When the door slammed behind Hank, the starch went out of Bing. She slumped back in her chair and let her arms fall limply to her sides. Johnny stood halfway between her and the door, at a loss. Should he try to follow Hank? Stay here with Bing?
“I couldn’t lie to him. Too many people have been lying to him.” Her midnight-black eyes glittered with tears and anger. “I can’t believe Gil did this to him. He was Hank’s sponsor. The person who sees every square inch of your guts and soul. And he came there, put himself in that position, knowing this.” She heaved to her feet and paced over to the window, cupping her hand against the glass to peer outside. “Hank didn’t take the pickup. Where will he go?”
“I don’t know.” Then he thought again. Whenever Hank was in trouble or upset, he would disappear, sometimes for hours. Naturally, it was Melanie who’d discovered his hideout. Johnny calculated his own fatigue, the low throb in his shoulder, and added in the possibility that he was the last person Hank wanted to see. “I’ll go talk to him.”
Bing’s expression did not convey overwhelming confidence.
“I won’t criticize, and I will not try to father him. But for once in his life, I would like to at least show up. So…please?”
She gave it a painful amount of thought before bowing her head. “You can’t do much worse than me.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
His attempt at a joke limped away unnoticed. Bing looked so drained—as if she’d had her emotions bottled up all day, and someone had pulled the stopper. Impulsively, he slid his arm around her and tucked her face into the curve of his good shoulder. Her hair tickled between the fingers that cupped the back of her head, and he was drenched in her tropical-night scent.
She was so warm. And so—
She pulled away, a flush rising in her cheeks. “Go. I’ll make coffee or something.”
And he had to concentrate on his son. Johnny grabbed a flashlight and tucked it in his coat pocket. If he was right about where Hank had gone—
As he stepped outside, a blur of white emerged from the lean-to alongside the barn that acted as a hay shed. Spider. Bingo! “Down,” he said quietly.
She plopped onto her butt. Close enough. He rubbed her head in approval, then made his way to the hay shed with the dog dancing circles around him. Like most everything else, the design hadn’t worked out quite like he’d planned. The roof was too low to stack bales with the tractor, so the work had to be done by hand, and the lean-to held more than he needed, so he never dragged the bales all the way to the back to begin the stack. Instead, he started flush against the inside wall and ended up with a gap along the outside—a narrow passage that led to what had been Hank’s hideaway.
Johnny clicked on the light and turned sideways to ease alongside the stack. When he stepped into the arm’s-width space at the rear, he found Hank sitting on a hay bale with Mabel curled beside him, her head in his lap. He didn’t blink, or speak, or acknowledge Johnny’s arrival in any way. Only the fingers that rubbed slow circles in the dog’s ruff moved.
Setting the flashlight shiny end down, Johnny lowered himself onto another bale. The shadows and the scent of cured alfalfa wrapped around him—warm, safe, and a million miles removed from the outside world.
“I see why you come in here,” he said.
“I didn’t think you knew about it.”
Whew. He’d expected to be met with stony silence. “Melanie told me when she left for college, in case I needed to find you.” He hesitated, then said. “Your sister always was good at keeping your secrets.”
Hank made a harsh noise. “Yeah, from me.”
Spider nudged a cold nose into Johnny’s palm, her eyes wide and earnest in her black mask. He scratched her ear, and her whole body waggled with delight. “Finding out about this baby…it’s a helluva thing.”
“You would know.”
Johnny laughed, a low huh. “Lord. When your mother told me she was pregnant…well, I’m not proud of how I reacted. I was twenty years old and barely scraping together enough winnings to stay on the road. And then a baby?”
“Twenty?” Hank repeated. “But…that would’ve been Melanie.”
“Yeah. All I could think was that a baby would ruin everything…gobble up energy and money, screw with my focus. But your mom swore she’d make it all okay.” He combed his fingers over the dog’s head, and they both sighed. “That’s what she did back then. Make everything okay so all I had to do was rope.”
Hay rustled as Hank shifted on his bale. “You didn’t want Melanie?”
“I know. It sounds terrible.” Johnny angled him a sheepish look. “I would, um, appreciate it if you didn’t tell her.”
“But she was your little buckaroo.”
Johnny hitched his good shoulder. “She had to be. It was just the three of us in a pickup and trailer, pounding up and down the road. You had a swing set and a tricycle. Melanie had a rope and a dummy and got to ride around on my horse. It was just lucky she took to it, or we would’ve had to pawn her off on her grandparents.”
“You would have done that?”
“In a heartbeat.” Johnny ran his fingertip up the white strip between the two halves of Spider’s black mask. Unable to really see or be seen, the words spilled out like he was in a confessional. “I was an addict. So was your mother. And there isn’t a weekly meeting of Rodeo Anonymous, so when we had to go cold turkey, it got ugly in a hurry.”
“And then I came along and made it even worse.”
“That was impossible.” Johnny rubbed behind Spider’s downy soft ear. “Yes, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe your mother had let it happen. But then…” He trailed off, reliving his foolishness. “I thought you might bring us back together.”
“Wrong,” Hank said flatly.
“Yeah. And oddly enough, having another baby didn’t magically turn us into decent parents, either.”
They sat and listened to the hiss of the breeze around the corner of the barn and the occasional snuffle or groan from one of the dogs as Spider and Mabel reveled in the unexpected attention.
“Melanie told me you’d found yourself another Miz Iris,” Johnny said.
Hank gave a pfft! “If Miz Iris joined a motorcycle gang and got herself a set of brass knuckles.”
“Bing is a tough lady.” But also soft. And she smelled really good. And she couldn’t be more off-limits. Johnny pushed his attention back to the person who needed it most. “She would do almost anything to protect you.”
“Even lie?”
“If she thought it was best. But it would have damn near killed her.” And thank God no one had forced her to make the choice. Johnny tried for a lighter tone. “I suppose she told you about scaring the spit out of me.”
Hank smiled slightly. “I wouldn’t have minded being a fly on the wall.”
“I may have screamed,” Johnny admitted.
There was a weighty pause. Then Hank said, “I’m glad she had the company.”
They went quiet again, and Mabel sat up to stick a concerned nose in Hank’s face. Rather than pushing her away, he wrapped both arms around her. In a blink he was a boy again, hiding out and telling his troubles to his dog. Even his voice sounded younger and a little scared when he said, “I have a daughter.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that.”
Neither did Johnny, to be honest, and the baby wasn’t even the half of it. The more he thought about it, the deeper the chill struck in his chest. Every one of them—Gil, Melanie, Wyatt, possibly even Grace—had known how much this would hurt, but they’d done it anyway, because they were convinced that Hank had to be protected…from himself.
And that scared the ever-loving shit out of Johnny, but he couldn’t very well look at his son and say, Please don’t stop breathing.
He braced a hand on his knee and carefully pushed to his feet. He was exhausted, and they had reached what the ag consultants called the point of diminishing returns. He’d contributed his two cents. Anything more would be a waste, at best.
“You’ve got time. Hell, it’s waited this long.” He fended off a face lick from Spider as he bent to pick up the flashlight. “Come on inside. We’ll have coffee and caramel rolls and turn on a football game.”
He’d worked his way nearly to the front of the hay shed when a quiet voice said, “Thanks, Dad.”
* * *
For obvious reasons Hank couldn’t go back to the apartment, so he squared his shoulders and headed down the hall to his former room. Every day, he’d told himself he should go through his old stuff and see what was worth keeping, but he’d kept finding excuses to put it off.
Number one being that he’d rather not have a staring contest with his past.
He pushed the door open and switched on the light. It was exactly as he’d left it, right down to the dirty T-shirt he’d yanked off and hurled into the corner that last day. They’d just finished gathering the stocker calves to haul to the sale, the reason his mother had made an appearance. She always showed up when there was a check coming in, to make sure she got her cut.
As usual, everything had taken twice as long as it should, and Hank had had to beg off staying to load the trucks because he was working an evening performance down in Paducah.
Predictably, his dad had blown a fuse. “If you’re gone to a rodeo every time I need help, you’re no damn good to me!”
And his mom had yelled, “Fine, we just won’t come back!”
“Good! I don’t need any dead weight around here.” Johnny had slammed out the back door.
She’d slammed into their bedroom to fling clothes into a suitcase.
And Hank had been left standing there wondering what the hell had just happened. He and his dad had been having some variation of this fight since the first time Hank went on the road with Jacobs Livestock. They’d always gotten past it before. Hank would work it out with Cole so he could be home for branding, and a few days here and there to catch up on other stuff. Despite the huffing and the muttering, Johnny would be damn glad for the extra hand.
Now he was dead weight?
And since when did his mother give a damn what he did, let alone speak for him? Eventually, he’d realized that she’d already had her mind made up to leave, but why take the blame when she could make his dad out to be the bad guy one last time?
Hank had let the angry words burrow under his skin and fester, though, using them as an excuse to stay away all summer and fall. Then he’d gotten the bright idea to come home for Thanksgiving, somehow thinking the holiday would make it all right.
Wrong. First came the shouting match with his dad at the café. Then he’d gone off to Canyon to lick his wounds at Korby’s place. And then he’d run into Grace.
And now they had a baby. Somewhere. Christ.
He forced his gaze to circle walls that were plastered with memorabilia. Posters from the rodeos he’d intended to work someday—all the big Texas shows, plus the Cheyenne Frontier Days, Red Bluff Roundup, La Fiesta de los Vaqueros. Action shots of some of the baddest bulls ever, and autographed photos of legendary bullfighters like Miles Hare, Loyd Ketchum, and Rob Smets.
And there were pictures of Hank. He could still feel the nerves jumping in his gut that night at Goodwell—but it didn’t show as he crouched eye to eye with Dirt Eater, a hand on the bull’s nose as Korby scrambled safely away. Did Grace still have the autographed picture he’d given her?
Grace. Shit.
Everything inside him twisted. Half of him wanted to scream at her. The other kept seeing her as she’d stood there tonight—so scared, so vulnerable—and could barely stand to think how much worse it must have been. She’d had a baby. Alone.
Well, almost alone. Wyatt must have been there. Shit. Had that bastard held Grace’s hand while she had Hank’s baby?
He focused on the picture of Joe that had hung above his bed since Hank was thirteen. Right next to that was the only empty space, framed by yellowed tape marks, where a matching picture of Wyatt Darrington had once hung. Hank had torn it down the day after Joe Cassidy married his sister’s best friend, after he—and everyone else at the wedding reception—had clearly seen that the airplane and the fast cars, the fame and the fancy clothes weren’t enough for a super-cool super-stud like Wyatt. He had to have the best and the brightest, so of course he’d wanted Melanie.
It had taken five years, but he finally had her. And Hank had a room wallpapered with wasted dreams. He stared at that dusty, blank space and wished with all his heart that the picture was still there so he could tear it up again.
There was no way he could sleep in here.
He dragged the comforter and a pillow off the bed, then dug in a drawer for sweatpants and a T-shirt. Bing came out of the hall bathroom as he hauled everything out and shut the door. Her eyebrows rose a fraction, but she didn’t ask questions. She hadn’t asked anything since he came in the house, just walked into his arms and held on as he hugged her tight.
The door to his dad’s room opened. He held out a prescription bottle. “Could one of you open this for me?”
Hank’s arms were full, so Bing took the bottle. “How many?”
“One.”
She tapped a single tablet onto her palm. He took the pill and set it on his dresser.
“In case I need it later.” When Bing tried to hand him the bottle, he shook his head. “Tuck that under your pillow. Maybe it’ll help you sleep.”
After he shut the door, Bing curled her fingers around the bottle and clasped it to her chest. “He’s not a complete loss.”
Hank smiled wryly. “Like father, like son.”
And for tonight, not a complete loss was the best any of them could claim.