Jilted

by Varina Denman

  He snatched a paper sack from the seat between us, then opened his car door. “Funny.”

  The shack, originally built as a home for ranch hands, had seen at least a hundred summers. The weathered wood siding stood exposed to wind, rain, and insects, and tattered curtains—probably left there when Fawn moved—gently fluttered behind broken window panes.

  I followed Clyde, high-stepping the tall grass and gingerly picking my way across the rotting plank porch. The house lay in stark contrast to the grandeur of the landscape, seeming grossly out of place.

  “You’re going in?” My nose wrinkled, but then I felt bad. This had been his grandfather’s place. Surely Clyde had all kinds of memories here. Happy ones.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” He pushed the door open without turning the knob.

  A few pieces of furniture had been left in the living room, but they did nothing to make the place feel homey. The cushions of a floral loveseat had been ripped apart and chewed, evidently forming a nest for an animal, and an odor radiated from the woven rug spotted with brown and white droppings. When I heard a rustling sound in the next room, I scurried back outside, and Clyde followed me.

  We walked silently back to the car, and I nudged his shoulder. “Found any more rattlers out here?”

  “I reckon a few are making their way back. It’s been a year since we gassed the den.”

  “This place just gets better and better.”

  “It ain’t that bad, Lyn.” He looked back at the structure, his eyes following the roofline. “In fact, I’m thinking about moving up here.”

  I scrutinized his face to see if he was serious. “It’s not fit to live in.”

  “Fawn was here just a few months ago.”

  “It was almost a year, and the storm that ran through last spring did a number on the place.”

  He crossed his arms. “It’s still standing.”

  “Barely.” I jabbed the word at him, but it did no good to argue with the man. He was as hardheaded as a Brahma bull.

  He still held the paper sack, and now he set it on the hood of the trunk. “Homemade blueberry muffins and fresh-squeezed orange juice.”

  “Homemade?” I asked. “Fresh-squeezed?”

  He ducked his head, and I stared at the covered plastic container and two travel mugs, knowing I should have been flattered. Instead, a twinge of panic returned as I calculated how early he would’ve gotten up to cook.

  “Well … thanks,” I said. “It’s so nice of you to do this … for me.”

  He leaned against the bumper. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  He took a drink of juice, and I could tell he didn’t want to say whatever he was about to say. “It’s too much.”

  I scooted back to sit on the hood next to him, then reached for a muffin. Yes, it was too much. Good grief, Hoby had only just died. Sort of. Maybe. But as I sat there nibbling the best blueberry muffin I had ever tasted, I wanted—more than anything—for it to not be too much, and I longed for the day I would be able to handle things. To handle Clyde. “It’s just breakfast,” I mumbled.

  We ate in silence then, side by side, each of us lost in our own thoughts while the sun crept up the sky. I tilted my face to absorb its warm rays and thought what a perfect morning it had been. Beautiful view, sunny weather, and Clyde. Lifting a palm, I shaded my eyes so I could see him. “You should open up a restaurant here.”

  He laughed once, hard, like a bullet.

  “You could have an outdoor deck for seating right on the rim of the Cap, and an indoor dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows. It would be perfect.” I poked his leg with my fingertip. “You can’t work at the DQ forever.”

  “Come on, Lyn.”

  “You have a dead-end job.”

  He leaned forward, intentionally shielding me from the sun, and when his shadow fell across my eyes, I could see the scowl on his face. “How is my job any different from yours?”

  I started to spout off a retort, but nothing came to mind. Finally I shrugged. “I guess the only difference is I’m not content with mine.”

  “So you’re thinking on looking for something else then?”

  He was shoving the discomfort right back at me. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I’m not sure what I would do. No reason to switch jobs if it’s not a good fit.” I reached down and tugged on a blade of tall grass, then slapped it gently against my thigh. “But think of it … You could have a dining room, or a deck, right on the rim of the Cap. And you’re a darn good cook.”

  “I can’t even tell when steak is done.” He glared at a prickly-pear cactus three feet away and ignored the expansive view that I couldn’t pull my gaze away from. “I can’t even tell the difference between bean dip and guacamole.”

  “You don’t need to do those things. I googled it.”

  “Why would you google it?”

  “Because you cook really, really good.”

  His frown deepened, but around the edges, I thought I saw a smile.

  “Real chefs check steak by touch,” I said, “not color.”

  “Naw …”

  “They touch it and see how firm it is or something.” I slid off the hood. “There are even blind chefs. Famous ones. And if a blind person can cook, you ought to be able to manage it.”

  He rubbed his palm across his cheek and down his chin, making a scratchy-whisker sound. “What about vegetables?”

  “You learn to tell the difference. Green tomatoes are bound to be more firm than ripe ones.” I rolled my eyes. “Or you could just get someone to help you. You’re using your color blindness as an excuse.”

  He gazed unseeingly at the cactus, and I imagined him mentally cooking a steak and checking to see if it was done. Then his eyebrows bounced, and a corner of his mouth inched upward. “I can’t think of anyone who would help me.”

  I punched him on the shoulder, but after a few chuckles, he sobered again.

  “There’s not room enough,” he said. “Not for parking and all that.”

  “There would be if you tore down the house.”

  “I can’t tear down the house.”

  I inspected the shack one more time. The wasp nests under the eaves, the missing board on the porch, the holes in the roof. “You could just wait for it to fall down.”

  “If anything, I’ll repair it.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Lyn, I’ve got a lot of memories here.” He winced as though the statement caused him pain.

  “Your grandpappy?”

  He paused. “And Fawn.”

  “Fawn wouldn’t get her feelings hurt if you let it go. It’s not like she comes out here and reminisces about her unmarried pregnancy days.”

  He resealed his travel mug, then slipped it into the sack. “I’m surprised Neil hasn’t torn it down already.”

  “What?” I asked. “Neil’s all lovey-dovey with Fawn now. I think he’s forgotten she was ever out here.”

  “There you go defending him again.”

  A bolt of lightning charged through my nerve endings. “I’ve already told you I can’t stand him, and I wouldn’t—”

  “I saw Neil’s letters, Lyn. Sunday when I made the sandwiches.”

  For a split second I couldn’t think what he was talking about. Letters? But then I remembered him in my bedroom, and the letters had probably been on the nightstand. I wiped my hands on my pants, but they were so sweaty, they slid across the brown polyester like an ice-skater on frozen mud.

  His eyes were pleading with me, begging for an explanation, but I didn’t want to explain. I wasn’t even sure I could. For years I’d guarded those old letters, kept them hidden from Ruthie, pulled them out of the trash dozens of times. I had no idea why. I certainly didn’t want them, didn’t want to need them.

&n
bsp; But if I didn’t answer, Clyde’s gaze would suffocate me. “It’s not Neil I’m hung up on,” I said.

  He let my response float on the breeze for a few seconds. “Explain?”

  “Maybe it’s the idea of him. Or the echo of a teenage girl’s broken dream.”

  “Like … first love?”

  If the earth had opened right then and swallowed me alive, I wouldn’t have minded, but I kept looking him in the eye, determined to beat this part of my demon. “I guess so. First love is different from the rest, you know? It’s like I had an image of what the perfect life would be, and then it shattered.”

  “And you think nothing else can be as good as your time with Neil?”

  “No!” I glared at him. “It has more to do with me not letting go of the fairy tale.”

  He looked away from me then, back to his precious house. “Do you still love him?”

  I couldn’t breathe. “I don’t know if I ever loved him. Neil is a selfish user, but I loved the way he made me feel—important, necessary, loved—so I’m just as selfish as he is. But those letters represent my life when it fell apart, and I keep them to remind myself that happiness is only an illusion.”

  Clyde studied the front window, his gaze tracing the outlines of the panes. Maybe he was unwilling to look at me. Maybe he no longer wanted to.

  “There’s another reason I keep them,” I admitted, knowing Clyde might never look at me again once I explained it. “I wrote Neil a letter once. Pretty much like the one he wrote me.”

  Finally Clyde’s eyes stilled, focusing on the front door. “When?”

  “Right after he married Susan. I was insane with emotion. One week we were shopping for rings, the next week he was married and building a huge house on her father’s ranch.” I shook my head. “I thought I would die.”

  “So did I.” Clyde hummed low in his chest. “I lost Susan and the baby and my life, all on the same day.”

  “But in the end”—words spilled from my lips like water gushing from a garden hose—“Neil couldn’t give up all those material possessions and the status. He refused to get an annulment, yet he expected me to be there for him—in every way a man expects a woman to be there. But he didn’t know me as well as he thought.” I snickered. “My anger consumed me until I couldn’t see straight, and to retaliate against him for what he had done … I married one of his best friends.”

  Clyde closed his eyes as though he didn’t want to hear more, but so far I hadn’t told him much that he didn’t already know. “So you didn’t love Hoby?” he asked.

  “Not when I married him, no.” I tossed the rest of my muffin in the paper sack and rolled the top down over itself, not really paying attention to what I was doing. “Most people marry for love, but I married Hoby because of hate. Hate for Neil. I wanted to hurt that man as badly as he had hurt me, and the only way to do it was to give someone else what he wanted for himself.” My body trembled as I relived the emotions from all those years ago, but then I calmed, right along with my memories. “But something happened that I didn’t expect.”

  Clyde smiled, as if he knew what I would say next.

  “I fell in love with him.” An uncontrolled, airy breath laughed from my lungs. “I didn’t see it coming, you know? We had always been good friends, and we knew each other so well, I guess the love just came on naturally. It started right after I got pregnant, but by the time Ruthie was born … I loved him desperately.”

  “So why did he leave?”

  “Neil lied to him.”

  “But why did Hoby believe him?”

  My teeth ground against each other, and I deliberately relaxed my jaw, knowing I’d end up with a headache if I didn’t calm down. “Apparently Neil kept my letter, too.” I smiled at Clyde so I wouldn’t cry. “When Ruthie was seven, he showed it to Hoby and told him I had just sent it. He told Hoby I’d been unfaithful and that Ruthie was his child, not Hoby’s.”

  Clyde’s head jerked as he looked at me.

  “But I still keep all the letters. Isn’t that moronic? Neil ruined my marriage with a letter, yet I cling to its twin like a crazy woman. It doesn’t make any sense,” I whispered. “I torture myself with them.”

  “It makes sense.” Clyde pulled me against his chest. “They’re like some kind of psychological token or something. You’re scared to live, Lyn. You’re scared of the risks, and those letters are your excuse to keep hiding.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Clyde dropped me off at the diner, promising he’d be waiting when I got off work. Even though I still regretted my wife slip, my anxiety had eased tremendously, just since breakfast. The speed at which my life was hurtling through the various stages of my comfort zones was enough to give me motion sickness, but all I could do was hold on tight and hope for the best.

  “You doin’ all right?” Dixie’s chin jutted forward cautiously.

  “I’m fine, Dix.” I tied my apron. “Been a strange week, though.”

  She frowned, seeming to evaluate my honesty. “Well … it’s good to have you back.” She flipped sausage patties on the griddle. “I’m about ready to thrash that new girl. She doesn’t know the difference between tater tots and hash browns, and when I asked her to work an extra shift, you’d have thought I was forcing her into slave labor.”

  “She’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”

  “Actually, she won’t.” Dixie’s eyebrows lifted like two hot-air balloons. “She got all huffy last night and quit on the spot.”

  “That right?”

  “I say we’re better off without her. Might take a few days to find a replacement, though.”

  I squirted soap in my palm, then paused before I turned on the tap. “Put me down for extra shifts till you hire someone.”

  “Aw, Lynda. You sure about that?”

  “It’ll be good to stay busy right now. Too much to think about.” Clyde would say I was hiding—and Clyde would be right—but he would undoubtedly agree that hiding at my workplace was an improvement from hiding in my house.

  He knew me well, and I felt like a teenager with a crush. Last night when Clyde cooked dinner at his house, I had still felt awkward with him, but when we went to the wind fields after dark, his gentle ways put me at ease. And during breakfast this morning at his property on the Cap, I had felt like I was returning home after a long absence. It was ridiculous, really. Less than twenty-four hours after our enchiladas and guacamole, I couldn’t imagine going a day without seeing him. But I wasn’t ready to tell him that. I was ready to do some other things, though.

  Like change.

  Like grow stronger.

  Like become the person a wife should be.

  The cowbell on the door jangled, and I glanced into the dining room to see the same three Rangers who had been in before. This time they had twice as many eager-eyed Scouts with them, banging chairs and pulling tables together. “Better put on more sausage,” I called to Dixie.

  I pulled a mixing bowl down from a shelf and began cracking eggs into it. I would add a touch of milk plus salt and pepper, then whisk it before scrambling them. I wondered how Clyde cooked eggs. All I ever did in the kitchen was exactly what Dixie had taught me the first week I started cooking for her. Never once did I consider changing her recipes or trying something new. I had no inclination to do that at all, but it was different with Clyde. The man had a knack for cooking, and he didn’t even seem to try. I reached for the salt.

  “Hey, there! Lynda, isn’t it?”

  I startled so badly, I dropped the shaker in the bowl of eggs.

  The Ranger with the raccoon tan around his eyes was leaning through the pass-through window. A spray bottle of vinegar water sat on the Formica ledge, and he scooted it over so he could lean on his elbows. “Where you been hiding?”

  With my thumb and forefinger, I fished the plastic shaker out of the runny
mess, wondering what made the idiot think he was welcome behind Dixie’s counter. “Oh, you know … here and there.”

  “You working all day?” The way he was leaning caused his shoulders to bunch around his ears like a turtle.

  Dixie bustled to the window and stood protectively between the two of us, her eyes level with his, since the man was leaning over. “Looks like you boys have a crowd working with you today,” she said.

  “One more weekend out here.” Raccoon Man stretched to peer at me before focusing on Dixie. “We’re making a last-ditch effort to find the rest of those bones, or a grave, or something. Without the rest of them, there’s no murder case, I reckon. They can’t make a positive ID leastways, even though the sheriff has his suspicions.”

  I walked to the sink, out of sight of the window, and rinsed my hands. The egg felt slimy on my skin, and I tossed the shaker in the trash instead of washing it.

  Dixie continued to probe for information. “How will it make a difference? I heard there wasn’t enough DNA because the bones were too old.”

  He chuckled, and from the sound of it, I imagined him thrusting out his chest like an overconfident wild turkey, just before a hunter fills him full of shot. “We’ve got an anthropology team down in Austin, and if we find the skull, they’ll be able to extract DNA from the teeth.”

  “But don’t they have to have something to match it to? Hair from a hairbrush or something?”

  “Oh, they’ve got something to match it to, believe me.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Now, see there? You made me tell a secret.” His voice lilted, and I realized he was flirting with Dixie now, regardless of their age difference. “They’re just figuring it to be the fella that owned that truck in the lake. Most likely a suicide, but I speculate his old lady could have knocked him off. Like maybe she got him good and drunk, then sent his truck off that cliff with him in it. But that’s just between you and me, ’cause—”

  Dixie snatched the spray bottle from the ledge and squirted the Ranger full in the face. “You best get on back to your table, young man.”