some kind of criminal. Sometimes days and weeks passed when she didn’t come to his room. He’d wake in the night, listening for any subtle sound, longing for their few minutes of rough intimacy.
Justin moved over to his side of the bed, giving Avery space, knowing he should apologize, but he felt resentful that she trespassed into his secret world, and tapped into his reservoir of deeply hidden memories. The darkness of Avery’s room provided the perfect canvas on which to project vivid memories of past abuse. Anger stewed in his gut when he thought of some of the misfit foster families he’d been placed with. Mostly hard working ranchers who used him as free labor, and were overly quick to get physical to make him work harder. Seemed he spent half his childhood hiding welts and bruises beneath his clothes.
His thoughts shifted to St. Teresa, his only childhood refuge. He remembered fondly Father O’Shea, the shuffling, lumbering priest who patiently gave him guidance and his only experience of real parenting. The God-fearing staff, nuns and devout volunteers, drilled into him the importance of self-discipline and self-reliance. They taught him good manners, how to cook, clean, and work hard at school. They also tried to persuade him that sex was a sin outside of marriage. How could this be wrong, he wondered? Sex with Avery was the sweetest experience he’d ever known. Before Avery, everything he knew about sex he’d learned from porn films. Sex with Jessica, his first lover, confused the hell out of him. He felt like he just provided a service; no foreplay, no sexy pillow talk, no affection, just him clumsily bumping under the covers in the dark. During daylight hours, Jessica barely acknowledged his existence, and let her husband and stepsons manage his workload.
With Avery, it was different. Justin liked her. He loved her body, the way it smelled, the way she moved, the way she taught him to move. She had never been shy about murmuring instructions and rewarding him for his efforts with little moans of pleasure. When he was clumsy, she laughed it off, made him laugh, too. Sex didn’t have to be so serious. But tonight, it had been. He used it as a weapon, misdirecting his old anger at Jessica. His shame now felt like an ache. Thoughts of the past tunneled through his mind, unrelenting, until he fell into a fitful sleep.
He woke with a start, drenched in sweat. The room was shrinking! Lightheaded and dizzy, his breathing short and rapid, he stumbled through the darkened house out into the yard. He knew what to do. Inhale deeply for five seconds. Hold for two. Exhale for five. He repeated the exercise for several long minutes until his heart rate and breathing returned to normal.
Anxiety attacks were nothing new but they still scared the hell out of him. Each time, he felt as though he was moving underwater, suffocating, just moments from death. He’d been experiencing anxiety it seemed since the morning he discovered his dead mother lying in bed when he was three. He lay with her corpse all day until a neighbor came to the door. Mommy won’t wake up. The father he vaguely remembered never came forth to whisk him off to a new life but instead made arrangements for him to live at St. Teresa’s. Anger rumbled through his stomach when he thought of the heartless father who deserted him.
There was no going back inside tonight. Justin grabbed his sleeping bag from his camper, rolled it out across the cool lawn, and lay under the black ceiling of night. He distracted himself by connecting lines between the stars and identifying constellations until he drifted into a tormented sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sully heard a truck braking to a halt out in the yard and then the sound of the engine dying. He scraped the last bite of food off his plate, set the dish in the sink, and glanced out the window. Christ, Lilah! He felt blindsided. He knew he couldn’t put off seeing her much longer, but he had wanted to do it on his own terms, in town on neutral ground. Not here, dressed in his dirty work-clothes and covered in dust from working in the barn all morning. He pulled on his boots at the door and strode out into the yard, Butch hot on his heels.
Lilah stood waiting next to her Dodge Ram pickup, her dark hair lifting and falling in the wind. It was a cold, gray day, yet her warm beauty made him think of nature at the height of summer when everything was fully ripe and blossoming. He parked himself in front of her and tipped his hat back but made no move to touch her. Butch sniffed around her feet, tail wagging with curiosity.
“What’s this? A poodle? You gotta be kidding.”
She wore a short dress beneath her bulky jacket, and western boots over bare legs. The wind pressed the fabric against her thighs, accentuating her graceful, athletic build. While he was deployed, the secrets of her body had lived and breathed in his imagination, keeping him sane in an insane country. Under other circu
mstances, he’d have grabbed her by now, would be kissing her like a thirsty drunk on a bottle.
She picked up Butch, held him like a baby, and peered over his fuzzy head at Sully. “Pretty cold hello, Sully.”
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Didn’t know I needed an invitation.”
Travis came out of the garage in his oil-stained coveralls and smiled ear to ear when he saw Lilah. He caught Sully’s expression and his smile withered.
“Hello, Travis,” she said.
Travis nodded. “I’ll take Butch.”
Lilah set him down and the poodle trotted after Travis into the garage. She pulled her jacket tighter against a sharp gust of wind.
“Not a very smart outfit for this weather,” Sully said.
“I didn’t come here to wow you with my IQ.” Her hazel eyes studied him. “What’s wrong? You’re acting like a stranger.”
“I’ve been gone a long time, Lilah.”
“Fifteen very long months.” She reached out and touched his face, fingertips caressing the scars.
He flinched and pulled away.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Reflexes,” he said.
“You always had great reflexes.” Her lips curved into a beautiful smile.
He looked away.
“Am I interrupting something?”
“I’ve got work to do.” His voice was tight. “Fences to mend.”
The smile vanished. “You’ve been home for days, Sully. You haven’t called. I had to find out you were here from the bartender at Beamer’s last night.”
“I haven’t called a lot of people.” He moved around her and walked into the barn where Dakota, his Tennessee Walker, was groomed and haltered outside the tack room.
She followed.
