They’d stopped in front of the main door to the Far Hills Banner and were practically toe-to-toe, gazes locked. Grif watched Ellyn’s chest rise and fall at a stepped-up rate, and became aware of his own faster than normal breathing.
“Grif! I’d heard you were in town!”
The grip on his arm and the hand pumping his own jerked Grif’s focus from Ellyn to Larry Orrin, editor/publisher/owner of the Far Hills Banner.
“Great to see you,” Larry said. “I hear you’ve been promoted again. C’mon back and give me the details.”
At the door to the glass and partition office with Larry’s name on it, Grif glanced around, spotting Ellyn watching them from a doorway at the opposite side of the room.
Before he could read her expression, she went in an office and closed the door.
* * *
When Ellyn emerged from her office three hours later, Grif was no longer in Larry’s office.
I will keep any promise I make.
Suddenly restless, Ellyn decided to use her lunch break to walk across town to the church that housed the baby-sitting co-op Fran Sinclair ran. Sometimes Meg and Ben took advantage of the after-school program, so Ellyn filled her fair share of shifts. With that, work, her commitments to help in the kids’ classrooms, and the kids’ activities, Ellyn’s calendar often looked like computer code.
“So, how’s Grif?” Fran asked once the scheduling was done.
“He seems fine.” Ellyn tucked her calendar into her purse.
“I saw you walking with him this morning. I would have stopped, but you looked deep in conversation.”
“He was walking with me,” Ellyn corrected mildly, her thoughts on something Grif said yesterday. “Fran, do you remember Nancy Susland? I mean Nancy Griffin – Grif’s mother?”
She looked up to see Fran’s sharpened interest, and regretted her impulsive question.
Ever since Kendra and Daniel’s wedding nearly three months ago, Fran and Marti had been egging her on to start dating. As if she didn’t have enough to think about without a social life to factor in.
“Of course I remember her. When I was a kid, she and Wendy lived on the ranch. And I remember summers when she’d come back to visit, first with her husband, then with him and Grif as a little one, then with Grif alone.”
That sequence must have represented a great deal of significance in Nancy Griffin’s life – leaving her home to marry a military man, and then returning without him.
Fran blinked once, then again. “I know one thing, she loved her son more than anything else in the world. She’d hate to see him lonely.”
Lonely.
Grif lonely? He always seemed so self-contained, his emotions so firmly under control.
“But at least he’s come home to Far Hills again. Nancy would like that.”
* * *
“Damn, double damn.”
The afternoon had not gone well for Ellyn. A display ad from a dry cleaner’s end-of-season special on winter uniforms for soldiers from Fort Piney had refused to go together for either the print or the online editions. And for some reason her mind kept wandering from possible solutions.
That put her behind in getting out of the office, so she missed picking up Meg and Ben at school. By standing agreement, if she wasn’t there to pick them up, they took the bus.
Taking the direct route home, she beat the school bus, allowing her to get the bedding she’d put in the washer before work out on the line. She’d changed into leggings and another old shirt – she was not going to stay in her work clothes because Grif was coming to play catch with Ben – when two things happened simultaneously.
She heard a car stop near the back door and she saw a starburst splatter of an unexpected rain shower against the kitchen window.
Sprinting out the door, she barely gave the car a glance as she headed up the hill. Apparently she didn’t give her footing as much attention as it needed, because three-quarters of the way up, her right foot went out from under her at a particularly eroded spot and she came down hard on her left knee.
Even then she didn’t swear, but clambered up and kept going. She reached the mattress pad first, and was bundling it into the basket when Grif arrived at her side.
“More sheets?” he asked as they started pulling the pins that secured the bottom sheet.
“Yes,” she said shortly. She wouldn’t give away Ben’s secret. Or her worry.
The wind caught the cupped interior of the elastic-rimmed sheet and puffed it up like a spinnaker. The end she held pulled out of her hand, and it collapsed as quickly as it had inflated, trailing the loose end into the dust that had absorbed just enough moisture to make it cling to the damp fabric. Mud.
That’s when she swore.
“You get the basket,” Grif instructed, as he reeled in the cloth to a dirt-smeared, damp lump against his chest. “I’ll keep this one separate.”
She didn’t argue, grabbing the basket with the still wet, but at least clean mattress pad, and scrambled down the path to rush breathlessly into the back hall, with Grif on her heels to escape the big, hard raindrops battering at them.
Not that a raindrop would have a chance against the Iron Warrior.
They stood there a moment, catching their breath. At least she did. He hardly looked affected at all.
The Iron Warrior. Ellyn had never cared for Dale’s nickname for Grif, yet here she’d used it twice in two days in her own mind.
“Thanks for the help, Grif. And I’m sorry for the outburst.”
“I’d say you had a right.”
“It’ll wash out.” She dredged up a smile. “Besides, the ranchers need the rain.”
“What you need is a dryer.”
“I’d like one, sure, but it’s not in the budget right now.”
“It should be. If Dale had – ” He bit muttered a curse under his breath. “You shouldn’t have to struggle.”
“We’re fine, Grif. Compared to a lot of widows, I’m truly well off, especially with all the good friends around us.”
“You shouldn’t have to struggle,” he repeated. “Ellyn, let me buy you – ”
“No.” The word sat there, solid and weighty, not a word to be easily swayed. “That’s generous of you, but no. This is not your responsibility, and – ”
“Maybe it is.”
“What?” Her initial surprise quickly gave way to amusement. “How on earth could you figure it was your responsibility?”
He hesitated. The stark planes of his face revealed nothing – no ticking muscles, no clenching jaw – but shadows in his gray eyes gave her the impression he’d looked at a precipice, and backed away from it.
“If I’d been paying closer attention... I might have known,” he said gruffly.
She tipped her head. “You might have known Dale was going to be killed in an accident?”
“I should have known he was borrowing against his insurance, eating away at your savings.”
She didn’t bother to ask how he knew. Several people around Far Hills knew her financial situation, and its cause. She doubted any would think twice about filling Grif in.
“If I’d known,” Grif was continuing, “if I’d paid attention – I could have talked to him. And you would still be living your comfortable life in Washington – you and the kids.”
She sat at the kitchen table, and he joined her.
“Dale wasn’t listening to anyone at that point, Grif. Besides,” she added more briskly, evading his probing look, “what about me? I was his wife. I should have known. And looking back, there were indications. Things I should have picked up on. But I shut my eyes to the warning signs.”
Warning signs of all kinds.
She’d been absolutely unprepared that night fifteen months ago when Dale woke her, smelling of beer and stale cigarette smoke, and announced he’d been thinking about getting a divorce, but had decided to “give her another chance.”
Maybe now she’d react differently to such an announcement,
but that night she’d been stunned, numbed. Near dawn, he’d decided they should return to Wyoming. Get back to where a man could breathe, where he wasn’t hemmed in by suburban life, where he didn’t have to mow the lawn every damned weekend.
Even then she’d known his reasoning was flawed. But she had been too scared to acknowledge he was feeling hemmed in by his family, not the lawnmower. And his wife and children were moving with him to Wyoming.
With daylight, Dale had experienced a feverish burst of energy. He’d written a letter of resignation to the mortgage company where he worked and sent it. As soon as she had the kids off to school, Dale had dragged her to a real estate agent, then a mover, next to a woman who arranged sales of household goods. When Dale wound down enough to take a nap that afternoon, the first person she’d called was Grif.
He was gone.
No warning. No half-measures. His phone disconnected and the only explanation a message on her answering machine saying he’d been given an urgent assignment, and he would be in touch.
But he wasn’t in touch. Not really. Not until now. As he sat here blaming himself for her no longer having the life in Washington he thought she should have.
I don’t want that life back.
As the words streamed through her mind, she knew they were absolutely true. She didn’t want that old life back. Sure, a few of the conveniences would be nice. But not the whole thing.
And not the old Ellyn.
She sat up straight, blinked away the past, and focused on the man before her.
“Grif, you have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you. Along with you being such a...an honorable man.”
He made a sound less benign than a snort.
“Don’t argue, Grif. You’re the most honorable man I’ve met in my life, and I won’t let anyone say otherwise – even you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know – ”
Ben rushed in, moving fast enough to arrive at the same time as the noise that usually preceded him.
“Grif!” Without waiting for a response, he spun around to his trailing sister. “I told you he’d come. Toldcha.”
She shrugged with frigid lack of interest as she passed him and began undoing her shoes. “So what. It’s raining.”
“It’s letting up.” Ben declared as he tugged off his shoes.
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Children!”
“Mom, it is letting up, honest. You caaaaan’t say I can’t practice baseball with Grif because it’s raining, because it’s nearly not. Honest, Mom.”
“Even if it’s dry as a bone, you’re not going out in those clothes, so go change, and then we’ll see what the weather is.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back, Grif. I’ll hurry.”
“Neatly!” Ellyn called after him. Meg followed at a more leisurely pace but without her usual detour to the refrigerator. “Don’t you want some milk or juice?”
“No, thank you.”
“Did you say hello to Grif?”
“Hello,” the girl half mumbled without turning around.
Ellyn grimaced apologetically. Grif started to reach toward her, as if to pat her arm to say it was all right, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he went to the kitchen window, pushing back the curtain and looking outside.
“Ben might make a good weatherman. It is clearing up.”
“I wonder when things are going to clear up with Meg,” she muttered. “She’s been as rude as humanly possible to you without overtly breaking house rules.”
“I told you, she’s got cause. Don’t let it bother –What?”
She was shaking her head. “You’re not going to change the subject. I want to get back to what you said before the kids come in. That there was a lot I didn’t know about something.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Grif – ”
“Sorry, I lost the train of thought.”
She didn’t believe him, but what could she do? Call the man who truly was the most honorable person she’d met a liar?
Ben charged back down the hallway, panting, carrying his precious baseball glove. “My ball and bat are on the back porch. I put them there so we wouldn’t waste any time.”
“Okay, let’s go. We’ll loosen up, then you tell me what you want to work on.”
Ben was already reeling off fielding techniques when Grif turned at the doorway and looked back at her. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Ellyn.”
* * *
Only with the greatest of willpower – and by finding things that needed doing at the other side of the house – did she overcome the temptation to watch them. Ben needed time – on his own – with Grif.
In the usual way of things, it should have been Dale out there playing with his son. If she’d done things differently, maybe... But no amount of regrets could change that now.
And if Dale had continued being the sort of father he’d been, it still wouldn’t have been Dale out there with Ben.
The slam of the back door startled her. She rolled the last pair of Ben’s socks together, and left the array of folded laundry on her bed to head for the kitchen.
She arrived to hear Ben offering, “You could stay for dinner.”
It caught her by surprise – and it shouldn’t have. Words to second the invitation and contradictory words to undermine it rose to her lips, causing a gridlock that left her mute.
“Thanks, Ben, but I’m having dinner tonight at the home ranch with Marti and Emily.”
“Sometimes, we have pizza on Fridays.”
She had to admire her son’s ability to double-dip – both offering an invitation and lobbying for a treat.
“I’m going to Kendra and Daniel’s Friday.”
“Okay, then tomorrow night. We can play catch and – ”
Finally Ellyn’s mouth started working. “Ben, you and Meg are going to the after-school program tomorrow because I work late.”
“I forgot. But Grif could still come to dinner.”
“I won’t have time to cook a special dinner for a guest.”
“Regular dinner would be okay, wouldn’t it, Grif? She makes real good macaroni and cheese. Better even than the box.”
“The kids like macaroni and cheese,” she said, feeling defensive. Here she’d been telling Grif they were fine, and Ben made it sound as if they were destitute.
“So do I,” Grif said. “But I don’t want to make more work for you, so how about if I take you out to dinner tomorrow.”
“Yeah!”
“No,” Ellyn said – not as loudly as her son’s agreement but firmly. “We are not going to take advantage of Grif’s generosity by letting him take us to dinner twice in one week.”
“But Mo-oom...”
“I could bring fried chicken and you could provide the macaroni and cheese, and even a vegetable,” Grif bargained.
“Grif, I don’t – ” But then Ellyn saw that her son had caught sight of the mattress pad, strung up to dry across the tops of the two partially opened doors used to mask the washer and dryer. And the look on his face was so glum she nearly made the whole situation worse by wrapping him in her arms and cuddling him. “Is six-thirty too early to eat for you?”
He looked from her to Ben, then followed the direction of Ben’s gaze to the mattress pad. “I’ll come around six. In case you need any help.”
“That’s not neces – ”But he wasn’t listening to her protests. Did he ever? “Ben, didn’t you say you had math homework? Better get to it.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Okay. See ya, Grif.”
“Good night, Ben.”
For a moment Ellyn thought he was going to say something. Instead he simply brushed his fingers across the back of her hand. She supposed this was compassion, too. But she didn’t mind accepting this. All he said was, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
* * *
Ellyn had poured the macaroni into
the boiling water when she heard a vehicle pull up beside the house the next morning. A glance out the window revealed one of the battered ranch pickups. She’d gotten the impression Luke had given up on her dryer, but if he was willing to take another crack at it, she wouldn’t say no.
She was putting cheese across the top layer of macaroni so all she’d have to do was add milk and put it in the oven when she got home when it struck her that Luke had never come inside. Maybe it was another hand, but the regular hands usually checked in to say hello and let her know they’d be around. She went out to check.
She recognized a pungent smell as soon as she stepped out the back door. The back of the truck bed was half loaded with used straw and manure from the barn where Luke sheltered any horses that were about to give birth, ailing or otherwise needing to be kept under supervision. The other half of the load was already piled beside the rectangle of earth where she’d grown vegetables and herbs last summer.
The compost made great fertilizer for the garden, but as aroma therapy it left something to be desired.
Movement from the corner of her eye made her turn. Grif had just driven a shovel into the firmed earth of last year’s garden, where a segment was already turned over. He’d taken his shirt off, revealing to her an angle of a muscled back and a slice of a rib cage narrowing to his waist.
She was staring.
That realization jerked her out of her reverie, and she strode toward him.
“What are you doing?”
“Digging.”
“I can see that. Why?”
“To turn the soil over.”
“Grif, if you don’t stop answering like Ben at his most frustrating, I’m going to give you a good whack on the behind.”
He stopped and leaned on the shovel like a caricature of a farmer. “A whack on the behind? You never hit Ben.”
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