The Sweet Spot (30 page)

The truth felt as clean as the breeze that kissed her face, giving her the resolve
to go on. “I know I’ve made you feel guilty, Jimmy. I acted like the jilted wife to
the entire town.” When she caught herself looking everywhere but
at him, she forced her gaze to his. “I’m not proud of it. The truth of it is, I gave
you to that young girl.”

Char inhaled a deep breath and set free her last secret. “You see, I forgot something
too, Jimmy. I forgot that there was a time, before Benje, when we were enough. I was
so immersed in trying to hang onto what was gone that I was willing to throw away
what was left.

“I felt—” Once begun, the truth spewed from her throat unstoppable, burning as it
burst out. “I feel so guilty. I’m afraid if I go on living, I’m abandoning my baby!”

The truth ended in a wail that rolled across the meadow. The birds and crickets fell
into shocked silence. She saw her own fright reflected in Jimmy’s tear-filled eyes
as he stepped forward to pull her into his arms.

H
er admission opened a door. Char cowered in the maelstrom of emotion, terrified she’d
be swept back to the nightmare world of the days following the accident; that off-kilter,
rabbit-hole world of shrouded light and foreign whispers. The fear didn’t matter,
because she couldn’t stop the inhuman howl pouring from her throat. Jimmy stood silent
through it, holding her, a solid mast she lashed herself to.

The tempest finally ebbed, leaving her limp, depleted. Still he held her, chin resting
on her head, smoothing his hand lightly over her hair, murmuring words too low for
her to hear. As she gulped for air, her chest loosened, absorbing the simple, powerful
pleasure of being touched. It had been so long since she’d allowed more than a stranger’s
accidental brush of a hand on the street in passing or a cashier’s touch while returning
change. No, that wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t that people hadn’t touched her. After
all, Bella had, and Sal hugged her in church last Sunday. The difference was that
now, the touch didn’t
end at her skin. She was accepting of it. As she drank in the comfort, it swelled
to a warm, glowing puddle in her chest, like a shot of Bailey’s on a frostbitten day.
She wanted to stay like this forever and not have to face whatever came next.

If she’d learned anything the past year, it was that you can’t stay in one place,
be it heaven or hell. She lifted her head from Jimmy’s damp shirt and looked up at
the quiet strength that resided in his brown eyes.

“Better?”

She nodded, holding his gaze for a moment before stepping back. “Thank you, Jimmy.”

He touched the brim of his hat. “My honor, Little Bit.” He pulled the white handkerchief
from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to her. She dried her tears and blew
her nose. Hand under her elbow, he guided her to the truck, opened the passenger door,
and settled her in as if she were made of spun glass.

He watched Char close. God, he’d hated to see her like that. Give him something solid
to vanquish, someone to punch out for hurting her, anything but to stand there like
an impotent fool while she fell apart. He walked around the truck grille. She hadn’t
really needed him. Had she? He’d only been the hurricane wall at her back.

But maybe that’s all a strong person needed.

He hopped in the truck and cranked the ignition. The sun had turned the cab into a
warm haven. He relaxed, wrapped in the well-known ease of riding somewhere with Charla.
They didn’t speak as he made a three-point turn and drove through the meadow.

Her hand wandered across the bench seat now and
again to touch him, as if, without looking, she wanted the reassurance of his presence.
Maybe the affirmation was for him. Maybe for them both.

Time to finish this.
He took a deep breath, and a chance. “Charla, I’m going to be honest with you from
now on. If I feel it, I’m telling you. It’s not easy, but it’s easier than dealing
with what happens if I don’t.”

“I’m glad, Jimmy.”

“So, I have to tell you.” Hands tight on the wheel, he made the turn from the dirt
fire road to the highway. “I’m glad we’re partners in the business, but I want more.
My life doesn’t work without you beside me.” He shot her a quick look before focusing
on the road again. Guts squirming, he blurted, “You’re a strong, independent woman.
If you decide to take another husband, or even if you decide to live alone for the
rest of your life, I’ll respect that.” He studied the road, afraid to see her expression.
“I’ll hate it, but I’ll respect it.”

At Char’s warm chuckle, he turned toward her.

She tilted her head in that amused way she had. “What makes you think I’d want that,
Jimmy?”

“Well, I know you need someone to lift hay bales and to chase off a crazed bull trainer
now and again, but other than that, you don’t need a man.”

She let out an unladylike snort. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been scared spitless most
of the time. I didn’t know anything, and I was terrified to make a mistake that would
hurt the stock or cost us the business. I’ve discovered a lot, being the responsible
one. I’ve even remembered things I’d forgotten about myself.”

She was quiet so long that he glanced over. Gaze unfocused, she watched the scenery
slide by his side of the truck.

“I need to be needed, Jimmy. Cows bawling to be fed don’t count. I’m not whole by
myself. I never have been. Maybe that makes me a relic. It’s just how I’m made.” She
heaved a pensive sigh. “Daddy needs me now, but sometime, in a future I don’t want
to think about, he won’t.

“I don’t know if we can be a couple again, Jimmy. That part of our lives may be behind
us.” Out the corner of his eye, he saw her refocus on his face. “Or maybe not. You
seem different. I catch glimpses now of that driven, humble cowboy I fell in love
with that day in the meadow.” At a feather-light touch on his bicep, he turned to
her resigned smile. “
That
cowboy still has my heart, Jimmy. He always will.”

He wanted to tell her he was that man still. Persuasions piled into his mouth. Dana’s
reminder echoed in his head.
She’s not listening, JB. She’s watching.
He locked his jaw against the words.

They rode the rest of the way to the ranch, windows down, lost to their individual
thoughts.

The wind had picked up, and the slant of the sun in his eyes told him it was around
three o’clock when he pulled into the drive. He drove around the back of the house
and shut down the engine.

Silence pressed into the car, and he glanced over at Charla. She sat, staring. He
followed her line of sight to the hole in the world where the tree used to be. Even
the stump was invisible in the high grass waving in the wind, but that damned tree
still stood solidly between them. He tried to decipher her blank stare. “Are you ready
to talk about it, Little Bit?”

She shook her head. “No.” Her mouth twisted as if she tasted something nasty. “Though
that doesn’t seem to
matter. I think we have to, Jimmy.” Her hands twisted in her lap. Her mouth opened.
Then closed. She shifted her feet, scrubbing palms over the thighs of her jeans, as
if to dry them. Still she said nothing.

When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he began for her.

“He was crazy for a tree fort that summer, remember? God knows where he got the idea,
but he pestered me for weeks. I promised we’d build it together.” The familiar dog-bite
pain ate into the lining of his stomach. “I was getting to it, I swear I was. Why
couldn’t he wait?” He took a deep breath to make himself calm down, his eyes glued
to the barn door.

“I was repairing tack in the barn when I heard you scream.” His swallow clicked loud
in the quiet truck. “I knew then. Not what had happened, but that inhuman howl told
me that life had taken a bad turn.” He still jerked awake nights, in a pool of sweat,
hearing it echo from a fading nightmare.

He’d dropped everything and run, to find Char, on her knees under the huge maple tree,
looking up, screaming. He didn’t want to look—the utter devastation on her snot-streaked
face told him he was too late—but he pried his eyes off her and looked up, through
the leafed-out branches. His son hung limp and unmoving, one arm and his neck caught
in a noose. JB didn’t remember climbing that tree. The next thing he knew, he was
sitting on a branch, holding Benje in his arms, rocking him. He didn’t know how long
he did that, except when he came back to himself, Char’s screams were only a hoarse
keening.

He choked out the rest past the tight wad in his throat. “I must have cut that damned
gold rope with my jackknife.”

Gold rope?
She jerked as a freight-train memory slammed into her brain. She saw every detail
as if her vision had become a microscope: the dust on the dash of the pickup, the
sun glinting cruelly off the metal on the windshield wiper. The sound of the wind,
moaning through the truck’s weatherstripping. Her stomach plummeted through her frozen
guts.

The gold rope!
She’d known this. Hadn’t she?

She’d been making new curtains for the great room. Soft green plaid curtains, with
pencil pleats and tie-backs. Material strewn across the floor, mouth full of upholstery
pins, it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Benje since she griped at him to go
outside, out from under her feet. Char raked her hands through her hair, trying to
tug the details from her head.

Benje was a ranch kid; he knew how to entertain himself, making fun out of whatever
was at hand. Gold rope. Her tie-backs.

My fault. It was my fault!

She scrabbled at the seat belt with unfeeling fingers. “I have to go, Jimmy.” Her
fingers seemed to have forgotten the steps to releasing it. Grunting, she fought it
for several seconds until, with a snap, it came open. It retracted like a rifle shot
in the cab.

“Charla, wait.” He reached for her arm but she recoiled. “What is it?”

Panic screamed in her head, vaporizing rational thought. She had to get away. Somewhere
she could bury the truth back wherever it had been all these months. Her lips pulled
back from her teeth. “I have to
go
, Jimmy!” She pulled the door handle and almost fell out of the
truck when the wind pulled at the door. Her legs wouldn’t hold her.

Suddenly Jimmy was there, reaching down to lift her by her arms. The fear in his eyes
told her what she looked like. “You have to talk to me, Charla Rae. I can’t help you
through this if I don’t know—”

“Leave it. Just
leave
it!” She clamped her hands over her ears to block it, but it made no difference to
the angry bee buzz in her head.
Myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault.

Jimmy still held her arms, but she shook him off, her air-starved chest heaving. “Just
get away, Jimmy!”

She jerked from him, stumbling toward the back door.
I can’t live. Not like this.
She remembered something else about that day. Jimmy carefully climbed down the branches,
Benje in his arms. At the bottommost branch, he’d handed him down to her. Her son
was warm and boneless, like when he was little and fell asleep in her arms. She cradled
him, rocking, waiting for the delicate blue-veined skin of his eyelids to flutter,
for his eyes to open, revealing the fractured blue irises that always reminded her
of cat’s-eye marbles.

Jimmy grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Char, you’re scaring me.”

“Get away!” She whipped her arm from his grasp, sobbing “Can’t you see?” She fisted
her hands at her sides, fighting the urge to slap at him. “You are not welcome here,
Jimmy. Get away from me!”

Jimmy’s face froze, his mouth opened in the prim scandalized
O
of a church lady. That look might have mattered to her, ten minutes ago. He ducked
his head and strode back to the truck.

Watching his back recede, another insight hit like a slap.

He’d known what her brain managed to block out all these months.

He knew she killed Benje. That’s why he left her.

A moan rumbled from the lava pit in her chest. How could he stand to look at her?
How could she stand to look at herself?

Only one way.
The wind pushed her as she ran for the garage.

C
har barreled through the back door to the garage. She wasted a few precious moments
catching her breath while her eyes acclimated to the shadows, listening to the wind
whistle around the corner of the house and the recriminations whipping around the
corners of her mind. The first object to appear out of the gloom was her father’s
prize possession, the 1959 El Camino he’d owned since he and Mom married. It sat,
a forgotten ghost shrouded in a pale gray dust cover. Yet another reminder of things
lost.

Silence met her shuffling steps as she squeezed between it and the row of storage
boxes against the wall. At the last tier, she stopped and pulled the first box from
the pile. Seeing no free space to set it down, she turned and dropped it. The
splat
echoed. Manila files spilled under the car. The next box followed, and the next.
Jerking the top off the bottommost box, she scrabbled through
registry papers of cattle long dead, to the bottom. Rooting for a glimpse of amber.

JB stopped in his tracks, turned, and watched Char disappear into the garage. He couldn’t
get his brain in gear. The shift in Charla’s demeanor was so sudden it caught him
flat-footed. Today he thought they’d tapped into the thick, braided-wire connection
they’d always had, from high school right up to the day of the accident. Then this.
She’d come at him, baring her teeth, driving him away, just like last time.