Mother Trucker (Crownville Truckers Book 1)

by Moxie Darling

  The woman snarled, “Answer her.”

  He struggled a moment longer and then cursed as if realizing his options were severely limited. “A truck stop. Some shithole town in West Virginia.”

  Though Mae had already known, she’d needed to hear his confirmation. “What shithole town?”

  “I … don’t know.”

  The woman leaned in, threatening him with her hard gaze. “Don’t make me help you remember.”

  “Fine,” he gasped. “It was Crownville, okay? Damn.”

  Mae wanted to vomit all over again. How many children had Shifty photographed? Were these his first? Or just two in a long line? Growing up on the lot, she’d always been wary of him. Both because her ma had told her to be and because he was just one of those greasy, slimy men you instinctively avoided. That he’d been involved in something like this was repulsive, but it wasn’t surprising. Still, knowing it had been happening behind her back for who knew how long made her skin crawl. Did anyone else on the lot know? Had her ma known?

  “You okay, honey?” The woman asked Mae, her blocky face concerned. “You know these kids or something?”

  Mae tried to answer, but no sound came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Not personally, no, but I’ve seen them.”

  The woman studied her for a long moment and then turned back to the man. “I ever see you hawking your perversion again, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  The man nodded quickly, looking ready to bolt the moment she set him free.

  “Then get out of here,” she ordered, shoving him aside.

  He stumbled, grabbing the truck’s bed for balance, but then he got his footing and ran.

  The woman turned to Mae, dusting off her hands. “Piece of shit.”

  “Agreed,” Mae said, shaking all over.

  The woman eyed Mae’s satchel and Ken. “Where you headed?”

  Mae thought about it. Her own future stood on shaky ground, but helping these kids was a certainty. It was solid. And something she could do right now. Swallowing, she looked up at the woman. “I’m going to Crownville.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Love’s Travel Stop

  Newton, Iowa

  Clyde glared into his coffee. How had this happened? Even the question pissed him off. He knew how it had happened. He’d been stupid. He’d been out of his mind with lust and he’d taken what he’d wanted with no give a damn for the consequences. And, not only had he fucked his relationship with Mae, but he’d forced her to choose between him or the baby he’d put in her.

  “Dammit,” he muttered, gripping the mug’s handle as if it could preserve his sanity.

  He didn’t blame her for wanting the kid. Her heart was wired differently than his. She saw the good in the bad and the hope in the hopeless. She’d allowed him to love her, after all.

  Love her and lose her.

  He closed his eyes. He wouldn’t be a father. He would never be a father.

  You already are, his subconscious reminded him.

  It took all his willpower not to launch the mug across the diner. Like it or not, his baby was growing inside her. His woman. His baby. He was so conflicted, he felt as though he might be torn apart at any moment, his blackened innards spilling out for all to see. He’d begun thinking about things he had no right to. Things that involved him and Mae, gold bands, and forever. With her, it had seemed possible. Right.

  And now …

  But hadn’t he told her? Hadn’t he told the universe? It wasn’t her fault. Dammit, he knew that. But his anger at himself was overflowing, and she was his spillway. He’d been so furious when she’d told him that he’d wanted to tear his rig apart with his bare hands. He’d felt as if everything he’d never known he wanted was being ripped away and he’d been powerless to stop it. And that was what had terrified him. The moment the words I’m pregnant popped his and Mae’s make-believe bubble, he’d been struck with a cold, bone-deep fear. He’d lived his whole damn life knowing he’d never be a father. It had been settled. Over and done with. Written in stone. Until it hadn’t been.

  It would be a kindness to let her go. Let them go. What kind of father would he be? The resentful kind. The shitty kind.

  The kind that failed.

  Nobody wanted that. Not even Mae. Even if she didn’t know it.

  “Howdy,” a pleasant female voice said, interrupting his wallowing. “Mind if I sit?”

  Clyde looked up to see a kindly older woman smiling down at him as if she somehow knew his dilemma and sympathized with it.

  Though he wanted nothing more than to send her on her way, he didn’t know if his conscience could handle being an asshole to a woman twice in one morning. He nodded. “Go ahead.”

  She sat and smiled at the waitress who appeared. “Coffee, sweetheart. Cream and sugar.”

  Nodding, the waitress hurried off.

  Clyde regarded his unwelcome guest. “Something I can do for you?”

  “No, sir,” she said. “It’s just my shift is over and I saw you sitting here like a whipped dog. Thought I’d see if I could help.”

  He sighed. “Look, lady, I’m just here for breakfast.”

  Undeterred, she smiled and asked, “The pretty redhead I saw this morning—she your girl?”

  Stiffening, he demanded, “What about her?”

  The woman raised her hands, chuckling. “Hold your horses, son. I work the counter in the Quick Stop. I see everyone who comes and goes here. No funny business.”

  “What do you want?”

  The waitress reappeared with the woman’s coffee. “Here you go, Luanne. Breakfast?”

  Luann pulled the coffee to her and waved off the waitress. “Lord no. You can save the grease for the truckers.”

  The waitress snickered and shook her head. “Holler if you need something.”

  Luann watched her walk away and then glanced back at Clyde. “You’re protective of your lady. That’s good. Donnie was like that.”

  Clyde sipped his coffee to hide his impatience and waited for her to continue.

  “I know you don’t know me,” she said. “And I hope I’m not overstepping here, but I couldn’t help but notice your situation.”

  Clyde’s frown cemented. “My situation?”

  “You got a baby on the way,” she explained. “Your girl’s reaction this morning gave me the impression it ain’t planned.”

  What little patience he had began fraying. “I’m not trying to be a dick, but I’m not seeing how this is any of your business.”

  His gruff tone didn’t seem to scare her off. If anything, she found it amusing. “I know I’m a meddler. Donnie used to call me Mother Hen.” She shrugged sheepishly. “Can’t help it. The words just fly right on out of my mouth.”

  “If you don’t mind, I just want to drink my coffee and be on my way,” he told her. Though what way that would be he had no idea. He knew he needed to talk to Mae, but what would he say? Where did they go from here?

  Luanne wrapped her hands around her own mug and nodded. “I’ll be out of your hair in a jiffy,” she said. “But if you’ll give me a minute of your time, it would make an old lady’s day.”

  Clyde leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, studying her. Finally, he sighed. “Let’s hear it.”

  She didn’t waste any time. “I met Donnie when I was fourteen,” she began, gazing out the window as if paging through the years. A secret smile curved her mouth. “Land sakes, he was a handsome devil. Tall. Dark-haired.” She glanced at Clyde. “Kind of like you.”

  “Donnie your husband?” Clyde asked for the sake of politeness.

  “Forty-eight years,” she confirmed, then added with a chuckle, “We fought. Boy, did we fight.”

  Clyde grunted, unsure what to say.

  “Donnie was a road man, too.” She nodded toward the parking lot. “Drove a truck for near thirty years. Spent our honeymoon on the highway, lighting the world on fire.”

  Clyde followed her gaze. He couldn’t see his r
ig from here, but he could imagine Mae inside it. Waiting for him. Hating him. It had felt like they’d been lighting the world on fire, too. Now, only smoke rose from the ashes.

  “It was the best year of my life,” Luanne went on. “We were free birds, my Donnie and me.” She paused as a family walked by their table, ushering a bouncing toddler and a sullen-faced teenager. “But then I got pregnant.”

  Clyde looked at her, momentarily forgetting his desire for solitude. “On purpose?”

  She laughed. “Heavens no. And let me tell you it blew one hell of a hole in our happy little bubble.”

  Though he wasn’t interested in a children-give-life-meaning speech, he asked, “What happened?”

  She took a sugar packet from the dish and added it to her coffee as if it wasn’t sweet enough. “All hell broke loose, that’s what happened. Understandable, too, considering Donnie was sterile.”

  Clyde’s eyebrows rose. “He wasn’t the father?”

  “He damn sure was,” she said. “But he came to the same conclusion, naturally.”

  Clyde settled back and took a drink of his coffee. “He thought you cheated on him.”

  “As any man would,” she confirmed. “Especially when his Podunk doctor had him convinced of his condition. At the time, though, I was madder than a fox with no hole that he doubted me.”

  Clyde couldn’t help but chuckle as he imagined it. “Yeah, I can see how that might not have gone over well.”

  “Understatement,” she agreed with a smile. “In fact, there was a time I thought it would be the end of us.”

  That sobered Clyde, and he thought of Mae and the end of them. “What did you do?”

  “You mean after I threw an ashtray at him?” Luanne asked wryly, sipping her coffee.

  Clyde laughed despite himself. “A plastic one I hope.”

  “’Fraid not,” she said, humor dancing in her eyes. “It was glass, and it opened up his forehead from crown to brow.”

  Smirking, Clyde said, “Damn.”

  “You ain’t shitting.” She laughed into her mug. “Twenty-six stitches.”

  Clyde whistled. “How’d he take it?”

  “Lying down.” She winked at him. “But it wasn’t until he told the ER doc what had started the fight in the first place that Donnie learned you could still make babies with only one testicle.”

  This time, Clyde threw his head back and laughed.

  She grinned. “Hell, I didn’t know any better, either. We were young and dumber than boxes of rocks.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  She shrugged. “We had a baby. Then we had a few more.”

  His amusement faded, and he tapped the rim of his mug with his thumb. “A trucking life ain’t no life for a kid.”

  She waved off his claim as if to say Poppycock. “You make it work. One way or the other. It’s what you do.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Sure it is,” she said, smiling faintly. “We’ve only got so many years on this green earth, son. No sense in wasting them shoving on mountains.” She held his gaze. “You know what you do with mountains? You climb ’em. Or you go through ’em. Or you blast a damn hole right through ’em.” She adopted an it-is-what-it-is expression. “But you don’t move ’em. Can’t. You love her, don’t you?”

  Though it wasn’t even remotely Luanne’s business, he found himself saying, “I do.”

  “Then there’s no two ways about it.” She shrugged and repeated, “You make it work.”

  Clyde balled up the napkin he’d been toying with. If only he could rewind the morning and drive off into the sunset with Mae toward the great state of Happily Ever After. But that was a broken dream. Things had changed. “I can’t be a father,” he said more to himself than to Luanne. “I won’t.”

  She laughed. “Son, you’re going to be a father whether you want to be or not. Only thing up to you is what you do about it.”

  He blinked as the truth of what she said finally sank in like a boot through a mile of mud. Jesus, she was right. He’d known it, but it hadn’t hit him yet. Not in that grab-him-by-the-balls-and-yank kind of way. He’d been fishing in a fishless pond. Searching for answers that weren’t there. What was done was done. He could hate it until the sun came up, but it wouldn’t change a goddamned thing. All of his shoulda-woulda-couldas amounted to shit. In nine months, Mae would give him a child. His opinion on the subject didn’t matter.

  His shoulders sagged. “Hell.”

  Luanne sipped her coffee with a knowing smile. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  Elbows on the table, he thrust his fingers into his hair and stared at the faded Formica. His displaced hat fell onto the booth beside him, but he barely noticed. Part of him had been hanging on to the hope that Mae would change her mind. That maybe none of this was real. That maybe if he beat on his chest and howled at the moon, he would wake up tomorrow and it would all have been a dream. Mae would still be beside him and they’d still be setting the world on fire. Only that wasn’t the way of it. He didn’t want a kid. In fact, he’d never not wanted something more in his life. But the moment he’d been careless enough to come inside Mae was the moment his wants had ceased to matter. Like it or not, he’d become a father on that sweet, sweaty morning alongside Rising Creek.

  It settled onto his bones like soot.

  He’d acted like a complete dick. He’d been so consumed by his own shit that he hadn’t stopped to consider what Mae was going through. Less than an hour ago she’d learned she was going to be a mother. Just like him, her entire world had been shaken, not stirred. The same rug ripped out from under her. And he’d left her to weather the storm alone. “Fuck me,” he said, grabbing his hat and yanking it on. “I’ve got to go.”

  Luanne smiled as if his reaction had been exactly what she’d been hoping for. “Good luck,” she said. “Remember, it ain’t perfect, but it’s yours. One day at a time.”

  He couldn’t identify the emotions standing inside him like an old, arthritic dog as he stared at Luanne. He felt half sick and whole stupid, but he knew where to go. What to do. Thanks to her. “Thank you.”

  She sipped her coffee again as though she hadn’t just shoved his runaway train back on its tracks. “My pleasure.”

  He recalled her story. The words seemed heavier now somehow. “You lost your husband, didn’t you? Your Donnie?”

  This time, her smile was sad. “Be five years in January. Cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “We had a good life. A damn good life. We fought and we loved and we fought some more.” She shook her head fondly and gazed out the window before looking back at Clyde. “We raised our babies and watched them raise theirs, and we didn’t take a single damn day for granted.”

  The last sentence burrowed into Clyde and dug in claws. He didn’t know her. He’d probably never see her again. But she’d gotten through to him in a way his own confused voice of reason never could have, and he’d be forever grateful. “I’ll make it right.”

  “I know,” she said, and her eyes told him she believed it.

  Pulling out his wallet, he tossed enough bills to cover both their drinks and a tip on the table. Then, giving her one last look, he nodded and strode off.

  His heart tried to jump out of his ribs as he hurried outside. Now that his head was screwed on straight, the desire to hold Mae in his arms and beg her forgiveness hounded him. He ignored the waking parking lot as he jogged toward his rig. Folks gassing up before their morning commute. Tired truckers hobbling toward breakfast. The Coke man filling up the vending machine. All he cared about was her. At the Freight Shaker, he tore open the door and surged inside. “Mae!”

  It took him all of two seconds to realize the truck was empty.

  Like a fucking tomb.

  He cursed and jumped back down, not bothering to close his door.

  Where would she go? A payphone? The restroom? For a walk?

  She
left you.

  The thought seared him. “No,” he snarled, refusing to consider it. He had to find her. He would find her. If he had to burn down every truck stop from here to the end of the line to do it.

  He stalked through the rows of trucks, scanning every aisle and wondering if she was inside each rig that drove past him. Stopping a fellow driver on his way to the diner, Clyde asked, “You seen a redhead walk through here in the last few minutes?”

  The guy, a wiry-bearded driver about Clyde’s age, grinned. “Yeah, hard to miss in those shorts.”

  Clyde considered throttling him but only growled, “Where did you see her?”

  The guy must have sensed how thin Clyde’s patience was because his eyes widened. “Shit … sorry, man. She your girl or something?”

  “Yeah,” Clyde said. “She’s my girl. Now tell me which way she went.”

  She’s my girl. That’s my baby. Damn it all to hell, but suddenly it wasn’t just Mae he was afraid of losing.

  The guy gestured with his chin. “That way.”

  Clyde walked away without another word, a real fear settling in his chest. Fear of not only losing her but for her. She knew how to handle herself, but that didn’t stop the caveman in him from wanting like hell to protect what was his.

  As he neared the end of the row, he eyed a driver checking his tires.

  “Hate to bother you,” Clyde said as he approached. “But have you seen a woman come through here recently? Pretty. Probably carrying a cat.”

  The older black man rose, dusting off his hands. He studied Clyde shrewdly as if trying to determine whether he meant the woman in question harm, then finally nodded. “Sure did. Reckon it was about ten minutes ago. You just missed her.”

  “Happen to see which way she went?”

  The driver spit a stream of tobacco onto the gravel and gestured with his chin toward the lot’s exit. “Hooked up with a lady driver. I remember because the pair of them got into an altercation with some feller.”

  Worry shot through Clyde. “What kind of altercation?”

  The old man shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Confusion tangled with Clyde’s warring emotions. Had Mae left with the woman willingly? Did she know her from Shifty’s? Or had something gone down? He had no way of knowing and it scared the hell out of him. “What kind of rig?”