Almost A Family

by Marilyn Tracy

  The same hunch that made him come to Almost rather than pitch the boys’ letter in the trash can or call to see what their mom had to say played over his skin, making his brain feel slightly tight within his skull. It was also the same hunch that tickled his backbone when he’d rounded the corner of the barn, only to find an empty barnyard and a semilush sorghum field.

  Cold... dray... horse.

  No matter how many times he’d heard the words, Steve couldn’t make sense of them. It didn’t help that the boys were equally puzzled.

  “Is there such a thing as a dray horse?” one of them had asked. Jason, he thought. The toughest one of the three.

  Texas Ranger Steve Kessler didn’t have the foggiest idea what a dray horse might be, though he had a dim notion that the word had something to do with labor. But, like the boys, he couldn’t see what a dray horse might mean to a nearly dead guy.

  The door to the kitchen opened and Taylor stood silhouetted in the light flooding in the kitchen windows.

  Steve couldn’t see her eyes and the shadows from the hall hid her expression. She held the door open with her arm outstretched, and her legs were slightly parted. Power seemed to exude from her entire body, an illusion augmented by the light creating an aura behind her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, and stepped forward into the light.

  I’m toast, Steve thought, but aloud he croaked, “Fine. We’re doing just fine.”

  The third triplet he was interviewing, not the brazen one, not the one with the labored breathing—Josh?—turned and beamed at his mother.

  “He’s gotta stay, Mom. To find the guy we saw dying. He practically believes us now—” Steve felt a stab of guilt in the boy’s innocent acceptance of his own disbelief “—’cause he knows there could really be a bad guy out there. A killer dude. He can stay here, right?”

  Steve had to catch his lower lip with his teeth to hide a grin at the look of sheer horror on Taylor’s lovely face.

  “Not here. I can stay in a motel,” he said.

  Josh piped up in triumph, “There aren’t any motels in Almost. You’d have to go all the way back to Lubbock. Or Levelland.”

  Steve looked at Taylor. Taylor looked at a crocheted doily on a pillow.

  “Of course, you’re welcome to camp here,” she said.

  Southern hospitality was never more grudgingly offered, he thought. “Thanks. I accept.”

  As Josh whooped a hooray, Steve wondered what kind of fool he was to take her up on her less-than-alacritous offer. Kids, a marrying kind of woman, a nearly dead guy who disappeared and a whopping matchmaking effort... why was he staying?

  Maybe because he’d never met a woman who talked to pillows before.

  Or maybe it was because he wanted to stay with her.

  Chapter 5

  “He’s staying with you?”

  Taylor withheld a sigh as she wandered onto the front porch with the cordless phone. Would this afternoon never end? “It’s either with me, or holing up in your garage, Aunt Sammie Jo,” she said into the phone.

  “No, no. I think it’s wonderful, honey. The boys scarce talk about anything other than the famous, the wonderful Texas Ranger Steve Kessler. And now he’s right here in Almost. Fancy that. And staying with y’all.”

  “The boys had a little scare this afternoon—”

  “Oh, honey, I know all about that. Poor little old things. Charlie Hampton called in here come along five o’clock and told us the whole story. Seems there was some blood smeared on the tack-room door of that old barn a his and the ground appeared to be torn up from some kind of scuffle. He said he didn’t know a thing about it till he saw the boys light outta there like they were fireworks on the Fourth of July, every jack one of them screaming bloody murder. And I mean that literally.”

  “There really wasn’t any blood—the boys made that with their chemistry set.”

  Taylor’s aunt chuckled. “Now if that doesn’t sound just like that handful of yourn. Reminds me of when you, Craig and Allison were little. We never had a clue from one minute to the next what you three were going to come up with. One day it was space aliens landing in Homer Chalmers’s backyard, another it was finding dinosaur bones out at your daddy’s ranch, when you still lived out there.... Hang on a minute, honey. Well now, Mickey Sanders. How’ve you been, honey? Didn’t you just love that picture? I swear I could watch Mel Gibson just read the phone book.”

  Taylor would never have dreamed of hanging up the phone while her aunt tended to a customer. If she had to wait thirty minutes, she would stay on the line with Aunt Sammie Jo.

  The older woman was her father’s only sister and the last of the former generation of Learys. She’d been surrogate mother to her nieces and nephews, filling in when they’d driven their own mom to utter distraction. Sammie Jo, an inveterate and unrepentant ranchwoman who now ran—with her husband, Cactus Jack—the Almost Minimart, Video Store and Gas Station, served as aunt to the entire community, probably the whole tricounty area.

  And she was fighting breast cancer with every bit of gumption she possessed. She sported the most outrageous of wigs, a flamboyant, Dolly Parton look-alike, as garish on Aunt Sammie Jo as it was glamorous on the famous country-and-western singer. “It makes Cactus go plumb wild,” she’d say, batting her eyes and assuming a Dolly pose. “And you know that old prickly pear still has quite a sting in him!”

  Trying not to think about chemotherapy or the fact that one day Aunt Sammie Jo might not be there to pick up the phone and relate the latest in Almost gossip, Taylor patiently waited while Mickey Sanders and Sammie Jo discussed the merits of Mel Gibson’s anatomy.

  Several minutes later, Aunt Sammie Jo said, “I’m back, honey. That Mickey, she’ll talk the tail off a jackrabbit.” As far as Taylor had heard, Mickey had only primly said she hadn’t noticed Mel Gibson’s “cute buns” and asked how much she owed for the carton of milk and the Lubbock newspaper.

  “Speaking of jackrabbits, you better have the boys come on by the store so I can stock ’em up with things you’ll need for your fellow.”

  Taylor grinned, shaking her head. “I’m fine, Aunt Sammie Jo. I’m about as stocked as a person can get.”

  “As you say, honey, but it’s been a goodly time since you cooked for a man,” Aunt Sammie Jo remarked, blithely ignoring the dinner she and Cactus Jack had enjoyed just two nights before at Taylor’s house.

  “He can hardly eat more than three growing eleven-year-olds,” Taylor said.

  “But you can’t feed him spaghetti every night he’s there. Tell you what. I’ve got some purty chops Alva Lu’s husband took off that yearling hog they put down. Makes my mouth water just thinking about ’em. That ought to be enough to feed your brood and a stray Texas Ranger or two.”

  Taylor knew from lifelong experience there wasn’t a bit of use arguing with her aunt. And demurring was out of the question. “That’d be terrific, Aunt Sammie Jo. Thanks. I’ll send the boys over in a few minutes.”

  “You do that. They can tell me all the news of the day, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Why, Alva Lu! We were just talking about you.... You heard right. Blood and a scuffle out at Charlie Hampton’s place. Yes, ma’am. And we’ve got a real Texas Ranger right here in Almost. Staying with Taylor.... No, I’m not pulling your leg one little bit. I’m talking to her right now.... Listen, Taylor honey, I gotta go. You send those boys, you hear?”

  And with that, Sammie Jo hung up on her. Taylor tried to picture the pursy-faced Alva Lu Harrigan gathering the latest Almost news. For years, Taylor and her brother and sister had joked about tel-star, telephone, tell Alva Lu; she was a better gossip-spreader than Sammie Jo. And that was truly a feat. At the same time, Alva Lu made it a point of dropping around Sammie Jo’s with a casserole at least once a week and always seemed to have an appointment of some kind in Lubbock when Sammie Jo needed to visit her oncologist.

  Taylor knew that between Sammie Jo and Alva Lu Harrigan, whatever had—or hadn’t—h
appened out behind Charlie Hampton’s barn would be all over Almost within a matter of minutes. It was a sure bet that the rural telephone company would see nearly every one of the Almost circuits busy for the next half hour.

  And by dinnertime, the story would have grown beyond all recognition.

  “Boys!” she called, cradling the cordless phone and opening the kitchen door. Her gang pelted down the halls as if they’d been on alert for her summons.

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “What do you need, Mom?”

  “We already cleaned our rooms and took out the trash.”

  And they’d washed their faces and hands.

  They weren’t just interviewing Steve Kessler for the position of dad, they were actively soliciting his acceptance. Even to the point of outright prevarication and the judicious use of soap and water.

  “We’re going to have a long talk about what you’ve done,” she said sternly. Three cherubic faces fell. “But right now, Aunt Sammie Jo wants you to come to the store and pick up some things she’s sending over for dinner.”

  Since going to Sammie Jo’s invariably meant treats before dinner and sodas straight from the machine outside—those dispensers requiring quarters from Sammie Jo’s cash register always producing far better tasting soda pops than any six-pack of the same brand in the refrigerator—the boys’ faces brightened considerably.

  “And come straight back home without dillydallying around,” Taylor called to three retreating figures.

  She shook her head and chuckled as she reentered the kitchen and nearly ran into six feet four inches of Texas Ranger.

  “I’ll bet it’s been thirty years since I heard that word,” Steve said, his brown eyes alight with humor.

  “What word?” Taylor asked, feeling oddly breathless. The man seemed to take up every inch of space in what she’d always felt was a large kitchen.

  “Dillydallying,” he said, and grinned at her.

  A bit of the child in him came out with that smile, as did the unvoiced admission that he was from the Southwest, probably West Texas. With the grin, his features didn’t shift, making him tough cop one second and approachable man the next. But the smile lured her, made her want to lean closer to him, as if she could bask in its warmth.

  “How about shilly-shallying?” she asked.

  “Means the same thing but that your grandparents came from Ireland,” he responded without a blink of an eye.

  She chuckled. “And shimmy-shammying?”

  He laughed outright. “Something circus performers can do?”

  “Eleven-year-olds,” she said firmly. “They can do all three without a pause. All at the same time.”

  “If today was any example, I’d say they would have had the toughest hombre shaking in his boots.”

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” she said, managing to step around him without succumbing to the urge to touch him as she moved. If he’d been the boys, she would have rested a hand on a shoulder or towhead. If he’d been Doug, she would have trailed her hand across his flat stomach or maybe down the side of his muscled thigh.

  But he wasn’t the boys and he certainly wasn’t Doug.

  “Listen, if my staying here is a problem—”

  “It isn’t,” she said curtly, her back to him. Of course it was a problem. Everything about him was trouble, the least of which was that her boys had singled him out as a replacement father and had brought him to this very house for that purpose.

  “I’m going to head back to the Hampton place. I want to have a closer look.”

  “Without the boys’ expert assistance?” she asked, turning back to face him, a smile on her lips.

  He grinned and shrugged. “If I need any help, I’ll holler,” he said.

  “If I’m any judge of the folks around here, you’ll have enough help that you could have finished any investigation at least four weeks earlier.”

  A funny look crossed his face. Taylor didn’t want to ask what caused the arrested expression.

  “I gotta go,” he said, and Taylor had the feeling he didn’t mean out to the Hampton place.

  The telephone rang, and as Taylor picked up the cordless phone, he left the kitchen mumbling a farewell.

  “Oh, Carolyn... No, the boys are perfectly fine.... Who did you hear it from? How could Doc already have heard about it?”

  Steve drove the short distance to the Hampton place, a grin still resting on his lips. And as he took the left fork of the drive, he wasn’t terribly surprised to see two extra cars parked at Charlie Hampton’s house and to catch a glimpse of two older men sitting in the shade of Mr. Hampton’s front porch, watching him carefully.

  Charlie Hampton raised his cane in a salute and Steve waved back after making a circling gesture with his finger. The old man nodded and pointed at his barn, granting Steve permission for another look around.

  Steve wondered how many people had already been out behind the barn in the last hour while he’d been interviewing the boys. If the number of phone calls to Taylor was any indication, he’d be lucky to find much of the scene left intact.

  To his relief, Mr. Hampton and whoever he’d brought out to show around had seemed to adhere to the principles of caution and had stopped well away from the scuffed area in the center of the empty barnyard during their inspection.

  Steve held his broad-brimmed straw hat in his hands as he knelt cowboy-fashion at the edge of the empty, dusty stretch of ground between the barn and the sorghum field. He narrowed his eyes against the glare of the late afternoon sun. And instead of seeing the scuffed area, the pointy-toed footprints, he found the possible crime scene simply melting away and he was right back in Taylor Smithton’s comfortable home, staring into her beautiful blue eyes.

  He shook his head and replaced his hat low on his brow. The last thing he needed to think about was a woman like Taylor Smithton, the kind of woman that radiated an aura of commitment, promise. A wedding-bell kind of gal, his mother would have said.

  And he just wasn’t the wedding-bell kind of guy. Not anymore. He’d been down that particular bumpy road before and was lucky to have gotten back out with his skin intact. He’d said “I do” and meant it both times. His first wife, Jessica, had said “I will” and meant “Who’s next?” Jessica wasn’t a wedding-bell kind of gal, but she’d been carrying someone’s baby and her mother had been pressuring her to find a daddy right quick. Steve, still wet behind the ears, and dazzled by Jessie’s red fingernails and moist warm lips, had jumped to the front of her mama’s long line of candidates.

  Then, when Jessie lost the baby, Steve felt as though part of him were buried with that tiny casket. But Jessie didn’t cry; if anything she seemed relieved. But she found plenty of shoulders to pretend to cry on, and other arms besides his to hold her close. And before too much time had passed, too much of their marriage lay in too many other bedrooms.

  Tom Adams had nicknamed Steve’s second wife the Barracuda, a title particularly suited to Charlena’s ultraslim form, her tiny, perfect teeth and her penchant for chewing men up and spitting them out in little pieces. Steve had swung her up on her pedestal just a few months after his marriage to Jessica had finally coughed its last dying breath. Three years later, he’d found himself apologizing for the brightness of the sky, clouds, if there were any, the heat in the summer, snow in the winter. There wasn’t a single aspect of life that Charlena didn’t find mildly or sometimes extremely irritating. And all of those irritations were somehow Steve’s fault.

  Steve knew it was a sad old story, and one not terribly unique. A thousand other guys went through divorces every day and went right back out there and found someone else. He couldn’t. In the aftermath of two failed marriages, and sometime long after that tiny casket had entered the ground and he’d thrown his life’s savings across two lawyers’ tables, unable to so much as give one last look at Jessie’s harder-than-hard face or at Charlena’s sleek satisfaction, he’d found he’d sealed off the marrying side of his heart. He’d
vowed then never to be vulnerable to that kind of pain again. Never to play the patsy in a strange con game. And if he’d wanted kids once, he didn’t now. He couldn’t bear the kind of torture that losing one would cause him. Far better to get clean out of the kitchen if he couldn’t stand the heat.

  Even if he found himself standing just inside the doorway, looking longingly toward disaster.

  He stood up, dusting off his trousers, as if erasing the years. The sooner he figured out what the boys had or hadn’t seen that afternoon, the better off he’d be.

  Because Taylor Smithton seemed to have the knack of looking deep inside him. Right down to that sealed-off door.

  Steve followed the pointy-toed footprints that seemed to lead from the barn to the scuffed area. Several other footprints—large and small—obscured any prints in front of the tack-room door. He shook his head, looking at the rust-colored stains on the doorjamb. Using a pen, he lifted the metal hasp and let the door swing wide.

  Light leapt through the opened doorway and bounced across the plywood subflooring, revealing years of dust, a few boxes of what appeared to be tax returns that might date back thirty years or more, and a few perfectly clear pointy-toed footprints.

  Stepping around the footprints carefully, Steve pried open a box the footprints apparently had stopped in front of. The box was empty, even of dust.

  Steve tried working out a possible route for the footprints. The man had entered the tack room by the same door that stood open now, had walked across the room, apparently directly toward the empty box. Had he taken something out of the box? Was he going to put something in it? Had Taylor’s sons made the prints themselves, and was their whole story simply elaborate window dressing for their matchmaking scheme?

  And when had he started thinking of the boys as Taylor’s, not Doug’s?