The Seventh Mother (3 page)

W
hen Brannon asked me to go with him to Kentucky, I almost said no. It really was too soon, I hadn’t known him very long, and I didn’t want to leave the camp. I loved my job there, I loved the horses. I even loved the winters in Idaho, when the wind blew so cold and bitter-crisp it took your breath away.

“Come on,” he said, rubbing my bare belly as we lay on his bed in the trailer, moonlight streaming through the open window across our naked bodies. “Don’t you want to see the rest of the country? You’ve never been east of Wyoming, babe. There’s a whole world out there you haven’t seen.”

“I know,” I murmured. “It’s just . . . it’s awfully soon. I’ve only known you a couple months. And I like my job. Hell, I love my job. It took more than a year for Boyd to really trust me with the horses. I can’t just leave them.”

“We can come back here next summer, if you want.”

I shook my head and avoided his eyes.

“You know I’m crazy about you, right?” He took my chin in his hand and made me look at him.

“I know.” I nodded.

“And I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual.” He stared straight into my eyes.

“Yeah, it is,” I said. “But . . .”

“But nothing. It’s you and me, babe, all the way. We’ll see the whole damned country together. I mean, Kentucky in the winter isn’t exactly Shangri-la, but it’s not too bad . . . rolling hills and funny little towns, oh, and distilleries, too. Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam, Wild Turkey . . . think about it, honey. We can see all of them. And when I’m done at Amazon for the season, we can go anywhere you want to—Florida, Maine, New York, California, even . . . anywhere you want to go.”

I closed my eyes, picturing the places we could go, being on the road with Brannon. I smiled a little, even as I shook my head again.

“But what if it doesn’t work out?” I asked. “What if
we
don’t work out?”

Brannon laughed and kissed my shoulder.

“Why shouldn’t we work out?” he asked softly.

“Well, we don’t really know each other that well.”

“So, let’s get to know each other.” His voice was warm, cajoling. “We’ll learn all about each other traveling cross-country. It will be fun. And . . .” he continued straight on as I opened my mouth with another, “What if?”

“And, if it doesn’t work out, if you decide you don’t want to stay in Kentucky, you can always come back here.”

He nuzzled my neck, touched between my legs gently, ran his tongue across my breasts. “But I think you’ll want to stay.”

I moaned softly.

“And I know what you want right now, don’t I?” he whispered, tracing his tongue slowly down my belly.

“Yes,” I whimpered. “Yes.”

Crazy as it sounds, that’s how it happened. That’s how I decided to leave behind Idaho and my beautiful horses and Boyd and Zella Fay and everything I knew and loved, to go with Brannon and Jenny to Kentucky, or to wherever else he wanted to go.

The next day I told Boyd I’d be leaving at the end of the season.

“You can’t be serious,” he barked, removing his sunglasses to stare at me. “You hardly know the man. You aren’t really going to leave your job and just follow him to wherever? You’re too smart for that, Emma.”

Zella Fay said pretty much the same thing when I told her.

“I told you, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you? The man’s got baggage,” she said, her mouth set in a firm, straight line. “And I ain’t just talking about Jenny, either. Brannon, he’s carrying a whole lot of junk.”

But I would not be swayed. Come the end of October, I would leave Idaho and the west, and travel to Kentucky with Brannon and Jenny.

I did almost change my mind at the last minute.

Brannon wanted me to sell my SUV and ride with him and Emma to Kentucky in his truck.

“That’s part of the fun, getting to know each other,” he said, his hand on my knee. “We’ll see the whole country together. It’ll be great.”

“But I’ll need a car once we get to Kentucky,” I said. “I don’t want to be stuck in the trailer while you’re at work every day.”

“I’ll walk to work,” he said. “The campground is right next to the warehouse. So I’ll walk and you can drive the truck.”

The idea of a campground sitting right up next to a huge warehouse sounded awful. But the idea of being without my Chevy Tahoe was even worse. I’d worked hard and saved for over a year to buy it. That car was my pride and joy. Hell, it was my independence.

“We’ll get you another car in Kentucky,” Brannon said. “Another SUV, if you want. Or maybe a sedan, something that gets better mileage.”

I shook my head and bit my lip. “I like my car.”

“But it’s just stupid to drive two cars all the way across country.”

It was our first real disagreement, and both of us dug in our heels for a while.

Finally, I said, “Look, I’m giving up a lot to come with you, Brannon. I’m leaving a good job and my friends. I’m not leaving my car, too.”

He stared at me for a long minute, and I thought he was going to tell me I should just stay behind. But then he laughed and shook his head, so that his dark curls brushed his collar.

“What the hell,” he said. “Fine, keep the damned car. But it’s going to be a long, lonely drive to Kentucky all by yourself.”

He was pretty unhappy when Jenny decided to do the first leg of the trip with me, instead of in the truck with him.

“Well, great,” he said. “That’s just great. Now I’ve got two stubborn women on my hands.”

He laughed, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. And for just a minute again, I thought I wouldn’t go, after all.

But then he kissed me on my forehead, my nose, my mouth. His dark eyes laughed into mine.

“Just be careful on the road,” he said softly. “I’m trusting you with the most precious part of my life, you know.”

I nodded and smiled back at him. He kissed me again, and I felt my knees tremble.

Lord, I was in trouble deep.

“W
ill you miss the horses?” I sat in Emma’s SUV, staring out the back window at the campground that was disappearing in a cloud of dust behind us. Ahead of us, Daddy drove the truck, pulling our trailer behind him. We were on our way to Kentucky for the winter.

“Sure,” she said. “But I’m ready for a new adventure. Aren’t you?”

I shrugged my shoulders and turned in the seat to look at her. She was so pretty, her red hair tied back in a ponytail. Freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. No makeup. Emma never wore makeup. Not like Trish or Cara or Jackie.

“How did you learn to take care of horses?” I asked, mostly to make conversation.

“My dad had horses,” she said. “I grew up helping take care of them.”

“Where did you live?”

“In Arizona; that’s south of here.”

“How come you came to the campground?”

She sat quietly for a minute and then sighed deeply. “I didn’t get along with my folks. So one day, I left. I came north and ended up in Idaho.”

I stared at her. “How old were you?”

“Seventeen,” she said. She turned to smile at me, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes looked sad. “Too young to be on my own, but too stupid to know better.”

“Why didn’t you get along with your parents?”

She shrugged, frowning at the road ahead. “They were . . . different. And I was bored, I guess. I didn’t want to stay in the same little town my whole life. So, I left.”

“Did you tell them you were going?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “I left in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping. Then I went down to the main road and caught a ride.”

“You mean you hitchhiked?” My eyes widened. We sometimes passed hitchhikers on the road, but we never picked them up. Daddy said they must be either stupid or crazy to be out there on the road, and either way, we didn’t want them in the truck with us. Daddy worried about stuff like that.

Emma nodded, her mouth set in a straight, tight line. “I know it was stupid. Like I said, I was seventeen and I thought I was invincible. It never even occurred to me that anyone would try to hurt me.”

“Did they?” I whispered. “Did someone try to hurt you?”

“Let’s just say I came across some good people and some not-so-good people. But mostly, I think, people are good.”

“And that’s how you came to Idaho?” I pushed further. “You hitchhiked here?”

“No.” She shook her head, frowning slightly again. “At first I hitchhiked to Utah, to Salt Lake City. I got a job waiting tables in a little restaurant there and stayed almost two years. Then, I met a man who was really nice. Or at least I thought he was nice. I came with him to Rexburg in Idaho, that’s where he lived. He owned a hardware store and I worked there for a while. But then . . . well, he turned out to be not so nice, after all. So I caught a ride to Driggs and I met Boyd there, and he gave me a job at the campground. That was three years ago.”

“Don’t you miss your mom and dad?” I asked.

She shook her head again. “Not really,” she said. “Like I said, we didn’t get along.”

I sat back to think about that. How would I feel if I left Daddy and never came back? How scared would he be? I couldn’t imagine it.

“They weren’t very good parents,” Emma said softly, as if reading my thoughts. “Not like your dad.”

“Did you have any brothers and sisters?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice even softer. “I had a couple brothers and three sisters.”

“Do you miss them?”

She was quiet for a minute and then sighed heavily. “I miss my sisters, I guess, especially my youngest one, Clarissa. She was only eight when I left. I do miss her.”

“Why don’t you go back to see her?”

“I can’t.” Her voice was firm. “I can’t go back ever.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, touching her arm the way I’d seen Daddy do so often.

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m going forward instead.”

We drove all morning south through steep mountains, and then pulled onto I-80 to head east. After we stopped for lunch somewhere in Wyoming, I climbed into the truck to ride the rest of the day with Daddy.

“So, did you have a good ride with Emma?” he asked, pulling back onto the highway.

“Yeah,” I said. “I like her.”

“Me too,” he said, grinning at me. “I think she might be the one.”

Daddy always said that when he got a new girlfriend.

“I hope so,” I whispered.

And I did hope so. I hoped against hope that Emma would be the one who finally stayed.

L
ord God, I was so tired after that first day of driving. We did thirteen hours straight, finally stopping for the night outside of Hastings, Nebraska. We stayed there in a nasty dump of a campground, but not before Brannon got into it with the manager over the cost of parking my car.

“Twenty bucks? Are you kidding me? What a fucking rip-off!” His face was red, and the muscles at the base of his neck bulged.

“Sorry, buddy. That’s the rate.” The manager, an older man with a paunchy belly and red eyes, sounded bored.

“But you’ve got all those empty spaces.” Brannon pointed to the half-empty campground.

“Twenty bucks for the extra car.” The manager’s voice was flat. “I don’t make the rules. I just follow them.”

“It’s okay, Brannon,” I said, as calmly as I could. I was so tired I would have paid twice that, just to be out of the car. “I’ve got it.”

I handed the man a twenty and he took it without comment.

“Lot twelve,” he said, pointing toward the back of the campground. “And you can park your car there.” He pointed to a small, completely empty parking lot behind the camp store.

Brannon glared at the man and then at me before turning the key in the truck’s ignition. Beside him, Jenny sat absolutely still, staring out the window away from all of us.

I parked my SUV and walked across the campground, to where Brannon was maneuvering the trailer into lot twelve.

“Unbelievable! Just un-fucking-believable!” he spat at me, stepping from the truck. “Twenty bucks . . . wasted. This is why I wanted you to leave your damned car in Idaho.”

“It’s okay,” I repeated. I tried to stay calm, but I could feel my voice shaking. I’d never seen Brannon angry like that. His dark eyes were wide, his mouth set in a tight, hard line.

“So it’s okay with you? You think it’s okay to just blow money?” His voice rose. Behind him, Jenny climbed down from the truck and stood watching us.

“It’s not that much, Brannon.” I was getting angry myself, now. After all, it was my money that got spent.

“Daddy?” Jenny’s voice was soft, pleading. “I’ve got some money saved from my allowance.”

Brannon turned to her, his face softening immediately. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed.

“Honey, no. You keep your money. It’s okay.”

He turned back to me and sighed again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m just really tired.”

“Me too,” I said, draping my arms around his neck. “It’s been a hell of a long day.”

It didn’t take much to set up camp, and soon I was boiling water on the stove for spaghetti and stirring a jar of sauce in a pan.

“That smells good,” Brannon said, wrapping his arms around me from behind. I pushed a sweaty strand of hair from my eyes.

“It’s just spaghetti and meat sauce. Nothing fancy.”

“Well, it’s better than anything I would have made.” He kissed my neck and squeezed me tight. “I’m glad you’re here, babe. I’m glad you came.”

We sat on lawn chairs outside while we ate dinner, and I stared at the landscape stretching out flat in all directions.

“That was good,” Brannon said, leaning back in his chair. “Jenny, wasn’t that good?”

Jenny nodded and smiled. “Thanks, Emma.”

She yawned and rose, taking her father’s empty plate and then mine and walking toward the trailer.

“Wash up and get ready for bed,” Brannon called after her. “We’ve got another long day of driving tomorrow.”

He belched and rubbed his stomach, then smiled at me, that beautiful, crooked smile.

“Will we make it to Kentucky tomorrow?” I was definitely ready to be off the road.

“Nope,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll stop in Indiana for the night.”

“Why stop there?” I asked. “Why not just go straight on to Kentucky and get it over with?”

“I’ve got a storage unit in Indianapolis,” he said. “I’ve got to pick up our winter gear and put away the summer stuff. It adds a few hours to the trip, but we need to get our winter things, Jenny’s coat and all that. So, we’ll stay in Indy tomorrow night, and then it’s just a short drive to Campbellsville. We can get there by noon on Monday.”

“Indianapolis, is that where you’re from?”

Brannon hadn’t talked much about his past. And thankfully, he hadn’t asked much about mine.

“Yeah.” He yawned and stretched again. “I grew up there.”

“Is your family there?”

He paused and took a long drink from his water bottle.

“I don’t have any family,” he said quietly. “My mom was killed in a car accident when I was seven. After that I lived in foster care.”

“My Lord, Brannon, I’m so sorry.” I put my hand over his and squeezed.

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

“Don’t you have any other family?”

“Nope, Mom was on her own when she had me. I never knew my grandparents or anything.”

“So, is Indiana where you met Jenny’s mom?”

He nodded and ran his hand over the back of his neck.

“Once I was eighteen, I was on the streets and on my own. My foster parents couldn’t wait to get rid of me. They were just in it for the money.”

He took another long drink of water.

“I met Hailey in Greenfield, that’s just east of Indianapolis,” he said. “I was working in a lumberyard and she worked in the office. We started seeing each other. Then she got pregnant, so we got married.”

“How did she die?”

I held my breath, waiting to see if he would keep talking. Like I said, Brannon didn’t talk about his past.

He stared into the gathering dark for a long time and sighed deeply.

“She had a hard time with the delivery,” he said finally. “She never really was strong or healthy after Jenny was born. She wasn’t really healthy even before she got pregnant. And I wasn’t home much. I was working twelve-hour shifts, trying to make ends meet and keep a roof over our heads. And then, right after Jenny’s third birthday, Hailey came down with the flu. I didn’t worry about it at first. I mean, it was just the flu, right?”

He rose and began pacing around the campfire.

“I came home one night and she was burning up with a fever. I took her to the emergency room, even though we didn’t have insurance, but it was too late. She died the next morning.”

I stood and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him close as if I might shield him from his pain.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He kissed my forehead and wiped a tear from my cheek.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I mean, it was hell then, especially for Jenny. But it’s been a long time. We’re okay now.”

“Is that when you started moving around?”

He shook his head and stepped away from me, staring into the fire.

“We stayed in Greenfield for a few months, but I lost my job at the yard. Jenny was three, and I didn’t want to leave her with someone I didn’t know. So I missed a lot of work. And then it took a while to find something else, so I lost the apartment. Then the economy went to hell, and I couldn’t find anything steady. So a guy I knew told me they were hiring seasonal workers at Disney World down in Florida. I wasn’t sure how we’d get there, but he said he had a trailer he’d sell me. I’d been saving for an apartment, so I used that as a down payment. He let me pay him the rest after the gig at Disney. He was a nice old guy. He died a couple years ago.”

He sat back down in his lawn chair and rubbed his chin. “Me and Jenny, we’ve been moving ever since.”

“Do you ever think about settling down?” I asked, sitting back in my own chair.

“Sure,” he said, nodding. “I’d like to, if I could find good, steady work. But with the economy the way it is, I have to take jobs where I can get them.”

“It would be good for Jenny to have a real home, maybe go to school and make some friends.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. Then he rose. “But . . . look, it is what it is. And at least this way she gets to see a bunch of difference places. And she’s happy, I think, especially since you moved in.”

He held his hand out to pull me from my lawn chair.

“We probably should hit the sack. We’ve got another long day tomorrow.”

I rubbed my stiff lower back and nodded.

“I sure wish you were riding with me,” he said, nuzzling my neck. “It’d be a lot more fun.”

I smiled and kissed his cheek. “But it will be worth it, having my own car in Kentucky,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

Brannon cupped his hand on my ass and smiled.

“Sure, babe,” he said. “It’ll be great.”