Dead Ringer & Classified Christmas

by B. J Daniels

  When he’d lost his temper and hit her, she’d told herself it was her fault. She’d promised to try harder to please him—just as her mother had said.

  A wave of disgust washed over her as she moved to the doorway to the kitchen and stopped.

  Wade was sitting at the table, elbows on the tabletop, his head resting in his hands. A floorboard must have creaked, because he suddenly lifted his head and turned it in her direction.

  His eyes were red and shiny. Hungover? Or crying? She couldn’t tell. Either, though, could change in a heartbeat and turn violent.

  Those eyes focused on her, shifting from her face to the bat in her hands. His expression went from sorrowful to surprised, then deeply hurt. She realized he’d been crying. It was what he always did after he hurt her. She’d never doubted that he was sorry or that he didn’t want to hurt her again. Until the next time.

  “Abby?” His voice sounded lost.

  She shifted the bat to one hand and let it rest against her leg.

  “You don’t need that,” he said, still sounding shocked that she would either think that she needed a bat to protect herself or that she would consider hitting him with it.

  She felt the irony of that soul-deep.

  Yesterday she’d been determined to save her marriage. But looking at him sitting there, she knew that she no longer wanted to. The last few months had been so much worse than any she could have imagined. Him putting her in the hospital because of his temper... It was the last straw.

  “I want you to pack your things and move out,” she said, surprised how calm she sounded. Her heart was pounding in her chest.

  “Abby, you can’t mean—”

  “I do, Wade. I can’t live like this.” He had started to get up, but her words stopped him. He settled back in the chair and put his head in his hands again.

  “Don’t do this, Abby. I’ll change. I swear I will. In fact, things are going to get better.”

  The familiar words had no effect on her. She stared at her husband and wondered how long it had been over. She’d left him once. That night, running for her life, she’d made the mistake of going to her mother’s.

  “Don’t you ever darken my door again. Your place is with your husband.”

  “You don’t understand. He’s going to kill me.” She had pleaded with her mother.

  “What did you do?”

  She’d stared at her mother in disbelief. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Her mother sneered. “You did somethin’ to make him mad.”

  “He came home drunk, smelling of some other woman—”

  “Grow up, Abby. He’s a man. He has to let off a little steam. Be glad he took some of it out on that other woman before he got home. You want to be a good wife? Don’t make him mad. Now, get out of here. He finds out you came here...”

  She’d left, walking home in the dark and realizing she had no other place to go than back to Wade.

  Now she felt a sadness deep in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t been strong enough to leave Wade then, but she was now. “It’s over, Wade.”

  “You can’t throw me out of my own house,” he said belligerently. But he didn’t make a move toward her.

  She felt the weight of the bat. “If you don’t leave, I’ll call the sheriff. I don’t think you want that.”

  He fisted his hands at his waist, glaring at her. Then knocking over the chair, he jumped up and stormed out. She listened to the sound of his pickup engine dying off in the distance before she went to the door, locked it and pushed the fallen chair under the knob.

  But all her instincts told her he wouldn’t be back. At least not until tonight.

  * * *

  WATERS SHOWED UP the next morning to see if Vance needed a ride to the lab for his DNA test.

  “This really isn’t necessary,” Travers said when he opened the door to see his attorney standing there.

  “I’m representing Vance through this,” Waters said, surprising his old boss. “He asked me to on his behalf. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I guess I can understand how he might feel alone in this, though if this test comes back like I think it will, he’ll now have family to take care of things. I hope, after all these years, that you won’t be involved in any litigation with my son.”

  “I was the one who brought him to you,” Waters reminded him. “I promised to look after his interests even though I’ve spent years looking after yours. But I’m sure once we confirm he’s your son that he will have everything he needs.”

  Travers nodded.

  “Since I am only on a retainer with you, I thought you’d appreciate me taking care of things on his behalf.”

  “You know I do.” The horse rancher turned as Vance came down the stairs.

  Just moments before, Waters was feeling good. Travers did appreciate what he was doing. He thought they might actually be able to patch things up. He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when he saw Vance’s expression.

  Worry wormed through him. The kid looked petrified. Maybe he hated needles. Waters could only hope that was all that was going on with Vance. Surely he wouldn’t be so stupid as to think he could pass a DNA test if he knew he wasn’t Oakley McGraw.

  Then again, maybe Vance thought the toy stuffed horse would be enough.

  He tried to relax. The kid had the horse. Unless he’d picked it up at a garage sale, he was Oakley McGraw, right?

  “I thought you and I would ride together to the lab,” the attorney said to him. He promised to see Travers and his sons at the lab and quickly steered the would-be Oakley outside.

  Once the two of them were in the car, he buckled up and looked over at the kid. “If there is some reason you think you might not pass this DNA test, then you need to tell me now.”

  * * *

  ABBY WONDERED WHAT had made her think she could stay in this house. Everywhere she looked there were too many bad memories. Her first thought this morning was simply getting away from Wade. She didn’t think her body could take another run-in.

  But once she realized she didn’t want to stay here, she knew she had to find a place of her own. Something small. Something she could afford by herself.

  They’d been paying on this house for the past couple of years. If there was any equity in it, Wade could have it. She just wanted out.

  That decided, she couldn’t wait to pack up and leave. It wouldn’t take much packing. She hadn’t accumulated hardly anything she cared about over these few years of marriage.

  When she looked around, she thought she could pack all of her possessions into the two suitcases out in the garage. She walked through the kitchen, opened the door from the house to the garage and froze.

  A memory tugged at her the moment she saw the ladder lying on the garage floor. Was it possible she had fallen—just as Wade had said? She shook her head. No, the blood was in the kitchen. But there was something about the garage and the ladder.

  Standing there, she tried hard to remember. Closing her eyes, she felt another nudge. Wade and his father. She frowned. They’d both been in the garage. She’d come to the door and heard them talking.

  A shudder moved through her. Why had they been talking in the garage? Because they hadn’t wanted her to hear. But she had heard. Had she let them know it?

  Apparently not at once since she’d found her dried blood on the kitchen floor. Had she confronted Wade about what she’d heard and the argument had gone from the garage to the kitchen?

  She squeezed her eyes closed tighter. They’d argued, but she’d already suspected that. But not in the garage. No, it had been in the kitchen. The two of them alone. But what had it been about?

  Something important. Had Wade found out that she’d gone back on the pill and had been keeping it from him? She shook her head and trie
d to concentrate on what she’d seen and heard in the garage.

  She could almost see Wade and Huck with their heads together, talking in grave tones in the garage. Almost hear... She opened her eyes with a groan, the memory just out of her grasp. But whatever it was, it was serious.

  * * *

  WATERS HAD FOUND a local lab to do the DNA test so they didn’t have to travel out of town.

  “Won’t you need to get DNA from Mother?” Ledger asked. Once they’d seen that Jim Waters would be taking Vance to the lab, he and his brothers had insisted on driving their father.

  “At this point, all they need is mine,” Travers said after lecturing them about babying him. “It should be conclusive enough. If needed, we can get your mother’s.”

  As they walked in, Ledger wondered how long it would be before the news was all over town. He’d already heard the rumor going around that one of the twins had been found. Waters’s doing? Or Vance’s?

  Vance had spent his first night in a motel in town. If Waters had checked him in, that could have been enough to get tongues wagging.

  At the lab, his father walked up to the reception desk and was told that he could come on back. As he disappeared down a short hallway, Ledger looked around. The building was small. His brothers had taken seats in the waiting area, but he was too antsy, so he’d moved where he could see down the corridor.

  There were a series of small rooms off the hall. His father had gone into one of those with the lab tech. He wondered where Vance was. At the sound of a familiar voice, he saw Deputy Sheriff Huck Pierce step out of one of the rooms with one of the lab techs, this one a redhead. She was laughing at something the deputy had said.

  Ledger turned away, but not before he’d seen the lab tech move to open the door of one of the rooms. He got a glimpse of Vance sitting nervously on a gurney, waiting to have the test done. He didn’t look like a man who believed he was Oakley McGraw.

  “Good thing Dad is smart enough to demand a lab test,” Ledger said when he joined his brothers. “I just saw Vance. He looks scared to death. What if he’s lying?”

  “Then we’ll know soon enough,” Boone said. “DNA doesn’t lie.”

  “He had the toy stuffed horse.” Cull shook his head. “What I want to know is what happens if he is Oakley.”

  Chapter Seven

  LEDGER LET A few days go by before he stopped in the Whitehorse Café. He halted at the door to scan the room as he always did. Today, he would tell Abby why he hadn’t been back. He would apologize for making things worse for her. He would step off.

  But as always, there was that moment of expectation, that sense of hope, then concern when he looked around for her. If he didn’t see Abby, there was always a painful disappointment that ruined his appetite. But he was too polite to turn around and leave on those days when she’d traded shifts. He would have a little something to eat even though the other waitress could tell there was only one reason he’d come in and it wasn’t for the food.

  “Abby took the day off,” her friend Tammy said as she swung by on her way to a table with two plates full of biscuits and gravy. She didn’t give him a chance to comment.

  Abby never took a day off unless something was wrong. He waited until Tammy came back to ask, “Is she all right?”

  Tammy slowed to a stop even though he could tell that she was really busy this morning. He saw her hesitate. He knew she didn’t like telling something that Abby might not want him to know.

  “It’s okay,” he said, not wanting to put her on the spot. “She needs loyal friends.”

  “She’s looking for an apartment,” Tammy said and gave him an encouraging smile.

  “An apartment?”

  “A studio,” she said pointedly and then took off as she had another order come up.

  A studio apartment. Did that mean what he hoped it did? That she’d finally left Wade? He tried to keep from getting too excited about the prospect, not knowing what it meant. There was always the chance she would change her mind. Or worse, that Wade would stop her.

  He couldn’t possibly eat a thing. He left and walked to his pickup, his step lighter than it had been in three years.

  He’d just climbed into the ranch pickup when his cell rang. He thought for a moment that it would be Abby calling with the good news. He reminded himself that he wasn’t part of the equation. He hadn’t been since she married Wade. Just because she was getting an apartment—

  Ledger quickly dug out his phone, still hoping. “Hello?” he said without checking to see who was calling.

  “You need to get home,” his brother Cull said without preamble. “Dad just got the DNA test results. He wants us all there.”

  “That quick?” Ledger asked in disbelief.

  “They did just a preliminary one that should tell us if Vance Elliot has any of our blood running through his veins.”

  “I’m on my way.” He disconnected and sat staring out over the steering wheel. It was the moment of truth.

  He started the truck and drove as quickly as he could toward the ranch, his thoughts straying radically from what was waiting for him at home to what Abby was doing right now.

  He wanted to call her, but he resisted. He’d promised himself he would give her space. Ledger chuckled to himself, thinking about the times he’d wanted to pull some crazy romantic stunt like he’d seen in the movies. He’d ride into the café on his horse, scoop Abby up and ride off into the sunset with her. He’d save her from herself, from Wade, from her horrible mother.

  Ahead the ranch came into view, the Little Rockies in the distance. He slowed the pickup to turn down the road past the bright white wooden fence that lined both sides of the road. A half dozen horses had taken off in the wind, their manes flying back as they ran.

  The sight always made him smile. He loved this ranch, loved raising horses. He’d always thought that he would bring Abby here after he saved her.

  Waters’s car was parked in front of the house along with an older-model pickup he didn’t recognize. Vance Elliot’s?

  Both trepidation and excitement filled him. For twenty-five years his father had searched for the twins. Was it possible the DNA test would prove that one of them had finally made his way home?

  * * *

  ABBY FELT STRONGER every day both physically and emotionally. She’d made a point of ignoring the pleading messages her mother left on her phone as well as the angry, threatening ones.

  To her surprise, Wade had stayed away, as well. Each night she had expected him to get a snoot full of beer and come banging on her door. When she woke each morning to realize he hadn’t, she felt like a woman in the eye of the hurricane. She didn’t kid herself that it would be this easy to get her freedom from him.

  Now she braced herself. The last couple of days had been nice not having to confront him. Unfortunately, she had to talk to him. She found Wade as he was getting off his shift. From the look in his eyes, his father had already told him everything, including that Abby now knew about the marijuana business.

  “We should talk about all this at home,” Wade said once he was close enough to whisper.

  “I don’t have that much to say and I don’t want to be alone in the house with you.” She saw the sharp ache of pain in Wade’s eyes. The other times, she’d weakened. “I moved out of the house today. You can keep it or sell it, whatever you want. I don’t want anything from you.”

  “You don’t mean that. You’re just angry and upset. Once you calm down—”

  “No, Wade. I do mean it and I’m not going to change my mind. It’s over between us.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. He got that familiar look in his eyes. If they hadn’t been standing on the street in front of the sheriff’s office, he would have lost his temper and they both knew what happened then.

  “I saw
a lawyer today and filed separation papers. There is a waiting period, but once it’s over, if you sign the divorce papers, you won’t have to pay for a lawyer of your own. Up to you, but dragging this out will only cost us both money.”

  He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe the words out of her mouth. “You just hold up a minute. You didn’t say nothin’ about no divorce.”

  “I told you I was done.”

  “That ain’t the same as a divorce,” he said, taking off his Stetson to rake his fingers through his hair. “I just thought you needed some time to cool off.”

  “No, Wade. I can’t be married to you anymore. Please don’t put up a fight. It’s over and I’m not going to change my mind.”

  He put his hat back on, looking like he was going to cry. “I’ll change. You have to give me another chance.”

  “I’ve given you too many chances,” she said, looking away from him.

  His voice broke and, when she looked at him, fury was back in his gaze. “It’s McGraw. Ledger McGraw.”

  “Believe what you want because you will anyway, but this is only about you and me.” She started to walk back toward her car, hoping he wouldn’t come after her.

  But, of course, he did. “Abby, I know I’ve messed up...”

  “Please stop,” she said, continuing to walk. “I don’t want to rehash this. You know exactly why I’m divorcing you. I won’t tell anyone about how you physically abused me unless you fight the divorce.”

  She heard the breath come out of him in a whoosh. Clearly, he hadn’t thought about that. Not that people didn’t know already. Ledger had always known. But it was clear that Wade liked to think it was still their secret.

  “It’s my word against yours,” he said, grabbing her arm and spinning her around to face him.

  She jerked her arm free. “People saw the bruises on me, Wade. They’ll testify in court. The doctor at the hospital is already suspicious after my...accident.”

  He looked furious but also scared. If it became public knowledge, he could lose his job. He grabbed her arm again.