The Love of a Cowboy

by Anna Jeffrey

  Piggy followed. “So what are they saying about Elton?”

  “Drugs and therapy. He’s going to West Texas Rehab daily. I think he’s going to be okay. Not like new, but okay.”

  “A trip to Abilene every day, huh?”

  “Yep. The old Plymouth’s never had such a work-out. Chuck and I are taking turns driving him.”

  “I’ll help,” Piggy said. “The co-op’s expecting me back to work next week, but they’ll let me take a day or two off to drive Elton. They think a lot of him. I might take him to see a strip show or something.”

  “In Abilene? Hah.”

  Together they carried the stepladder into the kitchen and moved the kitchen table, making room. Dahlia climbed up with new light bulbs. “What happened between you and Pete?”

  “We checked out all the better motels between Callister and Cody, Wyoming and concluded it had been a great summer.”

  “But I thought you had gotten serious about him.”

  “What can I say. He’s an Idaho boy and I’m a Texas girl. That’s never gonna change. Bottom line, I said no.”

  Dahlia stopped and looked down at her friend. “He wanted you to stay in Callister? With him?”

  Piggy’s answered with a lift of one shoulder. “When it got down to cases, I couldn’t. Girl, I’d freeze to death in all that ice and snow. My family’s too important to me. I like being close enough to stick my nose in my brothers’ business. I want to teach their kids to be monsters. It’s the least they deserve after all the dirty tricks they’ve played on me.”

  Piggy’s large, close-knit family had always been a source of envy for Dahlia. For all their lives, watching the good-natured pranking of her friend’s four brothers, Dahlia longed for siblings, a family group of which she could be a part. And now, she had something else to envy: the man Piggy had met in Callister had asked her to stay. Silly, Dahlia called herself, tightening the last bulb. Especially under the circumstances.

  “Ahh. Let there be light,” Piggy said as dim became bright.

  In tandem, they carried the ladder back to the garage, then returned to the kitchen. Out of the refrigerator came a chilled bottle of zinfandel. Piggy made herself at home and reached into the cupboard for wine glasses. Sitting at the kitchen table, they talked of Dad’s prognosis and the Handy Pantry’s future, but Dahlia avoided mentioning Luke.

  “So who’s running the grocery store?” Piggy asked.

  “Who do you think? I’ve been going through the books. Unless Dad’s hidden money in secret accounts, the store’s broke, Piggy. Sales have dropped off something awful. I suppose that Walmart Super Store and the new Albertson’s in Abilene are too much competition. Abilene is just too close. Dad’s been hanging on by his fingernails and I didn’t even know it. I sold my wedding ring to—”

  “No shit?” Piggy said, her eyes wide.

  “I had to. Dad had borrowed money on the store. The payments were behind. I couldn’t think of any other way to get cash. You know what my credit is like.”

  “Elton had mortgaged the store?”

  Dahlia nodded. “At least four years ago, before I moved home from Dallas. The balance was small, but the interest was outrageous and the payments were huge. She sighed and went on. “I paid off the mortgage and caught up some past due bills, but it still takes all I can do to keep the inventory up and find the money for the payroll every week. I’ve laid off six people, so half the people in town hate me.”

  Piggy’s brow crinkled with concern. “Damn.”

  “It’s was selfish that I didn’t know the state of store’s business. I was so focused on my own woes I didn’t see it. Now I know why Dad couldn’t afford to hire help, why he took on so many of the store’s jobs himself. And I only added to his stress by being worthless as a sloth and then leaving for the summer.”

  “Damn,” Piggy said again.

  “Besides all that, the store’s a huge mess. Dad hasn’t been keeping things up like he always did. As soon as I got home from Idaho, I had to clean and sanitize the butcher shop. It would’ve never passed the health inspection. I’m trying to stay on top of it, but I’ve been so rattled over the finances—”

  “Dal, you’re babbling.

  “I don’t think I could survive going through bankruptcy again, Piggy. And I couldn’t live with myself if I lost the store. Dad’s whole life’s invested in it. Without it, what would he do for income?” Tears spilled. Dahlia couldn’t restrain her anguish around her best friend.

  Piggy reached across the table and took her hand. “Hey, quit worrying. Who’s smarter than we are? I’ll put on my accountant’s hat and we’ll dig into the books. We’ll figure it out.”

  Dahlia covered Piggy’s hand with hers and dredged up a smile. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  Piggy poured herself another glass of wine. “Now that we’ve addressed the Handy Pantry’s problems, go ahead and ask me about super-stud. I know you’re dying to.”

  “I am not. It doesn’t matter.” Dahlia toyed with the stem of her wine glass, hating for Piggy to be right. “Okay. Tell me.”

  “Here it is. I was in the bar Tuesday night with the Forest Service crowd. They were talking about the prince himself. Mind you, this is gossip, but it happened just like you feared it would. Dave Adams told Beauty-Shop-Tami’s husband who then told Janet McRae about the cabin thing. So Janet’s lawyer made threats. Janet and Beauty-Shop-Tami told everybody in town Jimmy was in the cabin while you and Luke were, you know, doing it.”

  “I hope nobody believed that.”

  “Oh, she didn’t stop there. She got really nasty. She accused Luke of incest with his oldest daughter.”

  Dahlia’s jaw dropped. “Why, that’s just crazy!

  Piggy laughed. “You know Callister. Those people gossip to live and vice-versa. McRaes are their juiciest topic. Luke went ahead and took those two daughters back down to Boise, but it turned out to be temporary ’cause then . . .”—Piggy hummed a few tension-building notes—“. . . he brought out the big guns.”

  “What big guns? What are you talking about?”

  “Lawyers. Private detectives. Luke had piles of evidence of stuff his ex-wife has done. Booze is just the tip of the iceberg. She’s in a substance abuse clinic in Boise. Everybody’s saying she’s lucky she’s not in jail. It’s not settled yet, but Luke got his kids back in time to start school in Callister and he’s suing for permanent custody.”

  Dahlia snapped her mouth shut. Though custody of his kids had been a never-ending concern, Luke had not once revealed the extent of his ex-wife’s problems or that someone monitored her activities.

  Piggy drained her wine glass and reached for the bottle.“Hey, girlfriend, your glass is still full. You’re not helping me celebrate my homecoming.”

  Dahlia took only a sip. “I guess I’m not thirsty.”

  “And you won’t believe what else. That range manager, Ted Benson, told Pete that Luke sat Dave Adams down and told him if he couldn’t show some family loyalty and start holding up his end, he was no longer welcome at the Double Deuce. And that caused a big fight between Luke and his little sister.

  “In fact, Pete said the range manager and Luke have had some pretty hot arguments, but he’s never seen Luke so pissed off. So the atmosphere up at Fort McRae is pret-ty strained.”

  Dahlia’s stomach began to roll. Her hand went to it. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “Being the coward that I am, I’m glad I had to leave.”

  Piggy frowned. “You look green. Are you sick?”

  “I’ve had this . . . virus.” Dahlia looked down into the pink liquid that filled her glass, summoning the courage to say, I might be pregnant. The words refused to transfer from her brain to her tongue.

  “Luke fools you,” she said instead. “That down-home demeanor is a façade. He does what he thinks needs doing regardless of the consequences.” An acid taste grew in her mouth as the ugly memory of the afternoon in the Forest Service parking lot came back. “What did you d
o with his furniture?”

  “The landlord said he’d see to it. Said since he owed Luke for a tank of oil he might even drive that junk up to the Double Deuce himself.”

  Dahlia gave her an arched look.

  Piggy opened her palms. “Looks like your hunch was right. Luke did pay for that heating oil.”

  Back in May, it hadn’t taken Dahlia long to learn that a tank of heating oil delivered to Callister cost well over a hundred dollars. She had always suspected Luke paid for it. When she tried to pay him back, he had led her to believe the landlord had footed the bill.

  Her stiff upper lip quivered. Tears spilled down her cheeks, un-wiped. She rose and went to the kitchen sink, tore off a sheet of paper towel, dampened it and wiped her face. “I’m so damn hot, Piggy. And I’m so miserable.”

  “Haven’t heard from him, huh.”

  Dahlia shook her head, all at once aware she had stopped waiting and hoping.

  “Well if you’re so unhappy, why don’t you call him?”

  Dahlia stared out the kitchen window at the dying grass in the side yard. “Piggy. I’m over a week late.”

  She let out a great breath. There. She had said it aloud, calmly, as if she were speaking about someone else. She had spent the past twenty-four hours yearning, waiting for the heaviness low in her belly that signaled the onset of her menses, willing it to appear. In the wee hours of this morning, her last conscious thought before sleep had been how would her dad take it if she were pregnant? He might have another stroke.

  After a pointed silence, Piggy spoke. “Oh, that’s no big deal. I’ve been that late before.”

  “Well, I haven’t. Ever.”

  “What did I tell you, Dahlia? Didn’t I tell you? Hunh?”

  Dahlia blew her nose with a loud snort. “I don’t need a lecture.”

  Piggy left her chair, came across the room. Her arm slid around Dahlia’s waist. “I know, I know. Look, we both know women who work at getting knocked up and it never happens. I don’t think it’s that easy. Everything has to come together just right. Look at all that’s going on. It’s probably stress.”

  Dahlia fell into her best friend’s arms. “Oh, Piggy. I love you. What would I do without you?”

  “Listen, we’re not living in the Dark Ages here. In the Handy Pantry, you’ve got pregnancy tests you bought at wholesale, right?”

  Dahlia pulled away. “Oh God, I’ve already thought of that, but I don’t know if I have the nerve—

  “Nerve? Either you is or you isn’t, girl. There ain’t no in between. Wouldn’t it be better just to know?”

  Chapter 20

  While the home health nurses checked and bathed her dad early Sunday morning, Dahlia went to the Handy Pantry. She didn’t open it for business until eleven on Sundays. She had always thought the store spooky when closed, lit only by the cold drink coolers and the one small spotlight over the cash registers.

  This morning, the coolers hummed in harmony with the meat case’s compressor, but the sound did nothing to penetrate the palpable stillness Dahlia felt within. Standing before a four-foot gondola of home pregnancy tests in the dense gloom was almost an out-of-body experience. This couldn’t really be happening to Dahlia Felise Montgomery Jarrett Montgomery, the sexual neophyte who had been a virgin until her senior year in college, who had slept with only two men in her entire life while many of her peers needed both hands and a foot to count their sex partners.

  With shaking hand and hammering heart, she selected a best-selling brand and jogged upstairs to the office. The sliver of daylight sluicing between the air conditioner and the window casing only lit the room to gray. Without the air conditioner to freshen the air, the hot room smelled of mildew, nearly bringing up the toast she’d had for breakfast. She went straight to the windowless bathroom off the left side of the office, hugging the apocalyptic box to her bosom.

  In a matter of minutes, she knew. She closed the toilet lid, sank to it and dropped her forehead into her hands. “Oh, Dahlia. What have you done?”

  Well, it’s a mistake, that’s all. It’s a mistake.

  Sweating buckets, she clicked on the air conditioner, then marched downstairs and snatched a different brand off the shelf, jogged back upstairs and erased all doubt.

  Strangely, after weeping almost daily for weeks, now, she couldn’t cry. Her emotional reservoir was suddenly an empty well. Drained dry. Tapped out. Used up.

  She moved out of the bathroom, dropped to the gold velvet sofa and covered her eyes with a trembling hand. She would give herself this private time to punish herself. She deserved it.How could she have been so thoughtless, so irresponsible, so, so…so sex crazed? People had always admired how grounded she was, how reliable. She had betrayed the trust of all who knew her, shamed her dead mother. She was lower than low. And now, at home was a seventy-eight-year-old parent depending solely on her. She had put his welfare in even worse jeopardy.

  A baby. What would she do with a baby? Long ago, she had seen herself baking cookies, reading stories, surrounded by the happy children she would have, but the picture had included a loving husband.

  Luke. An impulse to call him nudged her—she still had his number—but pride stayed her hand.

  She returned home and plodded through the rest of the day in a fog. Didn’t call Piggy and tell her the news though she knew her friend was waiting on tenterhooks. She functioned with surprising calm, taking one minute at a time. Did some laundry, scrubbed both bathrooms, read to Dad. Thinking of the future would have to wait until tomorrow.

  Dahlia sat in the Beemer in front of Dr. Webb’s office attempting to collect herself. The doctor had confirmed what she knew. Memories flooded her mind: . . . .I like my kids, sweetheart, but I don’t want any more. . . . Three kids is enough for anybody. . . . There’s nothing I want less than another kid. . . . .

  Dr. Webb had recommended that she inform her baby’s father as soon as possible. Inform the father? She huffed a sarcastic laugh as her gaze settled on the clock. Nine-thirty. Damn. She didn’t have time to sit and weep. On the days Chuck relieved her by taking Dad to therapy, she had to squeeze the most into every precious hour.

  At lunchtime, Piggy showed up at the grocery store with Dairy Queen hamburgers and for once, the smell of food didn’t make Dahlia sick.

  “It’s cooled down to ninety-seven today. Let’s eat in the park,” Piggy said.

  They strolled in white-skyed heat to Loretta’s only park two blocks away. A concrete table and benches, warm to the touch, hunkered under a single oak tree’s shade. Piggy dragged the food from the sack and moved a paper cup of milk toward Dahlia. “I don’t think you’re supposed to have caffeine. Maybe not greasy hamburgers either, but—”

  “Don’t start, Piggy. You don’t have to monitor my diet.”

  Piggy looked around. “Well, this ain’t as scenic as lunch on a mountainside, is it?”

  Bermuda grass struggled to grow here and there, but mostly, cracked, bare earth showed. Heat waves shimmered above the adjacent main street’s asphalt. Dahlia snickered in spite of herself. “Not quite.”

  “So? You gonna keep me in suspense? What’d Loren say?”

  “He said, ‘Young lady, it looks like you’re pregnant.’”

  “They must learn those stupid phrases in med school. Probably part of the penmanship class.”

  Dahlia snickered again. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. It must mean I’ve finally gone mad.”

  “So now you’ve got fact to tell Luke instead of just worry.”

  “He’s never going to know.”

  “You have to tell him. It’s only right.”

  “No. Even if he wanted more kids and even if he wanted me, even if Dad weren’t in the shape he’s in, do you think I could pack up and move to Callister? Live at that ranch with his mother hovering and judging? That vicious old bat probably ruined his marriage to Janet.”

  “He ought to know. If for no other reason, so his conscience will hurt.”

 
“No. I have to think of Dad. I’m all he’s got.”

  “I weaseled a clinic’s name out of Dan. He had that girlfriend in Fort Worth who—”

  “You told your brother? Good grief, Piggy. Why did you do that? Don’t you think this is going to get all over town without your help?”

  “Relax. I didn’t tell him who I wanted it for.”

  “He’ll know it’s me.”

  “No, he won’t. He thinks you’re still a virgin.”

  “I was married, for crying out loud.”

  “So? Dan knows you.” Piggy pulled a small piece of paper from her jeans pocket and held it out. “Here. This place is in Southwest Fort Worth. Convenient.”

  Dahlia ignored the note, her hand involuntarily landing on her stomach. “Don’t do this to me, Piggy. This is Luke’s baby . . . our baby. I couldn’t kill it.” Tears welled again. Damn.

  She dug napkins from the Dairy Queen sack and dabbed her eyes. “It’s all I’ll ever have of him. I’m not going to, to . . . get rid of it, like, like . . . it’s garbage.”

  “Dahlia, listen to yourself. I had to look at Elton just once to know taking care of him is a twenty-four and seven job. And you’re gonna have to keep running that store seven days a week.” Piggy began to sniffle. “Going it alone’s a noble thought, but you’ve got to face facts. You’re not Wonder Woman.”

  Dahlia had all she could handle dealing with her own emotions. She didn’t need Piggy’s, too. “We have to stop crying, Piggy. Dad’s getting better every day. I won’t have to nursemaid him forever. And running the store won’t kill me.”

  “Okay, fine. But there’s another part of this to consider.”Piggy dried her eyes and began to stuff the remains of their lunch into the empty Dairy Queen sack. “Luke’s well-off. You’re not. He should help you out with a dollar or two. He’s a decent, generous guy. He’d want to. I know he would.”

  “No, no and no. This is not about money.”

  Piggy’s face jutted forward. “No, what it’s about is hurt pride. You’re pouting. Martyring yourself.”