The Wanting Heart

by Rionna Morgan

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted you to have a chance to get better.” He patted her hand.

  Tactical error, huge mistake. He knew it the moment the unintentionally condescending words and placating gesture were out.

  “Don’t treat me like a little kid.” Kate grabbed her hand back. “You lied to me. Why? Don’t you think I’m capable of thinking for myself? Hiring a bodyguard for my mom is something you should have let me help you do. I know her better than anyone.” Kate couldn’t prevent the anger, hurt and sense of betrayal from building. “But that. Keeping that from me in order to protect me? That was stupid. Why?” All the feelings she had when he’d left her and Nichole standing at the side of her mother’s hospital bed came rushing back. “Damn you, Blake. Why do you always have to make me feel this way?” Kate damned herself for the furious, hot tears streaking down her face.

  Blake looked at her with shocked eyes.

  “Why?” Kate yelled. “Do you think I’m stupid? Or weak?” A thought occurred to her and she spit the condemnation at him. “Oh, wait. Maybe you think I’m too fragile to handle things I might need to know in order to protect myself!” Fury rushed through her like an ice flow. “Is that it? You thought I was too fragile to survive knowing what he wants to do to me now?”

  Bleakly, Blake shook his head.

  “Answer me, damn it! Is it?” Kate walked to the door and ripped it open. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t need you. I don’t need you to think I’m stupid or weak or helpless at all. I’m leaving.”

  “Kate, wait. Let’s talk about this.” Blake walked toward her.

  “Now. You want to talk about it now. No way. I’m through talking to you.” Kate turned to Nichole. “Can you take me back to the house?”

  “Okay.” Nichole glanced apologetically at Blake. It wasn’t just Blake who’d lied. They all had.

  Maybe later they could tell her.

  Maybe.

  Nichole glanced coming? at Ranae who grabbed Erin’s arm and dragged her after Kate, too.

  • • •

  A short time later, tears ran down Kate’s cheeks as she struggled with the zipper on her over-stuffed suitcase. She wanted to just throw all her clothes away. She’d never wear the Wranglers or the button up shirts or her boots again. But she couldn’t bring herself to put her rodeo clothes in the trash. They were the only link she had left to the past she’d loved.

  The damning thoughts piled up while she worked. Why did Blake lie to me? Why did he have to do this now? We were doing so good …

  The tears she cried as she finished packing were filled with anger, sorrow, and fear.

  It was long past sunset when she struggled across the yard to her car. She jammed the suitcase into the trunk, not caring that she smashed the boxes already in there. Praying that the trunk stayed closed, she banged it shut. It still seemed odd to her to have a car and not her truck and horse trailer. But after Lady Bug, she sold both and bought the seen-better-days heap. The clutch was touchy, the passenger side window wouldn’t roll down and the only door that would open from the inside was the driver’s. Still, the engine was new so she figured she should have no problem making the trip.

  “Here’s the last of the boxes, Kate,” Nichole said. She held out a box that had rodeo stuff printed in black marker across the top.

  “Where do you want these?” Ranae asked, coming out with a similar box.

  “In the back seat.” Kate motioned.

  Erin put hers in last and said, “I’m sorry, Kate. We didn’t want to keep those messages from you, but — ”

  “You guys knew, too?” Kate turned to face them. “Why didn’t you tell me?

  Ranae and Nichole bowed their heads, but Erin kept her eyes on Kate.

  “Before you start yelling at us about how we lied to you and kept you from making decisions, you need to know something. You didn’t see you after that sonofabitch steamrollered you, but we did. We saw the blood and the tears and the damn cuts on your body. I don’t know how you made it through the night without breaking, but you did.” Erin swiped the tears from her face. “There was no damn way in hell we were going to tell you about any note that night. And we couldn’t tell you about the one on graduation day and ruin it for you. No way. I’d have punched anybody who ruined that day for you, especially that bastard Luke, but he wasn’t within reach. So I don’t care how mad you get.” Erin waved her hand in the air. “We had a reason for what we did and if I had to do it over, I’d do the same damn thing! Because sometimes being a friend means you protect. And we were protecting you.”

  Kate eyed her friends. She understood their desire to protect her from … him, but not the fact that all they’d done was delay telling her what she really needed to know.

  Ranae stepped a little closer to Kate. “I’m sorry you’re mad at us. But none of us wanted you to hurt more than you already were.”

  Nichole nodded. “We don’t want you to hurt now.”

  “Why?” Kate asked. “In all this time, why didn’t one of you say something instead of hovering all the time. I’m the one who was assaulted, not you. I’m the one who has to live with that reality. It doesn’t matter how close we were, or what you felt or what you wanted to do for me. Luke didn’t try to kill you, he tried to murder me. I needed to know.”

  “Not if it would have kept you in hiding or from getting your courage back or even just healing,” Erin stated flatly.

  Nichole smiled tentatively. “We just wanted you back,” she said. “We wanted to hear you laugh and joke again.” She looked away. “And there was so much time between notes that we hoped — ”

  Kate interrupted her. “So none of you think I’m weak, stupid or helpless?”

  “Hell, no. I know you’re not,” Erin said.

  “We love you,” Ranae said.

  “Well, I wonder what Blake’s reason is then,” Kate said more to herself than to the girls.

  Erin kicked at the dirt in the driveway.

  Kate opened the car door. “Well, I guess I’ll go.”

  “Kate … ” Ranae put a hand on her arm.

  Kate looked at her.

  “Don’t you think it would be better if … ” She hesitated. “If someone traveled with you? Just in case?”

  “Yeah,” Nichole said. “Don’t you want to at least wait until morning?”

  “No.” Kate shook her head. “I need to get out of here. I need a new start.” Tears streamed down her face again. “Oregon is as good a place as any.”

  “What if Luke follows you, or is already there somewhere waiting for you?” Erin asked bluntly.

  “Then I guess I’ll deal with it, won’t I?” Kate told her stubbornly.

  “But … ”

  Again Kate shook her head vehemently. “No,” she said. “No more ‘buts.’ It’s time for me to go.”

  In the dim haze of the yard light Kate looked at the girls. Her friends. She tried to memorize a small bit of each one. How they looked and what they wore. Nae’s smile, her loving eyes. Nichole’s hair, the way it swayed in the breeze. Erin’s laugh, how it always made her feel good. Kate wished that this day had never come. She wished for the days they’d already lived. Maybe they would’ve taken more time to cherish them. Maybe they would’ve laughed a little more. Maybe their trips for ice cream and their weekends out would’ve lasted a little longer. They had so many memories and so many good times and so much love. But, this is how I’ll remember them, Kate thought. In the darkness of midnight, in the golden light they’re here with me, one last time.

  She slid into the car.

  “I love you,” she mouthed.

  “We love you, too.” Huddling together, the girls wrapped their arms around each other.

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “Shit.
This is too much shit,” Erin said.

  “Knock it off.” Ranae elbowed Erin.

  Kate laughed. Heart aching, she closed the car door and switched over the motor. Feeling like her friends were slipping into the past, she drove away from Ranae’s house.

  • • •

  Pulling into the parking lot of Waldman Stables, Kate turned off the ignition. She didn’t have to get out of the car. She didn’t need to go to the practice pen to remember why she came. She was really here so she could find a way to say good-bye. The real places, the ones in Kansas, Montana and Wyoming, the rodeo grounds, Kate’s heart was not quite strong enough to travel to. She did remember though. She remembered when she was in Miles City, Montana. The sky had poured and a little curly haired girl with sticky fingers had given her some watermelon cotton candy. That night after the rodeo Kate met an old rodeo clown who was retiring. He was at his last rodeo.

  “You can just call me Willie.” His dark eyes shining with humor as he held out his hand. “My mom wanted me to be a doctor. Thought Wilson sounded like one, nah. I think Willie sounds like a cowboy, so that’s me.”

  Willie, dressed in regular clothes looked like a cowboy. His hands were gnarled with hard work and courage and just a little bit of white paint still hung to his cheek. All the lives of all the cowboys he’d saved were felt by each sore muscle. When he found out that Kate had driven all the miles on her own over the last year and a half, he had called her bronc-y, gutsy and beautiful. “A man couldn’t ask for any more than that, any cowboy’s dream.” He’d added with a smile that made more lines on his sun worn face.

  Willie the rodeo clown had the life that Kate dreamed of. Chasing cans and the white lines on the highway were those dreams. She loved her horse. The sleepy miles and the cold cans of pork n’ beans were really just a small part of all she had wanted. There was peace there and just a little magic.

  What was that poem from college — “A Dream Deferred”? That’s what she felt like — the sorrow of feeling all the moments when life’s dreams went still.

  “Well, I’d better get on the road,” Kate said to her empty car and turned the key.

  The white lines didn’t look the same to her from behind the wheel of a car, but they were what she had to hold onto, so she embraced them.

  CHAPTER 14

  “She’s gone.” Sleepy-eyed, Ranae viewed Blake through the porch screen.

  “What do you mean, ‘she’s gone’?” Without an invitation, Blake opened the door.

  “Come in,” Ranae said as pointedly as her groggy mind would let her. “She left last night.”

  “What! Damn it. I knew I should’ve come over here right away. I stayed to finish at the police station and then figured she’d need some time too cool off.”

  “She’ll have plenty of time now,” Ranae mumbled.

  In response, Blake only scanned the neatly arranged couch, coffee table and lamp stands. There wasn’t a shred of Kate anywhere. Damn. He slumped onto the end of the couch and buried his face in a convenient throw pillow. God, I can smell her, he swore. Damning his pride, he let the pain come. So this was what being left behind felt like. Empty, alone, lonely. No wonder Kate was still wary around him even after all this time. God, he’d blown it!

  “Blake?” Ranae stood at the edge of his vision.

  “Yeah.” He looked up.

  If Ranae hadn’t been so scared, she might have noted the angry desperation in Blake’s eyes. As it was, she didn’t notice. “Look. I found this on the step.” Hands trembling, Ranae showed him the note.

  Where are you going, Kate? Don’t worry, I’ll find you! was scrawled in shaky lettering.

  “Damn. I’d better call Barrs.”

  “Isn’t there anything the rest of us can do?” Fear made Ranae’s voice squeak.

  “Stay out of the bastard’s way so he doesn’t take Kate’s leaving out on you,” Blake told her. Then swore. “Ah, hell, I really needed that extra week to make this work.” He pulled on his hat. “You find Erin and Nichole. Then you stay in touch. No telling what he’ll do when he realizes he can’t find Kate.”

  • • •

  When Kate reached the Oregon border, she began to see evidence of what her new life would look like.

  The long, hot drive across the desert had been helpful at calming her down. The first eight hundred or so miles she’d felt like turning around. The sense of loneliness and loss had been acute. But as Oregon got closer and closer she resigned herself to the decision she’d made. Also, besides seeing her mom, she had her new life as a teacher to look forward to — of learning with her students. True, she didn’t have a teaching position yet, but it would come.

  Beside the road a lake of soft, placid blue stretched out before a mountain peak still capped with snow. The water looked inviting. She saw a few people fishing. Others were enjoying the bike path that edged the lake. Slowing the car and rolling down her window, Kate felt a soft breeze sift through her hair. Ducks called and children laughed. She could smell the musty, sweet smell of too much rain and not enough sun. But the sun was out today. Kate smiled, taking it as a sign of good fortune.

  Another sign that her luck was holding happened when she found her mother’s house. The road that led to it wound this way and that, meandering through dense forest with dozens of tiny go-nowhere offshoots. Located just north of Cottage Grove, Oregon, the route had seemed easy on paper, but the actual act of getting there was much more difficult — and often misleading if you didn’t know exactly where you were going. She doubted very much that a GPS system had been invented that could locate it, even if satellite reception had been good. Which it wasn’t.

  Pulling into the drive beneath a towering walnut tree, Kate hurried to shift the car into first, pull the emergency brake and jump out. She smiled as she trotted to the front steps of a wood cottage snuggled into a protective hollow of trees. The tree limbs seemed to reach their welcoming arms around the house and out to Kate. Deep in the forest green blanketed everything around the large, arched entryway.

  “Oh, Mama,” Kate whispered. “It’s beautiful. I should’ve known you’d pick somewhere like this.”

  Kate’s foot was inches away from the front stoop, when she heard a voice behind her.

  “Excuse me. Can I help you?”

  Kate turned and saw a woman striding toward her. The first thing Kate noticed was her hair. The long, streaming curls of golden blonde ended at her waist. Her eyes were the next thing Kate focused on. They were a deep, searching blue. Kate felt like every inch of her was picked apart and evaluated in the span of a few seconds.

  “I — my — mom. My mom lives here.” Kate stood firm. Only chastising herself a little for stumbling over her tongue.

  “That would make you?”

  “Her daughter. I’m Kate.”

  “Of course you are. I would have recognized you anywhere.” The woman’s face changed from deep concentration to welcome. “I just had to hear you say it.” She held out her hand. “I’m Sally Knox.”

  “You’re my mom’s neighbor.” Kate shook her hand and was not at all surprised to feel the healthy grip.

  “Yup.”

  “How far away do you live?” Kate asked as she looked through the trees to see if she could see another house; she couldn’t.

  “Not far. I saw you pull in.” Sally flicked her hair back from her face. She didn’t mention the network of surveillance cameras that had helped her do exactly that. “We weren’t expecting you until next Saturday or Sunday. Well, I guess, I should say, I wasn’t. Maggie, now she had different ideas. She said you’d be coming today.” Blake had called Sally earlier that day, but she didn’t know how much she was supposed to let on, so she left it at that. “We’ve been cooking up a storm.”

  “That’s my mom,” Kate said, studying Sally. She wondered what it would be
like to be a bodyguard in secret.

  “Why don’t you go on in? Last time I checked she was taking a nap.”

  Kate nodded and crossed the porch. The wooden door slowly swished against the carpet as Kate, stepped inside. In her imagination the house she was stepping into wasn’t this Hansel and Gretel cottage. It was the home she’d lived in before her mom got sick. If Kate tried, if she closed her eyes, she could smell the warm scent of bread baking and hear her mom singing somewhere in the house.

  This house, however, was cool and quiet. A stream of light from the late evening sun glanced through the windows. Kate stood a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness.

  “Mama, where are you?” she called softly.

  “Dolly, is that you? Are you here?” The soft response came from the living area.

  “Yeah. Mom. It’s me.” Kate crossed the distance and knelt on the carpet before the couch. “I finally made it.”

  Reaching out a hand, Maggie felt blindly for Kate’s face. Her eyes, like so many other bits of her body, had stopped working. She did all of her “seeing” now with the hands that had once had been worn with calluses and cracked by the alcohol she used as a nurse. The calluses were gone now, smoothed down by time and the medicated lotion the doctor had given her. Tears slipped down Maggie’s face as she allowed herself to see her little girl.

  “I’m sorry about Lady Bug. I wanted to come back and be there with you.”

  “I know, Mama. But the girls were there. That made it easier.”

  Maggie’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “I never meant to leave you. I always wanted to stay, to help you study, to rejoice with you when you won. I wanted to stay.”

  “I know.” Kate’s own tears flooded her cheeks.

  “We’re together now. I know that it won’t be the same, but maybe it’ll be better. I can be home all the time and you won’t have to wonder if I’ll work long hours. I’ll just be here and you can be with me anytime.”