Leaning back, Mandy studied his face. “And just exactly what would those consequences be, Joe Bob Mason?”
“A life sentence without parole married to the mayor,” he said gravely.
Laying her head back against his chest, she sighed happily. “Just lock me up and throw away the key.”
126
Dusty contemplated Mandy's words on the iPhone screen, tracing them with her index finger as if they were etched in the glass. With Kate and Jake off in San Antonio, Jenny holed up at the K-Bar 3, and Mandy and her family spending the day at the dry creek bed, Dusty finished her work by noon.
She retreated to the couch in her cabin with her laptop and Eustace, the old yellow barn cat. The slightly disreputable feline, whose age was undetermined, took one look at Dusty, fell completely in love with her, and proceeded to establish his residence in her tiny home uninvited.
The first time Kate saw him curled up on the sofa, she said, "What the hell is that old rascal doing inside?"
"Try getting him to go out," Dusty said. "He moved himself in lock, stock, and barrel. Hogs the pillow at night and bitches when I don't clean his litter box out."
Kate reached down to scratch the cat's wide head. When her fingers touched his soft, glossy fur she looked up shocked. "Did you give this cat a bath?"
"Yeah, I did," Dusty said. "And I don't want to hear a word about it. If he's sleeping with me, he's not bringing fleas to bed."
"Well, he's sure taking to being a house cat," Kate said. "I never would have believed it."
"Believe it," Dusty said. "And don't ever make the mistake of feeding him cheap, chunky cat food. He likes the good stuff in those tiny, expensive cans."
Eustace, having just finished his top-shelf lunch, rested his head on Dusty's leg while she typed a long email to her mentor, Antoine Farber. His last message to her was filled with questions about the planned vineyard and the new life she was building on the Rocking L. As she typed, she envisioned the energetic little man, well advanced into his 90s, who was up and out each day before the dawn, still learning new things and exploring new ideas.
During the first few weeks they worked together, Antoine reacted with genuine horror when he discovered Dusty hadn't willingly cracked a book since high school. "No wonder you drift aimlessly, Lauren," he exclaimed. "You have no ideas to anchor you in the world."
The old man was one of the few people in Dusty's life who could use her real name and not infuriate her. "Why don't you like your name?" he asked, crinkling his brow. "It is a beautiful name."
"It wasn't beautiful the way my mother said it," Dusty answered. "Lauren, you're going to have to learn this. Lauren you're going to have to do that. Lauren I don't know why you can't be a lady."
Antoine shook his head. "You are no longer a child," he chided her gently. "And yet you carry the carping voice of an unhappy woman in your heart and in your mind. This you must stop. You must be like the hole at the center of the wheel."
"Come again?" Dusty said. "You want me to be like something that goes round and round all the time?"
It was early in the day and they were in the vineyard pruning the vines; a slow, contemplative task that lent itself to conversation or contemplation depending on the needs of the moment.
Antoine looked like a prophet of old when he turned toward her, the sun deepening the weathered lines on his smiling face. "No," he said. "Round and round is the problem." He drew circles in the air with his hand. "That is what we all do. Go round and round. Life wears us away at the edges. The rim weakens. A spoke breaks. Everything in the cart spills out onto the road and we don't know what to do."
Dusty shrugged. "Wheels wear out," she said. "It just happens."
"I did not say that you should be the wheel," Antoine answered patiently. "I said that you must be the empty hole at the center of the wheel. Everything else goes round and round, but the empty place never changes. Be that empty place and you will not wear out."
"Where does the axle fit in this picture?" Dusty asked stubbornly. "Wheels are attached to axles."
"Mon Dieu," he said, shaking his head. "You have much to learn. We will talk."
And so they talked. Every few days Antoine handed Dusty a book, and she soon learned to be prepared for the questions that would follow. What began as lessons on how to tend a vineyard became instructions on how to repair and build a life. As she grew closer to the old man, there were things Dusty wanted to tell him, but the words stuck in her throat. Thankfully, Antoine had the ability to hear them anyway.
One day, after Dusty complained far too angrily about a squeaking wheelbarrow, Antoine looked at her quizzically. "What in your life has made this sound such a terrible thing for you?" he asked.
Startled, and instantly on guard at the probing nature of the question, Dusty turned back to her work. She could feel the old man's eyes on her, however, and he seemed to have no intention of looking away until she gave him an answer. Finally, summoning up her courage, but unable to look at him, Dusty said, "The door of my bedroom growing up."
She didn't say the noise twisted her gut with memories of unanswered prayers. Her parents never heard the sound. They never came to investigate. Instead, she stared at the ceiling, ignored the pain, and prayed to hear the squeak again, because the second time meant her brother was gone for the night.
Beside her, Antoine resumed his own work, but he muttered something in French. Dusty didn't speak the language, but she recognized cussing when she heard it. Then, in a voice so gentle it felt like balm to her soul, he said, "The door no longer creaks in the night. Choose to hear it no more."
And with that simple idea, that she could choose the thoughts in her own mind, Dusty's life changed. She no longer joked about the empty place at the center of the wheel, and instead, concentrated on finding it. She read the books Antoine gave her, and with his help, she took hold of her own mind.
When the panicked, wild thoughts came up, the ones that made her want to run away again, she sat with her fears and cared for them. They were allowed to stay with her, but not to determine her actions. Dusty grew quiet for the first time in her life, and she grew patient.
Then Kate's email arrived. Dusty showed the message to Antoine. "This woman is your friend?" he asked.
"My oldest friend," Dusty said. "The only person other than my Daddy and you I've ever completely trusted."
"Then I think you must go to Texas," he said. "Perhaps your friend needs you to manage more than her land."
As usual, he'd been right. Without knowing Kate, or any of the circumstances on the Rocking L, Antoine read between the lines of the message and saw more than the words themselves conveyed.
Since Dusty's return, she and Kate simply picked up where they left off, but the second week Dusty was on the ranch, Jenny caught her in the barn. "Hey," she said, "I just wanted to thank you for taking Kate up on the job. She's so much more relaxed now that you're here."
Dusty, who had been mucking out a stall, stopped and leaned on the handle of the pitchfork. "I'm glad to hear it," she said, "but I'm still a little iffy on why she wanted me here."
"What did she tell you?" Jenny asked.
"That she needed somebody here who would tell her ‘no’ and give her hell when she's being stubborn."
Jenny laughed. "Good luck with that," she said. "And I do think what she told you is the truth. None of the rest of us will really argue with her much."
"But you don't think what she said is the whole truth, do you?"
"Katie would never admit it, but living with that bad arm is hard on her," Jenny said. "She thinks she has to be strong for all of us, and she doesn't realize we understand that."
"She can't let her guard down with Jake?"
Jenny leaned against the door of the stall. "Katie's not used to being with someone. It's a good thing Jake is patient. He's good with her. He knows how to make her laugh. I think they're going to be okay, but you know Katie. It'll all have to happen on her schedule."
&nb
sp; Dusty laughed. "God, I hear that. Katie has never been a woman to be pushed."
"She'll say things to you, Dusty, that she might not say to us," Jenny said. "Just like it's always been."
"Being so alone all those years wasn't good for her," Dusty said. "I know it gets kinda crazy around here on a regular basis, but Katie does better with family."
"All of her family," Jenny agreed. "That includes you."
A few days later, while Dusty and Kate were out for an afternoon ride, Dusty said, "Alright now, you gonna tell me why you really wanted me managing the Rocking L?"
"I told you already," Kate said, not taking her eyes off the horizon.
"You fed me some load of bull about nobody around here being willing to tell you no," Dusty said. "Best I can tell, Jenny would argue with Jesus Christ himself, so I'm thinking you left something out, Katie."
Several minutes passed with nothing but the sound of the horses hooves to break the silence before Kate spoke again. "You remember that old Jimmy Stewart movie, The Cheyenne Social Club?" she asked.
"The one where he inherits his brother's whore house?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
"What about it?"
"Henry Fonda plays his buddy," Kate said. "They're just a couple of old saddle tramps, and at the end of the movie, Harley — that's the guy Fonda plays — he says to Jimmy's character, 'John, you've changed.' Old Harley, he figures there's no place for him in John's new world, so he gets on his horse and rides off. But then Harley finds out that there's a bunch of guys coming to the whore house to kill his friend, so he turns around and goes back. Remember?"
"Kinda," Dusty said.
"Well, Harley gets there just when the gun fight is heating up, and he climbs up on this water tower with a Winchester and starts shooting. John knows instantly who's out there with a long gun and he knows everything's gonna be alright because his friend is up on that tower. I need you up on the water tower with a rifle reminding me I'm not alone."
"Your sisters don't do that for you?"
Kate reined Bracelet to a stop and turned toward Dusty. "They've been looking up to me since I was 15 years old," she said. "I've been their answer for everything. You're the only one who knows what it was really like for me after Mama died. You're the only one who knows how scared I was of Daddy. I don't get to be the one who's scared. Up in Colorado when I told Jenny that I was ready to give up and die the night I got shot, all the color drained out of her face. They can't have me be afraid of anything."
"That's taking a lot on yourself," Dusty said. "Don't underestimate your sisters and don't underestimate Jake. He loves you."
"And I love him. But you and me, we're not used to love, are we, Dusty?"
Dusty shook her head and sighed. "No, I guess we're not. We've been loners together most of our lives."
"That's why I feel better when I know you're the one up there on that water tower with the Winchester," Kate said.
"And I feel better being up there," Dusty admitted. "I guess we really are a couple of old saddle tramps."
"Pretty much," Kate said smiling. "I just hope I don't have to actually ask you to shoot somebody."
"If it comes to shooting," Dusty said, "you won't have to ask. Are you really worried there's more trouble coming?"
"I can't say quite what, but, yeah, I've got a bad feeling."
Now, weeks later, as Dusty remembered the conversation, she knew that once again that odd little sixth sense of Kate's had been right. They had themselves a nice mess of trouble to deal with, and damned if Mandy hadn't decided to go and get pregnant right in the middle of it.
Dusty scratched Eustace's ears and listened to the old cat purr. One thing was for certain, she wasn't going into town to buy a pregnancy test. She wouldn't even get out the front door of the pharmacy before the rumors started.
"Guess I'm taking a ride over to Kerrville," she told Eustace. "You want me to bring you a dime bag of nip, buddy?"
She got up and took a quick survey of the contents of her cabinets. No sense wasting an hour's drive. After her grocery list was finished, Dusty got in the shower. As the hot water rushed over her, she thought again about the hopeful excitement in the words of Mandy’s text. “Think might have bun in oven . . . can you get me a test kit?”
Mandy had no way of knowing how the request would suck the air from Dusty’s lungs for just a second. Back in high school, the old biddies of the town had Dusty knocked up on a weekly basis. It was never true. In those days, she wasn’t careful, she was just plain, damn lucky. Then, when she was careful? Lady Luck waltzed right on out the bathroom door while Dusty stood staring down at yet another plus sign on the sixth pregnancy test she’d taken in less than an hour.
That memory evoked another, one that made her lean forward under the pounding spray of the shower as if the water could wash his face from her mind. Quint Foster. Too reckless to be husband material, much less a father figure. Too good looking to pass up. Too good to give up. Too damn much trouble to keep. Bottom line? Quint was too damn much everything. Dusty never even told him about the baby. She just got in that beat-up old Winnebago pointed it toward a town nowhere near the rodeo circuit and took care of the problem herself.
Only to pick up a newspaper a few months later and read about a rodeo cowboy - her cowboy - who drew a bad bull and died instantly when the beast kicked him in the chest. Quint didn’t have any family, so the town buried him. Dusty went to the funeral and dodged the questions from the other riders. “Damn, girl. Where’d you disappear to?” Or worse yet, “He looked for you, Dusty. He really loved you.”
Once the last shovel full of dirt was in the grave she drove away — drove all the way to California — and tried not to remember any of it. So why was she remembering it now? Because she had to go buy a pregnancy test for her best friend’s little sister.
“Jesus, Dusty, really?” she muttered. “Get a freaking grip.”
She shut off the water and dried herself off with angry, impatient vigor. “Enough, damn it,” she said to Eustace, who was sitting by the sink when she stepped out of the shower and into her robe. “It was enough back then, and it’s sure as hell enough now.”
Eustace regarded her with impassive gold eyes.
“I’m not that woman anymore,” she told the cat. “That woman is gone. This is the woman you’re stuck with. This woman doesn’t get herself backed up in corners with no options but bad choices.”
Opening his mouth in a wide yawn, Eustace craned his neck out to rub his head against her arm. Impulsively, Dusty picked the massive old tom up and cradled him in her arms. “I’m not that woman anymore,” she whispered fiercely into his fur. “I’m not.”
127
Kate and Jake got back to the ranch around the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, just as Jenny was pulling in from the K-Bar 3. Jake excused himself, saying he needed to get a head start on his Monday morning email at the Institute, but Kate knew he was giving them some private time to talk.
When the sisters were settled at the kitchen table with fresh coffee, Jenny said, “So how did the weekend go? Did you have fun?”
“It was fun,” Kate said, describing the Menger and giving Jenny a run down of their sightseeing activities. “I wish you could have heard Jake’s talk,” Kate said. “He was very professorial.”
Jenny laughed. “He’s so down to earth and lovable, it’s hard to think of him as an academic. He’s like the big brother I never had.”
Kate ran her finger lightly around the rim of her coffee cup and said, “Actually, he’d like to have that job officially.”
Choking on her coffee, Jenny’s eyes darted to Kate’s left hand. Her ruby signet ring was in its usual place on her index finger, but there was no engagement ring to keep it company. “Oh my God, Katie, did you turn him down?” Jenny gasped. “Please tell me you did not turn him down.”
“I didn’t,” Kate said quietly, “I told him I wasn’t ready to say ‘yes’ yet.”
“Why on
earth not?”
Kate looked up. “Because I'm not ready,” she said seriously. “I thought the two of us had this whole marriage business settled and off the table. I wasn’t expecting him to pull a ring box out of his pocket.”
“What does the ring look like?” Jenny asked.
“I have no idea,” Kate said. “I didn’t look at it.”
“You didn’t look at it?” Jenny said in utter amazement. “A man proposes to you and you don’t even look at the ring?”
Kate shrugged. "I know it doesn't sound very romantic, but I know myself. I don't like surprises, even good ones. If I had looked at it, I might have said yes without thinking the deal through. I care too much about Jake to do that to him.”
“Honey,” Jenny said, “you’re talking about marrying a man you are obviously in love with, not deciding to buy a bull.”
Kate continued to trace the lip of the cup. “I don’t know anything about being a man’s wife,” she said softly.
Jenny covered Kate’s hand with her own, stilling the restless motion of her fingers. “That's ridiculous," she said. "You just keep doing what you're doing, but with a ring on your finger. What’s really got you spooked?”
“Everybody gets along when they’re just going together because the gate’s still open. You can get out without tearing the whole fence down,” Kate answered. “You go putting a ring on the situation and then it’s legal and you’re hogtied.”
Jenny covered her eyes with her free hand and shook her head. “Katie,” she said patiently, “what you’re calling ‘hogtied,’ most people call commitment. Do you have any reason to want Jake out of your life?”
“No.”
“Is there anyone else you want to be with?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I can’t see that we need a ring and a piece of paper to be committed to each other,” Kate said stubbornly. “Maybe I want to keep our relationship just the way it is. Do I even need to point out what happened to you when Josh started pestering you about getting married?”
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 87