by Ruby Laska
She let out a sound that was half cry and half snarl, but he had one more thing to say, even while she opened the truck door.
"You want love, Roan? It's staring you straight in the face, and you can't even see it."
Then she slammed the door, and Cal pulled away from the curb, giving the truck enough gas to spin out onto the icy road.
#
When Cal got back to the bunkhouse, the party was over. Great. One more thing he'd wrecked: the festive air from earlier had evaporated, the dishes were washed and drying in the drainer, and only one forlorn light had been left on for him.
"Hey."
The voice took him by surprise. He followed it into the family room. Jayne was sitting under an old crocheted afghan, watching TV with the sound turned off.
"Back from book club?" he asked, forcing a note of cheer into his voice.
"Yes, but everyone went to bed. And I'm not tired yet. My one night to stay up late and I've got no one to stay up with."
Guilt settled onto Cal's shoulders. If it hadn't been for him, everyone would still be enjoying themselves. He sat down heavily next to Jayne. "Mind if I join you?"
"Sure, but I wasn't really paying attention. Mostly just sitting here watching the snow."
For a while they sat together in companionable silence, looking out the picture window at the snowflakes swirling down in the night.
"Jayne," Cal finally said. "You remember me from high school?"
She shot him an exasperated look. "Of course I do. How could I not? You took up way more than your share of attention in that place. Not to mention the fact that half the girls in school were crazy about you." She gave a small smile. "The half that were drawn to bad boys, anyway—the other half were all crazy about Matthew."
Cal put his head in his hands. Pain was building behind his eyes. "I hated him back then," he admitted.
"Who, Matthew?"
"Yeah. Pretty much all of them, if you want to know the truth."
Jayne laughed. It wasn't at all the reaction he expected: he thought she'd shy away from the subject, that he'd have to press her to talk to him about it.
"Glad you're amused," he mumbled. "But I have to say, it didn't seem very funny at the time."
"I'm sorry," Jayne said. "It's just that Matthew pretty much told me the same exact thing, when we were all on our way up here in that damn truck. And you know what? I saw through him, too."
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't hate Matthew, Cal. You envied him. And he envied you. All those guys, they may have seemed like they had it all, but they just wanted to grow up and get out of high school, away from everything they grew up with. And to them, you looked like you'd figured out a way to call your own shots. You had freedom. You could get any girl you wanted. People respected you."
"Respect!" Cal bit off the word. "Jayne, you do know that I was arrested twice in high school, right? That when I dropped out the principal himself told me he was glad I wasn't coming back?"
"Well—yeah. But that only magnified your mystique. You were like James Dean, the rebel who told everyone else to go to hell."
Cal rubbed his forehead, shaking his head. "I was so ashamed," he said quietly. "That day, when I had to go home and tell my grandmother I wasn't going back to school, I lied and told her that I just needed to work so I could make money to support us. She never even gave me a hard time about being arrested, just drove me to community service every weekend and was there to pick me up after. Acted like I'd been teaching bible school all day instead of picking up trash."
"Everyone deserves someone to believe in them," Jayne said placidly. "What about all your girlfriends? Mindy Devon, I seem to remember you and her together. And Lisa Rodriguez and Heather Yarborough—heck, you dated half the cheerleading squad."
Cal snorted. "Mindy slapped me after the River North game, and I deserved it. As for Lisa and Heather—well, I told everyone they dated me, and I guess people believed me. But it wasn't true. I mean, I messed around once or twice with them, but they never did the things I said they did." He sighed. "Let me correct myself—I probably could have dated them, but I got scared. Every time I really liked a girl, I got worried she'd see me for who I was."
"Which was what?" Jayne said gently. "A guy doing the best he could in some really bad circumstances?"
Neither of them spoke for a while. Cal didn't trust himself; there was a knot in his throat the size of a boulder. What would high school have been like for him if he'd let himself try? If he'd been brave enough to own his mistakes, and turned himself around?
But that was what he was doing now. He'd come really close to blowing it, and then, yet again, he'd been given another chance. This time in the form of a graying, paunchy chief of police with a big heart.
"I went to the station tonight to withdraw my application," he said. Seeing Jayne's stricken expression he quickly added, "I had my mind changed for me. With any luck I won't screw up again before I get accepted."
"And what about Roan?"
"What about her?"
"She really likes you, Cal."
He laughed bitterly. "Yeah? I guess that's what she was trying to tell me when she asked me to drive her home. She couldn't get away from me fast enough. She found my journal, Jayne. And all my school records. I kept them on a shelf in my room. Apparently she and Regina decided to have a cocktail party in there while I was gone."
Her eyes went wide. "Oh, no, Cal..."
"It's okay," he said. "I'm not blaming Regina. I would have had to tell Roan eventually. Better that it come out now before things got too..."
Serious, he was going to say. But the problem was, it was already serious, at least for him. He'd let himself care way too much. "Anyway, doesn't matter. She doesn't want someone like me, not when she's trying to turn her own life around."
"Really?" Jane rolled her eyes in exasperation. "If Matthew and I called it quits every time one of us disappointed the other one, we'd never speak to each other again. Just today he turned my favorite bra gray in the laundry."
"Jayne..." Cal cautioned.
"Okay, okay, TMI. But you get what I mean. You can't expect relationships to be perfect all the time, especially at the start, when you're just getting things off the ground."
Cal pushed himself off the couch. "I appreciate what you're trying to do," he said stiffly. "But I think it might be too little, too late."
He took one last look out the window, where the snow sparkled in the moonlight, as cold as his lonely, hopeless heart, and stood up, twisting to ease the tension from his stiff muscles.
"I’m disappointed in you," Jayne said quietly. "What's this too little and too late? Unless you're taking your last breath, it's never too late. I mean, look at all of us. We're not quitters. We all came up here, didn't we? We were all brave enough to start over, to leave everything we knew behind. And now you're going to give up just because you guys had a few cross words?"
"Look, Jayne, if I knew what to do, I'd do it," Cal said in exasperation. "But it's out of my hands. There's not one damn thing..."
Then he stopped mid-sentence. Because there was one more thing, one more idea he hadn't tried.
"Thanks, Jayne," he said, and left the room in a hurry.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Roan turned the key in the lock and let herself into her apartment. The little lamp by the door cast its golden light on the familiar room as Roan went straight to the kitchen. She felt like she'd been hit by a truck, and all she wanted was to take Angel out for a quick walk and get to bed. Everything had gone wrong with Cal; everything she had said had come out wrong. Halfway through castigating him for the things he had done in high school, she had realized that what she was really reacting to was her own shame at the dark time in her past. So Cal was flawed—so was she, and she didn't even have an excuse. He'd overcome a lot to become the man he was. She'd had an idyllic childhood, and not getting along with her stepmother suddenly seemed like a pretty terrible excuse for the way sh
e'd been acting.
You're sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, Cal had said. You can't even see what's right in front of your face.
He was right. She'd been so stupid. And now she'd lost him. And she still didn't know what she was going to do about—
Angel. Her bed was empty. Roan snapped on the kitchen light, panic rising in her throat. "Angel!" she called. "Where are you?"
Something stirred out in the living room. There was a thump and then a muffled "ow." Roan raced back to the other room, snapping on lights as she went.
There was Angel, curled up on top of a nest of blankets on the couch. But how had she gotten up there? She hadn't been able to leap up in over a year.
A groggy figure emerged from the quilts and blankets, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
Mimi.
Roan took a step back. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I'm so sorry Roannie, I called you about a hundred times, I didn't mean to fall asleep—where have you been? What time is it?"
Roan knelt next to Angel, her mind racing in confusion. She ran her hand gently along her dog's back and rubbed her silky ears. She was rewarded with a yawn and a friendly snout poke.
"Did you break in?" Roan demanded.
"Of course not. I just used the key you keep under the geranium pot."
"How did you know—"
"Don't be silly, Roan, your mother kept the key there when that pot was out at the ranch. It was the first place I looked."
Roan had hand-painted the pot in first grade as a brownie girl scout project, and given it to her mother for Mother's Day. It was among her prize possessions, and when Roan left the ranch, one of the few things she took with her.
"You still broke in," she accused.
"Well, then can we maybe just call it even?" Mimi's voice was small and a little scared, Roan noticed, now that she'd calmed down from the initial shock. She was trying to pat down the hair that was sticking up on her head. Her makeup had run and lodged into the wrinkles under her eyes.
"I know I look terrible," Mimi said grimly, catching her staring. "Maybe that will help you understand just how desperate I was."
"Desperate enough to scare the crap out of me and Angel."
Mimi laughed. "She wasn't exactly scared. I took her out for a walk and she gave a couple of squirrels a run for their money."
"You didn't let her run off leash—" Roan tried to keep the panic out of her voice. At night, cars might not see Angel’s dark coat if she was out in the street.
"I'm not a complete idiot," Mimi said tightly. She rested her hand on Angel's flank and the dog licked it. Roan realized Mimi must have lifted the animal up on the couch herself. This evening was getting stranger and stranger.
"I...always thought you hated Angel."
Mimi sighed. "I never hated her, Roan."
"Ummm...I'm confused."
"Look." Mimi took a deep breath and stared at a button on her sweater, twisting it between her manicured fingers. "I've been practicing what I’m about to say, so I'd appreciate if you'd let me get the whole thing out. If you let me get to the end, there's an apology, which I guess you've probably been waiting to hear for a long time."
Roan was too stunned to do anything but gape.
"I never hated Angel," Mimi repeated, speaking quickly. "I never hated you. I was just so darn jealous of you. I fell for your Dad so hard. I'd dated lots of other men, but the minute I saw Earl Brackens I said to myself, Mimi girl, you're done for. I thought it would be so easy. It was real sad about your mom, but I thought I could step in and take up where she left off, take care of the house and your dad and you. But you made it clear you didn't want a thing to do with me. I tried to get you interested in things I liked when I was your age. Makeup and clothes and...and girl talk," she said, her voice going husky.
Roan squeezed her hand around the quilt, trying to keep quiet. Mimi seemed genuinely sad. Was it possible that she had remembered that time all wrong? "But you threw out all the crafts my mom and I made together. You got rid of her photographs."
Mimi closed her eyes and a single tear rolled down her cheek before she brushed it angrily away. "I made mistakes," she said, with feeling. "I did so many awful things. It was just, the more I tried to make your dad love me, the more I tried to fit in, the less he paid attention to me. I was stupid and I was spiteful and, and, I'm really sorry, Roan."
Roan watched in amazement as the single tear turned into a torrent.
"You hated me," she whispered.
"No, I didn't. I just wanted so badly to make your father love me and he—he—all he cared about was you, and he was so overcome with grief over your mother. I thought it would get better, but instead we just kept drifting further apart. He never stopped missing your mom. And he never started loving me."
Angel rolled over on the blanket so she could reach Mimi's hands, and licked her fingers. Angel had always been able to sense when Roan was sad. And now she was trying to comfort Mimi.
"Dad loved you," Roan said, suddenly uncertain. "I mean, in his own way."
"That's just it," Mimi said. "It wasn't the way I wanted. It wasn't the way I loved him. He was...I was so in love with your dad. I was heartbroken when he died. I couldn't stand to be at the ranch, with all those memories, all those reminders of how terrible I had been. I kept wondering if I'd been kinder to you, if I hadn't tried to scrub all traces of Elaine away—but it was too late. I never got a second chance."
She dug into her pocket and pulled out a small velvet pouch. "I'm so ashamed, Roan," she whispered. "I had it all along. Your mom's jewelry. But I only kept it because it was proof that he loved her so much. I couldn't bear to think that I would never have that, and I thought if I pretended that it never existed…well, it didn’t work."
She pressed the soft pouch into Roan's hands. "Anyway, I hope it's enough to take care of Angel. I have a little money, too—not much, especially since Patton owes me money and he seems to have flown the coop."
"Oh...I'm sorry," Roan said awkwardly. She hadn't liked Mimi's latest boyfriend, but then again she had barely given him a second thought. Much like Mimi herself—Roan had turned on Mimi long ago and never given her a chance. "This is all a lot to take in. I had no idea. I guess it wasn't always easy being with Dad."
"Some days it was wonderful," Mimi said forlornly. "Your dad could be so kind, and he was strong and good and thoughtful. He was never ever unkind to me. But I always knew his heart was somewhere else."
She started to fold the blankets, shaking them out briskly. "Anyway, that wasn't the only reason I came by."
"Oh?"
"No. I realize you're probably not going to want to see me after this, and I don't really blame you. But I thought you should know that your young man Calvin has never been late with his rent."
"Um…excuse me?"
"That might not seem like a big thing," Mimi said, not meeting her eyes. She set down the blankets, gathered up her purse and stood up. "But it says something about a man. He called me to offer to install motion lights on the back porch of the big house, too. Said it's one of the easiest ways to improve home security. He didn’t have to do that."
"Why are you telling me this, Mimi?" Roan asked.
Her stepmother was already halfway to the door. "Well, I just thought maybe one of the Brackens women ought to be lucky in love."
While Roan was trying to take that in, Mimi paused and gave her a fleeting smile. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble...would you let me know how Angel does after her surgery? She's a pretty nice dog."
And then she was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was damn cold in the dining room of the old house, but at least it wasn't dark, especially with Jimmy directing a flashlight at the baseboards as Cal worked.
"You know Matthew and Jayne are thinking about buying this place from Mimi," Jimmy said.
Cal paused and surveyed the growing pile of baseboard trim in the center of the room. He was prying the sections off
one by one, searching for a hiding place behind the walls. "No, actually. But it doesn't surprise me."
"Yeah, so, Matthew’s going to have to nail all of that back in place."
"Not if he's refinishing the floors," Cal said, thinking that the big house would suit the couple, especially since they were definitely straining the limits of the bunkhouse these days. "He'll have to take all the trim down. Probably replace a lot of it that was damaged in the fire."
"Interesting," Jimmy said, and Cal knew he'd lost his friend to musing over the mechanical process of replacing the trim. Odds were Jimmy would come up with some innovation for making the process simpler or easier or faster.
Cal kept working. They’d already done the hall. If they didn’t find anything in the dining room, the kitchen would be next. He was ready to stay all night if he had to—anything to find the treasure that Roan believed was there.
By the time he pried a bit of molding free from the window that faced the front lawn, Jimmy was muttering to himself and sketching on a scrap of wood. "Hey," Cal said. "I think I found something."
There was a space about two feet high and a foot wide between the studs under the window. Cal had noticed that the plaster appeared slightly raised there, as though it had been cut and patched. He reached into the dark cavity and touched paper. Very carefully, he pulled out a tissue-wrapped bundle secured with a faded ribbon.
"Could you swing that light over here?" he asked, but Jimmy was already kneeling next to him, shining the bright light onto the bundle.