Oregon Trails

by Olivia Gaines

  The rage in his eyes was so powerful that Jeremiah took a seat. Luke’s fists clenched and unclenched as he looked around the office filled with years of aristocratic trinkets, baubles, and dark mahogany wainscoting. An intimidating room full of memories of his own father talking down to him and forcing him to feel as if he was less than. Ruefully, Jeremiah self-acknowledged that he grew up and transformed into the same man that he never learned to please, his father Ezekiel Darton. So, had Luke.

  Paul had refused to bend and be like either of them.

  “I am sorry, Luke,” Jeremiah said.

  “Sorry for what?” he asked, snapping his head around in anger.

  “I am so sorry that I could not see sooner what I was doing or had done to my sons. I was trying to raise you as my father raised me to be strong and a leader. It never occurred to me that I should have worked on making either of you happy,” Jeremiah added solemnly.

  “Oh, fuck you old man!” Luke yelled.

  Jeremiah popped to his feet. “I will not...,” he started to say.

  “You won’t what? Hear what I have to say? Oh, yes you will, you self-centered, egotistical, maniacal, misogynistic bastard! I have done as you have always encouraged me to do...be the winner. That last woman Paul dated...I was the winner. I got rid of her like you wanted me to...,” he exclaimed.

  “I never said any such thing, Luke,” Jeremiah professed.

  “The hell you say! Your words, if I may quote, ‘I don’t trust that one. She sees dollar signs. It won’t take much to make her reveal her true colors.’ That’s the approach I used and you were wrong. You were wrong about her. It took a lot more than just dollar signs to get rid of her!”

  “Luke, please tell me you didn’t do what she accused you of doing!”

  “I sure as hell did! I also did a lot more than she reported, too,” he said with hatred in his eyes. Then he smiled. A Grinch-like smile that made the blood in Jeremiah veins run cold.

  “Get out. Get out of my sight, Luke,” Jeremiah said, sitting back down in his chair, his hands running though his gray hair.

  “Don’t pretend like you didn’t know the truth. Paul told you. You just didn’t want to believe it,” he said. “I did what you asked me to do, Daddy, so don’t sit there judging me like I am some animal. I protected the family name. I did what you wanted!”

  “I never asked you to harm anyone,” Jeremiah said.

  “Well, sometimes you have to get your hands or your dick dirty,” Luke chided.

  Jeremiah had nothing more to say. This was his fault. It was all his fault. There was no way to correct this without bringing scandal to the Darton name.

  “That poor girl,” Jeremiah said.

  “Don’t feel bad for that whore! She came like the 6:30 freight train heading south. Not only once but three times when I was having her,” Luke said.

  “Son, an orgasm is a muscle contraction– if you stimulate the muscle it contracts. It doesn’t know the difference if the stimulation is by force or by choice,” Jeremiah looked at his son with disgust on his face.

  Luke stood still with his jaw agape. He stared at his father with a new realization. “Oh my God! I truly don’t know which one of you fuckers I hate more, you or your do-goody son. Well, screw you both. I left a little bombshell with that bitch he married, so good luck to both of them getting a happily ever after,” he said with malice.

  “What did you do Luke?”

  “I did what you should have done before they said I do. I made sure she knew that no matter what she did, she would never be good enough to be considered as one of us. That alone will stick in her nappy head like cotton lint balls,” Luke said.

  Jeremiah was up, moving across the room so fast that Luke didn’t have a chance to duck the blow that caught him square on the chin and put him on the floor.

  “Starting next week, Luke Darton, you will begin extensive therapy. If you do not I will disinherit you and leave you poorer than the unfortunate women you like to date,” Jeremiah told him.

  Luke threw back his head in laughter.

  “You are such a fool!” he said grin mischievously. “You have spent so much time checking Paul’s accounts, that you have never bothered to check mine...or your own for that matter.”

  “What have you done Luke?”

  He slowly stood up, adjusting his expensive suit. “I protected myself from this little situation here. I have more money than you ever had or ever will. If anyone is going to extensive therapy to will be you,” Luke said.

  It was the way he said it that made Jeremiah look for something to hold on to. Luke was going to drop a bombshell and he held on tight trying to brace himself.

  “She’s not your daughter, but mine,” he said.

  “What?” Jeremiah looked confused.

  “Roberta,” Luke said.

  Jeremiah still didn’t quite understand and if he did, he truly didn’t want to know the nastiness that Luke was about to admit to taking part in.

  “Yes, the mistress you claimed to not have, the one you would sneak out every other week to go and see, I know all about her. I visited her one night after you left her...that little girl, Roberta, is my child,” he said with a grin.

  Jeremiah started to gag. The contractions of his stomach were so strong, his bladder let loose at the same time his stomach upchucked all of its contents. Luke...how could he ?

  He wiped his mouth with the handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

  “You stupid, stupid fool!” Jeremiah said.

  “What’s wrong, Daddy? Shocked that I got the upper hand on you as well?”

  “No, you dumb ass! Linda is not my mistress, but my father’s daughter from a woman he was seeing after my mother died. I was spending time trying to get to know her...to see if for once in the Darton men’s life could we do something worthwhile for the women in the family...and you stand here and tell me that my niece is also my granddaughter!” Jeremiah said, trying to get to his desk, but instead passed out in the floor in the pool of vomit.

  Luke too was surprised by the confession of his father. Linda was his aunt. My aunt .

  The monster he wanted others to fear had taken over.

  “What have I become?” he asked himself. Leaving the room with his father lying in the floor.

  What have I become ?

  Chapter 20

  K alinda woke, stretching in the bed, rolling to her side to reach for her husband. He wasn’t in bed with her. Instinctually, she rolled to her other side to check the clock on the nightstand to see the time. It was still early.

  Barefoot, she tiptoed to the kitchen to see her husband on the back porch with a cup of coffee. He appeared to be deep in thought, so she cleared her throat to avoid startling him. He turned to greet her with a bright smile.

  “Good morning, Kalinda,” he said to her.

  “That coffee smells great. I think I will pour myself a cup and join you in those deep thoughts,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Not sure, something feels weird,” he told her.

  “Physically? Emotionally? Spiritually?” she asked. Her mother would sometimes use the same phrasing to describe cosmic tugs of warnings about Kalinda’s four uncles. Fear seeped into her. “Call your mother right now!”

  “Don’t panic. The feeling will go away. It might just be gas or something,” he mumbled.

  “No! My mother would get these feelings and something would be wrong. Call your mother right now, Paul,” she said insistently.

  “Okay...okay,” he said coming inside to collect his phone. The moment he reached for it, it rang. He immediately noticed the name on the caller ID. It was his mother. The surprise on his face as he looked at Kalinda said it all.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” He asked in the line. Paul’s face turned ashen as he looked at his wife while listening to his mother’s words. Shock. Disbelief. Disgust. So many emotions were taking over him as he took a seat in his recliner. “I am on my way,” she said.

  Ka
linda gripped the mug tightly as she waited for the news.

  “You sure, Mom? I could be there in a few hours,” he said waiting on her response. “Okay, okay, but keep me updated, please.”

  He waited a few more seconds, listening. “Mom, I love you,” he said to her before clicking off the line. Tear-filled eyes looked at Kalinda, who automatically feared the worse.

  “Paul?”

  “No, my father is alive. Evidently, he and Luke got into some heated argument late last night when Luke got back to Portland. The maid found Daddy this morning passed out in his own vomit,” Paul said.

  “What happened?”

  “Based on what my mother just told me, it is too sick to even repeat,” he said. She sat her coffee mug down and joined him in the small living room.

  “Last night you told me to speak the words. Paul, speak the words and put your giant on notice. We are no longer afraid of the bastards of the world. We have a handful of magic beans and we are going to tackle everything that comes our way, including this ugliness,” she said holding his hands.

  “I am afraid to even speak it aloud. I don’t want you to think you married into a family of monsters,” he said to her.

  “Paul, how bad could it be?”

  His eyebrows were furrowed as he looked at her. “My father just found out that his niece is also his granddaughter,” he said.

  “What in the entire blue Hell?” she asked, frowning.

  “Luke...that lowdown.... he thought Linda, my father’s half-sister, was Daddy’s side piece and paid her a visit,” he said.

  The coffee left a bitter taste in her mouth as the stomach acids churned in her belly. “No! No....no, he didn’t?”

  “He did. That’s why I said you should never be alone with him, Kalinda,” he said, holding his own stomach.

  Kalinda spotted an expression which briefly visited Paul’s face. It was an expression of knowing. Her husband knew something about his brother.

  “You are disgusted by Luke’s actions, but you don’t seem surprised,” Kalinda said. “He’s done this before, hasn’t he?”

  “To a relative? Not to my knowledge...but he didn’t know she was a relative. Kalinda, he is sick. He is a very sick man. Right now, all I can think about is if there is a trail of these women that he has forced himself on,” he said.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “He has done this before to someone you know.”

  Paul’s face was somber.

  “Yes, but no one believed her but me. She and I were going to get engaged that weekend that she was visiting me at the hotel. I got called away to one of the sites where some protestors were making a fuss over Darton Industries cutting down trees. I tried to get back to the hotel that night, but I was delayed. Luke knew I was away, which is when he made his move. He called her that evening, saying he was ill. The cameras show her going to his room at one in the morning. The monitors also show room service arriving fifteen minutes later,” he said staring into the empty fireplace.

  “She said he called her professing to be sick, so she ordered chicken soup and ginger ale, but the cart that came to the room was loaded with champagne, foie gras , and caviar. To make matters worse, the guests in the room next door called to the front desk to complain because her...orgasms were so loud, they woke them up.”

  “That is really damning,” Kalinda said.

  “No shit, especially since there was lipstick on the champagne glass,” he said. “The argument was who puts on lipstick at one in the morning to check on a sick man?”

  “You are thinking something else?”

  “I know something else,” he said. “Carrie didn’t wear lipstick. She didn’t even wear a glosser or any of that other stuff. She was a naturalist. The woman made her own lip balms out of beeswax!”

  Kalinda’s hand went to her chest, trying hard to swallow down the throat full of crap she was having to gulp down. Beads of sweat arose on her head as she blotted away the droplets of knowing...knowing a man who did such bad things. Her skin crawled at the thought of her holding his hand at their wedding. She’d linked her arms into his escorting him into their home. She fed him at their table. Yet, what crawled across her thigh really making her flesh crawl was the niggling feeling that he was going to come back and try something with her. Men like him always did.

  She shook it off, pulling herself back into the conversation with Paul asking, “What happens next?”

  “That depends on what my parents do or want to do with this information,” he said.

  “I am thinking they aren’t going to do anything, but you also can’t do anything, either. Luke’s argument will be that you have a vendetta against him,” she said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know. This is why I live on the other side of the state, away from all of them,” he said to her.

  “Paul, we are building something here. Your head has to be here as well,” she told him.

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  Too many questions were unanswered, leading her to ask Paul, “How old is the child?”

  “I have no idea. I have only met Linda once, by accident,” he told her.

  “Your parents will sort it out,” she told him. “Want to know the good news in all of this?”

  “This should be rich,” he said half-heartedly.

  “You are an uncle,” she said with a wide smile.

  Paul stared at her blinking. “That is just plain ole’ screwed up, Kalinda,” Paul said flatly.

  “So are our families,” she said. “Speaking of which, my mother will be here in three weeks.”

  Her statement brought Paul back to the business he wanted to discuss yesterday after the arrival of the other two houses. The simultaneous arrival of Luke along with QT and Curly Joe had prevented the conversation. He figured now was as good a time as ever to get the ball rolling.

  “We also have another tiny house being delivered today plus campsites to clear for next weekend, and all five tiny houses are booked along with the three campsites. It is like that every weekend through Labor Day,” he told her.

  Kalinda did some quick calculations in her head. “I want to make sure I have this right. So, if we are fully booked every weekend from June through September, on the low end, we could pull twenty-five grand for four months’ worth of work?” she asked.

  “Yes, on the low end, but if you add in some of the extras you are thinking about selling, we can possibly pull thirty this year on top of my salary. Next year when we open five more trails, we can double that,” he said.

  “I don’t want it to be too big, Paul. I think ten tiny houses should be the max, along with maybe five campsites,” she said. “We don’t want it to be too crowded or Wide Open Spaces will become an oxymoron if everywhere you look you see more people and SUV’s,” she said.

  He was rubbing his stomach.

  “I don’t know if I am hungry or just sick to my stomach,” she said.

  “One giant at a time, Baby,” she said. “Now, get dressed and go make my money.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” he said coming to his feet. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Not packing your bags and heading east,” he said.

  “The day is still young, besides, you have yet to meet my Mama. Hell, you may pack me up and ship me back once you spend a week with that woman,” she said.

  “Hello? Have you forgotten about my demented brother? We won’t even begin to discuss my Botox-faced Mother who hasn’t had a facial expression since 2003. The woman sits around looking like a sarcastic cadaver, and then there is my father,” he said with a twisted lipped expression.

  “You are right, you win,” she said.

  “Now that is a shallow victory,” he mumbled as he made his way to the bedroom.

  “Yes, but when you get home this evening, I will be ready for our second session for the week,” she said, blowing him a kiss.

  “Don’t play with my emotions, Kalinda,” he said. “I will spend all
damned day with my junk almost poking holes in people’s mail.”

  “Just be careful crossing the street with all of them dang gone goats. We don’t one thinking your love muscle is a snowman’s carrot,” she said pressing her lips together.

  He shook his head as he made his way to the bathroom. Paul stopped suddenly and turned, coming back to her with measured steps. He slowly pulled her into his arms. “You, my lovely wife, make this all worthwhile. I love you,” he said, kissing her gently.

  “You just want to get my stuff tonight,” she told him.

  “If your stuff is your code word for vagina, yes, yes I do. I am going to get it good, too,” he told her with a grin.

  “I can’t wait,” she said with a sly smile.

  “We don’t have to wait. I am perfectly capable of handling our situation right now if you want,” he said.

  “Nope, this evening. I want you salivating all day long for me,” she said squeezing his butt.

  “Lord, save me from myself,” he said kissing her fully on the mouth.

  “Whatever, Paul! Go wash your ass and get to work,” she said laughingly.

  “Just long as you wash yours so I can lick on it when I get home,” he said.

  “For a man who said he didn’t do that kind of thing...,” she started.

  “Baby, you have me eating all kinds of delicious stuff...yours included,” he said with a wink. “My taste buds are happy as hell.”

  “Get out of here, Paul Darton,” she said with a chuckle. Irony was such a strange bedfellow. She swore she would never truly trust a man, but something about Paul Darton made her believe. She was also doing something she swore she never would do, take a man at his word and at face value.

  Chapter 21

  T he website was almost complete. A sense of satisfaction hovered over her as she clicked through the pages admiring her handy work. The only things missing were some really great shots of her and Paul and the products she was going to sell exclusively from the Wide-Open Spaces office.