“She’s lost her mind,” Roseanna declared.
“Then have her declared insane. I suppose it’ll take longer than four months to get a court date and all the documents to prove that she’s not in her right mind, but you can start proceedings tomorrow. You going to eat or not? I’m hungry.”
“Then eat,” she said and stormed out of the room, across the lobby and to her bedroom. She threw herself backward on the bed, picked up the phone and called Dee, Jack’s wife and her friend from the time they were little girls.
“Hello, Rosy. Guess you found out what those old girls did, haven’t you?” Dee answered.
“Damn caller ID. I’m surprised you even answered the phone,” Rosy swore.
“I can see smoke floating from the north. You must be steaming.”
“About to blow a gasket. Why did she do this?”
“This is the story Roxie told me and they know I can’t keep a secret so it’s only enough to keep me quiet, I’m sure. Trey called and talked to Granny Etta, fed her this long story about needing to hide out for a while. Whatever else he said caused Roxie to go into overtime and pay for first class air fare to Miami where they’re going on this big cruise. Wait a minute,” Dee laid the phone aside for a couple of minutes and then came back. “Had to lay Jaxson down. He fell asleep while I was rocking him. Now tell me what happened out there. I was wondering if maybe you two had made up and decided to give it another try.”
“When pigs fly,” Rosy snorted.
“So you just rescued him and came home?”
“Pretty much.”
“Granny Etta was ready to string him up by the ears two days ago. She didn’t even want you to go find him. Told Roxie that she’d shoot him and throw his body in the lake if she had a chance. Then real late last night she came to Roxie’s. I saw the headlights out the window when I was up with the baby. Asked Roxie about it this morning. She said southern women didn’t gossip. You know Roxie. Southern women have haloes and fluffy white wings when she wants them to.”
“I’d beg on the streets to know what he told Granny,” Rosy said. “What ever it was I’d have to get a lawyer to evict him or to fire him.”
“Boy, he must be a whiz at snow balling,” Dee said. “We’ve been friends for a long time and friends help friends bury bodies. You kill him in his sleep tonight or poison his eggs in the morning. I’ll bring two shovels.”
“I’m going to make his life a living hell,” Rosy said.
“If you run out of ideas, call me,” Dee said.
“Does Stella know about this?”
“Yes, she does. She came by this morning when Roxie was packing and got the same thing I did. Poor baby Trey needed a place to hide out from the big bad boogie man and Granny Etta gave him a roof, food and a part time job helping you.”
“Jodie doesn’t know though,” Rosy said.
“Lord no. Granny Etta said she was going to be a handful when she came home. I think that’s why they decided on that long cruise instead of a short one. No one wants to face Jodie when she gets home. Trey better start lifting weights.”
“Jodie hasn’t got a thing on me,” Rosy declared.
“Yes, she does. You are both strong willed, but she’s got mean behind hers. She’ll take him in the woods, make him dig his own grave and then kill him with the shovel.”
“Hummmp. That sounds like an excellent idea. Come around for coffee when you have time. We might have to do some serious planning,” Rosy managed a weak giggle.
“Will do. Keep your chin up. It’s only four months and you can prove the whole lot of them wrong by the time it’s over. Just think, in four months you can fire his sorry hind end. See you in a couple of days,” Dee hung up.
“Wrong about what?” Rosy asked but the line was already dead.
Her stomach grumbled. With determination she got up and stormed toward the kitchen, a tornado going to face a hurricane. He had rinsed his dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher. There wasn’t the faintest sign of a smudge on his pretty white shirt and he hadn’t lost a bit of the roguish handsomeness in the half hour she’d pouted in her bedroom.
“You’ll need to reheat your supper in the micro wave. I’m going into the lobby to watch television.”
“I don’t think so, scooter,” she said.
“What?”
“Daddy said he needs help with the chores tonight so while I eat you change clothes. We’ll be mucking out the horse stables, feeding the cows and what ever else needs doing until dark.”
Trey’s eyebrows knit together in a solid line. His first idea was to run. The second was to ignore her. His agreement had been with Granny Etta and it didn’t have one thing to do with ranching. Just with mowing and helping Roseanna in the kitchen … and doing whatever else she needed help doing. Good Lord, what had he gotten himself into? And did he really, really love her enough to stay with it?
“I brought the jeans and T-shirt you bought for me in Mena. I suppose that will do to work in?” He’d beat her at her own game or die trying. This was just the first of many battles in the upcoming war and if he didn’t measure up, he’d be thrown to the wolves. Roseanna didn’t know it but he had full intention of winning her back. It didn’t matter what chore she came up with, at least he’d be spending time with her.
She scooped cold fried potatoes into the bottom of a bowl, covered them with cornbread and then beans and grabbed a spoon. “Yes, it will. I’ll be finished in ten minutes. See you on the front porch. I’ll call Daddy and tell him to stay in with Momma tonight. We can take care of the chores.”
To her surprise he was sitting in the porch swing when she went outside. They had at least an hour until it was fully dark. There were lights in the stables so they’d do that last. By the time she got finished with him tonight, he’d be handing her the shovel to kill him with.
They drove to the barn at the far end of the ranch in an old, rusted pickup truck without a license plate or tail gate. The window on the passenger’s side didn’t roll down anymore and the windshield had a diagonal crack from one side to the other.
“It’ll take six bags of feed and a dozen square bales. You get the feed and I’ll do the hay,” she said.
He thought his knees would buckle when he grabbed the first fifty pound bag of feed. By the time he got six in the truck he was panting. He leaned on the fender and watched her handle a set of hay hooks, not wasting motions or energy. Tomorrow she’d probably tell him to load hay so he made mental notes about how she’d done it. Gloves. She wore gloves so he’d need to remember that. Maybe pick up some tomorrow in Tishomingo and stick them in his back pocket the way she did.
They fed cattle in two different pastures. He didn’t ask questions but did what he was told and learned quickly. Then she drove to a long horse stable. She picked up a pair of brown gloves from a shelf beside a couple of shovels and tossed them at him, along with a shovel.
“Wheelbarrows are over there. I’ll take Glory out of the stable and you can do her stall while I take care of Demon’s.”
“Where are you going to put Glory?” He asked.
“In an empty stall. Jodie took her two favorite cutting horses with her on the rodeo trip. Glory and Demon had to stay home. I want the floor clean enough to eat breakfast on when you are done.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he tipped an imaginary hat. Lord, his muscles already ached. What in the devil had he gotten himself into, anyway? But she wasn’t going to win. Not this time. The Cahill women, according to Granny Etta when they’d had a two hour conversation the night before, were a hard headed lot of women and it took a strong man to tame one.
She moved the horses and began to shovel wet hay and manure from the stalls into the wheel barrows. He did the same, his nose twitching at the smell, wondering all the time if he was going to lose his supper. All he could think about was a long hot shower when he got back to the lodge.
When they finished that job, she put the horses back and crawled back into the truck. He got i
nto the passenger’s side, glad that the chores were done.
“Now we’ll feed the hogs,” she said.
“Hogs?”
“That’s what I said,” she answered.
She drove to another part of the property and parked in front of a shed. He got out and waited to see what she told him to do.
“You get one bag of feed. I’ll get the other.” She hefted a fifty pound sack of feed to her shoulders as if it were a feather pillow.
He’d only thought the horse stables stunk. The pig pens were worse. Big old black hogs with white rings around their bodies rooting around. It put a whole new meaning to the words, “smelling like a hog lot.”
Cows. Horses. Pigs. What next?
“Chickens,” she answered as if she read his mind.
“Chickens?”
She nodded and hopped back into the truck.
They scattered dried corn to the chickens and then went back to the first barn where they left the old truck and got back into her pickup. At the lodge, she got out and went into the house without a word. She wanted to kick something or use every swear word in her vocabulary. He was supposed to cave in and tell her this was a bunch of bull and he was leaving. He dang sure wasn’t supposed to work.
He stripped out of his dirty clothing and showered, put on a pair of silk pajama bottoms and then remembered that he’d only brought one set of work clothes. He gathered them up and went to the laundry room where he crammed them into the washer. Before he went to bed he’d see to it they were in the dryer. Lord, he hated blue jeans. They were stiff and thick and felt so cheap on his body.
She showered and slipped into an oversized T-shirt and a pair of faded flannel pajama bottoms and went to the lobby where she flipped on the television set. Reruns of “CSI: Miami” were playing so she settled into a corner of the sofa.
“What are we watching?” He joined her.
“I’m watching “CSI.” If you want something else there’s a television in your room,” she said.
He hated cop shows. The few times that she’d seen him watch television it was the constant news channel.
Battle one—won.
Battle two—up for grabs.
In this corner Roseanna held the remote.
In the other corner, Trey was too tired to fight her for it.
“I’ve got a book I’ll read until bedtime. Good night, Roseanna,” he said. “Breakfast is when?”
She didn’t even look at him. “Five thirty when we don’t have guests. That way we can do the morning chores for Daddy.”
“I’ll see you then,” he nodded.
Sure you will. There won’t be anything but an empty room in the morning and a little puff of dirt where the dust is settling from your Ford leaving so fast the tires barely hit the ground.
She watched one episode of “CSI” and went to bed. At five o’clock the next morning her alarm sounded loudly and she wished she hadn’t been so rash. Moaning the whole time she pulled on worn jeans, a T-shirt and her work boots. The aroma of fresh coffee hit her when she opened the kitchen door. Trey was dishing up western omelets and a stack of French toast waited on the table.
“Thought I’d do breakfast this morning. Tomorrow is your turn. We can share the duties when we have lodge guests.”
She was speechless.
Chapter Nine
The laundry was finished after a week with a full house. Everything was put back together and ready for another group to arrive, but that wasn’t for another ten days and it was only four people. Ten days of Trey with no one in the house loomed ahead worse than the fog on the mountains of the Talimena Drive.
After two weeks she and Trey had worked themselves into a schedule. When guests were in the house, they shared breakfast duties. If not, they took turns at it. Sometimes they helped with ranch duties in the evening if there were no guests, depending on whether Roseanna’s dad needed them. Tonight she worried about the confrontation tomorrow morning with Jodie who’d be home from the rodeo rounds and had no idea what was happening at Cahill Lodge.
She paced the floor for a full ten minutes then sat down in a recliner and popped the foot rest up but didn’t tilt back.
Trey carried a thick book into the lobby, sat on the sofa across from Roseanna and opened it without looking at her. His black hair was combed back and he wore silk pajama bottoms with a loose fitting T-shirt and socks. Everything about him screamed across the room at her to come over there and cuddle up beside him.
She cleared her throat and he looked up.
“Okay, Trey, for the first week I was so angry at you being here, messing with my mind, I tried to figure out a way to make homicide legal in God’s eyes. I’m over the anger, well, almost. So we might be able to talk. Why are you here?”
“Blunt, aren’t you?”
“Always have been. You should remember that from the first time you met me. Now answer me. And I want the truth.”
“This is going to be easier than I thought. Teaching business. I’m excited about it, Roseanna. It’s the first time I’ve been really excited about a job in my whole life. Of course, it’s only the second job I’ve had, but I got it on my own merits. I went into that office and laid out my resume and they hired me. Not because my name is Fields or because my family started an oil company almost a hundred years ago. They hired me because of me. That’s exciting. That’s what I came here for. Last night after you went to your room there was an old movie on television. It was called Serendipity. You ever seen it?”
She didn’t know where he was going with the answer. Usually very terse, he always answered with as little words as possible. He’d already used more words than he normally did in a whole day’s time. To think that he’d watched a chick-flick was enough to take him to the psych ward of the nearest mental hospital. For him to be rambling on about his classes was extremely out of character. What had those kidnappers put in his Vienna sausage cans, anyway? Some kind of mind altering drug?
“I saw it years ago. Loved it. But what has that got to do with my question?” She asked.
“I’m getting to it. To understand the present or the future you have to understand the past. Someone great said that once. I can’t remember who. Anyway, I was watching this movie and one of the characters said that when a man died, the Greeks only asked one question. Do you remember that part of the movie?”
“Did he have passion?” She whispered.
“That’s it. Did he have passion?”
“Trey, we lost it. We started out with passion but we lost it. You can’t be here in hopes of rekindling that. I told you I don’t believe in happily-ever-after anymore.”
“I’m here because I want passion in my life. I don’t think we ever had it, Roseanna. We had lust and that’s something that is satisfied quickly and dies just as fast. We never had passion. And that’s not what I’m talking about. I want it in all aspects of my life. I want to love what I’m doing. Love who I’m with. Have a passion for life, for breathing, for beauty, for everything. I don’t want to die without that zeal, that fever, that excitement brewing inside me. I want to live, not merely exist.”
“And you’re going to find all that in Sulphur, Oklahoma, on a ranch that you hate?”
“The Greeks didn’t ask where the dead man found it, just if he had it.”
She picked up a magazine and began to flip through it. “Well, good luck. What made you turn so philosophical anyway?”
“That night in the mountains before you came. I didn’t know if you would. I didn’t know if Greta would ask you with the animosity between you two and I didn’t know if you’d be able to find me. Then there you were, Roseanna. Angry enough to tear up the whole woods. Smart enough to get me out of there without giving away a single clue. I had a lot of time to think and I figured out I was a complete failure.”
“As a husband, yes you were,” she nodded.
“I’m not talking about as a husband. That’s a whole different story. As a person and that’s what I have t
o be before I’m a husband again. It’s like an alcoholic who’s finally ready for AA meetings. First I was angry beyond words, then frightened so bad I couldn’t shut my eyes, then disgusted that I couldn’t free myself. Then I began to think. I was a failure, not because of not doing my job well, but because I was not a success. On the books, I am. Since I came into the business I managed to keep a dying whale in the water for several years after it should have washed up on the beach and died. But personally I am not. Do you know the definition of the word success?”
She was amazed beyond words. He was talking to her. Really discussing his deepest feelings—but it was too late. If only he talked to her before, they might have saved a marriage, but the moment had passed and it was time for them to move on.
“Success is enjoying what you do everyday. Whether it’s digging ditches or making international deals. I was a failure. I hated what I was doing but I made so much money I couldn’t rationalize leaving it. Besides it would have broken my grandfather’s and my father’s hearts. I’d been born, groomed, educated to do what I did. It drained every bit of passion from my soul and it killed what we had.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this years ago?”
“Because I didn’t know. I mistook pressure for pleasure. We had to put on a front for the business. We had to live up to the image. Fancy parties. The beautiful life. Our marriage on the rocks and I didn’t know why. But what difference did it make. Laura was there, flirting, offering another way to keep the whale in the water. Love didn’t matter. No sacrifice was too big if it kept Fields Enterprises from dying.”
“So why did you come here?”
“You love it here. It had strings that kept pulling your heart back here even when you had the whole world willing to drop down on its belly just to kiss your toes.”
“All that glitters is not gold, Trey,” she whispered.
“I wanted to come down here to this god forsaken place that smells like pigs and cows and see how you could love it when you could have had so much more,” he said.
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