Dances with Wolf

by Farrah Taylor

  After they got home, she let Stella out of the truck to romp next to the spring calves. Although the dog was one hundred percent retriever, she had a border collie’s desire to round up any animals in sight. She watched Stella’s tail wag from side to side, faster and faster, like she was in a time trial for happiness. How much simpler life was for her. “You don’t know how good you’ve got it,” she told the pooch. Great, Abby, keep talking to the dog. Show the world you’ve gone crazy once and for all.

  “Hey, Abby,” her mom called from the upstairs window. “Luther’s on the phone for you. Said he’s been trying to reach you.”

  Her phone had been on silent, but sure enough, there were two missed calls from him. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”

  Stella nosed Abby’s hand and together they walked toward the barn. It was too hot this time of the day to take Beau out for a ride, but she could groom and fuss over him at least. Anything was better than standing still and facing down her own dark thoughts. She pulled a curry comb and brush from the tack room’s top shelf and approached Beau, whistling softly. Best to practice her own medicine, even though this horse had tolerated Abby’s first foray into horse whispering with good humor. She began at Beau’s head, pulling burr and snags from his mane. Next, she picked his feet, nestling his hoof atop her knees. Stella circled around, begging the occasional pat on the head.

  Finally, Abby reached the gelding’s tail, a handsome arc of nearly blond hairs. An image of Wolf’s untamed locks crossed her mind before she could banish it. Actually, she’d like to grab him by the head right now and push him into a bucket of hot mash. How could he stay away on a night that meant so much to her? Did he have any idea of how much hidden pain that had uncovered? She buried her face in Beau’s mane. Tears streamed down her face. She’d held her head high for so many hours. The barn with its late afternoon warmth seemed the safest place to let it all go.

  Stella’s low rumble alerted her. She wiped her hand under her eyes. She just wanted to be left alone.

  Wolf’s Tony Lamas stirred the dust under the stall door before she saw his face. Damn his hide. What business did he have creeping up on her like this? She sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her face again.

  “Abby?” he said softly. “Can I come in?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer but opened the door, motes of dust raining down on her. She couldn’t decide what to say. He reached out to touch Beau, stroking the horse with one hand under his muzzle. Just like I taught him to do, she thought. Beau had the audacity to whinny in gratitude. So much for loyalty.

  “I brought you something.” She looked down at his hands without meeting his eyes. He was carrying a cardboard box with a copper ribbon wrapped atop it. Ranch & Home, she thought, without enthusiasm. She still refused to meet his eyes.

  “It doesn’t make up for not being here last night, if that’s what you were thinking. There’s no gift that’s going to excuse that.”

  You hit the nail on the head, she thought, but stayed silent. He didn’t deserve a response, anyway.

  Wolf cleared his throat. “Like Luther said, I know I missed a great party.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. Did he really not have an excuse at all? Did he really think that a damned gift would satisfy her?

  “Abby, sweetie. I’d do anything to turn the clock back.” He reached around to grasp her shoulder, but she shot him an icy look that made him think better of it.

  “That makes two of us.” Her voice was flat. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. “Anyway, I got the message.”

  He shook his head. “There was no message…it’s just…I know I made a huge mistake.”

  She stood up and dusted her pants off. “So, what happened, Wolf? You can’t tell me you forgot?”

  “I wish I could explain it, but I can’t. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. Some stuff happened in Polson, and…I needed to work it out.”

  “I’ll bet,” she said sourly. Another lame excuse from Wolf Olsen. He was telling her some truth, like he’d done when he’d apologized for prom. But Abby deserved nothing but the whole truth, and it sure didn’t look like she was going to get it.

  “Really. I need you to believe me.”

  “What am I supposed to believe, exactly? You haven’t even told me anything yet.” Abby let loose of Beau’s mane and crossed the stall, turning at the door, then crouching down in the sawdust. Finally, she looked at him. There was something new and raw in his eyes, a hint of fear, perhaps. Something desperate and unknown.

  “Something…happened to me between the roping and the steer-wrestling down in Polson. I got hurt…pretty bad.”

  “What, you didn’t show up because you were feeling…achy?” She rose so abruptly that for a moment, Stella jumped to her feet, her nose in the air, sniffing danger.

  “It was a little worse than that, Abby. I had to go to visit a doctor.”

  “You made it to the engagement party just fine. You’re telling me this supposed injury got worse over time?”

  “It wasn’t just the injury. It was the meds.”

  Okay, now he was going to blame it on his pain meds? She couldn’t stand these weak little justifications. “Oh, please.” She reached out for the door latch. “I don’t have the time for this.”

  Wolf put his hand on top of hers. The package fell to the sawdust.

  “Please. Just give me a minute to explain.”

  “I can’t believe I set everything I know about you aside and trusted you again. But you know what they say: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

  “It’s not like that. This time, we’re going to make it happen, for real. It can work between us, I know it. I want to be there for you, Abs.”

  “But that’s just it. You weren’t there. Isn’t that the whole point, Wolf? At the most important times, you’re a no-show.”

  He hung his head until it grazed his chest. “Come on, Abby. Please just listen to me.”

  “No. I’m done. I need someone I can count on. I need—” She paused before pushing the door open and stepping into the sunlit center of the barn. “—someone else.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Abby’s hands fluttered over the covered buttons that ran the length of Bridget’s dress. She was shaking with excitement, but something more, too. The two of them had giggled, joked, laughed or cried on every occasion that marked the three weeks before Bridget’s big day. But neither one had stopped to consider what might happen after the wedding. Mark and Bridge had already moved into a two-bedroom house on Merrilea Road. The three showers given in their honor had yielded several housefuls of possessions: a grilling set that made Mark the master of his backyard universe; red and white-striped dishes in multiples of twelve; even a baby stroller that folded neatly into the bumper seat of Bridget’s 4x4.

  While Abby was confident that the wedding wouldn’t alter her friendship with Bridget, or with Mark for that matter, she was beginning to realize that it would change her. That she and Wolf would be an important part of everything that happened to this duet “from this day forward”—the wedding later today, the baby’s birth around Thanksgiving, its christening, its upbringing, its well-being, its future. Bridget had already asked her to be the godmother. And Wolf, the baby’s uncle, would be godfather. For better, for worse, she and Wolf were now part of the same family. They were stuck with each other.

  “How many buttons do you have left?” asked Bridget.

  “I’m halfway there. Sorry, my hands are all sweaty.”

  “Please. I’m so nervous I can hardly breathe.”

  Bridget, despite the short span of time between engagement and wedding, had been particular about every detail of the event. Music, food, flowers—not a detail too small for her to debate. Abby had done her best to weigh in at the right moments, but mostly she just nodded and said what she thought Bridget would want to hear. Corsages and appetizers seemed beyond her powers of concentration—she
tried to stop feeling sorry for herself, but it was hard. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Wolf’s face, and the pain would resurface.

  She took a deep breath. For Bridget’s sake, as well as her own, she had to get through this wedding. The old Abby would have run out of the church and hidden under the nearest tamarack. But she was way past that. She summoned an image of Bullet, hampered by pain but head held high as she finished an event. She could do this. She would do this.

  As the trumpets sounded from the front of the church, Abby delivered Bridget to her father and tucked herself neatly off to one side to watch the expression on Jess Olsen’s face. A smile blossomed beneath his newly trimmed mustache; he looked as peaceful and content as she’d ever seen him.

  “Daddy, please don’t cry,” she heard Bridget warn him. “If you lose it, how will Mom ever hold it together?”

  Abby turned around to smile at the two of them before she began to walk. She, too, had felt the onset of tears—hot, angry ones—but somehow she kept them at bay. Walking just ahead of her was one of Mark’s nieces, eight-year-old Hadley, who had scattered rose petals with military precision onto the deep crimson carpet. Abby let herself imagine, for a few seconds, how she, Abby, might slip on an unlucky cluster of petals and fall face-first in front of everyone. Why not? She couldn’t feel any more humiliated than she did already.

  But such a catastrophe wasn’t in the cards, thankfully. She put one foot in front of the other, kept her bouquet of wildflowers discreetly tucked against her lace bodice, and tried not to think about Wolf, who remained out of her peripheral vision as long as she kept her eyes dead-center. As she reached the end of the long aisle, she followed Hadley to the left and found her pre-marked space near the altar.

  The congregation was uniformly silent, as if each person had been asked to take a deep yoga breath and hold it. But once Abby had arrived, heads began to turn toward the back of the church, each person straining to catch the first look at the bride. There was a communal “awww!” from every woman in the congregation as Bridget and Jess began their processional.

  Abby cleared her throat. I will not cry. I. Will. Not. Cry. After the first look at Bridget’s face, like sunlight beaming from the pale cloud of tulle veil, Abby turned her head toward Mark. He was leaning forward with his hands pressed tightly together, as if he couldn’t believe his good luck.

  Wolf stood just behind him, his face barely visible to Abby, but as he moved forward to put one arm around Mark’s shoulder, she saw that his own eyes were glistening. His mouth was set in a straight, grim line, as if it were taking all his powers of concentration to keep a flood of tears from streaming onto the crisp white collar of his tuxedo shirt. The muscles in his face flexed as he watched his sister join Mark at the altar. God, he looked so handsome and so vulnerable, his pecs straining the impeccable black jacket, but those blue eyes unfocused, clouded over as if he were watching from a great distance.

  Just then, Wolf leaned to one side to return Abby’s look. His face was flushed, his eyes impossibly bright. “Hi,” he mouthed.

  Abby turned away from him. Was she in a dream of her own making? She looked down at her feet, encased, as Bridget’s were, in rhinestone-covered lace. For the last week, she’d had nightmares of this wedding: horrid fantasies involving demonic flower girls and shredded veils. She’d woken from each dream wondering which was worse—these nightmare visions, or the sad reality of her aloneness. Here was Wolf, the man she’d always wanted, right in front of her, and yet it would never work between them. She rid herself of all thoughts of him.

  The minister’s lines were familiar, but Abby heard them as if for the first time. There was coughing in the audience and the sound of joyful sniffling and happy tears from relatives seated in the second row, but Bridget and Mark kept their eyes on each other like they were the only two people in the room. Even young Hadley’s fidgeting at the altar’s edge failed to deflect the couple’s focus on each other. To be that much in love. Would you actually feel the rush of the moment and the calm of infinity at the same time? It seemed a miracle Abby was not likely to experience. Not anytime soon, anyway.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” intoned the minister. Bridget and Mark turned slowly and kissed, and Abby handed Bridget her bouquet. The afternoon sun filtered through the stained glass, illuminating the wedding party in mosaic patterns of light.

  It’s pure magic. And Bridget deserves this, her own special, magical day. She watched as the newly anointed couple departed down the aisle, followed by hoots, hollers, whistles, and applause.

  But so do I.

  As the minister announced, “I am proud to introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Mark Miles,” Abby reminded herself that she was required to walk back down the aisle on Wolf’s arm. Though she’d gotten through the rehearsal by laughing and joking with Bridget and Mark, this was different. Her parents were sitting in the third row, right behind the Olsens. They, along with everyone else, would be studying every move she made, every expression on her most unpokerlike face. She tried to visualize the solemn expression of a Salish chieftain. She could do it. She could. She set her lips in a rigid half-smile.

  Applause woke her from her trance. Bridget and Mark were kissing a second time for good measure. More laughter, whistles, a couple of cheesy catcalls. She swiveled the train to fall gracefully behind Bridget’s back, and returned to the left side of the altar, all without looking at Wolf, though she could feel his eyes on her. The organist struck a chord, and after a stiff rotation, she took Wolf’s arm.

  He pressed her elbow warmly and leaned over to whisper. “You look beautiful.” She ignored him, proceeding down the aisle like some kind of apparition.

  As Mark and Bridget spilled out into the sunlight, Wolf insisted on keeping hold of Abby’s hand. She would have jerked it away, but didn’t want to cause a scene. Wincing at a sudden blinding brightness to her right, she turned toward it to see the wedding photographer, on his knees three feet in front of them, snapping away.

  Great, she thought. Our shining moment, captured for posterity.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The morning after the wedding, Wolf woke in a royal blue funk. He’d only had a single glass of champagne, but he felt like a rag wrung dry. Abby had looked absolutely beautiful at the reception, but she’d kept an ice-maiden smile on her face all night. She’d danced with Luther, Doc, and a baker’s dozen of Mark’s fraternity brothers, but whenever Wolf got anywhere near her, she whirled away from him, that same frozen look on her face.

  He wondered how he could break through to her. Clearly, his foray into Ranch & Home had been unproductive. The package that she’d left unopened on the stall floor was still in his truck. The cardboard was frayed at the edges, the ribbon undone like Wolf’s raggedy heart.

  Forget the presents, the futile gestures. If Abby were only able to see what he was feeling right now, she’d have to melt a few degrees, wouldn’t she?

  He showered hastily and put on a pair of freshly laundered jeans. His tux pants and jacket lay over a chair, the bow tie hanging from the breast pocket. If he couldn’t win Abby over wearing a penguin suit (and his sister had reminded him how fantastic he looked in it), how could he hope to impress her in his workaday uniform? A thought did occur to him, though: if he didn’t have the key to Abby’s state of mind, he knew one man who surely did. He’d go to him, hat in hand, and ask for some advice.

  At eight a.m., his mom was the only other person awake in the house. Her hair was somehow still in the up-do she’d perfected for the wedding as she bustled around the cozy kitchen. The smell of bacon permeated the air, but Wolf was immune to its charms. Hunger was the least of his needs. He’d been so sure he’d wake the morning after the wedding with the memory of Abby’s arms around him, if not the real live Abby. Or at least, that some pathway to forgiveness would have opened before him. But it seemed like he might have blown it for good this time. The pathway to forgiveness was buried under a glacial ice pack.

 
He scarfed some toast, washing it down with black coffee, and answered his mom’s questions as politely as possible. Yes, he’d enjoyed himself. Yes, he was happy for his sister. But he was no actor; Mom could tell something was wrong. He just hoped she wouldn’t press him.

  “Where’re you off to?” she asked as he put his jacket on.

  “I’m off to get some advice,” he said. “Or a talking-to. Not sure which.”

  “If it’s about Abby, I might have a tip for you.” He ducked his mother’s eager look. “Don’t worry, I’ll be subtle.” She had a way of making him feel like he was seven years old and in need of a good scrub behind the ears. Maybe he was.

  “I’m listening.” He sat down on one of bar stools facing the polished barn-wood counter and twirled the seat until he could finally look her in the eyes.

  “Yesterday was a very emotional day, for our family, for Bridget and Mark, of course. But for that darling Abby, too.” She wiped her hands off on a corner of her apron.

  “Go on.” Wolf leaned his elbows on the counter. His mom’s face was faintly etched with smile lines and the map of forty-nine summers under the Flathead sun; she had never looked more earnest to him. She’d never looked kinder, either. He tried to remember, she only wanted what was best for him.

  “It seemed to me that Abby had the most to lose yesterday. Her best friend became a wife, but she’s also about to become a mother. That does something to a woman. Something huge and probably hard for a man to comprehend.”

  “I get it. Or I think I do.” Wolf felt his edges begin to soften. Whatever she was about to say, he’d take it to heart.

  “Abby needs some time to get used to it. That’s for sure.”

  “How much time, do you think?”