Breeding Ground (12 page)

“Maybe we're wrong, Allie. Maybe Spence sees something that's there that we don't.”

“I hope so.”

“But you doubt it.”

They walked on without saying much for awhile – watching the horses in one paddock after another, listening too to an army of birds. Until Booker asked Alice what else was on her mind, because he could see there was something.

She slowed down without quite stopping, and said, “You know me too well, don't you?” as she pulled a letter from her faded khakis and handed it to Booker.

If you thought the last letter was, in fact, the last, you were wrong in that, as in much else. You need to hear once again that I will not forget what your family has done to mine.

Have you always hated us? Did you plan it all along? When you acted as though you cared for me all those years ago was that a lie too? It must have been for you to have done what you've orchestrated since.

You stole my art. That's indisputable. The idea I revealed so naively – the painting I should have painted, you painted instead, and won the award that should have been mine. Now, as I look back upon that experience, I see it ruined the career I should have had.

I couldn't paint from that time on, not with the freedom I'd had before.

Was your father an enemy all along too? I thought he loved my dad. I thought they'd been each other's best friends as long as they could remember, and that that led to their medical practice lasting forty years.

He couldn't have cared and killed my daughter. And that I won't forgive, not as long as I live. No one would. Not in their right minds, as I am now for the first time in years.

I have recently made decisions that have changed the course of my life. More will have to be made, though the precise nature and extent of their influence is unclear at this time.

One thing I can promise is you haven't heard the last of me. I won't let this rest, Allie. No one could if they understood what you two have done.

T.

Booker handed the letter back, then stood and stared at Alice. “What's
wrong
with Tyler? It sounds like he's lost his mind.”

“Something snapped when his daughter died. And I don't know what to do.”

“Do you think he could do something crazy? Come here and try to hurt you?”

“No. No. I can't imagine that. But I wish I could think of someway to help.”

“Pray.”

“I know.”

“I mean, what else can we do?”

Excerpt From Jo Grant's Journal:

…I never expected Tommy and me to choose as badly as we did. Mom and Dad were good together and set an example we thought we could follow.

They were different from each other. Mom loved books, but couldn't be trusted with numbers. Dad was born to do math and science, and wanted to be a big animal vet but never got to college, helping his folks through the Depression like he did, and caring for us too.

He studied hard on his own, and learned from all our vets. And I do think Dad was content. Once he got out of running the motor court and figured out how to move here, where he could work with horses fulltime.

He respected the way Mom studied literature, and would've been glad if he'd lived long enough to see her teach high school, but it seemed like their differences made the charge stronger between them.

'Course they did have the basics in common. Honesty and common sense and the same understanding of what people should and shouldn't do. And what you saw was about what you got with them. And maybe that made Tom and me vulnerable to folks who lie and manipulate. Nate wanted more than one woman and lied without batting an eye. Tom's lady was noticeably shallow. She wouldn't have waited for anyone, while swearing to be true forever when he went off to war. She wanted a husband
now
, and if it was one with money and connections, so much the better. I never did think she was good enough for Tom. And I probably wasn't too subtle.

And who's to say I'm not shallow? There's a restlessness and a running-away urge pushing me. And I know I'm afraid of getting taken again…

Sunday, April 22, 1962

J
o Grant left Toss on the front porch of her house drinking a beer with one of his oldest pheasant-hunting friends and drove east through Lexington toward Paris.

She'd phoned the person she knew as Tara Wilson's Aunt Betsy the day before – the nurse she'd first met as a little kid when her dad had trained a colt for Betsy, who was generally called Betts. Betts had told Jo that the Tara Wilson Jo had known was indeed the Tara Kruse Spence was now engaged to. And she'd agreed to tell what she knew.

Jo found her farm south of the main road to Paris on Bethlehem Road – ten acres, well cared for, with the house close to the street.

She pulled in and opened the farm gate, latching it behind her, and parked by the unattached garage behind the small gray white-trimmed bungalow, a hundred feet in front of a modest-sized gray and white barn.

There was a sand riding area to the right of the barn, and Betsy Seton was standing in the center while a young girl, maybe seven or eight, trotted in a circle around her.

She was riding an old bay gelding, small and probably part Morgan, with a large Roman nose that had a wide indented bald patch in the center, exposing shiny black skin.

His trot looked stiff, and when they slowed to a walk, and got anywhere near the grass verge, he'd try to pull the reins out of the girl's hands and grab a bite to eat.

Betts said, “Don't let Bert do that! Hold him with your back!”

The girl looked embarrassed and scrambled to pull his head up and get him to walk on. Bert decided to let her have her way and ambled forward on the circle.

“That's enough for today, Kath. Walk him around for a few minutes and then wash him off. Your canter work was much better. Did it feel good to you?”

Kath nodded and smiled shyly, her long blond hair blowing in wisps below her helmet, her back moving with Bert as he walked, her short legs in knee-high chaps staying still the way they should.

Betts Seton, five ten and very thin, but strong-muscled and big-boned, walked over to Jo with the same long-legged stride Jo remembered from childhood and stuck out a work-hardened hand. “It's good to see you all grown up. It's been way too long.”

“I know. It really has. You look exactly the same.”

Betsy laughed and said, “Yeah, sure. My hair didn't use to be two-thirds gray.”

They were both watching Kath, beaming to herself, walk Bert on the grass riding area between two paddocks.

“He'll try to eat there, so be prepared.”

Kath nodded and kept hold of the reins when Bert tried to duck his head.

“That's Bert's one and only fault. He never shies at anything. He won't canter, even if I've got him on a lunge line, no matter what I tell him, till
he
thinks the kids are ready, and he wouldn't do anything mean if you put a gun to his head.

“And then, when we take him to a little show, he stops schlepping around, and picks himself up, and wins all kinds of classes.”

“He sounds like the perfect school horse.”

“He is. A friend of mine with a big barn retired him and gave him to me. I only teach with him three hours a week, and only with little kids. But he seems to like the excitement.”

“What's with the bald spot on his nose?”

“The woman who owned him before my friend put a halter on him that was too small and never took it off, just put the bridle on top. I'd like to have five minutes alone with her in a dark deserted alley.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Let me finish with Kath, and get the horses fed, and we'll grab some tea and talk.”

They'd just sat down on white wrought-iron chairs under a vine-covered arbor that flickered and danced with afternoon sun, when Betsy asked Jo if she still rode.

They talked horses then, while Betts poured iced tea and pushed bowls of chips and onion dip toward Jo across the glass-topped table. Then she leaned back and studied Jo for a minute, before asking what she wanted to know about Tara.

“First of all, would you mind if I take notes? I want to get my facts straight, and I can do shorthand so it won't slow us down. I worked as a secretary to get through college.”

“I don't mind. Whatever you want to do.”

“Thanks. I'd like to have some idea of what she did after she left high school, so that if she's really as unstable and mean as I think she used to be, I can tell my friend who's engaged to her, and let him check it out.”

“He probably won't listen. And he may never speak to you again.”

“I know. But I can't stand by and watch, if she's still the way she was when I knew her.”

“Worse, I'd say. I don't ever see her, but I hear about what she does through the rest of the family. What's the last thing you knew?” Betts Seton ran a hand through her short wavy hair, then laid her arms on the arms of her chair, while she watched Jo.

“She left here in high school, maybe her freshman year, and went to live with her grandparents in Knoxville. Then she came back briefly, and ran off with some guy when she was a sophomore or junior. The fiancé she has now never knew her then. He's eleven years older than she is.”

Betts said, “Remember when she was giving that boy here all that trouble, back when she was in junior high? Her mother and I dragged her to a psychiatrist to see if we could get her some help. He and I both worked at St. Joe's Hospital, and I respected him a good deal. He told us she needed intensive treatment but she wouldn't believe him. Everything was everybody else's fault, and she ended up deliberately slamming his hand in the door on her way out of his office the last time she saw him.”

“Wonderful.”

“Yeah. Now her mother, my sister Lois, is none too stable herself, in my opinion, and the two of them together were a disaster. Tara's smart. And she could tie Lois up in knots and wear her down at will. That's one of the first things you've got to understand. Tara is relentless. She wants what she wants, and she will not give up. And when she hears what she doesn't want to hear or she doesn't get her way, she feels perfectly justified in hurting whoever's thwarted her.”

“That's scary.”

“Yeah, I think it is. Anyway, after she left my parents in Knoxville and came back here her sophomore year, she met a twenty-two-year-old guy named Rusty Rassmusen at a football game. He came with a friend of his who'd been a football star here and had come back to watch a game.

“Rusty was originally from Minnesota, but was living in Louisville, working for a commercial construction company. He'd been in the army, and had been stationed at Fort Knox in Louisville, and still had friends there. A sergeant in the office of a tank outfit in particular.”

“So she was sixteen and he was twenty-two?”

“Yep. Rusty and Tara began dating, and she ran away and moved in with him, and started going to school in Louisville. Her mom didn't know what to do with her, and pretty much washed her hands of her, and let her do what she wanted. That December she turned seventeen, and by then she was pregnant. She went a couple more months to school, but once she started to show, she wasn't allowed to attend. So she finished high school with a G.R.E. equivalency test, and took a correspondence course in bookkeeping. Tara does want to be able to get a job, if the worst ever happens and she finds herself alone. She also intended to get pregnant, by the way. She wants every guy to be tied to her, and she figures a child will do that.”

“How can anyone think like that?”

“I don't get it, but we've both seen it. I've seen it more than once. Anyhow, I've had dealings with Rusty since that time, for reasons you'll see in a minute, and his side of the story is that as soon as she got pregnant, she started treating him like dirt, the way she had her family. She stopped lifting a finger. She wouldn't keep the house neat, or cook anything, or do the grocery shopping. She blamed it first on her pregnancy, then on Jessica, after she was born.

“Even before she had the baby, Tara was keeping Rusty awake all night, screaming and fighting about nothing. But generally when they went out with other people she behaved herself fairly well. Though sometime around then she started making a point of talking to a friend of Rusty's, the one I mentioned who was an office guy in the tank corps.

“She was always saying there was something wrong with her. Her stomach was upset, or she had a horrible headache, and she had to stay in bed and be waited on. She'd done violent things by then too. She'd thrown a chair into a wall. She'd cut up some curtains or something. And when Jessica was a little over a year, when Tara was nineteen, Rusty took Jessica, supposedly to a park, and drove to Wichita, Kansas where his construction company had another branch, and he'd arranged another job.

“He didn't tell Tara where he was going. He just called her and told her Jess was safe, and he had a lawyer working on getting him custody. That he'd left an envelope with a sizeable amount of money in his dresser drawer to help till she got a job. He said he had plenty of evidence of her erratic behavior, that he had letters from the next door neighbor, the landlord, and me, as well as others. And that he'd be in touch later. I did write a letter for him. I did. I felt like I had to. I wanted to see Jessica safely away from her. And by that time I trusted Rusty more than I trusted her.”

“How did Tara react?”

“She blew up at her mom and me. She threw another brick through my living room window. She'd done that before when I took her to the doctor. She ranted and raved for a few days, and then pretty much dropped it. I think she was actually glad not to have to be bothered with Jessica if Rusty wasn't there to take care of her. He'd cooked, and bathed Jess, and got up at night with her, and did the shopping, and took her to the docs. Tara had worked on her G.R.E. and her bookkeeping course, but that was pretty much it.”