Rancher's Double Dilemma

by Pamela Browning

  Garth was relieved that she recalled this much about her life, though he hoped she wasn’t going to run through the whole list of family “begats” for his benefit. “I’m Garth,” he repeated.

  Ruth’s confused gaze came to rest on Lacey, who still held her hand. “But you’re not Joanie,” she said. “Where’s Joanie?”

  Lacey stood up, clearly rattled. She went into the bathroom and came out carrying a paper cup of water, which she sipped while bracing herself against the wall. She still looked too pale, Garth thought.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  “I’m fine,” Lacey said. She crumpled the cup and went into the bathroom for a minute, coming out looking collected.

  He turned back to Ruth. “That’s Lacey, Ruth. Joan died almost a year ago.”

  “Joanie died?” Ruth’s hazel eyes filled with tears.

  “It was a long time ago. You were at her funeral.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know Joanie had died.”

  Lacey pulled a tissue from a box on the dresser. “Here, Ruth,” she said. “I know it must be a shock to you.”

  “Thank you, dear. You’re very nice. And who did you say you were?”

  “Lacey. Lacey Shaw.” Lacey waited to see if the name rang a bell.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anyone named Lacey. I knew a Macy once, but that was in grade school and he was a big bully. I hate bullies, don’t you?”

  Lacey assured her that she did and shot a perplexed glance at Garth.

  Garth leaned forward. “Ruth, maybe you recall delivering twin girls almost a year ago at the hospital,” he said.

  “Why, yes, it seems like I do,” she said haltingly, though it was hard to tell if she really remembered or not.

  “I need to know what happened that night,” he told her. Lacey settled herself on the edge of the bed. “So do I, Ruth.”

  “I delivered lots of babies, you know. Lots and lots of them.” She looked from Garth to Lacey, waiting, it seemed, for an approving comment.

  “We know you did, and these two were very important. We need to know how Joan ended up with one of the twin girls.”

  “And how I ended up with the other,” Lacey said.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Ruth said, and she looked out the window at the people strolling in the garden. “Seems like it might rain, don’t you think?”

  “There’s no rain predicted until late tonight,” Lacey said, looking to Garth for help.

  “Ruth,” he said gently, “could you tell us about those twins?”

  “I came into the delivery room about to give birth to two babies,” prompted Lacey. “You and Ardie Fernandez were the only ones there.”

  “I know,” Ruth said. “But Joanie was going to have her baby that night, too.”

  “Yes, yes,” Lacey said. Garth shot her a look of warning; he didn’t want her to talk so much that Ruth couldn’t tell them what she knew.

  “Joanie was going to have her baby,” Garth reminded her. “Tell us what happened.”

  “Well, that baby was born dead. Just like her last two, and I couldn’t bear to tell her.”

  Garth winced and stared down at his boots for a long moment. “So then what did you do?”

  Ruth looked out the window again. “Are you sure it isn’t going to rain? I think I hear thunder. That’s a pretty garden out there, don’t you think?”

  Lacey knew a diversionary tactic when she heard one, and she gave this one short shrift. “Ruth, please,” she urged. “Tell us what happened that night.”

  Ruth seemed to pull herself back from wherever her mind had gone. She focused her unblinking gaze on them. “Why, all I did was I gave Joanie the baby she and Garth wanted. I took it away from the parents because that little girl who was the twins’ mother, she told me they could barely afford to take care of one baby, much less two. I saw her husband, he seemed real immature. The two of them, they were nothing but scared kids who were about to become parents. So I gave one of their babies to Joanie, who needed a baby to love. That’s what happened.” And she smiled gently, clearly pleased to be telling about something that had made Joan so happy.

  ON THE WAY OUT of the nursing home, Garth reached out and touched Lacey’s shoulder, letting his hand rest there in a gesture of support.

  “I did say that,” Lacey said, barely holding back tears. “I told Ruth that Bunny and I couldn’t afford to have twins. It was the truth, Garth. I’m responsible for what happened.”

  “No, Lacey,” he said, his voice gentle. “That didn’t give anyone the right to give one of your babies away.”

  Lacey paused at the edge of the garden and sank down on a wrought-iron bench. “I know Bunny and I didn’t look too prosperous when we arrived at the hospital that night. I was wearing a ratty old shift because it was the only thing I had that still fit, being so huge with having twins and all. I was almost hysterical at giving birth among strangers in a place where I knew no one. And I couldn’t help confiding in a gentle old nurse who was kind to me.”

  “Like I said, that didn’t give Ruth the right,” Garth repeated. “Don’t blame yourself, Lacey.”

  “I guess…I guess what Ruth did must have made sense to her.” Despite the heartache over losing a child, despite the anguish, Lacey somehow couldn’t find it in her heart to condemn the poor woman for her actions, even though they had caused unparalleled pain in her life as well as in Bunny’s. And in Garth’s life, too, she thought as she glanced at him and caught a glimpse of the utter desolation in his expression.

  He noticed her looking. “Would you…would you mind showing me where our baby—Joan’s and mine—is buried?”

  Lacey, her mind all jumbled up with her thoughts, was surprised at this request. “Now?” she said.

  “If you wouldn’t mind. It might help me accept what I need to.” There was a roughness to the edges of Garth’s voice.

  “Sure. I’d be honored,” Lacey said.

  They got into the car, and Garth drove down the driveway and out the gates. When they were headed back toward Mosquito, at first they didn’t talk much, but then Lacey asked, “Garth, doesn’t Ruth have any family? She seems so lonely.”

  “I know some of her nieces and nephews visit her occasionally, but her only son is in the army stationed in Europe, so she probably misses him a lot.”

  “If she remembers him,” Lacey said. She felt sad about Ruth, and even though she supposed she should be angry about what Ruth had done, it was hard to stay mad at someone so confused. And, reminding herself of what Ardie had told them about Ruth’s state in the few months before she retired from her job, it seemed likely that Ruth probably hadn’t been in her right mind on that night when she switched the babies.

  “How about you, Lacey? Do you have family other than your mother?”

  “No, there’s only my mom and a distant cousin of hers who is a missionary on some island way out in the Pacific Ocean. I’ve never met her.”

  “You’re lucky to have a mom. Mine died when I was twenty-one, Dad a couple of years later. That’s when I learned to run a ranch, and fast.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  “It was. Do you see your mother often?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “Every once in a while she gets on a plane and flies to see me for a couple of days, though. She’s crazy about Michele. I’d like to go see her, which I will do soon, I hope. She and Fletcher—that’s her husband’s name—live right on the beach in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “I guess she’s happy that you’ve found Ashley,” Garth said, sounding not too happy himself.

  “I haven’t told her.”

  “I thought you were going to. We talked about it.”

  “Well,” she said, “I phoned her to tell her, but the conversation was interrupted and I never got around to it later.”

  “She’ll want to see Ashley.”

  “Of course.”

  Garth retreated into himself, making it clear that he wasn’t interested in c
onversation. Lacey understood. The truth about that night ten months ago must be hard for him to accept.

  The town of Mosquito was quiet on this Sunday, with most people inside eating supper or maybe at an evening prayer meeting at one of the town’s three churches. They didn’t see any sign of Horace the mule, and the only person walking down the main street was an old guy wearing bib overalls. When they reached Peaceful Gardens, Lacey directed Garth to the small bronze marker near his own family plot.

  “I should have brought flowers,” he said as he pulled the car to a stop.

  “There’s no place open on Sunday to buy them.”

  “We could have picked lantana along the way,” he said, and Lacey wished she’d been the one to think of stopping to gather an armful of the pretty wildflowers that grew on the sides of the road.

  Garth went to stand with his head bowed for a moment at Joan’s grave before joining Lacey at the marker that said Baby Shaw.

  “The reason I came back to Mosquito was to see that this marker was done right,” Lacey told him. Her unspoken thought was that if she hadn’t checked on the marker, if she’d been convinced in the first place that her first-born had died, she wouldn’t have come here. Garth must have been thinking the same thing, because when she looked up at him, she saw him swallow, and he refused to look at her.

  She knew he had a different point of view about all that, because if she hadn’t come to Mosquito, he wouldn’t be faced with the possibility of giving up the baby that he had thought was his for the past ten months or more.

  Silently she edged away, thinking that if their positions were reversed, she probably wouldn’t be handling this as well as Garth. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. If her mother were here, Sheila Sue would think of a proverb to cover the situation, but for the life of her, Lacey couldn’t think of one or of any other pearl of wisdom that would help.

  When Lacey opened her eyes again, Garth was moving his hand away from his face. She realized with a jolt that maybe, just maybe, he had been brushing away a tear.

  AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME but approaching from the opposite direction, Bunny Shaw blew into town in his secondhand truck, which was on the verge of falling apart, and considered stopping by the cemetery to visit the grave of the kid that died. That was the way he thought of his baby—the kid that died. Michele, now, he thought of her as the kid that lived. And he didn’t think of her all that often, but his mother was bugging him about not being able to see her only grandchild, and he needed money. Delilah had been his best source of extra funds until, in her opinion, he’d screwed up.

  Well, maybe he had screwed up at that. Otherwise he’d still be riding around in the Winnebago and receiving regular checks from Delilah. As it was, he sometimes didn’t have a decent place to sleep at night, and women liked men who flashed a lot of cash. Not that he blamed Lacey for all that had happened. She was a good woman. And how could she help it if their baby—which he hadn’t wanted, exactly—turned out to be twins?

  He had intended to stop at a local watering hole and get the skinny on the Colquitts, but he’d forgotten that there was such a thing as a dry county. Plus that, the Coffee Cup, the measly little diner on the no-’count main street, was closed because it was Sunday. A bunch of cars sat around a church parking lot, and a mule was nibbling at a hydrangea bush in someone’s front yard, but other than that there wasn’t a whole lot going on.

  After he discarded the idea of going to the cemetery, which seemed like a real downer, Bunny downshifted at the yellow blinker that was the town’s only traffic signal. He pulled to a stop beside a man on the street, who was sauntering along in a pair of bib overalls and looking bored.

  “Did you know there’s a mule wandering around eating plants out of people’s yards?” Bunny said from the truck.

  The guy spit tobacco juice over his shoulder. “Can’t do nothing about that,” he said. “He eats anything he wants to. Thing that might save us is that old Horace has been looking a wee bit peaked lately. I expect he’ll die soon, which would solve the problem. You can’t run him off. You can’t pen him up. That durned mule’s a VIP around here.”

  Bunny thought the man had misunderstood. They were talking about a mule, after all. “Well, can you point me toward the Colquitt Ranch?” he asked.

  The man squinted and waggled his thumb to indicate the general direction of the highway. “Sure. It’s out the Old Grange Road.”

  “Name on the mailbox?”

  “Yup. You trying to get work there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The Colquitts treat their hands good,” the man said consideringly.

  “Glad to hear it,” Bunny said, but he’d already learned all he needed to know. He zoomed away without thanking the old guy, leaving him choking in a cloud of dust.

  Like he really would work on a ranch. Like he’d ever give up rodeoing for a living.

  The pastures as he rode out of town took on a lush green look, due perhaps to the overabundance of rain this year. When he reached the Colquitt place, which was marked by a big sign on the road, he thought it looked mighty prosperous. From the appearance of things, Lacey had come out smelling like a rose after the divorce and all. This rankled no end.

  Ahead was the ranch house, two stories painted white. Bunny chuckled at the idea of surprising Lacey. He wasn’t sure exactly what approach he would take with her. He’d figure that out as he went along.

  IT WAS AN HOUR OR SO until dusk when Garth and Lacey approached the ranch.

  “Do you mind if I stop off at the water tower? Cody thinks it’s sprung a leak,” Garth said.

  “I don’t mind,” Lacey said, though her head was beginning to throb and she suddenly had a painful longing to hold those two babies of hers tight in her arms.

  She spotted the blue truck as it pulled out of the driveway. It was too far away to see clearly, but the peeling paint on the driver’s side door did seem to have that odd and distinctive Indian-head shape to it.

  “It’s Bunny,” she said under her breath.

  “What?” Garth swiveled his head around to look at her.

  “I—nothing,” she said. Logic told her that it couldn’t have been Bunny’s truck. He was probably far away from here, riding in some damn ol’ rodeo in some ol’ town.

  Garth turned into the driveway, and they rode several hundred yards or so before he steered the car down a rutted path, stopped at the water tower, got out and squinted up at it. A magpie settled on the nearby fence, and Lacey studied it until it flew away. By that time, Garth was back.

  “I don’t see any leak. Must be Cody’s imagination.” He threw the car into gear and began to back and turn.

  When Garth slowed the car to a stop behind Kim’s convertible outside the ranch house, Lacey got out and ran up the porch steps and past the empty playpen. Garth was behind her.

  As they let themselves into the kitchen, the den door slammed shut. “You don’t understand. You just don’t understand!” said Kim as she burst from the room. Her eyes were red, and Lacey knew right away that she’d been crying.

  Cody followed her into the kitchen. “You’re asking me to take that job in Wichita Falls even though I could make more money on the ranch!”

  “But I’d be earning more money as manager of a branch bank, and we’d both get raises if—”

  They stopped arguing when they saw Lacey and Garth.

  “Sorry,” Kim mumbled. “I was just leaving.” Her eyes were downcast, and Cody looked sheepish.

  “Are the babies napping?” Lacey asked. They weren’t in their high chairs, and they hadn’t been in the playpen.

  Kim and Cody exchanged a panic-stricken look. “They’re in their playpen,” Kim said in a choked voice, and she was across the kitchen in two seconds.

  Fear clutched at Lacey’s heart as Kim burst out the door, and she was gripped with a terrible foreboding. “But they’re not there,” she said, her heart in her mouth as she whirled after Kim.

  They both stopped
stock-still on the porch. A blue jay cried from a nearby tree, and Tipper flapped her tail under the porch swing as Garth and Cody came outside. They all stared at the empty playpen.

  Lacey’s head swam, and the world began a slow spin. Blood rushed in her ears, and her knees went weak.

  “Cody?” Garth said.

  “We put them in the playpen half an hour ago after Michele woke up from her nap,” Cody said.

  “We did put them there,” affirmed Kim. She looked bewildered.

  No longer able to stand, Lacey stumbled toward one of the rockers and sank down on it. “Bunny,” she said weakly. “I thought I saw his truck.”

  “Who?” Garth asked incredulously.

  She looked up at him in utter wretchedness, her eyes brimming with tears. “My ex-husband. Garth, he’s taken the babies!”

  Chapter Nine

  It seemed to Bunny that the two girls were all over the cab of the pickup.

  “Stop that,” he said to the one who was fiddling with the seat belt clasp. He’d sat both of them on the front seat and buckled them in using adult seat belts, which he knew was unsafe, but it was all he could do. He hadn’t thought about buying a baby seat. He didn’t plan things that far ahead. And what good would it have done, anyway, since there were two of them?

  “Bababa,” said the one who had the pacifier. She jammed it back in her mouth and shut up.

  “We’ll stop at the first store I see once we get out of town,” Bunny said. “I’ll buy you both a car seat.” It would take what little was left of his cash, but that wasn’t a problem. Delilah would fork over bundles of money once she saw the two of them.

  The one closest to the door started to finger the handle.

  “No!” he said sharply, and she blinked at him uncertainly. Her eyes put him in mind of Lacey’s, and that made him feel right nostalgic. Too bad he’d missed seeing Lacey when he’d dropped by the ranch. He’d heard another woman and a man having a big fight inside, and that suited his purposes just fine. On impulse, he’d grabbed Michele. He also grabbed the other one. His mind was still cloudy about this peculiar circumstance, the two babies looking exactly alike. Must be that the oldest one hadn’t died. Lacey hadn’t mentioned it, though. He couldn’t quite figure—