The Sweet Spot

by Laura Drake

  If she’d learned anything the past year, it was that you can’t stay in one place, be it heaven or hell. She lifted her head from Jimmy’s damp shirt and looked up at the quiet strength that resided in his brown eyes.

  “Better?”

  She nodded, holding his gaze for a moment before stepping back. “Thank you, Jimmy.”

  He touched the brim of his hat. “My honor, Little Bit.” He pulled the white handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to her. She dried her tears and blew her nose. Hand under her elbow, he guided her to the truck, opened the passenger door, and settled her in as if she were made of spun glass.

  He watched Char close. God, he’d hated to see her like that. Give him something solid to vanquish, someone to punch out for hurting her, anything but to stand there like an impotent fool while she fell apart. He walked around the truck grille. She hadn’t really needed him. Had she? He’d only been the hurricane wall at her back.

  But maybe that’s all a strong person needed.

  He hopped in the truck and cranked the ignition. The sun had turned the cab into a warm haven. He relaxed, wrapped in the well-known ease of riding somewhere with Charla. They didn’t speak as he made a three-point turn and drove through the meadow.

  Her hand wandered across the bench seat now and again to touch him, as if, without looking, she wanted the reassurance of his presence. Maybe the affirmation was for him. Maybe for them both.

  Time to finish this. He took a deep breath, and a chance. “Charla, I’m going to be honest with you from now on. If I feel it, I’m telling you. It’s not easy, but it’s easier than dealing with what happens if I don’t.”

  “I’m glad, Jimmy.”

  “So, I have to tell you.” Hands tight on the wheel, he made the turn from the dirt fire road to the highway. “I’m glad we’re partners in the business, but I want more. My life doesn’t work without you beside me.” He shot her a quick look before focusing on the road again. Guts squirming, he blurted, “You’re a strong, independent woman. If you decide to take another husband, or even if you decide to live alone for the rest of your life, I’ll respect that.” He studied the road, afraid to see her expression. “I’ll hate it, but I’ll respect it.”

  At Char’s warm chuckle, he turned toward her.

  She tilted her head in that amused way she had. “What makes you think I’d want that, Jimmy?”

  “Well, I know you need someone to lift hay bales and to chase off a crazed bull trainer now and again, but other than that, you don’t need a man.”

  She let out an unladylike snort. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been scared spitless most of the time. I didn’t know anything, and I was terrified to make a mistake that would hurt the stock or cost us the business. I’ve discovered a lot, being the responsible one. I’ve even remembered things I’d forgotten about myself.”

  She was quiet so long that he glanced over. Gaze unfocused, she watched the scenery slide by his side of the truck.

  “I need to be needed, Jimmy. Cows bawling to be fed don’t count. I’m not whole by myself. I never have been. Maybe that makes me a relic. It’s just how I’m made.” She heaved a pensive sigh. “Daddy needs me now, but sometime, in a future I don’t want to think about, he won’t.

  “I don’t know if we can be a couple again, Jimmy. That part of our lives may be behind us.” Out the corner of his eye, he saw her refocus on his face. “Or maybe not. You seem different. I catch glimpses now of that driven, humble cowboy I fell in love with that day in the meadow.” At a feather-light touch on his bicep, he turned to her resigned smile. “That cowboy still has my heart, Jimmy. He always will.”

  He wanted to tell her he was that man still. Persuasions piled into his mouth. Dana’s reminder echoed in his head. She’s not listening, JB. She’s watching. He locked his jaw against the words.

  They rode the rest of the way to the ranch, windows down, lost to their individual thoughts.

  The wind had picked up, and the slant of the sun in his eyes told him it was around three o’clock when he pulled into the drive. He drove around the back of the house and shut down the engine.

  Silence pressed into the car, and he glanced over at Charla. She sat, staring. He followed her line of sight to the hole in the world where the tree used to be. Even the stump was invisible in the high grass waving in the wind, but that damned tree still stood solidly between them. He tried to decipher her blank stare. “Are you ready to talk about it, Little Bit?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Her mouth twisted as if she tasted something nasty. “Though that doesn’t seem to matter. I think we have to, Jimmy.” Her hands twisted in her lap. Her mouth opened. Then closed. She shifted her feet, scrubbing palms over the thighs of her jeans, as if to dry them. Still she said nothing.

  When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he began for her.

  “He was crazy for a tree fort that summer, remember? God knows where he got the idea, but he pestered me for weeks. I promised we’d build it together.” The familiar dog-bite pain ate into the lining of his stomach. “I was getting to it, I swear I was. Why couldn’t he wait?” He took a deep breath to make himself calm down, his eyes glued to the barn door.

  “I was repairing tack in the barn when I heard you scream.” His swallow clicked loud in the quiet truck. “I knew then. Not what had happened, but that inhuman howl told me that life had taken a bad turn.” He still jerked awake nights, in a pool of sweat, hearing it echo from a fading nightmare.

  He’d dropped everything and run, to find Char, on her knees under the huge maple tree, looking up, screaming. He didn’t want to look—the utter devastation on her snot-streaked face told him he was too late—but he pried his eyes off her and looked up, through the leafed-out branches. His son hung limp and unmoving, one arm and his neck caught in a noose. JB didn’t remember climbing that tree. The next thing he knew, he was sitting on a branch, holding Benje in his arms, rocking him. He didn’t know how long he did that, except when he came back to himself, Char’s screams were only a hoarse keening.

  He choked out the rest past the tight wad in his throat. “I must have cut that damned gold rope with my jackknife.”

  Gold rope? She jerked as a freight-train memory slammed into her brain. She saw every detail as if her vision had become a microscope: the dust on the dash of the pickup, the sun glinting cruelly off the metal on the windshield wiper. The sound of the wind, moaning through the truck’s weatherstripping. Her stomach plummeted through her frozen guts.

  The gold rope! She’d known this. Hadn’t she?

  She’d been making new curtains for the great room. Soft green plaid curtains, with pencil pleats and tie-backs. Material strewn across the floor, mouth full of upholstery pins, it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Benje since she griped at him to go outside, out from under her feet. Char raked her hands through her hair, trying to tug the details from her head.

  Benje was a ranch kid; he knew how to entertain himself, making fun out of whatever was at hand. Gold rope. Her tie-backs.

  My fault. It was my fault!

  She scrabbled at the seat belt with unfeeling fingers. “I have to go, Jimmy.” Her fingers seemed to have forgotten the steps to releasing it. Grunting, she fought it for several seconds until, with a snap, it came open. It retracted like a rifle shot in the cab.

  “Charla, wait.” He reached for her arm but she recoiled. “What is it?”

  Panic screamed in her head, vaporizing rational thought. She had to get away. Somewhere she could bury the truth back wherever it had been all these months. Her lips pulled back from her teeth. “I have to go, Jimmy!” She pulled the door handle and almost fell out of the truck when the wind pulled at the door. Her legs wouldn’t hold her.

  Suddenly Jimmy was there, reaching down to lift her by her arms. The fear in his eyes told her what she looked like. “You have to talk to me, Charla Rae. I can’t help you through this if I don’t know—”

  “Leave it. Just leave it!�
�� She clamped her hands over her ears to block it, but it made no difference to the angry bee buzz in her head. Myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault.

  Jimmy still held her arms, but she shook him off, her air-starved chest heaving. “Just get away, Jimmy!”

  She jerked from him, stumbling toward the back door. I can’t live. Not like this. She remembered something else about that day. Jimmy carefully climbed down the branches, Benje in his arms. At the bottommost branch, he’d handed him down to her. Her son was warm and boneless, like when he was little and fell asleep in her arms. She cradled him, rocking, waiting for the delicate blue-veined skin of his eyelids to flutter, for his eyes to open, revealing the fractured blue irises that always reminded her of cat’s-eye marbles.

  Jimmy grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Char, you’re scaring me.”

  “Get away!” She whipped her arm from his grasp, sobbing “Can’t you see?” She fisted her hands at her sides, fighting the urge to slap at him. “You are not welcome here, Jimmy. Get away from me!”

  Jimmy’s face froze, his mouth opened in the prim scandalized O of a church lady. That look might have mattered to her, ten minutes ago. He ducked his head and strode back to the truck.

  Watching his back recede, another insight hit like a slap.

  He’d known what her brain managed to block out all these months.

  He knew she killed Benje. That’s why he left her.

  A moan rumbled from the lava pit in her chest. How could he stand to look at her? How could she stand to look at herself?

  Only one way. The wind pushed her as she ran for the garage.

  CHAPTER

  27

  I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

  —Helen Keller

  Char barreled through the back door to the garage. She wasted a few precious moments catching her breath while her eyes acclimated to the shadows, listening to the wind whistle around the corner of the house and the recriminations whipping around the corners of her mind. The first object to appear out of the gloom was her father’s prize possession, the 1959 El Camino he’d owned since he and Mom married. It sat, a forgotten ghost shrouded in a pale gray dust cover. Yet another reminder of things lost.

  Silence met her shuffling steps as she squeezed between it and the row of storage boxes against the wall. At the last tier, she stopped and pulled the first box from the pile. Seeing no free space to set it down, she turned and dropped it. The splat echoed. Manila files spilled under the car. The next box followed, and the next. Jerking the top off the bottommost box, she scrabbled through registry papers of cattle long dead, to the bottom. Rooting for a glimpse of amber.

  JB stopped in his tracks, turned, and watched Char disappear into the garage. He couldn’t get his brain in gear. The shift in Charla’s demeanor was so sudden it caught him flat-footed. Today he thought they’d tapped into the thick, braided-wire connection they’d always had, from high school right up to the day of the accident. Then this. She’d come at him, baring her teeth, driving him away, just like last time.

  Acid burned at the back of his throat. He watched the wind push a scrap of paper across the empty yard. Here he was again, on the outside. No family, no real home. He settled his hat on his head and turned for the truck. Maybe he’d call her later, after she’d calmed down.

  Hand on the door handle, he hesitated. This didn’t feel right. Déjà vu ants crawled over his brain, leaving a trail of unease. Isn’t this what he’d done last time? Walked out when she needed him the most? He’d allowed his own pain and insecurities blind him to why she’d attacked him. Char told him just this afternoon that it hadn’t been about him. It was about her.

  Forcing his own feelings out of it, he looked again at what happened. When the greedy wind threatened to take his hat, he jerked the brim down.

  Char was upset. He’d expected that, but it wasn’t until he talked about cutting the rope that her eyes had gone wild, exposing that crazed woman he’d hoped to never see again. Why? It didn’t make any sense! Agitation amped, until a fine hum of electricity ran right under his skin, making him want to jump out of it.

  He was done running.

  He’d been a self-centered fool to get chased off like a stray hound last time. The jitters calmed. A solid weight of rightness settled over him.

  He tossed the keys on the hood of the truck and turned back to the house. “You may be stubborn, Charla Rae, but you got nothing on this old bull rider.” His words were snatched away by the wind, but not his determination.

  It didn’t matter if it made sense. Char needed him. He jogged to the garage door.

  There! With a strangled cry, she pulled out her small bottle of oblivion and rushed as fast as the squeezed space would allow to the kitchen door.

  Myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault. The taunting litany chided her as she groped her purse for her keys. Finding them, she dropped the purse, scattering former essentials of her life onto the cement floor. After a few fitful tries, her shaking hands managed the lock. She crossed the kitchen linoleum to the sink.

  While the water ran, she tried with palsied fingers to pry the lid off the plastic bottle. She was about to reach for her meat mallet to break it, when she remembered the childproof cap. Snorting at the stab of irony, she pressed on the lid and turned. It opened easily. She shook two tablets into her palm.

  Myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault. She added one more.

  A child’s heartsick sobbing echoed from down the hall. Benje? She cocked her head, listening.

  Son? The sound trailed off, moving away. Her chest collapsed in on itself, the air whooshing from her lungs.

  I can’t live like this anymore. Ghosts aren’t enough to live for.

  Her chest spasmed, her lungs having forgotten the skill of breathing.

  If Benje can’t come to me…

  She shook the rest of the pills into her hand. Decision made, the band around her chest slackened and her lungs pulled in a burden of air.

  JB’s fingers tightened on the door frame. Char’s back was to him, but he knew she had those damn pills; he could hear them rattling in the bottle.

  Save her! The cowboy code screamed in his head.

  You can’t save her. She has to save herself, whispered the contemporary voice he’d heard lately.

  Charla cocked her head, listening. To what? The water ran gently in the sink, and the ticking clock in the great room contributed to the silence more than broke it. “Ahhhh!” She folded over, leaning on the sink as her knees gave way.

  His hands jerked from the sill and he mounted the last step. The need to shelter a woman was a part of his genetic fabric.

  You could take them from her. But the world is full of pills, isn’t it?

  He forced his hands to clench the frame again, feeling the wood give under his fingers. Doing nothing was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  She grabbed the edge of the sink, the delicate tendons standing out on the backs of her bloodless hands. Slowly she straightened. Her head came up. Staring through the window where the tree used to be, she blindly groped on the wall next to the sink. The silence shattered with the deep growl of the garbage disposal.

  Without looking down, Char upended the bottle over the black hole in the sink. The grinder’s pitch changed as it chewed.

  Joy rocketed from JB’s core, releasing him. He stepped into the room.

  “I love you, Charla Rae.”

  At the deep voice, she jolted, shock coursing down her legs. She spun to the door. He was there, towering over her, enfolding her in clean, simple strength.

  “You’re not alone, Little Bit. I’m right here,” he murmured, his breath stirring the hair at her ear as his hand came up to cradle her head.

  Of course he was. She looked up into the deep brown eyes that had anchored her to the earth for the past twenty-one years. He had never left. Not really. His love spoke by way of the nurse he’d sent to save her when she was drowning. In the sweat h
e earned in the hot sun of the feedlot, to pay Rosa. In the money he’d left in the checking account for her, when she knew he went without. He’d hovered outside her direct sight for the past year, yet with a simple shift of focus, she could clearly see the threads of the safety net he’d woven. A net that kept her from the rushing dark waters beneath her.

  Which only made her feel worse. She didn’t deserve any of it. She pried her hands from his waist and took a reluctant step back.

  “Talk to me, Charla.” He frowned down at her. And waited. He leaned one hand on the sink, looking as if he’d wait for as long as it took. “I’m not leaving. So you might as well tell me.”

  “It’s my fault!” The sobbing admission burned like drain cleaner as it burst from her throat. “I didn’t know. I didn’t remember. How could I not remember?

  “The gold rope, Jimmy, it was mine!

  “I bought it to make tie-backs for the curtains. Benje must have taken it to make a swing.” The poison burst from her mouth in an explosive sob. “I yelled at him. Told him to get out from under my feet.” When black dots shot across her vision, she remembered to breathe. “I know why you left, Jimmy. How can you look at me? How could you love me? How can I live?

  “I killed our son!”

  He extended his hand slowly, as he would to a frightened horse. The deep rumble of his voice was like water chuckling over rocks. “Oh, Little Bit. You’ve carried that guilt all this time?” His eyes filled. With pain. With tears. “Don’t do this, Hon. You didn’t kill Benje.” His fingers on her arm were icy; she shuddered.

  The corner of his mouth twisted in a bitter parody of a smile. “If I’d have taken the time to build the fort he wanted, he’d have had no reason to be messing with your pretty rope.” His gaze wandered to the window, to the stump that lurked in the grass, lethal as a coiled snake.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve built that damned fort in my head? I can smell the sawdust from the sawn planks. I can see the sun shine off the red in his hair as I lean down to show him how to pound a proper nail—” His deep voice broke, and he swallowed. “Maybe we’re all guilty. Benje too. Or maybe none of us is.”