Long way home, p.7
Long Way Home, page 7
“I didn’t need any help until you moved into the neighborhood,” she said in such a tart tone, he couldn’t help but grin.
It had never been difficult to get under Jo Lena’s beautiful skin. At least not when it came to aggravation.
Lily Rae let out a squeal that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
“You moved here, Monte? You moved here from the Rocking M?”
“Yep,” he said as he opened the back door and they all trailed through.
Lily started whirling around in circles, bumping into him, then into Jo Lena in the small space of the back porch.
“Yay, yay, yay,” she chanted. “Yay for Monte. Yay for Monte. Monte lives with us. I get to tell LydaAnn.”
“Not with us,” Jo Lena said sharply. “Next door to us.”
“In the big house?”
“Right,” Monte said.
“Yay, yay, yay! Monte lives in the big house.”
Jo Lena gave a huge sigh. “Now she’ll be too excited to sleep,” she said wearily. “I don’t know when I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut.”
“Not your fault,” he soothed, setting his lantern on top of the washing machine. “She was already excited just because I’m here.”
“Well! You are as conceited as ever!” Jo Lena snapped.
“Just the truth,” he drawled, turning to grin at her over his shoulder as he reached for the door of the fuse box. “Too bad I don’t excite the grown women like I do the little girls.”
“Oh, I’m excited, all right,” she drawled back. “I haven’t had this much excitement in one day since I can’t remember when.”
Her sarcasm didn’t matter. Neither did the fact she was wanting to get rid of him. Somehow it just felt good to be this close to her, to feel her standing right behind him, waiting to see what he would do to get her out of this jam. Her breath felt warm where it brushed past his neck.
He opened up the box and shone his light on the rows of fuses inside.
“These are the real old-fashioned kind,” he said. “Where do you keep the extras?”
“I don’t have any,” Jo Lena said. “I’ve never even looked at them before.”
“Hmm,” Monte said mildly as he checked the connections. “Wish you had some.”
“So do I,” she shot back defensively. “If I’d only known, I would’ve stocked up.”
“I think that one there is blown,” he said. “But I’ll never be able to get a new one tonight.”
“At Wal-Mart we could,” Lily said, jumping up and down. “I know! Let’s all go to Wal-Mart!”
“They won’t have this kind,” he told her. “I’ll have to go to a hardware store in the morning.”
“I cannot believe this,” Jo Lena muttered desperately. “I have to have power in this house, and I mean early.”
Her quiet panic made Monte feel bad, but it made him feel good, too. This was the first problem he’d caused Jo Lena that he could actually fix.
“Monte…” she began.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m sorry I messed you up. But I’ll have all your equipment up and running right after daylight, I promise. I’ll call Old Man Donathan and ask him to open early.”
“The oven’s gas,” she said. “It’s the mixer I need.”
“You’ll have it,” he promised.
Lily was still dancing in circles, singing to her plastic horses as she twirled them in the air. “Monte’s my big brother. Monte’s my big brother.”
She was getting louder by the minute.
“You’ve got to get into bed,” Jo Lena said over the noise.
Lily pretended not to hear and sang even louder.
Jo Lena took her by the shoulders and started herding her toward the kitchen door. She turned to Monte.
“We’ve got our flashlight,” she said. “We’ll be fine. Thanks for trying. Good night.”
“No-o-o,” Lily cried. “It’s dark! I want my My Little Pony….”
“I know, I know,” Jo Lena said, “but you’ll have to do without it tonight.”
“I want Monte,” Lily wailed. “Don’t send him home.”
She burst into tears just as he stepped into the kitchen behind them.
He held up the lantern and looked over the situation. Jo Lena looked ready to cry, too.
“Let’s go get you into your nightgown,” she said, scooping the little girl up into her arms. “That’ll make you feel better.”
“Monte,” she said, turning to him, “you can find your way out, right?”
“Listen,” he said. “I’m not leaving y’all here alone. Come up to my house. Bring your night-light and…”
“Yay!” Lily cried. “I’ll go get it.”
Immediately she scrambled down and ran into the dark living room. Jo Lena turned on her flashlight and shone it in that direction.
“See?” she said hotly. “She’s not afraid of the dark! Why did you have to get her all wound up again, Monte?”
“Because I mean it,” he said flatly. “I’m not leaving you two alone down here. You might have an emergency.”
She didn’t answer for a minute. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head. At least she remembered him well enough to recognize when he was being as stubborn as she was.
“If we went to your house, where would we sleep, Monte?”
She sounded honestly amused.
He felt a small success. At least he’d taken her mind off her troubles.
“Do you even have linens on the beds?” she said.
“We-ell, actually, now that you mention it…”
“You have no beds, right?”
They both laughed.
“Right. But I could let y’all have my sleeping bag and—”
“The floors in that house need to be shoveled out and mopped with soap and water,” Jo Lena said. “I’m not putting my clean quilts down in that dirt.”
Monte looked into her eyes. The lantern light played on her beautiful face. Tired, drawn, mad, stubborn—it didn’t matter. No woman on earth was as beautiful as Jo Lena.
“Then I’m staying here,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous! We’re alone every night—sleeping in the dark. We have a flashlight. We’ll be fine.”
She looked back at him for a long moment, silent.
Too tired to argue, probably, although she’d never admit it. Or else she thought she’d won the battle and he’d go away.
He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he lifted his free hand and brushed back a strand of her hair that had come loose from her braid.
“Here she is,” Lily Rae called. “Monte, now you can see my My Little Pony night-light.”
Lily, now wearing a nightgown instead of a towel, came flying back toward them through the cone of light Jo Lena held for her.
“She’s too little to ride,” she said. “She’s my guard pony.”
Monte squatted on his haunches to be at eye level with her and set the lantern on the floor. She held out a pink plastic pony with a flowing tail and a plug-in on the back. Under her other arm, Lily Rae carried a wadded blanket.
“I think she’s a quarter horse,” Lily said.
Monte considered.
“Looks like one to me,” he said. “What color would you call her?”
“A pink roan,” Lily said decisively.
She took back the pony.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready to go to your house. Will you carry me, Monte? I’m barefooted.”
She came closer, holding up her arms as best she could, considering her burdens.
Monte picked her up and held her in one arm while he grabbed the lantern with the other.
Jo Lena heaved a great sigh. She stroked Lily’s blond hair, tucked it back behind her ears.
“Monte’s floors are too dirty to sleep on tonight, sugar,” she said.
Lily leaned her head against Monte’s cheek as if to tell him not to worry about his floors, and looked at her mother.
“Are his beds dirty, too?”
Monte suppressed a grin.
“He doesn’t have any beds,” Jo Lena said.
Lily Rae looked at him.
“You mustn’t sleep on the dirty floor,” she told him. “You can sleep at our house.”
He winked at her.
“That’s exactly what I told your mommy.”
Jo Lena groaned.
“I’m not scared, Monte,” she said. “Go on home and get some rest. You have to rest for your back to heal.”
“I’m scared,” Lily Rae said, winding her arms around his neck.
Jo Lena closed her eyes and appeared to be praying for patience.
“And Monte can’t sleep on his dirty floor, either,” Lily Rae announced in a tone so much like Jo Lena’s, he had to smile. “It’s not good for him!”
She leaned back and smiled at him.
“You can have my bed, Monte,” she said. “It’s not very big, but you can have it for your back.”
“I tell you what,” Monte said quickly. “How about we have a camp-out in the living room? Are y’all’s floors clean enough to put down some quilts?”
“Yes! Mommy cleaned them!”
Lily Rae started bouncing on his arm, poking his neck with the night-light at every jump. “Let’s put our sleeping bags on the clean floor!” she crowed. “Let’s all sleep on the clean floor!”
She started slithering out of his grasp.
“I’ll get the pallet!” she said, and ran out of the kitchen again. “Come on, Monte, bring the lantern!”
Jo Lena hadn’t moved.
“Sneaky snake,” she said.
She didn’t sound really mad, though.
“Aw, come on, Jo,” he said. “You know you were going to say yes anyhow.”
“No matter what I said, you know you were going to stay.”
They knew each other pretty well. Still. After all these years.
Jo Lena kept thinking that as she supervised the pallet making and finally got to stretch out under the sheet Lily Rae had chosen for her “cocoon.” But she wouldn’t have said yes to Monte staying because his looks, his voice and especially his squatting down like that on his battered leg, with his painful back, to listen to Lily, had stirred her blood.
No. She would have said it because she was too tired to take them both on and then deal with Lily Rae’s tears of persecution afterward.
Some days absolutely would just try the patience of a saint.
“Now,” Lily said, from her spot halfway between her mother and Monte, “have you all got your cocoons? Monte?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Mine’s right here.”
She scuffled around.
“Monte? What are you doing? Are you putting on your nightgown?”
He chuckled. Jo Lena’s heart turned over at the sound.
“No, I’m taking off my boots,” he said. “I’m goin’ to sleep in my clothes.”
“I want to sleep in my clothes!”
From the sound, Lily Rae had sat up again.
Jo Lena threw her arm over her face. She could not deal with one more thing today.
Monte seemed to know that, too.
“Naw,” he said. “You better stay in your nightgown, Lil.”
“Why?”
“So that pink roan will know it’s night and keep up her guard.”
Lily seemed to think that over while Jo Lena was deciding that it didn’t make much sense but it just might work.
“Lil,” Lily Rae muttered to herself as she lay back down, “Monte calls me Lil.”
Jo Lena smiled at that. Then a sudden thought stabbed her in the heart.
What would their lives have been like if Monte had never left the Hill Country? These last six years would’ve been so different in nearly every way.
She pulled herself up short. Before he left, before all the bad things had happened, Monte hadn’t asked her to marry him. They had both just assumed that it would happen someday. Maybe they wouldn’t have even married.
But in her heart she knew that they would have. Back then, she and Monte had been made for each other. Everybody had seen that at a glance. Everybody had expected them to always be a couple.
Bits and pieces, pictures and images came floating into her mind. Picnicking with his whole family on the ranch at the waterfall bend of the Guadalupe River. She and Monte climbing a cliff at another spot on the river, talking about building a house there one day.
Monte hauling her and Annie to a cutting, parking the trailer in the shade.
Monte on a crooked-horned bull, her heart in her throat.
What was it he had said this morning?
I don’t blame you for holding the past against me.
Monte finished with his boots and lay down. Lily Rae sighed once and began to breathe slow and deep.
“Monte?” Jo Lena said softly.
“Yeah?”
“You know what you said this morning about me holding the past against you?”
He was quiet for a long minute.
“What about it?”
His low voice was like a wind that just barely stirred the grasses. She could listen to it forever.
“I don’t want you to think that,” she said. “It’s not true. I’m a lot stronger spiritually than I used to be and I want my life to show it.”
He didn’t answer for an age.
Finally he said, “What does that mean, Jo Lena?”
“That I want you and everyone else to see that I’m partnered with God to live every day He gives me to the fullest. That I know I shouldn’t waste time and energy on grudges or regrets. So I don’t.”
The night suddenly seemed to stand still and wait for his answer. Then his voice came into the darkness and filled the space between them with so much pain she wanted to cry.
“Sounds good,” he said.
Forlorn. He sounded forlorn, as if that could never be true for him.
“I have a million good memories to look back on if I want to,” she said, trying to take away some of his hurt. “All I ever held against you, Monte, was the way you left me.”
She swallowed hard and bit back the sudden tears that threatened her.
“Because you don’t know the whole story,” he snapped.
Bitterly. Now he was bitter as well as hopeless.
“I think I probably do,” she said gently. “Don’t forget I’m the one person who knew you and Scotty both better than anybody else in the world.”
He was silent forever.
“Right,” he said at last. “Hold that thought.”
Monte woke up still scared. He’d come so close to spilling his guts to Jo Lena last night that it was a miracle he hadn’t lain awake for hours. He could thank his pain and exhaustion for that one lucky escape from his eternal regrets.
It might be true that he’d returned to the Hill Country to prove himself where it would mean something, but it was a fact that he had not come home to dredge up every shameful reason he’d gone away. Confessing everything to Jo Lena was not the way to go.
No, what he needed to do was keep his word and help her get those cookies made this morning.
He sat up.
But then he couldn’t even reach for his boots.
There, on the far side of the pallet, was Jo Lena, sleeping all curled up around the pillow in her arms, with the first morning light reaching in through the window to make silver glints in her golden hair. He wanted to reach over there, brush it back from where it fell across her cheek. It lay free and loose in all directions over both her shoulders. She must’ve undone the braids when she went to bed.
He wanted to touch her flushed face and wake her, wanted to see the sleep fade from her eyes as she smiled at him.
Which was a dream. She’d probably wake, remember that she had no power and be furious with him all over again.
Lily Rae stirred, kicking against the tightness of her “cocoon,” as she’d called it. She had managed to wind herself up in it until she could barely move.
Monte reached for his boots. He’d promised action on the electrical problem first crack out of the box, and he would make good on that. Surely he could find some fuses and get back by the time they woke up. It was barely daylight now.
Yet he pulled one boot on and then just sat there with the other in his hand. It was so different not to be waking up alone. For a long moment he just sat there, listening to the soft breathing of the child and the woman in the dawn dimness of the shadowed room.
Finally he stuffed his foot into his other boot, levered himself up and onto his feet by hanging on to the arm of the sofa, and walked as quietly as he could to the wall rack to get his hat.
“Monte,” Lily Rae said slowly, “where are you going? Can I go with you?”
He turned to see her sitting up, rubbing her eyes sleepily. Jo Lena raised up on one elbow, pushing her hair back from her face, looking from Lily to him with a hazy stare.
“Monte?” she drawled, surprised, as if she’d forgotten he was there.
“I’m goin’ after some fuses,” he said very quietly, as if trying not to wake them completely. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
“Can I go?” Lily Rae asked.
Her voice quavered a little as if this one thing meant the world to her.
“Ask your mama,” he said.
Jo Lena sat straight up and gained her senses.
“I have to put the butter out to soften,” she said, and looked toward the kitchen. “I…no, I can’t open the refrigerator…just in case…”
“Just in case of what?” Monte said.
“In case we can’t get the power on very soon,” she said. “It can hold the cold for twenty-four hours if we don’t open it.”
We.
“We’ll get it on,” he said, “you can trust me on that, Jo Lena.”
She accepted that promise as innocently as Lily Rae would have and that warmed his heart.
“All right,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I’ll put it out now. I’ve got to get those cookies started.”
Padding barefoot across the room toward the kitchen, sleepily lifting her hair to hang down her back, she looked like the old Jo Lena. She might as well still have been in high school.
“Mama?” Lily Rae said. “Can I go with Monte?”
