One True Thing

by Marilyn Pappano

  She set her own plate next to his on the table, then sat back, looking around the room. He had an impressive home entertainment system to go with the satellite dish up on the roof, and the furniture was nice—she could grow seriously attached to the buttery softness of the leather couch where she sat—but the place had an impersonal feel. She recognized the cause of it—the lack of any personal items—because she lived with it herself. “Is your decorating style always so austere?”

  “Austere,” he repeated. He looked around as if noticing the empty walls and shelves for the first time. “My style is easy-to-clean. Nothing unnecessary to dust or vacuum around.”

  “Photographs are worth dusting.”

  “Then why don’t you have some?”

  “I do at home,” she lied. She had had a box of photographs when she and Phil had moved to Oregon, but she’d been forced to leave them behind when she fled. She’d been too traumatized to think about anything but saving her life. She hadn’t remembered the pictures until days later. “You can’t expect me to pack them up and move them with me for a short trip like this.”

  “If they’re worth dusting, they’re worth taking along. Who do you have photos of? Family? Friends? Or are all the people in your photographs strangers?”

  In all fairness she couldn’t hold his cynicism against him. God knew, she’d given him plenty of reasons to doubt her. Still, it stung. She was an honest person by nature. It had been honesty that had led Phil to the decision that changed their lives—that ended his life—and honesty that had led her to support him one hundred percent. She didn’t like lying or giving people cause to think poorly of her.

  But she shrugged as if the pain didn’t exist and carelessly answered, “Family. A few old friends. Whatever good-looking men I’ve come across in my travels.”

  “And your husband?”

  That quickly, careless was no longer an option. She couldn’t summon it up to save her life. She fixed her gaze on the stormy scene outside the window, wishing for one moment that she was out in it. The rain could wash her clean and the wind could carry her away, setting her down in a time and a place far from the troubles of the present. She doubted, though, that such a time and place existed, or that she could find them if they did.

  What she meant to be a simple exhalation quavered too much like a sob. “Yes,” she replied. “And pictures of my husband.” A few snapshots had been stored on her laptop and she’d carried another in her wallet. That last night in Portland, she had been juggling groceries and mail and had left her purse and laptop in the car, intending to return for them. It had turned out lucky for her, since all she’d had time to do once she got inside the house was scream in horror, drop everything—grab one thing—and run.

  “How long were you married?”

  She drew her feet onto the seat, tucking them beneath her, then rested her arm on the sofa back, her head on her hand. “Seven years.”

  “Was it a mugging? A robbery? A random shooting?”

  She shrugged. “They never caught the person.” For months she’d checked the Portland newspapers every chance she got, praying she would see a story about the killer’s arrest. When she’d never found a word, she had tried to convince herself the authorities had arrested him but were keeping it quiet. Then one day she’d seen him, and the terror streaking through her had left no doubt that he was looking for her. She had disappeared again that very afternoon, and she’d become smarter about covering her tracks. She would love to believe that, after all this time, he no longer considered her a threat, but another close call nearly a year ago had robbed her of that luxury.

  “What happened? Was he shot at work? In his car? On the street? Did he walk in on a burglar? Had he been involved in an altercation?”

  His questions were prompted by natural curiosity, she knew—more natural for him with his law enforcement background. Her reluctance to answer was prompted by the strongest instinct she possessed these days—the one for self-preservation. If she told him too much, he could prove her right or wrong. He could poke around, as cops tended to do, and fill in a few blanks. He could uncover some of her secrets.

  The last thing he needed—the last thing she needed—was for him to know her secrets.

  So she made the one comment she was fairly certain would turn him away from that line of questioning. She settled a measuring gaze on him and evenly remarked, “You sound like a cop.”

  Sure enough, that made a muscle in his jaw tighten and narrowed his gaze. He shoved to his feet, took their dishes in the kitchen where he set them in the sink with more force than necessary, then returned with the paper plate filled with cookies. She took one when he set it on the coffee table, then settled back again to watch as he paced to one of the side windows.

  “Who told you I was a cop? Dad?”

  Though he couldn’t see her, she shook her head. “Lexy Marshall.”

  He grunted. “Kid thinks because she’s practically family she doesn’t have to be afraid of me.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve met anyone yet who’s afraid of you,” she said with a smile. Tiny Liza Beth Rafferty certainly hadn’t been, and neither had any of the other small children who’d greeted him at the barbecue last Saturday. Not that she doubted he could put the fear of God into a person, given the right motivation. “I’m not sure it’s occurred to Lexy to be afraid of anyone or anything. She’s a very self-assured kid.”

  He turned, leaning against the windowsill, feet crossed at the ankles. “She is now. A year ago, when she showed up here, she had spiked purple hair, a dozen or more piercings, tattoos and an attitude with a capital A. Brady couldn’t decide whether to put her in the lockup or to ship her back to Texas where she came from.”

  “I thought she was his and Hallie’s daughter.”

  “Nah. They’ve only been married a year or so. Lexy’s mother is Brady’s first wife. Sandra’s not real maternal and was doing Lexy more harm than good, so when Brady and Hallie got together, they got custody of her.”

  “Her own mother just gave her up?”

  His smile was thin and cynical. “Not exactly. Hallie gave her a few good reasons. About fifty thousand of ’em.”

  “She sold her own child? Jeez, my mother would give fifty thousand bucks to see me—”

  The room was gloomy, but she didn’t need light to see that his gaze had hardened, his expression sharpened. Her breath caught in her chest as she waited for him to pounce on her slip, to accuse in that sarcastic, scornful tone. You said your mother was dead. You said you have no family, and now you’ve got a brother and a sister and your mother’s been miraculously resurrected from the grave.

  But he didn’t voice any of the accusations. Instead he shook his head with a derisive grin. “You’re something, Cassidy McRae. Damned if I know what, but something.”

  After fifty years of regular clearing, the Barnett ranch consisted of eighteen hundred and fifty acres of good grassland with a minimum of timber and was home to a sizable herd of cattle. Not being in the cattle business, Jace preferred the red-and-white Herefords—the breed he’d grown up with, the ones that always came to mind when he thought of cattle and ranching. Looking to get the best bang for his buck, Ray liked the black baldies, born to a Hereford bred with an Angus or Brangus bull, and the Brafords, a Brahman-Hereford mix.

  What Jace really preferred, he thought as he drove along the narrow lane that led to his parents’ house, was not being in the business. He wasn’t the first Barnett who didn’t have ranching in the blood, and he wouldn’t be the last. Hell, even his dad only did it part-time. The majority of his workday was spent at the garage he owned in Buffalo Plains with Reese’s father. He was fond of saying he preferred grease under his fingernails to manure on his boots. He hired out the running of the ranch to somebody else—had offered the job to Jace when he’d first moved back from Kansas City. Jace wasn’t sure how desperate he would have to be to accept such an offer. He hoped he would never find out.

  “So this
is where you grew up.”

  He glanced at Cassidy, her head swiveling to take in the scene. There was no need. Once she’d seen one section of it, for all practical purposes, she’d seen all of it—gently rolling hills covered with grass, occasional arroyos created by hard rains and erosion, even rarer stands of trees. Except for the few acres surrounding the house, that described the entire ranch. “Yep, this is it.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “Yeah. A bit open for my tastes.”

  She smiled. “You prefer the privacy of the forest and the lake?”

  “Oh, honey, that’s not a forest. It’s just a few thousand acres of timber that no one’s cut down ’cause they’ve gotta have someplace to go hunting.”

  “How far off the road do your parents live?”

  “About a mile and a half. It’s just over that hill.” He nodded ahead and to the right. “I’ve always thought that was why I took up running. I had to catch the school bus back at the county road every morning. My folks never had time to take me, and I never wanted to get up early enough to walk it, so I ran.”

  Again with that faint smile. “I thought you looked like a runner.”

  “I was, but not anymore.”

  “You gave it up last winter?”

  He scowled at her as they crested the last hill, but she wasn’t paying any attention to him. The valley stretched off to the horizon, dotted in the distance with trees and cattle, broken up in the foreground with the house and the ranch buildings. The house was on the small side, one story and built of native stone with a sharply pitched roof and tall windows stretching across the front. “My great-grandfather built the house—quarried the rock himself from a place a couple miles from here. Mom never really liked it, so as soon as more kids came along, she intended to build a new one right over there.” Slowing to a stop, he gestured west toward a clump of catalpa trees. “Unfortunately, more kids never came, so she learned to make do.” He gave Cassidy a sidelong look. “Some of us who claim to be only children really are.”

  She sat primly, legs crossed, chin raised, offering zero response to his dig. Instead she gestured into the distance with one graceful hand. “What are those buildings?”

  “Barn, equipment shed, chicken house, manager’s house. Manager’s my cousin, Jimmy. His wife, Kristin, is his right-hand man. They’ll probably be at dinner tonight.”

  She got an uncomfortable look at that, but didn’t say anything. “Do they have horses?”

  “Of course they have horses. It’s a ranch, isn’t it? Though they do an awful lot of work with trucks when they can.” He removed his foot from the brake and the truck started rolling forward. “You like to ride?”

  “I never learned.”

  “Don’t they have horses back east?”

  “Not where I lived.”

  “Tell me again where that was.”

  She frowned at him as he parked beside his mother’s car. “Halfway between the middle of nowhere and the end of the line.”

  “Wrong, darlin’, ’cause that’s right here.” He got out of the truck and took a few steps toward the door before realizing that she wasn’t behind him. Turning back, he watched her slide to the ground, close the door as if trying to do so silently, then sidle toward the front of the truck. She looked nervous. Because she thought meeting his parents meant something? Because she thought they might think it meant something? Maybe it was simpler. Maybe lying to him, Reese and everyone else was one thing, but doing it with his folks was something else.

  But that would mean she had scruples about her lies, and he was pretty sure that was an oxymoron, along with honest thief and innocent criminal.

  “They won’t bite.”

  She slowly circled the SUV. As she continued toward the stoop, he fell into step with her. “I know,” she said with a dry look. “I was just thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve had dinner with a man’s parents.”

  “Your husband’s parents?”

  She nodded.

  You sound like a cop, she’d told him the day before, shutting off his questions like a tap shutting off water. He still had the questions, though—dozens of them. Some were important, like What did he do? and Why did he die? and How did you deal with it? Others were important in other ways, like Do you still love him? and Are you still grieving for him?

  He settled for one question. “What was his name?”

  She climbed the two low steps leading to the stoop before facing him, stopping him at the bottom. The difference in height put them eye to suspicious, wary, maybe-brown-probably-not eye. “Why do you want to know?”

  Because I’m curious. Because he was important to you. Because I want to know what I’m getting into. “Occupational hazard,” he said with a shrug. “I spent seventeen years asking questions. It’s a tough habit to break.”

  Suspicion and wariness faded into acknowledgment that he’d told her something—how long he’d been a cop—that he hadn’t volunteered before. Just as quickly the distrust returned. Did she think it was tit for tat? He’d told her something, and so now she should tell him something in return? That hadn’t been his intention, but if it worked….

  “And if I tell you his name, are you going to get on the Internet or on the phone with Reese and check to see if someone by that name really was murdered and really did have a wife named Cassidy?”

  That hadn’t been his intention, either, not initially, but if she gave him the information, it would be too tempting to ignore. “Probably so,” he admitted. Something that looked a lot like hurt flashed across her face and gave life to a twinge of guilt deep inside him, but he refused to accept it. “Hey, you want to tell lies all the time, you’ve got to get used to people not believing you.”

  She pressed her lips into a thin line and her jaw tightened. Then she took a deep breath and her face went blank. “And you’ve got to get used to not thinking you should be able to believe me.”

  The flat statement angered him. He wanted to shake her, to demand an explanation from her, to force her to tell him the truth, to confide in him, to trust him….

  To trust him. That was what made him crazy—not so much that she lied, but that she lied to him. He was one of the good guys, honest, truthful, principled, above reproach, but she didn’t trust him.

  Why?

  They were just looking at each other, neither willing—or daring?—to speak, when the door opened suddenly, followed by his father’s booming voice. “I told your mother I thought I heard your truck, but she didn’t believe me. Says I’m too hard of hearing to hear her tell me to run the vacuum when she’s standin’ right beside me, so I sure couldn’t hear a truck pull up outside.”

  With one last look at Cassidy, Jace stepped past her and stopped at the door. “Doesn’t she know by now that you’ve got selective hearing?”

  Ray grinned. “She’d rather forget that than think I could possibly not want to listen to what she has to say. Cassidy, it’s good to see you again. Come on in and let me introduce you to Jace’s mother.” With a hand on her shoulder, he ushered her inside, gave Jace a wink, then followed.

  Alone on the stoop, Jace rolled his gaze heavenward, then stepped inside.

  The house was cool and smelled of…well, good things he couldn’t quite identify. Orange-scented cleaning solutions, vanilla-and-citrus potpourri that Rozena mixed up herself and incredible food aromas. His mother’s cooking was always good, but on special occasions she really knocked herself out—and his bringing a woman for dinner rated with his parents as the most special of occasions. They were always hopeful, in spite of having been disappointed every time in the past. They’d disliked Julie and Amanda practically from the moment they’d met—a mother had instincts about these things, Rozena had told him later—and though angry on his behalf when the relationships ended, they had also been relieved.

  It seemed his father had taken an immediate liking to Cassidy. Was that good or bad? Good, he guessed, as long as Ray understood that nothing serious could
come of it, that she was leaving soon, that Jace didn’t want anything more than sex from her….

  Sure, he would tell his dad that—when he wasn’t standing in striking distance.

  Though there was no sign of his cousin, the dining table was set for six, confirming his expectation that Jimmy and Kristin would be joining them. His mother was using her favorite china, tablecloth and napkins, handed down from some great-great on his father’s side—a sign of how significant this dinner was to her. If Cassidy hadn’t agreed to come, the invitation would have stood for him alone, but they would have been eating at the smaller kitchen table off the everyday dishes and with paper napkins.

  He sighed before he followed the voices into the kitchen. Rozena, wearing an apron over her dress, stood at the stove, dividing her attention equally between the cooking and Cassidy, and she was smiling—not the polite-but-hating-it smile she’d offered the other women in his life, but an honest-to-God, genuine smile. Oh, boy.

  “Hey, Mom.” He slid his arms around her from behind, kissed her cheek, then lifted the lid on the pot on the front burner. She slapped his hand away before he got more than a whiff of fragrant steam.

  “Don’t interfere with the artist at work,” she admonished him. “It’s about time we saw your face around here. Do you know how long it’s been?”

  “I come every time you invite me.”

  “And since when did visiting your mama and daddy require an invitation?” She gave a sniff, then patted his cheek even as she pushed him to arm’s length to study him. “Thank heavens, you finally got that hair cut. Was that your idea, Cassidy?”

  Standing against the wall near the kitchen table, Cassidy looked startled by the question. “Oh, no. He just did it.”

  Rozena grinned knowingly. “Uh-huh. And here I’ve been nagging at him to cut it for months.”

  “She was afraid I would start braiding it with leather and feathers, the way her people used to do,” Jace teased. “Then who knows how far behind the war paint and breechclout would have been?”

  His mother swatted him, and he moved out of the way, copying Cassidy’s position against the side wall. The table there held a napkin-lined basket, waiting for bread, and a bowl filled with sliced strawberries buried under sugar. The first meal he and Cassidy had shared had ended with strawberry pie, and she had all but gotten orgasmic over it. Lucky guess for Rozena on tonight’s dessert.