The Widow of Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  But she had to be careful, she realized. Careful that she wasn’t suffering from some kind of rescue complex, that she really saw him as a capable adult, an equal.

  Maybe that was why he’d thrown himself into that painting in this almost manic way. Maybe he was proving that to himself, too.

  She sighed and started to turn to go inside and make lunch.

  “Sharon?”

  At the sound of Liam’s call, she turned back. He was dismounting the ladder, holding the pan and brushes.

  Automatically she started walking toward him, reminding herself to remain as casual as possible despite the storm of conflict within her. She had to deal with her own feelings, not inflict them on him.

  While she crossed the yard, he ascended the ladder again and brought down the rest of his supplies. She arrived just as he reached the ground once more.

  He surprised her with his first smile in days. “I’ll be done with the primer today.”

  “You’re doing a wonderful job,” she said warmly. “But, Liam, aren’t you working too hard?”

  His gaze shifted from her to the distance, although it gave her the feeling that he was staring into himself, not at the neighboring mountains.

  “I need it,” he said finally.

  She wasn’t going to argue that. “I just don’t want you to get heatstroke or something.”

  “This isn’t hot.”

  She wondered if he was comparing it to Iraq, where he and Chet had both served for a time, but for around here this was warm, indeed. She remained silent.

  “Thank you,” he said finally, “for your concern. I know my limits.”

  Well, at least that was a positive statement. The first really confident one he’d given her. “Did you want to show me something?”

  His gaze came back to her. “Show you something?”

  “You called me,” she reminded him.

  “Oh.” His brow creased. Then it smoothed just a bit. “Apologize,” he said.

  “Me? For what?” Her heart skipped as she wondered what she had done.

  “Not you. Me.” He sighed and ran his fingers through hair that had grown noticeably since his arrival. “I was going to apologize.”

  “No need. All you’ve done is a fantastic painting job.”

  “Not that.” He closed his eyes a few seconds and she could almost feel his internal struggle to grip some thought. “I’ve been ignoring you.”

  She started to say that he’d been working awfully hard but decided to just remain quiet and let him follow his thought train.

  “It’s not right,” he said in a burst, “to want your best friend’s wife.”

  Shock held her frozen. Blunt? Incredibly. But honest. And hadn’t she struggled with the same thing? She should speak. Or maybe not. God, she didn’t know the right thing to do, so she waited for whatever else he might say, her heart sinking then rising like a bouncing ball, up and down. Desire drizzled through her at his blunt declaration, awakening all the things she’d been trying to keep sleeping.

  “You should send me on my way. As soon as I finish painting.”

  At that, she could no longer remain silent. “Why? And to what?”

  “What do you mean what?”

  “What do you do next, Liam? What’s the plan when you walk away from here?”

  “Damn it, I don’t want to be an adopted stray!”

  The words exploded out of him, the fury unmistakable. The dimensions of his problem were becoming clear. But she had a bit of a temper, too, and while it might have been the wrong way to respond, she erupted right back.

  “I’m not rescuing a stray! You’ve been helping me. What I want from you is a plan!”

  “I can’t make plans.” He glared at her.

  “So I gather. But you were Chet’s best friend. Do you think he’d let you walk away from here without a plan? A job? A place to go? Would you let him if he were in your shoes?” It occurred to her that question might be beyond him still, but she was relieved to find it wasn’t.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then shut up. You’re doing an incredible amount of stuff for me that wouldn’t be getting done except for you. I owe you big-time. I think about it constantly.”

  It was his turn to remain silent, simply looking at her.

  “And let’s get one other thing clear,” she said, still feeling hot in more ways than one. “I’m not Chet’s wife anymore. I’m his widow. That’s a whole different thing. I got used to it, now you get used to it.”

  Turning, she nearly ran toward the house. Tears burned in her eyes, though whether from sorrow or anger she didn’t know. Sorrow for Chet, certainly, but sorrow for Liam now, too. And anger because she was doing an incredibly poor job of getting her feelings across to him.

  To occupy herself and work out her own frustration, she made a tuna salad and started piling it onto rye bread. The man must be starved, and maybe she’d calm down enough to eat something herself.

  Just as she was placing the plates on the table, the back door opened, and he stepped in. His clothes were paint covered, and she cleared the way to the sink so he could wash his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Quit apologizing. There’s not one damn thing you need to apologize for.”

  “Okay.”

  She sat at the table, out of the way, waiting for him to scrub his hands and forearms. At last he joined her, facing her across the tile and two lunch plates, his brimming with three sandwiches and some chips.

  He didn’t say anything as he started to eat. Of course not. He wasn’t much of a conversation starter. When he did speak first, it often seemed to come out of nowhere. She was getting used to that, but she often wondered what roads his thoughts wandered down.

  “You’re opaque sometimes,” she said finally.

  That got his attention. He stopped chewing, swallowed and looked up from his plate. “Opaque?”

  “Yeah. For a guy who told me he often says things he shouldn’t, and says too much, you turn into a sphinx a lot.”

  “Sphinx?” It took a moment, but he made the connection. “That’s good.”

  “It is? Why?”

  “Because they spent a lot of time teaching me not to say the first thing that popped into my head.”

  She thought of what he’d said out at the barn, then decided not to mention the obvious: he didn’t always succeed. Surprisingly, she was glad of that.

  “Just talk,” she said finally. “It’d be nice to know where we both stand. We might fight sometimes, but the air will be a whole lot clearer. I’m spending entirely too much time wondering what you’re thinking, if I’ve said or done something wrong.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not. Hey, are you afraid of a squabble?”

  He astonished her then by laughing. “No,” he admitted.

  “So talk. Squabbles are useful, too.”

  “Okay. I remember there was something I was going to tell you when we were coming home from town, but I can’t remember what. Losing my train of thought frustrates me. It makes me mad. So I started painting to work it out in a safe way.”

  “You’ve been painting like a demon.”

  “Maybe not smart. Working keeps the frustration down, but it lets my head wander too much. And then I get aware that I get lost sometimes in what I’m thinking, just the way I get lost when I’m talking.”

  “And that makes you madder.”

  He stared at the sandwich he held. “I can remember not being this way. Sometimes I think it would be better if I couldn’t remember at all.”

  That was so unutterably sad that she felt her eyes burn again. “Liam?” Her voice sounded choked.

  “What?”

  “I’m glad yo
u can remember even if it’s hard. Even if it hurts. Even if it frustrates you. Without a memory...you wouldn’t be you anymore. And I like you.”

  His head snapped up, his odd light green eyes fixing on her. “I’m not very likable.”

  “Says who?”

  “Plenty of people.”

  “Tell me one.” It wasn’t a challenge; in fact, she kept her voice calm and even gentle.

  “I don’t need to tell you one. I can tell you lots. The ones who called me mental and stupid.”

  She bit her lip, and now the burning in her eyes transformed into an ache in her heart. “Those people don’t know you and they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “They know what they see. That’s how I look.”

  “Not to me. Not even the first time we met.” Her throat now hurt as if a noose was wrapped around it. Oh, God, she didn’t want to break down and cry. He might misread it.

  “I like painting. I’m not stupid when I do that.”

  She swallowed the pain she felt for him. “No, you’re not. In fact, you’re pretty damn good.”

  “I remembered how.”

  “Exactly. No help from anyone.”

  He nodded slowly. “But what’s next again?”

  “The barn needs paint over the primer.”

  “Right.” He repeated the words. “As soon as I finish.”

  “Ed will deliver the paint tomorrow.”

  “Good. Then what?”

  “Should we make a list?” At least he wasn’t talking about hitting the road again, although she suspected that might come back.

  He met her gaze again. “I’d like to try to remember. If I forget again, then we can make a list.”

  Her chest swelled as she realized he was back to making an effort, that he’d stopped trying to hide his frustration, stopped trying to hide from her, stopped trying to think leaving was the only answer. “Sounds good to me.”

  He resumed eating and she didn’t press him again. Her own stomach had loosened up enough that she felt able to take a bite of her sandwich.

  Then he surprised her. “Let’s make a list,” he said. “A long list of all the things you want done. After the barn. The longer the better.”

  “Sure.” She didn’t question him. Maybe the list would give him a sense that he had a direction and a plan beyond tomorrow. It sounded like a good idea, actually. Maybe she ought to make one for herself, too. Things that she could do that she should have been doing. Giving up on the ranch because her dream with Chet had vanished might not have been wise.

  No, maybe not. Maybe she should have gone ahead with as much of the dream as she could manage on her own, because it had been her dream, too, not just Chet’s.

  She spoke. “Should you give up a dream of your own just because the person you shared it with is gone?”

  “No.” The answer came surprisingly fast.

  She lifted her eyes to him. “What are your dreams, Liam?”

  “Feeling normal again, even if I’m not.”

  “That’s a good one. I think you’ll get at least that far, if not well beyond it.”

  “I hope so. What dream are you talking about?”

  “Having some livestock here. Maybe I can’t do the whole rescue thing, but I could get a couple of goats.”

  “Why couldn’t you do the rescue thing?”

  She smiled wryly. “Because the way Chet had it planned out, it was going to be a full-time job for at least one of us. I still have to teach this fall.”

  He nodded. “That was going to be his retirement.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “But it wasn’t just his dream.”

  “Not at all. I wanted it, too. He just kept making it bigger and bigger.”

  Liam chuckled. “For a fact. I listened to it. So start small. I can help at least for now. I think Chet always intended to drag me into this.”

  A little bubble of laughter escaped her. “I think you’re right. I lost count of the times we’d be talking about those plans and out would come, ‘Liam and I will...’ How did you feel about that?”

  “Truthfully? It was nice that he wanted me to be part of it, but I wasn’t really sure it was my thing. How would I know? I was a city kid.”

  “But he dragged you into helping in Afghanistan.”

  “He sure did. I liked it, too.”

  “So maybe I’ll put that on my personal to-do list. Get a few goats to start. I’ll see how it goes.”

  “And if you don’t like it?”

  “I have a neighbor,” she said dryly. “He probably wouldn’t mind a few extra goats, especially since I’ll likely buy these from him.”

  He smiled, and she realized that whatever had been bugging him seemed to have passed.

  Good, she thought as he returned to finish the barn. It would probably only take him an hour or so at this point. But she couldn’t stop remembering his words, it’s not right to want your best friend’s wife.

  They drummed in her head and seemed to pulse between her legs. She shouldn’t want her husband’s best friend, either.

  But the situation had changed. Afghanistan had changed it irrevocably.

  * * *

  “We didn’t have kids,” she announced over dinner to Liam. Why, she didn’t know. Maybe because she was thinking about giving Ransom a call and he had children. Everyone, just about, had children.

  “Why not?” he asked. He seemed to like the roast chicken and green bean casserole as much as Chet had.

  “Because... You know, sometimes I wonder if I was selfish.”

  His expression grew perplexed. “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to have any children as long as Chet was going into combat. I didn’t want to raise a child alone.”

  “Did that bother him?”

  Apparently, this was something Chet had never discussed with his best friend. In some way it relieved her to know that some things had remained between the two of them, unlike paint chips and fabric samples. “He said he understood.”

  Liam pondered that. “Chet didn’t lie.”

  “No, he didn’t. So we waited.” She stared into space, remembering. It had seemed to make so much sense at the time, but now she wondered. What if she’d had a small version of Chet running around for the past year and a half? Would it have helped? Would she have had something more important to focus on than herself?

  And then there was the fact that now there was nothing of Chet left but this ranch. Would he have been content with that legacy?

  “Do you feel bad about it now?”

  The question called her back. “I’m not sure. It seems wrong somehow that he didn’t leave a son.”

  “It might have been a girl,” he said bluntly. “And either way, the kid would never have really known him. So what are you talking about here? Genes?”

  God, he could be blunt. He’d warned her, after all.

  “Well, that sounds stupid,” she said irritably.

  “Just reducing it to the bottom line. The gene thing? A lot of people get hung up on that. I get it. But considering that I read somewhere that we’re all more closely related than we’d believe, it also gets a little silly. Last name carried on? Well, maybe you’ll find a guy who’d be willing to let a child carry Chet’s last name.”

  She gaped at him. This conversation was going sideways fast, heading to places she never would have imagined. “Yeah, right,” she said finally.

  “I would,” he said with a shrug. “What’s a name? How many people named Majors are there in the world? Thousands probably. The world is overrun with O’Connors.”

  “You,” she said, “are something else.”

  “Why? Because I don’t get hung up on this whole thing? I guess. A lot of people
think it’s important. I just never figured it that way. I read somewhere that you can’t take a genealogy back more than four hundred years because everybody starts being related to you. Two thousand years and everybody on the planet is related. So Chet’s genes are out there in lots of places. After all, he got them from somewhere. That leaves a name.”

  “That also leaves,” she said tautly, “an emotional connection.”

  His expression dimmed. “I just put my foot in it again, didn’t I?”

  At once she felt that squeezing ache that was becoming all too familiar with him. She didn’t want him to feel bad, and she knew she wasn’t being entirely rational. This thought had reared up to plague her more than once since Chet’s passing, and why the hell it had come up tonight she wasn’t sure. Except that she was thinking about getting goats, and getting goats from Ransom probably meant he’d show up with his son to help and...and what?

  “I’m sorry you regret it,” he said. “I was stupid to talk that way.”

  “You’re not stupid,” she said, expressing her pain with a little anger. “Stop saying that!”

  “I made you mad. Maybe hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me.” She wanted to put her head in her hands and find a way through this morass she had just created. Instead, she sought a plateau within herself, the place where she could remain calm even when she had twenty kids in a classroom erupting simultaneously. “You were being logical.”

  “And you reminded me that logic isn’t always right.”

  “It’s different, is all.” Bit by bit she was finding her equilibrium. “You’re right. I made a decision. Chet agreed with it. It’s ridiculous at this point to regret it. It is what it is. And logically you’re right about what it means. But emotionally I sometimes wish I still had that connection with Chet. It’s an emotional tug I can’t explain very well. It’s just there sometimes. But when I’m not feeling it the way I am tonight, I can see that maybe we weren’t wrong to choose to wait. I’d have a little child now who would be fatherless. I’d have more to deal with and I haven’t exactly been managing the best. Maybe it would have helped me to cope, but would that have been fair to a child?”

  He answered slowly, but she couldn’t tell if he was choosing his words with care or simply finding it difficult to follow that spate of nearly contradictory feelings.