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Matt avoided his parents’ room, couldn’t possibly go in there, so headed back out to the kitchen.
He touched the stove and left his fingerprints in a layer of dust. When had it last been cleaned? More than fifteen years ago. Just before she died, Mom had been consumed by her anger and depression. The house had become more and more dirty, until Matt couldn’t stand to eat there.
He opened a cupboard door and spotted a tin of beans and a loaf of bread, now green and dried out. He opened another cupboard door and froze. There on the second shelf, beside the salt and pepper and a bag of pasta, was a small, framed photo of his mother and him.
He looked younger than Jesse was—maybe four, maybe only three. Why was it in the cupboard? Did she want to look at it every time she reached for the saltshaker? Or had she put it here without realizing? Like when he used to find the milk, warm and sour, in a cupboard, and unopened tins of beans in the fridge?
His mother was holding him in her arms and smiling. She’d been so pretty when she was young.
Flashes of memory filled his head, glimpses of this and that, with no rhyme or reason, before finally settling on this one. He thought that maybe he remembered when this photo had been taken.
He remembered his shock later, after his mother had changed.
“MATTHEW, WHAT IS THIS?” Mama held up a pair of pants with holes in the knees. He’d put them in the laundry basket on the floor of his closet, with all his other dirty clothes, just the way he was supposed to.
“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” Her voice sounded funny, like one of the bad ladies in the Cinderella movie. She sounded mean.
“Those are my jeans.”
“I know that, you little moron.”
His mouth dropped open. Mama called him a name. She never did that before.
“I mean, why do they have holes in the knees?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I must have falled down.”
She hit him across the face. He fell on the floor and cried. Where was the mama he liked? Where was the mama who loved him?
MATT CAME OUT of his memory with the question he’d asked himself so many times as a child. Where was the mama who loved him?
It had started the day she’d slapped him and had gone downhill from there, with Mama becoming more and more demanding, her demands more and more unreasonable.
Then Pop started to stay out later and later, coming home only long enough to make sure his kid idolized him and then running off to another rodeo or another ranch or another bar.
To another woman, Missy Donovan from Ordinary.
When Pop did come home, he was angry and drunk and ready to leave again, but not before he and Mama tore each other apart in the bedroom. They went at it like animals.
When Matt was old enough, he got out of the house before they started, and stayed out until long after they finished.
Matt’s shell threatened to crumble now, to let the emotions free to kill him with their poison.
He set the old photo on the scarred countertop, facedown because he couldn’t stand to look at him and his mother happy. What kind of weird compulsion had driven a warm, loving woman mad?
Was it inside him, too? Was there some sort of double curse in his life? He’d learned too much of the wrong things from his father. Love ’em and leave ’em. Don’t let a woman get her hooks into you. When things get too tough, run scared.
Was he also eventually going to lose his mind the way his mother had?
And now he had a child to worry about.
What on earth had he ever learned here that would help him to be a parent?
JENNY HAD BEEN POSITIVE Matt would run, had known it in her marrow. Then why did she feel so disappointed that he had? It was nuts. She didn’t want Matt sticking around or deciding that he should have a hand in raising her son.
She and Angus would do just fine raising Jesse. Angus knew how to be a good father.
She sat down on the top step beside her son and took the small spoonful of custard he offered her.
“Do you want to play in the backyard when you’re finished?” she asked, smoothing his bangs away from his face.
“Yeah.” He lapped up more of his custard.
Angus drove into the yard in his big silver Cadillac. When he got out, he looked tired. Frustrated.
As she’d done so many times lately, Jenny wondered what was going on with him. What was distracting him? He approached the veranda with heavy steps.
His face lit up for Jesse, though.
“Hey, little buddy,” he said and tickled the boy.
Jesse giggled then offered him custard.
“No, thanks. You finish it.” Angus turned his attention to Jenny. “How did it go?”
“About as well as I expected. He lit out of here twenty minutes ago. Barely hung around long enough to find out his name.” She tipped her head toward her son.
Jesse finished his custard.
“Take the container to Angela in the kitchen and head out back,” Jenny told him. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
The screen door slammed shut behind him. Jenny smiled. Kids made so much noise.
Angus put one foot on the bottom step. On his face, Jenny read a disappointment in Matt that ran much, much deeper than her own.
Angus had always wanted to think the best of Matt, and he hadn’t had Jenny’s firsthand experience with Matt’s leaving.
“Angus, I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but this is exactly what I expected.”
“Where did he go?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
Angus glanced around the grounds. “I guess he’ll come back for his stuff later.”
Jenny smiled grimly. “Oh, yeah, he’ll be back for Master.”
He didn’t think twice about leaving me behind, but he would never forget his horse.
“Then he’ll go for good,” she continued. “I’m sorry, Angus.”
Angus mounted the stairs and rested a heavy hand on her shoulder. If she could ease his disappointment, she would, but the truth was the truth.
She stood and walked around to the backyard where Jesse played on the jungle gym. She helped him across one part that his arms weren’t long enough for.
Jesse put his small feet on her shoulders and she held his waist. They’d played this game so many times in the past year, but they never grew tired of it.
Jesse squealed and giggled and Jenny laughed. The world felt right again.
Matt knew about his son now, but he wouldn’t stay. Jenny could get on with her plans. She could marry Angus and raise her son on the ranch that was in her blood, that she’d wanted to live on her whole life.
She used to sit up by the cotoneasters as a child and look down on the ranch with such a swell of pride, knowing that someday it would all be hers.
Her dreams had started when she was little more than nine or ten. At the time, her world spun on an axis that was sure and constant.
Her parents loved her. One day, she would have a nice man like Daddy to love her. They were going to build a house on the banks of Still Creek.
Mom and Dad had shown her the piece of land they would give her. It was beautiful. She would raise her family there until the house felt too cramped.
Then they would all move to the big house and Mom and Dad would take the smaller house in the clearing by the stream.
Jenny would live on the ranch her entire life, as her Sterling forefathers had done before her and as her children would do long after.
Then they’d lost everything.
Bankruptcy.
Her heart had broken.
She’d lost hope for many years, but things were finally, blessedly right. Everything would be fine.
Jenny heard a noise behind her. Thinking it was Angus or the housekeeper, she turned with a smile.
Matt stood by the back fence.
Her smile fell away.
The look on Matt’s face terrified her.
He watched her and Jesse play with pure, unadulterated longing. He watched his son with hunger.
“I’m staying to get to know him.” He turned and stalked away and Jenny’s world turned to dust.
CHAPTER FOUR
MATT SAW ANGUS step out of the house, so he walked over to confront him. Why hadn’t Angus ever contacted him, told him that he had a son? The betrayals kept mounting.
Maybe he hadn’t known.
When he noticed Matt, Angus’s expression turned grim. Matt’s hope fell. Angus had known.
“You knew and you never called me?” Matt asked, a world of accusation in his voice.
“I found out only after you got here today. Jenny came and talked to me.” He set his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “How are you doing?”
Matt’s teeth hurt. He struggled to relax his jaw. “I don’t really know. I didn’t have the greatest role model. I don’t have a clue what to do with the boy.”
“Give it time,” Angus said. “It will come to you.”
Matt wasn’t sure about that, but he’d stick around to find out. After he’d paid his debt to Angus, he’d see how things were going with the kid.
In the meantime, he had to deal with his anger toward Jenny. Didn’t Angus think it was wrong of her not to tell him?
“How can you still want to marry a woman who would keep a child from his father? Who would lie to a man about something that important?”
“Matt—” Angus cleared his throat. Whatever he had to say was clearly painful to him. “She wouldn’t have lied to me. She wouldn’t have had reason to.”
That hurt, but Angus was right.
Matt had earned his reputation fair and square, and now had to face the consequences. “Angus!”
A happy shout from the side of the house had both men turning their heads. Jesse barreled across the clearing and threw himself against Angus’s knees.
Angus picked him up and tossed him into the air, catching him effortlessly on the way down. He had a great love for children. Too bad his wife had died before they’d had more than one.
Now that one was dead.
Matt watched Angus with Jesse and wondered if he was trying to replace Kyle with the boy.
“I petted a new horse today.” The pipsqueak had a high voice.
Angus turned to Jenny with concern on his face and Matt could tell it was to see how she was doing after confessing to him.
For God’s sake, Angus shouldn’t be worried about Jenny. He should be worried about Matt. Only Matt. He was the one who’d been wronged. Not Jenny. She could have called him at any time in the past five years.
Jesse took Angus’s face in both of his hands and turned Angus’s attention back to himself. “Hank says I can go in the pool on the weekend if it’s warm enough. Wanna come?”
“Sure.” He put the boy down, but as Jesse turned away and headed for the house, Angus stared down at him with his heart in his eyes, full to overflowing with affection, but Jesse wasn’t Angus’s son. He was Matt’s, and Matt hadn’t had the same time to get to know him as Angus had had.
Had Angus bathed Jesse when he was a baby, changed his diaper, fed him? Had he done all of the things Matt could have done with his son?
Jesse babbled to Angus as if they were best friends.
On his way past Jenny, Angus wrapped his arm around her shoulders and the three of them walked into the house like a real family, leaving Matt feeling like an outsider.
Story of my life.
Matt felt his jaw tighten again as though someone was screwing it on too tightly. He loved Angus, didn’t want to be jealous, didn’t want to resent his relationship with Matt’s son and Jenny, but he did.
