Letting Go

by Mary Beth Lee

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  But when she opened her eyes, Jed stood there smiling like he’d won the lottery and a shift at Pete’s was as good as it got.

  “In about three hours, you’re going to wonder what on earth you were thinking when you agreed to this,” she said, looking for her apron and finding a brand new one with her name embroidered on it hanging on a peg next to a new set of lockers.

  Grabbing the apron, Clarissa almost laughed at the worry on Jed’s face.

  “I’ve moved cattle, planted and harvested wheat and spent multiple weekends camping with Mack. I think I can handle helping out Pete for one day.”

  “We’ll see,” she said over her shoulder before heading into the restroom.

  Once the door closed, she blew out a breath in one long exhale and looked in the mirror. There wasn’t one in the bunkhouse, and she tried real hard to avoid the mirrors at the church because she didn’t like what she saw in herself in that house of a God who didn’t seem to care about her.

  The face looking back had changed. Her eyes were soft. She had to be careful. Had to resist the temptation that was Jed Dillon.

  Jed watched Clarissa maneuver from table to table to diner bar to pie fridge and back with a combination of wonder and pride. Momma was right. Clarissa Dye was grit personified.

  And she sure was pretty.

  He wanted...he said a quick prayer. Your will, God. Not mine.

  It wasn’t always easy to remember that. But with Clarissa it was essential. She needed God, needed His salvation, His comfort, His absolution in her life.

  So far she hadn’t been willing to talk to any of them about God. Not him, not his daddy, not even his Momma, and Susie Dillon could talk to anyone about God.

  “You working or lolligagging?” Pete asked and threw a towel in Jed’s direction.

  Message received.

  He started wiping down the tables and would have been content doing that all night.

  Only the bell above Pete’s door rang and Joan Anderson walked in, a piece of paper clutched tight in her hands, her powder blue suit and matching shoes showing she’d already been to church for the day.

  And of course she was headed right for him.

  “Jed Dillon, you need to be aware who you’re keeping company with.”

  Chapter Eight

  Clarissa watched the woman marching through Pete’s diner, like spit and vinegar and maybe worse.

  She should have told him the truth. Should’ve told him that day in the church.

  The diner full of lunchtime customers looked a little startled at Mrs. Anderson’s sudden pronouncement, and Clarissa could feel their eyes on her.

  She tried to make herself shrink, tried to make herself pretend this biddy and her gossiping ways meant nothing, but she couldn’t make herself move. Couldn’t make herself stop watching the train wreck about to happen.

  “That girl,” she heard Joan say the words as she pointed in her direction. “And her mother….”

  “Table eight’s fried pickles are going to get cold,” Pete said sternly and then he stepped from the kitchen and started toward the ugly scene playing out in his shiny new diner.

  But he didn’t have to worry because Jed had it under control.

  He gently took the paper from Joan Anderson’s hands, ripped it in four pieces, threw it in the shiny new trash bin and spoke loud enough for the whole diner to hear.

  “Joan Anderson, you’ve been a good friend to my mother, and a good aunt to my daughter, but I guarantee you that if you go around casting aspersions on the woman who has given selflessly to this community and who has become an extension of the Dillon family, Momma won’t take kindly to it. And I won’t tolerate it. Clarissa Dye is a godsend to this town. You owe everyone here an apology for disturbing their Sunday lunch like this.”

  With that, the problem of Joan Anderson was done. She’d told him to let her solve it, but she couldn’t fault Jed for his actions. He’d stepped in like a hero. And she wanted to hug him for it.

  Oh, be honest, her brain screamed. She wanted to do a lot more than hug him.

  Clarissa grabbed the fried pickles and rushed to get them to table eight just so she could try to get her mind wrapped around what had just happened.

  Her hands were shaking, her nerves scattered like the bits of paper Jed had thrown in the wind. She needed to sit down.

  Instead she grabbed two pieces of German chocolate pecan pie and delivered them to the Rains’ table.

  She turned to leave, but Tess Rains stopped her.

  “That right there is a mighty good man,” she said.

  Her husband laughed. “I would’ve paid to see that, and here I got the show for free.”

  Trevor knocked over his water and harumphed “I always do that” at the same time his parents scrambled to get napkins.

  She hurried over to grab towels and reached the drawer at the same time Jed did. His hand covered hers and she felt herself flush hot, but she didn’t step away.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

  Jed pressed his hand over hers and a tingle leaped up her arm. “Yes, I did.”

  She turned her body to face him. He was everything good and right in the world. He deserved the truth. “She was right, Jed.”

  He opened the drawer took out the towels and made sure she knew they weren’t done with this discussion.

  “We all have pasts, Clarissa. It’s the present and the future we control.”

  And then he was gone, helping the Rains clean up the mess leaving her to embrace or reject his words. In the end she decided it didn’t matter if she accepted his words or not. He might be right, but if she was entertaining thoughts of sticking around Stearns she had to tell him about her past.

  The ride back to the Triple Eight was unnaturally quiet at first. Clarissa wasn’t sure why Jed wasn’t talking, but she knew her thoughts were flying a thousand miles a minute. Once she told him her truths, he’d probably be ready to shed himself of her and Tammy Jo and thank the good Lord he hadn’t gotten involved with either of them.

  That should be a good thing. She didn’t need or want a knight in shining armor, and he kept trying to make himself one where she was concerned.

  “Joan wasn’t always bitter,” he said, and her thoughts careened to a stop. Once again she was ready to tell the truth, but he had something to say first. She wouldn’t let tonight end without him knowing the truth.

  “When Mack’s mother left, it changed her.”

  Clarissa quit thinking of herself with his words.

  “Bethany, that’s Mack’s mother, used to stay every summer with her aunt. That’s Joan. When she left, she broke Joan’s heart as much as mine. I came to terms with my grief, moved on. I don’t know that Joan can.”

  Clarissa never imagined she’d feel sorry for Joan Anderson, but at his words, she did.

  “That’s so sad,” she said.

  He nodded. “She won’t give you trouble again. Not when I threatened to take Mack from her. She loved Bethany and she loves Mack. She tolerates me. You don’t have to worry about her anymore.”

  He finished as they took the final left to the ranch, and she knew what she had to do. Even as she was reeling from the idea that Joan wasn’t aunt as in good family friend, she couldn’t put this off any longer.

  She reached out and turned the radio off. “Pull the truck over, Jed. I’ve got to tell you.”

  “Clarissa…”

  Something in her eyes must’ve made clear she wasn’t going to lose this battle. Once the truck stopped she started.

  “I appreciate you jumping in to save me tonight, Jed, but Joan was right.” She stopped for a second because it felt like her heart was going to burst from her chest. She didn’t want to tell this story, but she had to.

  “The first con I remember making with Tammy Jo was around the time I was seven. She and I convinced a church I was dying of cancer, and they held a benefit for us. Over time and towns, the be
nefits grew. Too big eventually. That might’ve been the article Joan brought in.”

  “You were seven, Clarissa. Come on. This isn’t necessary.”

  “Just listen. There’s more. That time, Tammy Jo had to go to jail, but they only kept her 180 days. When she got out, she made sure our cons weren’t quite so grand. We lived off the graces of good people all over the state of Texas, using my hypoglycemia to make people believe I was close to dying. They gave us food, rooms, cars. Sometimes, the people weren’t so good. We dealt with it and moved on. Tammy Jo said it was the price of doing business.”

  She stopped and looked across the field beside the road. Wild flowers dotted the ground around them. A dog barked. In the distance, she could see horses running. A light breeze lifted her hair off her neck and she blew out a breath. She didn’t want to go on.

  And like the knight he was, Jed tried to protect her.

  “You don’t need to do this, Clarissa. You were a kid. Your mother…”

  “This isn’t all about Tammy Jo. And I wasn’t always a kid. Eventually, I became a liability of sorts to my mother. She dropped me off at my grandmother’s when one of her cons decided he liked me a little too much. Instead of using the time with my grandmother to start over, I joined a group of girls who didn’t bother conning people. We stole right out in the open. They dubbed us the Barbie Bandits. We were young, pretty and we’d walk in to stores and take what we wanted without a worry in the world. That might also be the news clipping you ripped up.

  “I got lucky after that one, though. Probation and juvenile court. My mother said I’d conned the entire juvenile court system into going easy on me. She was probably right. Once my probation ended, I ran. I started off using people, telling them horrible stories about my past, convincing them to help a poor girl out. Churches were the best places to score. It was like living with Tammy Jo all over again, only I was on my own.

  “And then, about ten years ago, one of the kind strangers I’d conned nearly killed me. When I woke up in a hospital bed, I decided to try to start over. I tried to reach my grandmother to apologize, but I was too late, and Tammy Jo was the only one at the house.

  “Since then, I’ve been straight. I work and I move on. Eventually I figure maybe I’ll find a place to stop, a place where maybe I can come to terms with who I’ve been and what I’ve done. But it can’t be here. This, you and everyone, you’re too close to who I was. I can’t find peace when the life I’m living mirrors the life I pretended to live for so long.”

  To his credit, Jed didn’t kick her out of the truck. That’s the first thing Clarissa thought when she finally looked at him.

  When he didn’t say anything for another minute, she started to worry.

  “Jed, say something.”

  At first, he continued looking into her eyes like he was trying to see into her soul, and then he did the strangest thing. He reached out and pushed a curl of her hair away from her cheek and said “You are so pretty. Mack’s right. You look like an angel.”

  What was wrong with him? “Did you hear a word I said? I am a horrible person. I’ve done things…I can’t even...”

  “You are an amazing, courageous woman who made some bad life choices and then started over.”

  “Bad life choices? Jed, I stole from people. Blatantly. I was on CNN. I used my hard times to take from people. Old people, young people, sick people. I didn’t care.”

  “And you’ve been beating yourself up for it the past decade while you tried to do things differently.”

  Something turned in her chest, sank into her stomach, blossomed through her body. Hope.

  “I…You…Jed, I’m not….”

  “You are not the same person,” he said and then he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers in a soft kiss that made everything in her melt.

  She knew she should fight him, should tell him to take her to the bunkhouse she was sharing with Tammy Jo and they’d leave as soon as possible, but all she wanted was to sit in his truck and kiss him sweetly and pretend her past didn’t exist.

  A zap of longing swept through her and she knew this was so wrong.

  She pushed away from him and leaned against the truck’s door. “You can’t help yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You want to save me. It’s part of what makes you tick. But Jed, I don’t want anyone saving me. I’m working hard to save myself. It’s got to be that way.”

  Jed laughed, and she heard a roughness that hadn’t been there earlier.

  “You’re confused, Clarissa. That kiss wasn’t me trying to save you. That was something else entirely. Maybe later we can talk about what it was.”

  Later. He really still wanted to see her, to be part of her life. Even knowing….

  “Jed. I think maybe…”

  “Maybe you should just stop thinking so much,” he interrupted. “Maybe you just need to let go and let God.”

  So easy for him to say.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I want to. You have no idea how much I want to. But I’m not even sure He exists.”

  Jed smiled at that. Strange response. Then he restarted the truck. “It’s okay, Clarissa. Because here’s the deal. God doesn’t need you to be sure of Him to exist. If you want to spend all your time thinking, think about that.”

  Clarissa wished it were that easy. Jed’s phone buzzed, and he looked puzzled as he answered.

  “Hey Momma,” he said, and Clarissa wondered what it would be like to have such an easy relationship with a parent. With Tammy Jo at the ranch maybe they’d forge some kind of mother-daughter bond.

  “I’m with her now,” Jed said, suddenly concerned. “We’re on our way.”

  ‘What’s wrong?” Clarissa asked when he hung up the phone.

  “Your mother’s in the hospital. It’s bad.”

  Chapter Nine

  Clarissa’s heart dropped and then she remembered this was Tammy Jo they were talking about.

  “It’s not bad, Jed. It’s business,” she said as she climbed in his truck.

  “Whatever it is, my parents called and said you better get to the hospital quick.”

  Clarissa couldn’t believe she’d almost let herself be lulled into a sense of security where her mother was concerned. Silly girl. Nothing was going to change Tammy Jo. The Dillons and Stearns, Oklahoma were the perfect con. If her mother thought she’d stand by and let that happen, she had another think coming.

  “I’m going to need you to take your family and leave for a while when we get there, Jed,” she said. “Tammy Jo and I need to talk.

  He didn’t argue with her, didn’t try to reason with her or use his life experiences to challenge her surety.

  Maybe he’d listened to her earlier. Maybe he understood nothing in their lives meshed. That for every good thing in his world, she’d done or been part of or lived through something equally bad.

  “I don’t think…”

  And then again, maybe he didn’t understand at all.

  “Look, Jed,” Clarissa said. “You’re a great guy. But this is something you can’t begin to understand.”

  “I don’t think you ought to make assumptions. They can end up leading to an awful lot of heartbreak.”

  “Again, you have no idea how good Tammy Jo is at swindling people out of their hard earned livings. Just trust me here, okay?”

  He looked forward, a frown marring his face, his jaw working in an effort to do as she asked.

  He didn’t try talking to her the rest of the trip to Shawnee, and Clarissa told herself she liked that just fine.

  Scenes from her life with her mother played through her mind as they closed in on the small hospital, and Clarissa wondered why on earth she hadn’t packed her mother’s suitcase and brought it along with. Lord knew she wasn’t going to let Tammy Jo set foot on the Triple Eight again.

  Jed parked the truck in a visitor’s spot, and Clarissa climbed out without waiting for him. Warm wind brushed her hair off
her face and the sky held a tinge of red from a dust storm moving their direction. Behind her she heard Jed’s booted feet closing the gap between them.

  “Remember what I said, Jed. I’ll need a few minutes alone with her.”

  He didn’t answer, just strode beside her as they made their way through the automatic door and to the elevator. The hospital scent from her memories clashed with this one. A different kind of cleaner, she supposed. Cold anger kept her moving forward. Once they were inside the elevator Jed fished a piece of paper out of his pocket then pushed the floor’s number.

  A few seconds later they were greeted by the whirring, whooshing and beeping noises of the critical care unit.

  Clarissa had to hand it to Tammy Jo. Her acting must’ve improved quite a bit to get herself admitted to CCU.

  She started to tell Jed she didn’t need him to walk back to her mother’s room, but Susie Dillon was there, her face a mask of worry.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” she said, wrapping Clarissa in one of her perfect hugs.

  Clarissa didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d been used by an expert manipulator the past few days.

  “The doctor will be back by in a few hours,” Susie said. “For now she’s stabilized, but she’s on multiple monitors and she’s dehydrated.”

  Clarissa shot Jed a meaningful look, and he cleared his throat before speaking. “Uh, Momma, why don’t we let Clarissa and her mother have some privacy,” he said as they reached the room door.

  Clarissa walked in the hospital room and blinked. Her mother was connected to an IV and a heart rate monitor. She looked horrible. Of course, Tammy Jo was an expert at looking terrible for a cause.

  “Momma,” Clarissa said walking forward, but her mother didn’t acknowledge her presence.

  Behind her she heard a nurse moving forward. “You can talk to her,” she said. “She can hear you even though it doesn’t look like it.”

  Clarissa stopped moving and blinked. The room whirled around her and she looked again at Tammy Jo. Her mother was on a ventilator. She couldn’t fake that, could she?