Springwater Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  The conversation lapsed for a few moments, and J.T., who valued both silence and solitude in their places, was ambushed by a need to fill the void. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Daphne looking so happy,” he said. “Is it the kid?”

  Maggie’s smile was gentle, and he saw reservations in her eyes. “I think so,” she said.

  “So what’s worrying you?”

  Maggie sighed. “Tiffany is a foster child, not an orphan up for adoption, and someone could come along and claim her any time. Daphne would have to surrender her.”

  “On the other hand, McCaffrey, everything could work out fine.”

  She bit her lower lip, looked away.

  He reached across Quinn to squeeze her shoulder lightly. “When did you stop believing in happy endings?” he asked, in a quiet voice.

  She turned her gaze on him but didn’t speak.

  Mercifully, they soon arrived at the animal shelter in Maple Creek. It was a square cinder-block building on the edge of the town. Quinn might have scrambled over Maggie in his eagerness to get inside and make his choice if J.T. hadn’t slowed him down a little by taking a loose hold on the back of his shirt.

  “Easy,” he said.

  Once out of the truck Quinn bolted for the front door, while Maggie and J.T. walked slowly, taking the opportunity to talk.

  “How are the investigations going?”

  “Basically, they’re going nowhere. We have a few candidates in mind—Randy Hough and Travis DuPres among them—but nothing solid to go on. Sheriff Robertson is all over Purvis, threatening to send for the feds, and the worst part is that everybody seems to think I ought to be able to step in and wrap the thing up in one fell swoop, just because I was once a homicide cop. And the keyword here is ‘once.’”

  Maggie walked with her hands pushed backward into the rear pockets of her jeans. “That’s pretty much what they expect, all right. At the least.”

  “At the least?” J.T. echoed, as frustrated by the persistent rumors as he’d ever been by anything, and more troubled still to learn that there were other speculations going around.

  She looked up at him, studied his face. If the eyes are windows to the soul, then she was peering in and seeing more than J.T. was comfortable revealing. “I’ve heard you plan to run against Sheriff Robertson this fall.”

  J.T. was aghast. “What?”

  They’d reached the door of the shelter; J.T. reached past Maggie automatically to hold it open for her. She brushed against him as she passed, quite by accident he was sure, and sucked all his nerve endings to the outside of his skin.

  She gave him a meaningful look. Quinn was at the counter chattering to the receptionist. “So it isn’t true?”

  “It never crossed my mind,” J.T. said honestly. “I want to be a rancher, that’s all.”

  She sighed. “Good,” she answered, and then they had to let the subject drop for the time being, because Quinn was ready to choose a dog. He stood with one small hand raised to shoulder level to indicate the size he wanted—Extra-large, it would seem. J.T. felt another of those echoing tugs, way back in some hidden corridor of his heart.

  Maggie was watching him, and it was plain from her expression that she understood what he was thinking and feeling, perhaps better than he did, though, bless her, she didn’t comment.

  The teenage girl manning the reception counter led the three of them back into the kennel area, an antiseptically clean if depressingly utilitarian place. The walls were lined with what could only be described as cages, and each one held a mutt of some kind, butt ugly right down to their toenails. J.T. knew that if he wanted to adopt the whole crew, which he did, Quinn must be ready to pull a cattle truck up to the backdoor and take them all home.

  “This is a jail!” the little boy cried, horrified, turning to look up at J.T. and Maggie.

  The receptionist waggled her fingers in a sort of Valley-girl farewell and hurried out. She didn’t want to deal with Quinn’s appraisal of the setup, and J.T. didn’t blame her. As the boy’s father, he didn’t have a choice; there’d be no sidestepping this one.

  “It’s a shelter,” he said, crouching to look into Quinn’s eyes, which were glittering with tears. “These guys are the lucky ones, Q. They’ve got food, water, medicine, and a clean, warm place to sleep. Not a bad deal, in a world where a lot of people do without the basics.”

  “It’s still a jail!” Quinn insisted.

  J.T. might have embraced Quinn if he hadn’t been fairly sure it would embarrass the kid to have Maggie for an eyewitness. He settled for ruffling the boy’s hair. “They’re not being punished, Q.,” he said patiently. “This place is kind of like a dog-and-cat hotel.” He paused, smiled. “Even has room service.”

  Quinn cast a desperate glance at Maggie, then fastened his gaze to J.T.’s face again, imploring, skeptical. Even a little accusing. “We’ve got to take them all home with us, Dad,” he said. “They’ll ufennize them all if we don’t. I saw a story about that on the news once!”

  Now it was J.T. who looked up at Maggie, though he wasn’t sure why. He sighed and faced his son again, still sitting on his haunches there in the center of the animal shelter, with dogs barking out a chorus of “choose me’’ all around. There were cats, too, but they looked on in silence. The place was a furry tribunal, and J.T. felt like Pontius Pilate.

  “Bud,” he said, “we can take two dogs. That’s the best I can do.”

  Quinn’s lower lip wobbled.

  “More people will be coming in right along,” Maggie interjected, leaning down, hands on her thighs, “to adopt other dogs.”

  Quinn looked around. “Like who?” he asked, despairing. They were still the only three human beings on that cell block.

  “Like me,” Maggie said. “I can use another dog. Somebody to keep Sadie company.”

  Confounded, J.T. tossed her a look.

  “You mean it?” Quinn asked.

  Maggie nodded. “I mean it,” she said, and raised one hand, like a witness taking the oath in a court of law.

  Quinn’s gaze flickered back and forth between Maggie and J.T. for a few moments, then he turned, in stalwart resignation, to the task of choosing.

  “You don’t have to do this,” J.T. pointed out to Maggie, rising to his full height again. He kept his voice low and watched as Quinn knelt at the far end of the aisle to commune with a mass of gray-and-white fur.

  “Yes, I do,” Maggie said, zeroing in on an animal that might have been part cocker spaniel, with generous portions of just about every other breed in the universe stirred into the mix. “I like this one.”

  Half an hour later, they left the pound with three dogs: Maggie’s multinational, a black Lab imaginatively named “Blackie,” and a mid-sized gray-and-white creature J.T. privately thought of as the “missing link.” Once they’d paid the fees, which covered the shots, neutering, and spaying that had already been done, they headed back toward the truck. It was, J.T. reflected, a little like driving a herd.

  J.T. hoisted the two larger dogs into the back of the truck, one by one.

  “Will they be all right back there?” Maggie asked, with a little frown of concern.

  J.T. smiled. “They’ll be fine,” he said. “They’re ranch dogs now. They need to get used to riding in trucks.”

  “Can I ride with them?” Quinn asked.

  “No way,” J.T. replied, without hesitation.

  Maggie was carrying her own, smaller dog. “Here,” she said to Quinn, “you can hold my puppy until we get back to Springwater. Did you come up with another name yet? Besides Blackie’s, I mean?”

  “Winston,” Quinn said.

  “Winston?” J.T. echoed.

  Quinn, in the meanwhile, scrambled eagerly into the truck, fastened his seat belt, and held out his arms. He laughed when Maggie handed him the dog, and the sound had a purity, an element of joy, that made J.T.’s throat tighten. “Mom read me a book about Winston Churchill,” he explained. “He was prime minister of England.” />
  J.T. was impressed. There was no getting around it; his kid was gifted.

  Maggie climbed in beside Quinn, eyes twinkling. “I propose that we all go back to the Springwater Station and celebrate,” she said. “Chicken livers all around.” She laughed at the expression on Quinn’s face. “For the dogs, that is. We’ll have something else, I promise.”

  J.T. grinned. “Let’s eat at the ranch,” he said. “You’ve always liked my cooking, remember?”

  She was looking straight ahead. “I remember,” she said, very softly.

  At home he threw together a batch of chicken enchiladas, while Maggie leaned against a counter, arms folded, watching him cook. Quinn fed the dogs and then led them, like a piper, into the study.

  “Remember,” J.T. called after him, chopping lettuce a few feet from Maggie, “use your own screen name and don’t get into any of my email.”

  Maggie smiled. “He could do that?” she asked.

  J.T. considered the point. “Yes,” he answered, unequivocally.

  “Is there something I can do to help?” She meant with the food, he figured, not the kid. Still, it made J.T. feel wary. He was used to doing things for himself, and he took great care not to lean on others, even in small ways. It was safer that way.

  “Yes,” he said a little stiffly. “You can work up a good appetite.”

  She smiled again, though he knew she’d caught something in his tone. “No problem there,” she said heartily, perhaps for Quinn’s sake. “Hey, if you get tired of ranching and dabbling in law enforcement, you can come to work at the Station. I could use a good cook.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” he said.

  She opened cupboards until she found plates and glasses, and began setting the table. So much for not helping. McCaffrey had never been very good at taking direction. She liked to lead, not follow, and if he wasn’t careful, she’d have him dancing to whatever tune she wanted to play.

  Before J.T. could think of something to say—as well as he knew Maggie, as much as they’d been through together, he still had a tendency to get tongue-tied around her—a whoop of joy sounded from the study.

  “What?” J.T. called, grinning. Quinn’s presence kept things from getting too heavy.

  “Just a sec,” Quinn yelled back. After a couple of minutes, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, beaming. “I got an email from Mom. She’s back in Atlanta. And she said she loves me.”

  J.T. and Maggie exchanged glances. Maggie was smiling. “Yup,” J.T. said, and Quinn raced back to the computer again.

  “I like Annie,” Maggie said. Her expression had turned a mite wistful.

  “Me too,” said J.T., opening a can of sauce and pouring half of it into the bottom of a casserole dish.

  She got out silverware, rustled up paper napkins. She was going to be through setting the table long before the food was ready. “She said—” she broke off, looked away, looked back at him. “Oh, hell.”

  “What?” J.T. prompted.

  “Did I truly break your heart?”

  “Yes,” he replied, without hesitation.

  Maggie frowned thoughtfully. He saw bruises lurking in the blue depths of her eyes. “I remember it a little differently.”

  He kept working on the enchiladas; he could have made them in his sleep. “Really?” he asked innocently, and waited.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You broke up with me,” she said. “I was the one with the broken heart.”

  He poured the remaining sauce over the chicken-and-cheese mixture he’d just wrapped in corn tortillas, and then began to grate more cheddar to sprinkle over the top. “You were already seeing the doctor by then,” he said evenly.

  Color pulsed in her cheeks. “I wasn’t,” she said.

  J.T. did his best to look casual when he shrugged. “That isn’t what I heard,” he replied.

  “Well, precisely what did you hear?” she asked, lowering her voice.

  “You weren’t the only kid from Springwater to get into Northwestern right out of high school, you know,” he said. “Your big brother Simon made a point of telling me you were dating his buddy, Young Doctor Bartholomew, and wasn’t that a fine thing. He’d be able to offer you everything you were used to, everything I couldn’t.”

  Her mouth dropped open, closed again. “Simon said that? Of all the—”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You deny that you went to football games with the doc, and a few frat parties?”

  “A whole bunch of us went to the games and parties,” she said, indignant. “I wasn’t paired off with Connor. Damn it, J.T.— damn it. Why didn’t you just ask me instead of taking my big brother’s word for it?”

  It had all happened so long ago, but J.T. was surprised to realize that the wounds were still raw. “I guess I was ready to believe that nothing as good as you could ever happen to me,” he said.

  She began to cry, and J.T. felt patently helpless and, at the same time, his hopes soared. He was at once jubilant and scared stiff; he wanted another chance with Maggie, and he wanted to run from all the things she made him feel.

  “McCaffrey,” he rasped, took a step toward her.

  She shook her head. “Don’t, J.T. Just—don’t.”

  11

  J.T. stood looking down at the simple headstone, feeling the loss of his father anew. He rarely set foot in the little churchyard cemetery, though generations of his family had been laid to rest here—as he would be as well, sooner or later. Other people found solace, a sense of continuity, making such pilgrimages, but it was different for J.T. The experience invariably stirred the embers of his grief back to full flame, reminded him in no uncertain terms of a fact he tended to sublimate—until Jack Wainwright’s killer or killers were found, there could be no lasting peace, no real closure. Not for him.

  Quinn, standing at J.T.’s side, scuffled his feet and slipped a small, rather grubby hand into J.T.’s. “Dad?”

  J.T. closed his eyes tightly for a moment, swallowed. “What is it, partner?” he asked, when he felt sure the words would come out right. He imagined himself introducing one generation to the other. This is your grandson, Dad. I’m so proud of him. Quinn, meet your grandfather, the finest man I ever knew.

  “Do you have any pictures of my granddad?” The small, freckled face was a study in concentration. “I don’t think I know what he looked like.”

  The words took J.T. off guard. Surely he’d shown Quinn photographs of Jack Wainwright, told him stories of hunting trips and horseback rides, Christmases and birthdays—hadn’t he? When it came right down to it, he couldn’t recall a single instance. After Jack died, he and Janeen, in a frenzy of fierce but silent mourning, had packed everything away, from picture albums to personal belongings to memories. J.T.’s mother, Becky, though hardly a family type, kept in fairly regular contact with Quinn, and they knew each other quite well. In fact, J.T. had no doubt that his son was closer to Becky than he himself had ever been.

  “Sure,” he said hoarsely. “There are pictures. We’ll rustle some up tonight, after the chores are done.”

  Quinn nodded, surveying the neglected grave as though he might somehow form an image of Jack by measuring the plot with his eyes. “Mom told me Granddad was a cowboy. She said he traveled with the rodeo for a while, riding bucking broncos and Brahma bulls, before he married Nana and they had you.”

  “That’s true,” he said, oddly choked up, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his lightweight denim jacket. Just then it seemed as though their roles in life were reversed; Quinn was the man, and he the boy. “He was a cowboy, all right. The genuine article.”

  Quinn’s brow was crumpled. “What happened to him?” Not surprisingly, Annie had spared their son that part of the story. Little wonder, gruesome as it was.

  J.T. crouched, in order to be at eye level with his son. He wouldn’t have volunteered the information, but because Quinn had asked him outright, he figured the kid was ready to know the truth. “He was shot, Q.”

  Q
uinn’s voice was small. “Like you were?”

  Vivid images flooded J.T.’s mind, crimson with blood—his own shooting, Murphy’s, his father’s, all mixed up into one mind-numbing tragedy—and he thrust out a ragged sigh. A child Quinn’s age shouldn’t have to deal with such grisly realities. Hell, a grown man shouldn’t, either. “Yes,” he answered. Except that he didn’t make it, and I did, and after all this time, I’m still not sure how I feel about that.

  Quinn made the obvious leap. “You could be dead now, too. Real easy.”

  Help me out, here, J.T. prayed. He wasn’t sure who he was petitioning; he’d all but stopped believing in a benevolent god when his dad died, and Murphy’s killing had undone whatever fragile faith he might have had left. “But I’m not, Q.,” he said, at some length. “I’m still around, and I will be for a long time.”

  Maybe, countered a voice in J.T.’s head, the one that always played devil’s advocate. During his career as a homicide cop, he’d come to respect that contrary part of his nature, if not actually like it.

  Quinn gazed straight into his eyes, his expression wary. He was smarter than a six-year-old ought to be when it came to the vagaries of life, death, and fate, and he obviously wasn’t in the market for pat answers. “You can’t promise that. Nobody can.”

  “You’re right,” J.T. ground out. His haunches were beginning to ache; he longed to stand upright, stretch his legs, but he didn’t want to break the delicate connection with Quinn. “Anybody can die, at any time, including me. But if you go through life worrying about everything, being afraid of what might happen, you’ll miss all the best stuff. The only choice any of us have, partner, is to show up for every day and make the best of things as they come.” He wished he could convince Maggie of that. Convince himself.

  Quinn pondered J.T.’s words in silence.

  J.T. ruffled the boy’s hair. “You all right?”

  Quinn nodded, and J.T. stood, heard his knees crack as he rose. Hell, he thought, his fortieth birthday was almost a decade away, and he was already getting old. Turn around, and he’d be another Purvis.