Revenge (30 page)

“I don't think we have to worry about that.” Beth wiped the table, then hung the dish towel over a metal bar near the sink. “But it would be difficult for Cody to grow up here and know that his father lived in town and didn't want him....” She shook her head, her own painful memories assailing her.

“It's because of me, isn't it?” Harriet asked, her voice barely a whisper as she reached into a drawer for her carton of cigarettes. “It was hard on you growing up and you don't want your son to have to deal with all the questions and gossip you did.” She flipped open the carton, extracted a new pack and tapped it against the counter. “You know, Beth, I was the best mother I knew how to bet.”

“I know,” Beth said, a lump forming in her throat.

“And I realize that I was something of an embarrassment. I've heard the rumors, too. But most of it's just gossip. Idle tongues wagging and trying to stir up trouble.” She unwound the cellophane wrapper, shook out a cigarette and struck a match. “It bothered me, of course, but the worst part was that the gossip, aimed to hurt me, probably cut you more deeply.” She lit up and smoke filtered from her mouth as she sighed.

“I survived,” Beth said.

“But I can't help feeling responsible.”

“Mom, don't. It's over. Kids can be cruel, yes, and I hope Cody doesn't have to suffer the same things I did, but God knows I'm not the perfect parent and I don't know anyone who is. I'll make my share of mistakes.” She winked at her mother, trying to jolly her out of her sadness. “Besides, all those teases and taunts made me tough—tougher than I would've been.”

Harriet hesitated, then drew on her cigarette. “I hope that everything that happens here with Jenner won't make you think that you don't have any options, that you should just run off and marry the first man who asks you.”

Beth stiffened. Her mother usually wasn't one to pry. “Are you talking about Stan? Don't you like him?”

“Of course I do. He's a wonderful man. I thought you should marry him, but...” She hesitated. “But he's closer to my age than to yours.” Folding her arms across her chest, Harriet ignored her cigarette and let the smoke curl in a wavering line to the ceiling. “I know what I said before but I guess I'm having second thoughts. Even if you do marry him and have a wonderful life together, who knows how long he'll be around. If you want Cody to have a father—”

“Stan's only fifty-eight. That's not ancient, Mom.”

“No, but when Cody's fifteen and a hellion, which, judging by his genes, he probably will be, Stan will be over seventy. He might need some special care of his own—”

“I can manage. I'm a nurse, remember.”

“A
young
nurse,” Harriet reminded her. As if suddenly weary, she pulled out a kitchen chair and sat on the faded cushion.

“So what do you think I should do?” Beth asked as her mother smoked silently. “Try to find a way to make Jenner marry me?”

“Oh, God, no.”

“Stay single? Let Cody grow up without a father?”

Harriet ground out her cigarette. “No,” she said, “but if I were you, I certainly wouldn't marry a man just to give Cody a daddy. You might find this hard to believe, Beth, but every man I ever married, I married for love. And when I stood at the altar I really believed in till death do us part. That only happened once, thank God. Will was a special man, but cancer took him and...oh, Lord, it was hard to watch him die.” Her throat clogged and tears shimmered unshed in her eyes. “Do you remember him?”

“Not much, Mom,” Beth admitted, placing her arm around her mother's shoulders. William Jones was little more than a hazy memory to her. “But I know he was a good man.”

“The best,” Harriet said as she wiped her eyes with her fingers and sniffed. “Until Zeke, he was the best.” She blinked rapidly, and suddenly a smile stretched across her face. “Well, speak of the devil.”

Zeke Forrester walked into the room in a gray-striped bathrobe and his slippers. A V-necked T-shirt was visible beneath the robe. Only five foot six, he had a blocky build and, before two cups of coffee in the morning, a sour disposition. “How ya doin'?” he said, pausing to buss his wife on the cheek.

Harriet scrambled out of her chair to pour him a cup of coffee, then went to open the refrigerator. “French toast?” she asked brightly.

“It's Saturday. You know I like bacon and eggs on Saturday.” He shot Beth a dark look and took a quick gulp of the coffee. “Doctor won't let me eat eggs but twice a week,” he said as some kind of explanation, then searched the tabletop and counters. “Where's the paper? Don't tell me the carrier didn't deliver it again!”

“I'll get it in a second,” Harriet said. “And stop being so grumpy. Good Lord, you're a grouch in the morning.”

“Cody and I will go out and get the paper.” Glad for an excuse to escape, Beth carried Cody outside. She was still smarting from her mother's remarks about Stan, though she knew that Harriet's concerns only echoed her own. In the past few weeks, even before seeing Jenner again, she'd reconsidered her relationship with Stan. He was a good man. But he really wasn't interested in starting over with a young family.

Outside, the air was fresh, the sky a clear shade of blue. Beth breathed in a blend of fragrances from Harriet's flower garden and she watched birds flutter around a rusted feeder swinging from a low branch of an ornamental plum tree no longer in bloom.

“Well,” she said, as she picked up the paper from the front porch, “how do you feel about meeting someone today?” Cody turned his blue eyes up to her.

“Who I meet?” Cody asked.

“Your fath—a man I knew a few years ago,” she said, deciding it was better not to confuse her son. Not yet. Not until she knew how Jenner would react.

“A friend?” Cody asked innocently.

Beth rumpled her son's dark blond hair. “Well now, I don't know that I'd call him a friend,” she admitted as she scanned the headlines. “But he's someone who wants to meet you.” She winked at her boy and hurried back inside.

The phone jangled as Beth tossed Zeke's paper onto the table. Harriet grabbed the receiver on the second ring, then stretched the cord as she kept pronging pieces of bacon that were beginning to sizzle in a skillet on the stove.

“Oh, hello. Yes, she's here...no, don't worry about that. We're up with the chickens around here.” Harriet's eyebrows rose as she handed the phone to Beth and mouthed, “It's Stan.”

Beth's stomach clenched suddenly. She felt a jab of guilt and didn't know why, but she took the receiver from her mother's hand and tried to remain calm. After all, she'd done nothing wrong. Yet.

“Hello?” she said brightly as Zeke snapped his paper open and Harriet turned back to the stove. Cody investigated the back porch.

“Hi! Thought I might catch you.” Stan's voice was friendly, and for an inexplicable reason Beth thought of her Uncle Jim with his pleasant smile and graying beard. Oh, Lord, this would never do.

“Hi! How are you, Stan? Didn't expect another call from you so soon,” she said, easing around the corner for some privacy and drawing the coiled cord tight as a piano wire.

“I know, but I've been thinking.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “You know, I really miss you.”

“Oh, well—”

“I really do. It gets lonely here without you,” he said, and she suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if a noose was tightening around her neck. “Listen, I had an idea. Maybe you could leave Cody with your mom for an extra few days and you and I could do something together.”

“Without Cody,” she said, her heart nearly dropping to the floor.

“Right. We need time alone. To be adults.”

That was the problem. Always the problem. The noose tightened a little bit more.

“It's not that I don't love the little tyke, you know I do, but, well, frankly, Beth, he wears me out sometimes and I need a break. Besides, we never see each other without him. So... since you're there already, I thought leaving him for a few more days wouldn't be a big deal.”

“I don't think that's possible, Stan,” she said.

“Why not? It's not like your mother sees the kid all that often. She's his grandmother, for Pete's sake. You think she'd be thrilled to have him to herself for a few days.”

“She works, Stan, and so does Zeke and... well, to tell you the truth, I don't want to leave him here alone.”

“Why not? Don't you trust your mother?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then I don't see why you couldn't spend a couple of days alone with me,” he said in a tone that bordered on whining. Sighing patiently, he added, “You know, it wouldn't kill you to forget you're a mother once in a while.”

“Never,” she said, and then it occurred to her how far she and Stan were apart, at least on this issue. Stan was a kind, decent, loving man, but no matter how she tried to kid herself, she had to face the fact that he wasn't willing to be a father a second time around. He'd had his kids; he really didn't want hers.

“Beth, you know I think Cody's the greatest, but—”

“But you like him best when he's not around.”

“That's not true!”

“Sure it is, Stan, and something else is true, as well. This—our relationship—isn't working. Not for me or for you.” She waited and heard only stunned silence. “I've been thinking and—”

“You're seeing him again, aren't you?” Stan charged, his voice an angry whisper. “Cody's father. That's the problem.” Stan jumped to the same conclusion he always did, whenever they argued—that Beth was still in love with the man who had sired Cody.

“I'm not seeing him. Not like you mean.”

“But you'd like to. You're thinking that the three of you could be a cute little family unit, aren't you?”

“No, I—”

“Just remember how he reacted when you told him you were pregnant, will ya?”

“I never told him,” Beth said, then held her tongue. This was a subject she and Stan had avoided in the year they'd been seeing each other. It only came up when they argued. He didn't know who Cody's father was and didn't really seem to care. She'd never confided the truth to him, only told him that her relationship with Cody's father hadn't worked out and that she'd wanted a baby and had moved away. It hadn't been a lie—not really—but she'd never felt close enough to Stan to share her most private secret. There had been a part of her that had always held back. Maybe it was because he didn't seem as close to Cody as she'd hoped he'd be or maybe it was because she didn't trust him. Not completely.

“Jeez, Beth, what do you want from me?” Stan asked, unable to hide a ring of anger in his words.

“Nothing.” And that was the truth. “I don't want anything, Stan.”

“So this is it? You're telling me it's over?”

She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “I think it has to be, Stan, because Cody and I, we're a package deal. You don't get one of us without the other.”

“For the love of God, Beth, listen to you! Have I ever said I don't want him? Have I?”

“Yeah, Stan, you did. Just a couple of minutes ago.” Tears burned behind her eyes as she said a quick goodbye. She didn't need any more emotional turmoil in her life right now, didn't want to make any abrupt changes in her life. Yet she knew deep in her heart that Stan would never love Cody as his son. She'd rather never marry than put her own son through the hell of rejection that she'd felt because of her own father. Brushing aside her tears, she cleared her throat, walked back to the kitchen and hung up the phone.

As she speared crisp strips of bacon onto a plate, Harriet slid her a glance. “Oh, honey—”

“It's all right, Mom,” she said.

Zeke didn't bother looking up from the sports page.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

As her mother cracked eggs into the skillet, Beth scooped up her son and held him as if she were afraid he might disappear. To think that she had contemplated marrying a man who didn't realize how wonderful Cody was. Again she fought tears. “Come on, kiddo,” she said, forcing a smile as she kissed Cody's crown. “I think it's time we got outta here.”

 

The apartment house wasn't as huge as Beth remembered, nor as imposing. For years she'd come to this old Victorian home on Pine Street with the basement clinic where Dr. Fletcher had had his practice before he'd moved to the modern facility on the next lot. Beth had always been intimidated by the size of the house, three full stories, and detested walking down the outside stairs to a small reception area. It had smelled of antiseptic and was guarded by a no-nonsense nurse with gray hair. She'd insisted that all the children who were patients of Doc Fletcher call her Nurse Hazel. A fleshy woman, she'd lied and told Beth that the shots wouldn't hurt, then handed out balloons when the ordeal of the examination was over. With kinky hair and big eyes magnified by the thick lenses of her glasses, she'd scared the life out of Beth.

It was a wonder she'd taken up nursing, she thought now, as she parked on the street and unbuckled Cody from his car seat.

So this was where Jenner lived. It didn't seem right somehow. She could see him in the sprawling ranch house at the Rocking M or imagine him throwing down a bedroll in a bunkhouse or under the stars. But an apartment in town? No way.

Carrying Cody, she walked up the front steps, opened the door to the foyer, and knocked on the door of the first-floor unit where she supposed the new owner lived.