River Road (River's End Series, #4) (19 page)

The fourth time she went, she had a rather invigorating discussion with the pastor in the foyer of the church. The oppressive outside heat wafted in each time a parishioner came in or went out the door. AJ stood off to the side, clenching his hat in his hands as he waited patiently for Kate. He nodded and smiled periodically at the passing citizens of River’s End. Lots of them stayed afterwards for the brunch and their kids rushed to play on the toys at the side of the church. Women came in and out, carrying all kinds of bowls and trays of food. Most were salads and other side dishes. AJ never stayed for the meal. What would he do there by himself? There was no one to stand beside, and no one he knew except the people on the ranch. None of the ranch workers ever came to church on Sunday, and the Rydells never stayed for brunch.

The pastor asked them both to stay that day. Kate’s smile was genuine as she shook the woman’s hand. “Oh, we’d love to. I didn’t realize there was a brunch afterwards.”

“Every week. You’re welcome to enjoy it. We just ask for any donation of food or money or drink, whatever you can comfortably give.” The pastor nodded at the collection bowl.

Kate opened her purse. “Of course, that’s totally understandable.” Kate only had money to give.

AJ grabbed Kate’s arm, and leaning closer, he said, “I don’t usually stay.”

Kate glanced up. “The food is practically free.” Then she eagerly followed the pastor out the front doors while AJ stared after her, helpless. He didn’t know what to do. He could see the crowd collecting under the majestic old cottonwood trees whose shadows cooled the freshly clipped lawn. Tables overflowed with the usual potluck dishes as the families, couples, teens, and older people milled about. There weren’t many places to spend money, nor much to do in River’s End, so church was more of a socializing outlet. Except for AJ. He had no idea how to deal with the occasion. His hands started to grow clammy. Kids screamed and shrieked. A cacophony of voices turned into a blended murmur, and the bees hummed while a neighbor’s sprinkler spun in lazy circles. It was idyllic. Lovely. A painting.

A picture AJ would never and had never set foot in.

Kate glanced back and AJ forced himself forward. He pulled his hat lower, grateful for the anonymity it provided as well as a place to hide.

He stepped behind Kate, who was chatting to an older lady, perhaps in her fifties, and serving at the table. Kate already knew her name. She held out her paper plate and received potato salad, quiche, and baked beans. She added some pieces of fried chicken, inhaling the delicious aroma and smiling. Kate talked and babbled with everyone she encountered: the older, matronly women, as well as a hard-of-hearing, balding man who was flattered by her genuine interest. She sat down at one of the picnic tables, facing the lawn and placing her meal on her lap. AJ followed her like a puppy afraid to lose its mother. He took the same food as she before sitting down right beside her and balancing his plate on his lap. He kept his head down and used his hat to hide from everyone’s view. It did wonders in keeping him from making any eye contact or having to talk to people. Lacking eye contact, most people weren’t too anxious to start gabbing. A facial expression is the first sign of welcome in a conversation, and only a rare person would just start talking to AJ unless they knew him. Very few would ask him questions or try to initiate conversation.

He ate his meal swiftly and kept clean. After dumping his empty plate in the garbage, AJ was ready to be done with it. Meanwhile, Kate, who didn’t have any hat to hide under, and didn’t want to hide anyway, was intrigued. She had been drawn into several conversations. Most were from passers-by who stopped and wanted to meet her. She’d become a bit famous in River’s End as Jack’s long-lost sister. Kate’s mother was already notorious. She was the woman who ditched River’s End and Henry Rydell. One old lady lit into a small tirade when she remembered Kate’s mother. It wasn’t the most pleasant conversation, but Kate merely smiled politely and refused to comment. Finally… it felt like hours, but was barely an hour, Kate was ready to leave. She slipped into AJ’s truck and became uncharacteristically quiet.

Pulling into the ranch, AJ glanced at her. “Did the questions about your mom bother you?”

“Honestly? Yes. I forgot actually, that anyone here might’ve remembered her. Even Jack has no memory of her, so we just talk like she never existed despite the link between us. You know? But realizing my mother lived here, in this very house for a year or so and tried to be part of the community, is like we’re talking about someone else. If you’d known my mom, imagining her being married to a rancher is like… like…”

“Anyone who knows you imagining you with a ranch foreman?” AJ supplied, his tone deep and soft.

She glanced over his shoulder sharply. “I was actually looking for a physical metaphor, like a fish taking residence in a bird’s nest, or a bat suddenly clinging to a rock covered in algae. She was the prissiest woman I ever knew. She wore eight rings on her fingers, and a dozen bracelets and necklaces. Her clothes could have funded a small country. Her hairspray alone would have choked you and she singlehandedly could have created the hole in the ozone layer with her product overuse.”

AJ clicked his door handle and jumped out. Kate tried to slide out while holding her skirt down. She needed running boards for that. She couldn’t comfortably get in or out, especially in a skirt and heels. She finally landed and adjusted her stance to bear her weight, closing her door before walking towards the porch. “You didn’t like us staying after church. Why is that? Church seems so important to you that I assumed it would be something you regularly did.”

“No.”

“The pastor didn’t even know your name, AJ,” she added softly.

Stepping past her, he walked through the Rydells’ front door without knocking or asking for her permission. Sometimes, it still made him pause because it felt so odd and wrong to do. He threw his hat on the table and walked over to the sink, pretending he needed a glass of water instead of going there simply to avoid her probing inquiry.

“I don’t talk to her much. I suppose she doesn’t.”

“But it’s so important to you.”

He drank. Liberally.

She walked closer, but he didn’t turn to look. She stopped behind him. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why don’t you talk to anyone? You’ve lived here for three years. You said the permanence of this address was very important to you. Why not try to get to know some of the people who live here?”

“I don’t think I’d have much in common with anyone.”

“There were all kinds of people at that church potluck. They are not pretentious people. I think you’d fit in better than I do. So… why haven’t you?”

He set the glass down, shrugging his shoulders and staring out the window. Far down below his trailer sat. Not his trailer, really.

“AJ?”

He ignored her and rested his hands on the edge of the counter, leaning his weight on them.

“Tell me why you won’t even try to make any connections here?”

“Because I don’t know how, okay? I don’t know how to talk to anyone.” Agitated, he walked to the kitchen table and sat on the edge of it. She turned her body angle to follow him.

“You talk to Jack, Shane, Caleb… so that’s not true.”

“I discuss work. What we’re doing. I tell them what Jack wants. I ask Jack what he wants. It’s a confined topic. I know what they want out of me. What do I know about those people at church? What should I say? What do they want to talk about? I don’t know. I have no idea what they’d want to hear from me. What could I possibly have to say that they’d be interested in? I talk to no one. I do nothing but physical grunt work. I have nothing to say. And no one to say it to. So I don’t socialize.”

He stared down, crossing his arms over his chest when he could almost
feel
her eyes searching over him. “You have lots to say.”

Glancing up for only a brief second, his gaze instantly slid off in the opposite direction. “To you, maybe.”

“Well, that started with us being complete strangers.”

“Yeah, and you nearly stripped naked before I said hello. We were strangers then. I was just thinking in church, while watching you interacting with everyone, how open and easy you are. You can socialize with everyone, which made our encounter one heck of an ice breaker and if I could do that with everyone…”

“But the point is, once the ice was broken, okay, maybe I was a little too brazen, considering—”

“You weren’t.”

“What?” she glanced up at his soft interjection.

He sighed and rolled his shoulders. He hated talking like this. “You didn’t act too brazenly. In fact, that’s what I
liked
about you.”

“What? Sex? Well, of course you did, you’d been denying yourself for three years.”

“No. I mean, yes, I liked the sex with you. But I meant, I liked knowing what you wanted from me. There was no waffling or obscure signals with you that I was afraid of missing. I wasn’t confused about what you were doing, or why you were doing it. So maybe that made it easier to talk to you. You asked me whatever you wanted to know. You showed up where you wanted to be. And when you felt like having sex, you did.”

Her head tilted and her eyes softened as she glanced over him. He wished for his hat.

“You’re unsure of how to talk to most people? But you’re not really shy. That’s what I couldn’t put my finger on when I first met you. You were there, but you wouldn’t engage me. You wouldn’t talk to me. Yet I felt your presence, so it wasn’t like I thought you were that shy. Is it because you don’t know what to say?”

“I never learned, okay? I grew up with no one to teach me. I mean, living in one house or another, full of strangers who didn’t give a crap about me, and the one who should have cared only came to get me when he planned to use me in one of his scams to get money from innocent people. He’d tell me what to say and I mimicked it until I got old enough to tell him to screw off. So I never learned any manners. I have no idea what polite society like that church or where you live in Seattle would talk about. I don’t know much. I only know cowhands. I know work. Men. We talk when necessary, but we don’t
share
anything, not even the weather.”

“It’s not okay, actually, AJ. It’s really screwed up that your father would do that to you.” She stepped closer. He wanted her to step further away. He didn’t like that. He didn’t want her crowding him right now. Not while they were
talking
like this.

“He didn’t do anything to me. There was no abuse. Look at me, you think once I got past the age of thirteen anyone would dare mess with me?”

“I think that it didn’t just mess with you, it fucked up your whole childhood. And besides, you don’t use your strength in ways like that.”

He pushed his hand out to stop her from coming closer and stared right into her eyes. “You didn’t know me. You have no idea what I’m capable of. I took a bottle, a glass beer bottle, and smashed it over another man’s head. Right here.” He pointed above his temple. “Do you realize the damage I could have done? I went to prison, Kate. It wasn’t detention, or juvie hall, or some white-collar jail, it was a penitentiary for—”

“Violent criminals?” She stepped right between his legs, which he was dangling over the table. She clutched his jaw in her hands. “It was a horrible thing to do to anyone. But I don’t, not even for a minute, believe that was
you.
”

“It was inside me.”

“I don’t think it is anymore. What was going on?”

He shrugged, trying to avoid her touch. “What do you mean?”

“What was the man doing? Standing on the street corner and you just casually walked up and cracked a bottle over his head for sheer pleasure?”

He scowled. “No, we were in a bar. Drinking. I was three sheets to the wind. I made a bet of course, on the football game. So often did I do that. Anyway, I won. The guy was being loud and obnoxious about it. He didn’t want to pay up. We exchanged words, and fists and then… honestly? It’s a little fuzzy, but at some point, I grabbed a bottle and hit him with it. Knocked him out cold.”

“So it was a bar fight.”

“I consider someone needing stitches a bit more than a bar fight.”

“It was a fair fight that got out of hand.”

“Not what the court ruled.”

She sighed. “Fine, you win on all the facts. My point is your intentions. I don’t worry about my safety or anyone else’s when I’m around you. I believe your intentions are to avoid hurting anyone. In fact, I think you prefer to stay out of everyone’s way.”

“Things work out better for all involved when I do, me included.”

“Except for with me.”

“You were supposed to leave.” His arms were still crossed over his chest. He refused to budge. He felt her body tensing against his. He kept his gaze pinned on her elbow, studying the little, floral designs of the dress fabric.

“But I didn’t. And that’s what you wanted. That’s why you got so mad at me.”

“It made it easier, I suppose, to do what we did because we knew it wouldn’t last. I didn’t have to worry past the obvious.”

“Sex?”

“Yeah, even if it worried me to do that too, considering my past.”