The woman who had pelted his patrol unit yesterday wanted to talk about him? Either she was slobbering drunk, or she had sobered up and forgotten her earlier egg warfare and the gun she’d pulled on him.
He sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was have another run-in with that woman, but if she had the bag, her place was his next stop.
He dropped his hand down on the counter and papers slipped to the floor. It was about right. This day had seemed not only to have started with manure, but was seemingly destined to end with it as well.
Gwen ran her hands through her blond hair, and it caught the light that was streaming through the windows of the back room.
What he would give to be back in the shower and escaping from reality.
Chapter Ten
As she trudged up to the front door of the ranch house and kicked the snow off her boots, Gwen couldn’t help but feel like she was headed to the gallows. After her mother’s scene in the driveway and the Taser, regardless of the show she had put on for Eloise Fitzgerald, this wasn’t going to go well.
The door was unlocked, but before she stepped inside, she turned back to Wyatt.
His eyes were stormy. No matter how much she felt like she was going to the gallows, he was the one who looked it. His shoulders were rounded and his hands were opening and closing into tight fists as he stared in the front window.
The living room’s curtains were drawn shut, blocking the last of the evening light from seeping through and illuminating the mess that was their lives.
She hated this place. Every time she came to the door it felt like she was entering her own personal hell. It was a reaction that had been learned over years of coming to this door and not knowing what she would find inside.
Once, when she’d been about twenty, she’d come home to find her mother smearing peanut butter on herself. She had tried to have her mother see a therapist afterward, but her mother had sworn the incident was because she had been cleaning up a downed pine and needed to get the sap off her skin. It was a story she could have bought had her mother not been buck naked. And drunk.
She glanced back to the man on death row. He stared at the door as he sucked in a long breath.
“Are you sure that you want to go inside? I can just run in, get the bag and get out. You don’t have to put yourself through this,” she said, motioning toward the chipped door.
Wyatt shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said, but there was a hardness to his voice she hadn’t heard him use before.
Was that his officer voice? If it was, she could see why he was good at his job. He could probably scare the wits out of any criminal if he came at them with that kind of edge during an arrest or interrogation. As it was, the sound made her core tighten and a strange, unwelcome surge of apprehension moved through her. This wasn’t a good idea. She should have just called her mother.
But it was too late to turn back now.
Hopefully her mother wasn’t even home. She looked down at her watch. It was more than possible that Carla would be at the bar by now. And if she was, all the unpleasantness could be avoided. And heck, maybe if things continued on between her and Wyatt in the same way—with their constant failure to find a balance between their past, present and future—well, maybe he would never have to see her mother again.
The thought of them not working out coated her in a layer of heavy sadness.
Whatever they were or had been, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was the longing she had felt when she’d been standing outside his trailer and the thrill when she’d been in his arms.
She pushed open the door and walked in ahead of Wyatt. Every part of her begged that her mother would be anywhere but here. Yet as she walked into the living room, she heard the familiar banging of the cabinets as her mother moved around in the kitchen.
Sometimes it was like she had no luck at all.
She looked over at Wyatt, and even in the near darkness of the room she could still see flashes of the tempest in his eyes.
“Why don’t you wait here? I’ll go in and find out where she put the bag. No need to start a thing.” She held up her hand, checking him as though he was some kind of animal that she could control.
She should have known better.
“Gwen, I’m not letting you walk back there alone. What if whoever is behind your sister’s death broke into your house? What if it’s not your mother in there? Or what if she’s being held captive?” He motioned to the door that led to the farm-style kitchen. “I’m not letting you walk into trouble.”
“I hate to mention this, but...” She gave a nervous laugh. “Regardless of who’s standing in that kitchen, there’s going to be some amount of fireworks.”
He motioned her forward, not taking her polite no as an answer. Sometimes he was so pushy and controlling, but at the same time his concern for her safety made him all that much more lovable.
“You know I’m looking forward to seeing your mother about as much as I’d look forward to getting a root canal. Actually, I’d take the root canal.”
She chuckled. “Mom, you in there?” she called, afraid to let her thoughts go any further.
There was an unintelligible grumble from her mother inside the kitchen.
“Seriously,” she said, motioning to Wyatt. “Wait for a minute. Let me make sure she’s at least wearing clothing. If anything goes wrong, or if you are concerned in any way, you are welcome to come in. But you know my mother. I have no idea what kind of state she’s going to be in.”
Wyatt nodded. “Okay, but if I think anything’s going haywire, I’m coming in.”
Before she had time to think about what she was doing, she leaned in and gave him a quick peck on his stubbled cheek. Wyatt looked at her with wide eyes and she smiled. He was such a good man.
“Thanks.” She turned and entered the kitchen, ignoring the desire she had to turn and tell Wyatt exactly what she thought of him—and how sorry she was for their misunderstanding back at his place.
How differently the day would have gone if she hadn’t let her stupid emotions and insecurities get in the way.
In the kitchen, her mother was standing by the fridge. Her face was a shade of red Gwen recognized from her mother’s many nights of drinking.
“How much have you had?”
Her mother looked up. There was a glass of vodka in her hand and, as she noticed Gwen looking, she pushed it behind her back like she was a kid caught in some guilty act.
“I don’t know whatcher talking about,” Carla said, her words slurred with drunkenness. But as she spoke she forgot about hiding the drink in her hand and brought it back around where Gwen could see it.
Gwen gave a resigned sigh. “Mrs. Fitzgerald said she stopped by here today and talked to you. Is that right?”
Her mother took a long drink, her need to hide outweighed by her desire for more. “I played all nicey-nicey, but she’s still a piece of work. She thinks she’s all high and mighty. Like her life don’t stink...” She took another drink.
“Did she drop anything off?” Gwen couldn’t help but feel like she was talking to a two-year-old.
Her mother shrugged, but her gaze moved to the back door where Bianca’s vet bag sat on the counter. Gwen moved toward it, but her mother stepped in her way.
“Are you shacking up with that boy Wyatt?”
Gwen looked back at the door, praying Wyatt couldn’t hear their conversation. He didn’t need to hear her mother’s smear campaign or anything else she probably had to say right now.
“Do I need to remind you of what he done to me? He had no right to tase me.” Her mother picked up the nearly empty bottle of vodka that sat on the kitchen table and refilled her glass.
“You’re lucky he didn’t arrest you. He could have. And think about how badly you’d be detoxing if h
e had.”
“He didn’t have nothing on me. I’m gonna sue him and the county. They’re gonna have a real mess on their hands.”
The only mess here was her.
“I shoulda sued them all for more. Do you remember the pissy little settlement his family’s insurance gave us?”
Her mother had made it a nearly daily habit of complaining about how they had only gotten forty thousand dollars from the Dunrovin’s insurance company. That, added to her father’s life insurance, had covered his burial and about six months of the ranch’s overhead costs. Six months in which her mother had fallen deeper and deeper into her depression—a depression that seemed to never end thanks to the constant numb of alcohol.
Gwen walked over and pried the glass from her fingers. “Aren’t you tired of acting like this? Of feeling this way? It’s been long enough. And now with Bianca gone... This isn’t going to help you or me get through this.”
Her mother reached after her as she walked to the sink and poured the drink down the drain.
“No!” her mother called, running to the sink. She grabbed the glass out of Gwen’s hand and swirled her finger around the rim. “Who do you think you are? That was mine. I paid for it. I pay for everything in this dang place. You got no right to come in here and take anything of mine—especially in a week like this.”
“I’m the one who runs this ranch, Mother. Do I need to remind you how little you do?”
She knew now was a poor time to pick a fight, but she couldn’t stand idly by and let her mother try to slowly kill her with the lashes lain by her words. Not anymore.
“How dare you, Gwyneth Marie Johansen.” Her mother tried to take on an air of authority by using her full name, but it came out as a slow, slurry mess of syllables that made her sound even drunker than before.
Wyatt stepped into the kitchen. “Mrs. Johansen,” he said, greeting her with a dip of the head. “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” She motioned her glass toward Wyatt, then turned and lifted her shirt. There, on the side of her waist, was an angry black-and-blue mark where the Taser’s prongs had bitten into her skin. “Look what you did to me, you bastard. I hope you feel real good about taking down an old woman. What else are you gonna do to me? Get Gwen killed—just like you did with Bianca and my husband? You want to kill my whole damned family. Admit it.”
She staggered as she moved toward Wyatt. The glass slipped in her hand and fell to the floor, shattering. The shards of glass spewed across the linoleum, landing on the tips of Gwen’s boots.
Her mother kept moving, seemingly unaware of the glass and the scene she was causing.
“Carla, don’t move,” Wyatt ordered, motioning at her mother’s bare feet. “There’s glass all over the floor. If you step, you’re going to cut yourself up. Just stay where you are and we’ll clean this up.”
Her mother hiccupped, and she listed to the left so hard she was forced to grab the counter. The glass crunched under her and dots of blood oozed out from beneath the soles of her feet.
“Carla.” Wyatt rushed to her side, wrapping his arm around her. “I told you to stay put. Are you okay?”
She tried to push his arms away, but the movement was feeble and weak. Normally her mother was so strong when she was drunk that she could nearly take down a full-grown moose.
“I...I got...this,” her mother said, her words suddenly even more slurred and gummed together than before.
She fell into Wyatt’s arms.
Something was very wrong.
“What...did ya do to me?” her mother asked, looking at Wyatt like he had slipped her a roofie.
“How much did you drink, Mrs. Johansen? Really. It’s important you tell me.”
Carla slipped down, forcing him to hold her as she gently slid to the floor and her body rested along the bits of glass. Her eyes started to close.
“Mrs. Johansen! Don’t go to sleep. Stay awake.” Wyatt reached down to his handset and, speaking in codes, called an ambulance. “Does your mother normally drink to this point?”
“She drinks a lot. You saw how she can be.” Gwen motioned toward the driveway. “That’s how she usually is. Sometimes she’s so good at this that she can even seem sober. This isn’t like her.”
Her mother started to convulse and white foam poured from her lips. Wyatt rolled her over on her side and held her head so she wouldn’t choke.
He looked up at Gwen and there was a look of panic in his eyes.
She dropped to her knees, taking her mother’s hand. “Mom. Mom!” she called as Carla’s eyes rolled back into her head so only the whites showed. “Stay with us! I’m so sorry... No... Mom, don’t leave.”
Chapter Eleven
The St. James Hospital emergency room was a flurry of motion as the doctor jogged past them toward Carla’s room. The EMTs stood outside, watching as the nurses took her vitals and asked questions about the scene.
Wyatt wanted to be angry at Carla for what she had done, but he couldn’t feel anything except a deep pooling sadness for Gwen. She had such a tough life. It was like bad luck was constantly flying right over her and just waiting for the next moment it could swoop in and scavenge away another piece of what she loved.
No wonder she was so resistant to moving their relationship into anything serious—or toward anything at all.
Then again, she had kissed his cheek back at her mother’s place, before everything had hit the fan. That had to have meant something, didn’t it? Or had it simply been her way of thanking him for trying to take care of her?
He wished she came with a set of written instructions, or maybe a procedure manual—anything that could help him make sense of all the emotions and questions that swirled through him.
He glanced over at her. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hair was disheveled. Reaching over, he smoothed her hair. She looked up at him and their eyes met, and he was reminded of how scared she had been when she had watched her mother have the seizure. No matter how much she must hate her mother sometimes, and regardless of how mad or embarrassed the woman made her, Carla would always be her mom.
He could understand that kind of forgiveness and love. He hated to think or talk about it, but his mind went back to the pool of blackness that was his past before he’d come to the Fitzgeralds. His mother, a drug addict, had sold herself in order to support her drug habit, until one day she was arrested.
She hadn’t bothered to tell the police she’d left a child, him, at home. He had been five at the time; just old enough to remember the feeling of being all alone in the middle of the night, listening to the sounds that came with living in a cheap motel.
Some nights he could still remember the smell of her, the thick vanilla perfume mixed with the pungent odor of cigarettes.
He hated her now, but he could still remember on the day the police had come to take him away and he’d been placed into the foster care system, being scared and telling them how much he missed and loved his mommy.
Oh, those wounds that would never heal.
For some, those like him and Gwen, these were wounds they would carry with them for their entire lifetime.
He reached down and laced his fingers between hers. Perhaps together they could both heal, if only she would let them try.
“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Gwen asked, squeezing his fingers.
He nodded as he rubbed a small circle on the back of her hand with his thumb. “I think she’ll be fine, really...”
Gwen lifted their entwined hands. “Do you know that I’ve always hated those little circles you make with your thumb? It used to drive me crazy when we were younger.”
He stopped moving his thumb. “Oh,” he said, trying not to be embarrassed. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have stopped.”
She pulled their hands to her face and brushed the back of his hand against her cheek. “Don’t stop. I don’t want you to stop.”
Her face was soft and warm against his skin and he made a slow, meticulous circle over the back of her hand.
“Are you sure?” He wasn’t quite sure if they were talking about the circles or something else.
“Sometimes what we think drives us crazy are the things we end up missing the most.”
“I’m glad you missed me,” he said with a small, playful smile.
Some of the darkness lifted from her eyes. “I missed you more than you can know. I’m so sorry, Wyatt. I just thought...”
He leaned in and kissed the back of her hand. As much as he wanted to hear what she had to say, he didn’t want her to regret her decision when she was better rested and not under the stresses of the day.
“It’s okay, Gwen. I know. And I’m sorry, too, but...”
She gave him a weak smile. “But is right. And for now, but is good enough.”
Dr. Richards walked out of the hospital room, toweling off his hands. He looked around the ER and, spotting them, he made his way over. “I’ve got good news.”
Gwen shifted as though her knees were going to give out, and Wyatt wrapped his arm around her in an effort to keep her from falling.
“What is it? What happened?” Her words came in a flurry.
Dr. Richards motioned to the bank of chairs that sat against the far wall. “Do you wish to sit down?”
Gwen shook her head. She was usually so strong—sometimes almost to a fault. At least this time, she was just letting Wyatt support and comfort her.
Wyatt nodded for Dr. Richards to continue.
“While she isn’t out of the woods, your mother should pull through this.”
“What is this? What happened to her?” Gwen asked, her voice high with stress.
The doctor looked back toward the nurses’ station and the stack of charts like he wanted to go grab one, but he stopped himself and turned back. “We received the results of the toxicology screen. It looks as though your mother may have overdosed on Tramadol.”
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