A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) (6 page)

Under normal circumstances, he probably fluttered the pulses of every woman in a hundred-foot radius. Therese’s pulse had been unflutterable for a long time. Though when—if—it did flutter again in response to a man, it could be a man like him. She did have a weakness for blue eyes and chiseled muscles.

She watched him climb into his car, shiny and black, then pull away from the curb before leaning against the door, considering the future. However distant it might be, someday she might find herself in Carly’s position, interested in, sexually attracted to, in love with another man. A part of her wanted it intensely. A part of her wasn’t sure she could handle loving another man, because as she’d learned too well with Paul, love came with the risk of loss. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be up to that.

When a noise from upstairs drew her gaze that way, unease curled through her stomach, leaving sourness in its wake. There had been a time in her life when uneasiness was a rare thing—nerves over a school test, regret for an argument with a friend, fear that her college boyfriend was seeing someone else. Now it was a constant. Nerves strung tight. Queasiness. Uncertainty. Dread.

“Who was that man?” Abby stood on the landing, glaring down at her like an enraged demigoddess. How difficult had it been for her, opening the door to someone asking for her father? Logically, Therese knew it must have been tough—it had been tough for
her
—but she saw no outward sign of hurt on Abby’s face. Just anger.

“He was a friend of your dad’s.”

“How could he be a friend and not know that Daddy’s dead?”

Daddy’s dead.
The kids usually didn’t use that phrase. They usually didn’t talk about Paul’s death at all, but when they did, it was with euphemisms.
Dead
sounded too harsh. Too final.

“People lose touch. They met in Iraq. Your dad came back here. Sergeant Logan went wherever he was assigned. Their paths didn’t cross again.”

“So they weren’t friends.”

“Just because you lose contact with someone doesn’t mean you stop caring about them. I haven’t seen my best friend from high school in ten years and haven’t talked to her in five, but if we got together again, it would be like nothing had changed.”

“Things
have
changed or you would have seen her and talked to her.” Abby snorted. “What did he want?”

Sometime in the past moments, Therese’s head had begun to ache. It was Abby’s tone of voice, just the right pitch and level of snottiness to zero in on her eardrums with laser precision. She pressed her fingertips to her temple, but it did nothing to ease the throb. “To touch base.” She guessed. People who’d been in combat together always had memories to discuss, maybe questions to answer or sorrows to share.

With a dramatic
hmph!
and a toss of her hair, Abby spun around and disappeared down the hall. Predictably, a moment later her bedroom door slammed, the exclamation point at the end of the longest conversation they’d had since her return.

Therese needed aspirin, caffeine, and sugar. After lunch, she’d stopped at CaraCakes, her favorite bakery in town, and picked up fresh-baked bread and cookies. Cookies never failed to improve her disposition. In the kitchen, she poured a glass of mint tea brewed with simple syrup and took her first cookie from the pink and black CaraCakes box. By the time she began the second cookie, the oatmeal, raisins, and brown sugar had worked their magic, rendering the aspirin tablets unnecessary.

She was a creature of routine, and except for church this morning, today had broken routine. The things that usually occupied her time—laundry, paying bills, getting ready for work—had been done during spring break. Except for the dirty clothes Jacob had brought home with him, there was nothing requiring her attention. She could read a book. Go for a walk. Talk on the phone with that old friend she’d mentioned to Abby.

Instead she stepped outside. The house had a great front porch but only a square slab of concrete out back. It was one of the projects she and Paul had planned: jack-hammering the cement, putting in brick in a herringbone pattern, building a low wall around the perimeter to hold flower beds she would fill with something lovely and creeping, like phlox or ivy. They’d intended to reseed the yard, too, and add crape myrtles along the fence. She liked the vibrant colors and the papery peeling bark, and he’d liked the alien-looking seed pods left behind after the blooms.

All they’d managed was to invest in a nice set of outdoor furniture. Here it was April, and she hadn’t bothered bringing out the yellow floral cushions for them yet. Hadn’t considered hiring someone to replace the patio. Hadn’t even looked at flowers or crape myrtles.

What did the state of the backyard matter when she hadn’t yet reached a decision about the kids?

Even though her tea was in a tall insulated glass, sweat formed on it in the time it took to pull a teak chair into the sun and drag over another to prop her feet on. She sat, eyes closed, face tilted back, absorbing the sun’s warmth and concentrating on settling the disquiet inside her.

It was impossible, though. The first step in giving up custody of Abby and Jacob would be talking to their mother to see if she would take them back. Therese did her best to avoid talking to Catherine. The woman was the role model for selfishness and irresponsibility. Needing
me time
when she had two small children to raise. Refusing to be there for them when their father died because
she
was grieving too much herself. Oblivious to Abby’s unhappiness and uncaring that neither child wanted to live with Therese. And those clothes she’d bought Abby…

Selfish and irresponsible. And yet Therese would return custody to her in a heartbeat. Did that make
her
the role model for evil stepmothers everywhere?

Catherine was their mother, the small voice inside her insisted. But another small voice disagreed. Catherine gave birth to them. She hadn’t mothered them in the past four years. They were, for all practical purposes, orphaned. She had left them willingly, Paul unwillingly, but the results were the same.

Paul had left them with Therese. He’d entrusted two of the three people he’d loved most in the world to the third. He’d believed in her so much that she’d believed in herself. It hurt that she’d lost faith.

“Are you taking a nap or getting an early start on a tan?”

“Me, tan? Don’t you know that’s unhealthy for you? I’m getting my daily dose of vitamin D.” Slowly Therese opened her eyes to find Carly standing in the doorway. “Grab yourself a glass of tea and bring those cookies on the island out here.”

When her friend settled in the chair that had minutes before supported Therese’s feet, Therese gave her a long look. Carly wasn’t an impressive beauty, the kind who made men and women both take a second or third look, but Therese had always thought her delicately pretty. This afternoon she was downright radiant, and it had nothing to do with the sun.

“Being in love agrees with you.” Therese hoped her friend didn’t hear the envy in her voice.

“Being in love with someone who loves me back agrees with me.”

“How is Dane?”

“Recuperating,” Carly replied with a grin.

The man had spent months dealing with the loss of his leg, and the long months before that, he’d been in Afghanistan. He probably hadn’t had sex in longer than most men thought possible, until a few nights ago, and Carly had been celibate even longer. But no more. Therese sighed, not caring if her envy sounded loud and clear. Carly and Dane were going to live happily ever after. She would probably be pregnant before the wedding next month. They would find bliss and joy in every moment they could because they both knew how fragile life was.

Yep, Therese was jealous. All the margarita sisters were. Very happy for Carly, but jealous just the same.

“I missed church this morning. And dinner.”

“We missed you, too.”

“I don’t plan to stop going. To church or to dinner with you guys.”

Therese wanted to say the thought had never occurred to her, that she’d known things would change with Dane in Carly’s life but she’d also known it would never change their friendship, but she couldn’t without lying. The main group of the margarita club had discussed that very thing a while back—ironically, on the very day Carly met Dane. At the time of the conversation, none of them had guessed that she’d just met Mr. Right—more appropriately, Staff Sergeant Right—least of all her.

Even so, there’d been a little fear. All of the group, but especially Carly, Jessy, Ilena, Fia, Marti, Lucy, and Therese, had helped each other through their husbands’ deaths. They’d become best friends, sisters, family. They had assured each other that a new man in their lives wouldn’t affect them, but they worried anyway.

Because she couldn’t say anything without giving away the relief that filled her at Carly’s words, she settled for leaning forward and squeezing her hand.

After selecting a cookie from the box, Carly glanced toward the house, then said in a low voice, “Abby answered the door. Gorgeous haircut. She looks so grown up and beautiful. The boys at school tomorrow are going to be tripping over their tongues.”

“Oh, gee, thanks for reminding me of that. You just brought back my headache.”

Carly didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “I want boys. Little girls are so sweet and adorable, but then they grow into teenage girls and you have to deal with teenage boys. I want boys.”

“Paul never thought about her growing up. In his mind she was always Daddy’s girl. If it ever occurred to him that someday she’d be dating, having sex, falling in love, he shoved it out of his mind. If he saw her today, he wouldn’t be able to live in denial anymore.” She paused to sip her tea before drily adding, “If he’d seen her yesterday, she’d be locked in her room for the next ten years. Oh, Carly, am I really considering sending her back to live with the mother who dressed her like a hooker?”

Carly’s gaze remained steady on her. “I don’t know. Are you?”

Some decisions were so easy to make. When she’d been offered a job in Georgia after college, she’d taken about sixty seconds to consider accepting, even though it meant moving far from Montana and her family, and she’d never regretted it. When she’d met Paul after he and some buddies helped her with a broken-down car, she hadn’t thought twice about his invitation to dinner—or to bed. She’d never regretted that, either.

Not even when she’d stood beside his grave, clutching the flag presented to her by a solemn-faced general.

“Every thought I have about the kids makes my stomach hurt, whether it’s keeping them or sending them away. I think of five more years like the last two, until Abby goes to college, and I can’t stand it. I think of not seeing them, not knowing what’s going on with them, whether they’ve been abandoned again, and I can’t stand that, either.” Her eyes grew damp as she spoke, and the tightness in her chest made a deep breath impossible. “I think about what Paul would say—” She finished with an inhale so sharp her throat burned with it.

“Oh, honey, Paul would say that you’ve done the best you could. You’ve provided them with a home and security. You’ve taken them to counseling. You’ve tried, Therese. That’s all anyone can do.” Carly’s expression darkened. “That’s more than their mother or grandparents have done.”

The words reassured her—a little. But there was so damn much doubt as she stared across the yard at the bare wooden fence that separated it from the neighbor’s. The unfinished yard, the forgotten plans, the disappointing life. Everything was on hold, it seemed, waiting for her to find a solution she could live with. Nothing was going to change unless she changed it, and she didn’t know the right way to do that. “I just feel so conflicted.”

“You know I’ll support whatever you do,” Carly said. “But, sweetie, if you’re this torn, maybe you’re not ready to make a decision yet. Maybe you should pray more, think more, do the counseling bit more. I don’t know, maybe you should even set the kids down and tell them their options—straighten up and act human, be a responsible member of this family, or go away.”

That was most of her friends’ opinion—at least, the straighten-up-and-act-human part. How many times had she heard it?
I’d smack any child who spoke to me like that. My mama never would have put up with such a smart mouth. They have to learn that behavior has consequences.

She could have been tougher on them. Of course she knew that. But, as the chaplain, the psychologists, and the therapists had repeatedly reminded her, they were grieving children. She was the adult. They’d advised cutting the kids some slack, and she had done it. She’d let them get away with things Paul hadn’t tolerated. They’d pushed the limits of her control, and she had never raised her voice, much less a hand, to them in anger.

Abby couldn’t make the same claim. Therese imagined she could still feel the tenderness in her cheek from the slap Abby had once delivered in a fit of anger. The breaking point in their so-called relationship.

Which begged the question: if the relationship was broken, why hadn’t she called Catherine yet?

After leaving the Matheson house, Keegan turned onto Main Street, found a parking spot at the back of the Sonic drive-in, and ordered before dialing his mother’s number. Ercella answered on the second ring, not bothering with a greeting. “Did you talk to him?”

He removed his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No. He’s dead.”

“He’s— Oh, Lord, bless his heart. And his family’s.” She murmured more, a prayer for Matheson’s soul, no doubt. A month ago she’d been angry that he refused to acknowledge his daughter. Every few days since, she’d asked how in the world any man worthy of the name
father
could not want to be with a precious little girl—sometimes as much a dig at Keegan, he thought, as Matheson. Now she was praying for the man.

Honesty forced Keegan to admit that she’d probably been praying for Matheson from the first time she’d heard of him. She believed God answered prayers.

“Did you meet his wife?”