Springwater Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  Both Daphne and Maggie laughed, then Daphne consulted her watch and whistled. “Look at the time. I’m supposed to meet Ben after work.” She waggled her eyebrows comically. “I’m ovulating,” she added, in a confidential tone. Daphne never missed a viable opportunity to conceive, and she wasn’t particularly secretive about the fact.

  Maggie shook her head, smiling. “Don’t let us keep you,” she teased.

  Daphne grinned. “Not a chance,” she said, and vanished.

  “Is it all right if I use the telephone? To make a personal call, I mean?” Cindy asked a few minutes later, as Maggie stood in the middle of the room assessing the clean walls. “Billy’s over at his mom’s, helping Travis move the freezer out to the garage. If I catch him I can let him know I’m through working for the day, and he’ll pick me up.” Cindy had been working steadily since she arrived, running various errands and familiarizing herself with Maggie’s computer, and for the time being there wasn’t much else for her to do.

  “Of course,” Maggie said, tossing her sponge into the bucket with a sense of real satisfaction. The Station had been empty for years, after serving as a makeshift library and, before that, as the town hall. If she just hung in there, putting one foot in front of the other, plugging away at her list of tasks and goals, it would soon be restored to its former glory.

  “You going to knock off for the day?” Cindy asked.

  Maggie shoved her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans and assessed her accomplishment once more. “Sort of. My dad and brother ought to be showing up soon with my bed. I think I’ll sleep here tonight.”

  “Won’t you be scared? To be all alone, I mean?”

  “I won’t be alone,” Maggie said. “Sadie will be with me.”

  Cindy shivered a little, looked up at the bare rafters that had supported the sturdy roof through decades of Montana wind, snow, rain, and summer heat. “Travis says a lot of people have probably gotten old and died here. He says there must be a bunch of spooks.”

  “Travis?” Maggie asked. She’d never heard of the guy and already she tended to dislike him. “Who’s that?”

  Cindy blushed and averted her eyes. “He’s Billy’s half-brother,” she answered.

  “I see,” Maggie said, troubled by something in the girl’s manner. “Well, you needn’t worry about any ghosts that might be haunting this old place,” she said. “If they’re here—and that’s doubtful— they’re good, solid citizens.”

  Cindy still looked nervous, but she managed a smile. “Well, I’d better hurry up and call Billy before he heads back out to the ranch.”

  Maggie nodded and went to empty the bucket to rinse out the sponge. When she headed back to take down the ladder and put it away, Cindy was sitting at one of the trestle tables, her chin in her hands, looking downcast.

  “I missed Billy,” she said. “Doris said he left half an hour ago.” A moment later, she burst into tears.

  Sadie whimpered and curled up close to Cindy’s feet, the better to lend whatever canine comfort might be necessary. Maggie laid a hand on the young woman’s thin, heaving shoulder.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” she asked gently.

  Cindy seemed to melt under the least bit of tenderness. Had simple caring been so rare in her life as that? No doubt it had, considering what Daphne had said earlier about the girl’s childhood.

  She snuffled ingloriously. “Nothing,” she said.

  Maggie sat down on the bench beside her. “Come on, now. Nobody cries like that over ‘nothing’.” But maybe they did, she thought. While she’d never had the experience herself, she knew pregnant women were often emotional. Cindy’s hormones were probably running amok.

  The young woman wiped her face with both hands, and the gesture was so childlike, so guileless, that Maggie wanted to break down and weep herself. “It’s just that Doris doesn’t like me.”

  “Doris?”

  “Billy’s mom.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said.

  “She thinks I was trying to trap Travis.”

  Maggie was confused. “Travis?”

  Cindy blushed again. “I mean Billy,” she said.

  The confusion didn’t abate. “O.K.,” Maggie responded, in what she hoped was a cheerful tone of voice. Then she patted Cindy lightly on the forearm. “Sadie and I will give you a ride home. I’ll just leave the door open for Dad and Wes.”

  Cindy hesitated, as though afraid she would be overstepping by taking Maggie up on the offer, then nodded. “Thanks, Maggie.”

  Maggie stood, and so did Sadie, who had a sixth sense when it came to prospective car rides. “Come on,” she said to the eager dog. “You can keep us company.”

  Fifteen minutes later they passed the Wainwright ranch house, a rambling log structure on a high rise overlooking the valley, and Maggie marveled at how the place had fallen apart since she’d last seen it. Once one of the finest spreads in the county, it had been neglected for a long while, and it showed. If Scully and Evangeline Wainwright, the original owners of the property, weren’t rattling chains in the night out of sheer protest, their great-grandson, Jack, surely was.

  There were new, unpainted rails in the corral fences, though, and stacks of lumber, sawhorses, and other signs of industry stood around the overgrown yard.

  A kind of sweet shudder went up Maggie’s spine.

  The trailer stood some hundred yards behind the main house, tucked in behind an old grape arbor, long since out of control. Smaller even than Maggie remembered it being, the pink-and-white mobile home was no longer mobile, but set up on cement blocks. Somebody had made a real effort to spruce the place up: The aged pink-and-white metal walls gleamed in the sun, and the grass had been tamed into something vaguely resembling a lawn.

  “Come in,” Cindy said, half pleading. “I’ve got some ice tea brewed.”

  Maggie didn’t have the heart to refuse, even though she wanted to get back to the Station while her dad and Wes were still there. “Sure,” she said.

  Sadie bounded out on the driver’s side after Maggie, spotted a blue, black, and gold butterfly, and went in fearless pursuit. Cindy led the way into the trailer, leaving the door ajar in case the beagle decided to join them.

  The inside of Billy and Cindy’s modest home was as well cared for as the outside, and Maggie knew then, if she hadn’t before, that Cindy would make an exemplary employee, not to mention a good wife and mother.

  “Billy does most of the work,” the girl said shyly, following Maggie’s gaze.

  Maggie smiled. She didn’t know Billy Raynor—he might be a paragon—but she wasn’t willing to give him all the credit. Cindy was surely being too modest.

  “Have a seat,” Cindy said, heading for the refrigerator. She could nearly have reached it from the couch, the place was so small.

  Maggie sat. Through the open doorway she could see Sadie, still cavorting in the yard. Cindy had said she was seven and a half months along. “Your baby is due in August?” she asked, to make conversation.

  “First week in September,” Cindy said shyly, busy pouring tea from a plastic pitcher. “Travis says, wouldn’t it be funny if the kid came on Labor Day?”

  Travis again, Maggie thought, but she offered no comment. Sometimes she just couldn’t help interfering, but she mostly confined her efforts to Reece and Kathleen and, of course, Daphne. “Funny,” she agreed.

  Just then, Sadie began to bark, not out of alarm, but in gleeful greeting. Cindy handed Maggie her glass of tea and went to the door.

  “Hi, beautiful,” Maggie heard a male voice say.

  “Hi, Billy,” Cindy responded, and though there was warmth in the way she spoke, Maggie heard a note of something tentative as well, and wondered if Billy didn’t hear it, too. “My boss is here. Maggie McCaffrey, this is my husband, Billy Raynor.”

  “Hello, Billy,” Maggie said.

  Billy was only a few inches taller than Cindy, and he looked, as Reece would have said, as if he might blow away in a high wind. He had
earnest blue eyes and light hair razed to a buzz cut, and everything about him said “cowboy.”

  “Howdy,” he said, with a polite nod, holding his straw hat in both hands.

  “I tried to call you and let you know I needed a ride,” Cindy said, making for the fridge again. Billy accepted a can of bargain cola with a beatific look of appreciation; she might have given him manna from heaven or, at least, ambrosia. “Doris said you’d already left, so Maggie brought me out here.”

  “That was kind of you, ma’am,” Billy said. He’d seated himself at the tiny fold-down table just inside the door, laying his hat aside with the elaborate ease of a much older man. “We’re obliged.”

  Maggie felt uncomfortable, as though she were intruding on a honeymoon, and finished her tea quickly. “I’d better be getting back to town,” she said, rising.

  Cindy took her empty glass. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and the statement sounded almost like a question. She looked fearful, as though expecting to be fired on the spot.

  “Bright and early,” Maggie confirmed.

  She collected Sadie, got behind the wheel of the Pathfinder, and started back over the rutted dirt road. Distracted, she was looking into the rearview mirror, remembering the night she and J.T. had made love in the trailer’s berthlike double bed, when she heard the shout, accompanied by Sadie’s warning bark.

  “Hey!” The voice startled her back to reality.

  Maggie slammed on the brakes, practically throwing Sadie through the windshield, and nearly strangled when she saw J.T. right in front of her, struggling to calm the terrified black-and-white paint gelding he was riding.

  Maggie jumped out of the Pathfinder. “Are you hurt?” she cried.

  “No,” J.T. answered, still working with the frantic horse, “but I have to give you credit. You sure as hell tried!”

  Maggie, never inclined toward a temper, barely kept herself from thumping the hood of her own vehicle with one knotted fist. “Nonsense,” she argued. “It was an accident.”

  Finally, the gelding settled down a little, though its ears were tucked back and its nostrils were flared. J.T. swung out of the saddle to face her. “You could have killed this horse, not to mention me.”

  Full of terror and chagrin, Maggie started to cry. “Don’t you think I know that?” she blubbered.

  J.T.’s stern look softened into a lopsided grin, and he pulled her loosely into his arms, patting her back awkwardly. “Hey, McCaffrey,” he said, “take it easy. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. I’m sorry.”

  Maggie smelled fresh hay on his shirt, and another, more subtle scent she remembered from years before. She took one stumbling step backward, shaking. Sadie had moved to the driver’s seat and watched them with panting interest over the top of the steering wheel. “I think I’m going to throw up,” Maggie said.

  J.T. cupped her chin in one hand and lifted. “Take a couple of deep breaths. You’re all right, I’m all right, and the horse is all right.” He grinned, glancing over the top of her head toward Sadie. “And the dog looks like she might be planning to drive off without you.”

  Maggie, still weeping, began to laugh, almost hysterically.

  “Still going to throw up?” J.T. inquired.

  Maggie shook her head, and promptly began to hiccup.

  “You really are in bad shape, aren’t you?” He looked and sounded amused.

  “No, damn it,” Maggie managed to argue, hiccupping again. “I am just fine. I just—I just need to get home.”

  J.T. nodded, stepped aside. “Do you remember?” he asked quietly, before Maggie could turn away.

  She knew what he meant, though she wished she could have misunderstood. He was gazing in the direction of the trailer, now occupied by another pair of young lovers. “Yes,” she said, barely breathing the word. She couldn’t look at him because she was sure to see a reflection of her own memories in his eyes.

  “Hey, Maggie?”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “Look at me, will you?”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “All right,” she said. “I’m looking at you.”

  He chuckled. “Have supper with me.”

  Her heart picked up speed. “I can’t,” she replied, with some relief. “My dad and Wes are delivering a bed to the Station right about now. If I don’t keep an eye on them, they’ll put it anywhere but where I want it.”

  “Ummm,” he said, with a sage nod. “How about tomorrow, then?” There was no graceful way out. She wasn’t even sure why she wanted one, graceful or otherwise, but the truth was, she was scared stiff. Her inner child, if there was such a thing, wanted to bolt and scramble down the hill, run all the way home, leaving dog, car, horse, and man behind. “Tomorrow,” she repeated.

  “It’ll be here when the sun comes up in the morning,” he teased.

  “All right,” she said.

  “All right?”

  “I’ll have dinner with you. I’ll make dinner, at the Station.”

  “Even better,” J.T. said.

  “Good.”

  He grinned at her discomfiture. “What time?”

  “Seven,” Maggie answered, sounding a lot more sure of herself than she actually felt. Why was she so scared of this man, she wondered frantically. The answer came on the heels of the question; J. T. Wainwright scared her because she knew there was fury in him, even darkness, but it was more than that. He stirred some vague wildness inside her and scattered her well-ordered emotions every which way.

  “Shall I bring anything? Wine, maybe?”

  She managed a smile, hoped it looked casual. “Sure. Sure, that would be great.” She turned, started back toward the gaping driver’s door of the Pathfinder. Her knees were wobbly, and her head felt light. “I’ll see you then.”

  “If not before,” he said.

  Get a grip, McCaffrey, Maggie scolded herself, you’re not a teenager. She pretended not to hear, waved cheerfully, and got behind the wheel. J.T. mounted the paint gelding, touched the brim of his hat in the old-fashioned way, and rode out of her way.

  She didn’t dare look into the rearview mirror again until the gates of the Wainwright place were far behind her.

  “Maggie seemed like a real nice lady,” Billy said, his eyes lighting up with appreciation when Cindy placed a plate of macaroni and cheese in front of him. If she cooked the least little thing for him, he acted like it was the blue-plate special from a fancy restaurant in Missoula or somewhere, instead of some goop out of a box. “She work you real hard?”

  Cindy filled a plate for herself, sat down across from Billy, and looked at the food with resignation. She’d eat, because she didn’t want her baby doing without, but she didn’t have to like it. “No,” she answered, at last. “She hardly expects me to work at all.” Cindy brightened a little, just thinking about her job. “I get to use the computer, though. I’m learning a lot of new stuff.”

  Billy’s smile was wide. “That’s good.” He hesitated, chewed, and swallowed a hefty bite of mac and cheese. “ ’Course, you’ll want to quit and stay home when the baby comes.”

  Cindy barely suppressed a sigh. “Maybe,” she said. Billy had had a hard life, just like her, but there was a stubborn innocence about him. He liked to pretend everything was perfect, but he wasn’t the one with the guilty conscience. “We need whatever extra money we can get our hands on, especially now.”

  Billy finished his macaroni and put his plate in the sink. He was still hungry, she knew that, but he was going to pretend about that, too. A lump formed in her throat; she wouldn’t be able to swallow another bite. A hardworking man like Billy ought to have meat for supper every night, but there was no money for such luxuries, and the marketing would have to wait until one of them got a paycheck. For the time being they were living on donations from Doris’s kitchen cupboards, and every boxed dinner and can of beans came equipped with one of the woman’s long-suffering sighs.

  Sometimes Cindy heard Doris’s voice even in
her dreams. If it weren’t for you, Miss Priss …

  “Here,” Cindy said, and pushed her plate across the table to Billy. “I’m feeling a little sick.”

  Billy looked genuinely worried. God bless him, he truly cared for her; he’d proven that over and over again, through the years. He’d fought her battles, given her valentines, told her she was pretty and smart, believed in her no matter what. He deserved so much better than the likes of her.

  “You need to eat, honey,” Billy said.

  Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she shook her head. Her throat was so tight, it hurt. “I can’t,” she said. “I told you—I feel sick.”

  Billy took the plate and finished her share of the macaroni and cheese slowly. “Things are gonna get better,” he told her. “I promise.”

  Cindy sniffled, then smiled. “That’s one thing about you, Billy Raynor. Your word is as good as gold.” At least, she thought, one of them had some integrity, and some faith in the future.

  “So’s yours,” Billy assured her. “You just need to start believin’ in yourself a little more, that’s all.”

  Cindy looked away. A year ago, she and Billy had been going steady, and she’d still been in school, getting O.K. grades. Then they’d had a silly fight over something Billy’s mother Doris had said, and Cindy had stormed out of the Raynor house, angry and crying. It should have been Billy who came after her, but instead it was Travis. Travis, who had somehow conned her—to this day she wasn’t sure how he’d managed it—into breaking up with Billy and being his girl instead. The relationship hadn’t lasted long—Cindy had known it was a mistake, for all the good that did—but the damage was done.

  Cindy had been a virgin when she left Billy, but by the time Travis was through with her, she was expecting a baby. Although Billy had cried when she told him she was pregnant—except for the night her mother died, that was the worst thing she’d ever been through—he’d sworn he loved her just the same, and he’d vowed to raise his niece or nephew as his own child. She knew he meant it, too. When Billy Raynor made you a promise, you could take it to the bank.

  He’d long since forgiven her, but the question was, would she ever be able to forgive herself?