Читать книгу A Match Made in Dry Creek - Janet Tronstad - Страница 11

Doris June waited for the airplane to come to a complete stop at the Billings airport before she unfastened her seat belt. It was dark outside except for the lights on the runway. Other passengers had started to reach for their overhead luggage, but Doris June was content to live by the rules and stay seated. She had a bag of puzzles in the overhead compartment and she’d wait for the line of people to pass before she pulled it down. She’d gotten to the airport at six o’clock this morning anyway and she was tired.

She could also use the few extra minutes to go over in her mind what she intended to say to her mother about the quite understandable possibility that her mother’s mental agility was compromised and that her mother might want to be open to receiving some help. Help that Doris June fully intended to give even if she had to pretend to take a series of short vacations to Dry Creek, Montana, to give it.

In her checked luggage, Doris June had a whole packet of information about how to deal with what she had decided to call “senior confusion.” She hoped that “confusion” was a friendly, befuddled term that would not hurt her mother’s dignity. The one thing that stood out every time she read one of those brochures was that Doris June, being the primary caregiver in the event of anything, should realize her mother needed help and that it should be given as naturally as it would be if her mother had a physical limitation that meant she couldn’t walk or see or hear anymore.

There was no cause for shame because a person faced a change in mental ability and Doris June intended to see that that message got through to her mother. Her mother was a proud woman and deserved to keep her pride.

Doris June knew that she was limited in how much help she could give her mother from a distance and she was perfectly willing to spend more time with her mother if that was what was needed. Doris June’s job was going smoothly, and she could afford to take a week off every three months or so. She had already mentioned the idea to her boss, and she had his full support. He knew Doris June was all her mother had and he understood the importance of family obligations.

There was nothing to prevent Doris June from flying back to Dry Creek regularly to help her mother with odds and ends—things like filling out the form for the state tourism board or maybe doing her taxes. Even if all she did was make pots of soup for her mother to freeze, Doris June would be happy to do it.

She was even prepared to make the big move and leave her job in Anchorage so she could relocate to Dry Creek. She had thought about doing that anyway before he moved back—not that she was exactly staying away because Curt Nelson was back, but she sure didn’t want it to look like she was moving back home because he was there all single and available.

If Doris June did move back to Dry Creek, she would want it clearly understood that she was moving back there to do her duty to her mother and for no other reason. The people of Dry Creek had a tendency to gossip about their own and Doris June didn’t want to have any speculation that she was coming back to ignite a love that had died decades ago.

She’d had enough pity stares over the years to last her a lifetime. She didn’t know why the people of Dry Creek had been so interested in the breakup between her and Curt. People broke up all the time even in a small town in southern Montana.

Besides, Curt had married that woman from Chicago. What was her name?

Not that it mattered, Doris June decided. The only thing important about that wedding was that it should have put a complete end to any speculation about her and Curt. She certainly would never have chased a married man. And, not only because she knew God would be appalled if she did, she also knew that she’d be so mad at a cheating man that she wouldn’t be able to respect him much less love him even if she did snag his interest.

Doris June picked her purse up from under the seat in front of her.

The real problem was that even though the speculation had died down, the pity hadn’t gone away. During the year or so after Curt announced his marriage, the people of Dry Creek treated Doris June as if she was a recent widow. The more sympathy people gave her though the more irritated she got. Her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d thought it would, but she didn’t need a crowd of people around her reminding her of the fact. She could remember it very well on her own.

She would have stopped going to church when she visited Dry Creek those first years after Curt got married, except she refused to give people there anything else to say about her. She did stop going when she was at home in Anchorage, however. At first, she told herself that she was too tired on Sunday morning and she just needed a break until the busy times at work let up. Finally, when the pace at work slowed and she still didn’t want to go though, she faced the truth of it. She was mad at God. He had let her down and she didn’t know what to do about it.

She knew she couldn’t stop believing in Him; that would be like refusing to acknowledge that her mother was alive. She knew God existed; she had felt Him in her soul and there was no undoing that. She even continued to believe that He had some sort of a plan for her life. What she couldn’t believe any longer, however, was that He placed any value on her heart.

She felt betrayed. She had lived her life by His rules. She had honored the wishes of her parents when it came to leaving Curt. Honor thy father and thy mother, the Bible said, and she had done it. She had trusted that God would fix things if she kept her part of the bargain. After all, she knew her parents followed God’s ways as best as they could. They all prayed. They all believed. She’d had faith that God would work things out. She had been patient. And then—boom—Curt had married someone else. That’s when she knew she shouldn’t have listened to her parents or to God. They had all let her down.

Her heart was broken and it was because she had obeyed someone else’s rules.

Of course, she could not live her life with her face turned away from her parents any more than she could renounce God. She wished she could say she’d had an epiphany of understanding somewhere along the line and that she had forgiven God and her parents; but it wasn’t like that. Life had just inched up on her.

Her father had his first heart attack and Doris June had to stay in close contact with her parents, even if she wasn’t talking to God. Finally, she became tired of avoiding God, too. There was no undoing what had been done and she was the only one suffering. She missed going to church and talking to God in prayer, especially when she was worried about her father. She had no real choice but to return to God. It was a bitter decision, however, and the dryness never really left her heart.

Her struggle with God had been very private though. She didn’t want others to know how hard it had been for her. It was humiliating that she had cared so much about a man who had not cared enough about her to wait.

She might not have been able to live without talking to her parents and to God, but she could live without talking to Curt again.

Although, it wasn’t easy to keep anything from the people in Dry Creek. Many of them mourned with her over Curt and she knew it. Dry Creek was small enough that the loss of one was the loss of all, whether it was a house that burned down or a crop that was lost due to hail.

All the pity for her lost love became awkward, however.

Doris June wished there was a no-sympathy-needed card she could send to others to say that she was fine now and that, while she appreciated their sentiment, she didn’t need special treatment. Unfortunately, there was no such card. There also didn’t seem to be any time limit on the sympathy. People still treated her as if she had reason to be upset at any mention of Chicago or brides or weddings.

In fact, Doris June usually didn’t get a wedding invitation in the mail like everyone else. Instead, it would be delivered by hand to her mother with instructions to only give it to her if her mother thought she could handle it.

If there was any justice anywhere in the world, the people of Dry Creek would forget all about the day she and Curt had started to elope only to end up in the sheriff’s office with a bent fender on the Nelsons’ old field pickup and a swirl of angry parents buzzing around them.

Curt hadn’t even been going fast when he hit the signpost. Neither one of them knew there was a signpost there. They found out later that the highway maintenance crew had just come into Dry Creek the day before to put up the sign as a precaution.

Fortunately, the sheriff who had helped them that night had retired years ago, moving to Florida. He had been the only one to witness the tears she had cried when Curt, angry with his parents for what he saw as their interference, had stomped off and left her at the sheriff’s office alone to face the remaining questions about the accident. She didn’t want to ride back home with her parents and had asked a classmate to come and get her. That classmate had proved a poor choice and within days the story of how Curt had left Doris June sitting at the sheriff’s office was all over the school.

Doris June hoped the gossip about that day was dead and buried. Twenty-five years seemed long enough to make it a forgotten subject.

Besides, by now everyone in Dry Creek probably expected her to move back to help take care of her mother. They knew Doris June took her duties in life seriously and they would assume she would fulfill this one when the time came. Hopefully, she was old enough that people would no longer think she was interested in marriage.

Of course, Doris June didn’t exactly know what she would do with all her time if she did move back to Dry Creek. She had her master’s degree in business and was accustomed to the pace of a multimillion-dollar sales department; she could hardly spend her days doing nothing more than dicing vegetables and making soup.

Maybe she could start a small business helping people do their taxes or something. There were enough ranchers in the area to bring in a fair amount of that kind of business and Doris June thought she’d enjoy it. She’d grown up on a small ranch and would enjoy helping ranchers with their books. Maybe she could even offer them some suggestions to improve their operations.

The airplane was completely stopped and people were moving down the aisle to the exit by the time Doris June smoothed back her hair and stood up. She had looked in a mirror in Seattle so she knew she looked competent in her white blouse and navy pantsuit.

Doris June had never been able to get away with the breezy flyaway-hair look that was so popular. On other women, the style made them look like they were having spontaneous fun; on her it just made her look a little startled or a little sick or both.

It was a pity really, Doris June thought as she watched a young woman with that style look up to share a smile with the man beside her. Smiles like that never seemed to come to competent-looking women in suits.

Of course, Doris June reminded herself, she had had her wild romantic adventure when she was seventeen and look how it had turned out. It was a disaster. She wondered if that man smiling down at the young woman had any more staying power in him than Curt had had years ago.

The aisle was almost cleared by the time Doris June reached up and got her bag of puzzles from the overhead bin and then started walking toward the exit.

“Excuse me, miss,” someone said when she was halfway down the aisle.

Doris June looked down and saw a frail-looking older woman. “Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if your airline will give me my full frequent flyer miles since I started in Seattle.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not a flight attendant,” Doris June said as she looked down at her clothes. Maybe navy and white wasn’t the best thing to wear today. “There’s a flight attendant by the door as we leave though.”

Doris June offered a hand to the older woman to help her stand.

“Why, thank you, dear,” the woman said as she stood. “You’d make a lovely flight attendant, you know.”

Doris June smiled. There was nothing wrong with being seen as someone who helped others. She hoped her mother would be as grateful for a little assistance as this other older woman was.

Doris June knew where the luggage-claim area was and she knew the area outside the terminal doors where she always met her mother. Her mother had promised she would have someone come with her to the airport. Billings was too far away from Dry Creek for Doris June to feel comfortable with her mother making the trip alone, especially at night. With her possible confusion, she might take a wrong turn and get lost.

Not that Doris June would mind waiting for her mother, but she knew her mother would be distressed if she wasn’t at the airport when she had said she would be. Her mother liked to be very precise about things like that.

Doris June was surprised when her mother had quickly agreed to have someone come with her to the airport. It showed how fragile her mother had become. Usually, her mother insisted on doing everything herself.

Doris June stacked her two suitcases on a rolling cart and had them with her when she spotted her mother outside the terminal door. She walked through the wide door and hugged her mother.

Doris June tried to keep the anxiety out of her eyes as she gave her mother a once over. To her relief, her mother didn’t look like she’d lost weight and her eyes were clear of the confused look Doris June had feared she’d see. Maybe all of her worrying had been unnecessary, Doris June hoped.

“We’re parked in the lot over there.” Her mother pointed vaguely to the right as she seemed to develop a sudden fascination with Doris June’s suitcases. “That green’s a nice color. Easy to spot on the luggage carousel. They look heavy, but that won’t be a problem. Curt said he’d keep an eye out for us and bring the pickup around front when he sees you’ve come out of the airport.”

Doris June froze. Her mother knew that Curt was the last person Doris June ever wanted to see again. Her mother couldn’t have forgotten what had happened, could she?

Maybe her mother really was getting senile, Doris June thought as she looked up. She hadn’t really believed it was possible until now. But that was the Nelson pickup all right. She recognized it because it was what Charley always drove to church when Doris June visited Dry Creek. Curt never came on those days. Doris June felt they had a truce of sorts. She avoided him and he avoided her. He would never violate that by expecting her to ride with him from Billings to Dry Creek. Her mother must be wrong. “Don’t you mean it’s Charley who came with you?”

“Oh, no, dear. Charley doesn’t drive long distances anymore. The road from his ranch to Dry Creek is as far as he usually goes.”

It was a warm spring night, but Doris June felt cold.

“Isn’t Charley’s grandson—what’s his name? Ben—isn’t he about the age when he can drive?”

The pickup was turning into the lane and making its way toward them.

“Ben’s only got his learner’s permit.”

The pickup was still coming toward them. “Maybe I could find a cab.”

“Don’t be silly,” her mother said as she waved at the pickup. “That would cost a fortune.”

Doris June nodded. She needed to think more logically. There was a solution. “I could get a rental car though.”

A car passed the pickup and the light from its headlights let Doris June see through the windshield of the pickup. She could tell it was Curt at the wheel. She hadn’t seen the man for twenty-five years, but she’d know his face in her sleep. Not that she ever saw him in her dreams, of course. She might have glimpsed him a time or two in her nightmares, but that was all. She was completely over him.

Curt wished he was anyone else. It might be night out, but Doris June was standing under a security light and he saw the dismay on her face before she turned to say something to her mother. She had obviously just heard who had driven her mother to the airport to pick her up. When you’ve been childhood playmates with someone, you learn to read their body language. And Doris June was holding herself so stiff she looked like she would break.

It was because of this very thing that he’d asked Mrs. Hargrove to take his pickup and go to Billings. Mrs. Hargrove had been a rancher’s wife and Curt had been sure the older woman would remember how to drive a pickup with a stick shift, but she had looked so confused when she asked which pedal was the clutch that he hadn’t dared encourage her to drive. He’d gone over to the café and offered to pay Linda and tend her place in her absence if she would only drive in with Mrs. Hargrove for him. Linda had shown little remorse as she let him down, even when he offered to sweeten the deal with an extra fifty-dollar bill.

So here he was pulling up to the curb beside Doris June and her suitcases. She had changed since the last time he’d stopped to pick her up twenty-five years ago. Back then, she’d thrown an old flowered duffel bag in the back and given him a knee-bending kiss before climbing into the passenger side of the old Ford pickup his father used to have for hauling small amounts of feed around.

Curt had been granted the use of that pickup when he turned sixteen and he had planned to drive it to Las Vegas with no hesitation. As he recalled, he hadn’t even known the thing had no insurance. Not that something like that would have stopped him and Doris June back then. They were in love and impatient to be married. Practical concerns like insurance and finishing high school hadn’t entered into their minds.

Curt could still remember the intensity of the feeling though it had been twenty-five years ago. The only time he had come close to that overwhelming feeling of love was the first time he’d held his son in his arms.

Curt couldn’t help but wonder if Doris June remembered the feeling like he did. He swore they could have lived on that feeling for the rest of their lives if things hadn’t gone so bad so fast.

After he’d hit the stop sign while trying to steal another kiss from Doris June, everything had changed. The only part of it that he had ever been able to make right was to pay for the repairs to the fender of his dad’s pickup. He had sent the money home from the first pay he had received in the army. He knew his father might not use the money to fix the fender, but Curt felt good knowing he had paid for it anyway. He only wished the other problems of that accident had been as easy to resolve.

“Curt was kind enough to drive me in to get you,” Mrs. Hargrove chirped as Curt stepped down from the cab of the pickup and walked around the front of his vehicle. He wondered what made the older woman try so hard to be cheerful. The Mrs. Hargrove he knew never put on an act and he couldn’t help feeling that her upbeat voice was forced.

“I could have rented a car at the airport,” Doris June said stiffly. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to bother.”

“It was no bother.” Torture maybe, Curt thought, but bother? No.

If it was just him and Doris June in the pickup, Curt would have used the darkness of this ride to tell her that he was a hundred kinds of sorry. But, as sorry as he was, he wasn’t about to bare his soul in front of Mrs. Hargrove. A man had to have some dignity.

Mrs. Hargrove had about run out of things to say and the pickup hadn’t even passed the sign that signaled the exit from the airport. It was a bonus that the pickup only had the one seat and Doris June was forced to sit between her and Curt, but Mrs. Hargrove did admit that it made the conversation somewhat strained as Doris June insisted on looking straight ahead. On her lap, Doris June kept the large shopping bag that she’d carried off the plane, so it was almost impossible for Mrs. Hargrove to look over and see Curt’s face.

Charley would have been much better at this part of it, Mrs. Hargrove fretted as she remarked for the second time that the night was unusually dark and that it looked like the moon was covered with clouds so maybe it would rain tomorrow. Unfortunately, Charley was back at his ranch playing a board game with his grandson and so the conversation fell to Mrs. Hargrove.

Mrs. Hargrove was never one to shirk her duty, no matter how unpleasant, but it was very difficult to keep a conversation going all by herself. If it wasn’t so important to set the tone for Doris June’s visit home, she would have been content to let her daughter and Curt sit there without a friendly word between them.

“Curt has been helping me with the pansies,” Mrs. Hargrove finally said. “I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

“It’s no problem,” Curt mumbled.

“I wish you would have let me come earlier,” Doris June said with a quick smile to her mother. “I’m happy to help you with whatever you need.”

Mrs. Hargrove nodded and patted her daughter’s arm. “And I appreciate it. You’re good to me.”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to handle the pansies,” Doris June said. “Curt probably has other work he needs to do this time of the year.”

“I’m not that busy,” Curt said.

“Yes, but—” Doris June began.

“The pansies are too heavy,” Curt added. “We’re going to be digging them up and putting them in my wheelbarrow before taking them into the old house to put in baskets.”

“But they’re only flowers,” Doris June protested. “How heavy can they be?”

Curt grunted. “I’d never hear the end of it from my father if I let the two of you dig up those pansies and pack the baskets by yourselves.”

“Well, we will pay you then,” Doris June said crisply. “Let us know your rate.”

“I don’t have a rate. The baskets are for the church. And for Mother’s Day! You don’t think I’d take money for doing something like that, do you?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Hargrove said hastily. She had tried to let the two of them handle the conversation, but they seemed determined to bury it. “And we appreciate it. Don’t we Doris June?”

Doris June murmured something that could be an agreement.

Mrs. Hargrove couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Everyone was silent. The only sound was the pickup engine as it kept humming along.

Doris June tried very hard not to move. She had worn the navy slacks that went with her suit, but the material didn’t seem heavy enough when her leg was pressed against Curt’s leg. It had been years since Doris June had ridden in the middle place in a pickup and she had forgotten how the gears forced the person in that position to lean their leg against the driver’s leg. She could almost feel the texture of the denim of Curt’s jeans.

Doris June used to love to ride this close to Curt. Back then, she’d snuggled even closer to him although there was no one sitting on the other side of her like her mother was tonight. For the first time that evening, Doris June found something for which to be grateful. She was glad her mother hadn’t just sent Curt in alone to get her from the airport. She wouldn’t have had a clue what to say to him if they had been alone.

Doris June hoped the darkness inside the pickup cab hid the flush to her face. She was a highly paid professional; she shouldn’t be caught in situations like this, stuck where she didn’t want to be. She had a feeling it was going to be a long time until the baskets were ready for Mother’s Day.