Johnston - I Promise (17 page)

She couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

But there was so much about him—about the man he had become—that she admired. She had followed his work with
The Chronicle.
His investigative articles were incisive, articulate, insightful. He had seen so much of the world, and done his part to help right wrongs by exposing them to public scrutiny. He was seldom in one place for very long, it seemed, heading from one trouble spot to another.

She had been tempted more than once to contact him, but had chickened out. In the beginning because she wasn’t ready to see him yet, and then because she had learned he had a family. She hadn’t even known she was still harboring a secret desire to marry him until she discovered he was married to some other woman. The news had struck her like a punch in the gut. It had taken her a while to recover. She had finally fallen in love with a Manhattan attorney, Averill Matthews, but it hadn’t worked out. An astute man, A very had figured out her heart wasn’t free to love him.

And Marsh was so lucky to have a daughter . . . who might have been theirs, if fate had not intervened.

Delia tried not to think of might-have-beens. It was unproductive and disheartening. She focused on the facts.

She had a demanding career she loved and wasn’t willing to give up. Marsh had the same. Their lives had no chance of intertwining except intermittently. When her mother no longer needed her, she would return to Brooklyn. When his daughter graduated from high school he would fly away to some trouble spot somewhere. End of story.

At least she had cleared her conscience. At least she had said she was sorry.

Delia frowned. She had heard long ago that the charges against Marsh had been dropped, but she hadn’t investigated how it had happened. She had always assumed it was because she hadn’t been there to testify. But according to Marsh, someone had come to the sheriff’s office and cleared his name.

Why had he brought it up? What was it he wanted her to figure out?

She racked her brain to think of a person who could have known enough to confirm Ray John’s suicide and clear Marsh at the same time. Someone with enough credibility for the sheriff to believe him . . . or her.

Rachel? Rachel hadn’t even known Delia was pregnant. Who else was left?

Mother?

Delia’s arm hairs lifted.

It wasn’t possible. Her mother was the one who had wanted to press charges against Marsh in the first place.

Who better to clear him with the sheriff?

Why would Mother help clear Marsh?

Because she knew the truth.

She didn’t believe me. She called me a liar. She took Ray John’s side.

At first. But she had time later to think about it. Maybe she started to believe you.

Why didn’t she tell me so? Why didn’t she send word to me, asking me to come back home?

Delia rose abruptly from the booth and headed for the hospital waiting room to meet Rachel. She had cast her mother in the role of villain for too long to believe Hattie Carson could have been wearing a white hat all these years. Nor could she believe her mother would have allowed her elder daughter to believe the worst of her for so long without seeking to correct the situation.

“You’d better live, Mother,” Delia muttered under her breath as walked briskly down the hospital corridor. “We have some talking to do when you’re able.”

Delia was stiff when she rose from the waiting room chair to greet Dr. Robbins. It was nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. Several times she had feared something must have gone wrong, but the nurses had assured her the surgery was commencing on schedule. The elderly doctor’s surgical greens were patched with sweat, and clumps of gray hair stood askew where he had pulled off his surgical cap. His shoulders sagged wearily.

“Your mother came through the surgery just fine,” Dr. Robbins said. “She’ll be in recovery for quite a while, and then we’ll keep her sedated so she can rest. You should go home and rest yourself. I’ll have the nurse give you a call when Hattie’s ready for visitors.”

“You’re sure she’s all right?” Delia asked.

“The surgery was a success,” Dr. Robbins said. “But your mother’s heart has some scarring. She’s going to need a lot of help and support in the coming weeks and months.”

“Months?” Delia said. “Doctor, I was only planning to be here a couple of weeks.”

“Then you’d better hire someone to take over for you. Your mother isn’t going to be able to manage the Circle Crown on her own for a long time—if ever again.”

“I thought you said there was only a little scarring from the heart attack,” Delia challenged.

“This isn’t the first attack,” he said.

“What?”

“She had an attack two years ago. That’s when I first recommended the surgery.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” Delia asked.

“I’m not sure I ought to be telling you about it now,” Dr. Robbins said. “Hattie is going to be madder than a wet hen when she finds out. But I like the old bird, and I’d hate to see her try to do too much too soon.”

“If she takes care of herself, is she going to be all right?” Delia asked.

“Her heart will work better after the surgery. But it’s never going to be as strong as it was.”

Delia turned to make eye contact with Rachel, who was on the pay phone in the hall with Cliff. How were they going to get Hattie to slow down? How were they going to find someone they could trust to manage a ranching empire the size of the Circle Crown?

“My sister and I will wait at the ranch to hear from the nurse,” Delia said. “You’ve got the number there?”

“I’m sure we do,” the doctor replied. “Call me if you have any further questions.”

Delia shook his hand. “I will. Thank you, doctor.”

The doctor had left the waiting room by the time Rachel hung up the phone. “What did the doctor say?” Rachel asked.

“Mother’s going to be fine. We’ll be able to see her tomorrow morning.”

“Thank God. I told Cliff Mom wasn’t out of surgery yet, and I had to stay one more day. He wasn’t happy, but he agreed. At least we’ll have one evening together before I have to leave. What do you want to do?”

“I want to go home,” Delia said. She meant to Brooklyn. But that wasn’t possible. “To the Circle Crown,” she clarified, “to shower and change clothes.”

“All right,” Rachel said. ''I’ll follow you in my rental car.”

“Afterward, how about if I buy you dinner at the Amber Sky?” Delia suggested.

“Chocolate chiffon pie for dessert?” Rachel asked with a grin.

Delia laughed. “Sure.”

“You’ve got a deal!”

Delia glanced at her watch as she drove up to the back door of the Circle Crown, pounded the steering wheel as she realized the time, and swore, which did nothing to ease the sudden anxiety she felt. She hopped out of her rental car and waited for Rachel, who had been following her, to pull up beside her in another rental car. She knocked on Rachel’s window, waiting impatiently for the car’s electric system to roll it down.

“It’s 4:00
P.M.
! I had no idea it was so late. I’ve got to call Janet right now if I want to catch her before she leaves for the day.”

“The door’s open,” Rachel said. “It always has been. Make a run for it, Delia. I’m heading upstairs to change into something I can wear to the Amber Sky without looking like a city girl.”

Delia left her sister sitting in her car and hurried inside. The phone call was necessary, but also provided an excuse to go inside without Rachel on her heels asking how it felt to be back, a way to get past the first awkward moments home with her attention focused on something else besides the home she had left twenty years before.

But even the smells were familiar—tamales in the kitchen as she passed through, and after twenty years, gunpowder in the hall as she passed her father’s gun room. That had to be her imagination, but the odor was sharp enough to pinch her nostrils. Memories were hard to shake.

She headed for the phone in her mother’s office. That room had the fewest memories, but also the worst ones. She hadn’t expected them to bombard her from the doorway.

It was as though time had stood still. She saw her mother sitting at her desk writing checks, and herself standing in the doorway scared to death, needing to tell her mother of Ray John’s perfidy.

She remembered the mild irritation in her mother’s glance when Delia interrupted her, and the dawning horror as Delia said, in soft, halting words, what she had come to say.

Her mother had risen from her chair, her face splotched with red, the whites of her eyes visible, and headed toward her. Delia had been expecting comfort. She had gotten a vicious slap instead.

“Liar! Take back those filthy lies!”

Reeling from the slap, she had protested, “I’m not lying, Mama!”

Her mother had grabbed her hair and yanked hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. “It’s that North boy. He’s the one who’s been doing these things to you. He’s the one who got you pregnant, and you need someone else to blame for behaving like a slut. Well, I won’t have it! Marsh North can’t help himself to my daughter and get away with it. I’m calling the sheriff. I’ll have that boy arrested.”

“It wasn’t Marsh,” she said, hanging on to her hair close to her scalp, trying to ease the pain, numb with disbelief. “It was Daddy. And it isn’t only me he’s been bothering. It’s Rachel, too.”

Her mother’s eyes had narrowed in fury. “You wicked, loathsome child! Take back those filthy, disgusting lies!” The spittle had flown from her mother’s mouth, landing on her face.

Delia wiped at it now. But her face was dry. She rubbed at her scalp, at the spot where the hair had nearly been yanked out. But that was remembered pain.

Her heart thundered in her chest. The room was empty. All that had happened long ago. She located the phone on the desk, forced herself to cross to it, and punched in the number for her office in New York with trembling fingers.

“Janet,” she said. “I’m glad you’re still there.”

Nothing much new was going on, except the
Times
had called to confirm some statistics.

“What kind of statistics?” Delia asked, sliding into her mother’s chair behind the desk.

“Number of trials scheduled, number of pleas granted, that sort of thing,” Janet said. “Said they’d been in touch with the DA and he had given them numbers and did you have anything different.”

Delia rubbed at the wrinkles in her brow. What was the
Times
after? Had they called Sam Dietrich, or had Sam called them? Frank’s warning came back to her.

Watch your back, Delia.

What the hell was going on? There wasn’t much Sam could do to her. She hadn’t done anything that wasn’t by the book. Except she had a few more trials scheduled than the other judges. Delia’s mouth curled wryly. About twice as many, to be exact. That might be unusual, but there wasn’t anything
wrong
with it. So where was the
Times
headed?

“The
Times
reporter still wants to talk to you. Do you want me to give him your number in Texas?” Janet asked.

Delia wanted to know what was going on, but she expected to be at the hospital most of the time for the next few days, and if the reporter didn’t reach her by phone, knowing reporters, he would show up on her doorstep. “No. I’d rather not have him hounding me here.”

She hung up the phone, picked up a pencil, and nervously rapped it against the old oak desk. Her stomach was churning. She wondered where she could get hold of a copy of tomorrow’s
Times
in Uvalde. Not that she expected to see her name in print, but it couldn’t hurt to keep her eye on the damned thing.

She sighed and pushed herself upright. Maybe that churning in her stomach had something to do with not having eaten much of anything for twenty-four hours. She was hungry. The Amber Sky beckoned.

Chapter Ten

The Amber Sky was almost full when they arrived. It looked smaller than Delia remembered. She eyed an old codger wearing a sweat-stained white straw hat and scuffed cowboy boots who had a toothpick hanging from the corner of his mouth. At least the crowd was the same.

The single fan in the ceiling was turning, but despite the closed orange blinds, the air-conditioning unit was struggling vainly to counter the heat of the setting sun.

The cafe had a familiar feel that made Delia think she had come home at last. She wished Peggy Voorhees hadn’t moved away to California. She could have used another friend in town. The people she and Rachel passed on the way to their table either avoided her eyes completely or gave her a too-effusive greeting. She was home, all right.

They ended up at a table near the back of the cafe that gave them some privacy. Delia ordered chicken-fried steak smothered in white gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans, with iced tea to drink, and Rachel said, “Make it two.”

“I’m so glad Cliff didn’t insist I catch the five o'clock flight today. I’ve missed talking with you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” Delia said.

“I hope Cliff doesn’t create a scene when I tell him I’m serious about a divorce. What if he won’t let me leave?”

Delia gave her sister a stern look. “He can’t lock you in.”

“He can get a restraining order to keep me from taking Scott,” Rachel said. “He threatened to do it once before when I said I was leaving him.”

“On what basis? Have you abused Scott?”

“Heavens no!”

“Neglected him?”

“No.”

“Any excessive use of drugs or alcohol?”

Rachel remained silent. She turned to stare out the window at the traffic on Highway 90. Delia had to admit it was a better choice than the godawful blue-green wall over the counter.

“Rachel?”

Rachel glanced at her with wary eyes. “I . . . I’ve been on medication for a while, Delia. For depression. Prozac, actually.”

Delia made a small moaning sound.

“And some pills to help me sleep.”

“You take sleeping pills?”

Rachel nodded. “I’ve also been seeing someone, a psychiatrist. A while back . . . before Scott . . . I took a bottle of pills.”