"He's going to fly up and join us in Washington, DC, anyway," said Rags briskly. "You don't think I'm taking you hooligans to the Smithsonian by myself, do you?"
And she didn't, either. When Tell called the day he was supposed to arrive in Washington to tell her he wouldn't be able to make it, she packed the kids and their "I went to Washington, DC, and all I got was this crummy tee shirt" apparel into the van and left the nation's capital. She drove north and west into Pennsylvania, so angry she didn't trust herself to talk. This meant the children sang "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" all the way to Gettysburg, where she said, "We'll stop here. It's historical. It'll be fun."
She didn't bother to let Tell know where they were. And it wasn't fun.
~*~
"That was the Pennsylvania state line we crossed a while back, wasn't it? You ever been to Gettysburg?" With Rags' glasses balanced precariously on the end of his nose, Tell studied the atlas.
She looked at him in surprise before she remembered that he hadn't been along on that trip. "Uh-huh," she said cautiously.
"When?" He must have remembered as soon as he asked, because he added, "Oh," and returned his attention to the atlas.
"I'd like to go back," she said. "It's nice, and I didn't really enjoy it the first time."
"Let's go, then."
Sometimes it was fun, driving along and talking about days gone by. It filled them in on parts of their children's childhoods they'd missed because shared custody allowed for only one of them at a time to deposit into the memory bank. Rags had learned the true story of when all three boys came back from Cordova Mall in Pensacola with their left ears pierced.
"I grounded them to the beach," said Tell. "Big deal. That was the only place they wanted to be that summer anyway."
Rags had told Tell about Marley's first date in a car, when all three of her brothers "just happened" to be sitting on the front porch when the boy arrived to pick her up. With guns "borrowed" from the high school drama department.
But there were subjects they avoided, too. Rags looked across at Tell's tight jaw and thought maybe that long ago vacation would have been a good one for that category.
"I knew where you were." he said finally, his words falling heavily into the silence.
So much for avoidance.
"You did." It wasn't a question. "Then why the show of shouting and great relief when we got home?"
He chuckled, earning a glare from her. "I shouted because I was royally pissed that you'd done such a thing, and I was relieved because...I guess because I was afraid you wouldn't be back." He sighed, all humor draining from his face. "Even though I wanted it to end, I wanted it to end right, not with you running off with the kids."
"End right?" Incredulity made her voice rise in an angry spiral. "You think it ended right? With our kids being raised in two places? Me living all those years thinking you were unfaithful, and you having balloons blown up in your arteries? If that was right, Telluride, spare me from your idea of wrong."
He was silent for a long moment. "We keep doing it, don't we? We talk about having new lives and being free, and we both play around the edges of being together again in some weird but fundamental way. Then we throw ourselves right back into the past. If it isn't me saying the wrong thing, it's you."
Rags didn't answer because she didn't know what to say. Finally, her voice sounding as defeated as she felt, she asked, "Do you want to stop for the night at the next town or do you want to drive for a while? I'm exhausted."
"Let's stop."
She parked in the circular drive of the Plumfield Inn, a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of the town they entered a few minutes later. Plumfield's narrow main street nestled prettily between the hills, and Rags wished she was in the mood to enjoy it.
"I only have one room available, but it has two double beds," said the elderly proprietor apologetically. "I know it's a poor time for a paint job, but you take the help when you can get it, and my grandsons are here for the weekend. I could call a motel in the next town if you'd like. It's only about twelve miles further on."
Tell swept his gaze over Rags. She looked tired, her eyes seeming to droop at the edges. "We'll stay here, if that's all right," he said. "Is there any place to get dinner?"
"Only McDonald's, I'm afraid. The café downtown closes up tight as a drum at six o'clock on Sundays, but I'd take it as a compliment if you'd join me for dinner. I've cooked enough for an army, but my grandsons are out carousing." Her brown eyes twinkled merrily through rimless glasses. "'Course, if I were their age, I would be, too."
"We don't want to be any trouble-"
Rags' protest was cut off with the wave of the woman's hand. "No trouble. Just have your man take your bags up to the Jo room and you come on into the kitchen with me. You look in dire need of some tea or some brandy. Or both, if you like."
"You're very kind, Mrs.-" Rags' brow lifted in inquiry.
"Yoder. But just call me Esther. Everyone does. When you get those bags in, young man, you can join us. Right through that door there."
Tell grinned. He liked anyone who referred to him as "young man."
Rags followed Esther into the big kitchen and slipped into the seat the older woman indicated. "It's good of you to have us like this."
"Nonsense. I get lonesome sometimes. That's why I run the B and B. Gives me a captive audience." Esther set a snifter in front of her. "I've put the kettle on to boil."
Even though she didn't care for brandy, Rags swirled the contents in the glass and then sipped. The liquid warmed as it went down. Warmed and comforted.
"Doesn't fill the cold spot," said Esther, "but it helps." She looked at Rags with wise eyes. "How long you been divorced?"
Rags didn't ask how she knew. She'd long ago accepted the fact that when a woman was divorced, she might as well be wearing a sandwich board announcing the fact. It was like a siren call to overcharging repair people, married men on the prowl, and school counselors who wore themselves out trying to mend the products of broken homes.
"Eleven years," she said, and sipped again.
"Y'ever feel like it's not even important? The reason you got divorced, I mean." Esther grinned over her shoulder at her from the stove. "I'm seventy-five. When I say what I think, folks generally attribute it to my advanced age and don't take offense."
"We didn't love each other any more," said Rags.
"And now?"
"Now I don't know." She heard Tell ascending the stairs, his step heavier than usual. "I like what he's become, and I think he likes me, too, but the past keeps jumping out at us."
"Then take what the past has to offer and toss the rest out." Esther brought the teapot to the table, three cups dangling by their handles from her other hand. "As people say today, I've been there, done that, and bought the damn tee shirt. We were married for ten years, divorced for ten, and married for thirty more." She smiled, her eyes soft and distant. "The only years I regret are these past two, since he's been gone."
"What about the years while you were divorced? You weren't sorry you didn't spend them together?" Rags finished her brandy and reached for the cup of tea.
Esther laughed merrily. "Shoot, no, we'd have killed each other. There are women, lots of women, who would have stuck with it when things were impossible, and never been sorry for it. Me, I had to go my own way. If life was going to be impossible, I wanted it to be impossibility of my own making."
Rags thought of Ellis Ann, and felt a new understanding. Her mother-in-law had "stuck with it," but she'd never faulted Rags for not following her example.
"Did you marry anyone else?" she asked.
"Nope. Men seemed to think they should be more important to me than my own children. I reckon that's one thing that drew me back to my husband. He knew he took a close second to them, and he liked it that way. I held the same position in his heart. Even when he was a lousy husband, he was a good dad."
Rags grinned at her. "Are you sure you're not me, or I'm
not you? I was left on the porch of an orphanage when I was little. You didn't lose a kid in Indiana, did you?"
Esther shook her head. "Last time I looked, they were all there."
"Of course, she's not you." Tell came into the room, camera in hand. "She's taller than you. Esther, this house is wonderful. You care if I take some pictures?"
"Go right ahead. Maybe I'll have me some new postcards made up. Mind you don't open any closet doors, though. The fallout could be terrible. You want some tea, Mr. Maguire?"
"Tell," he corrected easily, taking the proffered cup.
Rags finished her tea and got to her feet. "Can I help you with anything?"
"Sure can. The stuff's all there in the cupboard if you'll set the table. You don't mind the kitchen, do you? The dining room's kind of stuffy, though people in business suits are comfortable there."
Rags opened the cabinet door. "These are beautiful," she said, lifting out creamy plates with pansies around the edge.
"They were my great-great grandmother's. Word has it she served chicken and noodles to a band of Confederate soldiers on them. Don't know if it's true or not, but my great-great grandfather was a Rebel colonel."
"And you use them?" Rags snatched her hand back.
Esther gave her a patient look. "Why not? They're mine while I'm here. What good would they do anybody locked up somewhere? Tell, reach up there for that basket, will you? Now, just take these biscuits off the cookie sheet and drop them in there. Hope you don't mind biscuits out of a can-my homemade ones could have been used for ammunition in that war that brought my ancestors together."
Tell obeyed her request, looking over his shoulder with twinkling eyes at Rags. "Yankee cooking," he murmured. "You've probably given us the answer as to why the north won the war, Esther."
She flapped a hand at him. "I don't even enter into that discussion, my boy."
"Good thinking," said Rags, her smile sweetly malicious, "since to some people, the war's still going on."
~*~
Rags never dreamed. More accurately, she never remembered her dreams. When he'd taken his first psychology course, Micah had explained to her that she probably blocked out her dreams just as she blocked out memories of her early childhood before being left at the orphanage.
"Pain avoidance," he'd said gravely.
"Nah." Joe had grinned at him. "She kept you, didn't she? If she was hoping to avoid pain, she'd never have done that."
Occasionally, however, she'd wake inexplicably. Her heartbeat would be different, and sometimes she'd feel tearful, vaguely frightened, or even amused. She'd lie still, waiting for her pulse to return to normal, and eventually fall back asleep.
But tonight there was no vagueness to the feelings. She woke soaked with perspiration and with sobs wracking her body. Tell was at her side, swabbing her damp hair back from her face and making soothing sounds deep in his throat. Soft light shone from the lamp between the two beds. Two beds? Why were there two beds?
"Tell?" She gripped his wrist, stopping the motion of his hand. "The kids. Check on the kids." He was always looking in on the kids. Why didn't he do it now, when terror held her motionless with its relentless weight?
"Wake up, old lady. The kids are fine, just fine."
"No, it's-" No sooner had her mind grasped the reason for her fear than the knowledge was gone, leaving her quaking and weeping in its wake. "Tell?" she said again.
"Right here."
His arms came around her, lifting her from the twisted, sweat-soaked sheets to put her in his lap. He held her face to his shoulder, bending his head so that his breath whispered across her clammy forehead. "What was it?" he said, his voice as soft as the sensation on her brow. "Do you remember?"
She never remembered, and this time was no different. Images flitted through the back of her mind with elusive clarity, finally fading away until only a slight, dull ache remained. The slam of her heart against her ribs slowed to where it beat in steady rhythm with Tell's. She realized that her fingers held his shoulder in a death grip, and she loosened them, leaving angry red marks on his skin.
"Shh." He continued to hold her, taking her hand and holding it to his lips so that they vibrated against it, all warmth and comfort. And more.
"Stay here." He set her back on the bed and went into the minuscule bathroom with its footed tub and brass fixtures. He came back with a wet washcloth in his hand and a towel over his shoulder.
She lay quiescent under his ministrations. He washed her face and neck as though she were an ill child, then ran the cloth up her bare arms before he grasped the hem of the nightshirt she'd bought their second day on the road. "Lift up," he said, and she did. She could find no voice to object when he pulled the shirt off over her head.
The cool cloth, driven by the warm hand, traveled the length and breadth of her body. At first, gooseflesh broke out in the path of the cloth, and he smiled as he dried her damp skin. Then, as the white square swept over the curve of her belly and dipped between her thighs, she felt the liquid heat begin. It teased the soles of her feet before moving up her legs to the center where Tell's cloth-covered hand lingered.
Her nipples tightened and throbbed in response, her breasts swelling under his steady regard.
"Tell," she said yet again, with no questioning rise at the end of the word this time.
"Old lady." He tossed the washcloth aside, replacing it with his fingers. His other hand came to her breast, his thumb teasing the taut bud at its tip.
She thought she should move away before they were both eclipsed by the heat. She thought if she moved quickly enough, their freedom would be unscathed by the mercurial thing that passion was. She thought she could retain her "impossibility of her own making." She thought-
Then Tell's lips teased hers, his teeth nibbling on her bottom lip. And his hand weighed her breast, the pad of his thumb rubbing gently over its sensitive underside. And he stretched naked at her side with his erection nudging her hip. And his eyes, soft and smoky blue in the glow from the lamp, met hers. And she didn't think at all.
There was a moment, when he slipped away from her to take precautions, when reason came to the fore. When she decided she could do this and then let it go. Making love in the middle of the night in a B and B in Pennsylvania wasn't really about love or permanency or giving up freedom.
He came back to the bed, kissing her as he lay partly beside and partly on top of her, his leg crooking heavily across her thighs. Ah, his mouth. She was convinced Tell Maguire was the most luxuriant kisser in the whole world. He never hurried, never forced, never took more than was offered. Yes, she could do this.
His hand slid under her bottom and down her thigh to lift her knee, then stroked the tender skin at its back, moving so that he could kiss where he touched. His lips trailed down the inside of her thigh, but when his tongue flicked unerringly against the pulsing flange of flesh, she moved sharply.
"No," she said, pulling at his shoulder. "Come with me."
He moved up, kissing her belly, her breasts, the hollows of her collarbone and behind her ear. "Come where?" he asked as his hips came to rest between her legs, his shaft sliding into the wet heat that was there waiting and wanting.
"Oh," she said, feeling her muscles clutching at him as he thrust and drew back, thrust and drew back. "Oh, God."
"Come where?" he repeated, his voice pitching low and thick.
She met his eyes in the golden lamplight, dark and intense and alive with passion. "To the wild place," she said, her words coming out jerkily between spasmodic breaths. "Where only we can go." Her hands left his shoulders to tunnel through his hair.
His eyes darkened even more, and he lowered his lips to hers, ravaging and plundering and driving her even higher. "Now, Rags," he gasped just when she thought she'd surely go mad with the delight of it. "Now, love."
As though from a distance, she heard him say her name, heard another voice saying his and realized it was her own. Then she heard nothing at all through the
splendorous waves of pleasure.
She returned from the wild place slowly, breathing deep of the new-old scent that was Tell's alone and relishing the feel of his perspiration-slick skin against her own. She laid her palm over his heart, counting and waiting. Slow down. Slow down.
He chuckled, and she felt it before the sound came from his throat.
"I'm not going to die on you, old lady."
"Hush." His heartbeat was slowing under her hand, and she relaxed slightly, pillowing her cheek against his shoulder.
He blew at the hair that wisped into his face and held her closer so that their bodies touched full length. "I love you more than cotton candy at the county fair, old lady."
Longing washed bittersweet through her. She closed her eyes against it, pressing her lips to his skin. With her whole heart, she wanted to return the sentiment, to say as she had in times past, "Not as much as I love you."
But, blocked by fear of pain and freedom's threat, the words didn't come.
Chapter Eleven
He leaned on one elbow and watched her sleep. Her mouth was slightly open, her cheek creased by the folds in the pillowcase, her hands folded under her chin as though she were praying. She took up only a small portion of the bed, lying on her side with her knees tucked up and her arm held close to her body. Self-defense, he figured, against a man who tended to sprawl in his sleep.
She looked so young in repose beside him that for an instant he forgot they were long-divorced people in their forties who knew each other's least admirable secrets. The parts of her that showed-her arm and hands, the shadowy cleft between her breasts, the curve of her neck-showed none of the ravages of age. Even the crows' feet at the corners of her eyes and the faint lines around her mouth were smoothed in sleep. Ah, he wished-
No, he didn't. He wouldn't want either of them to be young again. Common knowledge said you grew up between birth and the age of twenty-one or so, but he knew actual adulthood came when you were raising your children. At least, he admitted to himself, grinning at his own silent posturing, that's when it had come for him, when he'd learned what was important. That in the long run, junior high football games mattered more than corporate schmoozing in a hotel bar. That your wife saying, "I need you now," meant more than a secretary handing you your day's schedule. That living well meant being happy.
Because of Joe Page 10