I Promise

by Joan Johnston

  He turned on Delia like a dog in a fight that ceases to know friend from foe. “This is none of your business,” he snapped. “So stay out of it.”

  “Fine!” she snarled back. “I’ll wait in the kitchen. When you’re done acting like an idiot, I’d appreciate a ride home.”

  She hadn’t taken two steps before he grabbed her arm to stop her. “Delia, I—“

  She wrenched herself free. “I think you and your daughter have some things to discuss. Reasonably. Rationally. Calmly discuss.”

  “I get the point,” he said irritably. He turned back to find Billie Jo sitting on the edge of the bed still wrapped in the quilt from the waist down, watching them with wide-eyed interest. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know where to start.

  He turned back to Delia for help, but she had already left the room and closed the door behind her, leaving father and daughter alone together.

  He leaned back against the door with his legs spread wide and his arms folded across his chest. “All right. You’re not getting out of here until I’ve heard the whole story. So start talking.”

  “Daddy . . .”

  “What?”

  Her eyes floated with tears. Her chin quivered. She lowered her gaze to the hands knotted in her lap. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to get into another fight. It just . . . happened. I knew how disappointed you’d be, and I . . . I needed some time alone. To think.” She looked up at him, her heart in her eyes.

  He was across the room an instant later and lifted her, quilt and all, into his lap. “It’s all right, baby. I’m here.”

  “Oh, Daddy.” She gripped his neck tight and clung to him, pressing her face tight against his throat as she sobbed her heart out.

  Marsh felt the sting of tears in his eyes as he clutched his daughter to him. He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to say the right thing. He wanted to be a good father. He just didn’t know how.

  He brushed his hand over her mussed-up curls, soothing her, offering what awkward comfort he could. He crooned to her, not even sure himself what he was saying. Until the sobs quieted at last. Until she hiccuped and sighed.

  “How did you get back to the ranch?” he asked.

  “I hitched a ride.”

  He forbore telling her how dangerous that was, at least for the moment, because he was afraid the slightest harsh word from him would make her burst into tears again.

  “Can you tell me one thing?” he said. “Can you tell me where you were all the time I was looking for you?”

  She hesitated, then said, “I was sitting under the live oak by the Carsons’ north pasture gate.”

  “Why would you go there?” he asked.

  “That’s where Eula said the sheriff found Delia Carson when . . . when she lost your baby.”

  Chapter Eleven

  One of the hardest things Delia had ever done was to leave Marsh alone with his daughter. She knew all the bad things that could happen to a teenage girl in the clutches of an angry father, all the harm and hurt and pain that could result.

  But even at his angriest, Marsh had never laid a hand on Delia. And she knew from their discussions years ago that Marsh had planned, above all else, to be a better parent than his father. She had to believe he wanted to mend fences with Billie Jo. But it was hard to sit on the chrome chair at the kitchen table waiting, staring through the open window at the dark, quiet night, letting the breeze riffle her hair, wondering what was going on down the hall.

  As the minutes passed and Marsh didn’t join her, Delia’s thoughts turned to what had happened between her and Marsh in the kitchen. And the hallway. And the bedroom before the light had gone on.

  I must be out of my mind.

  No, just crazy in love with the man. You always have been.

  It felt so good. It felt so right.

  What did you expect? That the fire might have gone out? Why didn’t he ever come after me?

  Why didn’t you go after him?

  Both good questions. Neither of which Delia had a good answer for. There were explanations, of course.

  During the first eight years after she left Uvalde, she had been in high school, college, and law school. She hadn’t written to Marsh, hadn’t let anyone know how to get in touch with her. And Marsh had simply disappeared. She had no idea where he was or what he had done with himself. She had been too confused and unhappy for the first few years to do more than survive.

  When she had finally picked herself up and brushed herself off and started living again, she had been too driven to reach her professional goals to worry about Marsh. Much. It hadn’t been worry, actually. More like a constant yearning for a dream that was never going to come true.

  She had started following his work when he was hired by The Chronicle, a budding national newspaper that, along with USA Today, was among the first of its kind. It had been a way of connecting to him without meeting face-to-face. Even then, she had still been running away. She had been afraid to see him again. Afraid of what he would say, what he would do. Afraid he had stopped loving her. It would have hurt too much to know that for sure.

  “Penny for your thoughts?”

  Delia started when she heard Marsh’s voice. She felt his hands on her shoulders before she could turn around. She closed her eyes and groaned as his thumbs found the tight muscles in her neck. “God, that feels good.”

  “It’s been a rough day for you.”

  “And you.” She tried to get up, but he pressed her back down and kept up what he was doing. It felt too good to make him stop. Which was exactly why she should have stopped him. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Midnight.”

  “I should be going.”

  “Not yet. You haven’t told me what you were thinking.”

  “I was thinking about you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “It’s a good start. What else?”

  She took a deep breath and said, “I was thinking how scared I was all those years of seeing you again.”

  His hands stopped what they were doing, but his grip tightened. “You were scared?”

  She nodded.

  “Why? I loved you, Delia.”

  She heard the pain in his voice. She angled her body so she could look up at him, and his hands fell away. Once they did, she stood and moved away from him, toward the sink.

  Running again, Delia. Stop it. Stop running.

  She turned and faced Marsh. His eyes were sunken with fatigue and oh, so wary. His hair was standing every whichaway. His shirt was tucked haphazardly back into his Levi’s. He shouldn’t have looked so appealing. Or so desperately vulnerable.

  Her heart lodged in her throat, making speech impossible. Being with Marsh made her feel whole again, as though a missing part of a jigsaw puzzle had been slipped into place.

  Delia became aware of the refrigerator humming, of a steady drip hitting the old porcelain sink, of Marsh’s gray eyes staring intently at her.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry I ran away.”

  He smiled, a gentle curve of his lips, but his eyes were unbearably sad. “I know.”

  She swallowed over the lump in her throat. “I wish . . .”

  He opened his arms and she stepped into them and he folded them around her.

  Delia felt Marsh’s arms tighten around her. “I called The Chronicle once looking for you,” she said.

  “I never got any message.”

  “I didn’t leave one.”

  “Why not?”

  She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “Too scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “That you wouldn’t want to see me.”

  He made a sound in his throat. “God, Delia. I never stopped thinking about you.” Marsh’s lips pressed against her temple, then her cheek, and finally sought her mouth.

  Her eyes slid closed again as her lips met his in a kiss of frustration and need and forgiveness.

  “It’s been an incr
edible day,” she said against his lips, when they finally broke apart to breathe.

  Marsh chuckled ruefully. “You can say that again.”

  “Is Billie Jo all right?”

  He nuzzled her throat beneath her ear. “I tucked her into bed. She was practically asleep before the light was out.” He lifted his head and looked her in the eye. “She’s heard the rumors about us. It’s what she’s been fighting about at school.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “She was at the live oak all afternoon and evening. Thinking.”

  “Did she say what she was thinking about?”

  “Not precisely. If I had to guess, I’d say she doesn’t want to believe the gossip about us she’s heard at school. But she didn’t come right out and ask me for the truth, either.”

  “Maybe she’s afraid of what the truth might be.”

  Marsh put his hands on her shoulders. “How can I tell her the truth, Delia? If I didn’t get you pregnant, who did?”

  “I see,” Delia said, curling her arms protectively around herself and backing away from him. “It always comes back to Ray John, doesn’t it? Take me home, Marsh.”

  “Who killed Ray John, Delia?”

  Delia froze. “He killed himself.”

  “Suicide?” Marsh shook his head. “That bastard was too selfish to do any of us that kind of favor.”

  “It was an accident,” Delia said breathlessly. “You saw for yourself how he was always pointing a gun at somebody’s head and pulling the trigger.”

  Marsh raised a disbelieving brow. “Are you saying that’s what happened?”

  “I wasn’t there at the time,” Delia snapped. “How should I know?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  Delia felt suffocated, like someone had a hand over her mouth and nose. She took a gulping breath of air. And another. Marsh knew something, had found out something. But only three people knew the truth. She was sure none of them had talked. So how could he possibly know? “What are you saying, Marsh? What are you suggesting?”

  “I don’t believe Ray John Carson killed himself,” Marsh said. “I think he was murdered.”

  “Take me home.” Delia was already headed for the door.

  “Can we talk about this?”

  She was out the kitchen door and headed for Marsh’s pickup, nearly running. “There’s nothing to discuss.”

  She yanked hard on the door to the old pickup, got a helping yank from Marsh to open it, and pulled it closed behind her. The window was already down, and she stuck her elbow in it to keep Marsh from leaning in. She would rather have stuck her head out. She felt like throwing up.

  “All right,” Marsh said, moving around the pickup and slipping behind the wheel. “I’ll let it go for the moment. But the issue isn’t going to disappear, Delia. It’ll be right there between us until you deal with it.” He ground the gears as he sent the pickup clanking down the rutted dirt road that led off the North Ranch.

  Delia’s brow furrowed as she considered what Marsh had said. She angled herself so her back was braced against the door, and she was facing him with one leg tucked under her. “Is that what you think has kept us apart all these years? You think I ran away because I knew my father had been murdered?”

  He kept his eyes on the highway. “The idea occurred to me. I wouldn’t have blamed you, Delia,” he added quietly.

  Delia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You think I killed Ray John?”

  “It makes sense to me.”

  “I only wish I’d had the courage,” she said bitterly.

  As soon as she finished speaking, Delia realized what she had done. Her heart clutched. If she hadn’t killed Ray John, that left only two other people in the house who could have—the one who had actually committed the murder and her mother.

  Marsh couldn’t know Rachel was a suspect, but knowing him, he would ferret out the truth . . . unless she stuck firm to the suicide theory. “He . . . he killed himself,” she said softly.

  “There were no powder burns on his hands.”

  “How could you possibly know that? Why would you even think to check?”

  He glanced at her, then back at the highway. “I can’t help it if my job has taught me to question things. I looked up the coronor’s report a few weeks back. I would have been out of luck, except there’s a little old gray-haired lady in records who hasn’t thrown anything away for thirty years.

  “Only scant traces of gunpowder showed up on Ray John’s hands, not what should have been there if he were the one with his finger on the trigger. Most likely, he was struggling with someone when the gun went off.

  “Something fishy had to be going on for that to be kept secret by the authorities. All I can figure out is that you confessed to the sheriff what Ray John had done to you, and he decided it was justifiable homicide and spared everybody the expense of a trial.”

  “I . . . I never spoke to Sheriff Davis.”

  “Then who did? Only somebody who knew the truth could have told the police what happened. Who does that leave?”

  Delia let out a slow breath. Rachel. And Mother.

  But Mother had forbidden Rachel to say anything. And Mother wouldn’t have gone to the sheriff herself, because she hadn’t believed the truth about Ray John.

  Had Rachel struggled with Ray John over the gun? Is that how he had been shot? Or had someone else been there that morning? Someone stronger. Who else besides herself and Rachel hated Ray John enough to want him dead?

  She perused the harsh planes of Marsh’s face in the eerie green light from the dash. She hesitated, then said, “Are you telling me you killed him?”

  He glanced at her and smiled. “I wanted to. I would have been glad to. But I didn’t.”

  “Then who did?”

  “Figure it out, Delia.”

  “Have you?”

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  Who else had wanted Ray John dead besides herself and Rachel? She had no intention of raising suspicion about Rachel by mentioning her name. “It couldn’t have been Mother,” Delia murmured.

  “Why not?”

  “She loved Ray John. She didn’t believe the things I told her about him. And she was upstairs with me when the gun went off.”

  Marsh shot her a startled look. “She was?” His brow creased. “But who else could have gone to the sheriff and gotten me released? And why did Sheriff Davis tell me Ray John had committed suicide, when he couldn’t have had information back yet from the coroner to prove it one way or the other? No, Delia. Sheriff Davis had already made up his mind what story he was going to tell the public. And it wasn’t the truth.”

  Marsh pulled up to the back door of the Carson mansion. He didn’t turn off the ignition, just let the truck idle noisily. A light burned in the kitchen. Another was on in a room upstairs.

  “Looks like Rachel’s still awake,” he said.

  Delia glanced up at the lighted window. “That’s my bedroom light. Rachel must have left it on for me. Maybe she thought I’d forget where everything was after all these years of being gone.” And maybe she remembered that Ray John liked it dark.

  “Welcome home, Delia,” Marsh said.

  “Thank you, Marsh.”

  “I’d like to come visit Hattie when she’s home from the hospital,” Marsh said.

  “I’ll let you know when she’s ready for company.” Delia didn’t know why she was having such a hard time getting out of the pickup. She couldn’t shake the feeling that once she said good-bye to Marsh she might not see him again. Which was ridiculous, because he lived on the property right next door, and she wasn’t going anywhere for at least a week.

  “Be seeing you around,” Marsh said.

  “All right.” She hesitated, unmoving.

  He reached over and caught her nape and angled her toward him. His mouth covered hers hungrily, as though he were starving, and she were sustenance. As abruptly as he had captured her mouth, he let her go.

  “Good night, Delia.�
�

  Still, she sat frozen. She could taste him. Her lips were damp from his. Her body felt hot and liquid inside.

  “Would you like to go somewhere?” he said in a ragged voice.

  “Where?”

  Marsh laughed huskily and dragged her into his lap to kiss her mouth and nose and eyes. “Damn it, Delia, I want you so bad I hurt. But I refuse to check in to a motel in town, and we won’t have any privacy at either my place or yours. That leaves the front seat of this pickup or the cold hard ground. That isn’t how I want to make love to you for the first time.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Marsh groaned and pressed his mouth to her throat, while his hand grasped her breast and squeezed. “Don’t say things like that, or I’m liable to take you at your word.”

  “When did you get so sensible?” she complained, nibbling at his ear. The feeling she would lose him, that something would happen to steal him away before they ever had a chance to love one another persisted. And made her daring.

  “Take me to the live oak,” she whispered in his ear. “The grass is soft there. No one will bother us.”

  He shoved her off his lap so fast she nearly fell on the floor. She was still scrambling onto her side of the bench seat as he whirled the pickup and headed down the dirt road that led to the north pasture gate. He kept both hands on the wheel for the whole bumpy trip to the live oak, which was a damned good thing, because he was driving recklessly fast. He didn’t once look at her or say another word.

  Delia figured he was as worried she might change her mind as she was that he might get cold feet.

  When they arrived, Marsh turned off the key. The truck rumbled for another three seconds before it finally died.

  The quiet was profound. At first. Delia made out the sound of crickets. And the soft rustle of the live oak as the wind whispered through its leaves.

  Now that they were here, Delia suddenly felt awkward and uncertain. She stepped out of the truck and left the door hanging open. The overhead light didn’t work. The moon and stars created silvery shapes and shadows.

  Delia heard Marsh get out of the pickup and come after her. She stood with one hand on a limb of the live oak and looked across the fence line at the spot where she had taken the spill from her horse.