She looked everywhere but at him. “I…I don’t know how you can stand the sight of me.”
He shrugged and gave her a sad smile. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“After the way I treated you?”
“I won’t say it didn’t hurt when you turned me away and wouldn’t listen to me, but there’s enough blame to go around. It’s eaten at me for years that I could have found a way to make you listen.”
She smiled sadly and finally looked at him. “The way I was feeling then, I doubt that.” She closed her eyes. “But when I think that if I’d listened, maybe you wouldn’t have had to leave, I get sick to my stomach.”
“I still would have had to leave,” he said.
“Not if we’d have gotten married and provided Cody with a stable home. No court would have taken him away with your father and my brothers behind us.”
“Maybe not, but the sheriff would have claimed David forced himself on LaVerne and had him locked away in an institution for the rest of his life. I couldn’t chance that.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. “The sheriff knew about David? How?”
“LaVerne. Apparently she threw it in his face the night she came back from Casper, and that’s what prompted the beating he gave her.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “He said if he ever found the baby within a hundred miles of this county, he’d parade a dozen girls into court who would claim David had forced himself on them, too.”
“Oh, my God. Did your father know?”
“No.” Grady swallowed. “I couldn’t tell him. For as far back as I can remember, he blamed himself for David’s accident. He would have blamed himself for this, too, for not preventing it somehow. He wouldn’t have let me leave. He certainly wouldn’t have helped me the way he did, giving me his car and dipping into his savings so I’d have enough to get by on until I settled somewhere. He never expected me to be gone for so long. He thought he could talk sense into Martin.” Grady shook his head. “Maybe I should have told him the truth.”
“No,” Rachel said. “No, Grady, don’t do that to yourself. It would have killed your father to stand by and watch one son sacrifice everything he’d ever known in order to save the other. And he would have hurt so bad for David, that he would never know he had a son.”
“But David did know.”
“What? How? Did you tell him? Did he understand?”
Grady shook his head again. “I didn’t tell him. I didn’t think he would understand. The first time he and Dad came out to see me, Cody had just turned one. Remember how David was? Sometimes he remembered every word a person told him. Sometimes he remembered for a while, then forgot.”
“And sometimes he didn’t remember at all,” she said with a poignant smile. “But he never forgot a person.”
“No, never. He might not have remembered how or why he knew them, but he knew the face and name of every person he’d ever met.”
“And he remembered LaVerne?”
Grady cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah.”
Rachel nearly smiled. “And?”
“And…he also remembered the birds-and-bees talk Dad had given him. His thoughts might have been those of an eight-year-old, but his body belonged to a grown man. He knew what sex was, and that it made babies. He knew he’d…how was it he put it? He said he’d ‘done the dirty’ with LaVerne.”
“Your father wouldn’t have taught him that sex was dirty.”
Grady bit back a grin at her outrage. “I asked David about that, about why he called it that. He said he heard it on TV. Anyway, he took me outside one day when they were visiting and told me all of this and told me he thought maybe he’d given LaVerne her baby. That he’d given her Cody.”
Rachel put a hand to her mouth and blinked rapidly. “What did you do?”
“I asked him if he’d told anybody. He said no, so I told him not to. He said—” Grady had to stop and let the sudden lump in his throat subside. “He said he knew he couldn’t take care of a baby, so it was good that I was doing it, and that he didn’t want Dad to know, because he’d promised Dad that if he ever thought he wanted to have sex, he would talk to him first. He didn’t want Dad to be disappointed in him.”
“Oh, God.” Another tear slipped from beneath her closed lids and streaked down her cheek. “Oh, poor David. Your father would never have been disappointed in him.”
“No, but it would have been one more thing for Dad to feel responsible for. He would have decided it was his fault. He would have tried to make me bring Cody home.”
“How could he? What choice would he have had against the sheriff’s threats but to keep Cody away or risk David’s freedom?”
“None,” Grady said bluntly. “In the end, none.”
“Wait—what about the diary? Why couldn’t you have used that to prove David hadn’t forced himself on LaVerne?”
He shook his head again. “I didn’t know it existed until last week.”
“What?”
He told her about finding it in his old pickup out in the shed.
Then Rachel asked, “Why did you stay away so long, Grady? Why didn’t you bring Cody and come home? Surely after a while…”
“Dad thought it would be best, and I agreed with him, that I shouldn’t bring Cody back here as long as Gene Martin held any position of authority in this county. For the last election Dad said he did his damnedest to get somebody to run against Martin, but nobody was willing. Then last winter he said he’d found the perfect person, an outsider, to run in the upcoming election this fall. He never said who it was, though.”
“But…after all these years. You had the birth certificate. Wouldn’t that be enough to keep the sheriff from taking Cody away?”
“Not if he’d pushed for a DNA test. He could have proved I wasn’t Cody’s father.”
“What about now? Couldn’t he still do something now?”
“No.” Grady shook his head. “I made damn sure of that years ago. I hired myself a fancy California lawyer, and I legally adopted Cody. Gene Martin can’t touch him.”
“Yet you still didn’t come home?” she asked, distress etching new lines on her face. “Why, Grady?”
Evading her gaze, Grady looked out the door beside him at the deepening dusk.
“Grady?”
He shrugged. He had vowed to tell her the truth, and this was part of it. But he didn’t want to hurt her again. “The longer I stayed away, the easier it got. It wasn’t as if I could just pick up my old life right where I’d left it.”
Another tear rolled down her face. “And the girl you trusted to believe in you had sent you away. Oh, God, Grady.”
“Don’t, Rachel. I made my own decisions. I’m not saying they were all smart ones, but they were all mine.”
They stood there and looked at each other for a long time as darkness settled outside the glass door and seeped into the room. And they hurt. And wanted. And yearned.
“You’re still the only woman I’ve ever loved,” he told her quietly, his voice rough with emotion. “The only woman I will ever love.”
“How can you,” she cried helplessly, “after what I’ve done?”
“How can you love me after thinking all these years that I betrayed you?”
Rachel was nearly choking on a combination of anguish and hope. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know I still loved you until you came home, and I saw you again, and I just…couldn’t help myself.”
Humbled beyond belief, and grateful that her heart was strong enough to forgive what she thought he’d done, Grady crossed the six feet of empty floor that separated them. “Marry me, Rachel Wilder. Be my wife. Be Cody’s mother. Make more babies with me. I swear to you, I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never have to doubt me again.”
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. “Marry me, Grady Lewis. Be my husband. Let me be Cody’s mother. Make more babies with me. Forgive me and marry me and I swear, I will spend the rest of my life loving you, believing in you, and
never doubting you again.”
They came together with hearts too full for words.
Epilogue
A pile of giggling little boys and a grinning dog the size of a small sofa greeted Rachel and Grady in the yard when they pulled up at the Flying Ace the next day.
Rachel had talked Grady into coming with her. He still wasn’t convinced his reception would be painless. Her brothers were going to take one look at her face and know how she’d spent the last two nights and most of this morning. There was a look in her eyes that threatened to melt his bones every time he saw it. No way could her brothers miss it.
“Dad!” Cody called. “Look, guys, it’s my dad!”
“Hey, pard. Looks like you’re having a good time.”
“Ah, naw, we’re just doing boring stuff.” Cody then spoiled his nonchalant reply by bursting into giggles.
“Yeah,” Grady said. “I can see that.”
“Oh, good.” Belinda poked her head out the back door. “You’re here. We’re just about ready to sit down. Come on in.”
“You go on,” he told Rachel.
“Grady, you can’t stay out here like a coward. It’s a roast they’re carving up in there, not you.”
“I’ll be along in a minute,” he said. “I want to talk to Cody first.”
“Oh.” Rachel hadn’t been a bit nervous about telling her family she and Grady were getting married. But thinking what Cody’s reaction might be to suddenly learning he was going to have to share his father with another person had her breaking out in a cold sweat. “All right. I’ll just…go on in.”
Grady snagged Cody and held him back while the other boys trooped into the house with Rachel.
“Aren’t we gonna go eat with everybody else?” Cody asked.
“In a minute.” He squatted next to the child of his heart, so he could meet him at eye level. “I’ve got something I want to ask you.”
Curious, Cody cocked his head. “Sure, Dad. Is something wrong? Do we gotta move back to California?”
“No. It’s nothing like that. We’re not ever moving back, Cody. This is our home now. I thought you liked it here.”
“I do! I don’t wanna live nowhere else, Dad. This is the best place in the whole world.”
Grady smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair. “I think so, too. And I think, if you’re willing, it’s about to get even better.”
“Huh?”
“Where’s Grady?” Belinda asked when Rachel entered the kitchen and joined the rest of the family.
“He’s coming,” she said, her gaze darting around the room.
Ace stopped behind his chair and pierced her with a narrow-eyed, all-seeing gaze. “What’s wrong?”
If her smile was a little on the tense side, it was the best she could do. “Nothing.” What if Cody didn’t want a mother?
“Then why do you look like a Thanksgiving turkey waiting for the axe to fall?”
“Gee, thanks.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
Her nephews giggled.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack said. “I think she looks more like the Road Runner when it looks down and realizes the ground is gone.”
The three youngsters giggled again.
“The Road Runner,” Jason said, snorting.
Clay hooted. “That’s a good one, Uncle Jack.”
“You are too cute for words, all of you.” Rachel yanked her chair out and sat down.
“Leave the girl alone,” Trey said, eyeing her closely.
The back door opened and closed as Grady and Cody came in, saving Rachel from any more brotherly comments. She looked up anxiously, but could read nothing on Grady or Cody’s face. They were holding hands. Was that a good sign? Or bad?
“There you are,” Belinda said. “Grady, the seat next to Rachel’s is yours. Cody, you know where your seat is.”
“Thanks.” Grady nodded, but stood where he was, holding on to Cody’s hand.
The room fell silent as everyone wondered why they were just standing there.
“It’s going around,” Ace muttered. To Grady he said, “Is anything wrong?”
“No. At least, not yet,” he added with a wry smile.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ace asked.
Grady glanced around the table, sizing up what he hoped would not turn out to be the enemy. “Ace,” he said with a nod. “Jack, Trey, Belinda, boys. Cody and I have talked it over, and we’d like your permission—no, that’s not right.” He shook his head. “It’s going to happen anyway. But we’d like your blessing. Rachel and I are going to get married.”
Even the refrigerator quit humming, as if it didn’t dare break the sudden, stunned silence in the room.
Slowly, Jack grinned. “Well, it’s about damned time.”
Trey smirked at Rachel. “Guess he got over that shyness, and you got over your—hey, why’d you kick me?”
Ace ignored that and eyed Grady sharply. “I take it you two have already talked this over?”
“We have,” Grady said with a decisive nod.
“Rachel?” Ace asked.
“Ace,” she said between teeth that were clenched tight.
“Oh, my word.”
All eyes turned to Belinda as she stared at Grady, a huge smile covering her face.
“I just remembered where I’ve seen you before.”
“What are you talking about?” Ace asked irritably.
“When I saw Grady when he first came back, the day of the funeral, I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.”
“Can this wait?” Ace asked. “We’re in the middle of something kind of important here.”
Belinda shot her husband a look. “No, it can’t wait. You’re just hedging anyway. You know you’re going to give in. But it might make you feel better if you hear that where I saw him before was in Fort Collins at Rachel’s graduation in May.”
If Rachel’s heart had been racing before, now it threatened to swell right out of her chest. “You were there?”
He gave her a half smile. “I knew how much you wanted it. I couldn’t help it. I had to see you graduate.”
“Oh,” she cried, her eyes filling. She leaped from her chair and dashed around the table, throwing herself into his arms and covering his face with kisses. “Oh, Grady.”
Suddenly Ace smiled, then laughed. “I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but it’s yours. Welcome to the family, you two.”
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5557-2
THE PRICE OF HONOR
Copyright © 2000 by Janis Reams Hudson
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*Wilders of Wyatt County
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