A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel)

by Marilyn Pappano

  Honestly, he couldn’t imagine a good day for dealing with his mother.

  Twenty years ago she’d walked out on the family. She hadn’t just left his father for another man. She’d left all of them—Dad, him, his sisters. Ben had been fifteen, old enough and busy enough with school to not be overly affected, but Brianne and Sara, eleven and nine, had missed her more than either Ben or his father could handle.

  Not the time to think about it. He put on a smile and went into room one. “Mrs. Carter, how’d you do with that last shot?” Picking up the needle his nurse had waiting, he sat on the stool and rolled over in front of the patient on the table. She was fifty-five—his mother’s age—and had severe osteoarthritis in her right knee, bone grating on bone. The injections weren’t a cure but were helping delay the inevitable surgery. Though she’d recovered beautifully from the total knee replacement on her left, she was hoping to put off a repeat of the brutal rehab as long as she could. He didn’t blame her.

  He positioned the needle, deftly pushing it in, and was depressing the plunger when his cell phone vibrated again. His hand remained steady. Whether giving shots, inserting appliances to strengthen badly fractured bones, or sawing through the femur or tibia to remove a diseased knee, his hands were always steady.

  The nurse blotted Mrs. Carter’s knee and applied a Band-Aid while they exchanged the usual chatter—Don’t stress the joint for twenty-four hours, call me if you have any problems, see you in six months if you don’t—then he returned to the workspace to dictate notes again. There he pulled out the cell and looked at it a moment.

  He routinely told his patients to call him if they had any problems, but he didn’t want to speak to his mother no matter what her problem might be. Granted, his patients didn’t abuse the privilege—most of them, at least. There were a few for whom hand-holding was part of his job, but when Patricia was needy, she did it to extremes.

  Besides, none of his patients had contributed to his father’s death.

  He was still looking at the phone when it began to vibrate. Jessy Lawrence again. He might ignore her, but she apparently had no intention of remaining ignored. Since he had no intention of being stalked around his office by a stranger on a smartphone, he grimly answered. “This is Benjamin Noble.”

  There was that instant of silence, when someone was surprised to get an answer after repeatedly being sent to voice mail; then a husky, Southern-accented voice said, “Hey, my name is Jessy Lawrence. I’m a—a friend of your mother’s over here in Tallgrass.”

  He’d heard of the town, only an hour or so from Tulsa, but he couldn’t remember ever actually having been there. “I didn’t know she was back in the state.”

  Another moment’s silence. She must have thought it odd that he didn’t know where his mother was living. When Patricia had left them, she hadn’t made much effort to stay in touch except when guilt or selfishness pushed her, and he’d learned not to care.

  “She is,” Jessy said at last. “If you’ve got a pen, I’ll give you her address. Ready? It’s 321 West Comanche—”

  “What is this about, Ms. Lawrence?”

  “I’m sorry, Benjamin—Dr. Noble. There’s no easy way to say this. Your stepfather was killed in Afghanistan. Your mother just found out. She needs you.”

  Ben stared at the five-foot-tall skeleton on a stand beside the counter. He’d met George Sanderson twice—no, three times: when Patricia had brought him to his high school graduation, then to Brianne’s, then Sara’s. The bastard hadn’t had the nerve to attend Ben’s father’s funeral with her—a good thing, since they would have thrown him out. As it was, neither Ben nor the girls had wanted Patricia there, either.

  What he knew about George was sketchy: the man had had no qualms about an affair with a married woman or breaking up a family. He’d been married once before, had no kids, and had been in the Army a long time. Yet Patricia expected him to mourn the man’s death? To drop everything and rush to her side to be with her?

  Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Give her my condolences, Ms. Lawrence. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got patients waiting.”

  “But—”

  He hung up, returned the phone to his pocket, then on second thought laid it on the counter, beneath a stack of charts, before heading to room three where the fractured wrist waited.

  * * *

  Dalton Smith gave the palomino colt one last assuring pat, then headed toward the house. The animals were all cared for, including the colt who’d somehow opened a laceration on his leg, so now it was time to feed himself before he went to work on the tractor sitting uselessly inside the shed. The hunk of machinery was as cantankerous as its owner and broke down a lot more. He ought to give in and buy a new one, or at least new to him.

  But in this economy, ranchers didn’t pay the bills by giving in, not without giving a hell of a fight first.

  When he cleared the barn, the first thing he noticed was Oz, the stray who’d adopted him, stretched out in a patch of lush grass. He lay on his back, head tilted, tongue lolling out, all four legs in the air, letting the May sunshine warm his belly. The shepherd had been painfully scrawny, covered with fleas and ticks, when he’d shown up. Five weeks of regular meals had turned him into a new dog. His coat was thick and shiny, his ribs no longing showing through his skin. He had suckered Dalton into giving him a cushy new home, and he was making the most of it.

  The second thing Dalton saw was the dusty RV parked behind his truck. He groaned, and Oz opened one eye to look at him. “Some watchdog you are,” he muttered as he passed the dog. “You could’ve at least barked.”

  Nimbly Oz jumped to his feet and fell into step with him, heading for the back door. As Dalton pried his boots off on the top step, he scowled at the dog. “You’re gonna wish you’d warned me. Mom doesn’t allow animals in the house.” He might have bought the house from his folks six years ago when they retired and moved to south Texas, but that didn’t make it any less David and Ramona’s house.

  The first thing he noticed when he walked inside was the smells. The house never stank; he wasn’t that bad a housekeeper. It just sometimes smelled a little musty from the dust accumulated everywhere. At that moment, though, it smelled of beef, onions, jalapeño peppers, grease, sugar, and cinnamon, and it made his mouth water. How many hundreds of times in his life had he come home to the scents of hamburgers, Spanish fries, and cinnamon cookies in the oven? Thousands.

  Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, reading glasses balanced on the end of his nose, the Tallgrass newspaper open in front of him, and Mom stood in front of the stove, prodding the sliced potatoes, onions, and peppers in a pan filled with hot Crisco. She looked up, smiling brightly. “Sweetheart! I thought I was going to have to send your father looking for you. I hope you haven’t eaten lunch yet because there’s way too much food here for just your dad and me.”

  Before Dalton could do more than hug her, her gaze shifted lower. “Didn’t I already tell you once that you couldn’t come in?”

  As Oz stared back, Dad spoke up. “Ramona, you’re the queen of the house on wheels parked out there, not this one. If Dalton doesn’t mind having him in here, then you don’t get to mind, either.” He folded the paper and laid it aside as he stood. Tall, lanky, his face weathered from years working in the sun and wind and cold, he looked the way Dalton expected to look in thirty years. “How are you, son?”

  No handshakes for David. He was a hugger. It used to drive Dillon, Dalton’s twin, crazy, being twelve, sixteen, eighteen, and getting hugged by his dad in front of everyone. Knowing that was half the reason Dad did it was enough to make it bearable for Dalton. Noah, the baby, never minded it at all. He was more touchy-feely than the rest of the family combined.

  “Good,” Dalton replied as Oz defiantly pushed past Ramona and went to his water dish. “I wasn’t expecting you guys.”

  “Don’t worry, we’re just passing through.” Mom spooned the batch of potatoes, onions, and peppers on
to paper towels to drain, then tossed a second batch in. “Our friend Barb Watson—do you remember her? She and her husband Trey stopped by here with us a few years back. Anyway, Barb died yesterday, so we’re heading home for the funeral.”

  “Sorry.” Dalton went to the sink to scrub his hands.

  “It’s such a shame. She was only eighty-three, you know, and she got around as well as I do. She was too young to die—”

  In an instant, everyone went still in the room, even Oz. Mom’s face turned red, and her hands fluttered as if she could wave away the words. “Oh, honey…I didn’t mean…”

  To remind him of his wife’s death. No one in the family talked about Sandra, not because they hadn’t loved her or didn’t miss her, but because it had always been so hard for him. It had been four years this past January—four miserable years that his grief and anger had made tougher than they had to be.

  She’d been a soldier, a medic, on her second combat tour when she’d died. Twenty-seven years old, way younger than his parents’ friend Barb, way too young to bleed out in the desert thousands of miles from home. Losing her had been hard enough. Knowing she’d died in war had made it worse. Finding out she’d chosen to die had damn near killed him.

  Reaching for a dish towel, he dried his hands, surprised they weren’t shaking or knotted into fists. His gut wasn’t knotted like it usually was, either.

  Sandra was dead. He’d loved her more than anything, but she hadn’t loved him back the same. She hadn’t trusted him enough to come home to him. Being pissed off at her and the world and making everyone tiptoe around any subject that might bring her to mind weren’t going to change that.

  He hung up the towel again, then slipped his arm around his mother’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Mom. I know what you meant. Oz and I are starving. Are those burgers about ready?”

  * * *

  Jessy stared at her cell long after Benjamin Noble hung up on her. She was no stranger to cold people, but he’d been able to give her a chill long-distance. When the screen went dark, she slid the phone into her pocket, then turned her attention to the coffeemaker, the glass carafe slowly filling with strong black brew.

  Patricia, she’d learned in the past hour, was Patricia Sanderson, wife—now widow—of Colonel George Sanderson. He’d been in the Army twenty-nine years and would have been promoted to general or retired by the end of thirty. Patricia had been in favor of retiring. She’d grown tired of traveling from assignment to assignment and never wanted to face a moving van and a stack of cartons again.

  And she had a bastard of a son.

  Immediately Jessy regretted that thought. She was proof that not all parent/adult-child relationships were healthy. She hadn’t spoken to her own parents in years, had had LoLo Baxter, the casualty notification officer, inform them of Aaron’s death. They hadn’t called, come to Tallgrass for the funeral, sent flowers or even a damn card. That didn’t make her a bitch of a daughter.

  It had just made her sorry.

  “Is that coffee about ready?” LoLo came into the kitchen, bumping against Jessy deliberately on her way to choose a cup from the wooden tree. The major had the toughest job in the Army: telling people their loved ones had died. The first time—delivering tragic news, watching the surviving spouse collapse, getting dragged into the grief—would have destroyed Jessy, but LoLo had done it countless times with grace, professionalism, and great empathy.

  She’d made the worst time of Jessy’s life a little easier to bear, and Jessy loved her for it.

  “I talked to the son,” Jessy said as LoLo poured the coffee, then sipped it and sighed. “He said, and I quote, ‘Give her my condolences.’”

  LoLo wasn’t surprised. She’d seen families at their best and their worst. The stories I could tell, she’d once said. Of course, she hadn’t told them. Was there someone she did share with? Someone who helped eased her burden and made it possible for her to continue doing her job?

  Jessy didn’t know. Though all the margarita sisters knew LoLo, none of them knew anything about her personal life. She was compassionate, kind, supportive, and a mystery.

  “Any other kids?”

  “Two daughters, both in Tulsa. She doesn’t have their phone numbers.” Jessy fixed her own coffee, with lots of sugar and creamer, then peeled an orange from a bowl on the counter. She hadn’t gotten anything to eat yet, and her stomach was grumbling. She glanced toward the doorway. Down the hall in the living room, Patricia was sitting with the chaplain, their low voices punctuated time to time by a sob. She lowered her own voice. “Her son didn’t know she was living in Oklahoma.”

  “Any other family?”

  “No one on George’s side besides some nieces and nephews she doesn’t really know. Her sister lives in Vermont, her brother in Florida. They’ll both be in sometime tomorrow. And some nieces and nephews of her own. Her sister’s going to contact them.”

  LoLo leaned against the counter, cradling the coffee cup, and studied Jessy. “You know her from the bank?”

  “No. Never met her before today.”

  “So you picked a stranger up off the floor, dusted her off, and brought her home. That’s a tough thing to do, Jessy.”

  With someone else, Jessy could have been flippant. Tougher than you know. Or Not tough at all; I am Superwoman. But LoLo did know. She’d done way more than her share of picking people up off the floor. Instead of saying anything, Jessy focused on sectioning the orange.

  “I was at the bank yesterday,” LoLo said.

  Heat flooded Jessy’s face, and her gut clenched. “I thought you banked on post.”

  “I do. I went there with one of my wives.” Always supportive, doing anything she could to help the women whose tragedies brought them into her life. “Someone else’s nameplate was on your desk. So were his things.”

  “Yeah.” She mumbled around a piece of orange, sweet and juicy.

  “You making a career change?”

  Reaching deep inside, Jessy summoned the strength to meet her gaze, to smile brashly. “Yeah. I always hated that job.”

  “You have any plans?”

  Besides falling apart? “I’m thinking about it.” She thought about a lot of things. She just never found the energy to actually do anything. Going to get groceries today had been a big deal—and look how that had bitten her on the ass. Two hours now she’d been tied up with Patricia Sanderson, and she didn’t know how to extricate herself. She’d hoped the son would head this way as soon as he got the news, but she might as well have told him there were clouds in the sky for all the concern he’d shown.

  As long as LoLo and the chaplain were there, she could leave, she told herself. Even knowing that eventually they would both have to leave, too. Knowing that eventually Patricia would have to be alone in her house, surrounded by memories of her husband, drowning in her grief. Eventually everyone had to be alone.

  But not yet. Jessy could cope a while longer. It wasn’t like anyone else in the entire world needed her.

  “Maybe this time you’ll find a job you like.” LoLo drained the last of her coffee and squared her shoulders. “I should get back in there.”

  Jessy watched her go, figuring that in a few minutes the chaplain would come in for coffee and a break. Kind of a tag-team comforting. With her stomach still too empty, she opened the refrigerator, located a couple packages of deli meat, mayo and mustard, some pickles and cheese. Sooner or later, Patricia’s friends would start showing up with casseroles, fried and rotisserie chicken, sweets from CaraCakes, pop and doughnuts and disposable dishes, but in the meantime, a sandwich or two would stave off hunger for her, LoLo, and Lieutenant Graham. If Patricia was like Jessy, she wouldn’t eat for days. If she was like Therese, she would be sensible and eat even though she had no appetite, and if she was like Lucy, bless her heart, she would stuff herself with food to numb the pain.

  Sure enough, about the time she finished putting together the fourth ham-and-turkey sandwich, Lieutenant Graham came into the kitchen
. He wasn’t as experienced as LoLo; his lean solemn face showed the bleakness of his burden.

  Chaplains made Jessy uncomfortable. She hadn’t been raised in church and had never found a reason to start attending as an adult. Aaron’s services had been held at the chapel on Fort Murphy, and the memory didn’t make her eager to return. Besides, chaplains were good people. Earnest. They didn’t make the mistakes Jessy couldn’t seem to escape.

  “We didn’t get lunch. This looks good,” the lieutenant said as he accepted a plate. “We called one of her neighbors, who’s coming over as soon as she can get away from the office. I think she’s asked about as many questions as she’s capable of processing at the moment.”

  “She’ll think of more.” Jessy’s first questions had been simple: how had Aaron died, and why. The how had been understandable: he’d been shot by a sniper. She still struggled with the why.

  There had been more questions, of course. When would he get home? What did she have to do? How did one arrange a funeral? Where could she bury him?

  And more: had he died instantly? Had they tried to save him? Did he suffer? How did they know he didn’t suffer?

  Would she be able to see him, touch him, kiss once more when he got home?

  Could she tell him how very, very sorry she was?

  The chaplain took a seat at the breakfast table, ate a bite or two, then gazed at Jessy. “LoLo says you’ve been through this.”

  Her hands tightened around the coffee mug. She forced her fingers to loosen, to pick up a plate, to join him at the table and take a bite to settle her stomach. “Two and a half years ago,” she said at last.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Why did the words sound so much more sincere coming from him than they did from her? Because he was a chaplain. He’d probably never let anyone down. Never failed to live up to others’ expectations. He was a man of God.