by Maddy Barone
“Dusty, I love you. Do I have to choose between you and my family?”
His shoulders relaxed. He reached across the table and took both her hands. “No, Isa. No.” His voice was low and gentle. “We’re adults, not hotheaded kids who can’t compromise. We can find a way to make this work, can’t we?”
“Will you even consider staying in Dallas? Or at least in the area?”
“I can’t.” He looked unhappy, but adamant. “If I gave up my dream I would grow to despise myself.”
“Then there isn’t anything else to consider.” One tear escaped and rolled down her face. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
“You mean that as long as I stay in Texas, you love me.” He sounded more tired than angry. “Please think about it. I don’t want to give up on us. Please, Isa.”
“I’ll think about it.”
She looked down at her food and forced herself to eat. The next twenty minutes passed in miserable silence. Isabel couldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t allow herself to think, here in this public place, for fear she would weep like a heart-broken, hysterical teenager. The relief that filled her when Brutus appeared was sharp and overwhelming.
Brutus’ smile slid off his face when he saw them. Was their misery so obvious? Dusty seemed to be making an effort to act naturally. He made some joke about how lucky he was that his wallet had survived the fire. That made her remember the moment his dress trousers had ended up on her bedroom floor, probably with his wallet still in the pocket. The memory drove the tears perilously close to the surface. They had been so happy only eighteen hours ago.
Brutus seemed uncomfortable with the silence in the truck as he drove to Dusty’s apartment. He chattered about the wedding yesterday, and how Station 58 had taken the news of Dusty’s brush with fire, and the heat wave Dallas was entering. She had never known Brutus to chatter. When she climbed out of the truck, the heat hit her like a wet, steaming blanket. It didn’t touch the ice around her heart.
They climbed the stairs to Dusty’s third floor apartment. It was sweltering in here. “Are you going to be okay in here?” she asked Dusty.
He cranked up the air conditioning with a wide smile. “You bet. I think I’ll just veg out in front of the TV. Take it easy.”
“You can come over to me and Denise’s place,” Brutus offered. “She’s making fish tacos for supper.”
This time Dusty’s smile was smaller and more genuine. “No, thanks. I love Denise, but fish tacos are not my idea of food.”
“Not mine either.” Brutus looked from him to her. “But she loves them, so I eat them. You do what you gotta do to make the other person happy, right?”
There was a long silence. Isabel studied the threadbare carpet. Dusty finally nodded. “Right.”
“Okay, then, I’ll drop Isabel at Inez and Manuel’s. If you get bored and need company, come on over.”
Part of her hated to leave Dusty there. She went to him and kissed his cheek. “I love you,” she whispered.
“Call me.” The rasp was back in his voice, but whether from the smoke he’d inhaled or emotion she couldn’t tell. “Please call me later.”
“I will,” she promised.
She and Brutus had gone only three blocks before he burst out, “What in the hell happened in the restaurant? You two are acting as skittish as a virgin on her…” He broke off and cleared his throat. “Seriously, Isabel, what’s up?”
She recounted the conversation she and Dusty had had. “I can’t move to South Dakota. I won’t have anyone there I know, and it gets cold there.”
He sighed. “I get you about the cold. I’m not looking forward to that, myself. But you’ll have Dusty. And me and Denise.”
She turned slowly to stare at his profile. “You and Denise?”
“Yeah. Me and Dusty are going to be partners in the ambulance service. Denise will be the office manager. I know we’re not the same as family, but you know us. You like us.”
“But you said Station Fifty-Eight wouldn’t be the same without him. You said nothing about you!”
He arched one bushy brow. “No one will miss me the way they’ll miss Dusty.”
“Dusty didn’t say you would be at the reservation.”
“He’s a moron.” Brutus shoved a hand over his hair. “Look, I’ve never seen him so goofy about a woman. He loves you. Straight up loves you. And I’m not saying that it always has to be the woman that gives up everything to follow the man. But Dusty has had this plan for about as long as I’ve known him. He’s put lots of time in researching the legal requirements for running an ambulance service, both for the state of South Dakota and the reservation. This is important to him. Really important. Don’t break his heart by making him choose between the woman he loves and his dream. Okay? I don’t know if he’d survive it.”
His passion moved her. “I’ll think about it. I’ll think hard about it.”
“Okay. And if you need me to beat his head in a little, just say the word. I do better with actions than emotions, you know?”
“Thank you, but no.” She laughed. It was a little thick with suppressed tears, but it was a laugh. “It makes a difference, knowing that you and Denise will be there.”
“Well, you think about it. I’m done talking. I think I’ve sprained something, talking so much. I’m not good at that crap.”
Isabel smiled to herself. She disagreed. Twenty minutes ago, she’d believed there was no future for her and Dusty. Now there was a glimmer of hope. When he pulled up in front of Inez’ house, she gave him a quick, one-armed hug. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I still think Denise is a lucky woman.
Chapter Fourteen
Isabel needed a quiet place to think, but where? Her sister’s house was a place of comfortable chaos. Her nephew, Manuelito, was at the kitchen table, playing a game with lots of loud explosions on his tablet. Her other nephew, Raul, was watching some noisy, kids’ sing-along show on the television in the living room. Her niece, Paulita, was in her room, shouting at her brothers to keep it down so she and her BFF could hear each other on the phone. Longing for the peace and comfort of her lost apartment made her want to cry. Isabel decided to face the heat, and went out the back door to the picnic table in the shady patio in the backyard.
It seemed she had two choices: Marry Dusty and leave her home and family behind, or give him up. Live without Dusty? A vision of such a life rolled out in front of her like a threadbare carpet whose colors had been bleached to dingy gray. Empty. Joyless. Unbearable. But to go so far from home where she would know only a few people? No. Impossible.
Paulita came out to the patio with a sweating glass of iced tea. “Tia?” she said in a cautious tone. “It’s hot. Will you come in?”
Isabel rearranged her face into a more pleasant expression. “I need to be alone right now.”
Her niece held the iced tea out, and, after Isabel had taken it, retreated to the house. Isabel drank, her mind running from one choice to the other like a tennis ball bouncing from one side of the net to the other, over and over. Why couldn’t he just stay in Dallas? That would resolve this situation perfectly.
Her hand groped along her thigh, looking for something. Another tiny piece of her heart cracked. Her knitting. Normally, if she was sitting, she would be knitting. But she didn’t have any knitting. The shawl she was working on was gone, along with every single skein of yarn, every set of needles, and every pattern she owned. Gone. All of it was gone. Fury swelled up inside her like a raging river wanting to leap out of its banks. She set the glass down very carefully. If she held it one second more she would hurl it against the side of the garage.
Paulita came out again, looking even more timid than before, and extended the house cordless phone. “It’s Tia Christina.”
Isabel took the phone. Her aunt exclaimed with horror over the fire, lamented the devastating loss of the store and her apartment, offered up thanks that lives had been spared, and bubbled with plans for setting Isabel back on her feet. Isabel ha
d to smile. Tia Cristina always carried on conversations like this. She spoke a hundred miles a minute and barely let anyone else get a word in. It would have been annoying, except that every word the woman spoke was coated with love.
During this one-sided conversation, Paulita had taken the tea glass away and brought it back brimming with more tea. Isabel had barely said goodbye to Tia Cristina when Tia Julia called. Over the next hour, Isabel spoke with three of her aunts and two of her cousins. Every conversation wrapped her up in the warmth of their support and concern for her. This is what Dusty wanted her to give up.
The phone calls stopped coming around four o’clock. Isabel suspected they were now calling each other, planning how best to outfit her with everything she could ever possibly need. It made tears well in her tired eyes. How could she leave them? How could she live without Dusty? How could she decide?
Inez found her still on the patio a few minutes later. “I don’t know, Isa, where we can reopen the store.” She sat down on the bench opposite Isabel and shook her head. “I don’t think Eduardo has anything available right now that will suit us.”
Isabel gave her a blank look and sank her forehead into her hands. The store was the last thing on her mind right now. She gave herself a little shake. The store was important too. She looked up with an attempt at interest, but before she could speak Inez’ expression changed.
“What’s wrong, niña?” Sharp concern lifted her voice. “You’ve been crying! Is it Dusty? Is he okay?”
“Yes, he’s okay.” She struggled to find words and keep her tears back. She failed. “I think it’s over, Inez,” she wailed. “We’re not going to get married. It’s impossible.”
Inez half stood up, horror etched on her face. “What? What are you saying?”
When Isabel dropped her face back into her hands and sobbed, Inez came around the table to sit beside her with arm around her shoulders. “Tell me everything, niña.”
Between sobs, Isabel told her sister everything. “And I can’t move so far away from my family. Especially now, with the store to be rebuilt.”
Her sister put her hands on Isabel’s shoulders and turned her on the picnic bench so they were facing each other. “Isabel, you love Dusty, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Last night, did you think he might die?”
A shudder rippled down Isabel spine. She clamped her arms around herself to hold it in. “Yes,” she said in a small, shaken voice.
“If you had a choice between losing him in a fire, and living with him on the reservation in South Dakota, which would you choose?”
“But he’s not dead!”
Inez gave her a small shake. “Isabel, which would you choose?”
With a trembling hand, Isabel wiped tears away. “The reservation.” She swallowed more tears. “But I don’t want to leave you, or the family!”
“Because you’re afraid of the unknown.” Inez looked at her steadily. “Who can blame you? It’s far away, and probably very different than what you are used to here. But my little sister has never been a coward. You love Dusty. If you want to share a life with him, you must support him in his dream to help people on the reservation.”
That hurt. Isabel caught her lower lip between her teeth. She was afraid. The realization seeped into her like poison. Dusty wanted to do something that would benefit people. She wanted to keep him from doing it because she didn’t have the guts to leave the safety net of her family. She looked at her sister. “Do you think I’m being selfish?”
“I think you’re a woman who has had to give up many things, and you didn’t have a choice about it.” She reached and tucked a lock of hair behind Isabel’s ear. Her hand returned to Isabel’s shoulder, a strong, encouraging weight. “You didn’t choose to lose your leg, but that loss has affected every part of your life. Because of that loss, you’ve had to give up many things: your first love, the career you wanted in law enforcement, the sports you enjoyed. Now you have a man asking you to give up something else that you value very much. But even as you are giving up something, you were also getting something. Do you see that?”
Isabel thought about it. “I have to give up you and the rest of our family. But I would have Dusty. That’s what you want me to see.”
“Yes.” Inez’ voice was very gentle. “But would you really be giving us up? We’ll still be here. We will still love you. No, we won’t see each other every day, but we have phones, and video, and planes. We will visit each other.”
The hot, twisting pain in the center of Isabel’s chest eased slightly. A future with Dusty? Or a future without him? Was the choice really that hard? She took her first deep breath in what seemed like hours. Maybe she wouldn’t be giving up as much as she thought she would be. Maybe she could do it. But … “What about the store? I can’t abandon you to rebuild the store by yourself.”
Inez dropped her hands from Isabel’s shoulders and folded them in her lap. “Would you mind terribly if we just let the store close?”
“But…” Isabel stopped, amazed by how light she suddenly felt, as if dumbbells had been lifted from her heart. “Are you sure? Don’t do it just for me.”
“I’m not doing it just for you, Isa. We worked very hard to make our store successful, but we didn’t get very much return. I will be sorry about people like Ana Gonzales, because she truly loves to knit, and she loved to come to our store. But I don’t think the work required to reopen will be worth it.”
Starting over? The very thought of it made Isabel feel like she was a rickety old lady with no strength in her arms or legs. “It wouldn’t be quick or easy,” she agreed.
“There is only one thing that troubles me. Me and Manuel can survive on his salary. But if you choose not to marry Dusty, will you need to find something else?”
Her military disability checks went only so far. Without the small income from the store, she would be pressed to make ends meet. Isabel managed a ghost of a smile. “Tia Cristina has that all planned out for me.”
Inez laughed. “Of course, she does. But listen. Eduardo had a good idea. He thinks that I could rent a room and hold classes there. That was my favorite part about the store anyway, teaching people to knit. It wouldn’t bring in much, just a little extra spending money. Would that be enough to support you, though?”
“What a wonderful idea!” Like Inez, she enjoyed teaching. “The coffee shop around the corner from the store has a meeting room in back. I think it is free to use, as long as people purchase coffee or something.” She smiled with an excitement she couldn’t have even imagined an hour ago. “We could hold classes there. People could get coffee, and sit and knit. We could still charge for the classes.” The possibilities and the freedom of not having to manage a store and keep up with the stock were exhilarating. Maybe she could do the same thing when she and Dusty moved to the reservation.
Her breath caught. When she and Dusty moved to the reservation? Had her plans really changed so quickly? She looked into her heart, trying to imagine the future. The threadbare carpet unrolled before her, but cheerful bursts of color now punctuated the dreary gray. Inez didn’t seem to notice her pause.
“You’re right! The coffee shop would be the perfect place,” her sister cried.
Isabel’s future glowed with more color all the time. She hugged her sister. “This is brilliant. I swear I could kiss Eduardo right now!”
Inez laughed and hugged her back. “Well, you’ll have the chance to do that very soon. Carmen has invited all of us over for a barbeque tonight. The entire family will be there, all the aunts, uncles, and cousins who are available on short notice.”
“That means all of them.” Isabel giggled giddily.
“Tue. Carmen wants to invite Dusty too. I think she wants to meet your hero. So does Abuelo.”
“Oh.” Isabel’s mind raced, and her laughter faded. “I need to talk to Dusty. I don’t know if he’ll feel up to it tonight. He just left the hospital a few hours ago.”
“Yo
u need to talk to Dusty anyway,” Inez said pointedly. “Have you made your decision?”
Isabel took a deep breath. “Yes.” Her voice was strong and firm. She stood up. “I have to call him right now.”
“Wait! What did you decide?”
Isabel smiled brilliantly at her sister. “I’m going to marry Dusty, of course. If he wants to move to the moon, I’ll be right beside him.”
She hurried into the house to find her purse and her phone, and then locked herself in the bathroom for privacy. Her fingers might have trembled a tiny bit when she tapped his number on her phone. He answered on the first ring.
“Isa?”
There was a world of cautious hope in his tone that brought a huge smile to her lips.
“Hello, Dusty. There are two things I need to say to you. One, I love you and I will live anywhere with you.”
A choked laugh came from the phone. “Thank God. I love you, Isa, so much that I felt like my life was over if you weren’t in it.”
“My life would be like an endless gray carpet rolling out in front of me forever, with no joy or light to brighten it.” She wished she was beside him so she could kiss him. “I’m sorry I was so stupid.”
His voice went jokingly stiff. “Watch who you’re calling stupid. I happen to love that person madly.” He went back to his usual tone. “I do love you madly, Isa. So, so madly. I will do everything I can to be sure you are happy on the reservation. There are so many great people there who will love you.” He paused and then asked anxiously, “Are you crying?”
“Tears of joy, amado.”
“Well, those are okay, I suppose. If you were here, I would taste them on my lips when I kissed you.” He paused, maybe thinking, as she was, of the sweet hot kisses they’d shared last night when he’d made love to her. “What is the second thing you need to tell me, honey?”