Life After Wife (3 page)

“That’s what I mean. You got a problem with that? We will split up the house. There’re four bedrooms. I’ll take two. You can have two. I get half of the kitchen and half the dining room. I’ll take the den. You can have the living room. What do we do about the deck? Duct tape it down the middle?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought you’d stay in the bunkhouse until I paid you off.”

Elijah chuckled. “Thinking will get you in trouble every time.”

“You
are
a smart ass, aren’t you?”

“That would be the pot calling the kettle black, now wouldn’t it? You can stay in the bunkhouse if you don’t want to live with me. I snore. I get up at five o’clock every morning, and I’m not quiet. I rattle pots and pans while I’m cooking breakfast. I go for a run after I eat, and I come back all sweaty and stinky. You don’t like any of the above, you go to the bunkhouse, darlin’,” he said.

“Don’t call me that. If it’s an endearment, you don’t have the right. If it’s sarcasm, save it for someone who gives a…” Sophie stopped herself. He wasn’t going to make her swear another time this early in the game.

“Who ticked you off this morning?” he asked.

“An egotistical fool named Elijah Jones,” she told him.

He pointed at his chest. “Not me. I don’t like you well enough for that.”

“Believe me, the feeling is mutual. Before this goes any further, I will give you double what your half is worth,” she said.

“Not interested. But if you’ll move out of my doorway, I
am
hungry. I smelled fried chicken when I came in the door, so I’m going to eat. When you get ready to sell, let me know. Until then I won’t badger you with offers,” he said.

Sophie stepped to one side. “I will write you a check for one million dollars anytime you’ve had enough, and,
darlin’
, I can afford it. You let me know when you are ready to get on your expensive toy out there and ride out of Baird. Are you an idiot? This is a ranch, not a commune for worn-out Hells Angels.”

“In six months we’ll see who is an idiot,” he said.

She let him have the last word. She’d given him a figure to boggle his little military mind. If that wasn’t enough, she’d go to the bank. It was more than simply wanting to live on the ranch now. It had become a war, and after losing the last one with her sanctimonious, two-timin’, preacher husband, she wasn’t conceding one inch of her precious ranch to Elijah.

She marched back into the dining room where the table had been spread buffet style, and folks were helping themselves. Elijah was already visiting with Hart and Theron.

Traitors!

Tandy, an old friend of Maud’s, took her by the arm and led her to the table. “Come and eat, sweetheart.”

She whispered as they waited in line, “That Elijah sure grew up to be a handsome man. You’ll have to be very careful living in this house with him on a permanent basis. You realize he’s not really kin, and there could be talk.”

“Tandy, you don’t have a thing to worry about. He’s not staying long enough to be a threat. I’m buying him out. And, yes, I know we are not blood kin, but believe me when I tell you that I’m flat-out not interested,” Sophie said.

Tandy put a chicken leg and potato salad on a plate before handing it to Sophie. “You can add more to that, but you’re going to eat that much or listen to me fuss at you. You’re too thin, girl. Long legs like you got should have some meat on them.”

“Are you changing the subject?” Sophie asked.

“I’m old as Maud was, darlin’. I see things a lot different than you young’uns do. So, yes, I’m changing the subject. This ain’t no time for me and you to argue. But if you think you’re going to run Elijah off or pay him off, sweetheart, you’ve got horse feathers for brains. That man has come home just like you did last year. Now, I’m going on over here and havin’ a visit with Kate’s momma. I don’t get to see her nearly often enough,” Tandy said.

Sophie wrapped her fingers around Tandy’s arm. “If he’s come home, then why didn’t he come around while she was sick and help take care of her? If he loved this place so much and it wasn’t just dollar signs to him, where was he this whole past year?”

“Ask him, not me. Elijah would have his reasons. It’s the only year he didn’t come see her, and most of the time he came around two or three times a year,” Tandy said.

Fancy motioned for Sophie to follow her. “We’ve set up out on the deck. Come on out and join us. Tina has saved you a seat.”

Tandy’s old eyes twinkled in a bed of wrinkles. “Go on. We’ll take this up later.”

Sophie added a deviled egg to her plate and followed Fancy out to the deck.

“You waddle,” she told Fancy.

“Are you picking a fight? I’m pregnant. All pregnant women walk like ducks. It’s the forward momentum. Besides, I’m short and—why am I telling you all this? I don’t have to explain to you, even if I do love you like a sister. What did that man say to you back in the hallway? You came out of there ready to chew up railroad spikes and spit out staples,” Fancy said.

Sophie grimaced when she noticed that Elijah was already seated at the table with the rest of her friends. “I’ll tell you later. Why did y’all invite him to sit with us?”

“Hart did it. Shoot him, not me,” Fancy said.

“Why would he do that?” Sophie hissed.

“Hart’s known him for a long time, and Elijah is Superman, Batman, and God all rolled up into one being. I ain’t never seen Hart so happy to see a feller in my life.”

“That’s just great,” Sophie said.

Elijah looked up. “What’s so great?”

“Nothing you would understand,” Sophie said.

“Hey, Sophie, do you know who your better half is?” Hart asked.

She bristled and blushed at the same time. “What did you say?”

“Just a pun on words. You two each get half the ranch, so he’s your better half and you are his,” Hart chuckled.

Sophie set her plate on the table and melted into the chair. She’d expected it to be one of the most difficult days in her life. Putting Aunt Maud to rest and having the full responsibility of the ranch on her shoulders would be tough. But then toss Elijah into the mix, and it turned into her worst nightmare.
“I don’t know anything about Mr. Jones other than he was Uncle Jesse’s great-nephew.”

His blue eyes clashed with hers across the table. “Don’t call me Mr. Jones. It’s Eli to my friends. You can call me Elijah until you get to know me better.”

She rudely ignored him. “You were saying, Hart?”

“Eli is the best bull rider I’ve ever seen. He taught me a lot when I was a kid. I used to come down here with Dad. Uncle Jesse knew more about farm equipment and Angus cattle than anyone this side of the Mississippi. Anyway we’d come to visit, and Eli got me started riding bulls. If he’d decided to follow the rodeo route rather than enlisting, I wouldn’t have stood a chance at winning all those championships,” Hart said.

“Boy, you were a natural. What you got, you did on your own. It wasn’t none of my doing,” Eli grinned.

Sophie gripped the chicken leg hard to keep from shoving it up Elijah’s left nostril.

Sorry, God! I didn’t mean to cut all his air off. I just thought he’d look cute with a chicken leg sticking out his nose. I didn’t know it would kill him dead on the spot and solve all my problems.
Sophie continued to ignore him.

“I can’t imagine the military letting him go without a fight. He’s trained more men to get in and out of tough places than you can imagine. When I was in the Guard, his name was legend,” Hart said.

Everything went silent as a tomb.

Eli’s gaze met Sophie’s again. “Doesn’t impress you much, does it?”

“Takes more than riding a bull for eight seconds or teaching a man to crawl through the jungle to impress me,” she said.

“Sand,” he said.

“That don’t impress me much either,” she said.

“It was sand we crawled through. I’m not old enough to have been in Vietnam. I did my time in the sand. Spent the last year and a half in Central America, but I didn’t crawl through the jungle. Believe me there was plenty of jungle, but I didn’t have to do much crawling,” he said.

“There ain’t no machine guns in Baird, Texas. No land mines. And no drug cartels. So frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn—as the cliché goes—what you’ve crawled through,” Sophie said. “Just let me write you a check and you can leave.”

Elijah chuckled again. “Ain’t happenin’. Don’t want to listen to you saying that every day so let’s get it straight right now.
It. Ain’t. Happenin’.
Lucifer will sell snow cones on the backside of Hades before it does. Subject closed.”

He looked over at Hart. “Good chicken. Can’t nobody in the world cook chicken like a Texas woman gettin’ ready for a funeral. I missed southern cookin’ this past year. Got tired of rice. Give me potatoes any day of the week and lots of them. Fry ’em. Mash ’em. Bake ’em.”

“You got that right,” Hart said.

Kate kicked him hard under the table.

“What…” he started.

“Honey, would you please go get me some of that blackberry cobbler? And I want whipped cream on the top,” she said.

“Theron, would you get me a slice of pecan pie?” Fancy asked sweetly.

Elijah chuckled. “Guess that’s my cue to go with them and get my own dessert. I’ll keep Hart and Theron at the
dessert table as long as I can so you ladies can rake us all over the coals.” Elijah left his plate and followed the other two men.

“How are you going to stand it?” Kate asked.

“Not me. How is
he
going to stand it? It’s not going to be pleasant, believe me,” Sophie said.

“And here I’d entertained hopes that Elijah would be your soul mate. I found Theron when I came back to Texas, and Kate rediscovered Hart,” Fancy said wistfully.

“You know how I feel about that preacher over in Albany that Theron likes so well?” Sophie asked.

Fancy nodded. “You haven’t made it a secret that you are definitely not interested in him.”

Kate giggled. “What was it you said? If I remember the words, it was ‘I’d rather sit across the table from a skunk than a preacher.’”

“I’d take him over Elijah,” Sophie said flatly. “That man just grates me the wrong way. The way he looks at me…”

“What?” Fancy asked.

“It…I don’t know what it does…but it scares me.”

Kate burst out laughing. “That’s called attraction, girl. Didn’t your lousy, old, dead ex-husband ever look at you like that?”

“No, he did not,” Sophie huffed. “It’s going to be a long winter. That’s how long I figure it’ll take me to wear him down. I’m so glad you two are here to support me,” Sophie said.

“He’s pretty, ain’t he, Momma?” Tina asked.

Sophie blushed. “Dammit! I forgot she was sitting there. We shouldn’t have been talking about him in front of her.”

“Who, baby? That new colt out there in the pasture?” Fancy asked.

“No, Momma. That’s silly. That baby horse is cute, but I was talkin’ about Eli. I like him. I like his name and his ponytail. Can he come see us?” Tina asked.

“You know what they say about kids and dogs? I bet the dogs love him, too,” Sophie groaned.

“What dogs?” Tina looked around. “You got dogs? Are there puppies? Can I play with them? I’ll trade you one of my kittens for a puppy. Are they big puppies? Can Eli show me where they are?”

Fancy giggled.

Kate roared.

Sophie wanted to hit something.

Sophie sat down on the grass in front of the tombstone bearing Jesse and Maud Jones’s names. The engravers would carve in Maud’s death date the next week, and then it would be finished. It seemed strange to think that simply putting the date on a chunk of gray granite could finalize a lifetime. It might be over physically, but as long as Sophie was alive, she would remember her great-aunt with love. Maud had said that she wanted her life to be all used up and lived up, and then she’d slide into heaven in worn jeans and her boots ready to see Jesse again. Sophie knew beyond the proverbial shadow of a doubt that Aunt Maud had done just that. She could just see her sliding to a screeching halt in front of the pearly gates, yelling at them to open the doors and get out the salsa and chips for the party.

The sun had passed straight up and was on the downhill slide toward the west. When it came up that morning, she’d had the whole day planned and not a thing had gone according to the list. Oh yes, the song had been sung, the prayer said, lunch had been served and eaten, and the church ladies had cleaned up the kitchen. There were enough leftovers to last a week, unless Elijah ate every day like he had at lunch.
At that rate it might last two days. Kate and Fancy had gone home to their own worlds with instructions that Sophie was to call every single day with an update, and they’d see her on Sunday for their regular once a week gab fest at Fancy’s place.

Her parents and sisters lingered for another hour, but then they, too, had to leave if they were going to drop Layla off in Tulsa and make it to Alma, Arkansas, before dark. Sophie was happier to see them drive away than she had been with anyone else. She’d seen her family often before Matt’s death, but afterward time had drifted past. Weeks became months, and it had been a year since she’d spent time with them. Maud had told her repeatedly that she needed to come clean with her family about her dead husband, but she hadn’t wanted their pity, so it was between them, like a big old Angus bull sitting right there in the living room on the sofa, every time they got together. Everyone could feel his presence, but no one talked about him. They just walked around the big critter and hoped he’d miraculously disappear.