Texas Redeemed (28 page)

Peyton could feel the guilt in her words, and knew
exactly where this was headed. All this time she’d been
blaming herself for a tragedy. “No, Valerie.”

“It was my fault.”

“No.”
When he
opened his arms, she went willingly, sinking against him. “Valerie, it was
meningitis. Five people contracted it, and nobody saw it coming. I did my
research, read hospital logs, news reports—all of it. It wasn’t your fault.
You’ve got to believe that.”

“A mother should
always
protect her kids. I sent mine away.”

“It wasn’t like that. You’re honest with a good, loving
heart. It’s why I’ve never been able to shake you. There’s no way in hell you’d
let anyone you cared about fall into a trap.”

For a moment she stiffened in his arms. “But you’ve got
to shake me, Peyton. You shouldn’t get attached to me, the way Lucy’s attached
to you.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Damn him, he already was.

“Because you need freedom outside of Night Sky, but this
is where I belong. And how will you react the next time you’re hurt? The next time Marin … Never mind.”

“Valerie, this is you and me here. No
one else.”

“I don’t know what you want, and you don’t know what I want.”

“Then I’ll be in town for as long as it takes to figure
that out.” The words were true, rough like grit on his tongue. What he wanted
was to try to rebuild his family, to find redemption. He wanted a second chance
he wasn’t too convinced he even deserved. “Don’t close the book on us, okay?”

“Just—” she edged away, collecting herself “—let me
think about it.”

That was fair, and he left it at that. Driving away from
the ranch at the break of sunrise, he was also left to think about what his
life would be like if she decided not to be with him after all.

What he pictured looked a lot like hell.

T
HIS
WAS THE
world’s crappiest birthday. Marin
Beck had picked Lucy up at the beginning of lunch period for a jaunt to a
shady-looking quickie mart over the bridge. They’d worked out a system in which
Lucy would sneak to the rutted road behind the school building where her
grandmother would be waiting, and would creep back onto the premises before the
recess bell sounded. At first it was fun to chill with Marin. She told wicked
stories about New York, let Lucy ride with her feet out the window, and took
her to an alley mechanic who sold beaded jewelry from a van and to a record joint
that smelled like pot but sold awesome LPs. But on days like today she hated
being with her. Today Marin wanted beer and cigarettes and tried to get Lucy to
hide the items in her backpack. Scared of getting caught stealing, Lucy had
paid with her lunch money, and when she’d asked whether anyone cared that she
was only thirteen, the guy behind the counter, tattooed with greasy hair and ear
gauges, had said he didn’t give a shit and had sent her out of the mart without
giving her change.

Now they were at Marin’s apartment complex that had bicycle
parts in the yard, peeling paint and busted windows covered in duct tape.

Marin had forgotten that Lucy didn’t want to come here
anymore—not after last week when she’d overheard suspicious moaning and
banging
against the wall that separated
her grandmother’s apartment from her neighbor’s.

Marin forgot a lot of things—like the fact that today was
Lucy’s birthday, and that she’d sworn to go to the pawn shop and buy back
Peyton’s pen and the antique French statue that had belonged to his
grandmother.

She’d forgotten that she promised she would make
everything right.

Lucy set her backpack and hobo on the Formica counter in
the apartment, cringing when she saw a cockroach scramble past. “I can’t stay
the whole hour today, Marin.”

Marin snorted, and the booze smell on her breath wafted
into the air as she popped the top on a beer. “Got somewhere better to be?”

“Can’t be late for class, that’s all.
Math test.”

Ever since she’d stopped hanging out with Sarah, who was
starting to ask too many questions about what Lucy was up to, and had conceded
that Owen was into Minnie Hawthorne, school in general reminded her of the
purgatory she’d read about in one of her mom’s books.

This place was also like a little ring of hell.

Marin flopped onto the futon in the living
room/kitchen/bedroom. “You didn’t bring me a gift, Lucy Jordan.” She studied
her critically. “Lucy
Turner
sounds
better. I’d get that changed straightaway if I were you. You’ll get a lot
farther that way.”

“My name’s okay. And I bought your beer and cigarettes,
didn’t I?”
And it’s
my
birthday, not yours!

Marin stretched out on the futon. “Bud and Junie want me at the diner for a day shift tomorrow, so I
can’t swing by the school. Let’s meet up this weekend.”

“But how?”

“Find a way.”

After school, Lucy got off the bus expecting to see her
dad’s Lincoln at the ranch. Instead she saw the sweetest-looking motorcycle
ever.

“Happy thirteenth, Lucy.” Peyton
strode up the front walk decked out in a leather jacket with a helmet tucked
under one arm and a gift bag in his hand. He was like an older James Dean. “How
was that math test?”

“You remembered?” A nanosecond too late she realized she
was crying—again. One tear here, then another there.
Why was it so easy to cry these days? It was like she had PMS times ten, or
like all the tears she hadn’t shed over the years had built up and were now
overflowing.

“Whoa, whoa,” Peyton said softly, setting down the helmet
and bag. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she lied, scrubbing her hands over her eyes.
“Uh … it’s just like that old song. ‘It’s my party and I’ll cry …’” Except she
wasn’t
having a party. She’d told her
great-grandfather to call the whole thing off.

“I get it.” But his stony expression said he wasn’t
buying it.

Lucy took in the motorcycle’s smooth design and polished
metal. “Didn’t Gramps say you had this when you were a teenager? It looks new.”

“It’s not the same one,” he said, picking up the helmet,
and then handing her the gift bag. “I traded it in for one with a passenger
seat.”

“For who?” Lucy opened the gift
bag to find a black-and-hot-pink helmet inside. “Me?”

“C’mon. Daylight’s going and there’s someone we need to
see.” Peyton got on the motorcycle and revved it to life. Lucy dumped her stuff
in the mudroom and then put on the helmet and climbed on behind him.

“Is this kosher with Mom?” she asked, not wanting to get
in trouble for making yet another bad choice, and especially not wanting
Valerie to be upset with Peyton. Lately they seemed to be getting along—in a
weird, secretly-hot-for-each-other kind of way. Her mom had borrowed a
collection of John Donne poems from the library and Lucy had caught her dad
staring at Valerie like she was a thousand-dollar slice of cheesecake.

“Val trusts me to keep you safe. Do you?”

“Yeah,” she said, tightening her grip around his waist.
“I trust you.”

Peyton set the motorcycle in motion and they were off.
Flying past the ranch and farther down the open road toward town felt like
freedom.

The ride was over quickly, and when she realized they
were at the cemetery, she wanted to turn right back around—until she noticed
her mom’s pickup in the lot. “Mom,” she said as Valerie hopped out of the truck
and rushed to the motorcycle, “what’s going on?”

“Peyton and I had planned to visit Anna, but he suggested
we include you.” Even though Valerie was talking to Lucy, she was sending
Peyton an obvious I-
knew
-this-was-a-bad-idea
look.

“It’s Anna’s birthday, too,” Peyton said evenly, getting
off the motorcycle. “Maybe she wants to see her sister.”

That’s what I want,
too.

He held out a hand and Lucy took it, and the three of
them walked to Anna’s marker. Once there she unhooked Anna’s old hairclip from
her hair and clawed into the ground until she dug a hole deep enough to bury
it.

Anna and she had been born together, and had gotten sick
together. But the good sister was gone and Lucy was still here, making mistakes
left and right.

“I miss you,” she said as she covered the clip with dirt.
“If you were here, I’d probably screw up only half as much as I do.”

“What’s that mean?” Valerie asked.

“You loved Anna like crazy, because she was good. People
called you two peas in a pod. You even had the same eyes. If she was still
around, we’d, I don’t know, balance each other out.”

“Hey.” Valerie wrapped her in a hug, and for a second
Lucy nuzzled her face against her mom’s shoulder, storing in her memory bank
the super-soft feel of the old flannel shirt that had been washed only a
million times. For just that too-short second she let herself believe she
deserved all that warmth and security. “I love you like crazy, too. Because you’re my kid.”

“So do I.”

Lucy turned to her dad. “Really?”

“Really.” Peyton ruffled her
hair, and since it was already windblown and out of control without the
hairclip to hold it in place, she didn’t care. “So if you and I are both prone
to making mistakes, or screwing up, as you call it … and if we both have the
same eyes … what does that make us?”

“Puh-leeze.
We’re
not
peas in a pod. You’ve saved
lives all over the world. That’s über cool. You don’t
even do it just to be some hero. You’re like Steve Rogers or something.”

“Captain America.”

She nodded. “I’m not like that.”

Peyton scanned the cemetery, as if searching for
something, then said with an unsure frown, “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that
I’m not a hero?”

Valerie said in a low tone, “Peyton, you don’t have to do
this …” And she reached for his hand.

“That’s the thing, Val. I do.” He started walking, fast,
still holding Valerie’s hand, and Lucy jogged to keep up with them. When they
stopped in front of an elaborate marble gravestone, he hesitated before
touching the structure. “No one told you about this, Lucy?”

“No,” she replied, reading the name carved elegantly into
it. Estella Lee Turner. “It’s beautiful.”

“It was probably built the year you were born.”

“Why so late?”

“The first stone was destroyed—busted into pieces—” his
eyebrows pulled in close and the breath he took sounded unsteady “—by me.”

He’d desecrated his grandmother’s gravestone? Baffled,
she looked from him to her mom to the gravestone and couldn’t associate him
with that brand of meanness. “How come?”

“I couldn’t hold it together—the anger and hurt and …
hell … the fear. Grandma was always on my side, no matter what. She’d
understood that I needed a friend like Valerie. Grandma couldn’t stand Marin,
but she never told me to cut her out.” Peyton traced the
E
in the word
Estella.
“The year I left Night Sky was the first time I’d seen my mother since
Grandma’s death. She took money from me, skipped town, and I was really alone.”

“But you had Mom,” Lucy said.

“Not exactly.” The look he gave
Valerie was private and unique and was something only she could decode.
“Valerie was there for me until I shut her out. Finally I went to her ranch,
thought we could say to hell with this town and take off, be free … She wasn’t
having it. She wanted roots, commitment, love—all the stuff I couldn’t give
her. I let my temper fly, and your mom’s got her own hot streak, so we said
everything we could to piss each other off. I ended up here … don’t even
remember how. I had a sledgehammer, and I took it all out on Grandma’s headstone
because she was gone when I needed her.”

“What happened when people found out what you did?”

“You mean after the police came and arrested me? The
chief back then, Fitz Hyatt, released me, but I’d realized two things. One, I
couldn’t be the man my grandfather and Valerie needed me to be …”

“And two?”

“I had to take the chance Chief Hyatt had given me, and
run. That’s what I did.”

No way would Lucy tell him that the new start he was
hoping for with his mom was a total lie. She didn’t want to see him hurt.
Besides, he had Valerie now, and she had him.

“The point is,” Peyton said, “you don’t need to compare
yourself—or me—to a superhero. Yeah, we mess up sometimes, but sometimes we get
it right, too. Make sense?” He smiled, and she didn’t feel so cold and lonely
anymore.

Lucy felt like she had a friend.

C
HASE
HAD SHOWN
up after all. Valerie had
called Blue Longhorn from Memorial after the board meeting and had surprisingly
been able to get through to her cousin, who worked doing maintenance jobs at a
cement mixing company near the motel to pay his way. When Valerie had offered
him a place to stay after Thanksgiving, he’d resolutely declined.

But now that his sister, after her incident with Brute,
was on bed rest, being treated for gestational hypertension, the ranch was a
hand short and Valerie had a damn fine replacement in mind. If only he’d stop
dodging her long enough for her to give him the offer.

Still in her business suit, Valerie walked to the
backyard to see Chase throwing two sticks for Mimas
and Titania to fetch.

“You’re late, Val,” he said as Titania
jetted to him with the stick clamped in her mouth.

“The meeting was delayed. Glad you stuck around though.”
She crouched to ruffle Mimas’s shiny black coat.
“These guys seem taken with you.”

“My unit buddies and I had a stray. The boy was starving.
You could see his ribs. Once we fed him we couldn’t get rid of him. After a
while nobody wanted to, especially Musgrove. He talked about taking him to
Kentucky after the tour, but …”

Valerie glanced up at him. “Musgrove didn’t make it?”

“Roadside bomb.” Chase’s
gold-flecked green eyes, once vibrant and open, were borderline cold—as if they
were the gateway to a cache of dark secrets. “I kind of wonder what happened to
the mutt.”

“I want you to see something.”

With the dogs flanking him, Chase followed Valerie past
the carriage house to the bunkhouses. She looked over her shoulder, and the
picture of him walking with his military tags glinting in the sunlight was so sad
that she felt tears threatening.

There was a slouch to his usually army-straight posture,
thinness to his sinewy form, a rawboned quality to the already defined contours
of his face. When he grinned or laughed, a deep dimple bracketed one side of
his mouth. But now, with his lips set in a firm frown, no one would ever guess.

What had happened to the man who’d hummed with the drive
to serve and protect his country, who’d been optimistic and content? How many
friends—and how much of himself—had he lost to war?

“This is a fixer-upper,” she told Chase, gesturing for
him to enter the serviceable bunkhouse that boasted a living area, bedroom,
bathroom and kitchen. Everything about the space was cosmetically tattered, but
it had good bones and a bucket of soap and water and a fresh coat of paint
would go a long way. “It’s private, though, and it’s all yours—plus a decent
salary—if you come to work on Battle Creek.”

Chase silently scoped out the place before sinking onto
the thin, bare mattress on the bottom bunk in the bedroom. “Valerie, I don’t
know how long I’m going to be in this town. I don’t know if I should be staying
in Texas.”

“Well, you’ve been in Night Sky since before
Thanksgiving. Give it a try. Cordelia can’t work and
I need somebody who can handle her load.” Valerie sat beside him and watched
the dogs creep close. Titania rested her chin on his
knee, a plea for a good ol’ scratch between the ears.
“Dinah and Cordelia want you around. So does Lucy. So
do I. You’ve got yourself a little fan club around
here.”

“Aw, that’s gonna have to
change. I don’t need fans. I’m a civilian now and … I don’t know. I’m just
trying to get things to make sense again.”

“We love you, that’s all.”

“Same here.”

Valerie brushed at a lock of his hair with her finger. How
long had he been out of the army to have let his hair grow all the way to his
collar? More questions were building, but asking too many too soon would only
make him shut down—or leave. “I can’t speak for them, but I’m not gonna pressure you to talk about whatever’s eating you
inside out.”

After a long pause, he nodded and tucked his dog tags
into his shirt. “All right. A try is all I can
promise.”

“That’s good enough for now.”

“Y
OU’RE
STILL ACTIVE
with Doctors Without Borders,” Chief Lindsey said without preamble after
he’d summoned Peyton to his corner office, which had one of the best Hill
Country views this part of town offered.

At attention, Peyton inclined his head. “I am.” He’d
never hinted otherwise, though he’d passed on the opportunity to join Malcolm’s
group in Bangladesh. Another offer hadn’t come through since.

“An assignment in Chad’s become available. You were
selected from the pool of surgeons. Take a look.” Chief slid a packet of
documents across the desk. “I made this clear before, Turner. Your position
here can be permanent.”

Peyton held up the documents. “At the
cost of my field work?”

“No.”

“The administration’s okay with courting a surgeon who’d
leave Memorial for a mission at any time for any duration? Come on, Chief. Does
this flexibility have to do with the hospital expansion, which I know you’re in
favor of?”

“Again—no.” Chief Lindsey leaned
forward with his elbows on the desk. “I’ve chatted with the ER in Baltimore.
And I’ve been watching you at Memorial. I know to expect more than ‘either/or’
from you. You can be committed to this hospital and your field work and your
family—if that’s what you really want.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said to Chief.

“Do that.”

Peyton put it all out of his mind—the Chad assignment, the
conflict of being pulled in two directions, the tug-of-war between permanent
and temporary—as he finished his shift. Afterward he went to the hospital
cafeteria for a sandwich and coffee, and that same conflict surged to the
forefront of his mind.

What sacrifices would he have to make in order to divide
his time … his life? Would Valerie understand his need to continue accepting
potentially dangerous missions? Would his field work even make a difference
when she was, in many ways, still holding back? Would they ever scrape the
surface of what lived beneath friendship—beneath sex, even?

In the cafeteria’s cashier line, he accidentally crumpled
the bills in his hand, not realizing that the cashier waited with a questioning
look.

“Do you have enough cash on you?” someone asked. “I can
lend you a few … Doctor Turner?”

Peyton handed over the money and glanced at the woman
beside him. Shannon Dash, the hospital guide—the one who’d brought him to the
children’s library the day he’d first laid eyes on his daughter.

“Hi, Shannon.” He pocketed his
change and collected the turkey sandwich and coffee.

She smiled. “Suppose you had enough cash after all.”

Peyton found a just-vacated table in the hospital
courtyard and was unwrapping his sandwich when Shannon
approached again. “Pull up a chair,” he said, saving her from the awkward “May
I sit here?”

“Thanks.” With a plastic fork she flipped over a slice of
cucumber in her salad. “A review came out in the
Gazette
about that new place in the warehouse district, out behind
the Thaines’ boot place. Beer from
the best brewery in Wellesley County … country-western swing music … a
mechanical bull. Good location.”

Kitty-corner from Blue Longhorn.

“Relax. It’s just a no-pressure place for no-pressure
people.” She drew a finger over his hand. “We could meet at midnight.”

It was a variation of countless conversations he’d had
with women. An invitation to drinks or dinner or something innocuous would turn
into sex but wouldn’t go beyond that—if it even got to that point at all. That
routine had worked for him when there’d been nothing permanent in his life.

“I might be busy that night,” he told her, leveling a
meaningful gaze at her, hoping to save them both from embarrassment.

Shannon’s hand quickly retreated, and she stood. “My
break’s about over, so I should go. Thanks for offering the chair, Doctor
Turner.”

Peyton watched her leave. Taking her up on what she
offered would’ve been easy. Short-term satisfaction that came with no
expectations always was. Accepting a Doctors Without
Borders assignment in Africa wouldn’t ordinarily be easy, but in this situation
it was. Moving toward a future in Night Sky—with Valerie—was the greater
challenge.

But the woman he loved was worth the risk.