A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) (17 page)

She tapped lightly at the open door, then stepped inside. “Hi. I know.” She raised one hand to stave off the woman’s usual
You’re late.
“I am so sorry. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, so I took something last night and slept right through my alarm.” It was true on the surface: either she’d eaten herself into a CaraCakes stupor or she’d drunk herself into a Patrón stupor. Either way, she really had slept through the alarm.

Mrs. Dauterive stared at her so long that she fidgeted. The woman’s expression was severe, but there was something in it, something…searching. Like she knew Jessy hadn’t told her everything and if she just looked hard enough, she could find the truth.

Finally she broke the silence. “Perhaps you should get some help for your…sleeping problem.”

That hesitation tightened the muscles in Jessy’s neck. Mrs. Dauterive couldn’t possibly know about her personal problems. They never saw each other outside the bank. They didn’t have any friends in common. All she could do was doubt the veracity of her excuses.

Jessy swallowed, forced a smile, and said, “You’re right. I should. It won’t happen again.”

Keeping the smile in place by sheer force of will, she went to her desk and logged on to the computer. But the smile on the outside couldn’t keep the worries quiet inside. There was a name for when a person lost a whole chunk of time—blackouts—and it wasn’t a good sign.

How could she go about discovering her movements for the previous evening? Call friends, hint at whether she’d been with them? Stop in at CaraCakes at lunch and see if she’d mentioned anything to the clerk about her plans for the evening? Call the bars around town?

Silently she snorted. Oh, yeah, there was an easy task. She could start with Bubba’s out on the edge of town, her most frequent hangout. Buddy Watson’s was just a few blocks from the bank. TwoSteps, Jammerz, and Yellow Moon were all within walking distance of her apartment. Then there were all the restaurants that served liquor, dives she wouldn’t be caught dead in—assuming she knew what she was doing—and liquor stores every few blocks.

Hell, she could have met some stranger on the street and gone home with him, or shared a bottle with someone in the front seat of his car. She could have been anywhere, doing anything. Including in her own damn apartment drinking from her own damn bottle.

So she’d lost a few hours of her evening. It’d been Wednesday. Nothing important ever happened on Wednesday. It was no big deal. She was just overreacting.

But the nerves knotted in her stomach showed no sign of easing anytime soon.

K
eegan had followed Therese’s advice, putting Mariah to bed on the sofa without changing her into pajamas. He’d tucked a stuffed alligator into her arms, then covered her with a quilt his mom had sewn for her, and then he’d sat, all the lights off but one, and watched her sleep for two hours before finally crawling into his own bed.

Now she stood beside the bed, hair sticking straight up on the left side, two fingers stuck in her mouth, and watched him as intently as he’d watched her last night. He pushed himself up to sit with the headboard against his back and said, “Hey.”

“Potty,” she said, or at least that was what he guessed. The fingers made the sounds hard to distinguish.

Hell. As he shoved back the covers, last night’s conversation replayed in his head. Abby:
I wouldn’t know what to do.

Jacob’s laugh.
Crap, even I know that.

Keegan had never taken a little kid to the bathroom before. It had to be easier with a girl than a boy: just set her on the commode, right? Nothing to aim. In the years since joining the Army, he’d learned to do all kinds of things he’d never imagined before.

When he was standing, he started to pick up Mariah, but she backpedaled out of his reach, spun, and walked into the bathroom on her own. He switched on the light, then looked at her. Okay, at least she was wearing a dress, so no need to remove that. Just lift it and pull her underwear down, set her on the seat, wait…He could do it.

He set her on the commode, then took a few steps to the bathtub, intending to turn the water on to heat for her bath, but a splash sounded before he’d even reached the knob, and a wail filled the room.

He turned back to find Mariah wedged partway through the toilet seat, her face scrunched up, her fingers clenching the rim, her feet in the air. Along with the tears, to say nothing of the shock of having her butt plunged into cold water, she was giving him a look that could kill.

“Sorry, Mariah. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—” Grabbing her under the arms, he jerked her up, then, unsure what to do with her, set her on her feet in the sink.

She continued to cry, adding to the mix hiccups and a mournful sound. “Celly, Celly, Celly.” It was her name for his mother, since he hadn’t wanted her calling Ercella any version of grandmother. He’d thought it would somehow be harder on Ercella when Mariah left, but he knew now it couldn’t get any harder.

He turned on the bath, shoved the plug in, then began undoing the ridiculously small buttons on the back of her dress. “Celly’s not here, Mariah. Shh. There’s no need to get louder. I’m gonna give you a bath and put some clean clothes on, then we’ll get something to eat, okay, and everything will be better, I promise. Just—just don’t scream.”

Of course she screamed.

His mother always acted like bath time was fun time, playtime, but it’d been a lie. Mariah fought him on getting her dress off. She kicked him when he picked up her naked little body and set her in the tub. She climbed out when he turned to get the shampoo and body wash Ercella had sent. She screamed so loud it made the small enclosure vibrate and sliced a sharp wedge into his brain. When shampoo got in her eyes, she screamed even louder, and when he was soaked to the skin and she was clean and relatively free of suds, she leaned forward, lowered her head, and puked in the water.

God help him.

He drained the tub and started the process again, and she didn’t like it any better the second time around. The only good thing was she skipped the vomiting.

After wrapping her in towels that seemed skimpy for the job, he carried her into the bedroom in time to hear his cell ring.

“They just took your brother to surgery,” Ercella said before he could even say hello. “They think he’s going to be okay, though he took an awful hard hit to the head.”

“It’s an awful hard head.” Keegan felt a moment of shame. He’d been so stirred up about Mariah for the past twenty-four hours that he’d hardly had a thought to spare for Ford.

“Ain’t that the truth. Now…how are you and Mariah doing?”

He related the bathroom experience, and Ercella didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She settled for chastising him. “You’ve seen that skinny little butt of hers. You can’t just set her on a toilet and expect her to balance all on her own. Lord, Keegan, you’ve traumatized her. She’ll probably revert back to diapers and I’ll have to potty train her again when I get back.”

“She’s been traumatized since you walked off and left us alone with each other yesterday. If it weren’t for Therese and—” Too late he broke off.

“Who’s Therese, and what did she do?”

He sighed. “She’s Matheson’s widow.”

“You’re calling her by her first name now.”

He didn’t respond to that. “When Mariah and I got back yesterday, she wouldn’t stop screaming or eat or anything. I was desperate, so I went over to Therese’s, and it turns out the kindergarten teacher is good with little kids. So is her daughter.”

Ercella caught her breath. “Mariah met her half sister.”

“And half brother. She really liked Abby.”

“Do they look anything alike?”

“I don’t know how any of them missed the resemblance.” But that was easy for him to say. He knew the one thing the family didn’t: that they
were
family.

“Is she going to see them again?”

Should he tell her they were having dinner tonight? Would she think the idea was good, bad, stupid? Would she suspect he had ulterior motives, like hoping maybe, just maybe, Mariah would wiggle her way into her stepmother’s heart and, eventually, out of his life?

“Keegan?” Ercella’s voice raised. “Are you there?”

“Celly?” Shucking the towels and standing naked in front of him, Mariah grabbed the phone, pressing it to her ear. “Celly, I wanna go home. Now.”

His mother’s tone changed from matter-of-fact to a croon while she, presumably, explained yet again why she was gone and Mariah was stuck with him. Ercella could tell her a thousand times, and the kid still wouldn’t accept it. He didn’t blame her.

After a few minutes, lip stuck out, Mariah dropped the phone, went to the couch, and grabbed the gator to tuck it beneath her chin. Fingers in her mouth again, she stared mutinously at him.

“Poor baby,” Ercella said when Keegan got back on the phone. “She just doesn’t understand…Maybe I should have brought her with me.”

Aw, man, his mother never second-guessed herself. Him, his brothers and sisters, the entire rest of the world, sure, but never herself. “Mom, she’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Just concentrate on Ford, okay?”

It took a couple minutes to convince her of his words. Finally, he used Mariah’s naked state as an excuse to go.

Ercella’s laugh was part amused, part tearful. “I dress her, fold clothes, and cook breakfast all at the same time.”

“You also don’t dunk her in the toilet. I need both hands and all my attention. Call me when you have news about Ford. I love you.”

After he ended the call, he went to the dresser and opened the top drawer, pulling out the first set of clothing he came to, a blue shirt and denim shorts, plus a pair of rabbit-covered underwear. “Come on, Mariah, let’s get dressed.”

“No.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“No.”

“I’m hungry.” He wanted to get dressed himself, brush his teeth, and get some breakfast. A gallon of coffee and a handful of aspirin tablets would be a good start.

She swiped a hank of hair from her face. “Pink.”

With a shrug, he traded the shirt for a pink one. “Okay, come on.”

She shook her head.

“Look, it’s pink, see?”

She wasn’t impressed.

Keegan bunched up the clothes in his hand and gazed at the door. Maybe he could leave her just long enough to go to QuikTrip on the corner and pick up breakfast there. He didn’t make a habit of buying hot food from convenience stores/gas stations, but judging by the wide selection, a lot of people did. How much trouble could she get into alone for five minutes? Not even Ercella required line-of-sight on her every single minute.

Sighing heavily, he went to the couch, lifted her onto the cushions, then reached for one leg to slide into the underwear. She pulled and twisted, but he succeeded with that foot, reached for the other, and she slid the first one out again. “Come on, Mariah,” he cajoled. “You can’t run around naked all day, and I know you’ve got to be hungry. Maybe after breakfast, we can find a park to play.”

“No, no, no,
no
!” She jerked free, scrambled to the other end of the couch, then jumped off and headed for the bed.

His patience evaporated. “Mariah!”

She froze, her back to him. Any minute now, she was going to let out a shriek that would do both her and Abby proud. He steeled himself, waiting for the assault on his ears and his headache, but it didn’t come. Slowly she turned, came back, pulled the panties from his hand and primly said, “I do it my own self.”

It took her a while, though nowhere near as long as it had taken him, and she was actually wearing the underwear when she was done. A smile split her face at the accomplishment, then disappeared the minute she saw him watching. Next she grabbed the shirt, put it on backward, pulled her arms loose, twisted it so the picture of the princess was on the front, then spent another few minutes getting the shorts on, all but baring her teeth when he tried to help.

Relieved at the progress, Keegan got clean clothes for himself, pushed the bathroom door almost closed, then changed in record time. When he went in, Mariah was considering the long row of shoes he’d lined up beside the dresser. When he came out, dressed and having brushed his teeth, she was still crouched in front of them. With a dismissive look for him, she finally picked a pair of flip-flops with an elastic band around the heel, put them on the wrong feet, then trotted to the door.

“I want pancakes. Hurry, let’s go.”

“You’ve got your shoes on the wrong—” Aw, hell. Considering how long it had taken them to get to this point, if she didn’t mind, why should he?

For the second time in two weeks—and only the second time in four years—Dalton knocked off work early. There was more he could do. With horses and cattle and buildings to maintain, there was always more, but the necessary jobs were done, the stock taken care of. The world wasn’t going to end if he didn’t check off a few more entries on his never-ending to-do list.

After a shower and a change of clothes, he drove into town, a stack of bill payments to mail and the grocery list tossed in the passenger seat. Like the chores, both of those could wait until tomorrow, too. There was just something about him this evening that couldn’t wait. He needed to go somewhere. Do something. See someone. Anyone.

He thought on the way in about calling Noah and asking if they could meet for dinner. Stillwater wasn’t much of a drive, and he hadn’t been there in years. But his brother would be home in another twenty-four hours, and frankly, he wasn’t the company Dalton was looking for.

He considered calling Dane Clark. Dane was about the closest thing he had to a friend around Tallgrass—four years of ignoring people was hard on a friendship—but he probably already had plans with his fiancée. If he didn’t, he’d be wishing he did.

From the day he’d met Sandra, Dalton had wished. For years, he’d had everything he could have wanted…other than knowing whether Dillon was dead or alive, and he’d lived with that question for so long it had become nothing more than an occasional thought.

But Sandra…he’d wanted to spend every minute with her from the day they’d met in the feed store. She’d been looking for a trellis and tape to support the lone tomato plant on the balcony outside her apartment. She had asked questions about the feed and medications he was buying, confessed to loving horses more than anything in the world, and wrangled an invitation to see his.

Ten days later they’d flown to Las Vegas and gotten married. Their mothers had cried, both because they were happy for them and because there hadn’t been a wedding. His folks had been surprised. Dillon was the impulsive twin, the one who acted first and thought later, while Dalton had always been responsible.

But he’d never regretted it.

Until he’d found out the truth about Sandra’s death.

When he passed the flower shop just inside the city limits, he focused on where to go. Almost all of his rare meals out were at Serena’s, but he wasn’t hungry for home cooking. What he really wanted was a fat, greasy burger with onions and jalapeños cooked right into the patty and fries so crispy they were almost charred. While there were several places that could supply the burger, only one had the fries.

Bubba’s had started life during the log-cabin craze back in the early eighties, both home and showroom for a contracting company. The location might have been okay for living, but it was bad for a business, and with log cabins not being a novelty in Oklahoma the way they were elsewhere, it hadn’t taken long for the contractor to close up shop and move out of the area. Bubba Watson, on the outs with Buddy, his brother and partner in a bar downtown, had bought the place and turned it into what Dalton’s father called a good old-fashioned honky-tonk.

Every guy Dalton knew back in school had had his first bar fight at Bubba’s and gotten his first drunk on there three years before they were of legal age. Dalton and Dillon had been thrown out too often to count, and after a go-round with Bubba’s younger sister at the newly built motel across the parking lot, Dillon had been banned from the place for life. No one knew if Bubba would have held his ground, since Dillon had left town soon after.

Stubbornly ignoring memories of the last time he had come to the bar—resulting in his only time at the motel—Dalton parked at the end of a long line of pickup trucks on the east side. The music was loud, even through the thick log walls, and the aroma of fried onions and beef drifted on the air. With the customers primarily working cowboys or oil-field hands, odds were he’d find an old friend inside. If not, well, he wasn’t a stranger to eating or drinking alone.