Once Upon a Cowboy (16 page)

“I know.”

“So where were they, really? Or…
she
? Your
mother?”

“South Carolina. Just outside Charleston. Number 37 Breezy Meadow Trailer Park. Back row, fourth trailer on the left.” The words started filtering out.

Hayley sat down hard. “What?”

“Yeah.” Jess blew out a breath. Next would come Hayley’s realization that she’d been lied to since—well, since the day they’d met.

“Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

“I just couldn’t, Hayls. It was too—complicated.”

Hayley shook her head. “None of this makes sense. Did you really think any of us would have cared? Wait. Where did you go at Thanksgiving? Christmas? Kyla and I were always jealous that you were headed somewhere exotic to meet your parents.”

Jess shook her head. “I stayed in the dorm, usually.”

“But—but they locked the dorms over the holidays.”

“I was creative. And resourceful. And really good
at hiding.”

“Jess!”

“I’m sorry, Hayley. It’s true. I’m not lying this time.”

“So those pics of Tahiti you showed us?”

“Google. Printed them in the library.”

“And that blue-footed whatever-it-was from the Galápagos Islands?”

“Google.”

Hayley nodded. “So I’m assuming that view from the Eiffel Tower—Google?”

“The only tower I’ve ever been up is the fire tower outside the town I grew up in.”
Jess sighed. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“What about the horses?” Hayley tipped her head. “You were always at the barn at school, working with your horses.”

Jess shook her head. “Not mine. It was a work-study job.”

“Wow.” Hayley sat back. “Why did you lie—I’m just—floored.” Her words muddled together in hurt confusion. “Why didn’t you ever ask to come home with Kyla or me for the holidays?”

“If I
had done that, you would have expected me to return the favor, and there was no way I was inviting anyone back to where I grew up, okay?”

“So you grew up in a trailer park. Who cares? Do you really think we would have thought differently of you if we’d known where you came from?”

“It’s not about the trailer park, Hayley.”

“Then what? What
is
it about?”

“Let’s just say my family isn’t made
up of the nicest people. Not the kind of folks you bring a friend home to meet.”

Hayley rubbed her forehead, eyebrows scrunched together. “I don’t get it. I really don’t. And I’m trying really hard here not to be pissed that you ever thought it would matter. Why did you tell so many lies, Jess? What did you really think would happen if you just told the truth? Why couldn’t you be honest with
us?”

Jess felt tears gather behind her eyes. She’d buried the memories so deeply that she didn’t want to give voice to them. Didn’t want to let them bubble back to the surface and send her back down the black hole that had been her life.

But they were right here, biting and clawing and churning in her throat.

“Honesty wasn’t an option, Hayley. Trust me on that.”

“Why the hell not? This doesn’t
make any sense.” Jess saw color rising in Hayley’s cheeks. “Why were you so afraid of the truth?”

“Because.” Jess practically spit the word out between clenched teeth. She took a shaky breath. Then, hardly believing she was doing it, she fingered the hem of her shirt.

“Because
this
is my truth, Hayley.”

Slowly, she lifted her shirt, exposing her abdomen.

Hayley’s sharp intake of breath made Jess flinch, made her look down at the sight she tried to ignore every time she showered, every time she changed her clothes.

“Jess?” Hayley’s voice was a whisper. “Who did this?”

“Hold her arms, Luanne. Miss smartymouth needs a lesson.” Roxie lit a cigarette, and Star found her eyes immediately mesmerized by the glowing tip. She tried to rip
her eyes away from it, but she swore she could hear it burning, could hear the quiet sizzle.

“What’d she do this time?” Luanne caught Star as she tried to duck under her arm and head across the tiny excuse for a living room toward the door.

“Little too big for her britches. Again.” Roxie puffed on her Marlboro. “She’s ten going on sixteen tonight. You got her?”

Star struggled as Luanne pinned
her arms behind her. She tried to kick, but Luanne just laughed that gravelly laugh. “Sorry, baby. No can do. Your mama’s got something to say.”

Roxie advanced on her, cigarette glowing. “You gonna talk back to me again, Star?”

“No.”
Probably.
Star tried to stand up to her full height, tried not to act scared. Tried to calculate how long it’d be before she outweighed Luanne and could escape
the both of them forever.

Roxie grabbed the hem of her T-shirt, played with it a little bit, taunting. “You sure about that, darlin’?”

“Promise. I won’t sass anymore. Just please, please put down the cigarette.”

Roxie looked at Luanne. “Should I put it down, Luanne?”

“I don’t know, Rox. Ain’t sure I believe her. You don’t teach her right from wrong, who’s gonna?”

Roxie took a long puff on
her Marlboro, making the tip glow. Oh God. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, darlin’. You know this hurts me more than it does you.”

Roxie lifted up her shirt, and Star tightened her stomach muscles, tried to prepare for the searing heat.

“You’re gonna learn, baby girl. One of these days you’re gonna learn.”

“Are these—cigarette burns?” Hayley’s voice was dead soft as she looked at Jess’s
stomach.

Jess nodded miserably as she let her shirt fall. “Not so Tahiti, eh?”

“Oh, Jess.” Hayley’s eyes filled with tears. “How could you never tell us?”

“I don’t know. I just—how do you tell this? I was trying so hard to leave it behind. Trying to create a new life so the old one didn’t make me insane.”

“Did your
mother
do this?”

“Yeah. Aunt Luanne held my arms, and Roxie did the honors.”

Hayley held her stomach. “I feel sick. Please tell me they’re in jail.”

“No. As far as I know, they’re still at 37 Breezy Meadow Park.” Jess pointed at the letters. “I tried to get away. I tried to hide from them.
That’s
why I changed my name. I had to create a new—me. Because the old me was pretty much buried alive, and I couldn’t see any way out besides this. That’s why I came all the way to
Boston. I just wanted to be as far away from them as possible.”

“But now they’ve found you.”

Jess nodded. “Apparently.”

Hayley wiped her eyes, but more tears leaked out. “Shit, Jess. I want to be really pissed at you right now for shouldering this all by yourself for so long, but I
more
want to head for Breezy Meadow with a shotgun.”

“That’s a true friend for you.” Jess worked up a watery
smile.

“Why weren’t they ever prosecuted for this?”

“It’s not that black and white.” Jess shook her head. “And I would have had to testify, or at least talk to the police. Honestly—and I know it sounds a little insane—I was more afraid of the police than I was of my mother. She made sure of that.”

“So how’d you finally get out? How did you go from that hellhole to…Boston?”

“I had a grandfather
who finally realized what was going on. He rescued me and got me out of there. Stole into the trailer and dug up my birth certificate and social security card so I could change my name if I wanted to.”

No need to tell Hayley what had happened to precipitate
that
particular rescue. Jess had already shocked her enough with her other revelations.

“Why didn’t
he
go to the police?”

Jess shook her
head. “It was complicated. There were other people involved, too.”
Billy.
“Leaving was the best choice. Grampy did it the only way he knew how. Took me to a shelter, introduced me as Jessalyn Alcott, and then—gave me a kiss good-bye.” Jess’s voice wavered. “That’s the last time I ever saw him, and now—now he’s gone. He said someday he’d find me, but—he can’t anymore.”

For almost a week, Jess
had been holding back the tears that threatened every time she thought of Grampy. She’d blinked hard, taken deep breaths, tried to force his kind, wrinkled face out of her head. But now, sitting here on this couch, she could almost feel Grampy’s arms around her that last time.

“Oh, honey.” Hayley pulled Jess into her arms. “Saying
I’m sorry
just doesn’t even begin to cover things, but I am so
damn
sorry this happened to you.”

She hugged her hard, and for the first time in forever, Jess let go. She felt the tears gathering again, but this time she didn’t fight back. She let them fall, let the sobs erupt when they threatened, let Hayley rub her back and hand her tissue after tissue while she held her tight, not saying a word.

Twenty minutes later, when Jess’s eyes felt like she’d been
crying for days and her nose was raw from the tissues, there was a knock on the door.

“Oh God.” She sniffed and sat up straight. “Who’s that?”

Before she could make a dash for the bathroom, though, Kyla let herself in, all sparkles and sunshine. “Hey, girls! What’s going on in here?”

Then her face fell, and she looked from Jess to Hayley and back again. “Jess?”

When Jess didn’t answer, she
looked at Hayley. “Hayls?” She took a tentative step forward. “What in the world?”

Jess closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Hayley saved her by putting a hand on each shoulder and steering her toward the bathroom. “Go take a moment, okay?”

Gratefully, Jess moved toward the bathroom, almost on autopilot. But though her back was turned, she could practically feel the silent signals passing between
Hayley and Kyla. And as she closed the door and sat down on the cool tile floor, she heard their voices as a low, low hum.

As her tears dried and she finally got to a point where she could draw a breath without a hitch in it, she was filled with something that edged out the fear a little bit. It had taken every bit of courage she possessed to tell Hayley what she had, to lift the edge of her
shirt and give a glimpse of her childhood, but although the letters still sat on that coffee table and the threat of Roxie and Luanne finding her was very, very real, she felt a small seed of hope.

Tiny, barely formed, but there in a minuscule pinprick of light.

She had her girls. Kyla and Hayley would help her. She had come to Whisper Creek in fear, and maybe that had been unfair to everyone
here, but in the end, she knew they’d help her. If she dared to ask, they would help her.

The chill of the tile seeped through her jeans, but as it did, she felt warmer than she’d felt in a long, long time. Maybe her own family was completely for shit, but maybe—just maybe—she’d found a new family she could actually rely on to act like one.

Maybe at Whisper Creek…she’d finally discovered a home.

She opened the bathroom door, but hadn’t taken three steps before Kyla’s arms were firmly around her. “We’ve got you, Jessie. It’s all going to be okay. We’re going to open this envelope together, and whatever’s in it, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out together.”

Kyla kept an arm around her as they walked to the couch, and for the first time she could remember, Jess let herself lean on her friends.
She let Kyla’s arm squeeze her tight, let Hayley huddle close as they sat down. She fingered the envelope with Roxie’s writing on the front, paused her thumb before she ripped it open.

“It’s okay,” Hayley said. “We’re right here.”

Jess took a deep breath, slid open the envelope, and pulled out a piece of notebook paper. She unfolded it, dread filling her stomach as she saw more of that scrawling
penmanship. Kyla’s hand squeezed on her knee as all three of them read the shaking words on Jess’s lap.

Star, it’s me, Luanne. Your aunt, in case you forgot. Ha. I’ve been trying to call you, but you don’t seem to want to get back to me. That’s frustrating, I gotta be honest. Because we have a lot to talk about, don’t we? Specifically a night called July 25. You remember that night? I think
you do. Mack sure does. And I bet the police would be real interested in what you know about that night. Because I think you know a shit-lot about it. Course, for the right price, maybe we won’t feel like we need to make that call. You get me? I think you get me. You always were too smart for your britches. You call us. Otherwise we call the police. Or maybe we call Billy. Bet he’d sure like to know
where you are these days, wouldn’t he?

Cole balanced a two-by-four with his knee as he fished a nail out of his tool belt. Two more of these and he’d have the back wall framed. He whistled as he hammered, some country song stuck in his head from Ma’s kitchen radio this morning. He should probably be using this precious free hour to work on the downstairs, but all he’d wanted to do was get
going on making this space into a—well, home.

“Cole? You still up there?” Decker called from the first floor.

He stopped hammering. “No, moron. It’s the meadow trolls banging around.”

“Wow. Not wasting any time getting Jess moved in, are you?” Decker clomped up the stairs.

“It’s not for J—”

“I know, I know.” Decker waved a dismissive hand. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“You just here to
harass me? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the afternoon ride?”

“Yeah, about that.”

Cole narrowed his eyes. “About that
what
?”

“Mike just called. There’s an issue up on the site.”

“And he can’t handle it?”

“Not by himself, no.” Decker shook his head. “Sorry. I know I said this wasn’t going to happen again this week.” Decker took off his hat, scrubbing at hair that Ma would call long overdue
for a haircut. “It’s just how these things go. Shit happens, and I’m the guy with the job description to deal with today’s particular brand of shit.”

“Charming.”

“You want me to call in Jimmy and Pete to take out the late ride?”

Cole shook his head, holstering his hammer. So much for making progress on Jess’s—on
the
—apartment. “You know we’re maxed out on payroll already this week. Can’t give
anybody more hours.”

Decker looked out the window, then raised his eyebrows. “What about Jess? Would she go with you?”

“I imagine she’s busy with wedding stuff. She and Kyla and Hayley have been holed up in her cabin for over an hour now.”

“Not that you’re keeping track.”

“I’m not.”

Decker slid his hat back on. “Ask her. She likes riding better than anybody I know. And if Hayley’s starting
to go all bridezilla on the gals, she’d probably welcome an excuse to break free for a couple of hours, right?”

Cole unbuckled his tool belt and laid it down on the pile of fresh lumber in the corner. “I’ll figure things out here, Decker. Go do what you need to do.”

“You sure?”

“I can handle it. Go.”

Decker headed for the stairs. “This’ll all be worth it in the end when we’re up and running
and rolling in the dough, right?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a list in the tack room of who’s supposed to be on which horses today.”

“That’s helpful.” Cole rolled his eyes. “Almost as helpful as—say—
going
on the ride like you’re
supposed
to be doing.”

“Maybe I’m just trying to give you and Jess some time. Think of it that way.”

“Right.”

Decker shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable. “Listen. I
know we keep saying we need to talk about the whole who’s-doing-what thing. Maybe we can block out an hour or two Monday or something? After the wedding craziness is over?”

“Sure, Decker.” Cole sighed, gathering his hat. “As long as you don’t get called away to another crisis.”

He headed down the stairs and out the door, trying to shake off his irritation with Decker. Maybe Jess
would
like to
go out for a ride. She had barely left her cabin all afternoon, and it was one of those perfect Montana days—blue sky, warm breeze, and horses. He was sure she’d welcome the chance to get out on Sky Dancer and breathe some fresh air—even if kid-duty was involved. He just had to frame it the right way.

“No.”

Two minutes later, Cole stood on Jess’s cabin porch, facing two sets of folded arms.
“What do you mean, no? She loves riding.”

Hayley shook her head. “Not today, Cole.”

“But I need a hand, and Sky Dancer needs a ride, and”—he put up his hands in confusion—“why are you two standing here like palace guards? What’s up with Jess? Where is she?”

“Busy—”

“Indisposed—” Kyla and Hayley spoke at the same time, then looked at each other and cringed.

“Is she all right?”

Hayley nodded.
“She’s…fine. She’ll be fine.”

A low note of alarm pinged his gut. “What does that mean?”

“It means she’ll be fine.” Kyla took his elbow and gently turned him toward the stairs. “See if Jimmy can help with the ride. He’s looking for more hours this week.”

“But payroll’s maxed—”

“Ask Jimmy.” Kyla’s voice was uncharacteristically firm as both she and Hayley turned to go back into Jess’s cabin.
He stood for a moment at the top of the stairs, debating whether to knock on the door again and demand to see Jess, or just leave well enough alone. They were obviously hiding something—or protecting Jess somehow—but from what, he had no idea.

He thought back to all of the times this past week when she’d seemed uncharacteristically jumpy, thought back to the way she’d sprung away from his hand
at the waterfall and cringed when that church guy had reached toward her. Thought of the fear he’d tasted in her kiss.