The Price of Honor

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “You would have loved her,” Alma said. “Everyone did. And she would have loved you. Lord, I remember the first time I saw her. Joe and I had just lost everything in a house fire up at Jackson. We were heading to Cheyenne to look for work when we stopped in Hope Springs. We had five dollars, a gasoline credit card, and not much more besides the clothes on our backs. It was raining, and there she was, walking up the highway, away from her stalled car, with five-year-old David by the hand, and Grady, just under a year old, in her other arm.”

  With a faraway look in her eyes, Alma smiled fondly and shook her head at the memory. “We stopped to see if we could help. One look and I knew that David was special. I had a younger sister just like him—physically perfect but with a mind that would always remain childlike. I helped her with the boys, Joe worked on her car, and by that night Joe and I both had jobs here at the ranch. That was near twenty-six years ago.” Alma smiled and shook her head again. “Never been anywhere else since. Never wanted to be.”

  While Ida and Alma talked about those earlier days, Rachel’s mind filled with memories of its own about the Lewis family. Mary Standing Elk Lewis had died of breast cancer before Rachel knew her. Rachel’s memories were of the Lewis men.

  She’d met Grady on her first day of kindergarten, a couple of months after Dr. Ray had saved her pony.

  Actually she met—or at least saw—David first, on the playground. He’d been ten, and some of the younger kids were picking on him, calling him ugly names like dummy and retard. Rachel hadn’t known exactly what those things meant, but when she saw the tears well up in those beautiful dark eyes, she had wanted to cry with him.

  She had yelled at the other kids and told them to leave him alone. No one had listened to her, of course. She’d been a tiny little thing, and not many outside of her own kindergarten class even knew who she was, much less cared.

  Children, she thought now, could be the cruelest creatures on God’s earth. The harder Rachel had tried to defend David, the worse the other kids became. They turned into a laughing, jeering, miniature mob.

  Then, into the fray waded an older man—a first-grader with thick black hair and blue-green eyes. Except for the eyes, he looked a lot like the crying ten-year-old. But this boy wasn’t crying, he was furious. Like a knight to the rescue, he pushed and shoved, shouted and punched, and taught those kids that if they made fun of his brother, they would pay the consequences.

  His name was Grady Lewis, and Rachel had never been the same since that day. Sometimes she had thought of him as a hero, sometimes a troublemaker. But either way, she had thought of him, always. Throughout elementary school they snipped and sniped at each other one minute, then stood shoulder-to-shoulder to defend David the next.

  Rachel smiled at the memories. She could do that now, smile at memories of her and Grady. At least those early memories. But it had taken her years to be able to do even that much after his betrayal.

  There were more fights over the years for Grady. He refused to allow anyone to get away with hurting or making fun of David.

  It wasn’t until junior high that Rachel began to realize that she had a serious crush on Grady, and it wasn’t until high school that he admitted he felt the same. From the time that she was fourteen and he fifteen, it was the two of them, always and forever. They knew each other’s thoughts, shared each other’s dreams. Grady, too, wanted to be a vet, like his father. Rachel and Grady planned to go to college together, then come home and join Dr. Ray at his veterinary clinic. Then…Rachel and Grady would marry and start a family.

  It was seldom these days that Rachel allowed herself to remember that time, but today the memories seemed unstoppable. She and Grady had been so much in love, so close to each other, that when he graduated from high school he had stayed home a year and waited for her to graduate so they could go off to college together.

  College had been exciting, hard work, and for a young man and woman in love, frustrating. But Rachel and Grady had agreed early in their relationship that if she were to get pregnant, her chances of becoming a doctor of veterinary medicine would be jeopardized, and neither of them wanted that. They were holding off getting married because Rachel’s brother, Ace, had stipulated that if she got married before she was twenty-one, her college money would be cut off and she would have to pay her own way.

  The memory brought with it a dull pain. Rachel often wondered if Ace had known something would happen to tear her and Grady apart the way it eventually did.

  It happened the day they came home at the end of their second year of college. They’d arrived in Wyatt County late in the evening. Grady took Rachel home, to the Flying Ace. When he kissed her good-night that night, she’d had no way of knowing that within a matter of hours, her entire world would come crashing down around her head.

  The next morning Laura Jane Brubaker had called to tell her that LaVerne Martin, the county sheriff’s eighteen-year-old daughter, had died at the hospital the night before while Laura Jane, a nurse a couple of years older than Rachel, had been working the late shift. Rachel had been shocked, but wasn’t sure why Laura Jane was calling to tell her this. Laura Jane was a friend, but not a close one, and LaVerne was no friend at all to Rachel.

  Then Laura Jane had told her the rest. LaVerne had died after giving birth to the illegitimate son of the man who had brought her into the hospital late last night—Grady Lewis.

  In shock, Rachel had hung up the phone and stared at the small pink roses on the wallpaper in her bedroom. She could still see those roses in her mind now. To this day she hated wallpaper with pink roses. She’d stripped it from her bedroom walls less than a week later because it reminded her of that phone call.

  She had sat there that day, devastated by the news, and remembered the night the previous fall, the night before she and Grady had left to go back for their sophomore year at the university. They’d gone to a dance in town, and LaVerne had been all over Grady every time Rachel’s back was turned. Grady had finally got so disgusted, and Rachel so angry, that they’d left the dance early. He had taken her home so they could get an early start the next day.

  But he would have had to have driven back through town to get home that night. He must have seen LaVerne then. Must have…been with her after taking Rachel home. Because nine months later, LaVerne had given birth to Grady’s son.

  The realization had nearly killed Rachel that morning when she figured it all out after Laura Jane’s call.

  She’d seen Grady later that same day, when he had come to make excuses for what he’d done. To explain, he’d said.

  To this day she had no idea what he might have told her, because she had refused to listen to him. To her way of thinking, there was no acceptable excuse for his having cheated on her, betrayed her trust, her love. God above, he had fathered a child on LaVerne Martin! There was no excuse.

  She had refused to listen, had turned him away.

  That was the last time she’d seen him, until yesterday.

  Rachel shook her head at the old pain that threatened to rise. She had loved him with all her heart for years. She’d thought he had loved her.

  She hadn’t understood at first that he was gone, but it had taken little time to learn what had happened. When the truth came out, Rachel had been devastated all over again.

  After Grady had left Rachel the night they came home from college, he had showed up at the hospital with LaVerne Martin, who had been bruised and bloody and in the final stages of labor. She had been living with her aunt in Casper for the past several months, so no one in town knew she was pregnant until then.

  LaVerne died that night giving birth to Grady’s son. The shock of the news had reverberated throughout the county. As had the story of how the distraught sheriff blamed Grady for LaVerne’s death and had threatened to kill him. He’d also threatened to turn the baby over to the state adoption agency.

  Before he’d been able to do that, Grady had taken the baby and fled.

  Now, five years later,
he was back, and people were wondering what Rachel was going to do.

  She was going to do absolutely nothing. Grady’s return had nothing to do with her personally. Whether he stayed or left had nothing to do with her, except as to how it might affect her working at the clinic. He had lied to her, cheated on her, betrayed her. Left her. Grady Lewis meant nothing to her. She refused to give him or his actions any control over her.

  But he might have control over your job.

  Damn. What a mess.

  And what a coward she was being, hiding in the kitchen. From ghosts and rumors. No more, she decided, pushing away from the table.

  Grady saw her the minute she stepped out of the kitchen. Like a pigeon coming home to roost, his gaze zeroed in on that cloud of black shoulder-length hair, that creamy, pale skin, those Wilder blue eyes. She’d grown even more beautiful in the years he’d been away. He’d known she would.

  The past tried to rise up in his mind, but he forced it down. It was a waste of time to remember. She wasn’t his any longer. He’d given up all rights to her a long time ago.

  If he stayed…Grady shook his head at himself. If he stayed in Wyatt County now that he was back, there was no way he could avoid her. She worked at the veterinary clinic right outside the front damn door. He was bound to run into her. Often.

  God help him, he wanted to run into her, even knowing he shouldn’t. She was still the only woman he’d ever loved.

  “Grady.”

  The man holding out his hand for a shake was familiar, but it took Grady a minute to place him. Mack Norton. Owner of Wyatt County Feed and Seed.

  “Mr. Norton.” Grady shook the man’s hand.

  “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your daddy and brother.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t know if you knew it or not, but David had been working for me for the past couple of years.”

  “He told me.” Grady smiled. “In fact, he told me every time we spoke. He was proud as a peacock over that job. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your taking him on.”

  “Don’t thank me. We were glad to have him. I don’t know if you’ll believe this or not, but he was the best damn employee I ever had. Never missed a day of work, unless the bad roads kept your dad from driving him in to town. And he never complained about hard work. Loved talking to the customers. Lord, how that boy could talk. And smile. Never saw him but what he wasn’t smiling, no matter what. Sure gonna miss him.”

  “You didn’t have any trouble from your customers about him?” Grady didn’t have to explain his question. There were always people who felt bound to make fun of the mentally handicapped, or complain about them, or refuse to get near them.

  “Oh, we had the odd incident now and then,” Norton confessed, “but nothing serious. And usually nothing David understood. Except that one time when some newcomer stopped in and said something he shouldn’t have.” Norton chuckled. “He called David a dummy, and David fired back, ‘Takes one to know one,’ and stuck out his tongue.”

  Grady smiled at David’s response, but he hurt inside that his brother had needed to defend himself. Defending David had been Grady’s job since he’d been old enough to understand that people could be mean.

  Norton laughed again. “That guy didn’t come back for about three months, but when he did, he apologized to David, and the two of them got thicker than thieves, they did.”

  Grady shook Norton’s hand again. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me this. Thanks for being David’s friend.”

  “Like I said, don’t thank me. I might have been a friend to him, but he was a friend to me, too.”

  Then Norton was gone and Ida Sumner was there, bringing with her a flood of memories. Outside of his mother and Alma, Ida Sumner was the first woman Grady had ever loved. She must be near seventy by now. She’d had gray hair as long as he could remember.

  When a young boy moseyed into Sumner’s Drug Store with its exotic smells and old-fashioned soda fountain on a hot summer afternoon with nothing but lint in his pockets, Ida could always find a chore or two that needed doing and that paid just enough to buy a Popsicle. And later, when he’d outgrown the daily need for a Popsicle, she’d hooked him on her homemade peach cobbler.

  “Boy.” She’d always called him Boy. “It’s sure good to see you. I told Ralph you’d be coming home for your Daddy and David, I surely did, never mind what anyone else had to say on the subject.” The last was accompanied by a glare toward the sheriff, who stood with a group of men across the room.

  “I was so positive you’d come,” she said with a nod. “I made a peach cobbler up special just for you.” Then she leaned close and lowered her voice. “I already took it into the kitchen. Alma’s keeping it safe for you. And don’t you say I shouldn’t have gone to the trouble,” she went on in a more normal voice before Grady could say anything.

  Not that Grady would have tried. No one ever got a word in when Ida Sumner was talking.

  “Your daddy was a friend to everyone in this county,” she said firmly. “And David was a precious soul. I’ve watched you boys grow up right before my eyes, and if that doesn’t make you part mine, then I don’t know what’s what.”

  “Thank you,” Grady finally murmured when she stretched up to plant a kiss on his cheek.

  When Ida moved away to talk to someone else, Grady turned away from the room and stared out the patio door into the backyard. The cottonwood in the far corner had grown some. Beneath it about a dozen kids, Cody included, took turns on the old tire swing. God, the memories that old tree must have. It was a miracle it had survived all these years, considering the abuse it had suffered at the hands of two growing boys, not to mention their various dogs.

  It struck him odd that there was no dog out there now, yapping and leaping at the boys, running circles around them or hiding under a bush while hoping for a minute’s rest from being pressed into service for steer-roping or bronc-riding—the poor dog serving as both steer and bronc, depending on a boy’s whim. There had always been a dog in that yard. David had been crazy about dogs and couldn’t stand to be without one. The last one Grady recalled was Harry. Grady and his dad had picked him out together from a litter of pups in town the last Christmas Grady had been home. Harry was all black except for one white ear. He’d gone everywhere with David—including to California every time David had come to visit Grady. The dog had even gone flying with David and Ray. He’d been in the plane with them when it crashed.

  “No way, man,” someone whose voice Grady didn’t recognize said from behind him. “No way will Rachel have anything to do with him again. She’s too smart for that.”

  “Yeah, well, lock up your daughters and sisters, boys.”

  That voice Grady recognized, and the sound of it made tension coil in the pit of his stomach. It was a voice he’d hoped never to hear again for the rest of his life. Sheriff Gene Martin. LaVerne’s father. Cody’s grandfather, whom the boy had never met.

  “I’d hate to see some other young girl end up dead like my LaVerne did at his hands,” Martin said with a snarl.

  There were a lot of things Grady Lewis would take the credit or the blame for. Some things he was proud of, some he wasn’t. But whether he stayed in Wyatt County or left, this was one thing he could not, would not let slide. He turned slowly toward the sheriff.

  “You mean beaten to a bloody pulp by her own father?” he asked coolly.

  Around them, all sound stopped cold.

  Wyatt County Sheriff Gene Martin was a big man, six-four and beefy, weighing in at over two hundred and thirty pounds. Some was middle-age spread, but there was still plenty of muscle behind it to back up the badge on his chest. Those muscles bunched now, and his face turned red and mottled. “Why, you no-good—”

  “Come on, Gene.” Ralph Sumner tugged on the sheriff’s arm. “Leave the boy be. He just buried his daddy and brother.”

  “Like I buried my little girl five years ago.” With a snarl, Martin tore lo
ose from Ralph’s hold and glared at Grady. “You were smart to run off, boy. Smart to take that little bastard with you.”

  From out of nowhere, Rachel was there. “Sheriff!”

  “You’d do well to take him and hightail it out of here again the same way,” Martin went on.

  “Gene,” Joe Helms said, his voice low and hard. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  “There’s never a time or place,” Rachel said hotly, “for a man to call his own grandson such an ugly name.”

  Shocked that Rachel would rush to Cody’s defense, Grady deliberately kept his hands loose at his sides. If he allowed himself to bunch them into fists, he knew he’d be landing a punch in that fat mouth of Martin’s without thinking. There was a time when he would have done just that, but he was older now, hopefully wiser. And if and when he ever figured out how to tell Cody that this man was his grandfather, he didn’t want to have to confess to having come to blows with him.

  “You’ve had your say,” he told Martin quietly. “The last I knew, this house was still Lewis property. You’ve just worn out your welcome, Sheriff.”

  Ralph Sumner, Joe, and three other men crowded around the sheriff and herded him toward the front door.

  Grady turned away, and there stood Rachel, staring at him, anger still flashing in her eyes. Again it struck him hard that she had taken up for LaVerne’s son. She hadn’t done herself any favors in Martin’s eyes.

  “You should have stayed out of it, Rachel.”

  Shock darkened her eyes. And dismay. She gave him a sad parody of a smile. “You’re welcome, Grady. Think nothing of it.”

  Ah, hell. He’d said the wrong thing, hurt her feelings. Good going, pal.

  He watched her walk away and lose herself in the throng of people. He turned back and stared out the patio door again. What difference did it make if she hated him even more now? What difference did any of it make now?

  His father was dead. David was dead.

  It was just like it had been for the past five years. Just him and Cody. They didn’t need anybody else. They would manage just fine.