The Baby Gamble

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Shaking his hand, Blake readied himself to make his excuses and go. He’d done what he’d come to do. He’d only met the elder Carrick a few times, and while everyone thought highly of him, Blake didn’t like the way the man looked at his son. As though he didn’t quite trust him to carry through on what he said he was going to do.

  “Blake found a weanling, Dad,” Brady said, though, had Blake been in his shoes, he wouldn’t have done so. Brady repeated the news, ending with, “The sale is January 16.”

  “Forty-five thousand, huh?”

  “He’ll be worth four times that after I train him,” Brady said. The younger man had been trying for all of the fifteen months since Brady had returned from Vegas to get his father to take him seriously.

  “Trevor Dobbs is the Cross Fox trainer,” Marshall said, his voice easy, the look in his eyes not quite matching it. Marshall was a sharp businessman. Through and through.

  “He’s getting close to retirement.”

  “Try and tell him that,” Marshall scoffed. “He’s got another good ten years in him.”

  A far too generous estimate, in Blake’s opinion. Dobbs had played poker with them several times since Blake’s return, and he’d gathered that the other man was making plans for life after the Cross Fox.

  “I’d like us to go to that sale,” Brady persisted. And when he heard the “us” in that statement, Blake understood why. The ex-professional football player couldn’t afford to buy the horse on his own. Blake hadn’t known that until just then. Brady Carrick must have lost a hell of a lot of money during his months in Las Vegas, following his forced early retirement from the NFL.

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm, son.” Marshall’s words were obviously sincere. “But Dobbs is doing a great job as the Cross Fox trainer. We need you right where we have you—at the front end of the Cross Fox Ranch. You might have ended your career with the Dallas Cowboys, but there are an awful lot of people who still remember you with admiration and awe. Your name and face brings us business.”

  “I’m more than a damn name.”

  Witnessing the scene, Blake wished he’d taken his leave when he’d first thought to. His friend didn’t want him seeing this.

  He didn’t want to see it.

  “You’ve been home, what, a year?” Marshall asked.

  “Fifteen months.”

  “When it’s been two or three times that much, we can talk,” the rancher said with a pat on Brady’s shoulder. “You hear some distant call, son,” he continued. “I don’t blame you or hold it against you, I’ve just learned over the years not to expect you to stick around.”

  “I was scouted by the Dallas Cowboys!” Brady retorted.

  “And Vegas? What was that about?”

  “Stupidity,” he admitted, his expression faltering, leaving Blake to wonder what he wasn’t saying. “A way to get lost from the fact that my life’s dream had just come to an end.”

  Marshall seemed to remember suddenly that Blake was standing there. Or else something else occurred to him. He stood straighter, then backed away. “We’ll discuss this more later,” he told his son as he walked off.

  Just before he was out of sight, he turned and said, “Thanks for the good work, Blake. We appreciate it.”

  No problem, Blake might have said if the older man had waited around for a response.

  As it was, he took one look at the frustration on his buddy’s face and said, “It’s time for the game. You want a lift?”

  Which meant that not only was he going to the game, but he was trapped into staying until the end.

  Unless he found some excuse why one of the other guys would have to drive Brady home.

  JUNE STOPPED BY Annie’s house Wednesday evening after church, with some materials to give her daughter regarding the upcoming holiday bazaar. Annie had decided to do a series of human interest stories to garner more interest in her mother’s project, to try to pull in more business for the charity function. June was collecting stories from as many of the participants as she could.

  “Did you know Margie Ames started making quilts after her mother died as a way of ensuring that her memory lived on throughout Margie’s life? Every single quilt she sews has at least one square of material from a piece of her mother’s clothing.”Annie wasn’t even sure she remembered which of her mother’s peers Margie Ames was. But she wanted to know. Wanted to get reacquainted with all of the people whose stories her mom was bringing her.

  She used to love to go to church. To play with the babies and hear the ladies making plans to help out someone or other, or throw a baby shower, or meet for lunch. How had she grown away from that? And why?

  “Do you remember how old I was when I quit going to church?” she asked her mom, standing with her in the foyer of her home. She’d have invited her in, but didn’t have a sofa to offer her a seat.

  “Of course I do,” June said. Though dressed as usual in nondescript, pastel-colored slacks, with a matching blouse, she had lost some weight, and she looked good. “You don’t?”

  Frowning when the certainty in her mother’s voice made her feel as if she should know, Annie shook her head. Then tugged her little black shirt down over the waistband of her jeans, covering the thin line of belly that was showing.

  “You were thirteen, Annie.”

  That grabbed her attention—and jabbed at her heart. “After Daddy died?”

  June nodded. “You were mad at God for not saving him.”

  Annie had no recollection of that at all.

  “Reverend Wayne tried to speak with you—several times—but you’d have none of it. You refused to go to church after that, and Cole, who’d always followed around after you, wanting to do everything you did, decided he was going to stay home with you, too.”

  “He did?”

  With a soft smile, June nodded.

  “I thought you didn’t want us to go. That you left us home.”

  “Of course I wanted you to come to service,” June said. “I hated sitting there in church by myself, surrounded by other families….”

  “So why didn’t you make us?”

  “You were pretty feisty even back then, my dear.” Her loving smile took the sting out of her words. “And I just wasn’t up for the battle.”

  That Annie remembered. “You could have stayed home.”

  June shook her head, her smile fading. “Those were such hard years, honey. So many things were happening that you couldn’t possibly understand. It took me years to understand them, and I was an adult. How could you possibly hope to get it?”

  Things she didn’t understand? Besides the fact that her father had taken his own life when he’d had an entire family who loved and supported him?

  “I was just putting some tea on,” she said, when she would have liked to stay right there and ask her mother what she meant. “Would you like to have some?”

  With a trembling smile this time, June nodded and followed Annie back to the kitchen.

  BLAKE WAS DEALING the draw just after nine Wednesday night when Cole Lawry’s cell phone rang. Instantly on edge, fearing something had happened to Annie, he stopped midturn and listened.

  In a matter of seconds, all of the Wild Bunch and the guests filling up the empty chairs that evening were watching Cole, listening to his end of the conversation.And when he hung up the phone, every single man there, without saying a word, threw in his cards. The game was over for the evening.

  Verne Chandler had just passed away.

  “IT’S HARD TO UNDERSTAND exactly how the mind works in times of emotional stress,” June was saying as her fingers played with the edge of the napkin Annie had placed by her teacup half an hour before. “Or why it’s different for different people.”

  “But you knew what Dad did…his choice…wasn’t your fault,” Annie said. Even as she said the words, she was angry with herself for the double standard she’d held all these years. Her mother had been the quintessential wife, supportive through good times and bad, patient
. Laughing with her husband through his good times—and supporting, encouraging him, pulling him up when he fell into the darkness.She’d loved Annie’s father with every ounce of her being.

  Which was why she’d taken his death so hard. Grieved for years, at the expense of the children he’d left behind.

  Wasn’t that it?

  It had never occurred to Annie that her mother might have blamed herself. But why not? If a thirteen-year-old girl could take the blame, why couldn’t a grown woman? One who was closest to him?

  Annie had been through all the counseling. Understood that the loved ones left behind to grieve suicide victims almost always went through some stage of guilt.

  So why had that never applied, in Annie’s mind, to her mother?

  “I assume Reverend Wayne set you straight on that,” she said now, still angry. With herself. And maybe with her mother, too. Why hadn’t June been home, sharing all of this with her children? Why hadn’t they been able to grieve, and heal, together? As a family?

  June’s gaze fell, her lips straightening, as she shook her head. “Reverend Wayne was asked to leave the church, did you know that?” she murmured, seemingly from left field.

  “Since he was transferred, you mean?”

  “No.” June looked at her, and Annie hardly recognized the steady look in her eyes. The determination. “He wasn’t transferred. He was asked to leave.”

  “Fired?”

  June nodded.

  “Way back when Reverend Mary came?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Suddenly aware that she was going to hear something significant, Annie wasn’t sure she was ready.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “WAYNE RICHARDS WASN’T a bad man,” June said, and Annie instantly believed he was. Before she even knew what her mother was going to tell her. He’d brought the slump back to June’s shoulders, and that was enough for Annie to dislike the man.

  “What’d he do?” She couldn’t wait for an answer before she said, “He didn’t molest you, did he?”“No.” June’s smile was bittersweet. “I almost wish he had.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Something like that would have been easy to identify. To put a name to, to understand, to see.”

  “But…”

  “Wayne was a power junkie.” June’s voice took on an odd note—one of a gentle strength, as though it had been hard-won and still wasn’t sure it belonged where it had ended up. “And I was a perfect target for his addiction.”

  Annie poured more tea for both of them, wanting to take her mother’s hand, as she had Becky’s the other night, but not quite sure how to do that. How to cross the years of separation she’d erected between them.

  “The more he kept me weak, the stronger he felt,” June said.

  “He was your counselor,” Annie remembered. “You used to go see him three times a week.”

  “Yes, and every time I told him I thought I was ready to taper off, he’d tell me I wasn’t. He’d point out weaknesses in my behavior, tell me that he was worried about you and Cole and what would happen to you if I didn’t get myself under control. He told me that God was guiding him, and assured me that he’d stand right there beside me, holding my hand for as long as it took because God told him to do so. He said he had my back. When in truth he had his own. As long as I needed him, he was important.”

  “Damn him.” The words were no less intense for their softness. Annie wanted to kill the man.

  “I wish I could tell you that I caught on eventually, that I ended the sessions.”

  “How could you? He was your minister. A man of God. Your counselor and confidant, and he was telling you that in his professional and spiritual opinion, you were sick.”

  “I could have listened a little less to him and a little more to my own heart,” June said.

  Annie couldn’t argue with that. And at the same time, she could understand how that hadn’t been possible, given the circumstances. June had not only been dealing with guilt. And confusion. She’d just lost her partner. The love of her life. In a very difficult way.

  “So what happened?”

  “Several of the ladies in our women’s circle began to get suspicious. Apparently Wayne had pulled the same thing on a mother who’d lost her child a few years before, and the poor thing ended up in a psychiatric ward. They started asking me about my sessions with him. Asked me if I’d tape one of them. I did.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Of course not,” June said, her hand shaking as she raised her cup to her lips. “It was much uglier and harder than that. We couldn’t use the tape to implicate him. He didn’t give me permission to tape the session, and I wasn’t acting on behalf of an officer of the law. What the tape did was allow my friends to point out to me what was happening. It took a while for me to really see and believe what was going on. And another several months before I could stand before a board and go head-to-head with him, confronting him with what he’d done.”

  Annie was completely shocked. “You did that?”

  Nodding, June didn’t look up. “Hard to believe, huh?”

  Annie had never disliked herself as much as she did in that moment. All the recriminations she’d heaped on her sweet mother’s head. The blame for a life that wasn’t as she’d expected it to be. When all the while June had been fighting an unseen battle that could have robbed her of her very ability to function.

  Fighting and winning.

  For herself.

  And her children.

  “You never said anything.”

  “Why would I? You and Cole had your own things to deal with. You didn’t need to know how badly I’d let myself down.”

  Maybe not. Maybe at the time Annie had been so locked in her own grief that she wouldn’t have been able to accept her mother’s situation as she could now. She would probably have run scared, knowing that not only her father, but her mother, too, had deep emotional issues.

  But then, who didn’t? Dazed, confused, Annie sat there, processing what she’d heard. Seeing her entire life change before her eyes as she realized that she’d created a reality in her thirteen-year-old mind, one that she carried with her still, and it didn’t even exist. There was no set expectation in society of what it took to be emotionally healthy. She’d only thought there was. And had spent her entire life trying to be that.

  When, in truth, every single human being on the planet had emotional issues of some kind or other at some point in their lives. It was all part of the human experience.

  Wasn’t it?

  Or was she getting this wrong, too? Justifying action to fit into some logical place? Because of some issue of her own. Some need to have everything cleanly in a place, making sense. As if she could somehow keep control of life—of the potential for pain—if she could do so.

  Annie’s thoughts flew all over the place, bewildering her. Was she having an epiphany? Finally coming fully to life? Or was she losing whatever hold she’d had on her mind? Was she finally losing it? Just as she’d always feared she would?

  “All I ever wanted was to be a wife and mother and take care of your father and you kids,” June said. “He was a good man, Annie. A loving man. He was such a gifted artist. You used to love to watch him work, do his carving. Do you remember that?”

  Annie couldn’t remember that at all. Could scarcely think of her father without seeing that bloodstain on the floor of the workroom out back.

  “He was sick. He had a disorder that, today, they’ve been able to attribute to biological and physiological causes. Chromosomal imbalances, I think.”

  He’d been manic depressive. Annie knew that much.

  “Do you ever regret marrying him?” She yearned for the answer in ways she didn’t understand. “Or loving him?”

  “Never.” June’s response was emphatic. “He had his challenges, but he loved us completely,” she said. “What more could you want than that?”

  Loved them completely, just not enough for the love to he
lp him cope through the pain. And who was Annie to judge that?

  How well had she loved? She’d certainly failed her mother.

  And what about Blake? She’d turned her back on the love of her life that day he’d gotten off the airplane and literally run to her waiting arms. She’d held him then, but later that day…

  “I have something I want to show you,” Annie said suddenly, rising as the memories grew too vivid. Hurt too much.

  She reached for June’s hand, feeling at once awkward and also strangely peaceful as her mother’s fingers slid easily into her own. Moving slowly, silently, she led her mom down the hall to the nursery she’d decorated.

  There was going to be explaining to do. June knew nothing about Annie’s plans.

  But that could come. For now…

  She opened the door and waited.

  “Oh!” June walked over to the cradle, tears streaming down her face as she lovingly, reverently, ran her fingers along the spokes and bars of hand-carved wood. “Where did you find this?”

  Annie told her about the secondhand shop outside of Waco. The day she’d gone on the Internet and researched her father’s name. The picture.

  “I’d never seen it before,” she said. “I didn’t even know he’d done cribs.”

  “He didn’t,” June said, still touching the wood as if she were touching the man who’d made it into the beautiful piece it was. “Only this one. He made it for you, but we fell on hard times and he had to sell it before you were born….”

  ANNIE WASHED UP THE teacups after her mother left. Thought about baking some cookies to take into work the next day. Her boss loved chocolate chip cookies. And she wanted him in a good mood for the article she intended to propose. Something a bit more hard-hitting than positive thinking.

  Mental manipulation was abusive. Widespread. And hard to identify, most particularly for the victims. It was time to shed some light on the subject. To help women like her mother, who were easy targets, women who fell prey to exploitation due to the character trait that made them special to begin with—their tenderness and their ability to trust.The idea was only starting to take shape, but Annie had to do the piece. Maybe even try to sell it to a woman’s magazine. She had a contact or two.