CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“WHAT TIME IS your flight to Denver tomorrow?” Twyla asked as Rob unloaded her bags from the car. He tried to read between her words. Was she really asking about his itinerary, or was she wondering if he wanted to see her again? Damn, he’d made a mess of this.

“Around eleven in the morning,” he said, keeping his back to her. The day had gone from bad to worse. Or, depending on how he looked at it, from good to incredible. Twyla was great. Sex with her was great. But so, so wrong. He had a girlfriend, for Chrissake. He had to get the hell out of here and back to the real world.

He thought he and Lauren had an understanding. A solid relationship, one that stood a good chance of becoming permanent. But maybe deep down, he didn’t actually want that. Maybe he didn’t want anything to be permanent, because life hadn’t prepared him for that.

Excuses, he told himself. Lame excuses. The truth was, he had lost all control last night. And this morning. Twyla was everything he told himself he didn’t want, yet she was all he wanted. Maybe she was a temporary madness. He sure as hell hoped so. He had to get away, find some perspective, regain his sanity, reclaim his life in Denver.

Lauren would never find out. He’d never done anything remotely like this. Never thought he was even capable of cheating. Never intended to do it again. Even so, everything had changed, and the hell of it was, she didn’t even know. Yet.

He hadn’t told Twyla about Lauren. He hadn’t seen the point, because the reunion thing was supposed to be a ruse, a lark. And now it was too late. If he said anything at this point, she’d be hurt that he’d deceived her. The best thing to do was to get back to Denver and forget this whole thing happened.

They hadn’t talked about it on the plane. The flight had been full, and conversations carried weirdly on airplanes, so they had made small talk. A couple of times, she had touched his arm, his leg, quite naturally, as if he were a familiar and comfortable presence.

Despite his resolve to move on, there was a part of him—a big part—that didn’t want to. Why was letting go so damned hard? he asked himself, carrying her bags up to the sorry-ass house she lived in. Why couldn’t he just walk away, forget about her?

When he stepped on the top step to the porch, the riser collapsed. He dropped the bags and found himself sunk to the thigh in rotten wood.

“Rob!” Twyla rushed to his side. “Did you hurt yourself?”

He shook his head, extracting himself from the gaping hole. “I’m okay. That step’s a doozy, though.”

Gwen and Brian came to the door. Dinner smells wafted out through the screen. Feeling stupid, Rob brushed off his jeans.

“I’m so sorry,” Twyla said, blushing. “I’ve been meaning to get that step fixed.”

He forced a smile. “You’ve got no choice now.” Patting Brian on the shoulder, he said, “Hey, you. I bet you know where I can find some tools.”

“You bet, Rob,” the kid said, and led him to the shed behind the house.

* * *

TWYLA CAUGHT HERSELF chopping basil to the rhythm of Rob’s pounding on the porch outside. She smiled, enjoying the sense of busy purpose that the hammering and sawing seemed to lend to the atmosphere around the place.

Then she felt her mother’s stare. She could always tell when her mother was looking at her. She felt a prickle of awareness, and when she looked up, Gwen stood leaning against the kitchen counter, studying her.

“What?” Twyla asked.

“You know what. Spill.”

“Mom, I told you everything.” Twyla attacked the basil with new vigor, frowning down at the cutting board. “We had a great time, everything went better than I thought it would.” She stopped working to enumerate with her fingers as she spoke. “Darlene Poole and Tommy Lindstrom have four kids, Sandra Jaffe’s been saved, Harold Fox is an alcoholic, I saw Jake, and the world didn’t come to an end.”

“That’s not everything,” Gwen insisted, giving the spaghetti sauce a brisk stir. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Sure I like him.” She scraped the basil onto a plate of sliced tomatoes, then concentrated on drizzling olive oil over them. “What’s not to like? He was a good sport about the whole thing, he impressed the pants off the whole town of Hell Creek, and now he’s keeping my son company and fixing my front porch. Can you blame me for liking him?”

“I mean you really like him. In the romantic sense.”

Twyla put the plate of sliced tomatoes in the fridge. “Slow down, Mom,” she said, even as a warm rush of emotion flowed through her. “I’ve only known him a couple of days.”

“Sometimes a couple of days is all it takes. Especially when you’re made for each other.”

Twyla thought of the first time she had met Jake. Three years her senior, he’d been in front of her in the lunch line at school and had come up a dollar short. Twyla had lent him the money. He’d promised to pay her back and had asked her out that weekend. She’d been so flattered by his attention, she’d hardly noticed that he never did pay her back that dollar. Odd. It had been a sign, and she’d ignored it. A single dollar might have saved her years of heartbreak.

She went to the front door to see how the work was coming. Rob and Brian had dragged a pair of sawhorses and a stack of weathered lumber out of the shed. Rob wore an old baseball cap. Tools that couldn’t possibly have been used in decades lay strewn in the yard or dangled from the stiff tool belt he wore slung around his waist. He handed Brian the end of a tape measure, and with the deep absorption of a pair of brain surgeons, they marked off a plank for sawing. The picture they made, the large man and the small boy working together, caused Twyla’s throat to constrict.

Rob finished sawing and took off his baseball cap. Then, saying something to Brian, he peeled off his golf shirt and slung it over the porch rail. Watching him closely, Brian did exactly the same, slinging his Godzilla T-shirt over the rail, as well.

“Now, there’s a sight we don’t see around here too often,” Gwen commented, joining her in the vestibule.

Flushed and dry-mouthed from the sight of Rob’s muscular, athletic body, Twyla hurried back into the kitchen. “I think I’ll make a pitcher of lemonade.”

Gwen followed her, fetching a mesh bag of lemons while Twyla got out the wooden hand juicer. “I wonder why the steps waited until today to collapse. I guess everything happens for a reason, even your date this weekend.”

“This weekend happened because you Quilt Quorum ladies can’t seem to mind your own business.”

“It all worked out for the best. You went back home with your head held high, and got yourself a new beau in the process.”

“Now, wait a minute. No one said anything about a beau.” She went to the sink and rinsed her hands, drying them on a tea towel. “I don’t want to hear another word about a beau. He’s going back to Denver and we won’t be seeing each other again.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s the way things are, Mom. My life is here. His is there.” She took out a sharp knife and started cutting the lemons in half.

“Does it have to be that way?”

Twyla hesitated, setting down the knife. “You tell me, Mom.”

Gwen pressed her lips together, her expression pained. “Twyla, I’m so sorry. I’m so ashamed of my—this—illness.”

“Mom, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” This was a familiar topic, but today Twyla felt more urgency than usual. “You’re a beautiful woman. Youthful and full of energy. But if you won’t leave the house, life will pass you by.”

“We’ve been over this so many times.” Gwen turned a lemon half on the juicer. “Lately Brian’s starting to ask why I never go anywhere. I want to get better, but I just panic. Even thinking about it makes me panic.”

Twyla felt a lump rise in her throat. Her mother’s strange affliction frustrated her, angered her, but mostly it made her sad. What must her mother have been thinking, looking out the window of their trailer that day and seeing her husband crash his plane into the sheer rock face of Lost Horse Mountain? How could Twyla convince her that it was safe to live again?

“Dear God,” Gwen said, “it’s me, isn’t it? I’m the reason you won’t get on with your life, try to find love again—”

“No, Mama, don’t be ridiculous.”

“And don’t you be a martyr to my problems. Tell you what,” Gwen said, industriously squeezing more lemon halves with the juicer. “I still have that card your friend Sadie gave me—the one with the number of the anxiety disorder specialist in Casper. And I still have the pills they gave me last time I tried to snap out of it.”

Twyla felt a dawning of hope. “Why the sudden change of heart, Mama?”

“Because I saw the way you were looking at Rob Carter just now. And it was the way I used to look at your father.”

“And how is that?”

“Like you’d follow him anywhere. I want you to be free to do that, Twyla. Follow a man anywhere.”

“That’s not freedom,” she objected. “I tried that with Jake, and he led me to my own ruin, practically.”

“This one is different. You know he is.”

They poured the lemon juice with ice and the sugar syrup into a pitcher. “It doesn’t matter, Mom. This was a weekend thing. He’s out of here tomorrow, and I won’t be seeing him again.”

While Gwen drained the pasta, Twyla went out on the porch. With a grin of triumph, Brian held something aloft, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “Mom, look! Rob pulled my loose tooth.”

“How about that?” She held out her hand and he dropped the tiny tooth in her palm, then pulled back his lip to show her the gap. “You’ve never let anyone pull a tooth,” she said.

“I used a clean handkerchief,” Rob said hastily. His bare chest and shoulders gleamed with sweat.

“It didn’t hurt one bit,” Brian declared.

She put the tooth in her pocket. Brian wasn’t a coward, but he’d never let her get near him, even when a loose tooth was hanging by a thread. He was a different kid with Rob—more confident, more…himself, perhaps. Don’t get used to him, Brian, she wanted to warn her son. Don’t start needing him.

“You two had better get washed up,” she said, chiding herself for wishful thinking. “Supper’s ready.”

“Man, I could eat a horse,” Brian said. He seemed to be making a special effort to deepen his voice. Nothing like a set of tools to raise the testosterone level.

“Show Rob where the powder room is,” Twyla said.

“Not the powder room,” Brian said impatiently. “The can.”

Ducking her head to hide a smile, she went in to get supper on the table.

* * *

“ROB,” TWYLA SAID, looking across the dining room table at him, “I can’t thank you enough for fixing the step.”

“It’s the least I can do, since I’m the one who put my foot through it.” Both Rob and Brian had shown up at the dinner table with hats removed, hair combed and hands washed. He helped himself to a slice of warm bread and added more pasta to his plate. “If this is the thanks I get, I’ll stomp holes in the back steps, too. This is delicious.”

Both Twyla and Gwen beamed. It was a family trait that they loved to feed people who appreciated being fed. To Twyla’s amusement, she saw that Brian kept emulating everything Rob did, from the way he buttered his bread to the way he twirled his spaghetti. Yet even as she hid a furtive smile, she felt a now-familiar tightness in her chest. Her son was growing up without a father. It was not such a rare thing these days, but there was a special energy between a small boy and a man that she couldn’t supply, no matter how hard she tried.

Did she want Rob because Brian was smitten with him, or because he made her laugh, or because when they were making love, he made her feel like a goddess? All of the above, she decided.

Her mother was her usual charming self during dinner. Rob listened with polite interest as she chatted on about the Quilt Quorum, the books on Brian’s summer reading list, a pro golf tournament she’d seen on TV.

The four of them ate and talked as if they had known one another forever, and there was a delightful ease between them, no strain or awkward tension. Because, she supposed, there were no expectations on either side. On the few occasions she had tried dating, the strain had been there, palpable, because an invisible weight of anticipation pressed on the shoulders of these reluctant suitors. Rob wasn’t a suitor. He wasn’t anything. She knew she should take comfort in that, but instead, the thought of it made her unaccountably glum.

Rob took a last swig of lemonade and carried his dessert plate to the sink. “Ladies, I can’t thank you enough for the home cooking,” he said.

“You already have,” Gwen assured him. “Those steps have been a hazard for years.” She stood to clear the table. “Brian, I’m going to need help with the dishes tonight.”

“Aw, Grammy—”

“And then I’ll need help popping the popcorn before the Sunday-night movie.”

He dragged a step stool over to the sink.

“Good night, Gwen, Brian,” said Rob, taking his hat from his back pocket. “I’ll be back in the morning to finish up.”

Twyla followed him outside, down the new steps into the yard. “You’re not finished?”

He turned, propping one hip on a sawhorse. His eyes never left her. “Not even close to finished.” Then he blinked as if he’d been disoriented. The steps are done, but you need a railing.”

“I’ve never had a railing here. I think it fell off before I bought the place.”

“Probably violates some building code. I might as well do it right, Twyla, okay? Humor me. I don’t get to work with my hands too often.”

Everything he said seemed to have a double meaning. Everything reminded her of last night.

“Okay, so we need a railing,” she said.

“I’d hate to think of your mom losing her footing.”

Twyla hesitated, then lowered her voice and said, “She never comes down the stairs.” Catching the expression on his face, she said, “I’m not kidding, Rob.”

He held out his hand. “Come here. Walk with me.”

It felt good to touch him again, even if it was just holding hands. They headed down the slope to where his car was parked and stood together in the yard, watching the evening breeze stir the tire swing in the big oak tree.

“I know what you’re probably thinking about my mother,” Twyla said. “Everyone considers her a charming, bright lady, a good talker and a clear thinker. That’s why her agoraphobia is so strange, and so devastating. Everyone thinks that surely she’s not the sort of person who could be afflicted with some weird psychosis.”

“That’s more or less what I was thinking,” he admitted. “I did a psych rotation in med school. Anxiety disorders are pretty common, and your mother fits the profile. You probably know more about this than I do at this point, but I want you to know, it’s treatable.”

“I know that. So does Mom.” She shivered as the breeze drifted over her bare arms.

“Cold?”

“No, not really.” She strolled over to the swing and sat down. “Mom keeps saying she wants to seek treatment. She has some pills from our family practitioner, but I can’t force her to take them.”

Over at the house, a light came on in the window. In the gathering darkness, the place didn’t look so bad. You couldn’t see the peeling paint and warped boards. It appeared cozy and inviting. No one would ever guess that for Gwen McCabe, it was a prison.

“Maybe one reason this problem has gone on so long is that Mom is so rational, so grounded, that her illness doesn’t seem real,” Twyla continued. Other than Sadie, Rob was the only person she’d ever felt like discussing this with.

“At first everyone simply called her a homebody. People came to see her rather than vice versa, and they phoned her. There didn’t seem to be anything strange about a middle-aged woman who stuck close to home. Sometimes I wonder if I inadvertently contributed to the problem.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I expected her to be there for Brian while I worked at the salon. It’s been the ideal arrangement. I’ve always been grateful to her for staying home, supporting me, having supper on the table after a long day. I praised her for being so available, the model grandma. It’s no joke that I’m the envy of the town’s working mothers because of Mom.”

She touched her foot to the ground to set the swing into slow motion. “Home cooking, homebody, stay-at-home mom, homemaker. The messages are everywhere, ever notice that?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither, until it became clear Mom had this problem. But society promotes the idea. It’s considered virtuous for a woman to stay home. On some level, Mom took this to the extreme. Now it’s gone on so long, I don’t know if she can jolt herself out of it.”

She kept the swing in motion, and somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. “Whew,” she said. “And you thought this was going to be your day of rest.”

“What do you mean?”

“First you had to fix the porch, and now you’re having to be my therapist. I’m not usually such a wreck, honest.”

“You’re not a wreck.” He took a step toward her. “And you’re not finished. You never explained how this problem started.”

Twyla bit her lip, but she knew she’d tell him. He was so easy to talk to. She had never known a man whose silent, solid presence she could trust, yet she trusted Rob. “It started when my father died.”

The words hung in the air for a moment, and he said nothing, seeming to sense that she had to say more. “The lawsuit—the one Jake’s firm brought against him—wasn’t going well. Dad had borrowed way beyond his limit, and the only things he had of value were a policy on his crop duster and his life insurance.”

“Aw, damn, Twyla—”

When he spoke those words, she knew he’d figured out the truth. She stared at the ground, her chest tight with a grief that, at moments like this, felt as fresh and sharp as the day of his death.

“I don’t think he really meant to be so dramatic about it. He knew he was headed for bankruptcy because of the lawsuit. He saw a way to leave Mom with something before they took it all away.” She swallowed hard, trying to collect her thoughts. “What he didn’t realize is that he was all she needed. Not success or money or fine things.”

She looked into Rob’s face. “How could he have been so stupid?”

“Um, men get that way sometimes.”

She nodded, not about to disagree with him. “My father probably never even thought about the fact that Mom could see Lost Horse Mountain from the little window over her kitchen sink. She saw the accident, standing there, doing the breakfast dishes. I can’t imagine what that was like for her, watching him crash into the mountain while she’s washing his coffee cup.”

He took hold of the swing to stop its motion, then cradled her face between his hands. “Twyla, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“It was pretty awful, but it was ruled an accident, which is what he planned, I think. There’s a scar on the side of Lost Horse Mountain that marks his passing. The policy settled his debts and gave Mom and me a way to get out of Hell Creek.”

She felt his thumb skim over the ridge of her cheekbone, catching a tear and brushing it aside. “Thank God we were able to leave. Because everyone knew it was no accident. The talk was making me crazy.”

“That’s the real reason you didn’t want to go back, isn’t it?”

“It’s the main reason. But it’s been a long time. People found something else to talk about, and I managed to quit feeling responsible for everything that happened.” She reached up and took his hands from her face, holding them in hers. “I never thanked you for what you did. For taking me to the reunion, pretending I’d actually found some big important doctor to marry me. It meant a lot to me, Rob. Really.”

“Twyla, I said I wasn’t finished—”

“I know, we need a stair rail.” She took her hands from his and stood, walking toward his car. “Can you finish in time for your flight tomorrow?”

“Reilly’s opens early. I’ll need to pick up some things, and then I’ll be out here around eight.”

“I’m afraid I’ll already be at the salon. I like to get in early for the bookwork, and on Monday I do volunteer work. Brian’ll be at school—it’s the last week before summer vacation.” She managed to smile. “Mom’ll be here, though. You can count on that.”

She stopped at the driver’s door of the car. This was the best way to say goodbye, she told herself. Lingering and trying to make things last would simply prolong the inevitable. She rose up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, keeping it brief even though she wanted to press her skin against his, to inhale that scent of expensive aftershave and honest sweat, to touch her lips to his—No. Time to step back into the real world.

“Thanks again, Rob,” she said, her voice quavering only the slightest bit.

When she tried to move away from the car, he blocked her, his arm coming up and planting itself against the roof. “Twyla,” he said, “about last night…”

She put two fingers gently against his mouth. “Hey, last night can mean…whatever you want it to mean.”

“Why don’t you ask me?”

Because I’m afraid to hear the answer.

“I don’t think you’ve decided yet.”

“Have you?” he asked.

She thought for a moment. “Nope. But when I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.” She took a firm grip on his arm and moved it out of the way. “I’d better go inside, Rob. Good night. And thanks again.”

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked toward the house, but she didn’t turn. She wondered if he knew she lied. She knew exactly what last night meant to her.

Now she just had to think up what she was going to say to Mrs. Duckworth and Mrs. Spinelli.