The calamity Janes (11 page)

“I can do that,” Millie said, casting a pointed look at Ford. “You and Emma enjoy yourselves. This won’t take a minute.”

“I think you’re being overly optimistic,” Emma retorted.

“I’m a grandmother. I know a few tricks.” She winked at Ford.

After Millie and Caitlyn had gone inside, Emma studied Ford. “What was that all about?”

“What?” he asked blandly.

“What was my mother saying to you before I got back here?”

“Just sharing a little advice.”

“About?”

“Life.”

“That’s a broad topic. Care to narrow it down?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t want to give away any of her tricks.”

Emma frowned. “Don’t you start conspiring with my mother,” she warned.

“What would we have to conspire about?” he asked, all innocence.

“Me, for starters.”

Ford reached for her hand and tugged her closer. “Give me a little credit. When it comes to you, I think I can handle things on my own.”

“We’ll see,” she murmured just before his lips claimed hers.

She still bore the tart taste of lemons, which he found to be surprisingly improved thanks to an undercurrent of heat and passion. He lingered and savored, drawing a sigh for his efforts.

“How am I doing?” he asked after several minutes.

“Amazingly well,” she admitted, and reached for
him, turning what had been a simple experiment into something bold and dangerous.

A subtle cough and a giggle from inside the door suggested the return of her mother and Caitlyn. Ford drew away but kept his gaze locked with Emma’s.

“I think we’ve been busted.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said, grinning. “My mother always did have radar when I was just about to get lucky out here.”

“Emma Clayton Rogers!” her mother protested, coming outside.

Emma winked at Ford. “She knows it’s true.”

“I am shocked, nonetheless,” her mother said. “Get lucky, indeed.”

She turned from her daughter to Ford, and he saw Millie’s indignation fade, to be replaced by amusement.

“Watch your step, young man,” she scolded, eyes twinkling.

“Yes, ma’am. Emma, I think we’d better get out of here before she decides to ground you.”

Caitlyn watched the adults with increasing bemusement. “Grandma, are you gonna ground Mommy?” The prospect seemed to fascinate her.

“You never know. I might,” Millie threatened.

Caitlyn tucked her hand in Emma’s. “Don’t worry, Mommy, I’ll come to see you.”

“Me, too,” Ford declared seriously.

“Which would pretty much defeat the purpose,” Emma’s mother said. “Now, go. I have things to do around here, and I can’t get them done with all of you underfoot.”

Caitlyn scampered off the porch at once, followed more slowly by Emma. Ford paused and kissed Millie
Clayton’s cheek. “Remind me to tell your husband how fortunate he is.”

She chuckled. “Oh, he knows. I remind him all the time.”

L
istening to the exchange between Ford and her mother, watching the two of them grinning at each other like co-conspirators, rattled Emma worse than the few stolen kisses she had shared with the man. She knew exactly what her mother’s agenda was: to get Emma and Caitlyn back to Winding River permanently. Apparently she was willing to enlist an unsuspecting Ford Hamilton in her plan, hoping that his methods of persuasion would be more successful than her own.

Emma stewed about that all during the trip to the mall, all during the movie and all during their outing for Mexican food before heading back to Winding River. Despite Ford’s speculative glances, he didn’t try to ferret out the reason for her silence.

In the car on the way home, though, she saw him glance into the rearview mirror as if to assure himself
that Caitlyn had finally fallen asleep in the back seat. Then he turned briefly to Emma.

“Okay, spill it.”

“Spill what?”

“Something’s been on your mind all day. Tell me.”

Emma started to deny it, then sighed. They needed to get this out in the open. “It’s you and my mother.”

He shot her an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”

“I want to know what you were up to back at the house.”

“Up to?” he echoed as if the phrase had no meaning he could divine.

“Don’t you dare play dumb with me, Ford Hamilton. I saw you. I heard you.”

“Well, if you
saw
us and
heard
us, why don’t you tell
me
what we were up to, because I’m clueless.”

“A journalist admitting he’s clueless,” Emma said scathingly. “That has to be a first. I figured if you didn’t know the facts, you’d just go right ahead and make something up.”

A scowl settled over his features, and for a minute Emma thought she had gone too far. She had promised to stop taking potshots at him. Her vow was only a few days old, and she was already breaking it.

Finally Ford turned to her. “Do you honestly believe that? Have I ever given you any reason to think I would do such a thing?”

Emma struggled to put fairness above her own history. “No,” she conceded reluctantly.

“Okay, then, why don’t you tell me about what you think your mother and I have done, and leave out the uncalled-for slams against my character?”

She accepted the rebuke as her just deserts. “I’m
sorry,” she said. “But it looked to me as if you were conspiring.”

Ford chuckled.

“I’m serious, dammit.”

His expression sobered, but she suspected there was still a twinkle in his eye. In the dim light of the car she couldn’t see it.

“Don’t you think that’s a little overly dramatic?” he asked. “What were we supposedly conspiring about?”

“Me.”

“Keep talking.”

“She wants you to influence me into staying here, doesn’t she?”

“As if I could,” he said with another deep-throated chuckle. “Emma, is there a person on earth who could make you do something you don’t want to do?”

“No,” she said flatly.

“Well, then, what are you so worried about?”

“You could try,” she said.

“But I wouldn’t succeed, right?” He glanced at her. “Or is that the real problem? Are you afraid I might convince you that Winding River is where you belong?”

“You could never convince me of that.”

“Well, then, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Somehow she didn’t find his response as reassuring as she should have. “As long as you understand that,” she said.

He regarded her solemnly. “I do.”

The words made her shudder. Apparently he noted her reaction, because he grinned.

“Those two little words don’t scare you, do they?
I do?
”

“It depends on the context, doesn’t it?” she said carefully.

“Exactly. You and I are a long way from standing in a church, repeating vows to each other, wouldn’t you say? We haven’t even made it through a single date without sparring over something or other.”

“Absolutely.”

“Good, then we’re on the same wavelength.”

“Good,” she agreed, but for some reason the thought brought little comfort. If anything, she found it annoying. It was no wonder she had so much trouble with relationships. Clearly she was totally perverse, declaring one thing, wanting another, and unable to reconcile the two. She’d better stick to the one thing she was really good at—being a lawyer.

For once, though, the idea brought scant comfort.

Ford couldn’t quite figure out Emma’s mood. She had been quiet at the mall, letting Caitlyn’s exuberance fill in all the conversational gaps. The child had charmed him, suggesting what Emma must have been like as a girl. Once she’d gotten over her shyness, Caitlyn had talked a blue streak. In some ways he already knew her better than he did her mother.

As for Emma, he concluded he might never figure her out. He had thought she might be relieved to have everything out in the open, to have his agreement that they were very much on the same wavelength when it came to their relationship…or lack thereof. Instead, she’d gone quiet on him again, maybe even a little more despondent.

Pushing for answers didn’t seem likely to get much clarification. He had a feeling Emma didn’t understand her mood—or the reason behind it—any better than he
did. Since he was familiar with conflicting emotions, he decided it was best to let the subject alone, to let her mull it over and sort through it on her own. She would let him know when she’d reached a conclusion about whatever it was that was troubling her now.

They rode on in silence, the night closing in around them. Even from the car the splash of stars in the black-as-velvet sky was visible. Normally Ford found peace in these surroundings, especially on a night like this when the sky was clear and the temperature had dropped to a more hospitable seventy degrees. Tonight, though, he was finding Emma’s edginess contagious. When she finally spoke, he jumped.

“Ford?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I ask you something?”

He braced himself. “Sure.”

“Are people in town condemning Sue Ellen for what happened?”

He stared at her. “You’re asking me? Why?”

“Because you probably hear things they wouldn’t say to me. I just want to know what I’m likely to be up against when we go to court. What’s the popular sentiment? And how are you going to cover it in the paper?”

It grated on him to admit that most of the people he’d spoken to had been unswervingly on Sue Ellen’s side. Though he’d listened to the remarks without comment, he’d wanted badly to explain that a man was dead because of what had happened that night. How could that be an acceptable solution, no matter what the provocation? He just couldn’t see Sue Ellen being eligible for sainthood, the way some of her neighbors seemed to think she should be.

“I think most people understand what Sue Ellen did. They’ve known her for years. They want to believe what happened was an accident. Many of them believe that Donny got what he deserved in any case,” Ford conceded grimly.

“You don’t agree?”

“Did he deserve to die?” Ford demanded, tossing the question back at her. “Does anybody have the right to take another person’s life?”

“He was threatening her with a gun,” Emma said sharply. “What would you have had her do? Maybe try to reason with him? Let
him
shoot
her?
”

“No, of course not, but there had to be a better way.” He believed with everything in him that resorting to violence was never an answer.

“You tell me what that would have been,” she said impatiently. “Name one thing she could have done.”

“She could have left,” he said, though even as he spoke the words, he knew he was oversimplifying. Emma wasn’t likely to hesitate to tell him exactly that, either.

“She tried,” Emma reminded him. “Donny came after her. The struggle went out into the street, remember? Then she tried to get inside so she could lock him out. He followed her.”

“I’m not talking about that night. I’m talking about weeks earlier—or months earlier. Maybe even years earlier.” To him, it was so clear-cut: If someone was hurting you, physically or emotionally, you got away. You didn’t stay and take it.

“Just like that?” Emma asked mockingly. “Assuming she was brave enough to make the break, where would she have gone that he couldn’t have found her? Who would have taken her in, knowing that Donny
would be on the warpath? And he would have been—make no mistake about that. After all, it was that violent possessiveness that was behind every beating.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people who were willing to protect her,” Ford insisted, though his certainty of that was wavering.

“A few,” Emma corrected. “Most wouldn’t get involved if it meant putting their own families at risk, and who could blame them? Many of Sue Ellen’s friends our age have children at home. How could they knowingly endanger them, even to protect Sue Ellen?”

Ford tried a different tack. “She could have gone to Ryan for protection.”

“She could have,” Emma conceded slowly.

Surprised by the concession, he asked, “Okay, then, at last we agree about something. Why didn’t she go to Ryan?”

Emma’s expression was thoughtful as she considered the question. “I think there’s a whole other dynamic at work there,” she began at last. “Ryan may be the sheriff, but he’s also an unmarried man who has very strong feelings for Sue Ellen. He has ever since high school, but she was always Donny’s girl. I suspect she understood Ryan’s feelings and feared that she would be endangering him if she got him involved. After all, Donny’s biggest problem, aside from alcohol, was his jealousy. Ryan was the target of it as often as not. On some level Donny knew that Ryan cared about Sue Ellen, even though Ryan was very careful never to let it show. There was bad blood between them as a result. It had been that way for years.”

Ford had guessed as much, both from what Ryan had said and what he hadn’t said. He was surprised Ryan had remained as calm as he had when he’d in
tervened between Sue Ellen and Donny the night of the dance. He was equally surprised, under the circumstances, that Donny had left with Ryan peacefully.

“Still,” he said, “if Sue Ellen had filed charges even once, Ryan could have arrested Donny.”

“Let me ask you something. When you were a kid, did you ever have a best friend who was a screwup?”

Ford thought back to Cory Sullivan. Cory had gotten into more mischief than any other kid in their small Georgia town. It hadn’t been long before innocent mischief turned into something more serious—vandalism, for starters, then shoplifting. He’d pleaded with Cory to stop before he ruined his life.

“Well?” Emma prodded.

“One,” he admitted.

“Did he get in a lot of trouble?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Did you ever turn him in? Stop being friends with him?”

He saw where she was going with this. “No, but it’s not the same. The only person Cory was endangering was himself.”

“Are you sure no one else ever got hurt thanks to his actions?”

Ford swallowed hard. There had been one person. Cory had beaten up old man Jensen because the grocer had tried to stop him from stealing cigarettes and beer from his store.

“Just once that I know of.”

Her gaze locked on his. “Could you have prevented it by turning him in before it came to that?”

“Possibly.”

“So who was guiltier—you or your friend?”

“Cory, of course. He committed the crime.”

Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And Donny committed this one. Not Sue Ellen. He beat her over and over and over. Would it have been better if she’d had him arrested? Of course. But she loved him. She wanted to believe he would change, just as you wanted to believe your friend would change.”

“Are you saying she was right to stay and take it?”

“Absolutely not,” she said fiercely. “I’m just saying that it’s understandable, that it happens all too often, either because the victim is scared or has such low self-esteem that she blames herself for what’s happening, or because she keeps clinging to a false hope that things will get better—if only she’s nicer, better, less confrontational, whatever. With Sue Ellen it was that unwavering faith that her love could make Donny change. I’m sure they had good patches. That only convinced her she was right, that underneath he was a good man.”

“Was he? Do you remember him from high school?” Ford asked. “Were the signs there then that he would be an abuser?”

“Honestly, yes. He was always jealous and possessive. And his own father had a reputation as a mean drunk. Donny was all but preordained to be violent.”

“Did any of Sue Ellen’s friends try to warn her?”

Emma’s expression turned sad. “I don’t think any of us recognized what those signs meant, not back then. My perception is based on hindsight and what I’ve learned about domestic violence more recently.”

Ford glanced at her, but she evaded his look. “Emma?”

“What?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“Why is this case so personal to you?” he asked, almost dreading the answer. Once again, he feared he
knew what it might be—that her husband had been abusive, and that she had stuck it out longer than she should have.

“Because Sue Ellen is a friend,” she said tersely.

“And that’s the only reason?”

She turned then and met his gaze. She even managed to hold hers steady. “What other reason could there be?”

Ford debated with himself before responding with the question that was really on his mind. It was exceptionally personal and he wasn’t sure he had any right to ask it yet, but he had a feeling it was critical to understanding Emma. Finally he chose a circumspect approach that might elicit the truth…if Emma was willing to share it.

“Tell me about your marriage,” he suggested mildly, thinking of her mother’s comment that Emma’s husband had thought he could change her. In what way had Kit Rogers found her deficient? And how had he handled it?

Even though he considered his question to be innocuous, alarm flared in Emma’s eyes.

“I don’t know what you want to know,” she said, looking uneasy.

Staying determinedly on neutral turf, he focused on the beginning of the relationship, not the end, and asked, “How did you meet?” Though he’d heard the story from Ryan, he wanted Emma’s take on it.