by Anna Jeffrey
Afterward, as they shared yet another glass of wine, she laid out a plan for a four-three-two house in a bedroom community within commuting distance to her downtown office. Her scenario included a nanny to care for the two kids they would have while she worked toward a partnership in the firm where she practiced personal injury law.
Knowing her lofty ambitions, Terry was surprised that institutions as mundane as matrimony and motherhood interested her. Unfortunately, sharing those two life steps with Michelle didn’t interest him. Her true loyalty lay with who could do the most for her and too often, her sharp tongue or her self-centered attitude reminded him too much of his mother. Terry couldn’t wrap his mind around playing the role with any woman he had now watched four men play with his mom.
Still, he didn’t mind Michelle’s company. Oh, sure, she was argumentative and did have to have the last word in any conversation, but she was witty and quick with a quip, thus entertaining. She was a head-turner in the looks department. And she was an animal in bed, as was he. Before knowing her, he thought he knew most of what there was to know about sex, but she had taught him a few new tricks. He had never asked where she learned them, didn’t care. From the beginning of their affair he had suspected he wasn’t her only sex partner, though he was certain she would deny that.
For the six months they had been seeing each other, he thought sex was what their relationship was about. The L-word had never been uttered, nor had the C-word. Then, wham! Last night, after more merlot than either of them needed, she brought up children and family and insisted on a discussion. He felt as if he had been ambushed. Marriage was the farthest thing from his mind. And living in a suburb, even in a sub-division he had designed and developed, held less appeal than watching a freight truck unload.
He tried to be kind, tried to say gently that if and when he chose a woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life, one who would be the mother of his children, the same woman would most likely be a stay-at-home mom. If he ever had a family--and at age thirty-six, he had begun to wonder--no nanny or babysitter would raise his kids.
Chauvinistic? Perhaps. He had been labeled as such by the fairer sex more times than he could count and he had no intention of changing. He had been reared by babysitters himself while his parents pursued their respective careers. His mother was a trial attorney who had usually shown more concern for her cases than her family. His dad, a consulting petroleum engineer, traveled the world.
He remembered the loneliness of being the only kid with no parent present at a Pop Warner game, the embarrassment of parent-teacher conference week with no parent available to participate, being handed a hundred dollar bill and told to choose his own athletic shoes because no one had time to take him shopping.
Even now, he didn’t know exactly where on the planet his parents might be. His dad could be somewhere in the Middle East, or perhaps Indonesia. His mother, the last he had heard, was in California, honeymooning with her fourth husband, no doubt already arguing talking points with the poor bastard, just as she had done with her first husband and her succeeding husbands. And her son.
The previous evening still on his mind and his conscience, he returned to the kitchen, poured a cup of Joe and made his way to the master suite. Michelle had ended up in tears, which was why he ended up spending the night at her apartment. Leaving with her so upset felt too callous. No question, he was a soft touch for a woman in tears.
He stayed over, then got the hell out early this morning while she slept. Not the most chivalrous move he had ever made, but, under the circumstances, the easiest and most surgical. With a busy and exciting day ahead of him, he did not--repeat, did not--want to be distracted by another session of her weeping and him tactfully trying to explain that as far as he was concerned, the feminist idea of a woman “having it all” was hogwash.
He clicked on the TV as he strode through the huge master bedroom on his way to the bathroom. The news came on with headlines. Mortgage interest low, new home starts up. Good news for a man who owed over a million dollars in mortgage debt and had fifty spec homes on the ground in various stages of completion.
Inside the bathroom, as he brushed his teeth and shaved, he planned his day. This morning he would meet his engineer, Brad England, at a new sub-division site he had bought at a distress price fifty miles southwest of Fort Worth. The roughly two thousand acres were incredibly beautiful, with gently rolling hills, groves of hundred-year-old live oak trees and a huge stock tank with the potential to be expanded into a small lake.
He and Brad were in the process of carving and shaping the old ranch into ten-to-twenty-acre parcels. It would become Rancho Casero, a sub-division and gated horse community. There would be stables and an arena for playdays and cutting horse events, a clubhouse and pool and a restaurant that would be planned and operated by a chef well-known for his Tex-Mex cuisine. Buyers were already migrating out of Fort Worth and Dallas and laying down premium prices to own an elegant little piece of western style country living.
His construction company, Terry Ledger Homes, had already begun construction of upscale Santa Fe style houses in which commuters and still more retiring baby-boomers would live. The population of well-heeled retirees would patronize his restaurant. His profit would be enormous. He knew all of this from having already done it several times.
He entered his marble walk-in shower and turned on the radio he kept on a shelf inside the shower. He shampooed his hair while one part of his brain listened to local news and weather and another part thought beyond his meeting with his engineer. He would be finished by noon, then he would head west to the most exciting real estate buy he had ever made. His pragmatic persona shuddered at the gamble he had taken; his risk-taker side, the one that lived to skydive or hang glide or jetski at full throttle across a Texas lake at daylight, the one that usually won out, cheered him on.
It was the risk-taker side that had made him rich.
It was the risk-taker side that had been in charge when, just four days ago, he had purchased a town in West Texas, site unseen, on eBay.
Now, as he soaped and rinsed his body, exhilaration thrummed within him. He could hardly wait to get to his town. He had wanted to return to West Texas since his discharge from the army. For several years, Ledger Ranches, a retirement community on the order of Sun City, had been on the drawing board, waiting for him to find just the right location. He believed his quest had ended. Both desires could now be met. A hamlet with good water and two hundred acres adjoining a cattle ranch on one side, which, he had learned from one of his fellow Realtors in Odessa, could be bought.
He stepped out of the shower less than fifteen minutes later. Time was money. He rarely wasted either. Finger combing and drying his hair in front of the vanity mirror, something caught his eye. When had the hair at his temples turned silver?
He stopped for a few seconds and looked closer, noting the creases in his forehead, the crow’s feet fanning from the corners of his eyes, the lines framing his mouth. He clenched his jaw against one of his deepest dreads—growing old or dying before he completed his many plans.
He shook his head, driving away the disquieting thought.
He carried an extra toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo and shaving gear back to the bedroom and stuffed them into a small nylon duffle. He pulled on clean jeans, a long-sleeved knit shirt and his heavy biker boots, then crammed half a dozen changes of socks and boxers, jeans and shirts, sweats, his cowboy boots and his Nikes into the duffle. He was packed.
By the time the sky turned lavender, he stood perusing the nearly bare shelves of his refrigerator. He pulled out a Styrofoam takeout box and found half of a beef and bean burrito, which he zapped for thirty seconds in the microwave. It tasted like plywood, but he didn’t worry over little things like taste and texture. Food was sustenance, nothing more. During survival training in the army, he had eaten the unthinkable. He washed the burrito down with coffee, quelling the empty feeling left in his gut by too much vino last n
ight.
As wine entered his thoughts for a second time, another wave of conscience passed over him. On a sigh, he called up his favorite downtown florist and ordered a spring bouquet--roses would send the wrong message--to be delivered today to Michelle at her office. He told the florist to include a note saying, “Sorry I’m not the one. Terry.”
Then he was out the door. In the parking garage, he donned his leathers and helmet, backed his Harley out of its closeted slot, mounted up and roared out onto the street. By sundown, he would be five hundred miles away in Agua Dulce, Texas.
Chapter 3
Marisa came awake to a bedroom bright with sunlight. The aroma of something cooking teased and tempted her. A jolt of fear popped her eyes wide and she sprang from bed, nearly falling from being not quite awake.
She stumbled to the kitchen in her sleeping costume--boxer shorts and a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt--and saw Mama sitting at the dining table. At least a dozen slices of toasted bread, sans plate, stood in a stack on the tabletop. The bread loaf’s plastic sack gaped open and the remaining untoasted slices from the loaf were scattered across the kitchen counter.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Mama said, munching on a toast slice, her blue eyes looking huge behind her glasses lenses.
Marisa suppressed a groan. “That’s okay, Mama. I’m sorry I didn’t wake up.”
Last night, unable to shut out the endless parade of varying disasters that could result from the sale of Agua Dulce, Marisa had lain awake for hours. “I didn’t drop off until late. Is everything all right?”
“Oh, yes. I just made some toast.”
These days, having Mama in the kitchen alone cooking anything, even toast, was an unacceptable risk. Every day Marisa pondered if she should remove all cooking utensils from the kitchen and disconnect the stove.
Her brow arched as she whipped herself into wakefulness. A pain throbbed behind her eyes. “Lord, I’m late. I hope no one’s showed up for breakfast.” She went to the coffee grinder and fumbled through grinding beans, wincing at the noise the grinder made. “Listen, Mama, I’m gonna get a shower, then run over to the café and heat up the griddle. You’ll be okay here ’til I can get back, right?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll get dressed and take a little walk.”
“No!” The thought of Mama alone outside was another of Marisa’s nightmares. In the vast expanse of unpopulated desert that lay outside the singlewide’s walls, Mama could get lost in nothing flat. Marisa switched on the coffee maker and lowered her voice. “No, don’t walk, Mama. I’ll come back after breakfast and we’ll take a walk together, okay?”
Her mother’s eyes teared and her chin quivered. “If you say so, Marisa. I hope you don’t forget. I do need my exercise.”
Shit. Now Marisa felt like a heel. Emotion so close to the surface was part of Mama’s disease. It had taken some getting used to because such displays were so out of character for the mother Marisa used to know. “Look, you need to eat something besides toast.” She pulled Cheerios from an upper cabinet. As the coffee dripped, she prepared a bowl of cereal with canned peach slices and set it in front of her mother. “Eat some cereal while I take a quick shower, okay?” The coffee gurgled to a finish and Marisa poured Mama a cup, then poured one for herself.
Carrying the coffee, Marisa padded to the hall bathroom, which was barely big enough for a tub/shower combo, a commode and a sink. The mobile home had a master suite of sorts on one end, but Mama used that.
Marisa hurried through a shower and shampoo, bumping her elbows on the fiberglass walls and vowing that when she got rich, one of the first things she would have was a decent-sized bathtub and shower.
She dried quickly and styled her hair. Cut to a shoulder-length bob, it required nothing more than a hairbrush and a few minutes with the dryer. She didn’t wear makeup, but this morning, she rubbed a bit of cream from every jar on the bathroom counter under her eyes. None of it seemed to lighten the dark circles or shrink the puffy pouches.
She pulled on a Western style shirt--white, with embroidered red roses and silky fringe hanging from arching yokes across the front and back--and stuffed herself into clean Rockies jeans. Through the belt loops, she slipped a Mexican tooled-leather belt with conchos and a silver buckle the size of a saucer. She pulled on cowboy boots and added some silver jewelry to her earlobes and wrists. Marisa, Queen of the Cowgirls.
Though she could ride a horse and had been around livestock growers most of her youth, she wasn’t a real cowgirl. Not even close. But it was important to look like a Westerner. In this part of Texas, near Langtry, where the legend of Judge Roy Bean flourished, and not too far from Billy the Kid’s haunt in New Mexico, the Wild West was what tourists expected to see. Since those roaming visitors were her and Mama’s bread and butter, Marisa would climb aboard a bucking bronc before she would disappoint them. She even laughed at their lame jokes about her being “Pecos Belle.”
When she returned to the kitchen, Mama had finished eating and, thank God, forgotten about walking. Marisa seated her in front of TV, then consumed another cup of coffee and slid all of the bread and toast slices into a Ziploc bag.
She reminded her mother that she would be back soon, then headed for Pecos Belle’s, carrying the toast slices with her. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade, she told herself. Only today, she would use the toast to make bread pudding. Waste not, want not.
As she made a tour through the flea market turning on lights, straightening displays, brushing away a speck of dust here and there, unlocking the front door, the sunrise began to brighten the large room. Early morning was the most peaceful part of her day. She enjoyed being alone in the café with its silence and its mix of spices and good food smells left over from the day before.
She put two flavors of coffee on to brew in the Bunn on the back counter across from the lunch counter, drew a large empty pickle jar full water, added two giant teabags and set it just outside the front door to steep.
Ready to begin work, she turned on the radio to keep her company and heard a new tune with a good dancing beat. She loved dancing--in that way, she was like Mama—but how long had it been since she had dressed up and hit a honky-tonk?
In the tiny café kitchen, she turned on the flame under the griddle, then set about measuring ingredients for bread pudding. Back when she’d had a job as a professional cook, her recipe for bread pudding had always been a favorite. She usually used sourdough bread she baked herself, but today, toasted store-bought white bread would have to do.
Soon, the delicious aroma of the baking pudding surrounded her. Savoring the smells of butter and vanilla, she hummed along with the radio as she cleaned and straightened the back counter. A car engine sounded out front, then died. She glanced across the flea market, out the display windows that took up the whole front of the building, at a state trooper’s black-and-white. She smiled inside.
Two minutes later the front door chimed and the best part of her life strolled in. Keith Wood, or just Woody to his friends. He had probably come for breakfast.In his taupe-colored uniform and gray Stetson, he looked good enough to be breakfast. She had a weakness for a man in uniform, especially one who was lean and tanned, with mysterious dark eyes and a slow, come-hither smile. She and Woody had been an item for about a year and he still came by several times a week. The good-looking sonofagun had touched every one of her secret places and she usually couldn’t wait for him to do it again.
“Hiya, copper,” she said, eager to tell him about the sale of Agua Dulce. Just a few weeks ago they had laughed about the widow posting the town for sale and the odds against someone ever being dumb enough to buy something like a town on eBay.
He took a seat on one of the round stools that fronted the lunch counter and she leaned across to kiss her favorite Texas DPS trooper. He kissed back, but without the usual enthusiasm. “Uh-oh,” she said, deferring her own news to listen to what could be bothering him. “Don’t tell me. You’ve had a run-in with some real bad guys.”
He shook his head and looked up at her with serious eyes.
She braced herself on her forearms just inches from his delicious lips. “Tell you what,” she said softly. “I could lock the front door for a while. There’s clean sheets on the bed and I know all sorts of remedies to take your mind off your troubles.”
Growing up, she and her mother had lived in the two-bedroom apartment in the back of the building. Mama hadn’t bought the singlewide mobile home until after Marisa left home. Many times, Marisa and Woody heated up the apartment bedroom that had been Mama’s.
“Don’t I know it,” he said with a crooked grin.
She could see in his eyes he wanted to follow her back there. But she could also see it wasn’t going to happen today. Something was really bothering him. She touched his lower lip with her finger. “What is it, sugar?”
He lifted off his hat and set it on the counter. “You got just a plain old-fashioned cup of coffee?”
She tucked back her chin and widened her eyes in a display of mock surprise. “What, no French-Columbian-Traditional-Campfire blend flavored with vanilla?”
He snickered and she stepped away and poured him a cup from the carafe labeled REGULAR.
“Smells good in here,” he said. “What’s cooking?”
“Bread pudding. Comfort food. Be done in a few minutes. Want some?”
He shook his head and lifted the mug to his lips. After a long sip, he set the mug back on the counter. “I need to talk to you, Marisa.”
She heard a solemnity in his tone and felt a chill in the air that had nothing to do with air-conditioning. “You know me, sugar. I’m always up for good conversation.” She set the coffee carafe back oh its heating element, the news of the sale of the town forgotten for now.
He stared into his mug without saying anything, but in her head, Marisa heard Santa Anna’s trumpet blowing “Degüello.”