Double Wedding Ring (19 page)

Malorie was instantly infected with Maxine's enthusiasm. “That's wonderful.”

“Yes. Indeed it is. Perhaps you would like to help with the angels.” Maxine's eyes swept the vestibule as she put her hand on Malorie's elbow to steer her toward the stairs to the Fellowship Hall. Her eyes lit on Sam, then she turned back to Malorie. “Or perhaps you are needed up here, after all. Would you mind terribly helping Sam? It occurs to me that two adults are needed to keep one impulsive child from creating disaster with strings of lights.”

Malorie drew a deep breath, nodded and walked over to Sam. When he looked up, the patience in his eyes turned to pleasure.

“Rex, I think we're in luck,” Sam said. “A woman. Did you know that women have a real gift when it comes to straightening out the messes men make?”

Rex looked up at them skeptically. “Nobody told me that before.”

Malorie smiled. “He's exaggerating. Women do a pretty good job of making a mess of things, too.”

But she sat down on the floor beside Rex. “Now, let's see what we've got here.” She began guiding his small fingers in the task of untangling the lights.

“I'm glad you came,” Sam said, beginning the same task on the other end of the strand.

“Me, too,” she said. She wanted to tell him that she'd decided not to be a coward any longer. But all she could do was look into his eyes. And from the way he looked back at her, she believed he understood even though she couldn't say a word.

B
ETSY HELD
C
ODY TIGHTLY
because he persisted in squirming. Malorie insisted he should be allowed to walk whenever they went out, but Betsy knew keeping the two-and-a-half-year-old under control would be impossible if she let him out of her arms.

A tiny voice inside her head asked if it would be so terrible if the toddler
did
head off in a dozen directions. Betsy ignored that voice.

“Keep still,” she said for the umpteenth time since she had bundled the two of them up and headed out the door.

“Wanna pway wif Tag,” Cody whined. “Pwease, okay?”

“Not today,” Betsy snapped, irritated to realize that the man had even managed to charm an innocent child. “Just be still.”

“Down,” the little boy commanded.

“Not yet.”

Then when?
came the voice.

Betsy pursed her lips and continued determinedly down the sidewalk.

She was taking her grandson to the park, although her thoughts kept straying to the Finley house—now the McKenzie house to most folks in Sweetbranch—just around the corner on Dixie Belle Lane. They could stop by there first to see if Jake wanted to play.

Impatient with her thinly veiled self-deception, Betsy pulled Cody's knit cap farther down on his head. If she detoured down Dixie Belle Lane, it wouldn't be to inquire if young Jake could come out to play. It would be to see Jacob Finley. Surely she could be that honest with herself. Jacob's criticism had struck her to the core. He thought her manipulative and nosy and Lord only knows what else.

Of course, Jacob's assessment of her had hurt all the more since Thanksgiving Day, when it seemed that her entire family had turned on her, wagging their accusing fingers and passing the same judgment as Jacob Finley had.

She might
be
manipulative, she told herself. But didn't she have an
obligation
to see to the happiness and well-being of her children and grandchildren? She looked down at the pouting toddler held tightly in her arms. Wasn't Cody a prime example? Wasn't he better off than he might have been? Weren't they all, whether they had enough gratitude to admit it or not?

She had reached the corner without reaching a decision.

“Well,” she muttered. “I'm no coward. Never have been.”

So she turned onto Dixie Belle Lane, marched right up to the Finley house, opened the gate and knocked on the front door.

She heard the thunder of a toddler running to the door. Cody wiggled around, looking for the source of the sound. The sound of Jacob's approach was more halting. Betsy's heart began to pound a little harder. The front door creaked open and Jacob stood there, frowning out at her.

“For heaven's sake, Jacob, have you even combed your hair this morning?” she said, hoping her strident tone covered her breathlessness.

His frown deepened. “Dad blast it, woman, if I wanted to be nagged, I'da married a long time ago.”

“You probably should have. Might've kept you civilized.”

“Might not,” he countered.

“I brought Cody to play.”

“Fine. Fine.” He pushed the screen door open. “Bring him in. We'll turn ‘em loose in the backyard.”

Hesitating, Betsy bent to set Cody down. The two little boys were off in a flash, chattering away in a language Betsy couldn't decipher. She remained standing in the doorway.

“You coming in or you just gonna stand there and let the flies in?”

Betsy saw no point in reminding Jacob there were few flies to worry about in early December. “I can come back for the boy later.”

Although where she would go, she couldn't have said. Ever since Thanksgiving, she felt like a pariah in her own house. Everyone shunned her. And Tag was there now, for another lesson on that foolish computer of his.

“Suit yourself,” Jacob said, stepping onto the porch. But as Betsy backed away and started to turn, he said, “Got some fresh coffee. In case you need a little warm-up before you head back.”

Betsy weighed the disapproval and isolation awaiting her at home against the bickering and companionship awaiting in the Finley kitchen. “You have cream?”

Jacob shook his head. “Skim milk. Rose is the boss.”

She didn't like the idea of skim milk, but she understood the importance of a woman making the rules in her own home. “Fine. But none of that powdered stuff.”

* * *

“I
T'S TOO EASY NOW
,” Susan said as the computer once again sounded a cheerful “Good job!” The commendation was growing monotonous; she longed for one of the silly sounds that signaled an error. She pushed away from the keyboard. “I want harder ones.”

Tag smiled and kissed her on the nose. “Good! I...I have to be out of town a couple of days, anyway. I can pick them up then.”

His eyes flickered when he spoke of being away, and Susan wondered where he was going. What he would do. She longed to ask but wasn't sure such questions were appropriate. Would it be nosy? Would asking make her like Betsy? She kept quiet.

“Sit with me in the love seat?” Tag asked. She nodded, and he picked her up and took her onto the side porch. She cuddled against him and he pulled an afghan over them for warmth.

“I wish—” She hesitated. Wishing was pointless.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me. Don't you know you can tell me anything?”

“I wish we had the quilt to cover up with.”

“I know.”

“I wish things had gone exactly the way we planned them.” She buried her head more deeply into the crook of his shoulder, found the place where she could hear his heartbeat.

“Then there would be no Malorie,” he reminded her, dropping a kiss as light as butterfly wings on the top of her head. “No Cody. I wouldn't want that.”

“You like them.”

“I like them a lot,” he said. “Malorie's a bright, funny girl. And Cody—well, Cody's great fun.”

Misgivings flashed through Susan's mind. She felt the same way, sometimes, when she watched Tag playing with the boy. She remembered Tag's delight Thanksgiving afternoon, when Cody insisted on learning how to climb a tree. Tag guided the boy up the trunk of a young dogwood, one hand lifting his bottom, the other showing him which little fist to move where. Tag made sure Cody got credit for “climbing” the tree, while keeping the adventure perfectly safe. In the days since, Tag and Cody had shared more than one adventure. Cody wouldn't leave Tag alone, and Tag seemed to welcome his company.

The first time she'd seen them together, Susan had felt warmed by their bonding. But the closer they grew, the more her anxiety grew. Something bothered her, and she couldn't put her finger on what.

“I've always wanted a son,” Tag whispered, and the words shot through Susan like an alarm. Tag must've felt her reaction, for he said, “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Just a shiver.”

And the truth was, she didn't know what was wrong. She only knew that the alarms were growing louder. Worries she had put out of her mind were crowding forward. “The racing sounds exciting.”

She didn't really want to hear about it, but it was the first thing that came to mind to distract her from the unnamed worries filling her head.

“Nah. Not really. Damn foolishness, mostly. Like a lot of the stuff I did.”

“Why did you do it?”

He was silent, and she wondered what thoughts whirled around in his head. Sometimes it seemed to her that other people had just as much trouble as she did sorting through their thoughts, figuring out what was what.

“Is it fun?” she prodded.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Yeah, I guess it's kinda fun. You're moving fast, taking chances, just skirting the edge of danger.”

Susan closed her eyes and tried to imagine that being fun. She couldn't, quite. “Did you ever get hurt?”

He laughed. “Oh, yeah. Remind me to point out all my scars sometime.”

Her anxiety grew. He had lived in a world she not only hadn't shared, but couldn't even imagine. “Tell me more. Tell me a story.”

“Why?”

“Because. I want to feel like I was there.”

She heard the reluctance in his voice as he launched into a story about the year he spent on the rodeo circuit. He started out downplaying the excitement and the danger. The travel in his battered trailer was monotonous, the work hot and brutal. He spent most of his time sweaty and dusty and bruised. But, eyes closed, concentrating only on his voice, Susan heard his tone change as he talked about riding the bull, about holding on for dear life and feeling the charge high in his throat when he went flailing through the air, never sure whether or not the landing would be a safe one. Excitement crept into his voice. She could almost feel the currents sparking off his skin.

“What a wonderful life,” she whispered.

“It might sound glamorous,” he said. “But it's not. It's just something you do to keep your mind off the things you really want. You know, family and a house and a puppy like Butch.”

They laughed as Cody's puppy twitched an ear from his sunny spot in the corner. But Susan wondered if Tag was being totally truthful. He didn't sound convinced, somehow. Susan wondered again how she could ever hope to keep up with that kind of life-style. How could she ever recover enough for that?

“Why did you do it, really?” she asked.

“Sometimes I think I just didn't give a damn. You know, if I battered and bruised this sorry hide, who would care?” He raised her chin and looked into her eyes. “But that was before.”

“Before what?”

His eyes were dark with emotion. “Before you came back. Before I realized there is something to live for, after all.”

She kissed him back when he lowered his lips to hers. But she didn't believe him. She was certain he was only saying it so she wouldn't worry. He loved the excitement, and she had no way of sharing it with him. Where did that leave them?

The nagging fear stayed with her for days, although she did all she could to hide it from Tag and even from Malorie, who always seemed to show up after work in time to talk with Sam. One day the two young people even walked by the creek together in the lowering dusk, stirring hope and relief in Susan's heart. Perhaps her forebodings about Malorie were nothing, after all, just more of the irrational fear that her jumbled-up brain insisted on inflicting upon her. Fear that had been fed by her mother's sour outlook.

Even the absence of Betsy's carping did little to ease Susan's mind, however. Betsy moved briskly from room to room, never pausing long if anyone else was around, speaking only when necessary. Susan's heart hurt for her mother, even as she hurt for her own losses.

On the day that Tag left town, Susan's fear grew from an insidious whisper into a screaming monster consuming every empty corner of her mind.

“Where are you going?” she had asked, despite her resolution not to pry.

“I have some business,” he'd said, and that was all.

She'd listened to him roar off on his motorcycle in the early hours of the morning. She lay in bed and closed her eyes and tried to feel the wind in her hair, on her cheeks, tugging at her sleeves, the way he must be feeling it. She tried to feel the graceful dip and curve of the machine as it took every bend in the road, a fluid sensation that Tag had tried to describe. She tried to see the open road leading anywhere, everywhere.

When she opened her eyes, she was still trapped in the house, her room, her chair.

“My body,” she whispered to herself.

She told herself that if Tag needed time to himself to pursue the active interests he couldn't share with her, she shouldn't begrudge him that time. But jealousy and fear won out over her generous nature, and she spent most of the day steeped in self-pity.

Tag was back two days later, in time for Malorie's birthday. He and Sam and Susan and Cody spent the afternoon decorating, planning to surprise Malorie when she came in from work. Betsy baked a cake without being asked, but excused herself from the festivities when Tag exclaimed, “Coconut cake! My favorite! I don't know when I've had a coconut cake. Thanks, Betsy.”

Her only acknowledgment was a curt nod.

But Susan and Tag were determined that Betsy wouldn't put a damper on Malorie's twenty-second birthday. A crepe-paper garland and metallic confetti and pink-and-white-striped candles transformed the bare dining room. They invited Rose McKenzie, Addy Mayfield and Maxine Hammond. When those three brought their broods, the house was suddenly full of children and laughter and Susan thought there was no way to avoid having fun.

When Malorie walked in the front door, they all jumped out of the dining room and shouted “Surprise!”

“I always wanted to do that,” Susan told Tag as they watched the cake being cut at the kitchen table.

“Then, I'm glad we did it.”

“Me, too.”

After the cake, the children ran out into the yard to play, the older children charged with keeping a watchful eye on the younger ones. A few presents were opened and everyone sat around talking and making jokes. Susan thought she'd never felt anything so happy, so friendly. So normal.

“I remember when you were born,” Susan said, happy in the memory.

“Oh, tell us,” Addy said wistfully. “I love new baby stories.”

Malorie smiled. “I wasn't eager to get here, was I?”

“No. Thirty-four hours in labor.” Her daughter's smile spoke of shared memories, filling Susan with a quiet joy. She supposed she had told the story before and was glad for yet another sign that she and Malorie had been close. It had been different since the accident, but she hoped they would be close again. “I threatened to send you back, but they told me it was too late.”

Rose groaned. “And I thought Jake took forever. Thirteen hours sounds like a breeze compared to thirty-four.”