Have a Little Faith (16 page)

October was beautiful in Oklahoma. Faith’s birthday had begun with a magnificent sunrise and was ending with colorful sunset. Alex had ridden Joy to Little Blue Mountain and
poked her stain glass flowers into the earth. She’d talked to Faith as she always did.

She
’d
talked of Lane. She
’d
told her she would be telling Lane about her
soon
. And she had every faith that her husband would respect her wishes to leave Little Blue Mountain untouched.

The grief was easier to bear now, Alex had realized as she adjusted her dark tinted glasses over her nose. She knew she had Lane to thank for that. He hadn’t told her he loved her, but Alex knew that he cared for her. Care
was
more than she’d ever had from someone who had meant so much to her and she clung to that.

She wondered if Lane wanted to have children. She certainly hoped so. She could even be pregnant now. The timing was chancy, but possible. If they had a daughter, she would name her after Faith. If they had a son, then she would gladly let Lane chose.

Lane would make an excellent father. Alex smiled at the thought as she turned
onto
Highway 17. She rarely took the new highway since it was only built after they had sold half the land.

Alex looked to her right and said a silent apology to the six-hundred acres
she’d forfeited
. Guilt swelled like it always did when she saw the land she had loved being untended
and neglected
. If she had the extra funds, she would take care of it whether she owned it still or not.

Maybe she could now, she mused. Lane would understand and want to help her preserve it. Maybe she would bring it up. But she needed to tell him about Faith and about Sam. He had given her so much in the past few weeks that he deserved all the truth.

She pulled up to the house and made short work of unloading the weekly supply of oats and grains.
It was dark outside by the time she finished.
She was a sweaty mess when she walked into the house and went straight upstairs for a shower. When she walked into her bedroom to get her clothes, she saw Lane calmly packing a suitcase. Everything in her froze. His eyes met hers and she saw his anger.

“What’s going on?” She was almost afraid to ask.

“When were you going to tell me about your daughter, Alex?”

Alex bit her bottom lip as she struggled with her shock. “Who told you?” The look on his face told her it was obvious. Her mother had probably told him her version of what happened instead of the truth.  “I see.”

“Do you?”

“Are you angry because I had a baby or because I haven’t told you yet?”

“I’m not angry, Alex.”

“That’s why you’re packing your suitcase? You’re just going to leave because it hurts me too much to talk about my baby? That’s why I haven’t told you, Lane; because I don’t feel like being ripped open again right now.” The damn tears were coming and she couldn’t stop them.

“Alex.”

“You want to go? That’s fine. But don’t ever think I was deliberately keeping things from you. I was going to show you. I was going to tell you everything.”
With
a sob, she turned and fled.

Linda was sitting in the den when she ran down the stairs. She didn’t hesitate. She turned and faced her mother. “Damn you, why do you have to ruin everything?”

“Calm down, Alex. Speak to me like an adult or don’t speak to me at all.”

“You just couldn’t stand it, could you?” She spoke quietly now, letting the pain wash over her. She wanted to be numb. She wanted to never feel anything again. “You couldn’t just leave knowing I was happy. You had to make sure I’d be as miserable as you are.”

She drew in a breath and studied her mother. She had seen the woman nearly every day of her life
,
but she didn’t know her at all. “What did you tell Lane? Did you just tell him about Faith? About how your whore of a daughter got herself pregnant and refused to
get
married?”

“I told him what you should have told him.”

“That I had such a perfect example of marriage that I wanted to jump on the band wagon?” She was shouting again but didn’t care. “Did you tell him the truth about your husband, Mother?
About how he chose the bottle over both of us every night?
Did you tell him how I used to cry at your feet on the floor and beg you to make him stop hurting me?”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Really?”
She
responded to her mother’s lifeless tone with venom. “Because I remember
the only time I ever went to sleep without an aching backside was the few months I stayed with the Preston’s. And I remember you always turning your eyes away when your husband beat me bloody.”

Linda’s eyes were spitting fire now. “You were always such a burden to your father. You never gave him an ounce of respect.”

“I agree. I didn’t respect a man who drank our mone
y away. I didn’t respect a man wh
o never once told me he
loved me or even liked me. I have
no respect for either of you.”

Alex walked to
the bookshelf and pulled a thic
k book out from the shelf. She opened it up to where Faith’s picture was holding her page in her Bible. She’d always kept one in her room and one in the den. Both had pictures of her baby in them.

Tears were falling down her face when she turned to her mother holding the picture of the bright eyed baby
girl
. “You never once held your granddaughter.”

Linda remained silent.

“You never once acknowledged her even though when I was so out of it in the delivery room, I saw you crying for me.” She had been in too much pain at the time
,
but later remembered her mother’s tears and how her fingers had wrapped around hers. “You wasted your life
and mine
for a man who didn’t give a damn about you, Mom.”

Linda glared at her daughter then turned her face away from the picture of Faith. “Your child died because she was a sin, Alex. I knew it would happen, so did your father. Bad things happen to bad people.”

“It took a while for bad to happen to Joshua Morgan.”

“Don’t you speak of him that way!”

“Oh, but you can speak of my baby that way? She was innocent! She never did a damn thing to earn your hate or his. This baby
loved
me more in the three months I had her than you did my entire life. I hate you for that, Mom. I
hate
you.”

Still clutching her daughter’s picture to her breast, Alex ran out into the night. She ran blindly, not even seeing her husband standing in the shadowed kitchen with tears in his eyes.

Chapter Eleven

She
wept shamelessly once she reac
hed Little Blue Mountain. She’
d run on foot and was now thoroughly exhausted. Years of
pent up
anger and hurt had all come out tonight and her mother hadn’t even blinked.

Alex wished she could be that unfeeling.

As for Lane, it hurt to lose him. She loved him more than she’d ever loved another person besides Faith and she had ruined everything by not telling him about the most important thing in her life. She didn’t know if she could recover from this.

What would happen if he were to divorce her? Would she get any part of her home back? She didn’t want his money. She just wanted Little Blue Mountain. Nothing else would really matter to her if Lane left.

She didn’t know how long she lay on the cool grass beside Faith’s grave
,
but the running creek and crickets lulled her to sleep like they always did. 

Lane tied Joy’s reins to a tree and walked slowly up the hill. He saw her then, sleeping deeply beside a tiny stone. Careful not to wake Alex, Lane walked over and sat in front of the grave. He read the name over and over and felt grief for the life that had been so brief. He didn’t know the child, but knowing Alex still ached for her left him aching too.

He’d heard every word Alex had said to her mother when he had followed her downstairs. He was going to tell her he wasn’t packing to leave her
,
but to leave with her. When she had run out of the house, he had looked in
at
Linda w
ho had sat rigid as ever in her
wheelchair
with tears streaming down her cheeks.

He didn’t know what to make of it
,
but he knew his wife needed him. It took him forever to find out where she would have gone. Finally, he had cal
led Jack
and
had
gotten it out of him.

He’d followed the directions he had gotten
,
but Joy knew exactly where she was going. That told him Alex had made the trip often.

So this was why she was desperate to keep the ranch. Had he known at the beginning, he would have left this spot alone. It was close to the edge of the property line and would have been only the matter of some minor changes to the contract. It didn’t matter. She was keeping all of it now.

She came to wake slowly and looked up at him. He saw the confusion in her eyes before he saw the pain. Without speaking, he reached down and gripped her arms, bringing her up for a kiss meant to sooth
e
and
comfort her.

She melted in his arms before he pulled back. He pulled her more securely in his lap and kissed her temple. She rested her head against the
hollow
of his throat and sighed.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“I wasn’t leaving you, baby. I was packing us both some clothes. I was going to whisk you away for a night so we could have privacy. I wanted to tell you some things.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Don’t be. I know what it looked like. And I handled it wrong.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment and he was content just to hold her. He looked out at their surroundings and watched fireflies dance in the dark.
Out of the corner of his eye, he
saw the picture she held clutched to her chest.

“Is this Faith?”

“Yes.” She handed him the photo.

The chubby little face smiled back at him. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black
,
but otherwise she was the spitting image of her mother. When he saw her eyes though, he knew
without a doubt
who the father was. “She’s beautiful, baby.”

“I know. I miss her so much.” She took the picture back and traced Faith’s fuzzy head. “She died in a car accident.
The same one that paralyzed my mother.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“She was a little ov
er three months old. Sam and I—” S
he paused and looked up at him realizing she was getting ahead of herself. “Sam was the father.”

“I figured it out.”

“Oh. Well, we never split custody. He just came over every day or I would come by every day. He tried to get me to marry him
,
but my parents would have never allowed it
even if I agreed
. I would have when I turned eighteen had Faith still been alive.”

“You loved him.”

“Yes. He was my best friend. We’re still best friends
,
but we never loved each other like that. We were both drunk when I got pregnant
,
but we didn’t regret it. Faith was a blessing.”

“Of course she was,” he murmured.
He wouldn’t be jealous of the love and discovery of two teenagers. She was his now and he knew it.
He stroked her hair and encouraged her to lean back against him.

“You know everything else then.”

“I guess I do.”

They were quiet for a long time until Alex spoke again. “This is the reason I need
t
o keep this part of the ranch—
just this hill. I don’t want to move her.”

“You don’t have to. I was taking you away tonight to tell you what I’ve decided.”
He felt her stiffen in his arms
. “I bought the other six-hundred acres back from the city.”

“You did
what
?”

He
smiled
at her bewildered tone. “I still want to open a resort of sorts. But I want the theme to be
a
rustic getaway. We could have trail rides and put a pond in for paddle boating and fishing. I’ve
gotten
bids on the lumber and labor for thirteen cabins. And we’ll use
those
six-hundred acres. This six-hundred is ours.”

“Ours.”
She twisted around to look at him with her heart in her eyes. “You mean…”