by Liz Isaacson
She looked at the rumpled sheets, pausing for a moment. How could she fix things between them? She’d apologized. She’d told him that Julia wouldn’t say anything if someone came to ask about their marriage.
Nothing was good enough for him.
With the poisonous thought in her mind, she continued into the massive closet and got a bag out of one of the drawers in the shelving unit. She was just going for a few days, and Mal packed quickly.
“You’re leaving?”
She spun around, her heartbeat shooting through her whole body.
Skyler stood there, wearing his running clothes and a frown on his sweaty face.
“I’m just going to get my things out of storage,” she said. “Tomorrow. After I finish at the bakery.”
“When will you be back?” he asked.
“Monday,” she said, swallowing. “I have to work on Tuesday.”
He nodded, though he still didn’t look happy. At all. “Okay.”
“Is there anything you need from the apartment?”
“Nope.” He walked away, peeling off his shirt and tossing it on the bathroom floor. Mal scampered out of the closet and bathroom so he could shower. She felt like she’d just made the biggest escape of her life, and she hated that.
But the Lord hadn’t given her any ideas about what to do, and Skyler didn’t seem keen to forgive her. Nothing bad had even happened yet, but Mal understood why he was so agitated. She hated walking on eggshells all the time, and that was how this situation was.
The immigration agents could show up at any time, and Mal felt like she was living in a glass box. One wrong move, and everything would shatter.
The following day, Mal made churros for hours, baked and decorated a cake for someone’s fiftieth anniversary, and got two dozen loaves of honey wheat bread rising before her shift ended at the bakery.
“Fifty years,” Heidi said, gazing down at the cake. “That’s an amazing thing.”
“How long have you and Frank been married?” Mal asked, looking at the older woman.
“Thirty-nine years,” she said fondly. “We’ve been through a lot, that man and I.”
“That’s amazing, Heidi,” Mal said. “I might not even make it to my first anniversary.” The moment the words left her mouth, Mal regretted them.
Heidi’s gaze whipped to hers. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry things aren’t going well. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Mal pressed her lips together and shook her head. “What did you do…I mean, surely you and Frank didn’t agree about everything.”
“Heavens, no,” she said with a smile. “There were times when I wondered what I’d gotten myself into. Frank could be a very hard man to crack, that was for sure. He’s a cowboy through and through, and it took me years to figure out how he communicated.”
Mal nodded like she understood, but she didn’t.
“But I love him,” Heidi said. “We loved each other, and that always seemed to be enough to get us to forgive, open up, try again.” She patted Mal’s hand, but didn’t tell her that everything would be okay.
Mal sure did appreciate that. She knew better than most that sometimes things weren’t okay. But aren’t they? she wondered. Aren’t they really, in the end?
It seemed to her that yes, even if something was hard to go through, on the other side, things did turn out okay.
She drew in a deep breath. “Okay, well, I better hit the road. I have a lunch date with an old friend in Amarillo.”
“Okay,” Heidi said, turning toward her and taking her into a hug. Mal took a deep breath of her scent, thinking her own mother would smell and feel very much like this. She loved Heidi in that moment, and she couldn’t help thinking of Skyler’s mother too. Penny was a hugger, and she’d never held back with Mal.
“Please be safe,” Heidi said. “See you Tuesday.”
Mal couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat. So she just nodded and headed out to her car, more than a little excited she didn’t have to exist on pins and needles for the next few days. She met Karla at the Mexican restaurant, and Mal couldn’t help laughing as she hugged the friend she hadn’t seen in so long.
“Girl, you look good,” Karla said, stepping back and looking at Mal. “I guess married life agrees with you.”
“I guess so.” Mal didn’t want to say anything bad about Skyler. The man hadn’t done anything wrong, and he had every right to be upset with her. But she’d told him once that she trusted him, and she would’ve supported him had he decided the right thing to do was to tell his brothers about their fake marriage.
The familiar feeling of being Skyler’s wanna-be wife coursed through her, and she almost started crying. She worked hard to keep the smile on her face, tuck her hair, and say, “I haven’t been here for so long, and I’m starving.”
“Let’s go get you that smothered enchilada then,” Karla said, linking her arm with Mal’s. They laughed again, and though Mal’s heart pinched with every beat it took, she managed to make it through lunch as if she was the happiest Walker in the world.
By the time she got to the apartment where she’d only lived for a couple of months, pure exhaustion filled her. She had been up for over twelve hours, most of them emotional and turbulent.
The apartment felt hollow to her, but the door locked behind her, and she saw that Skyler hadn’t brought the furniture at all.
“You bought new stuff,” she reminded herself. Everything looked like it had the day they left, if not for some footprints in the carpet from the movers. Her room sat to the left of the kitchen, but she went right, where Skyler’s suite had been.
She’d always thought he had a ton of charm and charisma, and without him here, the apartment just felt like a box with different rooms in it. His bedroom sat undisturbed, though there were no family pictures on his bureau anymore. The bed stood there, made and ready for someone to sleep in it.
Part of Mal wanted to, because then she could smell her husband on the sheets. Tears pricked her eyes. Had she really done something so terrible that she couldn’t make up for it?
She turned away from the bedroom she’d never entered and went to the one where she’d slept. It too felt like a foreign land, and Mal could only look around at the bed, desk, and dresser she’d used.
Sighing, she took her bag back into the living room and set about making tea. She’d stopped at the grocery store before coming to the apartment, and she ended up heating the water in the microwave, because there was no teapot in the apartment anymore.
With her paper cup of tea, she sank onto the couch and sipped it, letting her mind move wherever it wanted to.
The thought that she should move back to Amarillo and go back to school entered her mind.
“I can’t do that,” she said aloud to the apartment. “I have an amazing job in Three Rivers.”
And she realized that the thing tying her to Three Rivers was her job at the bakery—and not her husband.
She set the tea on the coffee table, curled into a ball on the couch, and cried.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At church on Sunday, Skyler sat by himself through the sermon. He didn’t hear a word of it, as his mind had completely been taken over with the idea of calling Mal. She’d left Friday morning for work at two-thirty, same as she always did.
She hadn’t come home after her shift, and while Skyler had known she wouldn’t, it had still stolen his breath and stung his stomach. Sleeping in the huge ranch house alone for the past two nights had been torture.
He was lonelier than he’d ever been, even surrounded by family. In Amarillo, he’d been sure to surround himself with friends, but they hadn’t been the same as family.
And now his family wasn’t the same as Mal.
He had no idea what that meant, and he had no idea why he couldn’t just apologize to her. Tell her she was the sweetest, smartest, most spiritual woman he’d ever met, and he was just sorry.
Then maybe everything could go back to normal
.
His phone buzzed while the pastor was still going strong, and Skyler’s hopes soared. Perhaps Mal would reach out to him. But the text was from Momma, and she said, Dinner at our house tonight. Everyone is invited.
He wasn’t sure why she hadn’t put the message on the family text string, where Skyler may or may not have seen it in time to go. But this message had come straight to him.
He didn’t want to go, not without Mal. He suddenly understood how Micah had been feeling for all these months, though he’d started bringing Ophelia to family functions as they grew more and more serious.
“Be courageous this week,” the pastor said. “I leave God’s blessings with you. Go forth and live with His example in your countenance.”
Skyler looked up at the pastor’s words. Be courageous.
How? he wondered.
Go to Momma’s. That was one courageous thing he could do. Tell the whole truth. To everyone.
That was another.
Fear gripped his insides with an icy fist, but Skyler couldn’t shake the thoughts no matter how hard he tried. No matter how long he rode that afternoon. No matter how long he hesitated to leave to get to Momma’s on time.
By the time he joined his truck to the fray of them already outside his mother’s house, he knew he was the last one to arrive. Dread filled him with every step, and someone opened the door before he’d even reached the bottom step. Noise spilled out of the house, and Skyler met his mother’s eye as he climbed the steps and moved into her embrace.
“Oh, my son,” she said as she held him tightly. “What is going on with you?” She stepped back and held him at arm’s length, studying him.
Skyler just let her look, and he didn’t try to mask the misery streaming through him. “I dunno, Momma.”
“Come in,” she said. “Let’s you and I have a talk with Daddy.”
“I don’t want to do that, Momma.” Skyler went inside with her anyway, and it seemed like the whole family had been primed for his arrival. They all seemed to pause and look his direction, and Skyler sure didn’t like that.
Momma closed the door behind him and linked her arm through his. They faced the crowd together, and Daddy poked his head out of the kitchen to see what the silence was all about. “Oh, Sky’s home.”
Home.
Skyler’s emotions soared, and he looked around at these people who made anywhere they were the meaning of home. He did love them, and that they always accepted him, no matter what he’d done.
He still didn’t want to tell them the real reason he’d married Mal.
Be courageous.
Skyler cleared his throat. “Mal went back to Amarillo.”
“Permanently?” Marcy asked, swaying with her newborn son in her arms.
“I don’t honestly know,” Skyler said, dropping his eyes to the floor. He took in their sandals and cowboy boots, shame moving through him powerfully. “She said she’d be back tomorrow, but I have my doubts.”
“She has a job at the bakery,” someone said.
“Yeah,” Skyler said. He looked up again, the words pushing against his throat. “I offered to marry her when she got notice that she was going to be deported for not renewing her green card appropriately.” He swallowed. “We’d been friends for a couple of years, and I’ve always liked her.”
No one said anything, and Skyler almost wished he’d kept the secret. But he shrugged, thinking of how great of a session he’d have with Dr. Haskell that week. “Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with her.”
People moved in front of him, and he watched them all reach for each other. Tripp linked his hand with Ivory and looked at her, something meaningful passing between them.
“She fell in love with me,” Skyler said, wiping his nose. “But now…I don’t know.”
“Well, what happened?” Wyatt asked.
Skyler didn’t see how he could explain without giving details about everything—including the situation in Dallas. He looked at his father, who nodded one time.
“Well, it’s a long story,” Skyler said. “But I guess I can tell it over dinner.”
“Yes, let’s eat,” Momma said. “Everyone will feel better then.”
“You guys all know Marcy and I got married so she could inherit Payne’s, right?” Wyatt took a few steps and came to stand right beside Skyler. “Right? It was fake in the beginning too.”
“I married Ivory so her ex-husband wouldn’t get custody of Oliver,” Tripp said. He edged past people and nodded to Skyler.
“Everyone knows I married Callie to save the Shining Star,” Liam said.
“And that I married Evelyn to save her matchmaking business,” Rhett said.
Momma started crying, and Daddy looked like someone had just told him he’d have to sell all of his miniature horses and go back to Grand Cayman.
“Fine,” Jeremiah said, and he sounded pretty upset. “I asked Whitney to marry me to prove to the rest of y’all that I wasn’t broken.” He gazed at his wife, who simply looked back at him. “And somehow, she said yes.”
Skyler couldn’t believe what was happening. He’d known some of his brothers’ marriages had come out of nowhere, but he hadn’t dreamed they’d all started out fake.
“For the record,” Micah said. “I have not married anyone, real or fake.”
Skyler blinked at his youngest brother and started laughing. That got everyone chuckling, and then laughing, and the tension in the farmhouse broke. He stepped away from Tripp and Wyatt and over to Micah, who had brought Ophelia to dinner.
“Bet you’re wondering what you got into, aren’t you?” he asked.
Ophelia too looked like she’d just been struck with a two-by-four. “A little, yeah.” She looked around at everyone and how they went right back to their conversations or tending to their kids. “You guys seem so normal. Happy. And they obviously all love each other.”
“Yeah,” Micah said, also surveying the lot of Walkers crowded into the space. “They do. We do. We’re not perfect, but we do love each other.”
His words struck something inside Skyler, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of them before.
No, he wasn’t perfect, he knew that.
But Mal wasn’t either, and it wasn’t fair of him to expect her to be. So she’d made a mistake in telling her sister about their fake marriage. But she hadn’t done it to hurt him. She’d trusted him, and he hadn’t done the same for her.
Guilt filled him even as Daddy said, “All right, boys, settle down. It’s time to say grace.”
Skyler swiped his cowboy hat from his head as all of his brothers did too.
“Dear Lord,” Daddy started. “I honestly don’t even know what to say. Bless these boys that they’ll be the kind of men Momma and I raised them to be. Thank You for the food. Amen.”
A beat of silence passed, and then, as if the brothers had practiced it, they all burst out laughing again.
“Daddy, come on,” someone said.
“We’re good men,” another added.
“That’s debatable,” Daddy said. “Fake marriages, boys? Really?”
“Oh, Gideon, it’s kind of sweet.” Momma set a huge basket of freshly baked rolls on the table. “Now, let’s all try to listen as Skyler tells us what happened with Mal and how he plans to get her back.”
“Save me,” he muttered to Micah, but his brother just gestured for him to go first into the dining room.
Twenty-four hours later, Skyler sat at the kitchen table in his new house, dinner on the table.
Mal had not come home.
No, he had not spoken to her. He hadn’t told her he’d gotten her favorite food from her favorite restaurant in town—a huge plate of pork nachos from the diner.
But she’d said she’d be home on Monday night, and she wasn’t.
“And she didn’t say she’d be home,” Skyler said, finally getting up and taking the plate of now-soggy chips with him. He dumped them into the garbage can, at an utter loss as to what t
o do now.
Call her?
Give her the space she needed?
Send a text of apology?
He honestly felt like getting in his truck and driving until he couldn’t keep his eyes open for another minute. Then he’d find a hotel and sleep until he had to face reality again. He wanted to run. He wanted to hide.
He still felt drained from last night’s dinner at his parents’ place, especially after revealing everything that had happened in Dallas. But no one had judged him. No one had said he should’ve been able to see through Shayla’s schemes. No one suggested that he should’ve done anything differently than he’d done.
Only Daddy had said, “We’ll always love you boys. No matter what, okay? You don’t need to be afraid that you’ll lose us, ever.”
Momma had reached over and threaded her fingers through Daddy’s, and just nodded.
Skyler had felt more connected to his parents and brothers than ever before.
But nothing mattered if he didn’t have Mal.
He knew the way to Amarillo. Maybe she’d just needed a few days away, but it hurt that she needed that time away from him.
Swiping his keys from the drawer, he left the house in a new kind of hurry. But he wasn’t going to drive in any direction until he ran out of gas or couldn’t stay awake.
No, he was going to get his wife back.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tripp watched Ivory pace with her phone pressed to her ear. She couldn’t seem to stand still and have a conversation on the phone, something he actually adored about her.
But not when the person on the other end of that phone call was her mother.
Ivory had a very strained relationship with her parents. She hadn’t told them about their marriage, and the only reason they were talking today was because Ivory had decided she had to do something about the distance between them.