Cowboy Sing Me Home (19 page)

            “Where are you going?”  She frowned and
stood when he did.

            “I have to go to the office.”  It wasn’t
his night to work, but if he said he was going home, she’d just try and get him
to stay.  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

            “You’re going to propose and then just leave?”

            “I’m sorry.  But I have to go.”

            She put her hands on her hips and her lip
curled.  “You’re going back to that tramp already, aren’t you?”

            Luke had to count to twenty before he
trusted himself to speak.  When he did, he spoke slowly and carefully.  “Don’t
ever call her that again.”

            She opened her mouth to speak, but shut it
again when she saw the look in his eyes. 

            “I will call you tomorrow.”  He fought to
keep his voice even, to keep this situation from getting any worse.

            She hugged her waist.  “Will you, Luke?”
            She looked suddenly so lost and unsure that he pitied her.  She was
as unnerved by this situation as he was, and needed his reassurance.  Surely he
could give her that much. “I said I would.”

            Her eyes filled with tears again.  “You’re
going to leave and change your mind.  You’re going to decide you don’t want to
marry me.”

            “Melinda.”  He gripped her shoulders,
wanting to be anywhere but here.  “It’s going to be okay.  You’re going to have
to trust me.”

            “I wish you could stay here, just for
tonight.  Can’t you get someone else to work for you?  It’s been a long time
since we’ve been together.”

            She turned those pretty blue eyes up at
him, but the thought of sleeping with her left him cold, and again the image of
Dusty popped into his mind.  “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

            She followed him to the door, and he was
acutely aware of the fact that he was leaving her with less reassurance than
she needed, but he didn’t know what else to say that wasn’t an outright lie.

            “Why don’t you call your mom and have her
come stay with you tonight, so you won’t have to be alone?”

            She wiped tears from her check, then
nodded.  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

            “Are you going to be okay?  You’re feeling
all right?”

            She nodded and reached for him.  “I’d feel
better if you’d stay.”

            He held her, forcing himself not to
fidget, then stepped away.  He gave her a quick peck on the forehead before he
stepped off the porch.  “Get some sleep.”

            She smiled and nodded.  “I’m going to need
it.  I have a wedding to plan.”

            He made himself return the smile.  He got
into his pickup and drove to the office.  He thought of all the men he knew who
had left their wives, left their kids without support, or the ones who
supported them financially, but in no other way.  He’d always thought of those
men as complete losers, too weak to do the right thing.  He thought of a couple
of them who’d simply left, got in their cars and just drove away. 

            It chilled him to realize how close he was
to being that kind of man.

            He spent the night at the office.  It
wasn’t his turn, but he didn’t want to go home, and if he drove around he would
just end up out at Dusty’s trailer, where he was supposed to be right now.

            She was the last thing on his mind when he
finally fell asleep, and the first thing he thought of when he woke up on the
cot in the second cell.  That fact alone compounded his already-heavy guilt. 
He had no business thinking of another woman.  Not now.

            He sat on the edge of the bunk and held
his face in his hands, feeling hung over though he’d had nothing to drink.  He
couldn’t face Dusty, he realized with shame.  They were supposed to rehearse
for the Jubilee this morning, but he simply could not do it.  He couldn’t look
at her until he was sure he could do so without making a complete ass of himself. 
And that definitely wasn’t going to happen today.

            She’d given him the number to her cell
phone.  He could call her and cancel.  He looked at the clock, realizing it was
later than he thought, and she was probably out at Tumbleweeds.  He used the phone
in the front office to call out there.

            “Rodney, is Dusty out there yet?”

            “Yeah, she’s here, let me –”

            “Wait!”  Luke cleared his throat and
licked his lips.  “Just… just give her a message, okay?”

            “Sure.”

            Luke cleared his throat again.  “Tell her…tell
her I’m not going to be able to rehearse with her this morning, for the
Jubilee.  Tell her we’ll just do the same songs we did yesterday.”

            “Sure, no problem.  Hey Dusty,” Rodney
said.  “Luke says –”

            Luke put the receiver down.  He didn’t
think he could handle hearing her voice right now.

            He moved through his day by rote, going
over his patrol, checking out the street carnival, getting lunch for Kenny and
taking care of business.  His mind rotated between two things:  Dusty, and the
baby.

            His mother invited him to dinner before
the Jubilee that evening.  He started to decline, then realized he was putting
off the inevitable.  They had to know they were going to have a grandchild. 
They had to know they were going to be attending his wedding soon.  Might as
well get it over with.

            Luke cleared his throat for the third time
in five minutes and bit into mashed potatoes he couldn’t taste.

            Finally, his dad turned to him and
growled.  “Would you just spit it out so we can get it out in the open?”

            “Claude, don’t you talk to him that way!” 
His mother glared across her corned beef at Luke’s dad.  “He’ll tell us when he
gets ready.”

            “You know already.”  Luke sat back in his
chair, not sure if he was irritated that he couldn’t keep his business to
himself for twenty-four straight hours, or relieved that he hadn’t had to break
the news to them himself.

            “Of course we do,” Claude said.  “What,
did you think you were going to keep a secret in this town?”

            “For a day, I hoped.”

            “We probably knew before you did,” his
mother said.  “But we just heard rumors.  We tried not to form any opinions
until we heard the truth from you.”

            “We heard you knocked the girl up and were
going to get married.”

            “Don’t you be vulgar at my dinner table.” 
Helen Tanner slapped her hand on the table.

            “Fine.”  Claude picked up his plate and
carried it to the living room.  A moment later, they heard the television come
on.

            Helen bit her lip and reached for Luke’s
hand.  “Okay, out with it.  What’s going on?”

            “She’s pregnant.”  It still hadn’t sunk in
for him.  They’d been so careful… but then, he knew that no birth control was
one hundred percent.

            “I take it from the look on your face,
this isn’t a happy surprise.”

            Luke wasn’t sure yet what he felt. 
Shock.  Dismay.  Guilt over both.  He was a grown man.  He knew about actions
and consequences. 

            He just could not reconcile himself to the
idea of marrying Melinda.  He had to. 

            His mind had spun all night, and he’d
finally decided that he would have to stop thinking about it and just do it. 
“The idea is going to take some getting used to, I guess.”

            “Are you really going to marry her?”

            His words of the previous night came back
to him, and with them the same sick feeling.  He nodded a head that felt heavy
and empty on his shoulders.  “I suppose I am.  I’m sorry you had to hear it
from someone else, Ma.”

            Helen waved that regret away with one
hand.  “It doesn’t matter.  I just want you to be sure this is what you want to
do.”

            “He already did what he wanted to do,”
came his father’s voice over his recliner.  “That’s why he has to get married
now.”

            “You just keep feeding your face and stay
out of this,” Helen yelled.  She turned back to Luke, her countenance once
again soft.

            “What I really want?”  Luke laughed.  “Ma
–”

            “I mean, do you really want to marry
Melinda?  Maybe you two could work something out…”

            “She said she would get an abortion if I
didn’t marry her.” 

            That was what it boiled down to.  Either
marry Melinda, or stand by silently while the life of his child was ended before
it began.

            And that was one thing he could not bring
himself to do.

            “Oh.”  Helen sat back in her chair and
looked at her lap.  “Well, I’ve always said it was the woman’s right to
choose.”

            “It puts a different spin on it when it’s
your blood being chosen, doesn’t it?”

            He and his mother looked at each other for
a long moment.  Tears welled in her eyes as she said, “Luke, you don’t love
her, do you?”

            Luke shook his head slightly.

            “Do you think you can learn to?”

            He chewed his lip.  He’d liked Melinda, at
one point.  Liked her enough to sleep with her, which he didn’t do with every
girl he dated, despite his reputation to the contrary.  They’d laughed a lot. 
She could shoot pool, he knew, and she was a good dancer.  They’d enjoyed
movies together, and even had a fairly interesting discussion about a book
they’d both read.

            It seemed like a fairly decent list, for a
good date.  But for a partner for life?

            Whenever he tried to picture himself
coming home to Melinda, night after night, sitting across the dinner table from
her, waking up next to her…

            They would be like his parents, he thought
with a shock.  Eventually, he and Melinda would look at each other across the
table, realize they were stuck with a person they had no real affection for,
and they would despise each other.  Just as his parents did.

            He’d vowed that he would never do that to
a child.  He’d made the decision long ago that he would not marry, and would
not have kids, to make sure he did not repeat the same mistakes his parents had
made.  They couldn’t stand each other, didn’t belong together, and never had. 
And here he was, poised on the brink of doing exactly the same thing, and he
had no idea how to stop it.

            “I have to,” he said finally.  “I have to
learn to love her.  That’s all there is to it.”

            “And the baby?”

            Luke drew his head back, shocked that she
would even ask.  “Of course I’ll love my own child.”  That one he didn’t have
to think about.  The one bubble of positive feeling in this entire episode, the
bright light he clung to that gave him the slightest hope that everything would
be okay, was this baby.

            With that thought came another, a fainter
light on the horizon that he focused on.  If he loved the baby enough, surely
he could nurse that love, and tend it, and make it grow so that it covered the
mother and the child.  Surely, if he tried hard enough.

            Throughout the previous night and today,
thoughts of Dusty surfaced again and again.   Every time he had himself
convinced, in fact, that he was happy about this impending marriage, Dusty’s
face would appear before him, her strong, nimble hands, her throaty voice, her
bright head bent over her guitar.  And he would wonder how.  How could he even
tell himself he could be married to Melinda, when she wasn’t Dusty.

            He’d never been a good liar.  He couldn’t
lie to himself.  He didn’t love Melinda.  But he wasn’t a child either.  He was
going to marry Melinda.  And he was going to make it work.  He was going to
keep his mouth shut, do right by Melinda and the baby, because they both deserved
the best he had to give.

            “It’s gonna be okay, Ma.  Don’t worry.” 
He stood and bent to hug her where she sat.  He cradled her head in his arms
and kissed the top of her head.  “Everything’s going to be okay.  You’re gonna
be a grandma.”

            Helen laughed and sniffed back her tears. 
“About time, too.  I’m the only one at Bunco night who still carries a rabbit’s
foot for luck instead of grandbaby pictures.”

            “Well, get the camera ready.  This is
going to be one cute kid.”  He patted her as he pulled away.  “Tell Dad I’m
going to feed the dogs.”

            He tried to get to his parents’ house a
couple of times a week to help out with chores and minor repairs.  Though
Claude insisted he could take care of things himself, Luke knew his knees no
longer bent when he told them to, and his back didn’t straighten back like it
once had.  Claude needed the help, whether he admitted it or not.