That Cowboy's Kids

by Debra Salonen

  Becky gave him a sympathetic smile, but appeared as bewildered as Angel.

  When Heather’s sobs subsided, he used his cuff to wipe the wet tracks streaking her chubby red cheeks. She blinked as if not sure where she was.

  “Hey, sweetness, what happened?”

  Her bottom lip shot out, trembling.

  “You got scared?”

  She nodded then buried her face in his shoulder.

  Right or wrong, Tom had been running on instinct. Like a wounded animal, he’d taken the girls and gone to ground. He’d protected his daughters the only way he knew how, by isolating them from the world. Maybe that had been a mistake. Instead of getting better, Heather seemed to be sinking deeper into a pit of despair.

  He rose, Heather’s warm little body plastered to him like a bandage. “Maybe we should see that doctor right away.”

  Abby nodded. “I’ll call ahead and see if she can take you earlier than four.”

  But will it do any good? Tom’s frustration weighed heavily on him.

  As if reading his thoughts, Abby said, “Believe me, Mr. Butler, it won’t help Heather to keep things bottled up.”

  She laid a gentle hand squarely on his daughter’s little back. She probably didn’t feel Heather’s sigh, but Tom did.

  Abby led the way to the exit, pausing at her office to give Tom her business card. “My home number is there. Feel free to call if you need anything.” She smiled. “Please don’t give up on us,” she said softly. Whether to him or Heather, he wasn’t sure.

  “ARE YOU READY for a good time, birthday girl?” a voice called, echoing in VOCAP’s empty hallway.

  Melina Orozco, Abby’s best friend and co-worker, had two missions in life: find a man to make her mother happy and have a good time to make herself happy.

  “Just give me a minute. I have one more call.” Abby smiled as she dialed the number.

  Since it was after normal office hours, Donna picked up. “Hello.”

  “Hi. It’s me. How’d it go this afternoon?”

  “You mean with the handsome cowboy and his two darling daughters?”

  Despite the light tone in her friend’s voice, Abby knew Donna was a complete professional. She’d been Abby’s therapist at one time, and they were still close. “Did you connect? Are you going to continue seeing them?”

  “Abby, dear, you know I can’t discuss my patients with you. Besides, one hour with two traumatized little girls and a worried father pacing just beyond the threshold didn’t give me a lot to work with. I’ve suggested therapy twice a week and participation in Rainbows.” Tomorrow’s Rainbows was a ten-week peer counseling session in Fresno.

  “And he went for it?”

  “Yes. With some reservations. Apparently the logistics are tricky—the new Rainbows session will be on Thursdays at six-thirty. Not the best time for him, I gather, but he said he’d work it out.”

  “Great!” Abby had sensed Tom Butler’s reluctance to reach out for help.

  “Interesting man, isn’t he?” Donna asked conversationally.

  Abby knew the ploy. “I called because I was concerned about the children. Not the father.”

  Donna laughed. “So you think. But I know you, dear heart, and you want to help them all. You’re the queen of fix-it.”

  “That was the old Abby. From now on, it’s me first. I’m thinking about quitting to go back to school this fall to get my law degree. Earn the big bucks.”

  Donna was silent a moment then said, “You have to do what’s right for you, Abby. Just be sure it’s for the right reasons. Thirty is not old.”

  After saying their goodbyes, Abby considered her friend’s words: the “queen of fix-it.” “Not this time,” she muttered. She’d do her best to help Tom Butler and his daughters get back on their feet, but if they were still in the system by the end of summer, she’d arrange for another advocate to take over. She couldn’t afford to keep putting the needs of others before her own happiness.

  “DON’T START READING without me, Daddy,” Heather said, scooting off the double bed she shared with Angel.

  Angel rescued the bottle of nail polish that almost tipped over when the mattress jiggled. “Damn it, Heather, you’re gonna make me screw up,” Angel snarled, ignoring the look her father gave her. She knew he disliked swearing, but she didn’t care. She had a right to swear. Her whole damn world got turned upside down and she was supposed to like it? Not even.

  Frowning, she concentrated on applying a second coat of polish to her toenails. Cat-puke green, her father called the color. Like she cared what he thought; he didn’t have a clue about what was cool. He was just a cowboy, living in this shack out in the middle of nowhere. Angel liked it okay when she came to visit in the summer—it made for great stories to tell her friends. But summer was one thing, actually living here was something else. And she was pretty sure she hated it.

  “Whatcha need, punkin?” Her father called as he dropped into the spot Heather had vacated.

  Angel rescued her polish a second time, growling under her breath.

  “A drinka’ water,” Heather answered, skipping out the door like the little kid she was. She’d started wetting the bed right after the police gave her back. The weekend-long ordeal must have scared Heather pretty bad because she was acting more like a three-year-old than a kid who’d turn six in August. Angel felt bad for her, but it was hell sharing a bed with a bed wetter. “Why don’t you just put her in a diaper?” she grumbled.

  She felt her father’s warning frown.

  “Go ahead and get your drink, sweets,” he told Heather, who stuck her tongue out at her sister. “Remember what Dr. Jessup said? This’ll get better soon.”

  Angel pictured their encounter with the therapist that afternoon. Right at first Angel thought the woman looked more like a hippie bag lady than a doctor. She had more beads resting on her broad bosom than some department stores had for sale.

  “How long will this take? A couple of weeks? A month?” her father had asked, pacing like a cat stuck in a doghouse.

  Angel actually liked the room; there was a “safe” feeling about it. In a way, it reminded her of her mother’s office back home.

  “There’s no credible timetable for grief, Mr. Butler,” Dr. Jessup told him. Her voice was kind, it made Angel feel warm inside. “There is, of course, a recognized grief process, a pattern of predictable steps we go through toward healing, but no formula that says you should be done with stage one by week three. It just doesn’t work that way. It would make my job so much easier if it did.”

  When she smiled, Angel saw something she liked. Honesty. Nobody was ever honest with kids. They all act like we’re a bunch of babies who can’t understand what’s happening.

  Angel understood most of what had happened. Her mother and Val had a fight. Angel had tried eavesdropping but they’d stayed in their bedroom, which was half a flight higher at the end of the hall. When her mom came and got her, Angel had seen tear streaks on her face, but Lesley had refused to talk about it. All she said when she’d dropped Angel off at Caitlin’s house was, “It’s grown-up stuff, honey. It’ll be all right.”

  Well, it wasn’t “all right.” When Val came and picked Angel up early the next morning, he said her mother had been attacked when she stopped at an ATM machine. Angel didn’t believe him at first. Her mother was such a stickler for safety. How could she have been that stupid? Angel wondered for the millionth time.

  Now, not only was her mother gone, but so was their life—their real life. And Angel was pissed as hell.

  “Angel-babe, please try to cut your sister a little slack,” her father said softly. “She’s doing the best she can. We all are,” he added under his breath.

  Angel knew that. None of this was his fault. He was a good guy who tried real hard to make things okay for them. And things had been going along pretty good until her crazy grandmother decided to sue for custody. Damn judge. Angel knew how hard it was on her dad’s pride to have to go to that vict
ims’ place today—even if the lady there was nice enough, and sorta pretty.

  “I know,” she said, regretting her rotten humor. It wasn’t Heather’s fault she was having bad dreams. Angel had a few, too.

  “Like the lady said, we just gotta take this one day at a time,” he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

  Angel closed her eyes to keep back the tears that seemed right on the verge of coming out nearly every minute of the day. She wanted to scream and hit things. Hurt things. She wanted her old life back. She wanted to go home, but she was stuck in this valley forever.

  Angel shrugged off his touch and didn’t say anything. Her mom always told her if you can’t say something good, then don’t say anything at all. The way things were going, Angel figured she’d never have to speak again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ABBY CLOSED the refrigerator door on the last of her groceries. Saturday mornings weren’t what they used to be in Welton. Traffic in the once-sleepy central valley town was beginning to rival the Bay area—quite different from when she first moved into Billy’s house on Glendennon Court.

  Actually, the three-bedroom bungalow had belonged to Billy’s mom until she passed away, and Billy had left it to Abby in his will. Janice Eastburn, Billy’s mother, had been a neighbor when Billy and Jarrod, Abby’s brother, were classmates and best friends in high school, but once Billy joined the marines, she’d sold their house in Fresno and moved to Welton, where she took a job in a dentist’s office. She lived alone until diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, then Billy moved home from Hawaii to help her. He wasn’t back three weeks before she died.

  Billy, Abby thought, pausing before the open cupboard, a box of Grapenuts in her hand. A familiar buzzing sensation bloomed in her chest like the beginning of a cold. Her memories of him were so jumbled—some good, some horrible—she was tempted to lock them out, but Donna had taught her to accept any memories that came. “Shove them in a black hole and they’ll fester like pond scum,” Donna warned her patients.

  Resigned that she was having a “Billy moment,” Abby set down the cereal and picked up her new “Thirty Isn’t Old—I’m just 21 with 9 years’ experience” mug and poured herself the last of the morning’s coffee. After taking a sip of the aromatic brew, she pulled out a stool at the counter and sat down. Tabby, her overweight cat, rubbed against her ankles, hoping no doubt for an après-breakfast snack. Abby ignored him, focusing instead on the past.

  Poor Billy, she thought wistfully, he didn’t really stand a chance where I was concerned. I put him on a pedestal not even a superhero could keep from falling off.

  She tried to picture herself back in 1988, when Billy came home from Hawaii. A nineteen-year-old college coed, fifteen years his junior, Abby doubted if she’d recognize that silly, naive girl who didn’t know the first thing about love…or grief. She learned fast.

  Abby, who was just a baby when Billy and Jarrod were in high school, had grown up on Billy stories, from his bad-boy image in high school to his heroism in Vietnam. Jarrod called him “G.I. Bill,” since all Billy ever wanted to do was be a soldier. According to Jarrod, Billy’s greatest fear was that Vietnam would be over before he got there.

  Taking a sip of coffee, Abby pondered the start of her hero worship. Honors English, she thought, bracing her chin in her palm. Each student selected someone local who had made a significant personal sacrifice for someone else. Since Billy lost a leg while helping to evacuate civilians at the close of the war, Abby felt he qualified.

  Jarrod gave her Billy’s address in Hawaii. Abby wrote him twice, but he didn’t write back. So, Abby interviewed Billy’s mother, instead.

  If Abby had been older and less idealistic she might have been able to separate truth from wishful thinking, but as it was she drew a picture of Billy in her head and so it stayed. When he returned home to help his mother, Abby was already halfway in love with him, even though she never really knew him.

  And she wasn’t disappointed when she accompanied her family to Janice’s funeral. Hawaii had given Billy a sort of “Baywatch” mystique: tan and weathered, a sun-bleached ponytail and wide, muscular shoulders from using crutches—he was the embodiment of a hero. Someone with a more experienced eye might have caught the jaded look in his eyes, the lines of dissipation from ten years of drinking and carousing.

  Abby sat back on the stool and looked around her bright, cheerful kitchen. It’s so weird that he’s gone and I’m still living here. What would my life have been like if he had returned my letters? What if he’d told her his story the way it was, not the way his mother had perceived it?

  Instead of a heroic amputee who lost his leg through a selfless act of bravery, Billy had stumbled out of a bar into the path of panicky citizens trying to flee their dying country. Knocked to the ground, he was too drunk to get out of the way of an army truck that backed over his foot, crushing his ankle. Chaos and confusion resulted in less than perfect medical treatment, which led to a series of infections and months of hospitalization. When gangrene set in, Billy agreed to a partial amputation of his foot. Unfortunately, a staph infection resulted from the operation and he nearly died. By the time he woke up, still in pain despite heavy medication, he discovered three-quarters of his leg had been removed to stop the infection from claiming his life.

  Bitter and addicted to painkillers, he accepted a disability settlement and hooked up with two ex-Marine buddies in Hawaii who needed some capital to open a bar. Billy drank most of his share of the profits, but his disability income kept him solvent and he tended bar just often enough to hit on lovely young ladies eager to ease his pain.

  Abby believed his mother’s death was an epiphany for Billy. As their relationship evolved, Billy told Abby about his life in Hawaii—the drugs and alcohol and the women. He insisted on being tested for AIDS before he would consider making love to her, and even then he always used a condom. Billy said he wanted to put the past behind him and straighten out his life. Who better to infuse him with energy and hope than an idealistic college student?

  Who better, indeed? Abby thought ruefully, tracing the printing on her mug. Maybe he’d have succeeded in turning his life around if she hadn’t been so full of hero worship. How could any man live up to that, especially a man who felt his whole life was a sham?

  “Abby? Are you home?” a voice called from the front of the house.

  Another voice from the past. “In the kitchen, Landon,” Abby said with a sigh.

  Landon Bower, her ex-boyfriend of eleven months, had a habit of dropping by for advice on his new relationship with the beautiful, if difficult, Deirdre.

  Dancer lithe, boxer light, he made his usual flamboyant entrance, sliding across the terra-cotta floor tiles on stocking feet. He always took off his shoes inside a house, claiming it his birthright since he was born in Japan. Abby believed it was because he never had to wash his own socks.

  “Hi, beautiful birthday girl.” Gallantly bowing, he offered her a thick bouquet of white daisies, pink carnations and yellow spider mums.

  “My birthday was last week.”

  “I know. I forgot.” He flashed what his mother called his “guaranteed-to-make-women-love-me smile.” She’d sent Abby a birthday card, much to Abby’s surprise. When Abby and Landon broke up, his mother told her, “You’ll regret this someday, Abby. Landon is a wonderful person.” Abby wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Abby or herself.

  “I’m sorry, girly-girl. You know how I am about dates. Hence the blooms. When we were living together, I always got away with murder if I brought home flowers.” He frowned. “I wish that worked with Deirdre.”

  Abby rolled her eyes. Sometimes she couldn’t believe she’d cohabited with him for as long as she had. Donna called it Abby’s self-imposed penance. “I told you at the time, a dog would have accomplished the same thing—companionship and utter dependency, but no, you had to bring Landon home,” Donna liked to tease.

  “Why can’t Deirdre be more like you, Ab?” Landon as
ked.

  Abby moved to the sink, ostensibly to tend to the flowers. She liked Landon, but she was tired of being his sounding board for his new girlfriend. Another area of my life that needs work.

  “Don’t blame Deirdre because she’s not a pushover like me.” Abby tried to keep her tone light, she’d been wallowing—at least, wading—in self-pity too much the past week.

  Landon gave her an inquiring look. “I prefer to think of you as a softhearted person,” he said, sounding as though he meant it.

  Abby smiled for real. Landon could be very sweet when he wanted to be. They’d lived together for almost four years. But their feelings for each other never blossomed into the real thing. Not that it surprised Donna.

  “He doesn’t engage your emotions—the ones you locked up after Billy,” Donna told her. Abby wasn’t sure such a man existed, or that she would want to meet him if he did.

  “So, how’s work?” Abby asked, changing the subject.

  Landon walked past her to pull out the stool she’d been sitting on. As he passed, she could smell his cologne. Canoe. The one she’d picked out for him at Macy’s. Did Deirdre know it was Abby’s pick?

  “Abby,” he groaned, dropping his face into his hands, “my life sucks. I think it started going down the toilet when I left you. Is it possible we made a terrible mistake?”

  One small part of her danced in triumph. Yippee. Somebody needs me and worships me and wants me. The adult part of her, the thirty-year-old, groaned. “Landon, our breakup was mutual. Granted, you had someone waiting for you, but I needed you to leave. I needed the space to find answers about myself.”

  “What’d you find out?” His tone seemed sincere, not skeptical like her mother’s.

  “Lots of things.” Liar. “I know I let people take advantage of me.” Most people. Except for certain cowboys who have too much pride to ask for help. One silly little part of her had expected a call from Tom Butler all week. When it didn’t materialize she was oddly deflated.