Lone Tree (37 page)

She swallowed hard, got the car started and left
Lone Tree behind her.

On top of her pillow she’d left a note, containing
three words:
Reed, I’m sorry
.

She’d spent the whole night composing those three
words.

Lainie found an apartment in Sacramento and a job
with another mortgage company. Rent was more reasonable there than on the
Peninsula. It’d also be warmer, but after Texas she didn’t think that’d bother
her. She put off sending for her things and charged what she had to on her
credit card. She figured Miles would leave her alone, at least for a while, but
she wasn’t sure about Reed. She wanted to give him time to either get so mad
he’d brush her off or grow so cold he’d stop caring.

Her apartment was upstairs, over a carport and a
laundry room, and her arms were full of the only set of sheets she owned, still
warm from the dryer, as she climbed the stairs. Halfway up, she absently
compared the feel of the sheets with the smooth lining of Reed’s sleeping bags.
In an instant the familiar pain hit. Automatically she straightened her back,
raised her chin and sucked in her gut like an athlete preparing for an event.
In the six long weeks she’d been in California, she’d had a lot of practice
combating loss.

She’d also done a lot of thinking, working around
the same issue in countless ways, and had ended up with the same bottom line
every time. She and Reed had no future together. She’d made a lot of mistakes,
so had Miles, and Reed had been pulled in and dragged along like a man tied
behind a galloping horse. It was impossible to go back and undo anything, and
equally impossible to go forward with things as they were.

Reed loved the land, the ranch, was as much a part
of Lone Tree as Miles. Yanking him out of there, asking him to settle somewhere
else, would only make the injustice fester. Their relationship had already
taken a hard hit, and in time the stress of a forced relocation could too
easily destroy whatever she and he had left.

Neither could she return. The rift between herself
and her grandfather was jagged and wide. Another factor, which had grown
insidiously throughout her time in Texas, was that due to her own guile and
guilt, she’d never been completely at ease there. Her memory of the state held
an unpleasant edge she was loath to revisit.

She unlocked her door, let herself in and elbowed it
closed behind her. The apartment was sparsely furnished, but what was there was
a godsend. She dumped the sheets on the double bed. The mattress sagged in the
middle and was lumpy everywhere else. To make up for it, she’d bought a decent
pillow when she’d purchased the sheets. But she’d chosen foam, not feathers.

Quickly, she again squared her shoulders, stared at
the scarred dresser and fought back another stab of memory.

The break had been made. Poorly and hurtfully, but
it was done and there was no going back. She’d misread everything, absolutely
everything and everybody. What hurt the most was misjudging Reed. Perhaps she’d
been right about one thing; she didn’t deserve his love.

Once she’d made the bed, she again considered
sending for her things. Her wardrobe was too limited to maintain an office
position, and her credit card couldn’t take much more. So she sat down at the
kitchen table and wrote a short note to Rosalie, asking her to box up her
belongings, and she apologized for the way she’d left. Strain was evident in
the letter, no matter how she phrased the sentences. Within a week, her
possessions arrived, along with an equally short note that politely wished
Lainie well, strain in it also.

As she unpacked, she came across the pale blue
nightgown, and stoic resolve couldn’t save her. Feeling Reed’s anguish as
strongly as her own, she sprawled across the bed as the sobs racked through her
and left her drained and empty.

That evening, though she knew a clean break with
everyone was best, thoughts of Jackie Lyn haunted her as they had so often
since she’d left Texas. It’d been such a short time since Jackie had suffered
at Carl Henry’s hands that Lainie decided she had to talk to her one last time.
Since the day had already been packed with emotion, she decided to call now,
and perhaps then she truly could put Texas and its people behind her.

“Girl, I’ve been so worried about you,” Jackie Lyn
said, voice breathless with relief. “And mad.” Quickly her tone changed. “What
do you think friends are for? That pot of stew might not’ve bubbled over with
such a stink if you hadn’t kept such a tight lid on it.”

“Always clearer after the fact, isn’t it,” Lainie
said more sharply than she intended.

Jackie’s rejoinder came fast. “You stop that right
now, Lainie Sue Johnson. I’m talking about friendship, before the fact and
after it, and don’t you make light of it.”

Lainie closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jackie’s voice softened. “You’re
uptight, which isn’t surprising. Your whole world has fallen down around you.”

“It got to a point where I couldn’t think straight,
Jackie. I still can’t.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“My mistake was in sticking around so long.” Lainie
decided not to get into particulars, not knowing how much Jackie had been told,
or even by whom. Again she thought of the small community. “It got away from
me. Everything did.”

“So you ran.”

“Yeah, I ran.” She swallowed past a sore lump in her
throat. “Jackie, I called because...well...are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m working through it. One step at a time,
one day at a time, like I told you. No other way to do it. How about you, girl?
You okay out there?”

“Oh, yeah. I got a job, a place to live, a
paycheck.”

“You had that here. Wish you were close enough I
could shake some sense into your hard head.”

Lainie managed a smile. “Guess I’m glad you’re not.”

“If my mama ever gets hold of you, she’ll do worse.
She’ll shake you till you rattle. There you were, the daughter of Elizabeth Ann
Auburn, but you didn’t own up to it. She said you didn’t play fair.”

Lainie sagged, in body and spirit. “She’s right.”

“No, she’s not.” Jackie’s voice was quiet. “A lot
was going on she didn’t know about. None of us did. You did the best you could,
I think.”

Hot tears flowed down Lainie’s face. Her throat was
too choked for her to speak. Her body tightened into a solid block as she tried
to keep the sob inside.

Silence lasted a long time, then Jackie said, “I
love you, girl. You take care, you hear?” There was a catch in her voice.

“I hear.” A sob got out. “And same back to you.”

Lainie hung up, had what she hoped was her last cry
for the day, then she started spaghetti for her evening meal. It was okay to
call it dinner again. Something nagged at her while she worked. Unable to nail
it, she let it go. Then, as she washed dishes, it came to her. Jackie hadn’t
tried to talk her back to Texas. Why not?

Did she know something Lainie didn’t?

She stared into space, then got busy doing some
detecting of her own. Dallas was the hub, so she called the major airlines to
find which ones had Sacramento-bound flights and the dates and times. Then she
called back, got different representatives and bluffed her way through. She
recited the flight number, apologized for misplacing the confirmation number,
and said she only wanted to make sure her husband had a window seat. One
airline wouldn’t divulge information, but her third call informed her Reed
Smith had an aisle seat. A window seat wasn’t available. Lainie thanked the
operator, said to leave the seating assignment alone, and hung up.

His flight was due to arrive at 2:10 p.m. on Sunday.

They couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave her alone, allow her to
make her own decisions. Their game plan—the pronoun included Jackie—was to give
Lainie what they thought was a suitable period of time, then follow her, talk
sense into her and get her back where she belonged. Where they thought she
belonged, mind you. What Lainie thought didn’t matter.

The next day was Friday. She went in to work, told
the office manager that a family emergency forced her to resign, and she picked
up her last paycheck. Then she went home and packed. Saturday, she loaded her
car and headed west on Interstate Eighty, all the way back to the Peninsula
where she’d grown up.

The trip that should’ve taken two hours took almost four.
She stayed in the slow lane, traffic whizzing by, concentrating so hard on the
road that she felt a constant frown creasing her forehead. Her mind felt
disconnected from her body; her hands on the wheel seemed like someone else’s.
She’d also felt a strain when driving from Texas but had worked around it, was
able to keep it in check. Instead of becoming stronger with time, it seemed
she’d become more bereft.

The loss of her grandfather seemed to be compounding
the loss of her mother. At times in her mind the two people became one. And a
yearning so deep it created a soreness inside her accompanied every thought of
Reed. She didn’t even have to think of him. She just lived, and drove, with
that rift inside.

She crossed the Bay Bridge, merged onto Highway
One-Oh-One, drove past Millbrae, and finally exited the freeway when she noted
the gas gauge was low. She found a gas station and a motel next to a
restaurant, bought a newspaper and checked out want ads.

The next day she rented an apartment in Belmont,
unfurnished, so she charged a new mattress and frame—and a second set of
sheets—on her credit card. Splurging on herself made her feel a little better.
She hit some weekend garage sales and lucked out. She found a used TV, a dinky
dinette set, a short chest of drawers for the bedroom and an attractive sofa
bed for the living room. The young couple selling the couch, who were following
their jobs out of state, even helped her transport it.

A job took a while to find, but finally she was
hired as secretary-receptionist at a financial securities firm. It paid less
than her Sacramento job and her Belmont rent was higher. Ouch.

Near the end of the month, she drove back to
Sacramento to spruce up her apartment and to apply for return of the cleaning
deposit. And she found three notes from Reed slid under her front door. They
weren’t dated or numbered, but she knew their order by their content. She
dwelled on the last one.

I
looked for you at work and your boss told me about your family emergency. How
did you know I was coming? Jackie swears she didn’t let on. You must need more
time. Take what you need, but get in touch. Please. I’m flying back tonight but
we have to talk. Call me, write, do something. I love you, Lainie. I don’t want
to lose you. I can’t lose you.

She sat on the faded print sofa for a long time,
holding and savoring the three pieces of paper, then neatly folded them. She
had memories, but these scribbled notes were invaluable because they were all
she had of Reed that she could touch.

She didn’t want to lose him either. As she sat in
the insignificant room she’d called home for such a short while, she thought
again about options. Another ranch, maybe. Not in Texas. Arizona, Oklahoma.
Maybe even Oregon, where it was green and pretty. Nevada, Utah. It wasn’t as if
there weren’t options. She leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees and
her head in her hands. Talk about uprooting someone. She’d done that to
herself, and look what happened. Did she want to do that to him? She sat back,
stared at the window blinds with dry eyes.

No. She didn’t have the right. And the issue
wouldn’t be open to discussion anyway. The moment she contacted him, he’d
decide for both of them. His will was strong enough he’d sway her, because
right now she was no more than an empty shell with no strength. So she had to
keep her distance. Just like she didn’t have the right to uproot him, neither
could she allow him to decide for her.

It’d be a mistake to return to Lone Tree. She
trusted Miles less now than before she’d met him. Arrogant and crotchety, she
could accept. Secretive and evasive...well, so was she. Together they’d set up
an explosive and destructive situation just by being who they were. He’d
cultivated power, used it without hesitation. But it was the conniving side of
him—not just controlling, but actually manipulating events and people in order
to get his way—that made her too wary to ever again expose her life to him.

*

Lainie arranged for an unlisted telephone
number—which would delay a professional investigator for a couple minutes,
tops. She spent her days looking over her shoulder, jumping when the phone
rang, then scolded herself for doing it. Paranoia could be a progressive
disease. She needed to get a grip on herself.

She bought an exercise tape in the hope a tired body
would curb an edgy mind. Months passed, taking her into October, and gradually
she breathed a little easier. She lived each day as it happened, not pushing
the future nor languishing in the past.

Though she hadn’t found the pattern of speech in
California any different from when she’d left it, every time she opened her
mouth someone asked her where she was from. She adopted the habit of speaking
slowly and precisely, not allowing the southern accent she’d picked up to get
through. But it still did.