Convincing the Rancher (31 page)

“I’ve never ever seen you this upset,” Samantha said. “Do you want to tell us more about what’s going on?”

“I told Slaid, and now he hates me.”

“Well, then, he’s an idiot, too, and I’m sorry I encouraged you to date him.” Samantha said. “I could never hate you, Tess.”

“Me, neither,” Jenna said. “Unless... You’re not a murderer or anything, right?”

Tess giggled, just like Jenna had intended. And then she told them. Haltingly at first, then with relief and shaky emotion, she finally told her two best friends her story. From her life with her parents, to her life in foster care, to her troubles in school and her pregnancy. She described her years of working full time to finish college. And her friends just listened, asking a question here and there, but mostly just watching her, wide-eyed.

And finally she got to the end. Graduate school. “And that’s when I met you two. Jenna, remember, we met in an exercise class at the USF gym? You were teaching it and...”

“You were my most dedicated student. I remember.” Jenna smiled.

“And, Samantha, we met in that economics class.”

“But I can’t believe you never told us anything about yourself.” Samantha paused. “Wait...you told me your parents lived on a farm in New England! You even told Jack that story on Halloween!”

“And you told me that your mom was afraid of flying and that’s why they never visited,” Jenna added.

“I lied,” Tess admitted. “I lied about so much. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want anyone to know the truth. I thought you’d see me differently. That you’d feel sorry for me or think I was damaged or something. Slaid did.”

“We won’t. We don’t.” Jenna leaned forward to look at Samantha. “Do we, Sam?”

“We love you,” Samantha answered simply. “We’d love you the same way no matter what your story is.”

“Even if you knew that up until my eighteenth birthday my name was Theresa Cooper?”

“Really?” They both leaned forward then to look at her, fascinated. Tess looked back and forth from one to the other, relieved to see only curiosity and acceptance in their expressions. No pity. No judgment.

“How cool!” Jenna said. “No offense to Theresa, but I like Tess Cole better. Way more glamorous.”

“I wonder what name I’d choose if I was going to name myself,” Samantha said.

Tess couldn’t believe it. All these years she’d thought they’d look down on her for her past, and here they were so...
normal
about it.

“Something that sounds good with Baron...” Samantha mused.

“Jacqueline?” Jenna offered. “Then you could be Jack and Jacqueline Baron.”

“Perfect!” Samantha and Jenna both burst out laughing, and even Tess had to smile at their goofiness.

“So is this why I barely saw you in Benson?” Samantha was serious now. “Because me having a baby is hard for you?”

Trust Samantha to get right to the very uncomfortable point. “It sounds so selfish when you say it out loud. I am truly happy for you, Sam, but when I’m around all this baby stuff it reminds me of when I was pregnant, and all the guilt I have for walking away from my baby comes flooding back.”

“You were a kid when you had him,” Jenna said gently.

“But I’ve been a grown-up for years now. I should have at least read some of these.” She pointed to the tote bag, overflowing with letters.

“What do you want to do about them now?” Jenna asked.

Anxiety pitted Tess’s stomach and suddenly the donuts she’d eaten seemed like an even worse idea. “I don’t know. Read them?”

“Would it help if Jenna and I at least put them in order for you?” Samantha offered. “We could look at the postmarks and organize them from the first ones to the most recent.”

Tess looked at Jenna and they smiled. Samantha loved to organize. “Why not?” Tess answered. “It might help.”

So she curled up under a blanket on the couch while her best friends stacked the letters into neat piles by year, and when there were fourteen piles on her coffee table, they each gave her a kiss and announced they were going off to buy favors for the baby shower and would return in a few hours with good things to eat and a jumbo-size box of tissues, just in case.

When her apartment door shut behind them, the silence was deafening.

Tess stared at the letters for a long time. Each one had the potential to put one more crack into the armor she’d so carefully constructed around herself over the years. That many cracks would surely cause her to break. But the alternative, of pretending Adam had never happened, or that giving him up didn’t hurt, was no longer an option. She’d just have to trust that if she completely fell apart, Jenna and Samantha would figure out a way to put her back together.

She decided to start with the most recent letters. If she saw pictures of baby Adam it might just bring up all that old pain and she wouldn’t have the courage to go on. She reached over and took the first envelope off the “most recent” pile, flopped back onto the couch and opened it with shaking hands. A letter came out and with it a school portrait of a handsome teenager with slightly shaggy, sandy blonde hair. He had a huge smile that was slightly self-conscious. His dark blue eyes were her own. Tears threatened to spill, but Tess swiped them away and forced herself to set the photo aside and read the letter. It was written on a plain piece of notebook paper, and it took Tess a moment to realize that it was Adam himself who’d written it, not his parents.

Dear Theresa,

Here is my sophomore-year school picture. I hope you like it. I made the swim team this year and I did well in the first couple meets. My grades are good so far, though geometry is kind of hard to get the hang of. My whole family is doing well, Mom and Dad say to send their love, and my little brother, Cameron, who is a total pain right now, says hi.

Hope all is well with you,

Adam

His signature scrawled across the bottom of the page.

And that was it. Maybe he’d learned just to keep it short and sweet after years of writing to her and getting no answer.

And then the tears came. Again. Tess had no idea that the human body was capable of pumping out such vast quantities of salt water. She cried for all the years she’d missed, all the times he might have felt disappointed or sad that she hadn’t reached out, and she cried for the other possibility, that maybe he didn’t really care that she hadn’t. That she’d made herself that insignificant in his life.

* * *

W
HEN
J
ENNA AND
Samantha got back, Tess was puffy eyed and she’d used up all her tissues, but she’d also made it through most of the letters. Her friends quietly joined her on the couch for hugs and cracked the label on the excellent Scotch they’d brought with them. Tess sipped the potent drink in silence, not trusting herself to say anything. Samantha and Jenna just chatted idly about their shopping trip, respecting her need to pull herself together.

Tess hated how quivery her voice was when she finally spoke. “Thanks for the Scotch, guys, and the letter organizing and, well, everything.”

“I’m so glad you finally told us,” Jenna said softly. “I wish you’d said something years ago.”

“You’re our friend, Tess. We love you. Please don’t ever feel like you have to lie about who you are.”

They sat in silence, and Tess pondered her friends’ words, feeling guilty that she’d so casually invented stories about her past for so long.

“You know.” Jenna gave her a shy smile. “You are pretty damn good at the tall tales, Tess. I believed everything you told me about the childhood you never had.”

“Me, too!” Samantha exclaimed. “You really are a talented...um...”

“Liar?” Tess supplied.

“I was going to say ‘actress.’” Samantha giggled. “But, okay,
liar
works.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Jenna said in a squeaky schoolyard voice, and that was it. All the massive heartache and guilt turned into hysterical giggles that erupted from Tess with a snort that had them all laughing. Tess felt a floating in her limbs and muscles, the deepest, most profound relief that her friends loved her, that they didn’t care who she’d been or that she’d lied. For the first time ever she could sit here with them, totally at ease, because now they knew who she really was.

A faint hope glimmered that there might be a better way to be than the tense, manufactured shell she’d become. And that she might be on her way to finding it.

* * *

T
HEY’D BEEN DECORATING
since 7:00 a.m. Tess had set the alarm for six, determined to make up for the time they’d lost during her enormous meltdown. She’d made cappuccinos, run to the bakery down the street for pastries and then tempted her sleepy friends out of bed with them. It hadn’t been easy, especially after the movie marathon they’d insisted on last night. A string of the most ridiculous comedies Jenna could find, which, despite the emotion of the day, had gotten Tess laughing.

And now she was on a ladder borrowed from one of the building maintenance workers, attaching blue paper baby booties to her ceiling. “You know,” she said to Samantha, who’d insisted on helping with her own shower and was tying little blue ribbons on the party favors, “you need to get knocked up again right away. When I went shopping the other day I couldn’t believe how cute all those little girl clothes were. I mean, no offense to the young gentleman you’re carrying, but the boy clothes were so boring!”

“Maybe
you
should have a baby,” Samantha said softly.

“Uh...been there, done that, and it was a disaster.”

“But that was years ago, and you were a kid yourself.”

Tess thought about the little clothes she’d picked out for Samantha’s baby, how sweet they were, how tiny. How they’d inspired this strange maternal tug that was so unfamiliar she’d barely recognized it. “I’ll just be the honorary auntie who spoils your kids. I’m not exactly a good candidate for reproducing. I’m jobless, guyless and all I really know about parenting is what
not
to do!” The booties were up and she started back down the ladder.

“That’s not true, Tess,” Samantha countered. “You can get any job you want, once word gets out that you’re free. And you’d be an amazing mom. You’ve taken care of Jenna and me for years.”

“Yeah, remember that night after Jeff and I broke up and you took me to Mack’s Place and made me try all of your favorite kinds of Scotch?” Jenna asked.

Tess laughed. “Getting you drunk in a bar isn’t exactly a good indicator of parenting potential.”

“But you talked to me the whole time, remember? About having confidence and not needing men to make me whole? In fact, I remember you saying something about them having one real use, which could, at times, be taken care of by a small mechanical device.”

A shocked yelp of laughter from Samantha had them all laughing. “How did I miss this outing?” she asked.

“You fell for a rancher and moved off to the middle of nowhere,” Tess said.

“You’re in love with a rancher, too,” Samantha retorted.

“We’re not talking about that. Unfortunately, I didn’t find one like Jenna’s, who prefers the city and cooks amazing food. Or one who actually likes me.”

“Tess, it’s obvious you miss Slaid,” Jenna said gently.

“I do,” she admitted. “But he fell in love with who he
thought
I was. Once he found out who I really am, he changed his mind. So I’ll just have to get over it.” She paused, taking a deep breath, looking for some humor to carry her through. “Plus, I barely survived a month in Benson, and I just saw the weather report—it’s snowing a ton there now. Even if I decide to try to see him again, I have to wait at least six months for it to thaw out there.”

“Oh, admit it, you miss wearing that parka. You know it looked fabulous on you,” Samantha teased. “And from all the town gossip I heard, you were pretty happy to spend a fair amount of time out in the cold as long as you were with Slaid.”

Tess glanced at her closet, where her parka hung. She remembered that first day when Slaid had chosen it for her and her chest felt funny, as though her skin was on too tight. “I’ll pull it out on foggy San Francisco mornings,” she said. “Anyway, Slaid wants nothing to do with me. He made that very clear.”

“I think that’s his pride talking,” Samantha said gently. “And yours.”

“Well, pride’s about all I have left right now.” Tess was pretty sure she’d exceeded her capacity for self-disclosure,
and
for thinking about Slaid and all that she couldn’t have. “Let’s go in the kitchen and you can make sure I have all the serving dishes organized. The caterers will drop off the food in about an hour.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

S
LAID RUBBED HIS
eyes and reached for the coffee cup on his desk. It was empty—how had he gone through an entire pot already? The screen on his computer blurred and he rubbed his eyes again. One more of these email interviews and he was done. He was officially resigning from his week-long gig as the nation’s most green mayor. He’d done interview after interview explaining that it wasn’t just him, that it was a group effort that made the town solar powered. But the media evidently didn’t appreciate a collective effort. A
New York Times
reporter had headlined her article The Sun King which had made him feel plenty stupid. Especially when the city council had laughingly presented him with a crown at their meeting earlier this evening.

He needed a PR person. Someone like Tess. But Tess was gone. Long gone. She’d left without saying goodbye and he was sure she’d never be back.

His cell phone buzzed and Slaid grabbed it, hoping it was Tess. But it was his sister, Mara, letting him know she’d just pulled up outside the town hall with Devin, who’d been having dinner and doing homework at her house while Slaid worked late.

Gratefully he shut down his computer, shoved some notes into his briefcase and headed out the door. He glanced at his phone once more before shoving it in his pocket. Nothing. He didn’t know why he had any hope that Tess would call. He’d been such a jerk to her, she probably wanted nothing to do with him.