Kentucky Rich (20 page)
Authors: Fern Michaels
Smitty appeared to consider the idea. “I suppose I could . . . But first I want to know, are you going to think about what I told you?”
“Yes, but only if you go shopping with me.”
“That's blackmail.”
Nealy closed the screen door behind her. She knew Smitty would do as she asked. She always did. Nealy felt positively
brittle
as she walked up the steps to her second-floor bedroom. How was it possible that after all these years thinking of her family could make her feel like this? She didn't give a good rat's ass about her father or her brothers. No, that wasn't true, she amended. She did care some about her brothers.
brittle
as she walked up the steps to her second-floor bedroom. How was it possible that after all these years thinking of her family could make her feel like this? She didn't give a good rat's ass about her father or her brothers. No, that wasn't true, she amended. She did care some about her brothers.
She felt incredibly old when she sat down in Maud's rocker. All the old hatreds she thought she'd overcome long ago rivered through her. Maybe Smitty was right, and she should pay her family a visit.
The memory of her father coming up to her on Derby Day all those years ago still haunted her. Only now did she understand that what she'd felt was fear, pure and simple. Was she still afraid?
Both Smitty and Hunt had told her that if her father really wanted to find her, he could have, without any difficulty. “Blood,” Hunt had said, “always wins out. Good, bad, or indifferent, family is family.” She'd lost count of the times he had goaded her to go home and confront her family. He'd begged, cajoled, and pleaded. But she'd always turned a deaf ear.
The one major fight they'd had during their married life was about her father. Hunt said Nick deserved to know his grandfather and uncles. Emmie too. He said SunStar Farms was part of their heritage.
Nealy leaned her head against the back of the rocker and let the tears come. She could still remember every awful detail of the night she'd taken Emmie and driven away from SunStar Farms. She remembered the rain slashing down on her when she stopped at the end of the drive to dig up the bucket of SunStar soil. She remembered being so sick she thought she might die . . .
The morning of the day Hunt died, he'd asked her when she was going to shed the bitterness in her heart so she could be a real woman, the woman he thought she was when he married her. She'd given him a flip answer and told him if he didn't like her heart, then maybe it was time for him to move on. The look on his face . . . like he'd just been stomped on . . . made her feel ashamed, but she hadn't apologized. How she regretted that.
She cried until she couldn't cry anymore because there were no tears left to shed. She was wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt when Smitty came into the room with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“That bad, huh?” she said, holding out the coffee cup.
“Yeah. That bad.” She took the cup from Smitty's hands and sipped the steaming brew. “Tell me something, Smitty, did you know things weren't right between Hunt and me those last couple of years?”
Smitty sat down opposite Nealy in Jess's old chair. “Everyone knew.”
Nealy nodded. She supposed she'd been fooling herself to think it was a secret. “I still don't know what he wanted from me, Smitty. I really think he fell out of love with me when he realized that the horses were my first love.” Her breath shuddered as she let it out. “I never hid that from him. He knew who and what I was when he asked me to marry him.” She looked away and waited until she could be sure her voice would be steady before asking, “Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know how many affairs he had?”
Smitty drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Three that I know of.”
“Did his father know?”
She nodded. “They had more than one row about it. I was never sure if you knew, and I always wondered if I should say something, but it wasn't my place, you know?”
“Yeah, I know, and you're right, it wasn't your place. I suspected,” she said, then shook her head. “No, that's not true. I knew, but I never confronted him. I suppose because I was gutless and didn't really want him confirming it. I didn't want to have to deal with it because once I did that I would have had to make decisions. I guess he died thinking I didn't know. I suppose that's for the best.”
“Did you love him, Nealy?”
She took a few moments to gather her thoughts. “If you mean that bell and whistle stuff, no. He didn't rock the ground under my feet. I loved him in a different kind of way, and I never would have cheated on him, Smitty.” She looked down into her coffee cup. “He said I had a bitter heart. One time he even said my heart was black. I wonder if Nick feels that way about me.”
“That boy loves you with all his heart. Whatever his father was or wasn't, it has nothing to do with him or you. You know what you've always told me, get over it and move on.”
“I know but . . .” A look of guilt crossed her face. “Smitty, I didn't grieve for Hunt the way I did for Maud and Jess. When they died, I thought my world was coming to an end. I remember when it was Maud's time, Jess wanted to lie down and die right alongside of her. I didn't feel like that when Hunt died. Good God, what's wrong with me? Maybe I'm not capable of loving anyone except my children, dogs, and horses.”
Smitty jumped up, went over to Nealy, and pulled her out of her chair. “Come on. I made an appointment for you at the beauty shop. You have an hour. We'll get the cats and dog another time. Oh, and by the way, I also called your old home and pretended I was a reporter. I spoke to your brother Pyne. He said the doctor said your father isn't going to survive very long. You probably shouldn't drag your feet on this, Nealy. By the way, didn't you tell me you have no other family?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Your brother said the family has been notified, and they're coming from all over the country.”
Nealy stopped dead in her tracks. “Family? Are you sure you called the right number?”
“Of course I'm sure. I don't make mistakes, Nealy.”
“Then Pyne was either drunk or delirious. We don't have any other family.”
“Should I make plane reservations for this afternoon ?”
“All right, Smitty.”
“What about Emmie, Buddy, and Nick?”
“Make them for three. Buddy mentioned having to go out of town. And hire a car service to pick us up at the airport and drive us around.”
“You're doing the right thing, Nealy.”
Nealy laughed. “I hope you're right.” She closed her eyes to ward off the dizziness she was feeling.
I'm going home.
Her heart fluttered in her chest.
Home.
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The two brothers watched from the window as a black stretch limousine crunched to a stop in the middle of the gravel driveway. In silence, they watched a uniformed driver get out and open the rear passenger door. Their jaws dropped when they saw a slender woman dressed in brown-leather boots, well-cut jeans, and white shirt emerge and look around. She reached a sun-darkened hand up to adjust her tinted glasses, then tipped the brim of her pearly white Stetson to reveal a mane of thick sable brown hair.
“Who the hell is
that?”
Rhy Coleman demanded of his brother Pyne.
that?”
Rhy Coleman demanded of his brother Pyne.
Pyne's face screwed up. “How the hell should I know? But whoever she is, she's coming up to the porch. I think you should open the door.”
When his older brother made no move to greet their guest, Pyne started toward the door, but it opened before he could reach it, and the woman blew in like a gust of wind. Without so much as a glance at the brothers, she headed straight for the stairway leading to the second floor.
“Hey! Just a damn minute!” Rhy shouted. “Who the hell are you to walk in here like you own the place?”
She turned to face them and grinned as she lowered her glasses. “Why, I do own it, Rhy, at least a third of it. Don't you recognize me, big brother?”
Rhy's eyes widened with shock.
Pyne walked toward her. “Nealy! Is it really you?”
“In the flesh,” she said, thinking it funny that neither one of them had recognized her. She'd recognized them the second she'd seen them, not by the family resemblance but by the slump of their shoulders. Her grin vanished as she glanced back at the stairs. “Where is he?”
Pyne's head jerked upward.
Nealy nodded. “You two stay here,” she ordered. “I have something I want to say to him, and I don't want either of you interfering. Understand?” When there was no response, she repeated her question. This time both brothers nodded. Nealy stared at her brothers and realized they were strangers to her and that she felt absolutely nothing for themânot love, not hate, nothing.
After all these years, here she was on Coleman land.
Shoulders stiff, back straight, she mounted the stairs with the same mix of confidence and caution she used when mounting her horses. At the top, she stopped and looked down at her brothers, who appeared to be debating whether or not to follow her. “Go about your business while I take care of mine.”
Nealy hesitated only a moment outside her father's bedroom, then opened the door and walked in. The room was just as she remembered it, dingy gray walls, a few pieces of battered pine furniture and worn-out, roll-down shades covering the two windows.
Her nose wrinkled at the smell of dust, mold, and medication. Hearing a groan, she turned her gaze toward the bed and saw a mound of quilts . . . her father, the man who had sent her fleeing from this very house over thirty years ago.
A frail voice demanded to know who was there. Nealy stepped up closer to the bed and heard a footfall behind her. Rhy or Pyne? she wondered. Pyne.
“Hello, Pa. It's Nealy.”
The voice was stronger when he spoke a second time. “There ain't nothin' here for you, girl. Go back where you came from. You don't belong here.”
“I don't want anything, Pa,” Nealy said looking down at the load of quilts on the bed. They looked dirty or maybe it was just the lighting. Clean, dirty . . . what did she care? She pushed the pearly white Stetson farther back on her head so she could get a better look at the dying man.
“Then what are you here for?”
Nearly felt a hand on her shoulder and glanced back to see Pyne. The hand was to tell her to take it easy.
Like hell she would. Her father had never taken it easy on her. Not even when she was so sick she couldn't stand up. She removed his hand with her own and gave him a warning look. More than thirty years she'd waited for this moment, and neither Pyne nor Rhy was going to take it away from her.
“I came here to watch you die, old man,” she said, looking her father straight in the eyes. “And I'm not leaving until I hear you draw your last breath. Only after I've danced on your grave will I leave. Do you hear me, old man?” She glared at him, her eyes burning with hate.
The old man's face became a glowering mask of rage. “Get out of my house!”
“Still ordering people around, are you? Well guess what? I don't have to take your orders anymore. I repeat, I came here to see you die, and I'm not leaving until you go to hell. That's where you're going, Pa. Hell!” There, she'd said what she'd come to say, but why didn't she feel a bigger sense of satisfaction? Why did she feel this strange emptiness?
“Pyne! Take this devil child away from me. Do you hear me?” the old man gasped as he struggled to raise himself up on his elbow.
“I'd like to see him try,” Nealy said bitterly. Then she felt her brother's hand on her shoulder again. “I'd like to see anyone try to make me do something I don't want to do. Those days are gone forever.”
The old man gurgled and gasped as he thrashed about in the big bed. Nealy watched him with clinical interest. Her eyes narrowed when she saw drool leak from his mouth. She stood staring at him until he calmed down, then stretched out her leg and, with a booted foot, pulled over a straight-backed chair and sat down facing the bed. For long minutes she stared at him with unblinking intensity until he finally closed his eyes.
“Okay, he's asleep now,” Pyne said. “What the hell are you doing here, Nealy? We haven't heard a word from you in over thirty years, and all of a sudden you show up just as Pa is getting ready to die. How did you know? Can't you let him die in peace?”
Nealy removed her Stetson and rubbed her forehead. She didn't really care all that much for hats, but she'd always longed to wear a pearly white Stetson, just like the Texans wore.
“No, I can't let him die in peace,” she said, her voice even now, calm. “He has to pay for what he did to me and Emmie. As to how I knew he was dying, I make it my business to know what goes on here. And you know why I'm here, Pyne. I want my share of this place for Emmie.”
Pyne chuckled softly. “Your share? You just said you'd made it your business to know what goes on around here. So how come you don't know that Pa refused to make a will? There hasn't been any estate planning, Nealy. And neither Rhy nor I have power of attorney. The IRS is going to take almost all of it. Whatever's left will be a piss in the bucket.”
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