One True Thing

by Marilyn Pappano

  Jace had been grateful Saturday that they’d avoided meeting his parents at the barbecue. He owed his grandfather, the worst hypochondriac alive, for having another of his heart attacks—in reality, just another bout of indigestion—and calling Ray and Rozena out of town. For feeling as poorly as Grandpa claimed all the time, he was the healthiest old goat Jace had ever known. Rozena knew that, too, but she couldn’t ignore one of his calls. After all, as with the boy who cried wolf, from time to time the wolf really did put in an appearance.

  He wondered what Cassidy and Ray had discussed, whether his father had said anything that would embarrass him and why she hadn’t mentioned it sooner, but he focused on her comment about Ray resorting to physical violence. “He never did.”

  “Oh? Where I come from, ‘tanning your hide’ refers to getting a whipping.”

  “And where would that be?” he muttered. “Maryland? Virginia? California? Mars?”

  “Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus…I think,” she said primly.

  “It refers to getting a whipping here, too, but that’s not physical violence, as long as it’s not taken to excess. It’s discipline.”

  “So when you have kids someday, you’ll show them that might makes right. That the punishment for hitting another kid is getting hit by an adult. That their misbehaving is wrong but yours is all right because you’re the parent.”

  “Let me guess. Your parents didn’t believe in spanking.” That was an easier-to-accept rationale than the other strong possibility—that they’d believed in it too much. Not surprisingly, kids who’d been beaten for the smallest infraction often grew into parents who rejected even the most well-deserved of swats for their own kids. It made his gut clench to think of a young, defenseless Cassidy getting beaten for an innocent mistake.

  “Oh, we got spanked,” she replied with too much easiness in her voice to be covering up abuse. “But it was reserved for the really bad behavior. Mostly, we got grounded, which was sometimes worse. When you’re ten and you have to miss your best friend’s birthday party just because you cut your sister’s hair, spankings start to look pretty good.”

  Damn. He’d thought they might actually make it back to her car in Buffalo Plains without any red flags waving. Careful to keep his voice level and unaccusing, he asked, “Why did you cut her hair?”

  “Because my hair was short and I—”

  The silence in the truck was intensified by its suddenness. If he looked at her, he knew she would be blushing and thinking furiously of a way out. He didn’t give her a chance to find it. “So you have a sister, too, but you haven’t seen her in years. You don’t know what she’s doing, whether she’s married or how her life is going. You don’t even know where she is, so she doesn’t count as family. Does that about sum it up?”

  “Yeah,” she replied, subdued. “Just about.”

  “Is that the story you want to stick with? Maybe she’s an imaginary sister, made up to go along with your imaginary brother. Maybe your name’s not Cassidy and you’re not from California or anywhere else because you’re imaginary, too.”

  She gave him an unamused look. “If I were making up a name, don’t you think I would choose something other than Cassidy? It sounds like a character on a TV show. Given a choice, I would be Elizabeth or Rachel, Jessica or Anna or Katherine.”

  She didn’t look like an Elizabeth or a Rachel, though he could see her as a Jess…or, in the middle of a long steamy night, Jessy. Not an Anna, but an Annie. Maybe even a Kate.

  “Why did your parents give you a name better suited to a character on TV?”

  “It’s a family name. My mother’s family are Cassidys.”

  Maybe…if she’d ever had a mother. More likely she’d been brought to life full-grown in a laboratory somewhere, with the gene for honesty neatly excised and the one for believable prevarication badly damaged in the process. She wasn’t a good liar—not that she hadn’t had plenty of practice at it. It didn’t come naturally to her…unless she deliberately lied badly to make him think so, in which case she might be the most accomplished liar he’d met.

  Thinking about it all made his head hurt, and he’d told himself he wouldn’t care today, remember? He was spending the afternoon with a pretty woman who’d crawled under his skin and tempted him in ways he hadn’t been tempted in months. All he had to do was enjoy it. Relax. Pretend he had no reason to doubt every word that came out of her mouth. Pretend he didn’t care.

  Pretend. The way she did.

  Too bad it was easier said than done.

  Chapter 8

  When the lights flickered, then went dark for the third time, Cassidy shut down the computer, rose from her chair and bent to touch her toes, stretching out taut muscles and easing kinks. The sky had been gloomy when she’d awakened that morning, and the thunder had started soon after, but it had taken more than three hours for the storm to blow in full-force. The first time the power had gone off, she’d unplugged the laptop and continued to work on battery power, but enough was enough. It was time to get up, move around and get a breath of fresh air.

  Wind blew the rain sideways across the lake, pounding into that side of the cabin with a relaxing tempo. Unfortunately, it also meant all the windows on that side had to be closed, so the only fresh air came from the other side of the cabin—the side where she couldn’t see her neighbor’s house and maybe, if she was lucky, her neighbor.

  She settled for leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb and watching the storm from there. As the mimosa swayed and bent under the force of the wind, she briefly considered trying to pick up a weather forecast on the radio. She’d never gotten caught in a tornado before and wasn’t in the mood to try something new today. But the reception was iffy under the best of circumstances, and if they were under a tornado watch or warning, what good would it do her to know? She had no storm shelter to hide in. There wasn’t even an interior room in the house away from windows—the next best advice the weather people gave.

  Lightning flashed, quick and brilliant, as thunder rattled the cabin walls. The rain poured, covering the saturated ground, running in a thousand tiny rivers to the lake’s edge. She didn’t care one way or the other about storms. As long as she wasn’t out in them, they could blow to their heart’s desire. Phil, though, had hated them. They interfered with his work, his play, his sleep, his television-watching, his reading, his computing, he’d said. Privately she’d always believed he was afraid of them. She’d seen how tense he got, had felt him flinch a thousand times at a particularly loud clap of thunder or close strike of lightning. The same pressure systems that created the storms had created a disturbance of a different sort in him, with pressure building almost to the breaking point, then easing as the system moved through.

  But if that was the biggest failing a husband had, his wife was a lucky woman. She’d felt lucky…until the last three years of their marriage. Even then, even with all the changes forced on them because of him, she had still loved him. Even when she’d resented him for all he’d cost her.

  All he’d cost her…. That sounded so selfish. The price he’d paid had been so much higher than hers. He’d lost all the same things she had—family, friends, hope for the future—as well as his life. He’d been betrayed by people he trusted, murdered by someone who should have protected him. Even when he’d died, his last words had been for her. Janey, get out!

  Janey…not a name she’d ever used, but Phil’s nickname for her, similar, familiar, comforting. In return, she had called him John, as in Doe. Two people without identities.

  She had obeyed his command and run, and three years later she was still running. This was her eighteenth day at Buffalo Lake. Another week or two and she would be setting a new record for longevity.

  It wouldn’t hurt to be thinking about where she would go next—how she would get there, who she would be, what she would do. Her first lesson on the run had been borrowed from the Boy Scouts—Be Prepared. If she had to leave Buffalo Lake today, where wo
uld she go? Would she dispose of the car before she left or once she’d arrived at her new destination? Would she sell it or simply abandon it? Would her hair be red, black or shades of brown, her eyes blue, green, hazel or lavender?

  Too many questions, she thought with a thin smile as the gusting wind blew raindrops through the screen door. Besides, she didn’t need to plan so carefully anymore. She’d fled dozens of places. It had become second nature.

  Movement across the inlet caught her attention as Jace’s SUV pulled close to the deck steps. She idly wondered where he’d gone and why he hadn’t waited out the worst of the storm there as he took the steps three at a time, then paused under the roof overhang to unlock the cabin door. Before stepping inside, he glanced her way, but she guessed distance and shadow prevented him from noticing her—along with the fact that she was standing utterly motionless, barely even breathing.

  When he went in, he left the door open. No lights came on, of course. Everything fell back into stillness, the storm the only sign of life.

  He hadn’t come to see her or invited her anywhere since they’d returned to her car in front of the antique shops on Wednesday afternoon. Stay away, she’d told him. I won’t come looking for you if you do.

  Did it bother him that all the interest, all the effort, in maintaining some kind of friendship fell on him? That the only time she’d walked across that bridge had been to accept his invitation for lunch, never to offer one of her own?

  It would bother her if the situation were reversed. If she did all the trying, all the giving, while someone else did all the taking, it wouldn’t be long before she decided he wasn’t worth the effort.

  She glanced toward the kitchen. Figuring the power would go, she’d made potato salad and baked beans to go along with last night’s leftover roasted chicken. She’d baked a batch of cookies, too, her favorite indulgence when things were good and consolation when they went bad. She’d made enough for today’s lunch and dinner, and probably tomorrow’s lunch, as well, so there was plenty to share. All she had to do was walk next door and offer it.

  What if he said “no, thanks”? Or if the price of keeping her company was ten million questions for which untruthful answers wouldn’t be accepted?

  A shifting of shadows in his cabin door made her squint. It was impossible to be sure, but she thought he was standing there, looking out as she was. She turned away, shoved her feet into a pair of battered sneakers, bagged the food in a plastic Wal Mart sack, closed and locked the windows, then took her umbrella from its place near the door. Tingling as much with apprehension as anticipation, she stepped onto the deck, locked her door, then set off through the rain for the other cabin.

  He was standing in the doorway, wearing nothing more than a pair of faded denim cutoffs that rode low on his hips, watching her with an utterly unreadable expression. Her expression felt the same as she looked back. How long had it been since she’d made a spontaneous friendly gesture? At least three years. Long enough to get rusty. To make it feel more important than it really was. All she was offering was lunch. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Yeah, right.

  When he didn’t speak, she did. “I fixed lunch before the power went off. I thought you might like to share it.”

  He opened the screen door, then stepped back so she could enter. First she shook out her umbrella, then leaned it against the wall, out of the worst of the rain. She felt the need to give herself a shake, too, to shed the raindrops that had blown onto her shorts and legs, but she resisted, settling instead for discarding her shoes next to the umbrella before stepping inside.

  As she unloaded the shopping bag on the kitchen counter, he came around the corner, tugging a T-shirt over his head. The part of her that missed love and lust was disappointed. The protective part was relieved. She had her weaknesses, and Jace bare-chested could very easily become one.

  “Does it storm like this a lot?” she asked, more to break the silence than because she cared.

  “You mean the intensity? Yeah, a lot. The duration? Often enough.”

  She took two plates from a cabinet and silverware from a drawer. “At least we can use the rain.”

  “Not particularly. It’s coming down too hard and running off. What we could use is a good soaker rain.” He paused a beat. “Of course, you probably know all about Oklahoma storms, having researched the climate before you came here.”

  It would serve him right if she’d taken the time since that earlier conversation to actually do just that. Then she could spout off something intelligent about storm systems or the effects of the Rocky Mountains on Oklahoma weather versus the effects of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Instead, all she could do was dish up food while he got bottled water from the refrigerator. After he took his plate and cutlery, she picked up her own and started toward the dining table. He was headed for the living room, though, so she shifted direction. Once she was settled in on the couch, she asked, “What took you out in this weather?”

  “I went to see my grandfather.”

  The ailing father whose illness had drawn the senior Barnetts away from the barbecue last weekend, the one Ray had mentioned briefly. “How is he?”

  “Stubborn as a mule and sly as a fox. He’s old, retired, bored and loves attention.”

  “So he wasn’t sick so much as feeling neglected last weekend.”

  He nodded.

  “My grandmother was like that. She had a different complaint every week, usually based on whatever she’d seen on television. Everyone was shocked when she really did get sick. It wasn’t nearly as much fun for her as the pretend illnesses. We were relieved when she died.” She repeated the last sentence again in her mind and grimaced. “That sounds cold, doesn’t it?”

  “No. No one wants to see someone they love suffer, especially when there’s no cure for what ails them. If death is the only possible outcome, better to go quickly than to linger on in agony.”

  She plucked a piece of chicken from her plate and chewed it before asking, “What did your grandfather retire from?”

  “He was the superintendent of schools in their county.” He smiled cynically when her eyes widened. “You were thinking cowboy or farmer or maybe laborer, weren’t you?”

  “No.” Though she could have been forgiven if she had, considering that she was smack-dab in the middle of ranch and farm country.

  “You were, too. Because he’s Indian or rural folk or, hell, maybe you just don’t think highly of Oklahomans in general, you assumed he was an uneducated hick, just like you assumed I was.”

  “I didn’t even know he was Indian or rural folk, and I don’t make sweeping generalizations about anyone,” she argued. Then she breathed. “Truth is—”

  He snorted derisively, and her gaze narrowed.

  “Truth is, I was a little surprised. You don’t meet many school superintendents, though I lived with one for eighteen years.”

  “Your father?”

  “My mother,” she said with a smug smile, then turned his accusation back on him. “You were thinking ‘highly educated professional’ equals man, weren’t you? That my mother must be a housewife or secretary or something better suited to a woman, weren’t you?” She enjoyed watching the dull flush that reddened his face, enjoyed making him feel backward for once, but then she relented. “Actually, you’re right. It was my father. I just wanted to make the point that I’m not the only one who makes assumptions.”

  He scowled at her. “And where was your father superintendent? Virginia? Maryland?”

  “Pennsylvania.” Stabbing a forkful of potato salad, she slid it into her mouth. For once she’d told him the truth, though he didn’t realize it.

  “What about your mother? Did she work?”

  “Not at a paid job. She took care of the house, the family and did volunteer work at school, church, the hospital. She was the best fund-raiser Mil—our town had ever seen.”

  He studied her a moment, debating whether to be suckered in, she was sure.
Guiltily she dropped her gaze to her plate, scooping up the last of the potato salad, then turning to the baked beans. When he finally spoke, though, it wasn’t to challenge anything she’d said. “Did she teach you to cook?”

  “Yes.” They’d spent a lot of hours in the kitchen, doing not just the usual cooking but baking and experimenting, creating their own dishes and tinkering with old recipes. Her mother had done the same growing up with her mother, and Cassidy had planned to duplicate the experience in the future with her own daughter.

  Until she’d found out she had no future.

  “She done good.” He leaned forward, setting his empty plate on the coffee table and picking up the napkin with cookies there. “We’re invited to dinner at my folks’ house tomorrow night.”

  Still considering the offhanded compliment, Cassidy blinked. “Are we going?”

  “I’m planning on it. Are you?”

  “Oh…well…sure. Why not?” she responded with a weak smile. Immediately she could have kicked herself. Why not? Because dinner with his parents was a relationship sort of thing. She’d known when Phil invited her home to meet his parents that he was serious about her, and her acceptance had given the same message.

  But that was then and this was now. Jace wasn’t serious about her at all. He could go days without seeing her and never miss her, probably not even think of her. When she moved on to a new safe place, he would have no regrets and no memories worth holding on to. While Mr. and Mrs. Barnett would no doubt like to see their son married and raising a family—Ray, at least, had a hankering for grandchildren—that happening with her wasn’t even a remote possibility. He didn’t want it, and she couldn’t have it…not that she wanted it, either, she hastily assured herself.

  This would just be neighbors, friends of a sort, having dinner with one’s parents—no different from Reese, Guthrie Harris or Easy Rafferty going with him to his folks’ for dinner. She could handle that.