by Tami Hoag
Trace just hunched his shoulders and hung his head.
“We came here to start over,” she said, clamping her hands on her hips to keep herself from reaching out and shaking him till his teeth rattled. “I’m working my tail off, trying to make a home for us here. And what do you do? You go out and make friends with someone like Carney Fox!
“I got a look at his file while you were having your little chat with the sheriff. How do you think it made me feel to see he’d been arrested for possession with intent to sell?” She bit her lip against a surge of fear and shook her head as she paced beside the table. Her voice thickened with a mother’s terror. “Trace, so help me, if you’re using again—”
“I’m not using!” Trace shouted. It was bad enough getting chewed out for things he was guilty of. “Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you?”
“Then what are you doing hanging around with him?”
“He’s a friend—”
“With friends like him, you don’t need enemies. Look what he’s got you mixed up in now!”
“Well, maybe it was my idea,” Trace challenged his mother belligerently, his chin coming up a notch. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe I didn’t like the way old Shithead Shafer called you a whore to my face and so I smashed up a couple of his stupid cars.”
Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her face. It was all her fault. Everything. She had driven Shafer over the edge, and Trace had tried to defend her honor in this horribly misguided way because she was a rotten mother. If she’d raised him right—If she’d given him a father—If she hadn’t had such abominable taste in men—
“So I screwed up,” Trace said bitterly. “It’s what I do best, isn’t it?”
“Trace—”
“No, it’s true,” he insisted. The feelings and words came spitting up through him from a dark, sad corner of his heart, and rolled out of him, surprising Trace as much as they surprised his mother. “I’m the original fuckup.” He said it with incredulity, shaking his head at the revelation. “From day one. My dad got you knocked up with me and life’s just been one big mess ever since.”
“Honey, that’s not true,” Elizabeth whispered, the words sticking in her throat.
“Sure it is,” he said bitterly. “You married Bobby Breland because of me and he kicked you around. Then you divorced him and you were stuck dragging a little kid around with you, and you probably couldn’t get a decent guy because no man wants some other man’s kid. And Brock probably wouldn’t have dumped you if it hadn’t been for me. He never wanted me around, and when I started making trouble for him he kicked us out.”
“Oh, Trace . . .”
“I never should have been born,” he mumbled.
Before his mother could refute his words, he turned and ran out the back door, jumping down off the step and charging for the woods as fast as his legs could take him. He didn’t know where he was running to or why he was running at all, except that he had to do something with the anger and frustration and pain that swelled inside him before he just plain exploded with it. He plunged into the woods and ran down an old trail that was overgrown with bushes. He stumbled over roots and batted branches out of his way and ran until his lungs were on fire and his T-shirt was clinging to him like wet paper.
He slowed then, and walked for a while with his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans. The air in the woods was cooler and darker, sweet with the scent of green leaves and humus. As his pulse slowed and the blood stopped roaring in his ears he began to pick up the sounds of his surroundings—the call of thief! from a blue jay as it swooped from the branches of a white oak, the busy twitterings of sparrows, the scratch of squirrel claws against tree bark as they chased one another from trunk to trunk.
As he walked deeper into the woods, he found a spot where an old maple tree had died and keeled over, creating a clearing. He hopped up on the natural bench and sat down to think.
Now that he’d run off all the wild emotions inside, he felt calmer. He sat there and listened to the quiet sounds of the woods, feeling as though he had reached the biggest crossroads of his life with the glaring spotlight of revelation beating down on him. He could go on screwing up as he had his whole life, acting like a stupid kid and disappointing everyone, or he could take charge of his life and start acting like the man he wanted to be. Like Jantzen had said, he had choices to make, and this was the time to make them.
Trace didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when the sound of something coming through the woods broke the trance he’d fallen into. He looked up just as a little blaze-faced black horse came into the clearing, and his heart jumped up and stuck in his throat as he saw who was riding it—the girl from the courthouse. Amy. He’d seen her in the bleachers at the softball game, heard someone call her by name—Amy. He should have figured she’d have a pretty, sunny kind of a name like that. It went with her smile.
He hadn’t gotten near her at the ball field. She had been surrounded by friends, the way a girl like her would be, and Trace had been hanging around the sidelines, wishing he knew somebody well enough so he could ask to play in the game. He was a fair hand with a bat and a pretty good shortstop. He figured he might be able to impress her if he could play, but he didn’t know anybody and no one asked him. Then the sheriff came.
Christ, she probably thought he was the biggest troublemaker since Cain.
Her horse spooked a little as it spotted him. Amy’s eyes went wide with surprise . . . or shock . . . or maybe it was disgust. Trace couldn’t tell. He slid to the ground and straightened his shoulders back.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to spook your horse.”
It took Amy a moment to find her tongue. She couldn’t believe it. He was here, in the woods, practically waiting for her. Her heart bumped so hard against her chest, she thought he could see it moving beneath the oversize work shirt she’d snuck out of her dad’s closet. She had seen him at the softball game, standing off to the side, watching everything with his serious eyes, his hands stuck in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders straining the seams of his white T-shirt. He was a loner, a rebel. Moody and quiet. Like James Dean. She had a huge crush on James Dean, even though he was dead and probably would have been old enough to be her father.
“That’s okay,” she said.
Tinker had recovered admirably from her scare and stood with her head turned to the side, nibbling on the leaves of a wild blackberry bush. Amy swung down off the mare and smoothed the tails of the shirt that hung nearly to her knees. She could have died of embarrassment. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and she was sure she looked twelve years old with this shirt swallowing her up. This wasn’t at all the way she’d wanted to look when she met him.
“I’m sorry if I interrupted your thinking.”
Trace shrugged it off, his brain stalling as he tried to think of a cool way to behave. Act like a man, stupid. Now’s your chance. He tossed away the bit of tree bark he’d been fiddling with and dusted the crud off his hand onto the leg of his jeans.
“Trace Stuart,” he said.
Amy took his hand, trying to bite back the ridiculous, giddy smile that was tugging at her mouth. None of the boys she knew had manners enough to shake a girl’s hand. It seemed old-fashioned and terribly mature. Tingles ran through her as his big warm hand closed on hers and she thought she might melt. “Amy Jantzen.”
“Jantzen?” Trace was pretty sure his heart had stopped. He let go of her hand and took a half step back. “Like Sheriff Jantzen?”
“He’s my dad.” Most of the guys around Still Creek were impressed when she told them who her father was. They looked up to him—more because he’d been a professional football player than because he was sheriff. But Trace Stuart looked as though she’d just told him her father was Dracula. She chewed her lip and hoped she hadn’t just scared him off for all time. Idiot. She should have known a rebel like him would be wary of the law, especially since she’d seen him at
the sheriff’s office, and then today her dad had come to the ball field and they’d walked away together, neither of them looking very happy.
“Are you in some kind of trouble with him?” she asked cautiously.
Trace glanced away, rolling his shoulders. “Uh—sort of. Well—not really. Kind of.” He swallowed hard and called himself a hundred names. “He—a—he asked me to come work for him.”
Amy’s eyes went wide as she looked up at him. “Really?” she breathed. “Like undercover or something?”
“Putting up hay,” Trace said, feeling like the dolt of the century. If he had been any kind of liar, he could have told her he was a special agent or something. She giggled and crinkled her nose, and Trace felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.
“I guess I have an overactive imagination,” she admitted, hoping he didn’t think she was an airhead. “That’s what Mike says. Mike’s my stepfather.”
“Your folks are divorced?”
She nodded as she wrapped her horse’s reins around a branch in the berry bush. “I live in L.A. with my mom and stepfather. I’m here visiting my dad for a few weeks.”
“Oh.”
“How about you?” She walked over to the fallen log and climbed up on it to sit. “You’re not from around here.”
Trace stuffed his hands into his pockets and mentally cursed his drawl. Everyone around here looked at him sideways when he talked. Amy already had him pegged as some dumb hick from the South. She probably thought he sounded as though he ought to be on Hee Haw or something. “We just moved here,” he mumbled. “My mom and me—I. From Atlanta.”
She beamed a smile at him. “Atlanta? Cool.” She made that cute face where she scrunched up her nose, and Trace’s stomach did another cartwheel. “I like the way you talk.”
His jaw dropped before he had a chance to catch it. “You do?”
She nodded and tugged on the tails of her shirt. She studied him for a moment with her head tipped to one side, her long, wavy hair hanging down like a curtain. “I like your glasses too. That retro look is so great.”
Trace grinned, unable to contain himself. He hauled himself up onto the log to sit beside Amy Jantzen, suddenly thinking that maybe life wasn’t quite such a bitch after all.
ELIZABETH SAT ON THE BACK STEP, STARING AT THE WOODS that had swallowed up her son.
“Every time I think I can’t feel any worse, I sink a little lower,” she whispered, swirling the ice in her Wile E. Coyote glass. She studied the smirking cartoon character that appeared to be standing ankle-deep in scotch and wished she had the same resiliency the coyote showed when all his big schemes backfired and anvils rained down on his head. Unfortunately, life was not a cartoon and everything that fell on her left a bruise.
She had wanted to run after Trace, but, aside from not having a prayer of keeping up with him, she didn’t know what she would say to him if she did catch him. She couldn’t tell him he had been planned, because he hadn’t. She couldn’t tell him it hadn’t been hard for her after her marriage to Bobby Lee had fallen apart, because it had been. She wanted to tell him none of it was his fault, but he didn’t want to hear it.
She looked over to the west, toward the Hauer farm. The Sunday church festivities had broken up. The buggies were gone. The Amish farm looked like the picture of peace and tranquility, and she wished some of that would drift over her way on the breeze. She could live a simpler life, but nothing had ever been simple for her, and there was no reason to think that fact would change any time soon.
As if to prove her point, Dane’s Bronco came rumbling down the road, dust rolling behind it. He slowed and turned in at her drive, parking beside the Caddy. Elizabeth stayed where she was, watching him as he crossed the weedy lawn. It wasn’t hard to picture him in a football uniform, those long legs striding down the field, elegant, capable hands stretching out to catch a pass, narrow hips evading tackles with moves that would make a lady’s breath catch. But then, she knew exactly what kinds of moves those hips could make, didn’t she? And they had indeed made her breath catch, time and again last night. The man might have his faults, but none of them could be found in bed.
He stopped at the bottom step, putting him on eye level with her. “You drink too much of that stuff,” he said, settling his hands on his hips.
“What’s it to you?” Elizabeth said, but with none of the sass she had intended to show and too much of the vulnerability she wanted to hide. The early evening breeze caught her hair, and she snagged it with one hand and held it at the nape of her neck.
Dane took the glass from her and tossed back the last two fingers of scotch himself, welcoming the smooth fire as it slid down his throat to his belly. He was beat. He was sick of looking at reports and sicker of the reason he had to review them over and over. Having to deal with Carney Fox for another unproductive round of sparring had given him a headache, and Garth Shafer had all but reamed him a new asshole, livid that Trace hadn’t been arrested and charged. He deserved a drink.
But then, he thought as he took in Elizabeth’s bleak expression, she probably deserved one too.
“How’d it go with Trace?”
“Oh, swell,” she said with a phony smile. “I yelled at him, found out he blames himself for everything that’s really my fault, then he ran off. I’m fixing to go on the talk show circuit as an expert on child rearing. I can be my own shining example of what not to do.”
He knew the feeling, and he couldn’t help but reach out to her in commiseration. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said, climbing the steps to sit beside her. “He’s at a tough age.”
The phony smile turned sad and reflective as she scanned back over the past sixteen years in her mind. “In some ways Trace has been at a tough age since conception. Always so somber, so unto himself. I don’t think we’ve ever been on the same wavelength.”
“It’s not easy being a parent.” He looked down into the bottom of the coyote glass to see if there might be another drop of scotch. There wasn’t.
Elizabeth gave him a sideways look, taking in the lines of strain and fatigue that were etched around his eyes and mouth, making him look tougher, older, more handsome, more dangerous.
“That sounded like the voice of authority,” she said.
Dane’s mouth twisted. “I’m on Amy’s shit list because I told her she wasn’t old enough to date.”
“How old is she?”
“Fifteen.”
“How old do you think she should be?”
“Thirty-five.”
A genuine smile claimed Elizabeth’s lips for the first time in what seemed like days, and laughter tumbled out. Poor Dane. He sat there looking gruff and disgruntled, big and tough . . . and vulnerable. Elizabeth couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to him; she didn’t try. She rubbed the palm of her hand over his back in slow, soothing circles and gave him a sympathetic look. “Are you an overprotective daddy?”
“I guess,” he admitted grudgingly. “I missed out on so much of Amy’s childhood, I don’t want to think of her growing up.”
“I wasn’t much older than her when I had Trace,” Elizabeth mused.
Dane winced, paling visibly. “Oh, Jesus, please don’t say that.”
“Sorry, sugar, but it’s true. ’Course, I was pretty much on my own then, anyway . . .”
Her voice trailed away and she pulled her hand back to band her arms around her knees as she looked out toward the woods again. Dane studied her profile carefully, with a sense of wonder. He had told himself he didn’t want to know anything about her, but now, as they sat on the cracked old steps, sharing uncertainties, he wanted to know everything.
“What about your parents?”
The shoulder left bare by her blouse rose and fell in a shrug too casual to be believed. “I don’t remember my mother. She died when I was a baby. And J.C.—my daddy”—her mouth turned in a sad smile—“he was kind of lost in a world of his own.”
As a child she had often wondered how di
fferent her life would have been if her mother had lived. She had fantasized about a real home, a permanent one, with flowers planted around it and a yard with a picket fence to keep in the puppy she would have had. She had envisioned her mama just as she looked in that old photograph of J.C.’s—always beautiful, always smiling that sweet, knowing smile the way angels must smile, always in a pretty flowered dress with a little strand of pearls at her throat. They would have been a real family with enough love to go around, instead of just her and J.C. Him with all his love still bound to a woman who was gone forever, with none left over for the child she’d left behind, the child who, ironically, had grown up to look just like her.
Dane listened as she talked a little about her father, a cowboy who had spent as much time in a bottle as he did in the saddle, by the sound of it. He listened as she painted a picture of a childhood that must have been as emotionally desolate as the West Texas landscape that had provided the backdrop, and felt ashamed of himself for judging her so harshly. His own childhood had been of the Norman Rockwell variety—the perfect family with perfect children living in a perfect small town. He had been given love and advantages in healthy doses, had been raised to believe he could do anything, be anything. Elizabeth had been raised to believe she was an inconvenience. She had grown up hungry—for love, for comforts. That explained a lot about the woman she had become.