Rescue Me (22 page)

She looked down and almost smiled. “There are some really good guys here. Not that I want to date any of them. Mostly because I’ve known most of them since grade school and remember when they used to pick their noses.” The corner of her lip quivered as if for a few seconds she’d forgotten where they were going and why, then suddenly remembered. “Thank God I didn’t sleep with any of them.”

That surprised him a little. Probably because he’d grown up in several small towns and there hadn’t been a lot to do but roll around in hay fields. “None?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t lose my virginity until I went away to college.”

“What was his name?”

“Frosty Bassinger.” Her voice wavered.

“
Frosty?
” He chuckled. “You gave it up for a guy named Frosty?”

“Well, his real name was Frank.” She unscrewed the cap and took a drink from the bottle. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen. She was eighteen and her name was Heather.”

Sadie choked. “Sixteen? And your girlfriend was eighteen? That’s illegal.”

“It was my idea and she wasn’t my girlfriend.”

“You weren’t even a relationship guy at sixteen?”

He glanced at her and smiled. “I had a few girlfriends in high school.”

“What about since?”

He glanced across at her. At the flat Texas plains, the green and brown grasses passing in the window framing her head. At the desperation in her blue eyes, pleading with him to talk. Just to keep talking so she didn’t have to think about her daddy and the reality of what waited for her in Amarillo. “Nothing really since I joined the teams.” He’d never been good at small talk or talking just to talk. He’d give it a try if it distracted her. “I don’t know anyone on his first marriage, but I know a lot of guys on their third. Good guys. Solid.” He pulled to the left lane and passed a Nissan. “The divorce rate in the teams is around ninety percent.”

“But you’re not in the military now. It’s been five years.”

“Almost six.”

“And you’ve never fallen in love?”

“Sure.” He hung his wrist over the steering wheel. “For a few hours.”

“That’s not called love.”

“No?” He looked over at her and turned the tables. “Have you ever had a real serious relationship? Ever been engaged?”

She shook her head and set the bottle in the cup holder. “I’ve had relationships, but no one’s ever put a ring on it.” Her anxiety leaked out her fingers and she drummed the console. “I date emotionally unavailable men, like my dad, and try and make them love me.”

“Did a shrink tell you that?”

“
Loveline
with Mike and Dr. Drew.”

He’d never heard of
Loveline
, but he’d certainly had a shrink tell him why he ran from relationships. “Apparently I have a disconnect with deep emotions.” He glanced at her, then back at the road. “Or so I’ve been told.”

“By a woman?”

“Yep. A Navy psychiatrist.” He could feel her gaze on him. “A damn smart woman.”

“Why are you emotionally disconnected?”

He was willing to distract her . . . to a point. That point did not include digging into his head or his past. “It’s easier.”

“Than what?”

Than living with guilt. “Did Mark and Dr. Drew give you tips on avoiding emotionally available men?”

“They gave me warning signs.”

“Did you heed their advice?”

Sadie studied Vince’s profile from the passenger side of his big truck. His strong jaw and cheeks were covered in dark stubble. He hadn’t shaved since she’d seen him earlier, but he looked like he’d showered, and he’d changed his clothes. “The fact that I am in any way involved with you points out the glaringly obvious fact that I didn’t listen.” Just below the surface of her skin, she could feel her pain and grief aching. It was so close. So close to leaking out if she let it.

“Clearly.”

She looked out the window at the dusty Texas plains. Her daddy was dead. Dead. It couldn’t be possible. He was too cantankerous to die.

For the next half hour, Vince kept up her plea for him to talk. He didn’t run on and on, just a few observations about Texas and Lovett. Every time the silence pushed her close to the edge, his voice drew her back. She didn’t really know why she’d pulled into the Gas and Go. She could have driven to Amarillo, but she was glad for his strong, solid presence.

At the hospital, he placed his hand on the small of her back and they moved through the automatic doors. He waited outside her father’s room with the nurse while she moved inside. The daisies she’d left the other day sat on the bedside table next to his nonskid socks she’d left out for him. Someone had pulled the sheet up to the chest of his pajama shirt. His old hands lay at his sides and his eyes were closed.

“Daddy,” she whispered. Her heart pounded in her chest and throat. “Daddy,” she said louder as if she could wake him. Yet even as she said it, she knew he wasn’t asleep. She took a step closer to the side of his bed. He did not look asleep. He looked sunken . . . gone. She placed her fingers in his cool hand.

He was gone just as she was beginning to understand him.

One tear and then another slid down her cheek. She closed her eyes and shoved it all down until her chest ached. “Sorry, Daddy. Two got out,” she said. He’d been her anchor when she hadn’t even known she needed one.

She slid her hand from her father’s and dried her cheeks with a tissue on the nightstand. Even in her raw grief, she couldn’t lie to herself. He hadn’t been a perfect dad, but neither had she been a perfect daughter. Their relationship had often been difficult, but she loved him. Loved him with a deep, soul-devastating ache. She took a breath past the pain in her chest and blew it out. “You did the best you could.” She understood that now. Understood it, given his own difficult past. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you passed. I’m sorry you were alone. I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

She kissed his cool cheek. There was no reason to stay by his bedside. He wasn’t there. “I love you, Daddy.” Emotion clogged her throat and she managed a weak “Good-bye.”

She moved out into the hall and made the difficult call to the JH. Vince stood beside her, his hand on her back as he spoke in a low tone to the nurses. Predictably, the Parton sisters fell apart, while Snooks and Tyrus were deeply saddened but not surprised. They were tough old cowboys like Clive and would make sure the JH ran smoothly like always.

She didn’t know how she was going to live without her anchor, and over the next five days, she just went through the motions. She ate little and slept less. Her life was a blur. A numb, hazy blur of people stopping by the JH to talk and remember her father. A constant stream of casseroles and Clive stories. A fog of picking out a casket and burial clothes. Of signing documents and writing the obituary. Of discovering that her father had died of heart failure due to deep vein thrombosis. Meeting with the estate lawyer, Mr. Koonz, and the executor of Clive’s will.

She’d sat within the lawyer’s office, the scent of leather and wood polish filling her blurry head. She sat with five of her father’s loyal employees and listened as each was bequeathed fifty thousand dollars and guaranteed employment at JH Ranch for as long as they chose. The lawyer mentioned a trust to an unnamed beneficiary that Sadie assumed was set up for children she might have.

Everything else in his estate was left to Sadie. Everything from his old Ford truck and unexpired insurance policies to the JH.

There was a time, a few short weeks ago, when the weight of responsibility would have overwhelmed her. It overwhelmed her now, only maybe not as much. Now the JH felt a bit more like an anchor than a noose.

He left a letter for Sadie. One that was short and to the point:

“Talking never came easy to me. I loved your mama and I loved you. I wasn’t the best daddy and I regret that. Don’t let the folks at the funeral home put makeup on me, and keep the lid to my casket closed. You know how I hate people gawking and gossiping.”

And through the worst of it, Vince was there. His strong, solid presence just when she seemed to need him. He’d helped her gather her father’s things, then driven her to the funeral home the next day. Mostly he’d been with her at night. When everyone was gone. When the house was too quiet. When she was alone with her own thoughts and the numbing grief threatened to swamp her. He came and pressed his body into hers. His solid warmth chasing the chill from her bones. It wasn’t about sex. It was more like he came to see how she was holding up and stayed for a few hours.

He never made the mistake of falling asleep in her bed again, and when she woke from a restless sleep in the darkness, he was always gone.

Chapter Fifteen

I
t seemed the entire population of the Texas panhandle turned out for the funeral of Clive Hollowell. Mourners from as far away as Denver and Tulsa and Laredo packed the pews of the largest Baptist church in Lovett. Like a lot of Southern Baptists, Clive had been baptized at the age of four after his profession of faith. Other than at his wife’s funeral, no one could actually recall ever seeing Clive’s tall frame sitting in the pews of the First Baptist Church on the corner of Third and Houston. But through the years, a lot of Hollowell money had flowed into the church coffers. Money that had paid for additions and renovations and the new forty-five-foot steeple and carillon bells.

Senior Pastor Grover Tinsdale delivered the sermon, hitting all the high points about sin and souls and God welcoming His son Clive back. After the pastor took his seat, Sadie moved to the pulpit and gave the eulogy. There was no question about whether she would give it. She was a Hollowell. The last Hollowell. She stood on the dais in her black sleeveless sheath, her hair pulled back, her eyes dry.

Below her sat her father’s casket, made of simple pine with the JH brand burned into it, as was due an old cowboy. And like all old cowboys, he’d been buried with his boots on. As was his wish, Sadie insisted the casket be closed, and an arrangement of sunflowers and asters, daisies and blue bonnets, which grew wild on the JH, covered the top.

In contrast to the simple casket, the front of the church was crammed with elaborate floral tributes. Crosses and wreaths and sprays crowded around big photos of Clive and his horses. Sadie stood above all that splendor, her voice clear as she spoke about her father. The Parton sisters loudly wept in the front pew, and she knew that there were those in the congregation who would judge her. They would hear her clear voice and see her dry eyes and whisper that she was an unfeeling and cold person. An ungrateful daughter who’d closed his casket so people couldn’t say their good-byes as was proper.

She talked about her father’s love of the land and the people who’d worked for him. She spoke of his love for his paint horses. Grown men and women cried openly, but she didn’t shed a tear.

Her daddy would be proud.

Following the funeral, the graveside service was held at Holy Cross Cemetery. Clive was laid to rest with generations of Hollowells and beside his wife. Afterward, the JH was opened up for mourners. The Parton sisters and dozens of other members of the First Baptist Church made cucumber and chicken salad sandwiches. They’d set up banquet tables beneath tents on the lawn, and the women of Lovett arrived with funeral food in hand. Recipes handed down through the generations loaded the tables with fried chicken and every conceivable casserole. Salads and five different kinds of deviled eggs, vegetables and breads, and a whole table filled with desserts. It was washed down with sweet tea and lemonade.

Everyone agreed that the service was lovely, and a fine tribute to someone of Clive’s stature and reputation. And it just went without saying that no funeral would be considered a success without a few scandals. The first was of course Sadie Jo’s emotional distance while real mourners fell on each other’s necks. She was no doubt much too busy counting her inheritance to really grieve. The second happened when B.J. Henderson declared that Tamara Perdue’s homemade pickled relish was better than his wife, Margie’s. Everyone knew that Tamara wasn’t above poaching another woman’s man. B.J.’s declaration sent Margie into a tailspin, and Tamara’s relish ended up on the losing end of an accidental dose of Tabasco.

“Where’s your young man?” Aunt Nelma yelled across the parlor at Sadie, who stood near the fireplace sipping her iced tea and just trying to get through the day.

First, Vince wasn’t her young man. He was her friend with benefits. He’d been a great friend the past five days, but he was still just an FWB. If she let herself forget that, if she ever let herself crave his solid presence in her life, even for one second, she’d be in deep, deep trouble. And second, Sadie knew for a fact that Nelma was “wearing her ears” and there was no reason to yell. “Vince is at the Gas and Go. I believe he is painting today.”

“Your man is handy,” she said loud enough to be heard in the next county. “It’s always nice to have a man who is handy to fix stuff and such. Does he have a good dental plan?”

Sadie had absolutely no idea about Vince’s “dental plan” nor was she likely to ever know, and there was absolutely no reason for him to attend her father’s service. Vince hadn’t known Clive, and while Sadie might have found comfort in the weight of his hand on the small of her back, it was best that he didn’t attend. His being here would have added another, juicier layer of gossip that she didn’t need.

Vince had been real sweet to take her to Amarillo the day her daddy died and the funeral home after, but he wasn’t her boyfriend. No matter how much she liked him, she could never forget their relationship was temporary, and as she’d discovered since she’d blown into town two short months ago, life turned on a dime and everything changed in the blink of an eye.

Her life was certainly changed. She had a lot to think about. A lot to figure out. But not today. Today was her daddy’s funeral. She just had to get through today, one minute, one hour at a time.

“You poor orphaned child.” Aunt Ivella wrapped her arms around Sadie’s neck. She smelled like hairspray and powder. “How are you holding up?”