by Susan Wiggs
He hesitated. “Yeah. I guess.”
“That might be the best compliment ever.”
“Glad I spoke up, then.” He turned away, picked up her bags and walked to his rental car. She followed, feeling strangely guilty, wondering what his past had been like. He had been raised at Lost Springs, not by a mother. What did he feel, watching her with Brian? She wanted to ask him, but she didn’t know how.
She got into the rental car and looked over at him.
Lord, that profile.
“I guess we should stay away from touchy subjects, huh?” she asked.
He turned to her and propped an elbow on the back of her seat, his scowl melting beneath the charm of a boyish grin. “Not if we’re about to become engaged.”
“What?”
“Engaged. You know, to be married.” With a casual lack of haste, he turned on the car and backed down the rutted driveway.
“I know what engaged means,” she said, her fingertips suddenly cold as she folded her hands nervously in her lap. “I don’t see what it has to do with us.”
“It was Mrs. Spinelli and Mrs. Duckworth’s idea. They think we should tell people at your reunion that we’re engaged.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I know. That’s what I like about it.”
“We really don’t have to—”
“I know that, too.” He put on his sunglasses. “But we’re going to. If I show up as your date, people will think I’m just some Joe Schmo you picked up at random so you didn’t have to show up alone.”
“Or picked out of a catalog like a packet of burpless cucumber seeds.”
“Yep. Can’t have that, can we?”
“I don’t need a fiancé, real or fake. And I certainly don’t see why—” She broke off when he turned west off the Shoshone Highway. “This isn’t the way to the county airport.”
“We don’t leave for two hours.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just sit tight and you’ll see.”
She watched the landscape slip by, a blur of wildflowers and sage and low scrubby hills rising to the far-off Owl Creek peaks, topped with eternal snow. “This is the way to Lost Springs.”
“Uh-huh.”
He wasn’t much for explanations. Ever since the day of the auction, Twyla had felt strangely disoriented, and the present moment was no different. But there was something else she felt when she was in the presence of Rob Carter—alive. Her skin and scalp tingled with awareness in the breeze, and a sense of anticipation built in her chest. She felt almost reckless, ready to take chances again. Those were two things she had never felt in her life when it came to men.
Her father had been interesting, certainly. Fascinating, truth be told. But with his freewheeling ways and wild dreams, he had never, ever imparted a feeling of security. Jake, on the other hand, had been safe. Comfortable, predictable and—she should have known this from the start—dull. Perhaps that was why, after the pain of abandonment had dulled, she had never regretted his leaving, hadn’t considered contesting the divorce. The papers served to her by a stranger who represented Jake had seemed a fitting conclusion to their failed relationship.
She decided to explore the novelty of feeling interested and reckless all at once. It was a rare man who could inspire that. She relaxed in the passenger seat and watched out the window. Rob drove through the peeled-log gateway of Lost Springs, stopped briefly at the security booth, then continued on to the main campus. He drove slowly to the spreading oak tree where she had hung the raffle quilt. She flushed, remembering the way he had rescued her as she dangled from a branch.
“Now what?” she asked.
He stopped the car in the shade. “Now…it’s time you learned something about the man you’re about to marry.”
CHAPTER NINE
“YOU’RE CARRYING THIS a little too far,” Twyla said, her voice huffy with disbelief.
“You’re not interested in where your fiancé came from?”
She hesitated, the skeptical expression on her face softening to…something he didn’t want to recognize. But he couldn’t help himself. She had the most compassionate heart of anyone he’d ever met. Her wisecracking exterior was just a facade.
“No,” she said quietly. “But I wouldn’t mind hearing about you.”
Rob got out and went around the car, holding her door open. One of the things the Lost Springs staff had hammered away at was manners. It seemed a small matter to youngsters found abandoned in motel rooms or showing up, abused, at the gates of the ranch, but part of rebuilding the boys’ self-respect included preparing them to live their lives, not just survive. They were groomed for every possible social situation, from door opening to fish forks to ballroom dancing. He and the boys who had come through the ranch with him used to snicker about it, but in later years he had been grateful for the lessons.
He hadn’t actually concealed his background from Lauren for months—he simply never brought it up. They’d first met at a charity ball for the Denver Children’s Hospital, and she had clearly been impressed by his gallant gestures, his style on the dance floor, all courtesy of the Lost Springs life skills program. It had been sort of fun, letting her think he was the product of some fancy Eastern prep school and Ivy League college.
It had been a lot less fun telling her the truth.
She’d taken it well enough, he supposed. But he would never forget her face when he said, “I don’t have any family,” in response to her questions. It had been an awkward ride downhill after that. He’d explained about Lost Springs as best he could, but looking into Lauren’s beautiful face, he could tell she had no clue about what his past had been like. The idea of the ranch was so alien to her imagination that she couldn’t conceive of it, except as an excuse for a charity event. He’d found her confusion charming in a way. It was refreshing to know someone with that level of naïveté about abandoned boys and troubled teens.
By contrast, when Twyla stepped out of the car and looked up at him, he could see nothing but interest and understanding in her expression.
What a stupid idea, bringing her here. Insane. After the weekend, they’d be strangers again. Telling her about his past was a pointless exercise.
“Show me where you lived,” she said, shading her eyes as a work detail of teenage boys armed with yard implements walked past.
“This way.” He walked in front of the administration building. The almost-deserted campus felt different than it had the previous Saturday, when everything had been set up for the auction. Then, a carnival-like atmosphere had prevailed. Today, a pervasive emptiness blew like an ill wind through Lost Springs. It was beautiful, well-maintained. The founding director James Duncan, Lindsay’s father, had seen to that. But it was still an institution, not a home, and on empty afternoons like this, the fact was blatantly apparent. Rob knew it was his imagination, but he felt himself growing smaller and smaller as he approached the long, low building that housed the junior dorm. He remembered the feeling of being six years old again and terrified, clutching his mother’s hand like a lifeline.
She’d had to pry his fingers off her wrist when it was time for her to go.
“Here,” he said gruffly, pushing open the door. He stopped to show ID to the house officer, who gave them permission for a quick look.
The smell hit him first. It was the scent of disinfectant and something he could only categorize as “boy.” The never-forgotten odor still hung in the air, filling his lungs with strangeness and, if he breathed it too long, loneliness. A neat row of low beds lined the long wall. Each boy had a small study carrel with high sides for privacy, a roomy locker for his things, and a bookshelf crammed with books and treasures. The arrangement looked almost military but for a few details.
“The quilts are a new touch,” he said.
Twyla, who stood in the doorway drinking in the sight, came into the room, passing her hand over one of the beds. “The Quilt Quorum made them a couple of years ago and presented them t
o Lost Springs. One for each boy. The project lasted for months.”
Each one had a different personality. The main fabric was old faded denim for the borders and around each square, but the individual designs—a horse, a cowboy hat, a sheriff’s star—varied. The homemade quilts muted the starkness of the big shared room.
“What do you think?” Twyla asked.
“It…helps.” He walked down the center aisle to the second-to-last bed. “This was where I slept. Right here.”
“You think it’s the same furniture, same everything?”
“Probably.” On impulse, he moved the study carrel away from the wall and looked at the back of it. Precise rows of notched check marks covered the wooden back. “Yep, this is the one.”
“You made all those marks?”
Suddenly he wished he hadn’t shown her. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I did.”
“What for?”
“I was counting.”
“Counting what?”
“You figure it out.” Regretting the impulse to bring her here, he turned and strode out of the dormitory, not looking back to see if she followed.
She was quiet as he crossed the quadrangle with long strides. He pointed out the senior dorm, where the older boys each had a small room to themselves. He showed her the library and music room, the refectory where meals were served, the gym and rec buildings, the paddock and stables.
In each place, he encountered a ghost. The ghost was always the boy he had been, watching hungrily as family members—sometimes a parent, sometimes an aunt or grandparent—returned to Lost Springs to reclaim the boy who waited there for them. Or staring in fascination as an adoptive family arrived to take one of the boys home. Or curling up into a ball on his bunk, pretending it didn’t matter that no one ever came for him.
A light touch settled on his arm, startling him. He pushed the memories away to find Twyla resting her fingers on his forearm, her face turned up to his. “This is harder than you thought it would be, isn’t it?”
As he gazed down into those rain-gray eyes, he felt something ease inside him, the unknotting of a tight coil.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I guess it is.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He took her hand off his arm. “What’s the point?”
“What’s the point of any talking? To get something off your chest. To share something. I’m a hairdresser, Rob. It’s made me a hell of a listener. A therapist with a blow-dryer.”
“Ah, just what I need.”
“Maybe you do.”
In the lobby of the gym, he showed her a couple of trophies he had won for basketball and track and field. She put her palm up to the glass case. “Everyone must have been so proud of you.”
“That’s why the trophies are here. They mean more to Lost Springs than they ever could to me.”
“You lived here for so long.”
“Eleven years.”
“I didn’t realize a boy stayed here that long. I thought it was more…temporary.”
“It is, for some. The ones who come because they’re in trouble only stay until they show they can keep themselves out of trouble. Same for those with family problems. In my case, my only next of kin was my mother. She was broke, strung out. Said she’d be back for me in a few months, so that’s why I was never up for adoption. The months stretched out into years.”
“And you never saw her again?”
He stared unseeing into the trophy case. “Nope.”
“Ever try to find her?”
“She died about fifteen years ago, a ‘Jane Doe’ in Vegas.”
“Rob, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens. And this place was good to me. I can’t complain.”
“You have every right to complain. I think you probably haven’t done enough complaining. The sorrow has to go somewhere.”
He had never thought of it in quite those terms. They walked back outside, and the emptiness yawned painfully inside him. Lost Springs was beautiful in its idyllic ranch setting. It was run by loving, caring people. But it wasn’t a home.
Rob had never defined home for himself. He knew what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a dorm at a boys ranch. It wasn’t the frat house where he’d lived in college or the cramped studio in Dallas where he’d done his residency. It wasn’t his condo in Denver, or the gated estate in Wildwood where Lauren had grown up, or the elegant town house where she lived now.
In time, he convinced himself that home was a place that existed only in his mind. A place full of old things, with a kitchen that smelled of baking and windows that opened to let in birdsong. Surfaces cluttered with framed family photos, and a yard with a tree and a swing and maybe a pond—
He shoved the picture of Twyla’s place out of his mind and strode across the parking lot to his car.
“Sorry about this,” he said as he held the door for her.
“About what?”
“About dragging you along on a bad trip down memory lane.”
“I’m glad you brought me. Really.”
“Why?”
“Just…because. I like getting to know people, learning about them. Maybe you feel that way about your patients. You’re better off for knowing them.”
He leaned his hip against the car. “I don’t have that sort of practice.”
She cocked her head, frowning a little. “What do you mean?”
He dug in his pocket for the keys. “I’m a pathologist. I specialize in analyzing abnormal tissue and fluids. My patients come to me in petri dishes and test tubes.”
“And you like it that way?” She spoke quietly, in a voice that said she’d rather listen than talk.
“Works for me. I can see sixty, seventy people a day. Figure out their problem in the lab, then recommend a course of treatment.” Rob had chosen the specialty during his fourth-year rotation. Working hands-on with patients was disorderly, messy, imprecise. He didn’t know what to say to an anxious mother or a worried wife, didn’t know how to offer hope and healing to a dying man.
But in the lab, logic and precision ruled. As a pathologist, he could stem a virus outbreak and his work could affect thousands, while a family practitioner could treat only one patient at a time. He had the power to isolate a problem, find its solution. He’d built a formidable and lucrative practice doing just that, and now there were four partners in his group. And each day, he went home knowing his work had touched the lives of hundreds of patients, not just a handful. He told himself that was the way he wanted things, and every time he felt the urge to change his specialty, he talked himself out of it.
He held open the passenger door for her. When they left the ranch, he turned down a pitted dirt side road. “One more stop on the tour.”
She braced herself against the bouncing of the car on the quarter-mile drive. He pulled to a stop in a secluded, wooded area on a bluff overlooking the swift blue flow of Lightning Creek.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said. “Very private.”
“That,” he said, glancing at his watch, “is the whole idea. We’d better get to the airport.” As he turned the car, he felt her staring at him.
“Nice view,” she said, “but what’s the significance?”
He made himself look straight ahead, watching the dusty road. “Lovers’ Lane,” he said casually. “It’s where I lost my virginity.”
A little gasp escaped her, but he heard the smile in her voice as she said, “You know, I could have gone all day without hearing that.”
They drove along in silence for a while, following the Shoshone Highway to the county airport. Finally, Rob said, in all sincerity, “You’re a good listener, Twyla.”
A smile lit her face. “You think so?”
“Yeah. I definitely think so.”
“I’m flattered. I always thought—” She shook her head and watched out the window as they entered the airport and headed for the tiny rental car kiosk.
“Thought what?”
“Ne
ver mind.”
He got out of the car, retrieving their bags from the trunk, then opened Twyla’s door. “Sorry, lady, but you’ll have to spill. No fiancée of mine keeps secrets from me.”
He didn’t know many women who blushed quite as often as Twyla did. It must drive her crazy, trying to be a smart-ass when your face kept giving you away.
“So?” he prompted.
“It’s nothing, really. Just that, back when I’d planned on going to school, I always thought I’d go into psychology or social work, some field that would require a lot of listening and problem-solving and people skills.” She sent him a self-deprecating grin. “As it turns out, I am in that field. Sort of.”
As they boarded the small commuter plane for Jackson, Rob realized he was worried about himself. For a physician, he was having a hell of a time describing his condition. All his life, he had felt an invisible weight pressing on his chest. No one could see it, no one but he knew it was there, always, pressing on him with the tension of failed hopes.
After one conversation with Twyla, the burden felt about one brick lighter.
When they were settled into their seats, he had to smile at her almost childlike curiosity about the plane, the contents of the seat pocket in front of her, the seat belt mechanism and the blinking panel of dials and gizmos visible through the open door to the cockpit.
“You like flying?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
He frowned, not understanding.
She looked out the small oval window and laughed. “I’ve only flown once before, in an open crop duster with my father. It wasn’t quite the same as this.”
He sat in stunned silence for a few seconds, letting the news sink in. Air travel was so commonplace he was sure he’d never met anyone who hadn’t flown. Finally, he said, “That’s something, Twyla. That’s really something.”
“What you mean is, that’s really pathetic.” She grew serious. “Rob, I don’t think you realize what you’re getting into, taking me to this reunion.”
The door shut, and the plane taxied toward the runway. “Honey, we’ve got nothing but time.”