Love on the Buchanan Ranch (A Romance Story)

“Don’t smile, Stacey…it’s a funeral. You’re the widow for crying out loud,”
Stacey thought those words as she stared at the open casket in front of her. She didn’t look at the man inside, but instead she stared at the beautiful white roses that adorned the top of the smooth oak. She tried hard to make herself think back on the good times, maybe then she could work up a tear…or two. People were bound to be wondering why the widow seemed to be the only one almost…smiling. Stacey sighed and urged her mind to return to a time when she and Edward were happy. She was really trying, but all she could manage to think about was how good it had felt the past few days to finally be free.

She felt the corners of her mouth draw upward again at the thought. “
Stop it
!” she chastised herself. She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them she forced herself to look at the man in the casket. She had spent the past twelve years of her life with this man, and the simple thought that she wasn’t at all sad he was lying in a casket at forty-five years old after suffering a very unexpected massive heart attack, should be enough to make her want to cry.  She looked across the aisle at the old woman who stood with her shoulders hunched and her thin, arthritic hands clutching the rail in front of her. The poor old thing was truly stricken with grief. The black lace veil she wore hid her face, but Stacey could see the frail, weathered body shake as she sobbed. Stacey felt true sadness for her. The old woman was Edward’s Abuela. The grandmother who had raised and doted on him since his drug addict mother had abandoned him when he was just a boy.

Stacey looked back at the man in the casket. She could feel a hot tear running down her cheek now as she thought about that little boy. Edward told her how his Abuela had come from Mexico to find him and his mother. She found him at last, nearly starved to death and all alone in a sleazy motel room just across the Mexican border in Texas. The city was Brownsville, a place as riddled with drugs and violence as Tijuana itself. His grandmother took him from the motel to a small house she had rented while she was searching for him. They stayed in Brownsville, and growing up there had not been easy for Edward. He would tell Stacey later that he thought they stayed there because of Abuela’s hope that his mother would some day clean up her life and come home. That never happened, but Eduardo Carrasco Martinez had grown into a fine young man in spite of it all. He was fluent in Spanish; articulate in English, handsome confident and some would even have said brilliant. He graduated from high school with honors and attended the University of Texas, Brownsville on a full scholarship. Medical school was funded on student loans, and after many hard years, Edward was an MD with a practice of his own. His Abuela was proud enough of him to bust. Her face would literally light up when Edward was in the room. Stacey was afraid now that Abuela would be soon to follow her grandson to the grave. The old woman truly had a good heart, and Stacey cared for her deeply. Thinking about how devastated she must be feeling now was enough to finally cause the elusive tears to fall.

***

All of the things that Abuela had loved about Edward were the things that had caused Stacey to fall in love with him as well. Stacey had not been naïve enough to believe that he was perfect, without the flaws that all of us humans possess, but she had to honestly say that he had done a fantastic job of disguising those flaws when they had first met.

Stacey left the present once more and escaped from the dull eulogy the pastor was reading. She returned in her mind instead to that day she had met him, almost thirteen years earlier. Edward had walked into the coffee shop that Stacey had been managing at the time. She was working at the counter that day, covering for an employee that had gone home sick. She had actually told herself later that it had been fate she’d been the one to take his order. She would change that opinion sometime in the near future, but in that moment, all she had seen was the handsome, confident man at the counter who had just ordered a large Café Mocha and asked for her phone number. Stacey made his coffee, but she didn’t give him the phone number that day. She was a single mother with an eight-year-old daughter at home, and she was very careful whom she handed out her personal information to.

Edward didn’t seem fazed however by her refusal. He started coming into the coffee house daily, and if she weren’t working the counter, he would request to see the manager. When she would come out of her office, he would simply tell her he had wanted to say hello and make sure she was having a nice day. Stacey began to warm up to him after a few weeks, and finally consented to having a lunch date.

Edward told her that day at lunch that he was a Radiologist. He had his own practice in Dallas, and owned a home in a nearby neighborhood that Stacey recognized as being upper crust. His money didn’t impress her, that wasn’t what Stacey was about. His intelligence and apparent drive to succeed after all he’d had to overcome was what she found herself in awe of.

They continued to see each other after that, with Edward wining and dining her. He would send flowers to her at work, always white roses, with sentimental little notes about how he missed her and couldn’t wait to see her. Stacey had been alone with her daughter Emma for a long time. She wasn’t one who needed constant adoration, but the attention that Edward was showering on her was so new and refreshing that it dazzled her, and had an almost dizzying effect on her brain. The only part of her life she refused at first to let it touch was Emma. She wanted to be sure that they were really headed for a future together before she got her baby involved. When she finally allowed him to meet Emma, she was sure that she and Edward were headed for a life together, but didn’t realize until a few years later that Emma was the glue that would keep them stuck together whether Stacey liked it or not.

She looked beside her at the beautiful young lady who sat with her head bowed, listening to what the preacher was saying about her “Pop”. Stacey reached over and took Emma’s hand in hers, and when Emma looked at her she could see the tracks the tears had taken down her lovely face. Edward was the only father Emma had ever known. Her biological father had been Stacey’s high school sweetheart whom she had cut ties with the day she told him they were pregnant and he suggested they borrow money from his brother for an abortion.

Edward and Emma had formed an instant bond. He was a different man with Emma than he was with any other woman. Stacey had discovered Edward’s disdain for women early on in their marriage. She knew it was probably caused by his mother’s neglect and abandonment. She had tried to be a good wife, thinking that she could prove to him that all women were not like the one who had bore him. It didn’t work, but by the time Stacey was ready to admit it, Emma had fallen in love, and she couldn’t bear to break her baby’s heart.

She looked back towards where Edward now lay in the casket. Eduardo Carrasco Martinez was a handsome man, even in death. Stacey felt sorrow for all of those around her who mourned his passing. He was truly loved by his Grandmother, his stepdaughter, his friends and colleagues. Stacey wished she had known the same man that they had. Instead though, she had known the Edward who was hateful and mean. The one who was so skilled with his verbal and emotional abuse towards her that no one else even noticed. Stacey herself hadn’t even noticed until it had all but peeled away her confidence and self-esteem like the skin of an orange. She looked at him again and truly wished she could feel grief for him. Instead however, her heart felt like it had grown wings, and all she wanted to do was fly away.

***

The reception afterwards was held at the home Stacey and Edward had shared for the past twelve years. Family and friends gathered and the kitchen was filled with so much food that Stacey didn’t know what she would ever do with it all. Abuela was able to stop by for an hour or so, but tired quickly, and was taken home by her great nephew who was staying with her from Mexico. Stacey did get the opportunity to speak with her briefly and tell her how sorry she was for her loss. The guilty feelings resurfaced when Abuela took Stacey’s face in her wrinkled hands and said in her broken English, “I had Edward for most of his life, mija. It is you I am sorry for. The little time you had with him was not enough. I am sorry you were not able to make children with him, so at least a part of him would have been left with you.”

Stacey only nodded at Abuela’s words. Inside her head, however, she was experiencing the guilt of thinking how blessed she was that she hadn’t gotten pregnant while she and Edward were together. She was sure she would have loved the child, but the thought of being a thirty-nine year old widow with a small child was overwhelming. As it was, Stacey hadn’t worked the entire time she and Edward had been together. He had insisted she stay home and be a mother to Emma and a full-time doctor’s wife to him. At first, Stacey had been thrilled at the thought. Eventually though, when Emma was old enough to spend time with her friends and school activities and Edward was working…. or doing whatever it was he did when he told her he’d been working…she had grown tired of being alone.

She had tried talking to Edward about going back to work. At first he had only laughed and said, “And what would you do? Work at a coffee shop? Wouldn’t that be fun to explain to my colleagues?” He had dismissed her idea with those cruel words, and then said, “What’s for dinner?”

Stacey knew she should let it go, and serve the chicken like the dutiful wife Edward willed her to be, but she couldn’t. Instead, she suggested that if her working didn’t appeal to him, perhaps she could go back to school and learn a profession that wouldn’t make Edward ashamed to tell his friend’s and colleagues about. He laughed at that as well. “You’re just not bright enough to be a professional,” he’d said to her in that cruel tone she had learned to hate. “Be satisfied with what I give you. Most women would realize how blessed they were to have a man like me to take care of them.”

Stacey wasn’t as angry with Edward over the things that he said, and the things he forbade her from doing, as she was at herself. She had put herself in the situation. She had been so blinded by his supposed love and devotion to her; she had allowed him to achieve a position of control early on. By the time she realized that was what he had been after all along, she was without an income, with nothing in her name, and no possible way to put a roof over her daughter’s head and food in her belly if she had left. So she stayed, and during the day while she was home alone, after Edward’s house was clean and before his dinner had to be waiting on the table, she would read and she would dream.

Each of her dreams began the same way. She dreamt about being free to be herself once again. She had never wished Edward dead, she had only hoped he would grow tired of her one day and leave on his own. She dreamt every day about what she would do when the day came that she could make her own decisions. She dreamt of owning her own business. She had been really good at managing the coffee house, and despite Edward’s barbs, she had been proud of her job there. She took care of the payroll, the inventory, the billing, and everything else that made the business profitable and run smoothly. She knew she could do it again, this time being the owner, rather than only the manager. She had never mentioned it to Edward. It was a dream she wanted to keep to herself, and not give him the chance to belittle. Now, she was finally free to pursue her dreams, and she knew Edward would probably turn over in his grave at the thought, but she planned on using whatever money he had left her to do just that.