As JohnScott walked toward the office, Neil took two steps as though he were headed to his truck, but when the door closed behind his son-in-law, Neil paused at the tailgate. He patted Ansel’s trailer. “So, the old man’s selling a few head?”
“I reckon. Can’t say I blame him, though. Getting up in years.” Clyde gestured to Neil’s truck and trailer. “You selling, too?”
“Maybe. Why do you ask?”
Neil lifted his chin and stared at Clyde, but Clyde only shrugged. There was nothing that needed saying. For a while Clyde looked back, but when it became an obvious attempt on Neil’s part to intimidate him, Clyde felt foolish. He and the other boys used to have stare-downs back in sixth grade. Surely Neil wasn’t still doing it.
As soon as Clyde broke eye contact, Neil laughed once. “So, I hear you and Lynda are together now.”
“Not necessarily.”
“That’s not what Fawn says.” Neil’s chin lowered, and he peered at Clyde like a detective drawing out a confession. “From what I hear, the four of you had a double date just last night.”
Clyde’s patience stretched. “I’m not sure I’d call it that.” He wasn’t sure Lynda would call it that either. He wasn’t sure Lynda wanted to be with him at all.
“You ever thought about taking her away from here?” Neil rested a boot on the trailer hitch. “If I was you, I’d head off to somewhere nobody knows you.”
Clyde rubbed his chin, not trusting what he was hearing. “Don’t know if that’d be such a good idea. We’ve both got family here.”
“It’s none of my business, really. Just offering a suggestion, but your family will be tended to whether you’re here or not.” He smiled. “You’re not all that good for the boy anyway.”
“Fawn would disagree.”
The rancher shook his head. “You don’t take good care of him. I saw you yesterday.”
Suddenly Neil was a spoiled child pitching a fit worse than Nathan ever had. “Yesterday was a bit of an emergency,” Clyde said.
Neil scanned JohnScott’s truck, then looked back toward the barn, and he had a strange expression on his face that Clyde couldn’t quite make out. “I’m just saying that if you leave town with Lynda, it might be the best thing for everyone involved.”
Clyde’s fingers tightened into a fist. “Nathan is my grandson, Neil. And his momma—my daughter—wants him to know me.”
Neil grinned. “Watch that anger of yours.”
The office door opened, and JohnScott held it while Ansel shuffled out.
Neil lifted his hat in greeting. “Ansel, you get a good deal for your stock?”
Ansel didn’t answer at first, only limped to the truck looking worn and tired. “Not bad.”
JohnScott’s eyes met Clyde’s across the bed of the truck, and in a split second, Clyde knew the old man was broken. Selling his herd was akin to digging his grave, and even though he still had a few head left on the ranch, this day marked the beginning of the end.
Neil chuckled as he shook JohnScott’s hand, either not seeing or not acknowledging Ansel’s discomfort. “We’ll be at your place Saturday night.” His eyes cut once more to Clyde. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Lyn, Hector told me about those Rangers giving you grief yesterday.”
“No big deal.” I didn’t see why the sheriff thought he needed to share that tidbit of information, but I didn’t say as much to Clyde. He sat on his usual stool at Dixie’s counter, eating his usual lunch, and I saw no reason to discuss Hector or the Rangers. I reached for a stack of menus so I could update them with tomorrow’s special.
“And he told me what you said about Neil.”
I gritted my teeth. “I didn’t realize you and the sheriff spoke much.”
“Some.”
I slapped a menu against the counter, then calmed myself as I removed today’s card, slid in tomorrow’s, and flipped the menu to the bottom of the pile. I stopped for a second, deciding if I really wanted to talk about what I was thinking, and then I huffed and went on to the next menu. “It was a long time ago.”
“What did Neil do to you exactly?”
I shrugged. “Crude humor and innuendo when he saw me in town. Sometimes touching me when no one was looking. But he was good enough, nobody ever caught on.”
Clyde’s cheeks reddened. “Sometimes I want to beat that man senseless.”
“You’d get arrested.”
“I don’t know. The cops might be on my side.”
I shook my head. “Neil has those two wrapped around his pinky finger. I’m not sure about the sheriff.”
“Well … he shouldn’t have treated you like that.”
“He doesn’t do it anymore. Not since everybody found out about all of it and he left the church. Now people are watching him. Curious.” I snickered softly. “He’s a different person—sort of—and it seems he’s trying harder since Nathan came along.”
“Why are you defending him?”
“Give me a break. I can’t stand the man.” I focused on my work but thought about what he had asked.
Every time I pulled out those blasted letters, something tugged at my heart and wouldn’t let go, but it wasn’t Neil. It was more of a lost promise. When he cast me aside, my life never seemed to catch up to the dream. Not even when I married Hoby.
But just because Clyde had kissed me in the kitchen didn’t mean I was ready to shine a light on all my secrets. “So, tell me about this post-incarceration thing Fawn mentioned.”
He studied me for a second, and I knew he didn’t appreciate my changing the subject from my sore spot to his. “It’s nothing,” he said.
I nodded, knowing he would have already told me about it if it was nothing.
“It’s like this,” he said. “While I was in prison, all my decisions were made for me. When I got out, it took a while for me to remember how to do stuff on my own.”
I clucked my tongue. “Like haircuts.”
“I’m still working on some things, but at least I’ve figured out how to treat people.”
“That explains your house.”
He looked up. “What’s wrong with the trailer?”
“It’s old and kinda ratty.”
He walked around the counter in slow motion, then helped himself to a piece of pie from the case and fetched a clean fork. Finally he returned to his stool. “Okay.”
Frustration niggled at the muscles in my jaw, but I wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with PICS. “I could have gotten that for you.”
“You’re busy.” He forked a bite into his mouth that was equivalent to a third of the piece of pie, then looked up quickly as if he had just remembered something he wanted to ask me. He swallowed and took a swig of tea. “Can I pick you up for the game Friday?”
I didn’t reply, unsure whether or not he was asking me to sit alone with him on the far side of the scoreboard.
“The view’s not as bad as you’d think.”
So he meant for me to sit with him. My teeth ran across my bottom lip, pinching slightly. Everyone in the stands would see us.
“Or you could come to worship with me tonight.” He shoved another bite into his mouth, but I thought he smiled.
I chortled so loudly, two people at a table near us turned to look. “I’m not going to church with you. Tonight or ever.”
He put his fingertip on the edge of his empty plate and pushed it an inch. “We don’t have to go to the Trapp congregation. We could go to Slaton. Or Snyder.”
“No need.” I slapped another menu on the counter.
Clyde pressed both palms against the counter and pushed himself to a standing position. “Friday then?”
He was bribing me, and we both knew it. “People will talk.”
“Yep. Hester Prynne and Magwitch.”
“Who?”
“Hester Prynne, the adulteress in The Scarlet Letter, and Magwitch, the escaped convict in Great Expectations.”
I rolled my eyes. “Books.”
He bent at the waist until his face was even with mine, and I found myself wishing Dixie didn’t insist we wear brown polyester uniforms.
“What?” I snapped.
His eyes wrinkled as if he were laughing out loud, but he didn’t make a sound. He only stared at me until I looked into his eyes, but then his gaze dropped to my lips.
Warmth spread up my neck as though my clothes had been set on fire, and even though my brain screamed at me to take a step back, my body involuntarily leaned toward him.
He chuckled. “Lyn? I may suffer from PICS, but there are two decisions I’m not struggling with anymore.”
“Oh?”
“First of all, I need God. He’s the only thing that gets me through the hard times, and He’s going to be part of my life no matter what.”
I lifted my chin in defiance, not so much against Clyde but in defense of a million other conversations I’d had about God. “And the second?”
“You.” He took a step back, and suddenly we were in the middle of the diner again. He tapped his knuckles on the counter twice. “I want you in my life.”
When he walked out on the street without looking back, I felt as if a high-powered vacuum was pulling me toward the door, and I had the urge to sprint after him. My heart longed to tell him that I wanted him, too, and I was ready to give in and give up. But my doubt still held me firmly behind the counter, where Dixie’s laminated menus busied my hands with a concrete task that I clung to as a means of avoiding the obvious.
I was falling for Clyde Felton.
And I was falling hard.
Chapter Twenty
Clyde pulled into the church parking lot on Wednesday evening, wishing Lynda had agreed to come with him. Maybe he had been foolish to push, but he wanted her to enjoy all the things in life that he enjoyed. He had waited twenty years to live, but truth be told, so had she.
He backed his sedan into a parking space, glad he had finally managed to get it repaired, and then he stared across the church lawn with his hand suspended above the gearshift. He froze.
Neil Blaylock was walking toward the front door, coming from the other side of the parking lot with Susan by his side.
She patted his arm and leaned to speak in his ear, but in spite of her prodding, Neil seemed to drag his feet. He almost didn’t look like himself because his behavior was so drastically different from usual. His face was red, and he looked like he might be sick at any moment.
Clyde knew that feeling. He had walked up that same sidewalk two years ago, anxious about coming to the little church in his hometown—where he was known for only one thing. It hadn’t taken him long to realize he’d be better off at the congregation in Slaton. He had attended there for a while, but in the end he couldn’t stay away from Fawn. And the baby. Even JohnScott had become like a son to him.
Clyde cut the ignition and rested his fist on top of the steering wheel, opting to wait a few minutes before going in.
JohnScott’s truck pulled past the sedan, and soon he and Fawn were hurrying up the sidewalk. Neither of them noticed Clyde. JohnScott was carrying Nathan, and Fawn was scurrying ahead of them, wielding a purse, a diaper bag, and a stack of construction paper. They surrounded Neil in front of the door, forming a huddle of encouragement.
Fawn tilted her head to the side, and JohnScott slapped Neil on the back. Susan took him by the hand, almost pulling.
Clyde’s hand tightened around the gearshift as envy tightened around his heart. He should have been glad Neil was returning to the church. Clyde had begged the Lord’s forgiveness for years of bitterness against the man, and he had finally gotten to the point he could let it go. Now here he was feeling the sting of resentment again.
He didn’t want Neil to be back at the church. He didn’t want him sitting on the pew down at the front. Didn’t want Nathan to crawl in his lap during services. Didn’t want Fawn to smile at him. He didn’t even want him there for Susan.
But when Clyde examined his heart, took a close look, and came away with a verdict, he realized it wasn’t that he didn’t want those things for Neil. He did. He wanted the best for him, but he also wanted Neil to be the best he could be. The best father, husband, and grandfather that his family needed. No, it wasn’t that Clyde didn’t want it for Neil.
It was that he didn’t believe it.
As he slid down in the seat so as not to be noticed, his memory swept back to his senior year of high school. He and Hoby had been first-team all-district offensive linemen guarding Neil all season, protecting him. Clyde was used to watching Neil. He had watched him back then, he had watched him in his memory for twenty years in prison, and he watched him now on the sidewalk in front of the church. And Clyde knew.
Neil was faking left.
Three running steps, a mock pitch to the left, then straight on to the end zone. Neil only used the trick play once in the entire season, though the Panthers had practiced it all year. The coach—and Neil—wanted to save it till it counted. The state championship. If they had revealed it anytime before that, the play would have been worthless. In the end it ran without a hitch. No team expected Trapp to run a sneak, because Blaylock was a passing quarterback, and when he completed that perfect play in Austin, it landed him first-team all-state, first-team all-American, and a full ride to Texas Christian University.
On the sidewalk in front of the Trapp congregation, Neil’s family finally coaxed him through the doors, and Clyde stared at the spot where they had stood moments before. A few latecomers scurried into the building, but Clyde stayed put. Thinking.
Neil had seemed nervous going in, but was it anxiety from returning to the church after eighteen months, or was it fear of something else? Clyde didn’t buy the penitent-sinner routine, but he couldn’t imagine why Neil would go back to the little congregation if he didn’t mean to repent of his ways.
Clyde peered out the side window of the sedan. Charlie Mendoza was on his tractor behind the church building—uncharacteristic for a Wednesday night—and Clyde figured the old guy was dutifully reciting his midweek prayers as he circled the field. Maybe Clyde should worship on his own, just him and God. He could go up to his property on the Caprock, because up there he was always three hundred feet closer to heaven.
His eyelids dropped as though they were weighted with lead. No. That wasn’t how God wanted it, and that wasn’t how Clyde had planned it. Even if the baptized believers were a tangled mess of problems, God wanted Clyde in the middle of them—worshiping, forgiving, tolerating. If he expected them to overlook his faults, he needed to overlook theirs, too. Especially Neil’s.
But Clyde wasn’t sure he was up to it today.
He opened his eyes just as the glass door swung open and Neil stepped out of the building.
He held the door, speaking to someone just inside, then raised one finger and mouthed the words “Be right back.” Letting the door close behind him, he stepped around the hedges and out of sight of the front windows. He took a deep breath, looked at the sky, and then rubbed the back of his neck as if it were tight.
Then he noticed Clyde. Neil squared his shoulders and crossed his arms, but he only hesitated a moment before he … laughed. Instantly all traces of his nervous jitters evaporated, and Neil once again became an arrogant rancher.
Clyde got the impression Neil was making fun of him for hiding in his car, slumped down in the seat, but Clyde didn’t change his position. He continued to watch Neil, wondering at the speed the man’s temperament had changed, wondering at the cause behind it. Wondering if the man had ever been what he seemed.
Neil put his hands on his hips, shook his head as though he had just heard a good joke, then walked confidently back i
nto the building.
Coldness crept up Clyde’s spine, not because he was afraid of what Neil might be up to, but because he was afraid for Neil himself.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Thank God you’re here, Lyn.”
Clyde pulled me through his front door on Thursday afternoon, holding Nathan awkwardly in one arm. The child had stopped crying long enough to see who was at the door, but now he resumed his wails and viciously rubbed his wet nose against Clyde’s shoulder, leaving a moist trail on his T-shirt.
“Why are you babysitting again?” I had intended to rake him over the coals, but when I saw his disheveled state, I changed my mind. It looked as if Nathan had run him through a gauntlet already, even though Clyde had said the boy had only been there forty-five minutes.
“Never mind the why. Fawn said he’s teething. What does that even mean? You’d think the kid was dying.”
“He’s just getting new teeth is all. It hurts when they’re breaking through the gums.”
“She said she’d only be gone a few hours, but …” The skin wrinkled around his eyes. “Can you take him for a while?”
I looked at Nathan. “What would I do?” I’d never been very maternal, even when Ruthie was a baby.
“I don’t care.” Clyde shoved him toward me, but Nathan began to howl as though I were a stranger.
As I stumbled into the living room, Clyde shut the front door, but not until he had peered up and down the street as if harboring a crying baby was a crime. While he ran his hands through his hair and took several deep breaths, I bounced Nathan on my hip and tried my hand at baby talk. Ruthie’s childhood had passed so quickly, I didn’t have time to figure out the difference between diaper rash and diaper cream, and Velma had done most of the mechanics of it anyway.
I patted Nathan’s back. Under different circumstances, Clyde would have called my sister to help instead of me, but under different circumstances, Nathan would have been with Velma—his grandmother for all practical purposes—in the first place, not here with the two of us.
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