After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  In Marfa, the Hotel Paisano had a lovely, ornate historic exterior and a red tile roof. Its most notable claim to fame was that the cast of the movie Giant, including Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean, had stayed there during filming. Next to the parking lot, a few people were scattered around the courtyard with their drinks.

  Inside, Julianne looked around at what she thought of as Old West–casual luxury—a mounted buffalo head hung on the wall in the lobby, leather furniture, and multicolored tile floors. Gift shops occupied at least a third of the main level. One of them continually screened the film and showcased movie memorabilia.

  Mitchell put a light hand on her elbow and guided her to the restaurant where they were seated in an intimate, quiet corner with a view of the courtyard. With its white tablecloths and pretty table settings, it was a welcome change from eating alone in her apartment over the store. They placed their drink and dinner orders, and it almost seemed like a vacation to Julianne after the weeks of work and worry.

  When the drinks had been delivered—a margarita for her and a double Tennessee whiskey for Mitchell—he lifted his glass to her. “Here’s to old friends.”

  She touched her glass to his and gave him a pensive smile.

  Old friends. They’d shared so much more than just friendship. “Mitchell, now that we’ve reached this, well, truce, I guess, I think it’s time we talked about what happened before I married Wesley. You think you know what happened, but you don’t.”

  He sat back in his chair, with one hand steepled over the top of his drink, his expression wary. “Okay. You first.”

  “I know you didn’t understand why I married him.”

  “Not then I didn’t. I can’t say it bothers me less now, but I get it.” He considered her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant back then?”

  “I didn’t know until after the wedding.”

  “Did he know she was mine?”

  Julianne dropped her gaze to the salted rim of her glass. “No. I would have told him before she was born. But—you know how that went.”

  He sat silently, obviously waiting for her to continue.

  “You know how my dad fretted over my future in the last months of his life. I had to do something, even if it was the wrong thing. I thought I owed him that.” Absently, she folded a pleat in her cocktail napkin. “I wanted to marry you. But you were so distracted with your own life, I didn’t think you’d be able to make that kind of commitment.”

  He took a swallow of the whiskey. “Just so you know, I did have a plan. And you probably remember I was waiting for the green light from a baseball scout. I really thought I had a good shot at going to the bigs—eventually. I pinned all my hopes on getting an offer to play minor league. I was so sure about it, I was going to tell you to pack up all your pretty things and be ready to go. I would come to pick you up, and we’d leave Gila Rock as soon as I got a ‘yes.’ But it didn’t happen that way. Oh, I had it all mapped out.”

  “You didn’t bother to tell me. You just kept talking about someday. I didn’t have a ‘someday’—I needed a ‘now.’ I couldn’t understand why you didn’t get that.”

  He looked up. “I did. But I was pretty damned cocky. I thought I’d just slide right into a sweet deal. It didn’t work out that way. I was good, they said, but not quite good enough. ‘Sorry, son, keep at it and maybe you’ll get another chance someday.’ Shit, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.” He sighed and tapped the ice in his drink, making it bob. “I didn’t have a Plan B. I just let everything slide after I was turned down. I’d hung all my hopes and dreams on that single thing. I thought I needed it to make everything else work.” He shrugged. “That’s how kids think—I couldn’t see beyond it. So you married Wes, and I got pissed off. It was just another slap in the face. Then I realized I’d been fooling myself. Why did I think I could get away from that life? I’m a Tucker, by God. I was born to it and it was all I’d ever have. I wasn’t going to have the pretty wife, or the kids and nice house.” He laughed, as if at his own foolishness. “I’d live the same kind of life I always had, the same life that Earl had, and who knows how many generations before that. I didn’t realize it was going to get worse—I didn’t even know it could.” He didn’t sound bitter, but he spoke with the weary surprise of a much older man reviewing many decades of life instead of just three. “But a baby . . . man . . .” He shook his head in a kind of gut-punched astonishment.

  She touched her finger to the salt crystals on her glass. “When I realized I was pregnant, it was too late. I had to stick with the life I’d allowed myself to get. Anyway, what would you have done if we’d found out about the baby sooner? Not much, I don’t think. And maybe you’d have come to resent me, and her, too, for tying you down.”

  “I loved you, so much. I didn’t have much to offer you, but I’d have done everything in my power to take care of you both.”

  She caught his gaze, and her heart wrenched. “So if you’d known about her, it would have made a difference?”

  His shoulders dropped slightly; his voice more so. “Oh yeah. It would have made all the difference in the world. At that sentencing hearing, the judge told me to spend the time in prison thinking about how I wanted to live the rest of my life. I did that. I also got some perspective on my past. I thought you just didn’t care anymore. I was a loser.”

  “I didn’t think that.” They fell silent when their waiter stopped at their table with a basket of bread and butter.

  Mitchell signaled him to bring them another round. “But it was the truth as I knew it,” he continued when they were alone again. “My big fantasy dried up and I couldn’t seem to get out of my own way. I was an ass—I made a mess of things.” He stated this as fact, not in a way that made it sound as if he hoped she’d disagree with him. “I sure as hell would have given you my best, though.”

  “I wish I’d known that. But I suppose I had my own baggage, too,” she admitted. “I had to grow up fast and I was expected to carry on the tradition of the hog farm.” She took a sip of her tart, slushy drink. “I love that house and the land, but I hated hog farming. Hated it.” She couldn’t believe she’d finally admitted that to anyone, including herself. The idea had flitted through her mind, but she’d always pushed it away, feeling disloyal to the earlier Boyces who had worked and sacrificed to keep that farm together for the next generations.

  “So you got married, your dad was at peace, and Wes thought it was his baby you were carrying.”

  She rolled her swizzle stick between her thumb and index finger. “You took up with Cherry and burned down the barn,” she replied.

  That pretty much summed up their past at the end, and they sat at their table, looking across the years at each other.

  “I’ve never stopped loving you, Julianne. I tried everything to get you out of my mind. None of it worked.”

  Hearing the ghost of long-buried emotion in his voice sent a quiver through her that made itself felt despite the relaxing glow of tequila. She looked down at the tabletop. “I never loved Wes. I was fond of him—he was a good soul who did his best to save the farm in the few months he worked at it. When he died I was racked with guilt.” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “I’ve loved just one man in my life.”

  The more personal and urgent their conversation became, the closer they leaned toward each other at the table, until finally he pushed aside a slender bud vase of baby’s breath and carnations along with the alcohol-burning candle. He reached out a hand to her, and she took it, holding on while the world she’d known for the last eight years tilted and fell away.

  “You told me you came back to Gila Rock for one reason—to get my forgiveness.”

  “I guess that was pretty selfish of me, considering what you went through. I don’t deserve it.”

  She maintained unwavering eye contact with him. “I promised myself I wouldn’t budge on that, too. But when I found your note and the flowers on Erin’s grave I realized I must do that—appreciate yo
ur gesture. I didn’t expect you to go looking around out there. I didn’t think anyone would know.” She turned her face toward the courtyard, where a tiered fountain burbled water into its lower levels.

  Feeling as if a benediction had been laid upon his life-scarred soul, Mitchell tightened his grip around her hand. Her acknowledgement wasn’t the absolution he hoped for, but it was something anyway. His voice turned low and rough with emotion. He felt as if his heart had climbed into his throat and lodged there, pulsing, aching, immovable. And Julianne . . . God, poor Julianne had been left alone to deal with her grief. “We know. We’re her parents and we know. That’s what counts.”

  She nodded, still looking at the courtyard. “We created a child together, and we lost her.”

  “Maybe it’s not too late. We could take another shot at it. We’re grown up now, and smarter, I hope.” He squeezed her hand to make her look at him. “And that fever I had for you—Juli, it’s still in me.”

  “I-I know,” she uttered just above a whisper. “I feel it. I didn’t expect this at all. I never thought I’d ever be—”

  Just then, the drinks and their entrees arrived, and they sprang apart. If their waiter had any sense of the intimate conversation he’d interrupted, he gave no hint of it as he launched into a chatty series of questions about who wanted fresh ground pepper, whether they were from out of town, if had they visited the local attractions, and so on, until Mitchell was ready to escort him back to the kitchen. He appeared to be about college age, and his maneuvers to earn a bigger tip were pretty transparent. Finally, Mitchell smiled and peered at the name tag pinned to the man’s vest. “Jeff, there’s an extra five dollars in this for you if you run along right now.”

  Jeff bumbled to a stop in his empty gab, then grinned and gave Mitchell a leering gotcha wink, as if he actually understood what was going on. “Sure.”

  “Smart ass,” Mitchell muttered after the kid was gone, and Julianne laughed. The disruption had derailed their conversation but not the intensity that had sprung up between them. While she speared her southwest salad and he cut into the rib eye steak he’d ordered, Mitchell felt a moment of dreamlike peace that he hadn’t felt in years. Briefly, he let his memory light on a scene from his not-too-distant past: a grim, institutional hall flooded with fluorescent glare, bad food of questionable origin, anger, and hopelessness. He didn’t dwell on it, though. That was behind him, and the hope of Julianne was in front of him, a situation he’d never even dared to hope for.

  As they ate and talked, Mitchell learned more about Julianne’s struggles over the years, and he shared with her some of the facts of life behind bars. He left them purposely vague—the details would just throw a bucket of cold water on their evening. And while he’d never once doubted he deserved a different fate for causing Wes’s death, he didn’t want to dwell on that. He concentrated on Julianne, even more beautiful now as a full-grown woman than she had been as a girl, and he felt the core of himself jitter with love, anticipation, and plain old lust. Her white top accentuated her slim neck and exposed her shoulders, where her sun-streaked hair fell in a smooth, sleek drape. Right now, Mitchell wanted to press his lips to the pulse he saw throbbing on her throat.

  At last the smirking Jeff returned. “Anything else tonight?” He’d just cost himself five bucks with that smirk, Mitchell decided.

  Mitchell glanced at Julianne. “No,” she replied to him only. “I have a nice bottle of Malbec at home that I’ve been saving.” He didn’t know or even care what Malbec was, but it gave them a good reason to leave.

  Jeff left the check in a black vinyl folder. Mitchell felt like he couldn’t hustle her out of there fast enough, but didn’t want to seem obvious about it. He looked at the total and threw down some twenties. He let Julianne walk ahead of him, partly to enjoy the view. Her long hair swung loose down her back, and he wanted to sink his hands into it, letting the gleaming strands slide through his fingers. Once outside, she let him catch up with her and tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. He folded his hand over hers.

  At that moment, free man Mitchell Tucker felt ten feet tall.

  The drive back to Gila Rock seemed interminable and yet too short to Julianne. The blistering sun of midday had dialed down to a back-burner simmer as it rode the western horizon. It colored the sky a dark pink along that border and threw long shadows across the highway. Somewhere—Moscow? Hong Kong? Timbuktu?—that same sun was making a rosy appearance on an eastern skyline.

  “Hey, look at that!” he said, pointing at the wide-open landscape.

  She glanced but couldn’t see what he was pointing to. “What? Where?”

  “Pull over.”

  She slowed and brought the truck to a halt on the side of the road. As far as she could see, they were surrounded by miles of the flat, open Chihuahuan Desert. “Do you see a garage sale or something?”

  “Ha ha. Come on, let’s go look.”

  “At what?” But she shut off the engine and took the keys when she got out. He waited for her and took her hand when she came around, then led her out a few paces into the landscape, through patches of spreading moonpod, Missouri milkvetch, and pink sand verbena.

  “There, see?” He pointed again.

  On the periwinkle eastern horizon, a golden moon, full and heavy, climbed the sky. Between it and them stood a giant saguaro cactus, a traditional symbol of the American West.

  “I’ve never seen one this far east!” she said. “They don’t grow here.” Their sole habitat was the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. But there it was, not that far from the road, with its unmistakable pitchfork arms stretching toward the sky. “This is an old one, too. Somehow it’s survived all this time and in this place.”

  “Isn’t that something?” he marveled. “I saw a few of them in Arizona last year when I was bouncing around.”

  Mitchell pulled his cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket. He hit the keypad, and from the small speaker she heard Willie Nelson singing “Waltz Across Texas.”

  “Ma’am, could I have this dance?” Mitchell held his hand out to her.

  She laughed and looked around. “Here?”

  “Sure—a big yellow moon, an old-man saguaro, and Willie.”

  Up on the highway, an occasional vehicle flew past, but they seemed far removed from that picture. She stepped into his embrace, and they moved around the desert floor to the sweet old ballad, between a rising moon and the sunset. Under her hand his shoulder was strong, and she felt the muscles move. “We never got to dance much,” she said.

  “That’s because we had to sneak around. Now we don’t. But this is more fun than Lupe’s, don’t you think? And I don’t have to worry about some other guy trying to cut in.”

  “Pfft.” As if that would happen, she thought. But she was pleased and tucked her chin down for a moment, feeling bashful. He tightened his arm around her, and her long skirt whisked over the sparse, low-growing vegetation as the moon arced up into the sky. This was probably the most romantic thing she had ever done—of course, her few romantic experiences had all occurred with Mitchell.

  When the song ended, he slowed their steps to a halt. “Thank you for having dinner with me,” he murmured. He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes. Julianne thought she could get lost in a gaze like his, just fall in and drown.

  “Thank you for asking,” she whispered.

  He lowered his head to hers and covered her face with tender kisses before he consumed her mouth. A part of Julianne that had slumbered all these years—the sense of true joy, thrill, anticipation—woke with the energy of a firecracker. She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him back while she breathed in his scent and the dry, clean smell of the desert.

  Mitchell reached into his inside pocket again. This time Waylon Jennings sang “Waltz Me to Heaven.” He took Julianne’s hand and pulled her along under the first pale stars that began to twinkle in the eastern sky.

  She smiled with her cheek resting against his
shoulder. “I haven’t heard that song in years.” She thought back to a time when she’d heard it often. Now, it was a bittersweet memory.

  “Remember when we used to park out there behind Bill Rogers’s sorghum field?” he asked, leading her across their outdoor dance floor.

  “Yes, I do.” She remembered the CD player turned down low in the darkness of his front seat, and this song, so perfect for them, then and now, floating from the speakers. “It was a long time ago.”

  “It’s here and now.”

  “We didn’t dance, then,” she pointed out. Their steps grew closer until they were moving in a small circle.

  “That’s because when you’re younger, everything is in a hurry. Time, life, cars, sex, fun, trouble. Everything is turned on full blast. We’re older now. We know better about what matters. We’ll just live this moment, dancing in the desert with only a magic saguaro for company.”

  They danced beyond the passage of time and bad memories until the song ended.

  “Maybe we should be going,” he said at last.

  “Hmm, maybe,” she agreed, languid and comfortable.

  They walked back to the truck with just enough bright sunset to light the way. She got into the driver’s seat, happy to leave behind the past and worries about the future for tonight.

  Right now her thoughts were on this time, this place, and the man sitting in the passenger seat. She and Mitchell had rolled down the truck’s windows, and locks of her hair flew around her head in the warm evening breeze as the tires raced over the pavement. She didn’t think her senses had ever been as acute as they were right now. She smelled a faint whiff of whiskey and motel-provided soap coming from Mitchell’s side of the truck, and the dust of the hardscrabble landscape. His left hand rested easily on the back of her neck, a gesture of affection and intimacy that she realized was exactly what she had found lacking in Wes and the very few other men she’d known since Mitchell. Now, his touch raised goose bumps on her scalp and arms, the kind she used to get when he’d brush a long blade of grass across her ear.