The Scarlet Thread (47 page)

“She told me to take out the garbage.” He gave a defiant snort.

“Yeah, right, like I’m the one living there all week. I told her she

could take out her own trash. I’m not her personal servant. Then

she launched into this lecture on how she had to give up every Saturday with
Alex
so he could be with his snarly, snot-nosed son.”

She could feel the heat of anger rising and fought to remain

calm. “Were those her exact words?” Elizabeth worked with

Alex every day of the week. She spent every night in his bed. She

had him all to herself on Sundays. And she was complaining

about the
one
measly day a week he spent with his two children?

Didn’t you?

“Close,” Clanton said, giving her an odd look when she

winced. “She called me a ‘half-breed.’ So I told her what she

was.”

“Oh, Lord,” Sierra murmured and sat down on the couch.

“What did you call her?”

“You know what I called her. I said it in Spanish, but I guess

she got the point. What did you expect? She started in on
you.”

His eyes glittered. “She said the reason Daddy left was because

you were a dull housewife with no brains and no class. And it

looked like I took after you. So I told her she wasn’t any better

than a common hooker, just a little more expensive on the upkeep. She slapped me across the face and called me a

‘foul-mouthed, uncouth little wetback.’”

_

His eyes lost the heat of anger and glistened with hurt. “I didn’t

see Dad standing in the doorway. I’ve never seen him look so mad.

He told me to get my things. He was taking me home. And she just

stood there, smirking.”

Sierra ached for him. She remembered the way Alex had

looked at her the day he’d left. She’d never known a man whose

eyes could be so hot and cold at the same time. “Did he say anything to you on the way home?”

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“Nothing,” he said softly. He turned away slightly, but she’d

already seen his tears. “I’m going to my room.”

Sierra wanted to call Alex and give him a piece of her mind

about the fiasco. She wanted to take Elizabeth Longford into a

ring and pulverize her.

A wetback?

A plague on her, Lord! Forgive my wrath, Father, but I’d like to rip her

heart out!

If she didn’t
do
something, she’d explode.

“Clanton? I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in a little while.”

Her walk turned into a run, and by the time she returned, she

was streaming sweat, her lungs heaving, her heart pounding like

a kettledrum. She leaned over the kitchen sink, gasping for air,

and splashed water on her hot face. She drank a few sips of

water. The telephone rang.

Snatching the kitchen towel from the oven handle, she dried

her hands. It rang again. If it was a telephone sales call, they

were going to wish they’d picked another number. As it turned

out, she barely said hello before Alex was making demands.

“Let me talk to Clanton.”

God! Help! If you can cool me off, cool me off
fast!

“Why?” she said tautly. She wasn’t ready to hand her son over

to Alex again. Not for a long, long time.

“Why’re you breathing like that?”

“Because I went out for a run, OK? A hard run! It was either

that or buy a shotgun and shoot
two
people!” She slammed the

phone down.

It rang again. She gritted her teeth. Turning, she caught a

glimpse of her face in the glass front of the cupboard-mounted

microwave. Amazing! No steam coming out her ears, but she

looked rabid enough to begin frothing at the mouth.

Clanton came out of his bedroom. “Aren’t you going to answer

it, Mom? It might be Dad.”

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I do, I’m going to tell him what he can do with himself and that

. . . that
broad
he’s living with.” She stalked off down the hallway

and went into her bedroom.

The telephone stopped ringing. She could hear Clanton’s

voice, subdued, scared, his heart in Alex’s hands. He didn’t say

much more than hello. Apparently, Alex wanted to do all the

talking. She clenched her hands, wanting to pick up the extension and listen to the other end of the conversation. Instead, she

sat on the bed and prayed through clenched teeth.

Strike them with lightning, Lord. Open the earth and swallow them.

Alex and Clanton didn’t talk long.

Expecting to have to pick up the pieces, Sierra came out to

find her son rummaging through the refrigerator. “What did he

say?” she asked, surprised that he was hungry. She always lost

her appetite after a big fight.

Clanton straightened, a carton of milk in one hand and a

Tupperware container of cold homemade enchiladas in the

other. “He said he wasn’t mad at me, but it was going to be a

week or two before he could see me again.”

“And?”

“And, that’s it.” He shrugged, set the milk on the counter, and

put the entire Tupperware container into the microwave.

Sierra heard from Audra before Alex called again.

“He left her.”

“Excuse me?” Sierra said, startled. Audra hadn’t even identified herself before blurting out the news.

“Alex left Elizabeth,” she said. “He packed everything and

walked out on her last Saturday. They had a huge brouhaha over

something, and this after Vesuvius erupted in Connecticut.”

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What had happened in Connecticut? She didn’t have a chance

to ask before Audra rushed on.

“Alex came in Monday morning looking like thunder and told

Steve to assign someone else to his work. He doesn’t want her

within ten feet of him. She came in an hour later. Steve talked

with her briefly. He wouldn’t tell me what was said, other than

that she gave notice and left.”

“Where’s Alex living?”

“In a hotel in Beverly Hills, I think. Do you want his number?

I could get it for you.”

Sierra thought about it for a moment. “No. He’ll call when he’s

ready. He told Clanton he’d be in touch with him and Carolyn in

a week or two.”

“You don’t want to talk to him?”

“I’ve said enough already.” As usual.

Alex didn’t call. He came by. Not on a Friday evening, but on

Saturday in the pouring rain. She heard the doorbell ring and

Carolyn and Clanton talking to someone. They knew not to let

strangers in, so she assumed it was one of their friends stopping

by or her neighbor, Frances, with another delicious treat she’d

concocted as an experiment for her gourmet cooking class.

“Nice.”

Her heart jumped at the sound of his voice. Luckily, she was

firmly planted on the ladder, where she was just dabbing the last

touches of gold acrylic paint on the sunflower design she’d

drawn along the wall of her bedroom. She’d completed half of it

over the last two weeks.

She looked over her shoulder and saw Alex leaning against the

doorjamb, watching her. “I wasn’t expecting you.” Amazing how

calm she sounded.

“I know.” His glance flickered over her.

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was his disdain. Why did he always have to catch her looking

like someone who had crawled out of a bag of rummage-sale

rejects? She brushed a strand of hair back from her eyes, wondering how much paint she had smudged on her face. She had at

least a dozen stains on her paint shirt, and her cut-off Levi’s

should have been trashed years ago. There was a hole under the

right back pocket big enough that he’d be able to see the cotton

flowered underpants she wore underneath.

“Are you taking the children out?” she said, feigning indifference. Maybe someday her heart wouldn’t leap into her throat at

the sight of him.

When he didn’t say anything, she looked back at him and

found him staring at her canopy bed. She felt the heat come up

into her cheeks when he looked up at her again.

“What happened to ours?”

“I sold it.”

Had he winced, or was she just imagining it? He looked

around the room. “I guess it wouldn’t’ve fit in here anyway.” His

glance halted abruptly on the old armoire she’d refinished. He’d

moved it into the garage when Bruce Davies had redone the

house, intending to take it to the dump. He’d left before he had

the chance.

Something flickered across his face as he looked up at her

again, his eyes barely grazing hers. “I need to talk to you,” he said

grimly and went out.

She shut her eyes for a minute and then gathered her brushes,

balanced her easel, and went down the ladder. She put everything

down on the drop cloth and went into the bathroom to wash her

hands. Glancing up into the mirror, she saw tendrils of sandy

blonde hair curling in all directions. A smudge of green was across

one cheek, some brown on her nose. Picking up the soap and

washcloth, she scrubbed her face. That done, she debated chang3 6 6

ing into clean clothes and dismissed the idea. Raking her hands

back through her hair, she French-braided it quickly.

When she came into the living room, she found Alex looking at

Mary Kathryn’s quilt, which she’d mounted on the wall. Audra

had taken her to a museum a few weeks ago, and she’d seen a

quilt mounted in the same way. Liking the effect, she’d promptly

come home, purchased material to make a sleeve, and bought a

wooden drapery rod. Audra had been impressed when she saw

what Sierra had done. Even better, they’d spent the better part

of an hour talking about the quilt.

“It belonged to Mary Kathryn McMurray,” she said to Alex.

“She was a relative of mine who came across the plains by wagon

train. She settled in Sonoma County in 1848. That’s her trunk at

the end of the couch.” It served as a side table. She winced, realizing the old brass lamps Alex hated so much sat on top of it. Naturally, she had to draw his attention to it.

He didn’t say a word. The condo rang with silence. Frowning,

she realized what was wrong. “Where are the children?”

“I asked them to make themselves scarce for a little while.

Clanton said he’d play billiards at the clubhouse, and Carolyn

said you wouldn’t mind if she went to Susan’s.”

She was immediately filled with trepidation. Why would he

send the children off unless he was going to say something to her

he knew she wouldn’t like? What could he want?

Oh, God,
the children!

“Don’t look at me like that, Sierra.”

“Like what?”

“Like a deer caught in headlights. I’m not planning to run over you.”

She turned away and went into the kitchen. “Would you like

some coffee?” Her mind was racing. She didn’t even notice if he

answered yes or no. She wished she had read the divorce papers

over more carefully. What had they said about custody of the

children?

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