Dream Country (21 page)

Alma’s eyes were oddly flat, but seeing Louisa’s emotion, she reached over and patted Louisa’s hand.

“It’s very hard, in times of illness,” she said. “When the people we love are laid low.”

“It is,” Louisa gasped. “Oh, it is.”

“Tammy and Todd speak very highly of you.”

Wiping her eyes, Louisa thanked her. They discussed salary, and Alma’s expression brightened when she heard the exact amount. Louisa said she’d want Alma to live in, for at least as long as it took Dalton to get on his feet. She might be very shy, Louisa thought. That could explain her initial dullness. Suddenly Alma seemed warm and friendly. Her dark eyes darted around the kitchen, taking everything in.

“You didn’t mention any names I recognize,” Louisa said. “I hope you won’t mind, but I’d like to check your references. Nothing personal, of course—”

“I don’t mind,” Alma said quickly. “But I don’t know many people around here. I’m from the other side of Dubois. I’ve hardly even been here to visit.”

“Except to see your sister?”

“That’s right,” Alma said. “Tammy and Todd have such a nice house. It’s a showplace, compared to my old . . . oh, never mind. I don’t want to get complaining about my sorry old life. It’s just fine, it really is.”

“So, assuming your references check out, you’ll take the job?”

“I will,” Alma said, flashing the closest thing to a real smile Louisa had seen. They shook hands, and Louisa told her what the doctors had said: that Dalton could return home in a few days. He would need physical therapy, but Louisa had arranged for someone else to come in for that.

Outside, Daisy came loping into view. She sat atop Scout, the old mare’s gait livelier than Louisa had seen it in many years. Daisy’s cheeks were rosy, her coppery hair streaming out in back. The snow was deep, but James had plowed out tracks and trails for riding.

Alma watched Daisy too, a slight frown on her face. “Does she live here?”

“She’s visiting,” Louisa said, not wanting to explain the relationships. It caused her embarrassment—pain—to have to say Daisy was Dalton’s daughter-in-law but not her own. “Don’t worry—your duties won’t involve anything but taking care of Dalton. I’m not going to hire you for one thing and expect you to pitch in everywhere else.”

“It’s just, she looks familiar,” Alma said.

Louisa didn’t reply. There had been so much publicity back when Jake had disappeared. Maybe Alma recognized Daisy from the news accounts—the TV stations and newspapers had plastered her all over the airwaves and front pages. Thirteen years had passed, but Daisy looked pretty much the same—even the worry was the same, only now it was for Sage.

Daisy waved at the house, then cantered toward the barn. Alma watched her disappear inside; when she turned back to Louisa, her blank eyes flickered with something like worry. She said she had to leave, to get home and put her husband’s supper on the table.

Louisa had said good-bye, grateful she didn’t have a man in her life who’d make her worry like that. The strange thing was, she’d gotten the feeling that maybe Alma was having second thoughts. That if she could have, she would have withdrawn her offer to work on the DR Ranch, taking care of Dalton Tucker.

The most bizarre thing of all, Louisa thought as she watched Alma drive away, was that seeing Daisy had had something to do with it.

Chapter Twenty-One

T
he snowstorm was followed by several days of brilliant sunshine, and by the time the doctors had okayed Dalton to continue his recuperation at home, the snow was melting away. James went with Louisa to drive him back. Picking her up at the main house, he saw Daisy standing on the front steps, waving as they pulled out. She was wearing tight blue jeans and a soft yellow sweater. Staring, James nearly drove the Suburban into a fencepost.

“It’s sure nice having Daisy here again,” Louisa said.

James fought to concentrate. A photographic image of Daisy waving, of her curves backlit by the morning sun, had imprinted itself onto the backs of James’s eyelids.

“You’re sure Dad’s ready to come home?” he asked instead.

“Of course I’m sure. You think I’d bring him home if it was the wrong thing to do?”

“No, Louisa, I don’t,” James said, calmly.

“Well, thank you. My God—” she sputtered.

James couldn’t help smiling. As much as she brought out the devil in him, he brought out the worst in her. They sped along the highway that traversed a quarter of DR ranch land. The Wind River mountains rose to the west, snow-covered peaks soaring into the blue sky. He hoped Sage, wherever she was, was seeing this sunny day. It was a hundred percent better than picturing her in the storm.

Three times on the way, Louisa told him he’d have to take care of Dalton’s paperwork. “I’m not authorized, you know,” she said. “Only a wife or a family member is able to sign.”

“What about Dad?” James asked finally, wondering what she was getting at. “He can sign for himself, can’t he?”

“They’re going to have him sedated for the ride home,” Louisa said. “Maybe we should have hired an ambulance to drive him—I don’t want him bouncing around back there.”

“I’m driving my father home,” James said.

Louisa sighed, but she didn’t argue. She knew that James hardly ever left the ranch for any reason. A beer at the Stagecoach, a trip to the grain store—that was about it. But that morning, he and Paul had washed the big ranch wagon. They’d folded the back seats down, placed a thick bunk mattress in the cargo space. Daisy had brought out quilts and pillows. Making up the bed, her hand had brushed James’s.

He wondered if maybe they were both thinking the same thing—about the time they’d taken the kids to the rodeo in Cheyenne. A whole caravan of ranch families had headed down for the two-day fair. They had camped out, barbecued together, watched Paul and James compete in the team roping event. Driving home, the twins had slept on a mattress in the back of the Ford wagon.

James had held Daisy’s hand almost the whole way home to the ranch while she’d kept his trophy on her lap. Halfway there, just past midnight with a full moon painting the mountains and range with white light, James had stopped the car. He’d walked around the front, opened Daisy’s door, lifted her in his arms. It was summertime, and the air was hot and dry. The land was bright as day under the moonlight, and he’d carried his wife through the sagebrush to a spot twenty yards from the car.

“We can’t leave the kids,” she’d whispered into his neck.

“We’ll hear them if they wake up.”

“And they’ll hear us—”

“I’m the rodeo champion—I want my own way.” James laughed, kissing her hard, sliding his hands down her full body.

“Then you’ll get it—” Daisy said, undoing his big brass buckle. They pulled each other down on the ground, undressing each other as they went. The ground was hot and dry, but James had spread his shirt so Daisy wouldn’t get dirty. Back then, the feeling for each other would be so wild and intense, they’d stop everything to be together. Her body was pearl-white in the moonlight, her nipples dark and sweet.

James tensed up, thinking about it now. The kids had been two at the time. They hadn’t woken up. For the rest of the drive home, holding Daisy’s hand with the windows open, James had smelled the musk of their bodies mingled with the spicy scent of sage swirling through the car. His thighs had ached, and all he’d been able to think about was loving her again the minute they got home.

He still couldn’t look at that old rodeo trophy—a gold-plated cowboy on a rearing horse—without remembering the burn in his thighs, the smell of that night, Daisy’s eyes full of mischief in the moonlight.

“You sign your father out,” Louisa directed now, as they pulled into the hospital lot. “And I’ll make sure he’s ready.”

“Whatever you say.” James wanted to get home fast. He wanted his father safely installed in bed, and he wanted to be there with Daisy, in case . . . He heard Louisa’s bitterness, her unspoken gripe about being Dalton’s mistress and not his wife, but James had never considered that his problem. He’d let his feelings be known long ago, when he was just a boy missing his mother. Dalton was his own man; he’d had decades to propose if he wanted to. Shaking off Louisa’s guilt trip, James went into the office.

Finally—papers filled out and Dalton in a wheelchair—they were ready to go. Louisa held Dalton’s hand while James pushed the chair. He was shocked by his father’s pallor, by the fact he’d lost so much weight. When Dalton talked, his voice sounded light and weak.

“What a good son,” Dalton said. “Coming all this way to drive me home.”

“I felt bad, not visiting you,” James said. “But—”

“I know, I know,” his father said. “You had the roundup, and you wanted to keep an eye out for Sage.”

Louisa let out a huge exhalation, and she dropped Dalton’s hand.

“Louisa!” Dalton called, but she didn’t turn around. “What’s she mad about?” he asked James.

“I don’t know,” James said.

“Louisa . . .”

She just walked faster. James couldn’t imagine what was eating her—getting temperamental at a time like this. James watched her walk ahead, arms held tight around her chest as if she might fall apart. Dalton’s head nodded from side to side—the effort of transport from hospital to car, coupled with Louisa’s bad mood, too much for him.

With the back cargo doors open, James bent down. He had never done this before—picked his father up. Slinging Dalton’s arm around his neck, he slid his arms under the old man. Dalton rested his head against James’s, and for a second James went back to the days with his son. Jake had done the same thing—touched his temple against James’s when James would pick him up.

“Ready?” James asked. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry,” Dalton said weakly.

Carefully, James transferred his father from the chair to the mattress. Dalton clenched his teeth, but he didn’t cry out. As James covered him with the quilts Daisy had supplied, Dalton’s face was pale and set. By the time they hit the highway, he was asleep. Driving, James kept quiet as long as he could. He looked across the front seat, saw Louisa fixing her hair with a comb.

“What was that about back there?” James asked. “In the parking lot?”

“Nothing,” Louisa said.

“Didn’t look like nothing. What were you thinking of, getting him upset when he has this ride ahead of him?”

“Getting him upset . . .” she began.

“Yeah. What were you—”

“Do you ever think, James, that I might be upset?”

“He’s the one coming home from the hospital—”

“He’s the one, she’s the one.” Louisa tried to laugh, but her voice was full of tears. “That’s how you think, isn’t it?”

James just gripped the steering wheel, not hearing anything she had to say right then.

“In families, there is no ‘he’s the one,’ ” Louisa said. “When one person suffers, everyone does. Your father’s pain is my pain.”

“I never doubt that you care about him.”

“No, you just doubt that I’m good enough to be his wife. And now, with the Alzheimer’s, he’s started forgetting who I am. Forgets my name and thinks your mother’s still alive. Think that doesn’t hurt me?”

“He does?” James asked with a start.

“Just sometimes. Recently. He knows I’m his sweet Louisa. In his heart he does and always will.”

James glanced in the rearview mirror. His father lay flat on his back, the white quilt pulled up to his chin. He hadn’t moved, and for an instant the quilt looked like a blanket of snow. James remembered the snow falling on his mother’s body as he tried to pull her out. So many years ago: It surprised him to hear what Louisa was saying.

“He calls you by my mother’s name?” James asked.

“Yes, he does. Once in a while. But you don’t want to hear what I have to say, do you?”

“Tell me,” James said, trying to be patient. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

“He’s the one coming home from the hospital,” Louisa said, “but it affects me, too. I love him.”

“I know.”

“I have to watch him learn to walk all over again. I have to open our home to a live-in aide, get used to a stranger at our breakfast table. When I sing at the Stagecoach—” She twisted the handkerchief into a tight ball. “I have to get used to him not being there. I want his arms around me. James . . . I still want him so much!”

“I’m sorry,” James said, shocked by the force of emotion.

“Old age can go to hell!” Louisa shouted.

“Rrrrr . . .” Dalton mumbled in his sleep.

“You’re not old,” James said.

“I’m old enough to know more than you do,” Louisa said. “So listen, and listen good. Get it the hell out of your head, this business about ‘my part and your part, I’m the one and you’re the one.’ ”

“You mean with—”

“With Daisy! You’re
both
the one—you loved your babies and she loved your babies. You’re worried sick about Sage and
she’s
worried sick about Sage. For right now, till that girl gets herself home safe, you and Daisy are family. You’re in this together.”

James held the wheel. He wanted to snap, to tell Louisa to stay out of it, to tell her about the mutilated cattle, the pictures—he was trying to protect Daisy and Sage, the same as he’d always wanted to do. But she just kept talking.

“You don’t know the first thing about staying together.”

“I what?”

“You blew your own world apart. After Jake got lost.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You felt unworthy,” Louisa said, suddenly sounding exhausted. “I saw it—we all did. You thought you lost your son, you might as well drive off your whole family. But there wasn’t any talking to you then. You were determined to bear the whole weight yourself.”

“Jesus Christ—” James muttered, glaring at the road.

“And the weight wasn’t all yours to bear,” Louisa finished.

She didn’t say anything more. The land slid by, snow-covered peaks and pastures melting down to rocks and mud. James looked up at the blue sky, saw a flock of geese coming down to land. They angled down, an arrow pointed at the earth. James saw the lake, wide and blue. A thin layer of ice had formed, but the lead goose broke through with his landing; the others followed safely behind.

“Rosalind . . .” Dalton called from the backseat.

James glanced across at Louisa, to see what she would do. An hour ago, he might have felt happy to hear his father say his mother’s name. But right now, he felt sorry for the woman sitting beside him.

“Rosalind . . .” his father said again, his frail voice plaintive and afraid.

Louisa half turned in her seat. Then, unbuckling her seat belt, she got up on her knees and reached back to take Dalton’s hand.

“I’m right here, darling,” she whispered. “Don’t you fear—I’m with you all the way.”

James watched the geese in the lake as long as he could. Then, both eyes on the road, he drove his father and Louisa due south, straight home to the DR Ranch.

David and Sage had run out of money, so they stopped at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere and signed on to wash dishes for a few nights. In return, they got minimum wage, plus lodging in a ramshackle bunkhouse out back. Sage was amazed by the fact that no one asked questions: They didn’t have to give their names, addresses, or Social Security numbers. They were just shown the kitchen and told not to break anything.

While David scrubbed the big roasting pans, Sage loaded plates and glasses into the dishwasher. She was glad to stop moving for a little while. Wearing an apron, she pretended she was the mother and she was cleaning up after a very big family. She imagined it was a holiday—Thanksgiving, maybe—and she had just cooked a turkey for Ben, their son, her brother Jake, her parents, and Aunt Hathaway.

That made her homesick, more than she’d felt since leaving Silver Bay. A telephone hung on the wall, and every time she went near it to grab another stack of dirty dishes, she felt a pang in her heart. She hadn’t called home once. Thinking of it hurt too much; she’d hear her mother’s voice and go to pieces. Her mother would talk her into flying back east, and she’d never get to see her father. Sage would miss her chance to get to know the man who’d given her life.

“What’s your dad like?” she asked David.

“He’s nice,” David said. “He has a nice twinkle in his eye, and he spends his days petting the dogs and smoking a pipe. I love him a lot.”

“You do?” Sage asked, beaming.

“No.”

Sage’s heart fell. She never knew when David was kidding her. When it came to his home and family, it was best to assume that when he said something good, he was being sarcastic. But Sage wanted to know the truth.