Page 57 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)
DAY FIVE
WEDNESDAY
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The day was dreary and cold, only the way a rainy June day can be, when everything inside you says it should be bright and sunny and warm.
And, no, I wasn’t reacting to the fact that my mother and Tamantha wielded the wedding prep whip. I’d promised them both my entire attention for this day.
First, thanks to my sending Mom to the supermarket, we had a leisurely start to the morning.
Dad spent that time with Zeb in the garage next door. Talking tools, I guessed.
Tamantha and I had a slow-motion breakfast, sitting on stools on the living room side of the kitchen peninsula. I read the parts of the Independence I hadn’t gotten to yesterday. She read something on her device.
Possibly a paper produced by scientists who once worked for the National Institutes of Health. She has eclectic tastes.
That ended when Mom arrived with enough supplies to cover months-long gatherings for a dozen weddings and we had to help unload and find places to stow all of it.
While Tamantha helped, I also was aware of her absorbing every nuance of our interactions. Beyond Tom’s sister, she did not have a great deal of first-hand experience of extended family banter.
When Mom rested a palm on the top of her head in passing, Tamantha snuggled into it like a preening cat.
“I don’t think I understood a word that woman said, but I’m persuaded she’s brilliant,” Mom said of Penny.
Dad turned his head to look at her fully. “I’ve got to meet this woman.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” Mom said. “We’ll send you grocery shopping next time to make sure it happens.”
As he turned away, she winked at me.
Next time? I had nowhere to put this time’s bounty.
He turned back quickly and Mom didn’t smooth out her expression quite fast enough. “Hah. I saw that, Cat.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she fibbed.
“That little licking-the-cream smile of yours that says you think you’ve set me up.”
“Duper’s delight,” I murmured, stowing a giant jar of peanuts in the cabinet over the refrigerator, where I likely would forget it for as long as I lived here.
At the same time, Mom said, “Set you up? By suggesting you meet a fascinating woman?”
Dad looked from one to the other of us, clearly debating which to respond to. He raised one eyebrow to Tamantha, inviting her vote. She giggled.
A sound so appropriate to her age that it made my heart ache a little.
Dad focused on me. “Hey, I didn’t know you knew that.”
“Why wouldn’t I know about duper’s delight?” I hadn’t taken courses from behavior analysts, but I knew about microexpressions.
“Didn’t think you listened to Van Morrison. I guess kids your age—”
Kids my age. Have I mentioned I love my dad?
“—are rediscovering his early songs. Brown Eyed Girl, along with Have I Told You Lately and Moondance. Interesting you know that newer release, Duper’s Delight.
A giveaway smile . . . something’s not right.
Like that, too, though apparently he’s a difficult character.
” He sighed. “Goes like that sometimes, doesn’t it?
You connect with the music, not the person behind it. ”
Someday I might tell him I had no familiarity with any of the songs he’d mentioned.
Impulsively, I hugged Dad, drawing Tamantha, then Mom in, too. They all cooperated.
* * * *
The rest of the day wasn’t quite a group hug, as I followed Mom and Tamantha’s spreadsheet with a final try-on of the dress.
It fit, thank heavens.
The Mikado silk flowed. The long sleeves hugged my arms, seeming to subtly call attention to my figure.
It was elegant, yet easy. And fun to twirl in. Just a little.
We went over the schedule for Friday and Saturday.
Mom and I split phone calls for final checks with venues and more providers than I could have imagined. Okay, Mom did most of the talking, either because she knew the details better or, in the instance of the cake-baker, it seemed wiser.
Mom and Tamantha organized another spreadsheet for thank you notes to-be. Tom and I had requested no gifts, with a suggestion that guests donate to a favorite charity if they chose.
Not everyone listened.
The ones who didn’t, focused on sentimental, including a book of family recipes from my sisters-in-law, an oversized afghan to accommodate Tom, Tamantha, and me cuddled up together from Tom’s sister, and a pledge from a friend of Tom’s to have his stallion stand to stud with Tom’s favorite mare — this is Wyoming, after all.
They even helped me start on the thank yous and draft the rest. Tom didn’t know it yet, but he had several designated for him to do. Including the stud service one.
Mike called mid-afternoon.
I sat on the stairs, a quiet spot for a little business as a break from wedding duties. I also had two cookies from my Double Chocolate Milano home stash.
“He took the job,” he said to my hello. “Can you believe it? Orson Jardine is going to be news director of KWMT-TV.”
I heard the disbelief and pride in his voice.
Orson wouldn’t start right away.
His cross-country road trip’s destination was the Oregon coast, where one of his kids lived.
After that visit, he’d drive back here.
The timing worked well. I’d be back from the mini-honeymoon Tom and I were taking. And Mike would have ended his stint of subbing for the regular sports anchor in Chicago.
We could all focus on making the most of Orson’s skills for this weird experiment of ours.
Of course, first there was a multi-ceremony wedding to celebrate.
And it sure would be nice to have answers that would satisfy Colonel Crawford before then.
Tom arrived and we had a relaxed, laughter-filled dinner. A family dinner.
My parents were yawning when they left for the B&B. Tamantha stayed again, with Shadow at her bedside. Tom left with lingering kisses at the door.
Only when I was in bed did my thoughts return to Nance’s death.
Connie’s voice came to me.
She could see through a person all the way to their backbone. And unless you knew to look for it and looked hard, you’d never know that’s what she was doing. You’d never know she had somebody dead to rights. They sure wouldn’t know.
Was that why I was reading this manuscript? Hoping to find an insight by Irene Jardos that would reveal all to me?
Fat lot of good it had done me so far.
I picked up my device anyway.
I was not a quitter.
Also, I wanted to know what happened.
* * * *
Ransom hesitated at the door, his eyes squeezed shut, though not against the bright sunshine.
When he’d awakened, she’d been gone. And he’d been grateful for the delay in talking to her.
But now, the day more than half done, he was no longer grateful. As much as he dreaded it, he hated putting it off more.
He pushed open the door.
She sat in the chair she favored that gave her good light, her head bent over a froth of white she was sewing.
He sat across from her. The light from the window showed half her face, leaving the rest in shadow.
She looked up at him, her eyes unreadable.
Or was that only to him? Could others read her eyes?
She dropped her head again, returning to her sewing.
It wasn’t going to get any easier by waiting.
“Maggie, what happened last night . . . shouldn’t have happened . . .”
“You didn’t enjoy it?”
Enjoy it— Flashes came to him. Sensations, scents, sights. Moments. He couldn’t remember them all . . . maybe punishment for taking her drunk. When you lost control, losing memories of the pleasures was only a small measure of justice.
“A man doesn’t do something he doesn’t enjoy twice.” He sounded grim to his own ears. “Once might be a mistake, but twice—”
“Three times.”
Jolted, as much by her cool calm as her statement, a flash of memory came to him. Nearly dawn. The gathering light revealing the chafing on her skin from his whiskers, the faint redness on her so-white breasts. Her softness under his tongue . . .
He cleared his throat. “Three times,” he confessed, “after I told you on our wedding night that you would not have that to expect from me. I broke that vow. But I swear to you. I will show you from now on that you have no such thing to fear from me.”
“Very well.” The needle in her hand never slowed, never faltered.
He should be relieved.
If she didn’t believe him, he accepted that. Only time and him keeping his word would prove to her that she could trust him.
“It’s . . . I suppose I was glad to be alive,” he heard himself saying. “After the fight with the Indians and . . . I had too much whiskey, too. And what with being so relieved to be alive. That doesn’t excuse me, I know that. I want you to be sure I know that.”
“Were you?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Were you relieved to still be alive? Or were you sorry? Were you trying to forget you are alive.”
He had no words, no thoughts.
She waited. Then, slowly, she folded her work, placed it atop the basket she used, then stood, and left the room.
Time passed — he didn’t know how much, but enough to change the angle of the sun some.
It struck him then that how they’d sat facing each other, with half her face shadowed to him, would have made his face appear the same way to her. Half in shadow.