by M Elle Kelso
“It could. I’m going to make her soup and crackers for now. There’s no bread. Actually, there’s not a lot of anything. I guess Hooch and the other two must have cleaned out her pantry when they were staying here. And because no one knew when they’d be back, nobody ever replaced the stuff. We’ll have to do some shopping for her tomorrow.”
By the time the soup was ready and Annie had gone back upstairs, C.J. was sound asleep. Annie dithered. Did she wake her up and make her drink the soup or did she let her sleep? She finally decided to let her sleep, but went and found a thermos for the soup. She left a note, with instructions, beside the bed, where C.J. could find it when she woke.
Back downstairs, she found Jared staring at sketches he’d found on the desk.
“Look, Annie, this is what she spent the morning doing. Mac said they’d ordered all the stuff David would need, I just didn’t understand what for. But she must have decided that all this has to be done to the house before David comes home, so she spent all morning on it. And I don’t see any evidence that she had any lunch.”
He tossed the drawings back on the desk.
“That’s got to stop or she’ll make herself really sick.”
“I know, but how do we stop her? I think it would be better if we just tell Mac to do things nice and slow, not to let her get too involved if he can help it. Think that would work?”
“Let’s talk to Mac. He’s the one that’s got to take it slow.”
For the next three weeks, Mac came every day and spent a few hours working on the ramps, the door frames that had to be widened and the chair lift for the staircase. He found the information she needed about the vehicle conversion and they discussed what options she had for that. In the end, she sold David’s two-year-old black truck and bought him a new one. This year’s model. Then she ordered a black minivan. One that could have the side door made into a wheelchair entrance with a lift and that would be equipped to hold his chair, locked down to the floor behind the steering wheel. It would be David’s van and David’s truck. They were outfitted for him, with hand controls being installed in both vehicles. Both vehicles were inspected and passed by the licensing department.
The day Mac announced that all the renovations to the house and barn were finished, she cried.
When Annie and Jared came over later in the day to see the work, they were shocked by her appearance. She had lost more weight. Her complexion was grey.
Jared secretly thought she was pining away for David but refrained from mentioning that out loud.
Annie took one look at her and gaped.
“You, my friend, are going to see a doctor as soon as I can get you an appointment. You can’t wait any longer, C.J.. Something’s wrong and it needs to be fixed right now.”
C.J. was so depressed she didn’t even argue.
When she looked at the calendar where she was writing her appointment, she realized that she had been married just over two months. And for those two months, she had lived with her husband in this house for only two weeks. It made her want to cry.
She had a two-day wait to see the doctor and decided it was time to do the one job she had been putting off. She kept hoping he’d change his mind. Phone her and ask her to come back. But he hadn’t.
She hadn’t heard a word from him.
She got news from Jared that came from Blake, but that was all.
She had tried, three different times, to phone him. He had his cell phone. Blake told her that he just sat and looked at the call display and listened to it ring, then shut the phone off and put it in the drawer the first time she called. After that, all she ever got was his voice mail.
C.J. went into their bedroom, the room they had laughed in, loved in. She took her suitcases from under the bed and set them, open, on top. She methodically emptied every drawer that had anything of hers in it. She put as many of her clothes into them as she could fit. She went to the shed and found two more boxes, enough to pack the rest of her clothes. The few belongings she wanted to take with her, she packed in between her clothing. She set everything in the back porch and when Mac came to do the chores, she waved him down.
When he got into the kitchen, he found his coffee ready for him and sat down at the table beside her.
“How you doing today, C.J.?”
“I’m all right. But I need to ask you to do me one favor, Mac. This is for me. Strictly for me. Not one for work or David.”
“Sure, C.J. Whatever you need.”
“See those boxes and suitcases?”
She pointed at the porch.
“Yeah. What about them?”
He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this, sorry now that he’d agreed so readily to do whatever she wanted.
“I need them taken into Douglas and dropped at my office at the paper.”
“That’s all?”
He drew a very relieved breath. He had thought for a moment that she might be planning to run away.
“Yes. Just some stuff that I’m giving away. And since I had time, I thought I’d get it packed up this week. You just need to drop it at the front desk. My girl can put it in my office until I decide what to do with it.”
“Okay, I’ll take it tomorrow for you. I’m going into town before I come to do morning chores. I’ll drop them off then.”
“Thanks, Mac, I appreciate that.”
When he left, the boxes were in the back of his SUV.
Jared and Annie picked her up for her doctor’s appointment on Thursday afternoon, relieved to see she was ready when they arrived. They had been afraid she might have changed her mind and refused to go.
The clinic in Casper, where they took her, was busy, but they didn’t have long to wait before her name was called.
When Doctor Collins joined her, he was amazed. He had seen C.J. less than three months ago, and the change was staggering. He knew about David’s accident, but he was sure that the changes he was seeing were not entirely due to that.
“Well, now, C.J.. What have you been doing to yourself? You’ve lost a bit of weight there, my girl, and you didn’t have any to spare last time I saw you.”
C.J. just nodded. While he took all her vital signs, she sat. She made no effort at conversation, answering his questions with only a yes or no.
It was her dispirited behavior that bothered him most.
“C.J., talk to me. What’s bothering you? You’re not just run down after David’s accident, this is something different.”
“Sorry, Doctor Collins. I guess I overdid it while I was in Cheyenne. I stayed too long at the hospital most days and lost a lot of sleep. I just haven’t caught up yet.”
“I think it’s more than that, C.J. How’ve you been eating? Drinking? Any problems being sick, anything like that?”
“No, not really. I’ve been really tired, and I haven’t been very hungry. But other than that, nothing else.”
“Well, I’m going to take a blood sample and do a quick sugar level check. And if you’ll use this for me,” he handed her a specimen cup, “I’ll run a quick check on that as well. See if anything’s way off.”
After giving him what he’d asked for, C.J. waited; Doctor Collins took the samples and went to his lab. He had a hunch, and if he was right, he just hoped it would be good news. Before doing any of the other tests, he got down the pregnancy test kit. A few minutes later he had his answer.
C.J. was a little surprised that he was back so soon. And the look on his face didn’t tell her a thing.
“Okay, C.J.. I know what’s the matter with you. And I know how to fix it. But I don’t know how to tell you this, because of David and all. Didn’t you notice that you missed one of your monthly periods? Maybe two?”
C.J.’s stomach sank. He was right; she’d missed two months.
“I just thought it was from the stress of the accident and everything. I know that can do it.”
“It can, but in this case, it didn’t. C.J., you’re pregnant. Can you give me any idea how far along
you’d be?”
“Well, since David’s accident, I haven’t slept with anyone, so it would have to be from the two weeks between when we got married and the accident. Sometime the last half of December.”
“So you’re about two months. Okay. I want you on a regimen of prenatal vitamins. And I want you on good food. Whatever will help you gain back the weight you lost. And I want to see you here, every week for the next month, until we know you’re on the mend.”
She nodded, wondering how she was going to get back and forth from Douglas to Casper for the appointments. That gave her another idea, one she could follow up on after she left the ranch.
The news that she was pregnant hadn’t made her too happy, but she figured she could handle it, after she made her move.
When Jared and Annie picked her up, she told them only that the doctor had given her a prescription. She didn’t say what it was for, they never asked. All they cared about was getting her back on her feet.
By the time she got home, C.J. was exhausted. All she wanted to do was go to bed and sleep. Annie and Jared realized this and left as soon as she had eaten the sandwich Annie fixed for her. C.J. had taken her prescription upstairs with her, so Annie didn’t see what the pills were, just reminded her to take them before she went to bed.
“Thanks, you two. I don’t know what I’d have done without you for the past month. I think you’ve been here everyday since I came back. Now that I’ve seen the doctor and have that prescription, you can start sticking around your house more. I’ll be back to normal in no time.”
“We don’t mind, honey, really. You’re important to us, and we’ll do whatever you need done. Just remember that.”
Jared gave her cheek a kiss, Annie gave her a hug; then he and Annie left. They walked down the ramp that had been built for David and marveled that she had got all this done so fast. And the two new vehicles were waiting to be picked up as soon as there were two people to go to town and get them. Everything was ready. Now all it would take was for David to come home.
When Gordon Donald showed up at the ranch the next afternoon, he was amazed at the changes that had been made for David. He was even more astounded by C.J. herself. She looked sick.
He was her one and only salesman at the paper and she had asked him to come out and pick her up. He didn’t know why he was doing it, just that she needed a ride and no one else was available to help her that particular day.
As they drove out the lane to the county road, C.J. didn’t look back. She couldn’t. If she had looked back and seen the house she was leaving for the last time, she might not have been able to go. She wouldn’t cry either. It was time to get her life back together and move on. Without David it would be hard, but at least she had something to remember him by. She would take this baby and they would make a new home someplace where no one would think to look for her.
She had left only one note. No letters for friends.
The only things she had left behind were her rings, sitting on the kitchen counter where David could find them; and a special parcel sitting on one of the kitchen chairs.
He would know what to do with both of them.
The rehab staff of the United Medical Center was getting mighty sick of trying to keep up to David Taylor.
They had planned his rehab program to give him the optimum training, in the least amount of time. They told him it would take close to three months before he would be safe to send home to his ranch.
But David had no intention of staying that long. He wanted out.
When Matt Hawkins had first told him the plans, he had refused.
“I won’t go there. I don’t care what you want, it’s what I want. And all I want is out of here.”
“Well, you don’t get out of here without doing rehab first. Take it or leave it. You can have a bed here for however long you want to pay for it. I don’t care.”
David sulked. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. Nobody could figure out what got him started, but once he was sulking, it took days before he finally snapped out of it. Then he’d be angry. This they knew and accepted as part of the healing and rebuilding process.
“Matt, if I agree to the rehab, will you stop bugging me?”
David’s question that morning caught him completely off guard.
“How come you’re having a change of heart about this?” David’s psychiatrist had sent him a report just the day before, telling him that David’s acceptance of his paraplegia had finally reached a level where he thought David could be pushed harder. Obviously, David had got the same message some place.
When he finally agreed to do the rehab program, he became an over-achiever. His attitude seemed to be that if he had to do it, then he’d do it fast and get it over with.
Because he had been in such good physical shape at the time of the accident, it hadn’t taken him as long to get going in the program. His upper body strength had amazed most of his physiotherapists.
But Matt Hawkins knew that something was wrong. It was a look, a sigh, just little things. He thought he knew what it was, but he had no idea how to broach the subject with him.
Blake and Jared had decided to take turns being there for him. While one was in Cheyenne, the other one was looking after home and office for the other. Since he had sent C.J. away so brutally, they were his only visitors. Matt decided it was time to talk to both of them.
Jared and Annie had been away for five days, taking a well deserved break from all the work they had been doing for C.J., the visits to Cheyenne and the regular work that continued along as normal at the office. The day they got back, they talked to Mac, checking to make sure that everything had been alright at David’s place while they were gone. What he told them disturbed both of them.
“Jared, I did the chores twice a day, as usual. But I never saw C.J. once. The lights were on in the house, but she didn’t answer the door. I didn’t try too hard, in case she was sleeping.”
As soon as he hung up and explained the call, Annie handed him his keys.
“Go, Jared. Find out what’s wrong. I can’t leave until the babies wake up. I don’t want to wait that long. Go, see if she’s okay.”
It only took him five minutes to get to David’s house. As Mac had said, the lights were on. But when he knocked, there was no answer. Looking in the back door window, he got the impression that the house hadn’t been lived in lately. There were no dirty dishes in or near the sink. The coffee pot was cleaned out. There was nothing out of place on the counter.
Then he saw them. On the end of the counter, near the portable phone.
Her rings.
Jared didn’t waste any time after letting himself inside. He went directly to the rings. The letter was addressed to David; Jared didn’t care. He had to know what was going on.
He read it.
He dropped the letter on the counter and laid her rings on top of it. Then he changed his mind and picked them both up and put them carefully in his pocket. He couldn’t just leave them lying there. There was no telling how long it would be before David came home.
As he passed the table, he looked at the paper covering the awkwardly shaped package lying there. It smelled like new leather. Feeling as though he were betraying them both, he unwrapped the parcel. There, highly polished and gleaming was an intricately carved saddle. But it was unlike any saddle he’d ever seen. This saddle, the one C.J. had given David for Christmas, was now specially rigged. It was a saddle that would hold a person in place, keep them from rocking too much but not so high through the cantle that the rider would have trouble getting a leg over and getting seated. And as his eyes traveled down the stirrup leathers, he saw what had been added.
Straps had been added to each side, one set on the skirt itself, another set on the stirrup leathers and toe covers and straps on the stirrups themselves, to prevent a foot from sliding through.
C.J. had taken the saddle she had given him for Christmas and had it converted for use by someone who couldn’t us
e his legs.
For David.
She had done everything that needed doing to the house and had made sure he had transportation. The truck, the van, the horse.
Now, she was gone.
Annie heard him come in about an hour later and ran downstairs to see what he’d found. One look at his face and she knew it wasn’t good.
“What’s the matter, love? What happened? Was she there?”
Annie knew the answer to that before Jared opened his mouth.
“She’s gone, Annie. All her things are gone, there isn’t a stitch of her clothing left. And those things we helped her move? I think there’s a few of them still there, but most are gone.”
He sat down on the kitchen chair closest to the door. It was more than an hour since he’d arrived at her house, and his mind was still reeling from what he’d seen. Remembering what he had brought with him, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter and C.J.’s rings.
“This letter was on the kitchen counter, with her rings. The same rings she swore she would never take off. Remember at the wedding, she joked that if anybody wanted them they’d have to wait until after she was dead, then they’d have to take them off her hand. She left them, Annie. Just left them lying there.”
“I knew she was upset, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. Jared, I know something happened at the hospital just before you two came back, but nobody has ever said what it was. Can you tell me?”
He replayed the whole scene for her, choking over the words David had thrown at C.J. while she stood still and quiet.
“Then she just quit on him. Matt Hawkins had me take her outside, but she never said another word until we were in the cab. I couldn’t believe she’d done it. Just walked out on him when he needed her most.”
Annie started to bristle, then thought better of it. Instead of yelling at him, she’d explain her view of it. She tipped her head to the side as she spoke.
“Jared, do you think what she did was wrong? That she should have just stayed there, even though he told her to go?”