Rogue's Reform

by Marilyn Pappano

“And he did. Just like that.”

  “He took all the money, but he left everything else. So at least I had a home and a way to support myself.” She was silent for a moment, then she answered his question. “Yes, I like Reese a lot.”

  The response left him feeling inadequate and hopeless. He didn’t notice the people on the sidewalk, didn’t notice the cars on the street, until a horn tap alerted him to someone wanting his space. Numbly he pulled out and had covered half the distance home—to her house—when she spoke again.

  “I like you a lot, too.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed bitterly, thinking it was definitely too little and just might be too late. “I’m your number-one guilty pleasure.”

  “Ethan, please don’t—”

  “Don’t what, Grace? Don’t remind you? Don’t take offense? Don’t take the fact that you’re ashamed of me the wrong way?”

  “I’m not—” Unable to finish the lie, she broke off and stared out the side window until he parked in her driveway. Then she faced him again. “I have to consider what’s best for my child.”

  “Our child! You never quite grasped that concept, did you?” Without waiting, he went on. “You get to decide what’s best for our child—you, who never had a normal life before now, who never knew a normal relationship until now. And you’ve decided that one of the lessons you’ll teach her is that public opinion is more important than having a father. That what strangers think about her matters more than what she thinks of herself. That how much someone loves you doesn’t matter a damn unless he’s got everyone else’s approval first.” He looked away for strength, then back again. “God help you, Grace, if some of these people in town decide that you’re not fit to be her mother—because with everything you’re going to teach her, she’ll believe them.”

  He opened the door, slid to the ground and breathed in deeply of cold, sweet air. A couple of breaths put him back in control enough to walk around the truck to help her out, then follow her onto the porch.

  She unlocked the door and went inside and halfway down the hall before realizing that he hadn’t crossed the threshold. She turned back. “Aren’t you coming in?”

  He wanted to, wanted it more than his pride could admit. But he gathered his courage, shook his head and said, “No. I—I don’t see much point in it.”

  She looked stricken. Stunned. “But— You can’t—you can’t just—”

  “Leave?” he finished for her. “That’s what I’ve been doing since I was fifteen, remember?”

  “But what about— What about the painting and the—the inventory? What about setting up the crib?”

  The sadness that settled over him was unlike any he’d ever felt before. “Is that all you need me for, Grace? To do things?” Hopelessness changed to despair. “Don’t worry. They’ll get done. And if you come up with anything else that needs doing, you can call me over at Guthrie’s—or, even better, call Reese Barnett. I hear he’s a real good friend.”

  He stepped inside to catch the doorknob, then stepped out again, closing the door firmly. For a minute he just stood there, not certain he could walk away, even if it was the best thing he could do for her, for Annie, hell, even for himself. Not when he wanted more than anything in the world to stay.

  He was pulling his hand back from the knob when he heard footsteps on the hardwood floor inside, then the faint creak of the door as she leaned against it. Even through the wood, her tears were audible. So were her plaintive words.

  “What about me, Ethan? I need you, too.”

  Steeling himself, he walked away.

  It was too little. And much too late.

  Chapter 12

  Deep in her heart, she’d known he wouldn’t stay.

  Grace tried to comfort herself with that, but it didn’t work, thanks to that nagging little voice in her head that kept insisting maybe he would have if she’d given him half a chance. If she hadn’t driven him away. If she hadn’t been so damned afraid.

  She moped around the house all day Sunday, hoping he would return, but bedtime approached without any sign of him. Considering how few nights he’d spent there—only seven—her bed felt incredibly empty and cold without him. Her heart felt empty and cold.

  He would come back on Monday, she told herself as she dressed for work. She would open the door and find him waiting out there to give her a ride. And when she opened the door and found no one waiting, she told herself he would come along somewhere between the house and the store. When she reached Main Street with no sign of him, she insisted he would be waiting at the store. And when he wasn’t…why, he’d probably had a restless night, like her. He would come in sometime before lunch.

  When she sat down in the break room to a solitary lunch delivered from the café, she finally admitted that he probably wasn’t going to come in at all today. Maybe he would show up tonight, before they had to spend another night apart. Maybe he would wait a couple of days, just so she could have a taste of what life without him was going to be like, so she could appreciate him more when he finally did come.

  But she knew what life without him was like—sad, bleak, depressing. She’d lived twenty-five years of it. And she did appreciate him. He was one of the two best things to ever happen to her.

  Not that anyone would have guessed from the way she’d treated him.

  In spite of her best efforts, she still hoped to see his truck parked out in front of the store when she closed up, or in front of her house when she got home, but there was no sign of him. The instant she stepped inside the house, though, she knew he’d been there. She could feel him, could practically smell him. Nothing was out of place, and there were no notes, but she knew.

  Had he used the key she’d given him to pick up the few belongings he’d brought over? she wondered as she trudged up the stairs.

  The answer was in the small room at the top of the stairs where she’d slept for twenty-five years. Last week he’d cleaned it out, stripped the wallpaper, repaired the wall-board and sanded all the wood. Sunday morning, before everything fell apart, he’d applied the first coat of white paint to the trim and the built-in shelves. Today he’d applied the second coat and gathered all the painting supplies so he could start on the walls.

  She stood in the middle of the room, hands clasped beneath her stomach, and cried.

  She played her little game again on Tuesday. When she opened the front door, he would be waiting. When she got to the store, he would be waiting. When she got home, he would be waiting.

  On Wednesday morning she couldn’t help pausing in front of the door, closing her eyes and whispering a fervent prayer that when she opened the door, she would see him. But she wasn’t surprised when she opened the door and he wasn’t there. Just very sad. And she didn’t expect him to be waiting at the store, or to saunter in sometime that morning, or to show up for lunch. Though some small hope remained every time the bell over the door rang and every evening just before she took that one step that would bring her house into view, the constant disappointments were so hard to bear. She couldn’t live that way. She had to accept that, if left to Ethan, she wouldn’t see him again.

  And she couldn’t live that way, either.

  “So you go see him,” Ginger advised over lunch on Thursday. “You know where he is.”

  Grace picked at the sandwich her friend had picked up at the café on the way over without much appetite. “I wouldn’t know what to say to him.”

  “How about the truth?”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “You know the important parts of it. You know he’s the father of your baby. You know that he’d be a great father, and you know that every kid needs a great father.” Ginger leaned across to pluck the dill pickle spear from Grace’s plate. “You know that you love him.”

  Yes, she loved him. It was amazing how easily she’d managed to pretty much avoid facing that fact until he’d gotten fed up with her and left.

  But love might not be enough, because she also
knew that she’d hurt him deeply. She’d never meant to—Lord, all she’d wanted was to give her baby her absolute best—but regardless of intent, the results were the same. She’d hurt him, told him she was ashamed of him, told him that he wasn’t good enough to be his daughter’s father.

  As if she were any sort of prize herself.

  “Is it really so important what people think?” Ginger asked.

  “I always thought so.” But these past few days she’d begun to wonder. Customers continued to give her curious looks, and the more forward among them asked sly questions about Ethan, but she’d been so distracted by other, greater problems that she’d hardly noticed. And the less she noticed, the less attention they paid.

  Of course everyone wanted to be well thought of. No one wanted to be the subject of gossip, especially when much of it was mean-spirited. But what really mattered, she was learning in a painful demonstration, was what the people close to you thought, and the people close to her, few though they were, thought she was nuts. Ginger hadn’t hesitated to say so. Neither had Reese, when he’d come by for coffee yesterday morning.

  Ethan, of course, wasn’t saying anything at all.

  “All my life, Ginger,” she said quietly, “I’ve been different, and there was always someone around waiting to point that out to me. The kids at school used to make fun of me because my clothes were secondhand and never fit and I always wore these damn thick glasses and I was too shy to talk even to the teachers. They heard their parents talking about my parents, and they tormented me with how mean and hateful my father was and how spineless my mother was and how she ran off and left me behind. How she didn’t love me enough to take me with her. I was this…freak, this oddity. Half the people ignored me, and the others didn’t want anything to do with me because I was different. I don’t want that for my baby.”

  Ginger’s tone was less than sympathetic. “Well, jeez, Grace, are you planning to dress her in ugly clothes and treat her like property instead of a child? Are you going to raise her the way your father raised you? Are you going to neglect and abandon her the way your mother did you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “So…what you’re really worried about is the tormenting-you-because-of-your-parents part. Exactly what is it you think they’re going to say? ‘Oh, that poor child. Keep your kids away from her. Her mother wears glasses and doesn’t have much fashion sense. And her father…jeez, he was a wild one growing up. Do you know, when he found out she was pregnant, he came halfway across the country just to help her out, knocked himself out trying to prove he deserved her and fell in love with her along the way? Oh, no, we don’t want our children playing with their child.”’

  Grace glared at her. She wanted to argue, wanted to point out all the things people really might say, all the little whispers she and Ethan had heard for themselves. She wanted to set the record straight, that Ethan had never said, had never even hinted, that he might love her. That would have made all the difference in the world.

  But hadn’t he, in his truck outside her house Sunday? How much someone loves you doesn’t matter a damn unless he’s got everyone else’s approval first. Wasn’t that a pretty strong hint?

  “I haven’t lived in Heartbreak long,” Ginger continued, her voice gentle, her touch on Grace’s arm gentler. “It’s only been about a year. But working at the only grocery store in town, I’ve met just about everybody. I’ve heard their good news and their complaints. They’ve told me all about their kids and their grandkids. I’ve worked with a lot of those kids. And you know what I think most of these people would say about your baby? ‘She’s got a mother and father who love her dearly and each other as well. How lucky can one child get?”’

  How lucky, indeed, Grace thought tearily.

  “And you know what else, Grace? I think most people in this town would be thrilled to see you and Ethan together. Because your childhood was difficult, because his wasn’t much better, I think they would think it was no more than the two of you deserved, and they would be happy for you.”

  Grace had also thought that people would probably think they deserved each other, but in her poor-Grace way of thinking, she’d managed to put a negative spin on it. But she liked Ginger’s positive outlook better. She could appreciate it much more.

  “Why don’t you call him? Better yet, go see him.”

  Go see him. After four days, she was hungry for the sight of him. She missed the sound of his voice, that damned grin, the quiet strength of his presence. Go see him. Close up the store, go to her house, surprise him at work.

  She smiled faintly. In the entire twenty-years-plus history of Prescott’s Hardware, it had never been closed up in the middle of a business day. She’d often thought nothing short of his own death could make her father do that.

  But some things were more important than death. Like life. Love. Living happily ever after.

  A set of keys landed on the table in front of her with a clatter. She looked up to find Ginger grinning broadly. “Take my car. Go on. I’ll stay here and mind the store.”

  “What do you know about minding a hardware store?” Grace asked even as she picked up the keys and got to her feet.

  Ginger patted her hair, pursed her lips and smiled prettily. “I know that most of your customers are men. I know that if I open my eyes wide and pull my shirt down a little lower—” she demonstrated “—and say, ‘Why, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout hardware,’ they’ll wait on themselves and all I’ll have to do is collect their money and keep their change.”

  “Gee. And here I’ve spent my time actually doing the work myself.” The dryness disappeared from Grace’s voice as she paused in the doorway. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck.”

  “I won’t be gone long.”

  “You will if you have good luck. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine here.” Jumping to her feet, Ginger began rummaging through her purse. “Ooh, wait a minute. Pucker up.”

  Grace waited patiently while she applied lipstick, then blusher, then dusted her face with powder. When she reached for her mascara, Grace caught her wrist. “This is enough. Ethan’s seen me plenty of times without makeup.”

  “And he kept coming back. God love him.” Ginger’s smile softened the words. “Go on. Find the poor guy and tell him you love him.”

  Grace pulled on her coat before stepping outside. There was a nip in the air, but spring was definitely on its way. She felt a sense of relief, though often Oklahoma’s fiercest winter weather came in March or even April. She was ready for spring, for the baby to be born, for new life to begin.

  Ginger’s car wasn’t much bigger than her Bug, but there was ample room behind the steering wheel. She settled in, started the engine, then took a minute or two to breathe deeply. What if Ethan wasn’t at her house? What if he’d gotten tired of waiting for her to come to her senses and he’d left town again? What if he didn’t love her at all, if everything he’d done had been done for the baby? What if—

  She forced herself to stop. She could drive herself crazy with what-ifs. Her time would be better spent thinking about what she was going to say to him, finding words sincere enough to express everything she felt.

  But she didn’t have time to come up with a single thought, because in the next block, parked in front of the Heartbreak Café, was a familiar old pickup truck. Next to it was Guthrie’s truck, and next to that was Easy’s. Of course Shay was inside—it was her café—and probably Olivia, too.

  Grace deflated like a child’s balloon. She would wait until later this afternoon, when she could find him alone, when she would have the privacy they needed to resolve this mess.

  But wasn’t privacy one of the problems? Not too little, as most couples found, but too much. Hadn’t they lived out enough of their relationship alone, hidden from curious eyes, and friendly ones, too?

  Though her hands were trembling, she pulled into the first empty parking space she came to and shut off the engine. Praying she wasn’t ma
king a mistake, she climbed out, ran one hand over her hair in a gesture she’d seen other women make a thousand times, then started toward the café. A half dozen times she thought about turning back. A half dozen times she kept walking.

  The bell over the door announced her arrival to a roomful of diners. Business at the café varied greatly. Breakfast was always a busy time, lunch may or may not be, and dinner was slower. Today was a busy lunch day. It didn’t appear, in the instant she allowed herself to skim the room, that there was an empty seat in the place. If she wanted an audience, she had one.

  The door slipped from her nerveless fingers and slowly closed again. Some people were looking at her. Maybe they’d heard the gossip, or they were aware of the problems between her and Ethan and wondered if she knew he was there. Frankly, what they’d heard or thought just didn’t matter this afternoon, not the way it used to.

  Too bad she hadn’t stopped caring five days sooner.

  Ethan was easy to locate in the crowd. He wasn’t the only blond in the place, wasn’t the only handsome man, but he was the only one who mattered to her. He sat in a booth back in the far corner, with Easy beside him, Guthrie and Olivia across from him. Shay was standing next to the booth, one hand resting on Easy’s shoulder.

  Even from across the room, she could see the weariness on Ethan’s face. She knew he wasn’t working too hard, though he had almost finished the baby’s room. Last night when she got home, she’d gone upstairs to see what progress he’d made, and she’d cried again, not because he cared enough to do this for Annie, but because he’d been nearly finished. The walls had been painted a sunny yellow, and the quarter-century-old carpet had been taken out and replaced with a wood floor in warm yellow oak. All that was left was some final detail work—replacing the overhead light fixture, adding new switch and outlet plates, setting up the crib. He could finish in an hour, and then he’d have no reason to come back again until the baby was born.

  Did she dare hope that his weariness stemmed from the same source as hers—sleepless nights, heartbreak, loneliness?