The Last Honorable Man (8 page)

Lost, she followed his back across the room with her gaze. “Where are we going?”

At the door he stopped and turned. “To get some advice from a lady who knows more about bringing babies into this world than anyone else in the state, doctors included. My grandmother.”

 

Del was convinced that the Cooper farm, thirty-five acres nestled in a pecan grove in rural Van Zandt County, Texas, existed in a time warp. Every time he came, the potholes in the gravel drive were a little deeper, the creek was a little dryer, and his mother's hair a little grayer, but nothing really changed.

The rope he'd swung on a thousand times as a kid still hung in the hayloft. Grandma and Grandpa Cooper's rockers still sat facing each other on the narrow wraparound porch surrounding the farmhouse.

And his mother still didn't know who he was.

Or at least
when
he was.

Wisps of salt-and-pepper hair trailed from the bun curled atop her head as she waved at him from the front steps. “Del? Oh, Del, where have you been? I've been so worried.”

He opened the door on Elisa's side of the car and
helped her down. His mother peered at them, then started forward.

Damn.
He should have explained to Elisa about his mother. He'd had an hour and a half on the drive out here from Dallas, but somehow he'd never found the words. He'd been too busy trying to figure out how he was going to break the news of his impending marriage to his grandparents.

“Look,” he said hurriedly. “I should have told you about my mom—”

“Del, is that Sammy with you?” Ariel Cooper asked, shading her eyes from the sun. “I sent Sammy out looking for you, you were gone so long.”

“No, Mom. It's not Sammy.”

Sammy hadn't been here for a long time.

“You know you're not supposed to wander off without telling me,” his mother chided, then stopped when she reached Elisa.

“Oh, hello.” She turned to Del with vacant eyes. “Del, are you going to introduce me to your little friend?”

Elisa looked at him curiously and he only hoped she could read his silent plea for understanding. His mom was easily confused, and he didn't want her upset.

“Mom, this is Elisa.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Elisa,” she said in a sing-songy, childlike voice. “Are you in Del's class at the elementary?”

“No, I—”

“She's new in town, Mom. We don't know which class she'll be in yet.”

“Well, won't it be fun if they put her in your class?” She gave her attention back to Elisa. “You're welcome
to stay for supper. If it's all right with your parents, of course.”

“It's, uh, all right, Mom,” Del said.

“Well, good then. We're having pot roast. I'll just go set an extra plate.” She started toward the house, and Del and Elisa followed. “You're sure you didn't see Sam out there anywhere, Del?”

Del kicked the dirt as fresh pain exploded along long-abused nerve endings. “No, Ma.”

“Probably out chasing that old dog again,” she said as she stepped onto the front porch and walked right past an aging border collie—a direct descendant of the dog in question.

Elisa gave him that raised-eyebrow look again as they followed his mother into the house.

“Later,” he said, and it seemed to satisfy her.

His grandparents, Ian and Rosario Cooper were waiting in the kitchen.

“Del, m'boy,” his pap called in a Scottish brogue as thick as the day he'd left the highlands. Balancing himself with one hand on the countertop, he hopped across the room on his one remaining leg. He'd lost the other to shrapnel in World War II, and he didn't like to wear the prosthetic limb the VA hospital had given him. Claimed his empty trouser leg was a badge of honor. Wanted people to know what he and men like him had given for their country. “How goes the fight?”

Del leaned into the offered bear hug, careful not to unbalance the elderly man. “Not much fighting to be done, Pap. I'm still on administrative leave.”

“Ah, hogwash, that,” Pap said, waving his hand in rude gesture. “What's a man supposed to do but shoot at the enemy?”

“Ignore el soldado viejo, Delgado, y venga a ver tu
abuela.”
Ignore the old soldier, and come to your grandmother.

Del eased from Pap's embrace and knelt beside Rosario Cooper's chair. She was a foot shorter than him, her knuckles were swollen with arthritis, and her once jet-black hair was now riddled with gray, yet he would have no more dared to disobey her than he would have jumped on the back of a Brahma bull for a joyride.

“Es bueno verle otra vez, abuela.”
He rarely spoke Spanish these days, but when he did it never failed to make her smile.

She touched his cheek with the back of her hand.
“Eres un muchacho bueno, Delgado.”

He captured her hand in his and rose, looking back at Elisa. “Pap, Mami, this is my friend Elisa.”

“Elisa might be in Del's class when school starts up again,” his mother chimed in, pulling the pot roast from the oven.

Long used to her eccentricity, Pap and Mami continued on as if there was nothing odd about the remark. They each welcomed Elisa, made small talk while dinner was served and eaten and stayed at the table after Del's mother excused herself to go upstairs and work on the new curtains she was sewing for the den.

Del picked up the plates, rinsed them in the sink and measured two scoops of grounds into the coffeemaker.

This was the family routine. Supper was for pleasant conversation.

Serious discussions were held over coffee.

When three cups—plus one glass of milk for Elisa—had been poured and sipped, Del took his seat.

“Pap, Mami. Elisa and I have something to tell you.”

“Only one thing I want to know,” Pap said, squinting out of one eye. When he'd been a kid, Del had called
that look Pap's Popeye face, and it meant it was time to come clean with whatever latest prank he and Sammy had cooked up.

“What's that, Pap?” he asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.

Pap put his hand over Elisa's on the table. “I want to know if that's your baby your pretty young friend is carrying, and if it is, why there isn't a ring on her finger?”

Elisa choked, almost spewing milk across the table.

Mami leaned over to pat her on the back.
“Querida,
take a deep breath.” She glared at Pap. “Ian, you have embarrassed
la niña
.”

“She's not the one who should be embarrassed,” Pap said, impaling Del with a look. “What do you have to say, son? Are you going to honor your responsibilities and do right by this woman, or not?”

Del was trying. “Actually, Pap, that's what we wanted to tell you. Elisa and I are—”

Mami raised her hands out to her sides and tipped her head to the heavens. Her smile lit up the room. “Of course they are getting married. They're having a baby!” Tears flowing, she leaned over and kissed Elisa on both cheeks.

Elisa's panic-stricken, dark eyes locked on Del's like laser-guided missiles. He raised his eyebrows in defense.

“See how they look at each other?” Mami exclaimed, joy bursting from every word. “They are in love.”

Del cursed himself for losing control of the conversation. He should have known Mami and Pap would assume Elisa's baby was his. What else would they think? He'd never brought a woman—any woman, much less one in her second trimester of pregnancy—home before.

Clearly, Elisa wanted him to straighten them out.

“Think of it, Ian,” Mami said, her hands clasped to her chest. “A grandchild. Our first grandchild.”

“Actually, the baby isn't…” Del began, but hesitated. This was where he should do it. Tell his grandparents the baby wasn't his. The marriage would be legal, but it wouldn't be real. That Elisa only stayed with him because she feared for her baby's life. That underneath the pleasant mask she'd donned for their benefit, she loathed the sight of him, and with good reason.

But looking at his grandparents now, he couldn't do it. Satisfaction beamed from his grandfather's face. Mami's eyes shone with such unconditional love and acceptance that it made his chest ache. As a kid he used to wonder what he'd done to deserve that kind of love. To deserve them.

As an adult, he still didn't know.

He did know they had faced a lot of sadness in their lives. He couldn't shatter this moment of happiness, even if its source was only an illusion.

He met Elisa's level gaze. Her nostrils flared. A warning? He sent a look he hoped she would recognize as a silent apology, and a plea…

“Actually, the baby isn't your grandchild,” he finished the statement he'd started earlier, only not the way he'd originally planned. “It would be your great-grandchild.”

Elisa rose. Del held his breath, waiting for her to cut the hearts out of two of the finest people on Earth, but she merely turned her back on the table and took her empty glass to the sink.

“Ach, so it will. You were so young when you came to live with us that you've always been like a son.”
Papi's brogue was thicker than usual, choked with emotion. “And now we have a daughter, too.”

Judging by the way Elisa's spine stiffened at Pap's declaration, Del wasn't so sure she agreed.

“O
ne hopscotch, two hopscotch, three hopscotch,” Del's mother sang as she skipped her red checker across the board, stacking Elisa's last black pieces beneath it as she went. “I win again.”

Elisa pulled her gaze from the baseball game playing out on the TV in the corner with the sound turned down, and frowned at the checkerboard.

“Don't take it too hard, sweetie. You did good for a beginner. Del and Sammy have been trying to beat me since they learned to play in Bible camp three years ago, and they haven't come as close as you did.” She looked toward the window. “Now where have those boys gotten to?”

“I'm here, Ma.”

The ranger's voice, soft and heavy, fell on Elisa like a shower of tiny, electrified raindrops. It wasn't like her to be so affected by something as mundane as a man's
voice, even if he had surprised her. Perhaps it was not the voice, but the sadness she heard in it. The humanity.

As she turned toward him, she rubbed the gooseflesh from her bare arms. She didn't want to think of the ranger as human. Especially not after he had broken their agreement.

“Did Sammy come in with you?” his mother asked.

The shadow of his eyelashes fluttered on his cheek as he half closed his eyes. “No, Ma.”

“I'll just go call him, then.” The ranger moved aside as his mother walked out. She laughed on her way past him, but it was an anxious sound. Her fingers twisted in the skirt of her cotton dress. “Boy's prob'ly out chasin' that old dog again.”

When Mrs. Cooper was gone, Elisa bent over the checkerboard and started picking up the pieces. She heard the shoosh of the ranger's boots over the carpet. Felt the air compress around her as he drew up beside her. Watched her numb fingers give over the checkers without resistance when he gathered her hands in his.

In the place of the plastic game pieces, he put a steaming mug.

“From my grandmother. She says to drink as much of this as you can stand tonight, and tomorrow she'll have a whole nutritional plan worked out for you.”

“You lied to them,” she said.

“Not exactly.” He sat on the floor, his long legs stretched out to one side and propped on his elbow, and motioned her toward the love seat. One by one, he set each checker in its place.

Incredulity spilled over her. “Then you misled them.”

He moved his first checker and gestured for her turn. “That's what this marriage is about, isn't it? Misleading people?”

“But these are your family.”

He sighed. “I tried to tell them the truth. I just…couldn't. You saw how excited my grandmother was.”

Elisa contemplated the game a moment, then nudged a checker forward. “And when she does find out?”

“I've got two years to figure that out.”

“Maybe.” Del took his turn, and Elisa interpreted his strategy. He'd opened with a direct frontal assault. She would have expected no less. Countering with a flanking move, she said, “Your grandmother is very astute. Do you think she will not notice something is wrong before then?”

Del frowned in concentration, whether on the game or the discussion, Elisa could not tell. “We'll just have to make it look real.”

Her stomach tumbled, imaging what it would be like even to
pretend
to be in love with him. She would have to talk to him, share long looks with him, touch him…

“It won't be that bad,” he said, as if sensing the direction of her thoughts. “We don't have to be together around them that much. Just holidays and such.”

“I would like to spend more time here,” she said before she realized she was speaking. In just a few short hours, she had come to respect the ranger's grandparents. Rosario Cooper reminded her of home, and the elder women she had learned so much from in her village as a girl.

The ranger grinned over his next move. “They like you, too.”

“They do?” She hadn't realized until then how much their acceptance meant to her. She still didn't understand why. Like the ranger, they would be her family in name only. And only for two years.

With the weight of that knowledge rumbling through her like thunder down a mountain pass, she studied the checkerboard. The ranger had taken two of her men in a sneak attack. He was good. But she was better.

She proved it by winning their best three-of-five match in three straight games.

“I think I've been conned,” he said, falling backward and staring up at the ceiling.

His good-natured tone made her smile, just a little, even though she was still mad at him.

She folded the checkerboard and gathered the pieces. He sat up, opened the coffee table drawer where they were stored. When she slid the game inside, he nudged the drawer closed with his knee, took hold of her with his hand and turned her to him.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

She arched one eyebrow. “For beating you?”

“For not telling my grandparents the truth.” One corner of his mouth kicked up. “And for letting my mother win at checkers.”

Elisa pulled her hand away. “I am not without compassion.”

“No,” he answered quietly. “You're certainly not.”

She wondered how he knew that. She certainly hadn't shown him much of her softer side. Hadn't seen much of it herself these last eight years.

Avoiding his gaze, she straightened the magazines on the coffee table, then when she couldn't find anything else to fidget with, she settled herself on the love seat again. Something in the way he was looking at her evaporated her troubled thoughts like morning mist under the rising sun. But she gathered her wits, kicking off her sandals and pulling her feet up to the couch.

He'd opened a door, given her space to ask a personal
question, and she did not intend to let the opportunity pass.

“What happened to her?”

“My mother?”

She nodded.

“She lost a lot of people she loved during her life, starting with her parents when she was just sixteen. I guess one day she just lost herself, as well.”

Dread knotted in Elisa's chest. “Sammy?”

A darkness descended over the ranger's features, like a candle suddenly snuffed. “My brother. Killed by a suicide bomber in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.”

“He was a soldier?”

“We both were.”

Elisa tried to swallow and couldn't. In San Ynez, the soldiers were even worse than the police. More corrupt. More violent.

The ranger's grandfather had been a soldier, as had he and his brother. A legacy of violence.

And there was more, Elisa suspected from the degree of his mother's devastation, though the loss of a child should be enough. “Your father?”

“Pilot. Drove an A-10—a tank killer—in Vietnam until he was shot down in '68. Technically he's still listed as MIA.”

“And the not knowing was harder on her than having a body to bury.”

Elisa was all too familiar with the plight of families left without closure. She'd seen too many of them in her country.

The ranger studied the carpet between his feet. Quiet surrounded the house—even the crickets had hushed for the night. “She thinks she still gets letters from him.”

The grate in his voice reminded her that he had lost much, too. A father, a brother, and a mother in a way.

“Sometimes when she gets upset at not hearing from him, I go and get one of his old letters out of the box she keeps upstairs and I read it to her.”

Elisa's heart throbbed. Mesmerized by the story, by the depth of the emotion that resonated in its telling, she leaned forward.

He pinched his lips bloodless before he spoke again. “She never seems to notice that the envelope is already torn open or that she's heard the words a hundred times before.”

Elisa reached out, but stopped short of touching him. Instead she rested her hand just beyond his splayed fingers. “You are a good son.”

“Am I?” Heat and light flashed from him like a small explosion. He leaned toward her, his palms supporting his weight on the table. “For letting her live in her goddamn fantasy world instead of shaking her back to reality?”

Elisa reared back, not just from his fury, but to make the sign of the cross and wing a quick prayer of forgiveness heavenward.

He rolled his head back and scrubbed his hands over his face, muffling something she suspected would require more than a quick prayer to be forgiven.

“You're a real stickler on the swearing thing, aren't you?”

“It is the way I was raised.”

A breath sagged out of him. “It's the way I was raised, too. Guess I'd just forgotten.”

He stood and offered her a hand. “I'll try to remember from now on.”

Once he had lifted her to her feet, he lingered with
her hand in his. She wondered if he could feel the way her pulse spiraled at his touch.

“If you're up to it tomorrow,” he said, “we'll go into town, apply for a marriage license, get blood tests.”

Her pulse went from spiraling to bounding. Her stomach sank in on itself, but she held her ground.

The ranger's gaze met hers, solid as rock. “We'll be married before the week is out.”

 

Elisa woke as she had each morning at the Cooper farm, enamored with the crinkle of fresh linens under her cheek, the smell of freshly brewed coffee tickling her nose—not that she could have any—and the warmth of golden sunlight flowing through gauzy curtains.

Not to mention the sight of a large, half-naked male laboring outside her window, which was about as close as he'd gotten to her since their discussion over checkers in the den four nights ago.

The ranger tended his grandmother's vegetable garden before the heat of the day set in. Wearing only jeans, boots and a leather belt with a silver buckle the size of a soup ladle, he knitted the limbs of a leggy tomato plant into a wire cage, mounded a burm of soil around the base of a flowering pepper plant and checked an ear of yellow corn for insects.

Even at this hour, exertion and the Texas heat had him sweating. His bare torso shone like a new bronze statue. Muscles bunched like mountains of pure stone in his shoulders and taut flesh played over an abdomen hammered flat as a platter. When he squatted to finger the frothy topside of a carrot plant, his thighs tested the seams of the denim that encased them.

He looked at home there among the rows and patches, she realized, and that was the appeal of watching him.
He looked like a man who lived by his hands instead of his gun. A peaceable man, capable of coaxing life from a handful of seeds and a square of dry soil, of nurturing tender green shoots into sturdy stalks. A man with the patience, and the strength, to wait for the time to reap the bounty of what he had sown.

Not at all like the reckless policeman who took an innocent life by mistake. The impulsive repentant who, out of guilt, offered marriage to a stranger. Committed himself to raise another man's child.

This was a new ranger. One who read his dead father's old letters again and again as if they were new to comfort a mother who lived in the past. One who mourned a lost brother. Father.

One who promised her that her baby would be all right with such sincerity that she almost believed he could make it so.

Restlessly Elisa pushed the covers aside and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She took her iron tablet with a cup of Mami's miracle tea in the kitchen, but passed up the spinach and tomato omelet the elder Mrs. Cooper pressed on her.

Each of the last three days, she'd eaten with the elder Coopers and Del's mother while he worked in the garden or tended livestock. In the afternoon she watched baseball with Mami. Mami was a die-hard fan, and Elisa was surprised to learn she enjoyed the game, as well.

Each evening she'd taken supper with them while Del again found chores to do. And after sunset, she'd displaced the family dog, Murphy, who she was told was named after a famous soldier, Audie Murphy, from the easy chair in the family room and curled up with a book borrowed from the floor-to-ceiling shelves. She had half hoped the ranger would join her there, as he had the
night they had played checkers, and tried to deny her disappointment when he had not. That night, he had opened up to her, shared something of himself.

The single draught of information left her thirsting for more.

Her nerves quivered as she padded out of the house toward the lot of tilled earth where he worked.

She was tired of waiting for him to come to her. She needed to know more about the man she was to marry, and there were things he needed to know about her.

Before four o'clock this afternoon, when the ceremony was to begin.

 

Hunched over in a row of green peas, Del watched Elisa's long, tanned legs swing toward him one enticing step at a time. Her calves were firm, tapering into fine ankles. Slender, with lots of definition to the bone.

He'd always been an ankle man.

“Don't touch that crabgrass,” he ordered, pulling his gaze away from her ankles when she bent over next to him. Without looking up, he nudged her away with his knuckles. Her skin looked soft and white and thin as paper next to his dirty hand, but he recognized the illusion. Underneath she was strong as a jungle cat.

His paper lioness.

“I want to help.”

He pinched the offending weed by the root and yanked. “You're supposed to be taking it easy.”

“If I took it any easier, I would be comatose.”

He craned his head back, squinting against the sun's glare. “Did you just make a joke?”

She pulled her shoulders up defensively and cocked her jaw to the side. “I do have a sense of humor.”

He didn't. Not with Elisa standing over him, her
glossy black hair combed back and secured with a braided headband, her golden skin glowing and her cheeks blooming like pink roses. Especially not with the way the sun behind her shone through the white cotton shift she wore, outlining the plump of her breasts, a waist narrow despite her pregnancy and hips with just enough flare to tempt a saint.