Dakota Born (36 page)

It soon became apparent that Lindsay didn't have any news of Kevin, either. “She hasn't seen him.”

Gage knew one thing; he fully intended to give his kid brother hell for worrying their mother like this.

“I think we should phone the police,” Leta said frantically.

“I'm sure he's all right,” Gage insisted again, “although he won't be once I get my hands on him.”

The phone rang just then, and Gage nearly yanked it off the desk in his eagerness to answer.

“Hello.”

“Is this Mr. Betts?”

“No—I'm Gage Sinclair.”

“Can I speak to Mr. Betts? This is in regard to his son, Kevin Betts.”

Gage stiffened and avoided meeting his mother's eyes. “Who's calling, please?”

“The Rugby Police.”

“Rugby?” It seemed impossible that Kevin would have driven that far, but obviously he had. Gage couldn't think of a single reason why. Rugby was a hundred miles west of Buffalo Valley, and the geographical center of North America.

“We have Kevin here at the police station.”

“For what?” Gage demanded. A list of possibilities raced through his mind, but no scenario seemed acceptable.

“Can I speak to his father?” the office asked.

“I'm sorry, he's dead. You can speak to me. I'm Kevin's half brother.”

“Gage, what is it?” His mother was close to ripping the phone from his hand.

He cupped the mouthpiece. “Kevin's with the Rugby police.”

“What?”

“If you'll give me a chance to find out, I'll let you know,” he snapped.

“We found him outside of town,” the police officer continued. “He'd run out of gas.”

“That isn't a crime, is it?”

“No,” the officer continued. Then he hesitated. “Is Kevin undergoing some personal problems at the moment?”

“What damn business is that of yours?” Gage asked angrily, taking a dislike to this form of questioning.

“I suggest you come and pick Kevin up.”

“Has he been drinking?” Gage asked.

Leta gasped and placed her hand over her mouth.

“To the best of my knowledge he hasn't.”

“Drugs?”

A predictable gasp followed from Leta.

“No. Perhaps it'd be best if you talked to the doctor yourself.”

“Doctor?” No one had said anything about Kevin needing a doctor.

Joanie's feet hurt from an eight-hour shift at the convenience store and the ache in the small of her back refused to go away. This pregnancy hadn't been an easy one; the physical strain coupled with the emotional stress of the separation was almost more than she could bear.

The children had come home from their spring break in high spirits. Unfortunately, that hadn't lasted long. Sage grew quiet and somber whenever anyone mentioned Brandon, and even Stevie, who'd accepted the upheaval in their lives with barely a murmur, broke into tears one night shortly after his return.

“I don't want you and Daddy to get a divorce,” he'd wailed into her arms, clinging to her.

Joanie had held her son and wept, too. Soon Sage joined them and they'd all wept together, holding on to each other.

“How'd the doctor's appointment go?” her mother asked, when Joanie came by to pick up the kids after work.

“I didn't go.”

“But, Joanie—”

“I got out of the store late and traffic was heavy.” She hadn't had the energy to battle her way across town to the free clinic. All she wanted was to get home and soak in a hot tub.

“Did you reschedule?” her mother pressed.

Joanie shook her head. “But I will, I promise.”

Her mother walked them to the door and stopped Joanie just as she was ready to leave. “I'm worried about you, sweetheart.”

“I'm fine, Mom.” She'd never realized a separation from Brandon would be this heart-wrenching for her and the children. At the time, it had seemed the only option, the only reasonable decision. She no longer knew if what she'd done was right.

“You look wretched.”

Joanie tried to smile. “You don't know how long eight hours is unless you spend it on your feet.”

Her mother didn't crack a smile.

“Thanks for watching the kids.”

“Joanie.” Once again her mother delayed her. She hesitated and reached out a hand to touch Joanie's shoulder. “Brandon phoned.”

Joanie paused at the sound of her husband's name.

“I only talked to him for a minute. He phoned for the kids.”

Since their return from spring break, Brandon had made a point of calling the children once or twice a week in addition to his weekly letters. But he avoided all contact with Joanie. They hadn't said a word to each other in at least a month.

“He says he misses his family,” her mother told her.

“We miss him, too,” Joanie said, not wanting to get trapped in this kind of conversation with her mother. Not tonight. “Are you telling me you want me to go back to him? Because if you are—”

“Joanie, don't be so defensive. I'm not suggesting anything. Go home, you're tired.”

Joanie wanted to weep with frustration and despair. She walked across the street where Sage and Stevie waited for her.

“What's for dinner?” Stevie wanted to know when she unlocked the front door. “Can we have chili and cornbread?”

“I don't make it nearly as well as your father,” Joanie said. She hadn't realized Brandon knew anything about cooking, but the kids had raved about his chili and cornbread from the minute they got home. He must have found the recipe in one of her cookbooks.

“Ask him how to make it,” Sage suggested.

“I will,” she promised, “the next time we talk.”

Stevie sat down in front of the cupboard and sorted through their dinner options. On the days she worked, they generally ate something that came out of a box or a can. She used to avoid feeding her family anything she hadn't cooked herself, but her standards had lowered considerably.

“Daddy phoned this afternoon,” Sage said, sitting at the kitchen table.

“That's what your grandmother said.”

Stevie handed her a can of stew, then reached inside the refrigerator for the premade biscuit dough. Her son enjoyed slamming the cardboard tube against the kitchen counter and hearing it explode.

It seemed to take Joanie forever to get their simple dinner on the table. By the time the kids were down for the night, her ankles had swollen drastically and she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.

Missing the doctor's appointment hadn't been smart. She'd phone first thing in the morning and reschedule. She was sitting on the sofa with her feet propped up and her hands against her stomach. She leaned her head back and let her eyes drift shut. Her problem, she decided, was that she actually felt jealous of her own children.

They'd talked to Brandon and she hadn't. Not that she and her husband seemed capable of a civil conversation anymore. Lately, he seemed to go out of his way to avoid her altogether. That was what she wanted, or so she'd thought at one time.

Perhaps it was because she was so tired or because she felt unsure of her future and the choices she'd made. Whatever the reason, Joanie walked over to the phone and dialed the Buffalo Valley number.

Brandon took his time answering.

“Hello, Brandon. It's Joanie.”

His silence told her he wasn't pleased to hear from her.

“I wanted—the kids keep raving about your chili. I thought you might be willing to share your recipe.” It was a flimsy excuse and it sounded even flimsier once she'd actually said the words.

“My chili recipe?”

“The kids—”

“I heard what you said,” he snapped. “I'm just having trouble making sense of it.”

“I can see this was a mistake. I'm sorry, Brandon, I won't bother you again.” She was about to replace the receiver when he called her name.

“I'll answer your question if you answer mine.”

“All right,” she whispered.

“Who's Jason?”

Her eyes flew open. “Who told you about Jason?”

“Ah,” he said, sounding almost friendly now. “You didn't know I was that well-informed, did you?”

“No…”

“According to Stevie, you're on a diet to impress your new boyfriend.”

“You interrogated your children about my activities?”

“No,” he said coldly. “Stevie volunteered the information.”

“And you believe I'm actually seeing some other man.” The idea was so ludicrous, she laughed out loud.

“What's so damn funny?”

“You don't have a clue, do you?” Her laughter mingled with tears. “Not a clue.”

“Apparently not.”

The sobs came in earnest now. “I couldn't get a date if I wanted to.”

“Then who the hell's Jason?”

“Jason,” she cried, laughing, weeping, hiccuping, feeling miserable and unloved, “is your unborn son. For your information, Brandon, I'm seven months pregnant.”

“Y
ou had to do it, didn't you?” Gage shouted at Lindsay as he jumped out of his pickup. He slammed the truck door and stalked across the street to Lindsay's house, where she'd just parked. Apparently he'd been waiting for her, and from the way he stormed toward her, he wasn't in the best of moods.

Lindsay had already received one verbal harangue that day and wasn't sure she was up to dealing with another. She raised her hand to stop him. “Can you tell me what's wrong without yelling at me?” she asked.

“You mean you don't know?”

“So you found out about me contacting Angela Kirkpatrick.” She should have anticipated this type of reaction from him. He'd been against it from the first.

“Who the hell is Angela Kirkpatrick?”

“Maybe you'd better come inside,” she said, resigning herself to his anger. At least if he yelled at her it would be in the privacy of her own home.

She led the way into her house and flopped down on the sofa, feeling discouraged and disheartened.

“Angela Kirkpatrick?” he reminded her, firmly shutting the front door.

“She's…our aunt.”

Gage momentarily turned his back on her. “So you went ahead and found her?” he said, shaking his head in disgust.

Lindsay braved a nod. “Only…there was a screwup.” The best she could figure was that she'd put the wrong zip code on the letter. In any event, Angela hadn't gotten it.

“She didn't want to be found, did she?” His tone unmistakably said
I told you so.

Lindsay stared down at her hands. “I did write her, but she claims she never got the letter.”

“You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you?”

“No, I couldn't,” she told him boldly. Given the opportunity she'd contact Angela again.

He went silent for a moment. “You'd better tell me what happened.”

Lindsay wadded up a fresh tissue. “Like I said, I wrote her a letter and told her about my connection with her and about finding the locket and the letters. I remembered what you said about invading her privacy, so I gave her the option of not meeting me if she preferred.”

“Apparently you didn't remember very well.”

Lindsay winced at the harshness of his words. “She answered the door and Gage, she has your eyes.” Lindsay paused as she recalled the surge of emotion she'd felt when she saw Angela Kirkpatrick. It had taken restraint not to hug her and tell her how thrilled she was to meet her. Thank heavens she hadn't.

“That was the first thing I noticed about you—what incredible eyes you have.”

Gage ceased his pacing and glared at her in the same disquieting way Angela Kirkpatrick had.

“I assumed Angela wanted to meet me,” she said. “I thought she was eager to see the things I'd brought for her. I'd written that if she didn't want the locket or the letters, she shouldn't answer the door, and she had, so naturally I assumed—”

“She was about to welcome you with open arms.”

Lindsay shredded the tissue in her hands and bit her lower lip. “That's what I thought at first, but as soon as I explained who I was and why I'd come, she got angry and started yelling and then her husband came and he asked me to leave.”

It would have been better if she'd taken his advice, but Lindsay was convinced that if she gave Angela a few minutes, she'd change her mind and want to see the locket and the letters. But as it turned out, not only did she have no interest in seeing them, she wanted nothing to do with Lindsay.

In the end, her husband had actually been rude in his efforts to get her to leave. Hurt and confused, Lindsay had sat in her car, shaking, wondering how everything could have gone so wrong. Now Gage had come to rub salt in her freshly inflicted wounds.

“Why couldn't you just have sent her the letter? That was all you wanted, wasn't it? To let Angela know about her birth parents, and pass on what information you had. You could have given her the option of responding if she wanted to.”

“That wouldn't work,” Lindsay cried. “I thought about writing and leaving it at that, but I wanted to be sure she received my letter—which she claims she didn't. If I hadn't contacted her personally, I would never have known.”

Gage continued pacing, his steps short and clipped. “Now you know. Are you happy? You didn't want to listen to me because you thought
you
knew what was best.”

“If I'd been born here, I would've known better, right?”

“That's right,” he shouted. “Despite what I told you, despite the fact that Angela Kirkpatrick is related to me, too, you just went ahead and barged into an emotionally explosive situation. You didn't even tell me—”

“You'd already made it quite clear how you felt.”

“I had a right to know, even if I happened to disagree with you.”

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry.”

He shook his head as if her apology fell far short of appeasing him. “You just don't get it.”

“Oh, no,” she said, fighting down a sob. “I got it—right between the eyes. Angela Kirkpatrick, her husband and everyone else in Bismarck need never worry about hearing from me again.”

“She's entitled to her privacy. You were wrong, Lindsay.”

“Fine, I was wrong. How many times do I have to say it?”

“One more time,” he flared back. “You couldn't leave well enough alone with Angela Kirkpatrick—or with Kevin.”

“Kevin? Is something wrong with Kevin?” He'd missed a couple of days of school, but then so had Bert Loomis, and she'd assumed Kevin was out with the same flu bug.

“You pressured him into applying for that scholarship.”

“I didn't
pressure
him into anything.”

“You encouraged him.”

“Yes, I did. Do you have any idea how talented he is?”

“You strung that seventeen-year-old boy along, not once considering the consequences of what you were doing.” He frowned heavily, as if what she'd done was despicable.

“He has a dream! Everyone's got a dream.”

“But you had to go and plant the idea of leaving Buffalo Valley in his mind—going to some fancy art school. I've told you—neither his mother nor I can afford art school for Kevin. This town can't afford to lose our young people, and you encouraged both.”

“But the scholarship—”

“He can't do it, and now I'm the one who has to tell him that. Thank you very much, Lindsay Snyder.”

She felt the blood drain from her face.

“I know you came here with the best of intentions, but you don't know us, you don't know our ways and you certainly don't know me and my brother. So kindly stay the hell out of our lives.”

He slammed out of the house with such force, the living-room windows shook. For a long time, Lindsay didn't move. Even breathing was an effort. She'd say one thing for Gage Sinclair—his timing was impeccable.

After her confrontation with Angela Kirkpatrick, she'd been convinced she couldn't feel any worse, but Gage had proved her wrong.

 

Brandon sat in the roadside café outside Fargo and nursed his coffee while he waited for Joanie. He hadn't seen his wife in four months and he wasn't sure what he'd feel once he did. Pride had carried him the first few weeks after she'd left, but eventually he'd found it damn poor company. He wanted his family back and prayed that this meeting would help bridge their differences.

When Brandon learned Joanie was pregnant, he'd been furious. Not that she was going to have a baby, but that she'd kept the pregnancy a secret from him. He'd thought about it a lot since she'd blurted out the news and figured it must have happened the night of their anniversary.

During the same conversation, he'd questioned her about being on the Pill. She'd started sobbing and admitted she hadn't been as faithful about taking it as she should have been.

Obviously.

Brandon loved Sage and Stevie and certainly didn't object to adding to their family, but what they had now wasn't a cohesive unit. This separation had taught him a great deal about himself, and about Joanie, too. He was sure that living apart wasn't what she wanted, either. He'd heard the pain in her voice. Sage and Stevie had repeatedly told him how unhappy their mother was.

A car door slammed in the parking lot and Brandon glanced out the window. A trim but obviously pregnant woman battled against the wind as she made her way toward the restaurant. Brandon didn't need to look twice to recognize Joanie. He felt his chest tighten with dread; he couldn't predict the outcome of this meeting, didn't know if they could arrive at any agreement. He dragged a deep breath through his lungs as she entered the café.

Brandon immediately saw the toll the past four months had taken on her. She remained as beautiful as ever, but he saw the strain in her eyes. From her awkward movements, he could tell the pregnancy hadn't been an easy one. Little wonder. The first two had been hard on her health, as well, but he'd always been there for her. Not this time. Maybe not even after today.

Once inside, Joanie walked over to his booth. “Hello, Brandon.”

He stood, nodding, stiff with politeness. “Joanie.” Motioning toward the seat on the opposite side of the booth, he invited her to sit down. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“I know you're angry—I should have told you about the baby.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Is it important?” she asked, her voice small and shaky.

“I happen to think so,” he returned, trying to hide his frustration.

The waitress approached their table and glanced doubtfully between the two of them, a coffeepot in her hand. She refilled Brandon's mug; Joanie shook her head.

Joanie waited until the waitress had left before she spoke. “I always intended to tell you…I'm sorry. You had the right to know.”

He couldn't live with Joanie all those years and not know the way she reasoned. “It's because of the health insurance, isn't it?” he asked.

She gazed down at the table. “That was part of it. And if you're going to be angry with me for keeping secrets, keep in mind that you didn't tell me our health insurance had lapsed.”

Brandon didn't find those facts comparable to a pregnancy, but he hadn't driven all this way to argue with his wife.

“All right,” he said, doing his best to stay calm. “Blaming each other isn't going to solve anything. You're going to have a baby.”

“That doesn't change the situation.”

“The hell it doesn't.” His voice had grown louder, and two or three people turned around and stared at him. “I might have my faults—all right, I'll admit it, I can be a real bastard—but there's one thing you can't fault me on. I love my children.”

“It just happens to be their mother you don't love.”

The agony he heard in her wrenched his heart. “Joanie, no…”

She reached for the paper napkin and dabbed her eyes and he could see she was angry with herself for letting the emotion get to her.

“You were the one who said if I left, you weren't coming after me, remember? For all you cared, the kids and I could leave, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to you. Your family was about to walk out, and the most important thing to you was letting me know that once I left, I was on my own.”

He had said that. Not exactly in those words, but close. “I had a few lessons to learn,” he murmured. “If you want me to say it, I will. I should've fought like hell to keep you and the kids, but I'm willing to fight now. I've learned my lesson.”

“So have I,” she surprised him by saying. “I thought…Nothing's working out the way I thought it would. The kids miss you and they're hurting. I'm miserable.”

He jumped on it. “Does that mean you'd be willing to move back?”

Joanie dabbed her eyes again and offered him a trembling smile. “I've dreamed about you asking me to come home.”

“I've missed you, baby, you and the kids. Nothing's right without you.”

“Don't say any more,” she pleaded, shaking her head.

She was so pale, and he knew she was emotionally and physically stretched to the limit. He reached across the table for her hand, linking her fingers with his, squeezing tightly so she'd know how he felt.

The tears came in earnest then. “I can't move back, Brandon. I can't.”

Her rejection hit him hard, too hard to disguise its impact or to keep the hurt from his voice. “Why not?”

Joanie glanced out the window rather than meet his gaze. “Nothing's changed except that you know I'm pregnant.”

“I love you, Joanie, and I love Sage and Stevie and baby Jason or Janey. Don't take my children away from me.” He'd never thought he'd beg, but he'd learned how lonely life could get when a man was too proud to fight for his family. That was one mistake he wasn't willing to make a second time.