Welcome Home, Cowboy

by Karen Templeton

Chewing, her mother shook her head, then smiled. “I’m guessing there would’ve been more panic in his voice if that’d been the case.”

  “But…what about Daddy?”

  “Actually, honey…” Mama lowered herself into the chair opposite, her hands in her lap and guilt clouding her eyes. “Bill’s… I moved him into one of those homes, for people with Alzheimer’s? Someplace where they can keep a much better eye on him than I can.”

  Emma stared at her mother for a moment, waiting out the dizziness. “When did this happen? And why on earth didn’t you tell me?”

  “Six months ago. And I didn’t tell you because…because I had to sell the house. To cover the initial fees.”

  “Mama!”

  “Don’t you ‘Mama’ me, you had enough on your plate without worrying about me, too. And don’t give me that look, it’s not like I’m out on the street or anything. I’ve got an adorable little apartment close to your father—in fact,” she said, digging her cell phone out of her pocket and scooting across the table to Emma. “I took pictures before I left.” While Emma scrolled through the photos, dazed, Mama said, “Anyway, the plain truth is, since I don’t drive long distances much anymore, and spur-of-the-moment plane tickets are through the roof—”

  “Cash bought you one.”

  “Yes. He did. Which I didn’t know until I opened my e-mail two days ago and there it was.” Curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d say the man was sweet on you. But now I’m guessing these aren’t ordinary circumstances?”

  Returning the phone to her mother, Emma released a weary laugh. Mama sat back in her chair, her arms crossed over her double Ds. “You sweet on him?”

  “Don’t go getting that gleam in your eye,” Emma said, carefully pushing herself up from the table. Bumble scrambled to his feet, then sat again, eyes on the baby. Emma half wondered if the dog would let her have him back. “Cash is a very giving, very troubled man who’s here for his own reasons. We’ve already agreed, when I’m back on my feet, he’s outta here. And, no, I’m not about to try changing his mind.”

  Her arms still crossed, her mother gave her The Eye. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not entirely happy about that?”

  “Mama, I love you. And I’m more grateful than I can say that you’re here. But I’m far too wiped out to get into this with you or anybody else.” She yawned. “In fact, I’m going to go crawl into bed with my baby and my dog. Would you mind bringing Skye…?”

  But before she could get around the table, her mother was up, pulling Emma into her arms for a gentle hug. And, yep, that got the waterworks flowing all over again.

  Pocketing his car keys, Cash walked back into the house after taking Gayle to the airport, and it smelled like coffee and vanilla candles and fabric softener, like Emma, and it struck him—not for the first time—that whatever defined the place as belonging to her, and her family, really had thoroughly washed away every trace of his father, of the old memories. Not that Cash couldn’t still conjure them up, but they weren’t in his face anymore. Couldn’t hurt him anymore.

  When they’d started to dissolve, he had no idea. Around when he started giving Hunter his guitar lessons, maybe. But by the time he’d moved his things into the boy’s brightly colored bedroom, spent his first night in Hunter’s double bed with its jungle-animal-motif bedding, he’d finally stopped thinking of this as his home.

  Instead, he realized as The Calico One bounced up on her hind legs to meet his hand when he reached over to pet her, he was now a guest in someone else’s.

  He found Emma in the kitchen—her kitchen—the baby in his little bouncy seat on the table in front of her, Bumble comatose as usual at her feet. Dressed in one of her roomy tops, her hair loosely coiled at the back of her head, she was frowning at her open laptop, periodically referring to the pile of receipts and what-all beside it.

  “Thought you were supposed to take it easy,” he said. Casually. Focusing on the selection of sodas in the fridge and not on the ramped-up hmmmmm in his blood that happened every damn time he saw her.

  “The incision’s not in my head,” she said, her eyes darting back and forth between the paperwork and the computer as she entered the figures. “And the laptop weighs half as much as Skye. So I’m good. By the way…Hunter’s teacher called.” She glanced up at him. “He told her you said you’d come perform for the kids in his class?”

  “I did,” he said, his cheeks warming as he popped the tab to the can.

  “When did this happen?”

  “While you were in the hospital. He asked me, and I said sure.” He shrugged. “No biggee.”

  “It is for Hunter. Not to mention his class. She asked if sometime the week after next would work for you.”

  “I’ll give her a call, we can work out the details. I’ve played for school kids before, Em,” he said at her perplexed expression. “And…”

  “And you miss being on stage,” she said, teasing. “Admit it.”

  Cash dropped into the chair opposite, slouching, one ankle propped across his knee. Still casual. Like seeing those new-mother pouches under her eyes wasn’t doing a number on his head. Like this whole freaking situation wasn’t doing a number on his head. It was like his brain had split in two, the old It’s-All-About-Cash Cash versus the new, marginally improved Cash. Both gave him the willies, but for entirely different reasons. Right now, it was not fun being him. Not that it ever had been, but still.

  “I might,” he said with another shrug. Although the truth was, teaching Hunter, goofing around with the guitar on the porch after supper all those nights…maybe things weren’t as dead in that area as he’d thought. He’d even been working on a couple of songs, although he wasn’t gonna tell her that. “Kinda hard to simply forget about something I’ve done for two-thirds of my life.”

  “I can imagine,” she said mildly, returning to her task.

  The foot over his knee began to twitch. “You want me to start dinner or anything?”

  “In the slow cooker,” she said, turning over a receipt. “Pot roast didn’t weigh over ten pounds, either.”

  “Emma—”

  “I have to keep going, Cash,” she said quietly, not looking at him. “Mama left, you won’t be around forever, no sense getting used to having people do for me.”

  Yeah, and weren’t Cash 1 and Cash 2 having a grand old time with that one? “But the doctor said—”

  “Not to overdo it.” The computer shut, Emma finally looked at him, clearly exhausted. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, okay? But my life didn’t go on hiatus because I had a baby.”

  Cash frowned at his soda can, then at her. “So if Lee was here, what would he be doing?”

  Her eyes clouded a moment before a smile touched her lips. “Hovering. Fretting. Making me crazier than you are, most likely.”

  “Aside from that.”

  “Just…keeping on. Once everything’s planted, it’s mostly about waiting. Other than the greenhouse crops, there won’t be much to harvest before mid-June. Goats need tending, of course—worming, hoof trimming. Can you do that?”

  “Yes. But I meant in the house. With the baby. The kids. Would Lee bring you the baby at night? Change him?”

  He saw her blink away tears before she nodded.

  “I can do that.”

  From his seat, Skye screwed up his face and let out a sharp, startled wail. Emma glanced at the clock over the sink and sighed. “Every three hours, right on schedule. Come on,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I’ve still got to lie down to feed him—”

  “You go ahead and get yourself situated, I’ll bring him.”

  As Emma carefully walked out of the kitchen, Cash unstrapped the now-frantic baby, curling him over his chest, high on his shoulder. But instead of relaxing, the baby only screamed harder, like he knew Cash didn’t have what he wanted.

  Yeah, that was the story of his life, wasn’t it?

  Emma had arranged herself on top of the cov
ers on her bed, surrounded by about a million pillows. For a moment he pictured himself lying behind her, curved to her spine…

  “You want me to change him?” he asked.

  “Probably not. I usually do it between…at the halfway mark. Hand him over. No, don’t go,” she said, drawing the baby close. “Please. You can’t see anything, I promise.”

  “That kinda takes all the fun out of it, doesn’t it?” he feebly joked over a sudden shakiness in his gut.

  “You are such a man, honestly,” she said, then tilted her head sideways, indicating an old, comfortable armchair beside the bed. “Sit. Keep me company. Tell me about your exes.”

  “What?” Cash said, halfway down. “Why?”

  “Because I’m bored out of my mind, for one thing. And for another I want to know how, not one, but two women could be stupid enough to let you get away.”

  Cash finally lowered himself completely into the chair, although the shakiness had escalated to an all-out earthquake. For a moment he listened to the muffled sounds of a hungry, nursing baby from underneath the little blanket Emma’d covered them both with, until he finally said, “I think it’s more that they couldn’t wait to get away from me. I really was a wreck back then,” he said to her it-can’t-be-that-bad expression. “Only thing I was good at was making bad decisions.”

  “Except about your career.”

  He almost laughed. “That was pure dumb luck.”

  “And talent.”

  Cash snorted. “God knows far more talented people than me never get anywhere. Or not very far, anyway. So I can’t credit choice all that much, far as my career goes.” Or went, he thought, then sighed, leaning back. “My wives, though… that’s another issue entirely. The first one, especially—”

  “Name?”

  “Misty. For real,” he said when she chuckled. “Anyway, I was twenty-one and about as full of myself as a person could get and not explode. Otherwise known as compensating for having no self-esteem. Or so the therapists said. Anyway, Misty was pretty and funny and made me feel ten feet tall. So I married her.”

  “That was it?”

  “And you wonder why it didn’t last,” Cash said, warming to his subject. Oddly enough. “Basically we got bored with each other. And she wanted her own career, wasn’t interested much in supporting mine. Can’t say as I blame her, although the stars never lined up for her. Last I heard, she’d married a casino manager and moved to Vegas. We get in touch once in a blue moon, but…it’s like her and me never happened.”

  “And Wife Number Two?”

  “That would be Francine. I was all of twenty-six then. Older, but definitely not wiser.” He mimed knocking back a drink. “She wasn’t the least bit interested in being on stage, but she constantly nagged me about being away so much. Even though this wasn’t exactly something I sprung on her, considering I met her on the road.”

  “She was a groupie?”

  “Lord, no. Her daddy owned a music store in Dallas where I picked up some strings one day. She was pretty and funny and…” His cheeks creased. “Guess you could say there was a pattern there.”

  Emma smiled. “So what happened?”

  “We fought. A lot. She wanted a kid. I didn’t.” He stared hard at the baby, wriggling underneath the blanket, and felt a pang. “The difference was, I knew why I didn’t want a kid. Even setting aside how little I would’ve been around, I didn’t much feel qualified to be anybody’s daddy. Francine, though… I pretty much figured she wanted to be a mom so she’d have somebody to love her.”

  “She had you.”

  A humorless laugh scraped his throat. “What we had, was like some dry husk of a marriage. Looked okay on the outside, at least for a while, but on the inside? Nothing. Small wonder, since I sure as hell didn’t have anything to bring to the table. So I wasn’t all that surprised to get back from tour one Christmas Eve a couple years in to find a ‘it’s been a blast, see ya’ note on the dining table, along with the keys to the condo. Said she was going back to Dallas, she didn’t want to see or hear from me again.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Actually, it was a relief.” He let his gaze pierce hers. “Nothing worse than failing to live up to somebody else’s expectations.”

  “She didn’t want alimony?”

  Cash smirked. “Apparently she already had Plan B in the wings. Seemed she hadn’t exactly been pining away for me when I was on the road.”

  “Oh, Cash,” Emma said gently, then lowered her eyes to the baby. She messed around underneath the blanket, then looked up. “If you bring me a diaper and wipes, I’ll change him—”

  “No, no…” He stood, almost too eagerly, to take the baby. Who thankfully smelled more of his mama’s milk than what was in the diaper. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he said, setting him on the other side of the bed. “I can figure this out on my own.”

  “Go for it.” Emma leaned her head in her hand, watching. And not saying anything, even though he used up six wipes to get the little butt clean. And an extra diaper since he had to slap the first one over the geyser that erupted before he’d finished.

  “You might’ve warned me about that part,” he said, handing her back the clean baby.

  “And spoil my fun? No way.” She’d gingerly sat up to nurse the kid on the other side, propping him on several pillows before looking at Cash again. “And there’s been no one since?”

  He should’ve known she wouldn’t let go that easy.

  “Not serious, no.” Instead of sitting again, Cash leaned one hand on the footboard. “How come I can talk to you like I can’t to anybody else?”

  Her eyes grazed his. “Maybe because I don’t expect anything from you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “He’s asleep,” she whispered a minute later, detaching the baby from her breast, which Cash caught a glimpse of, creamy in the muted light through the filmy curtains. “Would you mind putting him down…?”

  “Not at all,” Cash said, almost startled by how good it felt to hold the little guy, to feel all that innocent trust against his chest. He laid the baby on his back in the bassinet, watching him, stunned by the tiny, open mouth, the fat little cheeks and fisted hands. Emma came up beside him, her scent—her trust—turning him on more than he would’ve thought possible. Turning him inside out.

  “He’s Lee to a T, all right.” At her silence, he turned, catching her conflicted expression. “Sorry—”

  “No, it’s okay,” she whispered, touching the baby’s head. Then, not looking at Cash: “Your second marriage…it ended about the time you decided to stop drinking?” At his silence, she gently added, “I was always good at math.”

  “You know that accident I told you about? It happened right after Francine left. Got mad, got drunk, got in my car. I thank my lucky stars every day it wasn’t worse.”

  “You loved her, then?”

  “The truth? I don’t know as I’ve ever loved anybody the way other people mean the word. But I’d tried with Francine, as best I could. To be a decent husband, I mean. Yeah, I drank too much and was away too much, but…”

  He crossed his arms. “There’s a lot of temptation on the road. Plenty of opportunity to break promises. To yourself, to other people. And I’ll admit when I was single, I might’ve taken advantage of some of those opportunities. Not all, but some. Never when I was married, though. So when Francine walked out…it was the failure that hurt like a sonuvabitch. That my best hadn’t been good enough.”

  For once, it appeared Emma had nothing to say. Some bit of wisdom to impart. Well, good, Cash thought, turning to her, feeling that damn surge of tenderness again that was making his life hell. “You should really get some rest while he’s asleep. You want me to get going on the laundry?”

  “You know how to do laundry?”

  “Since I was sixteen and realized it wasn’t gonna magically do itself.”

  “Then have at it. And I think I will catch a nap,” she said, carefully crawling back onto
the bed to lie on her side.

  Cash watched her until her breathing slowed, then quietly retrieved the laundry basket from her closet.

  At least this, he couldn’t screw up.

  Not even on Open House night had Emma ever seen the school parking lot this crowded.

  Hunter’s teacher had called the day before, equal parts apologetic and apoplectic. Apparently, soon as word had gotten out about Cash performing for Hunter’s class, the news snowballed, first through the school itself, then the rest of the village, until the teacher wondered if the school cafeteria would even be big enough to hold everybody. And she was so sorry since she knew this wasn’t what Cash had intended. Not until Cash reassured her it didn’t bother him at all did the poor woman calm down.

  But now, seeing all these cars? Emma understood her initial panic.

  “You sure you’re okay with this?” she asked Cash as, with the starstruck janitor’s help, he unloaded three guitars and an amp from the back of his car. Beside her, Annie kept up a nonstop conversation with a very awake Bruiser in his hand-me-down stroller as dozens of excited townspeople streamed into the squat, brick-faced building.

  “More than okay,” he said, hooking the case strap for one of the guitars over his shoulder, his whole demeanor radiating a sense of peace like she hadn’t seen before. “Reminds me a bit of when I started out. All anybody had to say was, ‘You know how to play that thing?’ and I did.” Then he stopped, looking at the building. “Wonder if it’s changed any from when Lee and I went here?”

  Emma smiled. “I doubt it.”

  “We can go in this way,” Sal, the janitor, said, pointing to the cafeteria’s outside door. Underneath opaque brown eyes and bushy, graying brows, a smile bloomed. “We already got a stage set up. Some lights, too. Left over from the Presidents’ Day play.”

  “Couldn’t ask for more than that,” Cash said, then turned back to Emma, concern clearly warring with anticipation. “You sure you’re up for this?”

  And exactly how do you mean that? she wanted to say. Instead, she kept smiling. “I’m fine, Cash.” Physically, anyway. She was healing up quickly enough to at least resume some of her work, even though it’d be a while before she was hauling fifty-pound feed sacks again. And Skye was even sleeping the occasional five-hour stretch at night now, thank You, Lord. So she was almost feeling human again. “Go on,” she said, shooing him. “Do your thing. If you hear a catcall, that’ll be Annie. I made her swear not to toss her panties up on the stage, though.”