Dodge the Bullet (9 page)

“It’s going to take some getting used to,”
his mom said. All the color had drained from her face and she
looked really mad. “All I ask is for you to give it a chance and
try to keep an open mind. Because we aren’t moving back.”

###

Sarah sat on the deck, sipped her wine and
let the peacefulness of the night air fill her lungs and the empty
places in her heart. Dinner had been a disaster, with Kevin sulking
and Lyle and Jenny trying to lighten the mood. Sarah could feel
herself slipping into the void of space where she’d spent much of
the last two years, half present, going through the motions of
every day life, but not really involved.

That’s what Kevin had meant, her being a
downer. He was right. She suspected he and Lyle, Jenny and everyone
else knew she was only partly in the moment most of the time.
That’s why people kept their distance. Being in Colorado this past
week had her feeling alive again. But she could feel herself
backpedaling and she didn’t know how to stop the momentum.

So many people had advised them to seek
counseling after Todd’s death. She’d resisted, thought it would be
too weird, too weak, too slippery a slope to go down and ever get
back up. Maybe her insistence on handling things herself, within
the family, had been a mistake. Now that they were in a small town
where the kind of therapy they needed probably wasn’t even
available, she began to wonder if it might help. Typical.

“What are you sitting over there moping
about?” Jenny asked.

Sarah sighed. Just the sound of it made her
feel pathetic. “I’m just wondering if I should have put us all in
therapy like everybody suggested.”

“Oh, pooh. That’s all you’d need is for
Kevin and Lyle to use their dad’s dying as an excuse for everything
that goes wrong in their lives. You don’t need therapy now any more
than you did back then. You’re just a little lost at the moment.
You’ll find your way. Hell, I’m starting to think being out here is
just what you all need.”

Sarah looked at her surprised. Jenny had
been supportive of her decision to move, always told Sarah to
follow her instincts, that she was a good mother and to trust her
gut. But at the same time, Sarah knew she’d been worried. This was
the first time she’d heard Jenny admit the move was a good
idea.

“Sarah, I know its hard hearing Kevin say
what he did, but you can’t listen to him. He’s angry and upset, but
he still loves you. He needs to know you’re sure about this and I
think that’s why he’s pushing you so hard.”

Sarah watched the play of firelight flicker
over Jenny’s features, her big soulful eyes and the button nose
that softened the hard edges of her often biting personality. She
could see her sister trying to organize her thoughts carefully so
as not to say the wrong thing. She trusted the advice Jenny offered
because she knew it came from her heart and intuitive mind.

“Don’t you remember when we were teenagers
and we were mad at mom?” Jenny asked. “I don’t mean mad because she
wouldn’t let us go to the mall or dumb stuff like that, but really
mad.”

“Like the time I overheard her telling Mrs.
Johnson you’d gotten your period?” Sarah asked. “You flipped out
when I told you.”

“Exactly.” Jenny laughed. “I was furious
with her for telling my personal business to a neighbor. She didn’t
think it was a big deal. I thought she didn’t understand, couldn’t
understand how humiliating it was for me to know that Mrs. Johnson
knew something like that about me. I kept thinking, what if she
tells Brad? What if Brad Johnson, the hottest guy in the seventh
grade, knows I started my period?”

“You and mom didn’t speak for almost a week
after the big blow up.”

“Do you know what I said to her during the
big blow up?” Sarah shook her head. “I threw everything in her face
I knew would eat away at her self-esteem. I told her she looked
fat, she was the worst-dressed mother in school, she was an
embarrassment to me, and I topped it off by telling her I hated her
pecan pie.”

“What did any of that have to do with her
telling Mrs. Johnson about you getting your period?”

“Nothing. I said it all to hurt her and make
her feel small just the way she’d hurt me and made me feel small.”
Jenny turned and looked Sarah in the eye. “That’s what Kevin’s
doing to you. He’s hitting on every insecurity you have about this
move to punish you, like he feels he’s being punished. But I also
think, deep down, he needs you to stand up and convince him this is
the right thing for all of you. If he sees you wavering about this
he’s going to feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under him.
He’s scared. He sees the uncertainty in your eyes and its making
him worried.”

“Damn,” Sarah said. “You should have been a
mother. That was good.”

Jenny smiled. “It was good, wasn’t it?”

“I
am
sure about the move. But when
he’s like that, so angry and hateful, I don’t know how to convince
him I’m doing this for him--for us--and not to punish him. We’ve
all been through enough. I’m not trying to make it harder on him
and Lyle. I knew this would be tough, but it’s harder than I
thought.” Sarah reached out and took Jenny’s hand. “You sure you
don’t want to move out here with us?”

Jenny squeezed her hand. “If this town’s
full of Marlboro men like your Dodge, I may just have to put some
serious thought into it.”

“He’s not
my
Dodge. You were the one
he couldn’t take his eyes off.” Sarah almost winced when she heard
the jealousy in her voice. She’d expected Jenny’s reaction to Dodge
the moment she’d laid eyes on him. What she hadn’t expected was for
it to bother her so much. Jenny raised her brows curiously. “I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like that. I’m not sure where that
came from.”

“I know where it came from and I’m damn glad
to hear it. He’s hot. I’d hope you’d take an interest in a hot guy
who’s taken an interest in you.”

Sarah snorted. “He’s not interested in me.
He’s helping me with a few things because of some obligation. Then
he’ll be gone.”

“He wasn’t obligated to lend you his truck
or bring his horses out tomorrow. But he did, and he is. He was
flirting with you earlier.” Jenny raised her hands when Sarah tried
to protest. “I know flirting when I see it and he was flirting. And
there’s not a thing in the world wrong with it.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Sarah, your husband was a wonderful man. I
know you can’t replace him because I don’t think there’s another
man alive who can walk in his shoes. But that doesn’t mean you have
to wither away with nothing but your memories of him keeping you
warm at night.”

“I’m not interested in replacing Todd. I’m
not interested in anything with anyone. I can’t imagine ever being
interested in someone like that again.”

“That’s because you won’t let yourself think
about dating and moving forward. You’ve already moved yourself and
the kids damn near across the country. Why won’t you even consider
starting over in another way?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. With all the
hostility I’m facing from Kevin right now, you expect me to start
dating again. That would send the kids right over the edge.”

“You wouldn’t be dating for the kids, Sarah.
You’d be doing it for you.”

Sarah snuggled deeper into the blanket she’d
wrapped around her shoulders. “I’m not dating at all. And Dodge is
the last person I’d consider dating anyway.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really. Can you honestly see me with
him?”

“I’d actually like to see me with him. But
he’s not interested in me, he’s interested in you.”

“Where do you get that, Jenny? I just don’t
see it. I think you’re trying to plant a seed in my head to get me
back on the dating wagon. All you’re going to end up doing is
making a fool of me.”

Jenny reached over and squeezed Sarah’s arm.
“I’m going to bed. I’ll leave you to your thoughts.”

Dodge
let lukewarm water splash directly in his face before he shut off
the shower and reached for a towel. He hadn’t slept well the last
few nights. He’d hoped the nearly cold water would allow him to
wake up enough to shake off the dreams that had haunted him at
night. He’d fall into bed exhausted from a day’s hard labor.
Sometime after midnight, he’d sit up with a start, jolted awake and
gasping for breath. His skin would be coated in a slick sheen of
sweat and Wendy Hawkins angelic face the only recollection of his
nightmare.

He could see her as clearly as if she’d been
seated on the bed next to him, her golden blonde ringlets shining
in the moonlight. She always wore the same wide eyed look on her
face when she’d silently begged him to go along with her story and
change the course of his life forever.

While he’d aged appropriately in his
thirty-eight years of living, she’d remained the same, frozen in
his memories as a shy nineteen-year-old. She used to run around in
the shadow of his older sister, Isabel, sneaking glances his way
when she thought he wasn’t looking. There were very few occasions
when he hadn’t been looking and wondering how the soft roundness of
her body would feel against all the hard planes of his.

He’d been eighteen, a senior in high school,
and willing to jump on anything remotely female. There’d been
something about Wendy, the way she’d pretend to ignore him and then
go out of her way to rub against him or flash a bit of skin in the
most innocent way. He’d endured almost a year of her harmless
flirtation. He’d wanted her as badly as he’d wanted Mary Lynn
Fletcher, the first of many girlfriends who’d finally agreed to let
him have her when they were both fifteen.

Wendy was a tease. One night at the local
pub, a place where the legal drinking age depended on how much
money you slipped the bartender, he saw a golden opportunity with
Wendy. She was there alone, or appeared to be when he first saw
her. With the help of several beers, he’d decided to give her what,
in his mind, she’d been begging to have for months.

As he sauntered to the table where she sat
nursing a bottle of Miller Lite, intent on picking the label off
with her hot pink fingernail, he was stopped dead in his tracks at
the sight of the most intimidating man he’d ever seen. Dodge was
big at eighteen, measuring in at near his present six-three, all
sinewy muscle and lanky limbs. But he had nothing on the massive
man who seemed to pound across the smoky bar and take the seat
opposite Wendy in the dimly lit booth. Wendy smiled at him, that
shy smile Dodge thought she’d reserved for him. She reached her
hand across the table to link their fingers. His hands were big
enough to crush her skull in his palm. Dodge stood there, right in
the middle of the bar, flanked by feeble dancers and posters of
exotic women in beer ads, just watching his innocent Wendy offer
herself up to another.

And that’s where his friend Tommy Thornton
found him, staring into the booth.

“What’s up, man?” Tommy’d asked, then let
his gaze follow Dodge’s stare. Wendy and the monster were not only
joined at the hands but were making serious attempts to molest each
other with their legs under the table. “Whoa. Is that Wendy
Hawkins? Damn, who’s that guy she’s with? He’s not from around
here.”

Dodge couldn’t answer. He and Tommy stood
rooted to their spots, gaping as Wendy and her new friend eased out
of the booth and out the back door toward the parking lot.

“Do you think we should follow her? Make
sure she’s okay?” Tommy asked. He was as innocent as any sheltered
Hailey boy. Watching one of its better known young girls ushered
out the back of a bar in the arms of a leather-clad unknown didn’t
sit quite right.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dodge said.

They went out the same door the man had
pressed Wendy’s back against when he pushed her outside. It had
just swung closed when they saw Wendy in the passenger seat of an
old Chevy Malibu, dented from one end to the next, snuggled up
against the stranger. She spotted Dodge watching from the back
alley and actually blew a kiss in his direction and laughed as the
car pulled away from the lot.

“Damn, I never thought I’d see the day sweet
Wendy Hawkins took a walk on the wild side,” Tommy said as he
emerged from Dodge’s shadow. “Do you think she knows what she’s
doing?”

Dodge watched the trail of exhaust from the
Malibu’s tailpipe disappear into the cold spring night and shrugged
his shoulders. “I would’ve wondered until she blew that kiss. I
sure didn’t see that one coming.”

That was the last time he’d seen Wendy
before she weaved a tale so contorted, so believable, it’d caught
him like a fish on a line. Her lies broke every allegiance he’d
formed with family and friends. Her one night’s walk on the wild
side had cost a lot of people their pride and faith, and had left
Dodge wondering how his family could be so quick to turn their
backs on him.

As he looked at his reflection in the
mirror, Dodge felt that same hardening in his belly he’d felt that
night. He kneaded his side from habit after all these years, and
tried to ease the weight that had settled there, heavier now than
he remembered.

He’d considered driving out to her gravesite
one Sunday after he’d been back in town for a few weeks. The dreams
had started up again as soon as he’d returned to Hailey. He thought
maybe if he went to her gravesite he could somehow make things
right between the two of them. Maybe she’d let him have his peace
at night. But he hadn’t done it, and knew he wouldn’t. If anyone
saw him at her grave, they’d assume he was guilty. He already felt
enough guilt where Wendy Hawkins was concerned. Besides, his dad
was getting on in years. He still ranched, but the years were
wearing on him. Dodge didn’t want old news rearing its ugly head
again in what could be Donnie Dodge’s last few years. He’d carried
the burden around long enough.