The Reluctant Cowgirl

by Christine Lynxwiler

  She squeezed his hand. “It’s good to see you this way.”

  “What way?”

  A grin lit her face. “Hopeful.”

  They stopped beside the utility vehicle, and he reluctantly released her. “You make me feel hopeful.”

  “Unless we’re playing Razorback trivia.”

  “I’ll beat you next game.” He hoped there’d be a next game.

  As he watched her drive away, he wondered what it would take to talk her out of going back to New York.

  ***

  “Yes, I’m coming back.” Crystal clasped the cell between her shoulder and her ear as she stretched to make one more swipe at the ceiling fan blades with the long-handled brush. “Mia, I’ve got to go. There’s a lot going on here. Just trust me. Mama and Daddy will be home in less than four weeks, and I’ll be on a plane right after that.”

  After Mia said good-bye, Crystal hunched her shoulders and relaxed them as she walked into the kitchen, where Elyse was standing on a chair cleaning the light fixture.

  “So, what do you say we start a cleaning business on the side? Who knew we could get so much done at night after working all day?”

  Elyse pushed her long brunet curls away from her face. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Sad thing is this house was clean before we started, as far as I could tell.”

  Elyse nodded as she finished wiping the fixture. “That’s what I said.”

  “I know. But you should have heard the panic in Mama’s voice when she realized we were going to have a houseful of people here with her halfway around the world. I had no choice but to promise we’d clean.” Crystal glanced at her cell phone while she was talking. “Thanks for helping me.”

  “I’m guessing the call you just got wasn’t the one you’ve been carrying your phone around waiting for all night.” Elyse stepped down from the chair, breathless.

  Crystal chuckled. “No. That was Mia on the phone. And it’s nice to know my agent hasn’t forgotten me. But you’re right.” She grabbed a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator and pulled two glasses from the cabinet with her other hand. She plopped down at the corner booth. “I’m as bad as I was back in high school. Michael Miller would say he was going to call, and I’d spend the whole night by the phone.” She poured a glass of tea and scooted it across the table as Elyse sat down then poured herself one. “Wonder what ever happened to him.”

  “He married Marianne Rogers. I think he sells insurance.”

  Crystal snorted. “I can see it now. You call in with a claim, and it takes him ten days to get back to you.”

  Elyse snickered and took a sip of her tea.

  Crystal sighed. “Today was Lindsey’s funeral, so I called Jeremy this morning to let him know I was thinking about him.”

  “Oh good.” Elyse smiled at her. “That was sweet of you.”

  “He sounded glad. But he said he’d call me later. And it’s like...” Crystal looked at the kitchen clock. Seven thirty. “Twelve hours later.”

  Elyse ran her finger around the rim of her glass. Probably thinking up a good excuse for Jeremy. “Didn’t his parents just get back in town? Maybe they’re catching up.”

  “Yeah. Or maybe he didn’t feel like talking to me.” Crystal pushed to her feet. “Who cares? He’ll call if he wants to. I’m going to vacuum.”

  “Do you want to work in here and I’ll vacuum? So you can hear your phone if it rings?” Elyse stood.

  “No, thanks.” She left Elyse scrubbing the countertop and hurried to the utility closet to get the vacuum cleaner. She’d prove she wasn’t afraid to make a little noise, that she wasn’t waiting around for a call.

  Just before she turned the vacuum on, she glanced around to make sure Elyse wasn’t looking then dug her phone out of her pocket and turned it on vibrate. Chicken.

  When the downstairs rugs were all vacuumed, she put the machine away and fished her phone out again. Eight o’clock and no missed calls.

  She could write a one-person play about this. A woman who waited for a phone call that never came. The idea caused her to freeze in her tracks. She used to have those mini-brainstorms all the time. Especially when she was doing house chores. Self-defense to keep from passing out from boredom, probably. But that was before ... She forced herself to follow the thought through. Before Cami died. Before Crystal moved to New York and left all of her works in progress locked away in the room upstairs.

  Her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID. A smile tilted her lips as she slumped down on the couch and answered. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Jeremy’s voice was like slow molasses. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How’d it go?”

  “Pretty good, actually.”

  She sat up. There was something different in his tone. “The funeral?” She’d fretted all day over not offering to go with him.

  He gave a soft chuckle. “I know. Hard to believe.”

  She pulled her knees up to her chest. “What happened?”

  “We met at the cemetery. Dad, Mom, and me. And Brother Tom. Just the four of us.”

  “I bet that felt odd.” At Cami’s funeral, even at the graveside, there had been people as far as she could see, standing and crying.

  “Yeah. A little. But Brother Tom kept it short. Dad and Mom had told him some things about Lindsey. So he talked about her life. Before. How, even as a teenager, she always tried to help people who were down on their luck. And she couldn’t stand to see anybody hurting.”

  “That was really nice of your parents to tell him good things.”

  Silence. She didn’t know what to say, so she just stayed quiet, too.

  Finally he spoke. “They were true, though. She used to be like that. And when we got back to the house, Mom had a couple of scrapbooks she’d put together. For Beka, she said.”

  “Scrapbooks of Lindsey?”

  “Yeah. She’d spent a lot of time on them, so we sat down and looked through them.”

  “You did?” Crystal was having a hard time reconciling the anger and bitterness she’d always heard in his voice when he spoke of his ex-wife with this mellow-sounding man on the phone. “That was nice.”

  “Don’t sound surprised,” he said with a hint of teasing. “Sometimes I can be nice.”

  “You’re always nice to me. It’s just that...”

  “I know, just not about Lindsey. But Mom was really hurting today.” She heard him sigh. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my own pain since Beka’s kidnapping that I haven’t really stopped to think about how she and Dad have been feeling. Mom said those books were for Beka, but I could tell when I was looking at them that she really loved Lindsey once. Like the daughter she never had. Mom always thought Lindsey’s grandfather’s death changed her.”

  Crystal closed her eyes and rested her head against the couch. “Do you?”

  “I do now.” He sounded bemused by the fact. “Looking through those pages of her life, you can see she became a different person after he died.”

  “That’s really sad.”

  “Especially because that’s the last thing he would have ever wanted. He loved her so much.”

  “But you know”—Crystal didn’t know why it was so important to her to point this out, but she had to—“she had a choice. She didn’t have to leave you and turn to drugs. And especially, she didn’t have to take Beka from you.” She could hear the anger in her voice at the end.

  Silence. She clutched the phone and held her breath.

  “You’re right,” Jeremy finally said, slowly. “It was her choice. But once she made the decision to leave God and all she knew was right, even though she tried sometimes, I think she couldn’t ever find her way back.”

  Crystal’s eyes stung and she pushed to her feet. Her throat ached too much to talk. Was he speaking her own epitaph? Had she let Cami’s death change her to the point of no return?

  “Thanks for listening. I’m going to go make some notes for my interview.”

  “Hey.” She fin
ally found her voice. “I’m so glad you’re able to forgive Lindsey.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a process. I’m not quite there yet.”

  “But you’re on the road to peace. And that makes me happy.”

  “Thanks.” He paused. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just working through some things. But I will be.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “Not yet. But thanks.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you go, then. Talk to you soon.”

  “Take care,” she said softly and broke the connection.

  She sat on the couch staring off into space, thinking about their conversation.

  Elyse found her there a few minutes later. “Hey. Everything all right?”

  Crystal jerked her head up to meet her sister’s concerned gaze. “Huh? Oh, I’m wiped out.”

  Elyse collapsed on the couch beside her. “Me, too. The kitchen is clean. Perfect. You could eat off the floor.”

  “I’ll stick to eating at the table if it’s all the same with you.”

  Elyse groaned and tossed a sofa pillow at her. “Very funny.”

  “Hey, at least I still have my sense of humor.” Crystal threw the pillow back.

  “Such as it is,” Elyse murmured, a dimple peeking in her cheek. She pushed to her feet. “I’m going home to bed.”

  “Sure, insult me and leave.” Crystal stood and hugged Elyse.

  “Better than insulting you and staying.” Elyse gave her a saucy grin and a kiss on the cheek.

  Later as Crystal made her bed on the couch, she thought about Jeremy’s words that had hit her so hard. That once Lindsey had turned completely away from God, she couldn’t find her way back.

  Crystal shuddered. “Please don’t let that be me,” she whispered to the empty room, not sure her plea went any farther than the ceiling.

  CHAPTER 18

  “So I’m asking...” Jeremy closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them. “I’m begging you, if you have any information about my daughter, please call.”

  He stared at his own face on the TV screen. Maybe he should have shown more emotion. But he’d been so nervous about saying the right thing that he hadn’t allowed himself to feel when he was recording the interview yesterday. As the camera broke away to show the anchorwoman, who was giving the phone number and reiterating the plea, he looked around the crowded McCord living room.

  From across the room, sitting at the table with two phones on it, Crystal nodded and smiled. Beside her, Elyse stared at the phone in front of her as if it were going to open up and take a bite out of her hand. Jack and another deputy stood behind them, wearing headphones the phone company had provided, each monitoring a line.

  Jeremy had wanted to take first turn at the phone, but the experts had advised against it. He was “too close” to the situation. Plus, a woman’s voice apparently would put a caller at ease faster. So he’d wait and watch.

  His mom and dad stood from where they were sitting on the couch and came around to hug him. “You did a great job,” his dad said, his voice husky with emotion.

  On the TV screen, the anchorwoman was repeating the phone number.

  The phone bleated out the special ring that came with the unique numbers the phone company had assigned for the search center.

  His mother squeezed his arm.

  Crystal answered the phone with the preplanned spiel. Then she waited and listened, pen poised above the notepad in front of her. The whole room seemed to be holding its collective breath.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No, sir, she’s been gone for several months.”

  “This is a line set up for people who have information about Beka.”

  The other phone rang and Jeremy felt his mother’s fingernails cutting into the flesh of his arm.

  “Thank you anyway for calling,” Crystal said and hung up, just as Elyse picked up the phone.

  His gaze locked with Crystal’s. She shook her head. “An older man who wanted to help search for her,” she whispered. “He thought you said she’s been missing since just last night.”

  Beside him, his mother released her grip on his arm and covered her mouth with a trembling hand. His dad put his arm around her. “We’re going to step out on the porch and pray,” he said to Jeremy. “Let us know if there’s any news.”

  Jeremy pulled his gaze away from where Elyse was scribbling on a piece of paper with the deputy looking over her shoulder. “I will.”

  When Elyse hung up, she turned to him. “That caller said her neighbor has a little girl that looks just like the picture you showed. But the little girl was living next door when the neighbor moved in two years ago.”

  He wondered which was worse—these calls or the phone not ringing at all? Two minutes later, he knew. When the high-pitched b-r-r-r-ing broke the interminable silence, his heart leaped with hope.

  For the next hour, the calls came steady. Then they slowed to a trickle. None of them were real information about Beka.

  At eleven, Blair, the anchorwoman from Channel Six, called his cell phone for an update.

  He stepped out onto the porch to take the call. “No. No leads,” he said softly, glancing toward his parents, who were sitting in the double rocker.

  “Don’t be discouraged.” Her voice was thick with sympathy. “We’ll play the interview again at noon. And at six. And at ten. So you should have another rush of calls after each airing.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I just got special permission to bring a crew out to tape the action at the search center for Get Real, Shady Grove in the morning if you haven’t gotten a solid lead by midnight. That will give us a chance to run the phone number on the air one more time.”

  He knew she felt guilty about not helping him when Lindsey first took Beka, but he didn’t care what her motives were. “That would be great. I’ll let you know if we get a usable tip.”

  He looked up to see Rachel Westwood and Victoria Worthington coming up the steps. “Reinforcements have arrived.” Rachel gave him a side hug. “We’re next up to man the phone lines.”

  His mom and dad walked over, as behind Rachel, Allie Montgomery and Lark Murray held up trays of food. “And we’re the lunch brigade,” Allie added.

  “Oh, this is so sweet of you,” Jeremy’s mom said.

  Allie smiled. “We can’t take credit. Everyone met at the church building and put the trays together. We just got to be the ones who brought them.” She balanced her tray and hugged his mom. “Everyone’s praying.”

  “I know they are. Thank you.”

  Jeremy looked at his mom as she chatted with the women. A year ago, she’d looked young for fifty. But the trauma of losing Beka had aged her, worry lines etched deep. He looked behind her at his dad and realized that he, too, had changed in the last several months. Yet they were willing to forgive Lindsey. He was humbled by their Christlike attitudes all over again.