A man i used to know, p.18
A Man I Used To Know, page 18
“Then tell me why, Tom,” she pleaded, kneeling beside him on the blanket. “Why won’t you just give up this wandering life of yours?”
“And what if I do, Lila? What if I choose to stay here like a pet dog because that’s what you want from me? Will you have any more respect for me than you do for Trevor? Or will you wind up someday giving me pocket money to take your friends to dancing class?”
“Of course I won’t! The two situations are completely different.”
“How are they different?”
The question took her by surprise, and she had to search for an answer.
“Because I...I love you,” she said at last. “And I never loved Trevor.”
“But how long will you keep loving me when you realize I’ve been bought and paid for, and placed neatly under your control like everything else in your world?”
“Then don’t stay here at the farm!” she said. “I could pose the same choice to you, Tom. If you love me and you’re not afraid of commitment, prove it to me. Get a job somewhere here in the city, looking after livestock or something, and find a way to build a life for us and your kids. But don’t go wandering off into the sunset and expect me to trot along at your side.”
He stared at her intently, as if searching for something deep in her eyes.
“You just don’t understand,” he said at fast. “Do you, sweetheart? You don’t understand at all.”
“Why you have to live like a vagrant, and if I want to love you, my only choice is to share that life?” She shook her head. “No, Tom, I don’t understand.”
His face twisted with pain. He looked away toward the shimmering river. “God,” he muttered. “It’s happening all over again. The worst nightmare of my life, and now it’s back.”
Lila wanted to shake him. “But it doesn’t have to be this way!” she said in baffled frustration. “If you could only see reason...”
“See reason, Lila?” He smiled bitterly. “That’s all you want from me?”
She stared at him, mesmerized by his intensity. For a moment as she gazed into the shadowed depths of his eyes, a glimmer of understanding stirred in her, a sense of the important truth he was trying so desperately to impart. But as soon as it came, the illumination was gone, swallowed up in her anger at his unyielding stubbornness, and by something else....
Reluctantly she understood this other emotion was fear, the very thing he’d accused her of. But that was too painful to think about.
Instead, she got up and started off down the riverbank, heading for the lighted house.
“Better get to bed in your little camper,” she said over her shoulder, trying to keep her voice light and casual. “If you’re planning to leave on the weekend, we’ll all have to be up early tomorrow and work hard to finish painting the barn before you go, won’t we?”
He said nothing, and long after she’d plunged off down the graveled bank and past the overhanging branches of cottonwoods, Lila still imagined she could see him sitting quietly among the remnants of their makeshift bed, watching her with that same bewildering look of sadness.
SHE TOSSED AND TURNED all night long, torn by conflicting emotions. His lovemaking had set her body on fire, arousing all those wild, sweet emotions she’d worked so hard to suppress for the past fifteen years. With almost unbearable intensity, she wanted to slip out of the house, go down to his camper and climb into bed with him.
He was right, their bodies were created to fit together. Nothing had ever felt so right, or ever would again.
The blankets were hot and stifling in the warm summer night. She kicked them off and lay staring blankly at the darkened ceiling, listening to the murmur of wind in the trees beyond the window.
How could anybody endure this kind of pain a second time?
What a cruel trick of fate, when your body was drawn so intensely to a man whose mind and outlook could never, ever mesh with your own.
But he had no right to ask for the kind of sacrifice that he was demanding of her.
To throw everything away and follow him.... It might be a romantic notion for a couple of teenagers, but so impractical at this stage of her life that Lila couldn’t even bring herself to think about it.
If Tom really loved her, how could he ask such a thing? He was just being selfish, and any man so completely self-absorbed wasn’t worthy of a woman’s love.
But the maddening thing was, Tom hadn’t seemed self-absorbed when he’d been talking to her on the riverbank. Instead, his manner had been wise and sad and insightful, as if he were looking into a part of her soul that she herself couldn’t begin to understand.
Lila rolled onto her stomach and grasped the pillow, which also seemed hot and prickly. She turned it over, welcoming the brief coolness against her face. But sleep refused to come, and she was still warring with her troubled thoughts when the eastern sky began to lighten above the cliffs.
At last she got up and had a long hot shower, then put on her painting clothes and went downstairs to sit on the veranda with a cup of coffee, looking out at the glorious freshness of the summer morning.
Tom’s camper stood silent in the pearly glow of dawn under its bower of cottonwoods. She wondered if he, too, was lying awake in there.
Probably not, she brooded, sipping from her steaming mug. After all, he seemed to believe he had right on his side in this ridiculous ultimatum, as if he knew something she didn’t.
She studied the outline of the camper, wondering what it would be like to live in such a confined space with a man and two children.
To drive off into the sunset with no kind of order or routine to life, waking up in a different place every morning, seeing the horizon change from day to day...
Of course she couldn’t do it. The very concept was ridiculous. Lila got up abruptly and went back into the house to mix a batch of pancakes.
Her father was the first to come downstairs. He went directly out onto the veranda and began whittling, as usual.
Casey arrived soon afterward. He appeared in the kitchen doorway with tousled hair, wearing his Star Trek pajamas.
“What smells so good?” he asked.
“Bacon.” Lila crossed the room and knelt to hug him, holding his warm body until he squirmed in her arms. “You like bacon, don’t you?”
“I love it.” He kissed her cheek. “Are we painting the barn again today?”
“Yes, darling.” Lila released him and went back to turn the slices of bacon. “You’ll have to put your old clothes on.”
“I like painting.” Casey dragged a chair over by the counter and climbed on it to watch her at the stove. “I love everything here. It’s so nice.”
She glanced at the little boy. “Do you like it better than traveling to rodeos all the time?”
He nodded so emphatically that his curls bounced. “Much better. I don’t like being in different places all the time.”
Lila looked at him thoughtfully, then went back to turning the sizzling strips of bacon. “Casey,” she said, trying to sound casual, “do you remember very much about your mother?”
“My mother?” She could see the sudden tension in his body, the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the edge of the counter.
“Did she ever travel to rodeos with you?”
“No,” he whispered. “She didn’t like being in the camper. We just...” He gulped and swallowed hard. “We stayed at home all the time when she...when Mommy...”
Tears gathered in his eyes and rolled down his plump cheeks. His face contorted with pain. Lila looked at him in alarm, then reached to hold him. But he was gone, scrambling down from the chair and running out of the room.
Kelly came in, looking worried. “Casey’s crying,” she reported. “What happened to him?”
Lila felt close to tears herself. “It was my fault. I asked about his mother, and it upset him.”
“I told you not to do that,” Kelly said, but she didn’t sound as fierce as usual. “He always cries.”
“Why?” Lila asked, looking directly at the girl.
Kelly went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of orange juice. “Because he can’t forget what happened. He still has nightmares sometimes.”
“About what?” Lila asked. “Please tell me, Kelly. I can’t help him if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Kelly’s face went carefully blank. “It’s best if we don’t talk about that.”
“I should go and see if he’s all right.” Lila wiped her hands on a dish towel and turned the heat off under the bacon. “Kelly, could you keep an eye on—”
“It’s okay,” Kelly interrupted. “Dad’s coming in. He’ll look after Casey.”
As the child spoke, Lila heard Tom’s footsteps coming up the veranda stairs two at a time, and then the low murmur of his voice as he talked to Casey. She returned to the stove, feeling increasingly troubled.
Archie came in and seated himself at the table. “Something smells good,” he commented.
Lila gaped at her father. His manner seemed casual and offhand, as if there were nothing momentous about this event. But she couldn’t remember the last time Archie Marsden had walked into the kitchen for breakfast and volunteered any sort of cheerful comment.
Kelly sat next to him and glanced at him shyly, then reached in her pocket, removing a small wooden object, which she placed by her plate. Lila realized that it was one of her father’s carvings, the little prairie dog he’d been working on recently.
“His name is Flower,” Kelly said.
Lila looked from the child to the old man, completely at a loss for words. She set a plate of bacon on the table, then began to fill a serving platter with hot pancakes.
“Does Flower like pancakes?” Archie asked.
Kelly considered the question gravely. “I think mostly he likes nuts and seeds.” She touched one of her prairie dog’s fat cheeks. “But he might eat a pancake if he was real hungry.”
“I’ll bet he would,” Archie agreed. “You know, I love pancakes.”
“Me too.” Kelly slathered butter on her pancakes and poured warm maple syrup over them from a ceramic jug, which she handed to Archie. He accepted the jug with a smile.
Lila went back to the stove to pour more batter onto the griddle, feeling as dazed and astonished as if she’d just overheard a conversation between the sun and the moon.
She was still trying to think of something to say when Casey and Tom came into the kitchen. Casey looked red-faced but calm. He trotted over and hugged Lila’s legs, burying his face against her while she stroked his freshly brushed curls.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” she whispered.
He nodded, keeping his face hidden. Lila knelt to hug him while he burrowed against her. At last she moved him away gently and lifted him into a chair, then bent to kiss him.
“I’ll get you some bacon,” she murmured. “I saved you a few of the crispy pieces.”
Involuntarily she met Tom’s eyes across the table. He watched gravely, his handsome face calm and unrevealing. Her heart pounded and she felt unsteady again, almost ready to burst into tears and run from the room as Casey had done a few minutes earlier.
His presence was so overpowering here in the cozy, domestic confines of the kitchen, so utterly desirable and so far beyond her reach that she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Kelly glanced at her sad-eyed little brother, then leaned over to cut up his bacon. “Hey, Casey,” she said. “Look at Flower.”
“Who’s that?” he asked, his voice still hoarse from crying.
Kelly moved the prairie dog closer to the boy’s plate. “See, he’s going to watch you eat your bacon. Isn’t he beautiful?”
Casey’s brown eyes widened as he looked at the prairie dog. He gulped and swallowed, then gazed up at Archie with mute, passionate appeal.
“You can have the next one, son,” Archie said. “It’s going to be a nice little llama. We can even make a saddle and bridle for it.”
“But you won’t have time to finish the llama,” Kelly said “We’ll be leaving in just a couple of days. Won’t we, Dad?”
“Yes,” Tom said, watching Lila over the children’s heads. “We’re leaving on the weekend.”
“I want the llama!” Casey looked stricken again. “I don’t want to go away until I have my llama!”
Archie watched the boy in concern, then glanced from Tom to Lila. She turned away hastily to flip pancakes.
“I’ll try to get it finished,” he said to Casey at last. “And if I can’t, I’ll send it to you. Your daddy can let me know where you’re going to be, and as soon as the llama is finished, we’ll put it in the mail for you. Then you’ll get a nice big package with your own name on it.”
Casey nodded, looking only slightly mollified, and began to eat his bacon.
The meal dragged on, with Kelly doing most of the talking. She chattered determinedly about prairie dogs and barn painting while her little brother and the three adults ate in silence.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THEY WORKED on the barn all morning, while Archie sat on the veranda whittling and watching them across the farmyard.
Lila concentrated her efforts on the lower portion of the weathered clapboards. The two children were farther along the wall, slapping white paint on the big door and the trim that surrounded it. Tom moved carefully back and forth on the scaffold above them as he painted the upper walls and eaves.
She worried for a moment over the prospect of his partially healed arm being exposed to possible trauma, then forced the thought from her mind.
Not much point in worrying, she thought grimly. After all, in a few days he was going to be driving hundreds of miles, looking after two kids on his own, riding bucking horses and bulls again. An injured arm was probably the least of his concerns.
He climbed down from the scaffold and stood next to her, looking up critically at the expanse of eaves that remained unpainted.
“Today’s Thursday,” he said. “I doubt if we’re going to be able to get the whole building painted before the weekend.”
His face looked tanned and boyish again. Only when she looked at him closely did she see the bleakness in his eyes, and the depths of misery that he was hiding from the children.
“I won’t be able to help tomorrow,” Lila said with forced casualness, turning away from him. “I think I’ll go back to work for the day, just to get caught up and make sure things aren’t getting backlogged at the clinic.”
“What about the barn?”
“Dad and I can hire somebody to finish painting the barn.”
“I see.” He glanced at the two children, who were brushing the door with great energy down at the other end of the building, then moved closer to her and lowered his voice. “Our last day together and you won’t even stay here with me?”
“What’s the point, Tom?” She bent to dip her brush in a bucket of red paint, then pressed it against the rim to squeeze off the excess.
Tears burned in her eyes.
“I thought you were enjoying this,” he said, taking a long drink from the cooler of lemonade that stood in the shade of the barn. “I thought you liked being out in the sunshine, doing something wholesome and physical for a change.”
He was so close that she was conscious of his warm maleness, coupled with the oily tang of paint. A memory flashed into her mind from the night before, so vivid she could actually feel their naked bodies wrapped together in the moonlight, and the powerful thrusting strength of him as he held her with his injured arm and caressed her body.
“You’re thinking about it, too,” he said, watching her closely. “Aren’t you, Lila? You’re remembering what it was like to be with me last night.”
She glanced quickly at the two children, then pulled her cap lower over her eyes and brushed with nervous determination at the old wooden shingles.
“I’m not denying,” she said evenly, “that we’re a good match physically. We always have been. If a relationship was nothing but sex, we’d probably have a great future together.”
“Why are you afraid to admit what’s right in front of your eyes?” he asked.
Lila took a deep breath, then stood up and faced him. “Why does Casey cry whenever anybody says something about his mother?”
His face hardened, and his blue eyes were suddenly wary and full of pain.
“Come on, Tom,” Lila said in a low voice. “Tell me about your marriage. Tell me what happened to these kids that upset them so much.”
He bent to tip some paint into an empty pail while she watched the muscles knotting in his back and shoulders under the shirt.
When he stood erect, his expression was guarded and noncommittal again. “If you’ll agree to come with me,” he said at last, “I’ll tell you about it. Otherwise, I don’t see why I should share all the details of my past with you.”
“You don’t see why,” she began in fury, then stopped herself when she saw Kelly watching from the corner of the barn. “Why not tell me because I’m your friend, Tom,” she whispered. “Tell me because we’ve loved each other for most of our lives, and I’m concerned about you.”
“Are you?”
“Of course I am. Just because I can’t throw my life away to follow you into the sunset doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
He leaned against the unpainted portion of the barn, watching her with disconcerting steadiness. “I don’t believe you really love me, Lila. I don’t think you could ever allow yourself to love anybody. It’s too scary for you.”
“Oh, come on,” she said wearily. “Don’t start that again, all right? I hate it. Do you think you can just drop back into my life after fifteen years and tell me what’s going on in my psyche?”
“I know you hate it,” he said with maddening calm. “Nobody else has ever done this to you, have they? You’ve never allowed anybody close enough to know what you’re thinking.”
“Nobody’s ever been arrogant enough to pretend to know.” She began to paint again with short, furious strokes. “In fact, there’s probably nobody in the world as arrogant as you are.”
