“We’ve been telling her that,” Gina said, reaching for another chair and pulling it over. “Join us.”
Emma scowled, but she scooted over to make room for him. He sat down, then gazed at the empty sundae dishes. “It must have been a heavy conversation if it required hot fudge.”
“It was,” Emma said tightly.
“I need to get back to the ranch,” Karen said suddenly.
“I’m coming with you,” Lauren added.
Gina and Cassie stood up as well.
“Where are you going?” Emma demanded.
“Things to do,” Gina declared.
“Cole’s waiting for me,” Cassie explained with a shrug.
“He wasn’t waiting five minutes ago,” Emma complained.
“Nope. It’s later now.” Cassie grinned, then gave her a kiss. “You’re in safe hands.”
“I wish I believed that,” Emma said.
Ford watched the hurried departures without comment. Emma frowned.
“You certainly do know how to disrupt a party,” she grumbled.
“Is that what it was? The atmosphere didn’t seem very festive.”
“How could it be under the circumstances?”
“Emma, if you still have a problem with me interviewing Sue Ellen, we can call it off.”
“You know I can’t do that,” she protested. “I need people to see her side of things.”
“There are other reporters,” he pointed out. “I can hire a freelancer to do this interview if it will make you less uneasy.”
She shook her head at once. She might not be sure she was doing the right thing, but she did know that she was better off with Ford asking the questions than a total stranger.
“It has to be you.”
“Not if it’s going to ruin our chances of being together,” he said. “You mean a lot to me, more than I ever expected anyone to mean. I want us to have a future.”
When she was about to argue the point, he held up a silencing hand. “Look, I know what’s on the line here. If I fail you, if I get this story wrong or misquote Sue Ellen, whether it’s right or wrong, you’re going to use it as an excuse to end things between us. I know that.” His gaze locked on hers. “I also know that if I don’t do this, you’ll never know in your heart if you can trust me and we won’t stand a chance then, either. Talk about a rock and a hard place…but that’s okay. I have no intention of giving you any excuse to break things off.”
She swallowed hard. He had pegged it exactly right, and even she could see how unfair she was being.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
“So am I. Let me ask you something. Are you aware that Guy Northrup resigned in the wake of what he did to you?”
She regarded him with surprise. “How do you know that?”
“I checked into it. I suppose I wanted to be sure he had paid for what he’d done.”
“Paid? You call that paying?”
“He lost his job.”
“He resigned. He wasn’t fired.”
“But I got the sense that he would have been, if he hadn’t quit. And the city editor down there reports that he’s working at some home improvement store, that he can’t get a job for a legitimate paper. Doesn’t that reassure you at all that responsible journalists weed out the bad apples?”
“I’m relieved to know that he hasn’t merely moved on to wreak havoc on someone else’s life,” she conceded. “But what he did was a crime for which he’ll never pay.” She regarded Ford sadly. “Where’s the justice in that?”
Judging from his silence, he didn’t have an adequate answer to her question.
Emma stood up. “Let’s get this over with.”
Ford stood beside her, but when she would have started from the restaurant, he held her back. “I won’t let you down, Emma. You might not like every word I write, but I swear to you it will be evenhanded and fair and accurate.”
His words weren’t nearly as reassuring as he clearly intended them to be, but she knew they were the best she could hope for. “I know you’ll try. If I didn’t believe that with all my heart, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
At the jail, Ryan met them and escorted them into his office. His gaze locked with Ford’s. “I’m counting on you,” he said grimly.
Emma’s gaze was on Ford’s face, and she saw the anguish in his expression. In that instant, she knew just how deeply he cared not only for her, but for his friend, and how deeply he was hoping not to let them down while still being true to his own ethics and values. They were putting him in a potentially impossible situation, but all three of them knew that there was no other way. She also knew that Ford would do what he felt was honorable and right, no matter the cost to him—or them—personally.
“I’ll get Sue Ellen,” Ryan said.
It was several minutes before he returned. Sue Ellen had been allowed to wear a dress for the interview, and she had taken time to brush her hair. She wore no makeup, though, and her expression was haggard. Her gaze darted from Emma to Ford and back again.
“Sue Ellen, you know Mr. Hamilton,” Emma said quietly. “He wants to ask you a few questions.”
Sue Ellen twisted her hands in her lap, but she nodded. Ryan put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. For just a second she seemed to lean into his touch, but her gaze never left Ford’s face.
“I’ll do my best to answer them,” she whispered.
Emma had spent an hour the night before and another hour this morning briefing Sue Ellen. Emma had advised her client to go into as much detail about what living with Donny was like as she felt comfortable doing. She was going to have to get used to telling the sordid story anyway, because the prosecutor would be eager to punch holes in it.
Emma sat back silently as Ford asked his questions, his tone gentler than she’d expected, his expression faltering as the grim picture emerged. She watched his hands bunch into fists, heard his barely contained gasps, saw the color drain from his face at Sue Ellen’s matter-of-fact description of her life with the man who’d vowed to love, honor and cherish her.
“Was your husband always like this? From the very beginning?”
Sue Ellen nodded, silent tears streaking down her cheeks.
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“I loved him,” she said simply. “Besides, where would I have gone?”
“Surely there were family members or friends who could have helped,” Ford said.
Sue Ellen swallowed hard. “I was too ashamed. Besides, Donny said no one would believe me anyway.”
“But there must have been bruises, cuts, broken bones? A doctor would have known.”
“I only went to the doctor once. I told him I’d been injured in an accident.”
“Show him your arm,” Emma instructed gently.
Sue Ellen held out her right arm where the bone had clearly been broken at one time and not set properly.
“He broke your arm?” Ford said, his face pale.
“Yes.”
“Did you get treatment?”
She shook her head. “Donny put a splint on it. He said it would be fine.”
Ford muttered a harsh expletive under his breath. “Had he ever threatened you with a gun before that night when he died?”
“All the time,” she said in a whisper. “He had at least three in the house that I know of. One night…” Her voice broke.
Emma reached for her hand even as Ryan rubbed her shoulders. “It’s okay. Tell him.”
“One night he held it to my head and made me have sex.”
Ryan turned away, but not before Emma saw the fury in his eyes, the heartache on his face.
“He raped you?” Ford asked.
Sue Ellen started to shake her head. “He was my husband,” she began, but this time Emma cut her off.
“He raped you,” she said fiercely. “I don’t care if he was your husband, that’s what it was.”
Sue Ellen broke down then. Covering her face with her
hands, she wept. Ryan was at her side at once, kneeling beside her, whispering encouragement. Sue Ellen’s gaze locked with his as if he were her lifeline. Emma couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen when Ryan had to testify about the shooting in court. Would Sue Ellen feel betrayed yet again? Or would she understand that Ryan was just doing his job?
Emma sighed. Would she be any more forgiving when Ford did his?
“I think that’s enough,” she said quietly.
Ford nodded.
And without another word to any of them, he got up and walked away. Emma had seen how shaken he was. She prayed that would somehow come across in whatever he chose to print.
Over the next couple of days she watched as Ford visibly waged a war with himself and the values he held so dear. He was so alone. He sat by himself in Stella’s, refusing all offers of company, including Emma’s. The isolation was so uncharacteristic that Emma began to worry. If Ford wouldn’t turn to her, couldn’t turn to her, surely there was someone he could talk to. She went to Ryan.
“I think you need to spend a little time with Ford. He won’t talk to me. I’m pretty sure he thinks it would be wrong under the circumstances, but he’s obviously upset. He needs a friend.”
“Would I really be any better?” Ryan asked. “He knows where I stand on this.”
“Try, please,” she pleaded.
Ryan patted her hand. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“No, I…” Her voice trailed off.
“Emma,” Ryan chided. “Be honest with me. You and I go back too far for you to lie to my face and get away with it.”
She swallowed hard and forced herself to say aloud what she hadn’t even permitted herself to think. “Yes,” she said softly. “I love him. I don’t know how it happened, or why, of all the people in the world, he had to be the one, but he is. I’m just so afraid that we won’t survive this.”
“Want some advice from an old friend?”
She grinned. “As if you’re an expert.”
“Maybe not an expert, but I’ve waited a very long time for the woman I love to take a second look at me. In all this time, my love for Sue Ellen has never wavered, not once. That should tell you something.”
“That you’re a masochist?” Emma asked, only partly in jest.
Ryan frowned at her. “You know better,” he chided. “It proves just how powerful love is. It doesn’t bend or break so easily. It’s something that just is, something so strong that nothing can destroy it unless you permit it to.”
“Ryan, you’re a romantic,” she said with some surprise.
He shrugged. “What can I say? I had a good example. You know any couple in town more solid than my parents? They were childhood sweethearts, and I still catch them making out when they think I’m not around. They’ve taken some tough knocks over the years—my dad losing his job, my mom’s miscarriages, my sister’s pregnancy with Teddy—but they’ve survived because they both believe with everything in them that they’re better together than they would be apart. That’s the way I feel about Sue Ellen. I just pray when this is all over, she’ll let herself feel the same way about me.”
“She counts on you,” Emma said. “I can see it in her eyes and in the way she turns to you. There’s a whole lot of respect there.”
“Respect, yes,” Ryan confirmed. “But how does a woman who’s gone through what she’s gone through ever believe in love?”
Emma thought about the faint flicker of hope she’d seen in Sue Ellen’s gaze when she was with Ryan. “Give her time. She’ll get there,” she said with conviction.
And if Sue Ellen with her tragic past could make such a tremendous leap of faith, then how could Emma not be just as strong when it came to Ford?
She gave Ryan a hug. “Thank you.”
“It’s going to be good to have you home again,” Ryan said.
Startled, Emma simply stared. “Home again?”
“When you and Ford get together,” he said.
“But…” The protest died on her lips, when she realized that a part of her was ready for just such a move. It had been happening slowly but surely for weeks now.
With school about to start, now would be the perfect time to make the decision final. Caitlyn would be ecstatic. Matt and Martha would have her place in Denver to themselves to get their marriage back on track. And she and Ford would have time to explore their feelings without distance separating them.
Ryan was grinning at her stunned silence. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you? You’re going to move home?”
She nodded slowly, her own smile spreading as she accepted the decision she’d been avoiding for far too long. “Yes, I am.”
“I knew it,” he gloated.
“Oh, go suck an egg.”
He wrapped her in a fierce hug and spun her around. “Now that I know you’re staying,” he said, “I think I’ll go tell Ford the good news.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one to tell him?”
“He’s not talking to you right now,” Ryan reminded her. “And I think this news will definitely cheer him up.”
“Just don’t make too much of it. I’m not moving back because of him.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m not,” she protested, then sighed at Ryan’s knowing expression. “Not entirely, anyway.”
He chuckled. “Like I said, this is definitely going to improve his mood.”
A good thing, Emma supposed, because her own mood was turning decidedly sour as she contemplated all the gloating that was going to go on among her friends and family.
Chapter 18
Ford had been struggling to find the right words for days now. He stared at a blank computer screen, then listened to his tape of the interview with Sue Ellen. Each time he heard the stark portrayal of her married life, it sickened him. He’d known all of the statistics about domestic violence, had even read other articles in other papers about tragedies, but this was someone he knew. It made it real and far more devastating than he’d ever imagined when he’d made his sanctimonious declarations about what Sue Ellen had been driven to do.
To his astonishment, more than once as they’d talked Sue Ellen had actually defended that creep of a husband. As she had told her story, Ford had begun to see the psychological damage that years of abuse had wrought. He wondered if Ryan had any idea how difficult it would be for Sue Ellen ever to have a normal relationship, to believe in the possibility of a loving marriage?
He had to write the story. For hours on end Ford debated where to begin. How could he describe Sue Ellen’s marriage as bravely as she had? There had been no self-pity in her words, and he was not entirely sure that was a good sign. If ever anyone had a right to feel sorry for herself, it was Sue Ellen. But how could he, the outsider, allow pity to creep into the article, when she had none to spare for herself?
Had that been Emma’s dilemma? Had she feared that Sue Ellen’s refusal to cut herself the slightest break would somehow make her less sympathetic to both Ford and, ultimately, a jury? In the few days since the interview he’d understood Emma’s torment over permitting this interview more clearly than ever before.
He wanted desperately to do justice to all sides of the story, but even he—as hard-nosed as he’d been for weeks now—felt his sympathy shifting toward Sue Ellen.
He wrote a sentence, then a paragraph, then deleted it all with a muttered curse. He was tempted to throw the damned computer across the office. Instead, he stood up, kicked a trash can halfway across the room and began to pace.
“I recommend a drink,” Ryan said, coming through the door just in time to catch the display of temper and dodge the flying trash can.
“If I thought it would solve anything, I’d drink an entire bottle of Scotch,” Ford said with feeling.
“Let’s start with just one drink. I’m buying. We’ll go to the Heartbreak, listen to a little music and chill.”
Ford regarded his friend gravely. “You can do that after what yo
u heard the other day? Didn’t you want to punch someone?”
“Who? Donny’s dead. Besides, it’s not like it was the first time I’d heard it,” Ryan said tightly. “Every time, it makes me want to break things. Do you know how many calls I responded to at their house? How many times I was forced to walk away because Sue Ellen wouldn’t press charges? For a long time what I most wanted to break was Donny Carter’s face—and maybe his father’s—for teaching him by example that it was okay to treat a woman that way. I tried to make him get help, but he thought it was just a way to get him out of the picture, so I could take Sue Ellen away from him. It was so blasted frustrating that I wanted to hit him myself.”
“But you resisted the urge,” Ford concluded. “How?”
“By doing exactly what I’m recommending to you, going to the Heartbreak and having a drink. Just one. More, and all that celebrated self-control of mine would have gone out the window and I’d be the one in jail now.” He sighed, his expression soul-deep weary. “Maybe that would have been better.”
“You can’t believe that,” Ford chided. He turned off the computer. “Let’s go, though if I’m going to get this story done tonight, I’d better stick to soda.”
Ryan gave him a slap on the back as they left the building. “I have some news that might put you in a better frame of mind,” he said, mustering a faint smile.
“Oh?”
“Not till I get that drink, and trust me, mine won’t be soda.”
When Ryan finally had his beer and Ford was sipping on a cola, he studied the sheriff’s somber expression. “I thought you said you had good news.”
“For you,” Ryan said. “And all of Winding River, for that matter.”
“Oh?”
“Emma’s staying.”
Ford felt his pulse take a leap. “She’s staying?” he said cautiously. “How long?”
“For good.”
“When did this happen?”
“We were talking earlier. I tossed out the suggestion, she protested automatically, then caught herself. She finally realized that it’s what she’s wanted all along. She just didn’t have the nerve to take that last leap.”
“And you talked her into it,” Ford said, feeling vaguely disgruntled that it had been Ryan, not he, who’d accomplished the impossible.
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