Jilted (18 page)

She nodded, and her body relaxed into his.

“You working today, Lyn?”

Clyde had persisted in asking me that, but now I could finally say yes. Three days off had stretched Dixie's bereavement limit, and she had gently but firmly told me it was time to come back to work. I didn't mind. Even though I felt more comfortable at home, I couldn't afford the time off without pay. “I'm working this morning, and the lunch shift tomorrow.”

I sat on the passenger seat of his sedan, but I had no idea where we were going. He had knocked on my door and invited me to breakfast, but then he clammed up. Surely he wouldn't take me to the DQ or the diner, and other than the Allsup's convenience store, there were no other options. He had already passed his street, so the trailer house was out of the question, and he was headed north, the opposite direction of the wind fields.

He nodded. “Tomorrow, will you get off in time to go to the game in Tahoka?”

“Give me a break. You're lucky I'm going to work.” He was lucky I was going to breakfast with him. Clyde had become a healing tonic to my nerves. Every time I was with him, the darkness lifted a tiny bit, and when he kissed me, my doubts were banished to the back side of my heart, where I could easily forget they existed. “Where we headed?” I asked again.

He didn't answer, just kept driving north, past the city-limit signs and on toward Lubbock.

“I have to be at work in an hour.” We couldn't make it to town and back in that time, but surely Clyde knew that.

“Yep.” He flipped on his blinker, and as it clinked, I cringed. He was turning east on the gravel road at the top of the Caprock, and I knew immediately what he had in mind. We meandered down the small lane, around the curve that inched too close to the drop-off, then parked in front of his grandpappy's old house.

My fingers clenched the seat cushions. Clyde hadn't brought me to his family's home place until I got all stupid and called myself his wife. What had come over me? He probably got the impression I sat around dreaming about white dresses, when actually my comment had startled me as much as it seemed to startle him. I didn't want to be his wife.
Did I?
Now it felt as if we were barreling toward marriage with the speed of an out-of-control locomotive.

But still … the property was breathtaking.

The house sat near the rim of the Caprock, and I looked across the rolling plains, hundreds of feet below us. The northern Cap, free of the windmills I loved so much, had an unpolluted beauty that I had always found mesmerizing. “This view is amazing, Clyde. You should be proud you own something like this.”

“You like it?”

“Who wouldn't?” I turned to smile at him, surprised to realize his gaze was fixed on the run-down house. “No,” I said quickly. “I was talking about the land and the view. You should tear the house down.”

He snatched a paper sack from the seat between us, then opened his car door. “Funny.”

The shack, originally built as a home for ranch hands, had seen at least a hundred summers. The weathered wood siding stood exposed to wind, rain, and insects, and tattered curtains—probably left there when Fawn moved—gently fluttered behind broken window panes.

I followed Clyde, high-stepping the tall grass and gingerly picking my way across the rotting plank porch. The house lay in stark contrast to the grandeur of the landscape, seeming grossly out of place.

“You're going in?” My nose wrinkled, but then I felt bad. This had been his grandfather's place. Surely Clyde had all kinds of memories here. Happy ones.

“Why wouldn't I?” He pushed the door open without turning the knob.

A few pieces of furniture had been left in the living room, but they did nothing to make the place feel homey. The cushions of a floral loveseat had been ripped apart and chewed, evidently forming a nest for an animal, and an odor radiated from the woven rug spotted with brown and white droppings. When I heard a rustling sound in the next room, I scurried back outside, and Clyde followed me.

We walked silently back to the car, and I nudged his shoulder. “Found any more rattlers out here?”

“I reckon a few are making their way back. It's been a year since we gassed the den.”

“This place just gets better and better.”

“It ain't that bad, Lyn.” He looked back at the structure, his eyes following the roofline. “In fact, I'm thinking about moving up here.”

I scrutinized his face to see if he was serious. “It's not fit to live in.”

“Fawn was here just a few months ago.”

“It was almost a year, and the storm that ran through last spring did a number on the place.”

He crossed his arms. “It's still standing.”

“Barely.” I jabbed the word at him, but it did no good to argue with the man. He was as hardheaded as a Brahma bull.

He still held the paper sack, and now he set it on the hood of the trunk. “Homemade blueberry muffins and fresh-squeezed orange juice.”

“Homemade?” I asked. “Fresh-squeezed?”

He ducked his head, and I stared at the covered plastic container and two travel mugs,
knowing I should have been flattered.
Instead, a twinge of panic returned as I calculated how early he would've gotten up to cook.

“Well … thanks,” I said. “It's so nice of you to do this … for me.”

He leaned against the bumper. “I know what you're thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

He took a drink of juice, and I could tell he didn't want to say whatever he was about to say. “It's too much.”

I scooted back to sit on the hood next to him, then reached for a muffin. Yes, it was too much. Good grief, Hoby had only just died.
Sort of.
Maybe. But as I sat there nibbling the best blueberry muffin I had ever tasted, I wanted—more than anything—for it to not be too much, and I longed for the day I would be able to handle things. To handle Clyde. “It's just breakfast,” I mumbled.

We ate in silence then, side by side, each of us lost in our own thoughts while the sun crept up the sky. I tilted my face to absorb its warm rays and thought what a perfect morning it had been. Beautiful view, sunny weather, and Clyde. Lifting a palm, I shaded my eyes so I could see him. “You should open up a restaurant here.”

He laughed once, hard, like a bullet.

“You could have an outdoor deck for seating right on the rim of the Cap, and an indoor dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows. It would be perfect.” I poked his leg with my fingertip. “You can't work at the DQ forever.”

“Come on, Lyn.”

“You have a dead-end job.”

He leaned forward, intentionally shielding me from the sun, and when his shadow fell across my eyes, I could see the scowl on his face. “How is my job any different from yours?”

I started to spout off a retort, but nothing came to mind. Finally I shrugged. “I guess the only difference is I'm not content with mine.”

“So you're thinking on looking for something else then?”

He was shoving the discomfort right back at me. “I don't know,” I confessed. “I'm not sure what I would do. No reason to switch jobs if it's not a good fit.” I reached down and tugged on a blade of tall grass, then slapped it gently against my thigh. “But think of it … You could have a dining room, or a deck, right on the rim of the Cap. And you're a darn good cook.”

“I can't even tell when steak is done.” He glared at a prickly-pear cactus three feet away and ignored the expansive view that I couldn't pull my gaze away from. “I can't even tell the difference between bean dip and guacamole.”

“You don't need to do those things. I googled it.”

“Why would you google it?”

“Because you cook really, really good.”

His frown deepened, but around the edges, I thought I saw a smile.

“Real chefs check steak by touch,” I said, “not color.”

“Naw …”

“They touch it and see how firm it is or something.” I slid off the hood. “There are even blind chefs. Famous ones. And if a blind person can cook, you ought to be able to manage it.”

He rubbed his palm across his cheek and down his chin, making a scratchy-whisker sound. “What about vegetables?”

“You learn to tell the difference. Green tomatoes are bound to be more firm than ripe ones.” I rolled my eyes. “Or you could just get someone to help you. You're using your color blindness as an excuse.”

He gazed unseeingly at the cactus, and I imagined him mentally cooking a steak and checking to see if it was done. Then his eyebrows bounced, and a corner of his mouth inched upward. “I can't think of anyone who would help me.”

I punched him on the shoulder, but after a few chuckles, he sobered again.

“There's not room enough,” he said. “Not for parking and all that.”

“There would be if you tore down the house.”

“I can't tear down the house.”

I inspected the shack one more time. The wasp nests under the eaves, the missing board on the porch, the holes in the roof. “You could just wait for it to fall down.”

“If anything, I'll repair it.”

“You can't be serious.”

“Lyn, I've got a lot of memories here.” He winced as though the statement caused him pain.

“Your grandpappy?”

He paused. “And Fawn.”

“Fawn wouldn't get her feelings hurt if you let it go. It's not like she comes out here and reminisces about her unmarried pregnancy days.”

He resealed his travel mug, then slipped it into the sack. “I'm surprised Neil hasn't torn it down already.”

“What?” I asked. “Neil's all lovey-dovey with Fawn now. I think he's forgotten she was ever out here.”

“There you go defending him again.”

A bolt of lightning charged through my nerve endings. “I've already told you I can't stand him, and I wouldn't—”

“I saw Neil's letters, Lyn. Sunday when I made the sandwiches.”

For a split second I couldn't think what he was talking about.
Letters?
But then I remembered him in my bedroom, and the letters had probably been on the nightstand. I wiped my hands on my pants, but they were so sweaty, they slid across the brown polyester like an ice-skater on frozen mud.

His eyes were pleading with me, begging for an explanation, but I didn't want to explain. I wasn't even sure I could. For years I'd guarded those old letters, kept them hidden from Ruthie, pulled them out of the trash dozens of times. I had no idea why. I certainly didn't want them, didn't want to need them.

But if I didn't answer, Clyde's gaze would suffocate me. “It's not Neil I'm hung up on,” I said.

He let my response float on the breeze for a few seconds. “Explain?”

“Maybe it's the idea of him. Or the echo of a teenage girl's broken dream.”

“Like … first love?”

If the earth had opened right then and swallowed me alive, I wouldn't have minded, but I kept looking him in the eye, determined to beat this part of my demon. “I guess so. First love is different from the rest, you know? It's like I had an image of what the perfect life would be, and then it shattered.”

“And you think nothing else can be as good as your time with Neil?”

“No!” I glared at him. “It has more to do with me not letting go of the fairy tale.”

He looked away from me then, back to his precious house. “Do you still love him?”

I couldn't breathe. “I don't know if I ever loved him. Neil is a selfish user, but I loved the way he made me feel—important, necessary, loved—so I'm just as selfish as he is. But those letters represent my life when it fell apart, and I keep them to remind myself that happiness is only an illusion.”

Clyde studied the front window, his gaze tracing the outlines of the panes. Maybe he was unwilling to look at me. Maybe he no longer wanted to.

“There's another reason I keep them,” I admitted, knowing Clyde might never look at me again once I explained it. “I wrote Neil a letter once. Pretty much like the one he wrote me.”

Finally Clyde's eyes stilled, focusing on the front door. “When?”

“Right after he married Susan. I was insane with emotion. One week we were shopping for rings, the next week he was married and building a huge house on her father's ranch.” I shook my head. “I thought I would die.”

“So did I.” Clyde hummed low in his chest. “I lost Susan and the baby and my life, all on the same day.”

“But in the end”—words spilled from my lips like water gushing from a garden hose—“Neil couldn't give up all those material possessions and the status. He refused to get an annulment, yet he expected me to be there for him—in every way a man expects a woman to be there. But he didn't know me as well as he thought.” I snickered. “My anger consumed me until I couldn't see straight, and to retaliate against him for what he had done … I married one of his best friends.”

Clyde closed his eyes as though he didn't want to hear more, but so far I hadn't told him much that he didn't already know. “So you didn't love Hoby?” he asked.

“Not when I married him, no.” I tossed the rest of my muffin in the paper sack and rolled the top down over itself, not really paying attention to what I was doing. “Most people marry for love, but I married Hoby because of hate. Hate for Neil. I wanted to hurt that man as badly as he had hurt me, and the only way to do it was to give someone else what he wanted for himself.” My body trembled as I relived the emotions from all those years ago, but then I calmed, right along with my memories. “But something happened that I didn't expect.”

Clyde smiled, as if he knew what I would say next.

“I fell in love with him.” An uncontrolled, airy breath laughed from my lungs. “I didn't see it coming, you know? We had always been good friends, and we knew each other so well, I guess the love just came on naturally. It started right after I got pregnant, but by the time Ruthie was born … I loved him desperately.”