Mittman, Stephanie (19 page)

Without
looking up, Sloan spoke. "So it was brand and strand without no band,
huh?" he asked.

She
mulled over what he said silently. Leave it to Sloan Westin to have a more
colorful way of saying "wham, bam, thank you, ma'am."

She
nodded and stooped for his plate, but he wouldn't release it.

"And
the year at your granny's?" he asked. "That more like nine
months?"

Her
cheeks burned, and her eyes stung. It was hard to swallow around the knot in
her throat. What right did he have asking her about any of this? What business
was it of his?

"Six,"
she answered tightly. "I was chubby, and it didn't show for a while. And
then after, I was shipped home while I was still bleeding. Would you like more
details? How long I was in labor? What he looked like?" She had meant to
embarrass him, to punish him for poking around where he didn't belong, but it
wasn't working.

"Did
he look like Ben?" Sloan asked softly, his hand still on one side of his
plate, hers on the other.

"I
never saw him."

"Sit
down," he ordered, yanking the plate from her hand. "Why?"

"Because
it's damn hard for me to get up, Sweet
Mary, and I don't like having this
conversation with your knees."

"This
conversation is over," she said, turning on her heel. "Wash your own
damn plate!"

She
was halfway to the pond when she heard him shout.

"Him
and me, we ain't two coyotes from the same damn pack, Mary Grace
O'Reilly."

She
was running now, tears streaming, hands over her ears.

"I
got my son with me, Sweet Mary, so don't you go acting holier than thou on me.
I don't see your son nowheres, so before you go casting blame..."

Once
she was through the rocks, she couldn't hear him. But she didn't need him to
tell her what she had done, letting herself get pregnant, letting them ship her
off to Watertown, letting them give her baby away. She stood with her arms
wrapped around herself on the edge of the rocks, staring at her reflection in
the pond. It danced as though she were swaying to some distant music. In the
water she looked happy, contented, as though none of the things she had done
had followed her into the magical little circle of rocks and water.

She
picked up a rock and threw it at her reflection, watching the pieces of her
break up and float away in a hundred directions. She picked up another pebble,
and another, throwing them at herself again and again until Sloan's strong
hands pinned her arms to her body.

"They
don't stone women for havin' babies outta wedlock anymore, Sweet Mary."

He
pried the pebbles lose from her clenched fists, and they rattled to the ground.

"They
don't have to, Mr. Westin. We're perfectly capable now of doing it to
ourselves."

She
could see them in the water in front of her, looking like a couple. Her red
hair covered his beard, but his blond mustache, his eyes, and the deep blond
hair that shone from last night's washing stood above her own head. His arms
were around her, and his stiff right
leg stood just beyond her billowing
skirt. It could have been a photograph of a loving couple if she hadn't known
better.

"You
ever see his daddy again?"

She
shook her head.

"You
ever wonder about the boy anymore?"

She
shook her head again. "No, not anymore."

"And
you ain't been with a man since?" His arms crossed her chest, and as he
ran his hands slowly up and down her arms, his forearms came in contact with
her breasts. She felt her nipples stiffen and knew he must be aware of it, as
well.

"No,
never been with another man."

"That
can't have been easy," he said. "A young woman like you must spend
the better part of your days swattin' at flies with this pretty red tail."
He ran his fingers through her hair, and she let her head tilt back against his
chest.

"It
was easier than the alternative," she answered, pushing away from him and
dipping down to get the plates. He bent slightly and grabbed her arm, pulling
her up and close in to his chest. She knew what was coming, and she knew, too,
that she had only to run, or say no, or simply push against his pull. Even
stiffening in his arms would have stopped a man like Sloan.

But
every fiber in her body tingled. Instead of pulling away, she leaned forward,
into him, and raised her lips. Before she closed her eyes, she saw Sloan's son,
his head peeking over his father's back, watching their exchange with interest.

"I'd
a married Emily," he said simply before placing a kiss on the end of her
nose. "If I'd a known. Did he know?"

Her
body felt heavy with disappointment. She'd left every remnant of her previous
life behind her but one. The
only one she could never get away from. And it had
followed her through time and space to a small little pool of rainwater in the
middle of the Sonora Desert in 1894. And it would never, she knew, go away.
Through her tears, she said, in a whisper, "He knew. They all knew."

If
he wondered who all of them were, he didn't ask.

"And
you never even saw the child? Never held him? You just..."

"I
was fifteen years old, dammit! A sophomore in high school. I didn't have any
rights, no means of support, no man who was gonna marry me and take care of us.
No one asked me. They just took him and gave him away." She couldn't look
at his face, so she concentrated on his boot. Within the well-worn black
leather she could discern the outline of his foot. She didn't know how he
managed to get it off his right foot at night nor back on in the morning. Since
the start of their adventure together, he was the last to sleep and the first
to get up.

"Who's
they?" he asked.

"Mr.
and Mrs. O'Reilly."

"Your
family?" He couldn't hide the shock in his voice.

"Biologically,"
she conceded. "But it only takes sex to make a child. It takes love to
make a family. I'd say we both know that pretty well, wouldn't you?"

"And
you say that was thirteen years ago. I still don't see how you could be
twenty-eight. You don't look nearly twenty. And fifteen ain't no baby. My ma
was fifteen when she had me. And another thing—if you didn't have no means of
support, how'd you get out to California?"

So
there they were, all the things that were bothering him about her. All the
things he'd probably never be
able to accept. Mary Grace smiled. In 1994, no one
would have had trouble understanding that she had been forced to give up her
baby because she was only fifteen. Of course, no one knew, but they would have
had a damn sight more understanding than some cowboy whose own mama probably
married after her first period.

And
her looks. That was funny, too. She hadn't even been carded in years. People
were always saying she had old eyes, and no one disputed her age. Getting to
L.A. was easier to explain.

"I
took a job after school and in the summers, waiting tables at the diner. A year
after I graduated I went as far as what was left of my money would take me. I
never went home again."

"Never
been with a man again. Never been back home. You got any more nevers?" he
asked.

"Never
been back to church."

"You
ain't alone in that one, Sweet Mary." He played with her hair for a while,
apparently digesting all she had told him.

"I
just got one more question for you, Mary Grace O'Reilly," he said finally.
"Now that you know I ain't gonna just leave you in the desert, and you're
kinda calm, you want to tell me the real story behind how you wound up in that
river in Oak Creek Canyon with all your clothes on? And wound up back there the
next day on the back of Wilson Tate's horse?"

She
couldn't help the look that must have crossed her face. He'd seen her! Seen her
fall, seen her strip and lie in the sun, seen every inch of her, just like in
the pond and again at the campfire just this morning.

"If
you saw all that, then you know the answer as well as I do. I fell out of the
sky. I'm from the future, Sloan. I don't know any better than you how I got
here."

"Say
that again," he said, a smile curling his lips and showing off those white
teeth of his. "The middle part."

"I
fell out of the sky?"

"After
that...."

"I'm
from the future. I told you before, but if you saw me fall, you must have seen
how I just..."

"Not
that part," he interrupted. "The part with my name. Say my name
again."

"Sloan?"

"I
sure do like the sound of my name comin' outta your mouth, Sweet Mary." He
wasn't two inches from her face, the breath from his words warming her cheek.
One rough finger traced her upper lip and then tugged slightly on the lower
one.

"Ah,
Sweet Mary! How'm I ever gonna make it to Jerome?" His body rubbed against
hers. She backed up, and he reached out, stopping her from plunging into the
water behind her.

"What's
in Jerome?" she asked, righting herself and shaking off his help.

"All
the women a man can buy," he said, turning away, his limp more pronounced
than usual. "Any man," he added as he walked away.

She
ran after him, stumbled and fell, skinning her knee and crying out. He turned
and shook his head, coming back to take a look at what she had done to herself.
The knee looked raw, little bits of sand clinging to the bloodied skin. He
stood over her, staring down at her exposed leg.

"Do
you think I'll just stay in some hotel room while you find some, some..."

"They
call 'em whores, Mary Grace. And I don't know what I expect. I only know it's
gonna be hard enough with this." He pounded his right thigh so hard that
she flinched. "I sure don't need a woman that's so
scared of me
that she can't stop shakin' long enough for me to take aim and hit my
mark!"

"I
suppose Emily just spread her legs for you at the batting of your eyes. I
suppose she just welcomed you into her arms, and her bed, and..."

"She
did better than that," he shouted at her. "She invited me. She
started the whole damn thing, makin' eyes, makin' cozy, makin' a place to meet.
I never saw a woman so eager."

"Well,
you ought to have your eyes examined," she shouted back. "There's a
hell of a lot you don't see clearly."

Like
Emily set you up. Like I'm eager.
She couldn't come out and say it in as
many words, but he must know what she meant. Embarrassed, she turned away and
quickly untied the moccasins and slipped them off her feet. It was now up to
him, she thought, as she rose and stepped into the pond, raising her skirt to
hip level so that the water could rinse her cut knee.

Sloan
slipped the baby carrier over his head and kissed the dark down on the baby's
head. He didn't even stir in his sleep. Mary Grace watched as he made a
makeshift crib, rearranging the rocks around the baby so that he couldn't fall
into the water. He peeled off his shirt and made a tent over the child to keep
him from burning in the sun.

And
then he started to struggle with his boots, wedging the heel into a crevice
between two rocks and trying to pull his foot up. The pain etched lines across
his forehead and down his cheeks. She'd sworn she was never going to let some
man just take her. This was as good a time as any to reach out and grab her own
destiny.

"Sit
down," she said when she stood a foot or so in front of him. He opened his
mouth and then closed it,
apparently reconsidering arguing with her, and sank down onto a large rock.
Bracing herself, she put one foot against the rock he rested on and tried to
pull the boot from his foot. He slid rather ungracefully off the rock at her
attempt.

"Don't
you even know how to get a man's boots off?" he complained. "Turn
around and straddle my leg, woman." She did as she was told, looking over
her shoulder for approval. He nodded.

"Now
pull."

His
left foot settled on her behind, pressing her away from him. She held on to his
boot with all her might and found herself reeling toward the water when it
finally came off in her hand. She expected to hear his laughter when she pulled
herself from the water, but he was too busy removing his other boot and
shimmying out of his pants.

She
wrung the bottom of her skirt, trying to keep busy and not look at Sloan's
broad chest, fuzzy with pale curly hair that pointed unmistakably downward into
the waistband of his long johns.

"You'd
better take it off and hang it on the tree so it'll dry," he suggested,
pointing at her skirt. His voice sounded different, huskier, even though he
tried to keep it light.

She
undid the button at the waist and stepped out of it, reaching up and putting it
carefully on a few needles on the cactus tree.

"The
blouse, too, Sweet Mary," he said, and this time there was no mistaking
his tone.