“It could be altered,” Maggie responded, assessing the garment.
“I think you should try it on.”
Maggie laughed. “Don’t be silly. Suppose I tore the fabric?”
“It looks pretty strong to me,” Daphne said, tugging gently at one of the bodice seams. “Come on, Mags. Put it on.”
A lot of old dreams rose up in Maggie’s heart and swelled into her throat, aching there, and she couldn’t speak. Tears brimmed in her eyes and, once again, she shook her head. “I can’t.”
Daphne put one arm around her shoulders and gave her a brief squeeze. “Sure you can,” she said.
Maggie swallowed, took the dress in her arms, and sat down on the lid of a second trunk to admire it. For just a few moments, she allowed herself to dream, to imagine herself being married in the lovely gown like so many Springwater brides before her.
Daphne sighed. “It’s like an omen,” she said.
“It does seem to have an almost magical element,” Maggie managed. Then she looked up at Daphne and smiled. “I suppose I could assemble a display for the museum.”
“You’re kidding,” Daphne accused. “That dress is an heirloom, Mags. If you’re not going to wear it, then it should be preserved for a niece or a cousin or someone.”
Maggie found herself hugging the gown, oddly unwilling to let it go, then or ever. “Yes,” she agreed, meaning, no.
A few moments later, they agreed that the wedding dress ought to be taken down the street to the dry cleaners for special laundering. Daphne packed it carefully in tissue paper and set out on that errand, and Maggie went back to the computer, but as absorbing as they’d been earlier, it was hard to keep her mind on the tasks at hand. She kept thinking about the gossamer gown, envisioning herself wearing it, along with a flowing veil, walking down the aisle of Springwater’s tiny church. Waiting for her, in the groom’s traditional place, was J. T. Wainwright.
The thought filled her with a reckless sense of happiness, the sort of crazy, dangerous emotion only J.T. could have inspired.
Gradually, she became aware of furious whispers coming from the main room, where Cindy was folding colorful brochures advertising the Springwater Station as a bed-and-breakfast. They would be sent out to addresses from a rented mailing list, as well as prominently placed at the counters of other businesses in town.
Maggie got up, concerned, and went to the doorway.
Cindy was working determinedly, while a good-looking young man, probably in his mid-twenties, stood over her, a cocky grin slanting his mouth. He had dark hair and deep blue eyes and, though lean, he was powerfully built, reminding Maggie a little of J.T. when he was around that age. “I told you, Travis,” Cindy hissed, almost desperately, “I can’t afford to lose this job. Unless you’re here to book a room, you’d better run along.”
Travis. Maggie was still absorbing the implications of the boy’s identity when, standing across the table from where Cindy sat with her back to the office, he leaned over, hands braced against the table’s edge, his face only an inch or two from Cindy’s, and drawled, “If I did rent a room, would you share it with me?”
Maggie slipped back, out of sight, but not before Cindy slammed the palms of both hands down onto the tabletop and cried hoarsely, “For God’s sake, Travis, leave me be! I’m a married woman.”
“Married to my wimp of a little brother.”
Maggie hadn’t planned to eavesdrop, but the situation was too disturbing to ignore. She wasn’t entirely sure Cindy was safe, given the tone and general drift of the conversation.
“Billy is more of a man than you ever thought of being, Travis DuPres. This might be your baby I’m carrying, but Billy’s the real father. Now go, before you get me fired!”
Maggie let her forehead rest against the inside of the doorjamb, feeling heartsick even though Cindy’s announcement was hardly news. According to Kathleen, the facts surrounding the baby’s conception were common knowledge in Springwater.
Travis murmured something in response to Cindy’s remarks, and by that time Maggie was fairly certain she could speak and still retain her composure.
“Cindy? Are you out there? If you are, could you bring me one of the brochures, please? I want to scan it into the computer for that email campaign we’ve been planning.”
Travis swore audibly, and Maggie heard his footsteps as he stormed across the old plank floorboards. The main door slammed in the distance.
“Y-Yes,” Cindy replied, at some length, “I’m here. I’ll be right in—I-I just need to use the bathroom first.”
A full five minutes passed before Cindy came into the office, her red, swollen eyes giving her away even though she tried to put up a confident front. “You heard,” she said.
Maggie merely nodded, and gestured for Cindy to sit down in the chair next to her desk.
Cindy sank into the seat. “Are you going to fire me?”
Maggie sighed. “Of course not. You’ve been doing a good job.”
Cindy remembered the brochure clutched in one hand, and thrust it across the desk at Maggie. “Thanks,” she muttered.
Maggie set it aside. It was too crumpled to scan and, besides, the request had been a ruse. The email customer list was Cindy’s project; she could manage the whole job on her own. “If you ever need my help,” Maggie told the girl softly, “I expect you to tell me.”
Cindy’s eyes widened a little. “Travis won’t come here again. I’ll sic Billy on him if he does, or my brother Randy.”
From what Maggie had seen of Travis DuPres, Billy wouldn’t stand a chance against him. As for Randy Hough, well, he was a thug, according to Daphne. He and Travis were probably buddies. “There’s no need for that,” Maggie said quietly. “If Travis causes any problems around here, I’ll take care of the matter myself.”
Cindy looked fearful, not for herself, it seemed, but for her employer. “You don’t want to mess with him, Maggie.” She paused. “I mean—”
“I know what you meant,” Maggie said. “I’m not afraid of Travis DuPres or anybody else. If he bothers you again, you come to me.”
Cindy lowered her eyes, swallowed visibly. “You don’t think any less of me?”
“Why would I?”
“You must know,” Cindy said miserably. “Everybody does. I was Billy’s girlfriend, and we broke up over something stupid, and I got involved with Travis. Just long enough to get pregnant. But then, what can you expect from a Hough?”
“Things happen, Cindy,” she said quietly. “People make mistakes, no matter what their last name happens to be.”
Cindy was weeping again when she looked up. “I love Billy,” she confessed, in a miserable whisper. “I love him so much, sometimes I don’t think I can stand it. But he’s only standing by me because of the baby. I know it kills him inside, remembering what I did.”
Maggie sat back in her chair, fingers linked in front of her, and might have giggled at her own unconscious assumption of a classic shrink’s pose if the situation hadn’t been so very sad. “Maybe he really has forgiven you,” she ventured. “Billy, I mean. Maybe you’re the one doing all the remembering.”
Cindy looked grateful just to have somebody listen to her. God knew, the kid probably didn’t have a lot of people to turn to with her problems. Her shoulders, rigid before, sloped now, with disgrace and sorrow. “My dad said he’d kill me if I didn’t ‘take care of the problem.’ I couldn’t do what he wanted. Billy and I talked things over, and he offered to marry me and tell everyone the baby was his. The whole town of Springwater knows different, of course. It hurts me so much, knowing how Billy must feel.”
Billy Raynor went up another notch in Maggie’s estimation; he was kind to Cindy, Maggie had seen that when she visited their trailer. In fact, Billy had looked at his young wife with what could only have been adoration, as though she were a madonna blossoming with a holy child. “I wonder if any of us can ever really know how somebody else feels,” Maggie speculated.
Cindy n
odded, dashing at her tears. “He’s so good to me,” she cried, “and I feel just terrible about it.”
“Listen to yourself,” Maggie said, calling upon all the psychological training she’d garnered watching late-night reruns of Oprah. “You feel terrible because someone is being good to you?”
“I know,” Cindy sniffled, making a wan attempt at a smile. “That’s pretty screwed up, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Maggie replied, but kindly. “Cindy, you need some counseling.”
Cindy looked as though she’d been slapped. “You think I’m crazy?”
“Of course not. Everybody has rough times, things they need help sorting through.”
“I can’t afford no—any—doctor.”
“You can go to the county mental health people, over in Maple Creek,” Maggie replied, quietly but firmly. “They’ll charge little or nothing.”
“How would I get there? Billy’s got an old truck, but he needs it for work.”
“I’ll drive you to the first appointment myself,” Maggie said. “After that, you can take my car.” She was silent for a few moments, watching Cindy’s reaction. “You are getting prenatal care, aren’t you?”
Cindy nodded. “Doris took me to the welfare people, and I got medical coupons,” she said, plainly ashamed. “We didn’t know what else to do. It was just Billy working, and—”
“Cindy,” Maggie interrupted.
“Wh-what?”
Maggie picked up the telephone receiver and handed it across the desk. “Here. I’ll dial information, and you ask for the mental health office. I’ll go look through the rest of the things in that trunk while you’re making an appointment.”
Briefly, Cindy looked as though she might balk. Then an expression of grateful acceptance, even relief, came over her face. “How come you’re being so nice to me? Is it because you feel sorry for me?”
“I don’t feel one bit sorry for you,” Maggie lied, for the sake of the girl’s dignity. “I’m your employer and your friend, that’s all. I care what happens to you, to Billy, and especially to that baby you’re carrying. It isn’t good for you to be so stressed out. Dr. Parrish must have told you that.”
Ellen Parrish, also a member of an old Springwater family, was the only M.D. in town, so it was a safe bet that she was Cindy’s attending physician.
Cindy nodded. “She did,” she confessed, in a small voice.
Maggie tapped out three numerals on the telephone dial and left Cindy to make her counseling arrangements in private.
Purvis went over the list of complaints he’d received from various ranchers, regarding severed fence lines and stolen cattle, but his mind wasn’t on his work. He kept remembering his get-together with Nelly—aka Cowgirl—the night before, at Flo’s Diner.
At first, the conversation had been awkward. She hadn’t really wanted to be there, and neither had he, but after the waitress brought them coffee and they each ordered a piece of Flo’s legendary peach pie, things had begun to flow like creek water over smooth stones.
Purvis braced one elbow on the surface of his desk, dropped his chin into it, and let himself travel back, unrestricted, to that rear booth, with its red vinyl seats, glowing jukebox, and push-in napkin holder …
“I wouldn’t have figured you for the type to use a computer, except maybe for solving crimes,” Nelly said. For a little thing, she sure knew how to tuck into a piece of peach pie.
Purvis felt himself flush. “I’m a little on the different side, when compared with most folks,” he said, “but I’m not stupid. I keep up with the times.”
Nelly’s brown eyes sparkled as she looked him over. That expression of mischief made her look extra pretty, especially when one corner of her mouth tipped upward. “Touchy, touchy,” she said. “Nobody said you were stupid, Purvis. Old-fashioned, maybe, but not stupid.”
A humiliating sense of relief rushed through him. “Tell me about your book club,” he blurted, and immediately went red again.
She smiled. “It’s not a book club,” she said. “It’s a support group.”
Purvis started to ask what kind of support group, and stopped himself just in time, for all the good it did. He could see that Nelly knew what he’d been going to say.
She held up the book. Starting Over When You’ve Lost Everything, it was called.
That stymied him completely; his desire to know what had happened to Nelly was exceeded only by his fear that she might come right out and tell him. If she’d lost her whole family in an accident or something really terrible like that, he wasn’t sure he’d be able stand it. So he just sat there, scared to say a thing.
She spoke softly, fiddling with a packet of pink sugar all the while, but her gaze was direct. “I had a house, a business, and a husband. I was going to have a baby, too, but I miscarried. Right after that, my husband, Allen, just up and vanished—owing the government a lot of money in back taxes. They took the house and the business—the IRS, I mean. I was left with my clothes, a few books, and my car. End of story.”
Purvis sagged back in the vinyl seat, both relieved and stricken. “Why didn’t you say any of that when we were emailing each other?”
Her smile was small and sad. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to swap messages anymore,” she said. “Some people are scared bad luck will rub off if they get too close.”
He reached out, took her hand, squeezed. “You’ve been through the mill,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She hesitated a few moments, then pulled back her hand. Purvis could have kicked himself for grabbing her that way. “It’s okay,” she said, looking through her own reflection on the diner window.
“What brought you up here to Montana?” he asked.
She grinned, and a light shone in her eyes. “I always wanted to be a cowgirl,” she said.
Purvis was amazed, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been. After all, her screen name was “Cowgirl.” “You didn’t know anybody up here, or anything like that?”
She shook her head. “That seemed like a plus at the time,” she said.
“Wow,” Purvis muttered. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to make such an impulsive move. He’d been to Vietnam, and that was travel enough for him.
She laughed, and the sound was cheery, like Christmas music on a snowy afternoon. “I just opened up an atlas to the western states one day, right before I left L.A.,” she confided, leaning forward, “and I jabbed down my finger and when I opened my eyes, there was Springwater, Montana. I got a job there right away, but I couldn’t find an apartment, so I rented a little place here in Maple Creek.” She paused again. “What about you, Purvis? For all our chitchat over the Internet, you didn’t really tell me much about yourself, either.”
He was baffled. What was there to tell? He was a small-town cop, none too popular with his constituency at the moment, and a bachelor. He was lonely.
“Have you ever been married?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted. He’d paid his taxes right along, and he owned the house he lived in outright, such as it was. He had money in the bank, too. And for all of that, he still felt as though he’d missed the boat, because he’d never had what he wanted most in the world: a wife and kids. A family all his own.
She cocked her head to one side, eyes dancing. “What? No deep, dark secret? No skeletons in your closet?”
Except for some videos he’d accidentally ordered off a sleazy Web site one time, and sent back unwatched in a fit of chagrin, he couldn’t think of anything. He sure as hell wasn’t going to mention that, so he just shrugged.
“Maybe you are an innocent man,” Nelly surmised, narrowing those lively eyes speculatively. “Like the one in that Sherrie Austin song.”
Purvis blushed all over again. He’d heard the tune, all about boarding up windows and pulling down blinds and lying down with an innocent man. “I was in Vietnam,” he said then. Maybe God knew why he’d brought that up, but he sure didn’t.
“My dad went to Vietnam,”
Nelly said. “He never came back.”
Her dad. Well, that about summed up the matter. What was he doing having coffee with a woman young enough to be his daughter? He ought to be horsewhipped.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. He might have known Nelly’s father; he’d left a lot of friends behind in that God-forsaken place. One day, if he got the chance, he hoped to visit Washington, D.C., and find all their names on the Wall.
“I was a baby then,” Nelly said, as though that made everything all right. “My mom and I lived with my grandparents.” She studied him. “Were you ever in love?”
He shook his head. “Nope,” he said, and grinned. “Not unless you count Ann-Margaret.”
“Who?”
That really made him feel old. She’d probably never heard of Joplin, or the Stones, or Bob Dylan, either. He debated just paying the check, excusing himself, and leaving, but decided that would be the coward’s way out. Flo came over, refilled both their cups, and left, humming.
“So you’ve basically had a perfect life,” she prompted, letting the subject of Ann-Margaret slide.
“I was a little messed up when I got home from ’Nam,” he confessed. “Spent some time in and out of VA hospitals. When I finally got my head together, all the good women had either left town or married off.” He grinned, to lighten the mood a little, and Nelly grinned back.
“I got married right out of high school,” she said. “Dumbest thing I ever did.”
“You’re pretty hard on yourself.”
“Maybe,” Nelly confessed. She turned her head again, gazing at the darkening window beside their table again, as though she expected to find something important written there. “I’d like to have babies someday,” she said.
Purvis was surprised by the little splash in the center of his heart, like a trout jumping for a bug. It wasn’t as if she was offering to bear his children, was it, and millions of women wanted kids. Still, it did something profound to Purvis, her confiding such a private dream. “You will.”
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