Justified (24 page)

Chapter Forty-Nine

“Stop worrying, Fawn.” JohnScott tapped the screen on his cell phone as he opened the back gate. “Only five minutes.”

“Five minutes there and five minutes back, or five total?” The wind swept a curl across my eyes, and I turned into the onslaught, letting the air hit me full in the face. Stress seeped from my pores, spiraled down my hair, and snapped from the end of each wind-tossed curl.

“How about four each way?”

“Good deal.”

JohnScott led me in a wide berth around the pile of bark that had once been my woodpile.

“Is it safe to walk at this time of day?” I asked.

“Not the best idea we've had, but at least there's a full moon.”

“We need Rowdy.”

“I'll bring him back from Mom's house tomorrow. Should've already.” JohnScott activated the flashlight on his cell phone and slipped his hand into mine.

My body had almost gotten back to normal, and I had pent-up energy longing for release. The four-minute time limit created a mental safety net around my maternal instincts, and I picked up my pace.

“Slow down,” JohnScott said. “I can't keep up.”

“You too old?”

“Now … don't go there.”

“You listening for the monitor?”

He held the receiver to his ear. “Not sure I'll be able to hear much in this wind.” He adjusted the volume control, and we both heard the baby cry slightly.

My heart lurched, and I spun around and began walking back to the house.

JohnScott laughed. “So much for our four-minute sprint.”

I reached for his wrist and turned his phone to see the screen. “Three and a half. That's not bad.”

The baby cried louder, and my milk let down, instantly moistening the pads I had placed inside my bra.
Thank goodness I had done that.
The personal problems associated with breastfeeding were not something I wanted to share with JohnScott.

I pressed my forearms against my chest, pretending to straighten my necklace, but when I heard a man's voice over the intercom, all thoughts of leaking milk were lost.

“Hush up, boy.”

Gravel ground beneath my feet as I jerked to a stop, gripping the intercom between sweaty palms. “What's Tyler doing here?”

JohnScott kept walking, faster now. “Probably just came to see Nathan.”

We were halfway back to the house.
No need to worry.

But when Tyler spoke again, his stilted voice made my skin go cold. “Daddy's here, Ty, and you're never going to be a kicker.”

In the moonlight, JohnScott looked like a mountain lion, ready to pounce, and when the screen door slammed, he took off at a sprint, his flashlight swinging crazily as he hurdled cactus.

I ran after him, stumbling across the moonlit pasture with my soft insides jiggling in protest. But even as I considered the possibility of crossing the path of a rattlesnake, anxiety propelled me faster and faster. Branches lashed my shoulders, and tall grass slapped against my jeans.

The glow of Tyler's headlights shone around the side of the house, and guttural sobs choked from my throat. My legs felt weighted as I clunked past the new woodpile, feeling clumsy and inadequate and slow.

JohnScott charged around the corner just as Tyler's truck spun, sending a shadow of dust into the wind.

He wouldn't take the baby, would he?
My chest heaved as I ran across the front yard. “Where's Nathan?” I screamed the words and lunged toward the porch. My baby would be safely in his crib, right where I left him. But JohnScott grabbed my arm, wrenching me toward his truck, and as my skin burned from his grip, I remembered Ruthie giving me a two-handed sunburn in first grade.

“Get in!” He lunged for the driver's door, but time moved in slow motion, and a mired-in-quicksand frustration pressed against me as though I were in a nightmare. My fingers clawed at the handle, but I couldn't take my eyes off the road.

Tyler's brake lights fishtailed lazily, illuminating the jagged drop-off each time the truck swung to the left. A low grinding filled my ears as the tires locked and slid across gravel, but the sound gave way abruptly, unbelievingly when the truck sailed over the edge and into a free fall. For a long moment, I heard nothing but the soft purr of the engine echoing against the caliche walls.

My feet were cemented to the ground, but I took one faltering step before the oxygen around me thickened with the paralyzing racket of metal on rock. The vehicle carrying my baby—my world—had just dropped fifteen feet and slammed to the uneven ground below. I could no longer see the truck, but I stared into the blackness as the Ford rolled end over end down the Caprock's steep decline, its taillights casting a beam into the night sky like a grand-opening celebration.

Suddenly the wind slacked, and sounds became amplified in my ears. The horrifying crunch of the truck's frame. The shatter of breaking glass. The thick snap of a cedar. The rumble of a small avalanche of rocks and pebbles.

Then horrific, mind-numbing, tangible silence pressed against me, holding me captive and suffocating me with the odor of gasoline.

I screamed.

And I screamed.

And I screamed.

Chapter Fifty

Freezing water coursed through my veins, and I ran blindly, not heeding my body's angry protests at being pushed, not feeling the ice that silently froze my heart as I pictured Nathan dead at the base of the Caprock.

When I got to the curve in the road, I saw the truck halfway down, its chrome trim reflecting the moon. It lay on its side, and I registered absentmindedly that a squatty cedar had stopped it from falling the remaining distance. My heart raced as I jogged farther, but when I heard the baby crying, I fell to my hands and knees, scurrying along the brink of the cliff. Thorns cut through my jeans at the knee, and rocks pressed into the soft skin of my palms, but I hardly noticed. Nathan's wails swelled on the wind and then faded each time the breeze shushed past.

The sound of his crying was like nothing I had ever heard. Not the day he was born. Not when he had nightmares. Not even when he got shots. His screams mimicked the cries of a trapped animal, and the sound drove me into a frenzy of desperation. I lowered a foot down the side of the ridge, unable to get to him fast enough.

But then JohnScott's thick arms clamped around my waist, and he picked me up, lifting my feet off the ground. I kicked him. I jerked from side to side. I knocked my head against his chin in a frantic effort to get away. To get to Nathan.

“Fawn, stop!”

I tried to yell. To tell him to get his hands off, but all that came out of my mouth was a strangled shriek.

“Let me find a way down.” He held me firmly, coaxing me to comply. “You can't go jumping off the Caprock.”

He was shaking too. His arms, his voice, his confidence, all wavered uncharacteristically, and I stopped thrashing. “Hurry, JohnScott.”

He ran along the lip, hunched over, peering at rocks and bushes and crags. “Call 911. Tell them to hurry.”

I stumbled behind him, trying to still my trembling hands enough to work my cell phone. The screen prompts I manipulated every day now made no sense, and I stared at the keypad, urging my brain to process what the numbers meant. It took me hours to dial. Days to connect to an operator. Years to explain the situation.

And when JohnScott motioned that he had found a way down, I punched the phone off and shoved it back in my pocket, not heeding the questions I was being asked. They weren't important. Nothing was important except getting to Nathan, and I shoved past JohnScott.

“No.” His hand gripped my wrist and pulled me back. “Slow down. Let me go first so I can help you.”

I screamed at him to hurry, but he was already scaling the short drop. He balanced on a small overhang six feet below, catching me when I slid haphazardly over the edge. We repeated the move again, but I pelted into JohnScott's arms, and we rolled several yards before coming to a painful stop amid rocks and broken glass.

Nathan's cries floated upward, taunting me.

“Get up!” I crawled on hands and knees before stumbling to my feet, but then I fell again, not yet balanced on the hill.

JohnScott pulled me to my feet, but just then, Nathan's cries stopped.

I stood motionless, staring down at the truck, straining to hear a sound, desperate to know he was all right.

JohnScott and I jerked into movement at the same time, half running, half sliding, sometimes rolling down the hill. We pulled each other. We pushed each other. We scrambled over rocks and around cactus, and at some point, Nathan started crying again.

When I heard his cries—proof he was still alive—a mewling whine erupted from my throat, and sobs flowed one after the other. My cries mingled with Nathan's, and I imagined a cord of communication bonding us together. A cottony, soft moan of compassion and comfort.

The roof was smashed halfway down to the dashboard, and a shiver traveled up my spine when I saw the car seat hanging from the seat belt.

JohnScott beat me to the truck, reached through the broken-out windshield, and rested his palm on Nathan's head. “It's all right, little fella.”

The baby's cries eased slightly, then increased with renewed vigor.

“Hurry, JohnScott. Get him out.” I fumbled for my cell phone, trying to shine the flashlight on the car seat. The light trailed across the seat of the truck, now vertical, and I gasped. Tyler had been thrown across the seat and now looked as though he were sitting up. Blood covered his face, and his left arm was bent at an unnatural angle. He seemed to be compressed between the seat, the door, and the roof. I shuddered. “Is Tyler alive?”

JohnScott sliced the car seat harness with his pocketknife. “I don't know.” Holding one hand against Nathan's chest, he carefully lifted the baby out of the seat, beneath the damaged roof, and through the broken windshield.

Nathan frantically kicked and waved his arms.

“He looks all right.” A lone sob shuddered through JohnScott as he turned and handed me the baby.

Never in my life would I have dreamed my maternal instincts could be so powerful, so urgent, so driven. When I saw Nathan's chin and lips quivering in terror, and his tiny baby fingers jerking rigidly, I dropped my cell phone and grabbed for him, holding him close to my heart and pressing my lips against his sweaty forehead.

In the moonlight, I could see drops of blood on his sleeper, and I felt him frantically, looking for a source, but found nothing. The pitch of his cries lowered in intensity, and I crooned to him as JohnScott picked up my phone, then returned to the cab.

I lifted my shirt, and the baby nestled into me, sobbed twice more, then finally relaxed. I stood on a flattened rock and swayed from side to side, shushing him. He shuddered, seeming to remember what he had been through, but then settled into a calm rhythm and only whimpered occasionally.

Tyler moaned from the driver's seat. “I'm sorry, babe.”

His voice, raspy and desperate, nearly pulled a snarl from my throat, and I stumbled away from the truck—instinctively putting distance between him and Nathan. When I lost my footing, I almost fell, and I ended up standing on a crag with chill bumps creeping down my quivering arms. I tightened them around Nathan.

“Don't talk, Tyler.” JohnScott knelt in front of the truck and reached into the cab to hold his hand.

“Fawn? I'm sorry, okay?”

His voice sent shivers up my spine. “I know, Tyler. It's all right.” It felt strange to comfort him. Right and wrong at the same time.

Without warning, the muscles in my legs gave way, and I crumpled to a sitting position. I slowly rocked back and forth, back and forth—aware of Tyler's moans, aware of pain all over my body, aware of sirens and flashing lights and people approaching from above and below.

But I was unable to do anything except pray.

Chapter Fifty-One

The doctor said Tyler was a miracle. His left arm was broken in two places and had to be set with plates and screws, and he underwent surgery to repair bleeding on the brain. Other than that, he had bruises on almost every surface of his body, and his left kidney was so damaged, he might lose it.

But he would survive. He would eventually return home and carry on a healthy life.

But he would do it alone.

I had never considered Tyler's loneliness until I sat in his lawyer's office a week later. His family had always been surrounded by a whirl of people—ranch hands, businessmen, moochers—but when it came down to it, he only had Nathan. No wonder his father had been adamant he marry me. The lawyer said Byron Cruz had done everything within the limits of the law to force Tyler to marry me, even going so far as to withhold his inheritance until we married.

“So, will Tyler inherit anything?” I felt detached as I stared at the corner of his mahogany desk.

“Actually, yes.” The man leaned on his elbows. “Even unmarried, Mr. Cruz stands to inherit almost everything, but not until he's forty years old. Until then, the estate will fall under the management of an executor, and Tyler will receive a substantial monthly income.” He interlocked his fingers. “But … concerning the wreck … I'm assuming you pressed charges?”

“No, but he'll be arrested anyway, as soon as he's released from the hospital, because of the DUI and endangering a child. How will that affect the legalities?”

“He'll inherit either way, but there are concerned parties with the power to see he's treated for alcoholism before he gets a dime. Not to mention the psychotic behavior.” He ran his palm quickly across his mouth, and I wondered if he was supposed to be telling me all that. He shook his head slightly. “But nothing Mr. Cruz does will affect Nathan's college fund. It will be put in place now that I have your signature.”

My head hurt. From the discussion, from all that had happened, from the stress of it all.

As JohnScott and I walked to his truck, I couldn't meet his eyes. Neither of us spoke. We slid into the dingy cab, buckled the car seat, and gazed at the baby.

“Where to?” JohnScott laid his arm across the back of the seat and fingered one of my curls.

“Somewhere there are no people.”

He stared out the windshield as his wrist lolled over the steering wheel, and only after he contemplated his options did he start the truck. The engine coughed a few times before sputtering to life, and then he revved it to keep it alive.

I sat in silence as he drove from Lubbock to Trapp, and my mind filled with thoughts of Tyler's obsessive love for me. So painful and dangerous. Yet so passionate.

The truck pulled to a stop on the edge of town, and JohnScott slowly turned left.

My house.

I didn't want to go back up there, but I didn't have the strength to argue with him. Instead, I stared at the mesquites streaming past the side window, and my mind drifted to hollow emptiness.

JohnScott crept down the road, slowing to a crawl at the curve near the cliff. A fresh mar in the sand reminded me of the sound of Nathan's cries far below, and I clenched my eyes shut.

We pulled into the yard, but instead of parking, JohnScott shifted into reverse and did a three-point turn so the truck faced the cliff. Then he killed the ignition. My eyes focused on a random point miles across the mesa, giving my soul a blessed sense of uncluttered simplicity. My nerves relaxed as though all my stress had been poured out onto the rolling plains.

“How did you know?”

“I've seen the way you look at this view.”

“It's beautiful.”

He kept his gaze on me. “Yep.”

I smiled at his intended meaning but didn't look at him. Not yet. “It's not the beauty of this country that strikes me. It's the openness. I used to sit out here, looking into the distance, and it made me feel small. It made my problems feel small.” I grasped the hem of my skirt, wadding the fabric until it wrinkled. Just like my wrinkled, imperfect life.

I jerked the truck door open and slid out, but I caught myself before slamming it. It would never do to waken Nathan. Instead, I left it open and leaned against the warm hood with my back to JohnScott.

He left me there for a good five minutes before he joined me. “What are you thinking about?”

“Tyler,” I whispered. “I'm thinking about sitting in that waiting room, not knowing what would happen to him.”

JohnScott's dress boots kicked at a beetle.

“But then my brain began working through the options. What might happen, and how it would affect Nathan and me.”

I stared to the farthest point I could see. It would be so nice to go that far away and never come back, to escape from my wrinkled life, my upside-down world. But I would never be able to look JohnScott in the face if I didn't confess the truth.

I steeled my heart. “I thought it might be easier if he didn't recover.”

A cool breeze swept past, lifting one curl and blowing it across my face.

JohnScott tucked it behind my shoulder. “The same thing crossed my mind. I'm not proud of it, but it's natural for our brains to go down that road. That doesn't mean we wanted it to happen.”

“It feels like I wanted it.”

He pushed away from the truck and faced me. “You acknowledged that Tyler makes your life complicated, but that's different than wanting him dead. It's very different.” He squinted into the sun. “Half the town's thinking the same thing.”

“That doesn't make it right.”

“I didn't say it did.”

“But how can God forgive me for thinking something like that? It's repulsive.”

“Are you talking about God forgiving you or you forgiving yourself?”

I turned away, exposed, but JohnScott didn't offer comfort. He didn't even move. The sun tingled the skin on my arms as I pondered his question. “Both, I guess.”

He left the silence alone for a while and then said, “The two aren't interchangeable. God wants our best, and He's patient while we work on it, but we're never going to be perfect Christians. He doesn't want or expect that. If we were perfect, we would have no need for Him.”

My eyes wandered from the top button of JohnScott's shirt to the bend in the road near the cliff. “Why do I do that? I've finally gotten to know God on my own, but I still have trouble believing His promises. He forgave me for my sins with Tyler. He forgave me for rebelling against my parents. He forgave me for turning away from Him.”

“He'll forgive you for whatever you've done. He's cool that way.”

“I know He will, but sometimes it's so hard to feel Him, and to know for sure He's there, and that He'll keep forgiving me.”

JohnScott grinned.

“What?” I asked.

Without answering, he turned toward the expanse beyond the edge of the Caprock as his smile created happy lines across his cheeks.

I followed his gaze, perplexed. But then I heard the whisper of wind purring through the cedars, I saw the reflection of the sun bouncing off sandstone, and I smelled the earthy compost of nature itself. And I knew.

I had been feeling God's love all along.

“He's pretty big, isn't He?” asked JohnScott.

“Yes,” I agreed. “He's incredibly, amazingly, perfectly big.”