Because he hated office work, he had asked Laurie to help him, and she gradually took over responsibility for the accounting that he was supposed to do. They’d both been surprised-and pleased-to discover she had an aptitude for it, and even though she complained about doing it, Hugh-Jay thought she took pride in being better at it than he was. He’d been proud of her, too, and relieved to let go of a job he knew he’d botch. He’d looked forward to telling his father that he and Laurie were a team now. He hadn’t anticipated that she’d find a way to siphon a few dollars here and there for herself.
That came as an awful shock.
Hugh-Jay had felt sick to his stomach ever since he realized the truth.
He’d raised the subject, ever so delicately-he thought-two days ago, and Laurie had gone through the roof, accusing him of “calling me a thief!” He knew their fight was part of the reason he’d gone off so furiously on those strangers who threw the cigarette out of their car on the highway, and also why he’d overreacted to his brother’s return visit that morning to Laurie. He couldn’t bring himself to yell at her, so he took it out on other people.
She was still furious at him, and letting him know it.
It was why he had surprised her at lunch. He’d wanted to make peace with her, show her he still loved her, but he didn’t want her building up a head of angry steam before he got there.
It hadn’t worked so well, he thought, with wry, grim recall.
He’d be lucky, at this rate, if she didn’t kick him out of their bedroom.
Hugh-Jay knew he could go out to the Colorado ranch and lay the blame there, but there was no way he could blame an innocent man. That left him two choices, because his father wasn’t going to be satisfied-or let it go-until the problem was solved and the thief revealed. There was just enough money missing, and the disguising of it was just suspicious enough that Hugh-Jay knew he couldn’t pass it off as his own bad arithmetic. That left him the choice of telling the truth, which meant that Hugh Senior would never forgive his daughter-in-law or think of her the same way again. His mother would never forgive her, either, and they didn’t like her very much to begin with. And if he took that way out, Laurie would never forgive him. The whole thing could just spiral forever.
He had one other choice: he could take the blame himself.
If he did that, his father would never trust him again.
Hugh Senior drew lines in the dirt, and honesty was one of them.
As the day pulled to a close around him and rain started to fall, and prairie dogs popped out of their holes to check the weather one last time, he stopped the movement of the porch swing, bent over and put his head in his hands.
He felt anguished. Lose his wife’s affection, or lose his father’s respect?
“It’s such a little bit of money!” Laurie had cried out to him. “Who cares? Why are you making such a big deal of it?”
And it was, just a little bit, really, compared to all that the ranch owned, earned, spent.
But in his father’s eyes, stealing a dime was as bad as stealing a dollar.
It was a big deal to Hugh Senior, a mark of character or lack of it, maybe not as bad as cutting fences, but still, a sign of… badness. He might forgive a starving woman for doing it, but he would never forgive a woman who had all the food she could eat, and pretty clothes, and the house she’d always wanted.
Hugh-Jay remained there as the rain got heavier and night settled in.
Near midnight, when the roads were flooding, he gave in to what he had to do and then worked up the courage to do it. If he had to choose between the respect of his parents or the love of his wife, he would choose his wife so that he could keep their little family together.
He prayed that his parents would find it in their hearts to forgive him.
Hugh-Jay ran through the pouring rain to his truck.
He was going to tell Laurie that he would take the blame, if she would promise never to do anything like that again. And then he would face his father and tell the necessary lie, and the old man was never going to forgive him, but he could spend the rest of his life, if need be, trying to regain his father’s trust again. His decision killed him, because he respected his father above all other men, but his love for his baby daughter wouldn’t let him brand her mother a thief.
Hugh-Jay drove back into town, barely aware of the pummeling rain.
SHORTLY AFTER Hugh-Jay drove past the Rose Motel and turned the corner toward home, Chase opened the motel door that his brother Bobby had left propped open with a pen to keep it from locking. When he walked into the dark room, he saw Bobby seated by the window, drinking beer, and staring out at the rain.
“What took you so long?” Bobby asked him in a surly tone.
“What are you talking about? It didn’t take long. Long enough to grab some dry clothes, is all. Here, I brought some for you. I can’t believe you’re sitting there sopping wet like that.”
Chase tossed dry jeans and a shirt at his brother, who parried them with his left hand so they fell to the floor.
Chase started getting out of his own wet clothing.
“I saw Hugh-Jay drive by a few minutes ago,” Bobby told him.
“Couldn’t have. He’s in Colorado by now.”
“No, he’s not. It was his truck, plain as thunder.”
As if on cue, thunder actually rolled at that moment, so loud they had to wait before they could hear each other speak.
“You sure?”
“Hell, yes, I’m sure. I think I’d know that truck!”
“Did you tell Dad?”
“Why would I? If Hugh-Jay didn’t get on the road, it’s not like Dad can do anything about it now.”
“I guess not. And it’s not like he doesn’t have a home to sleep in.”
Bobby took a long drink from the lip of a beer bottle. “Laurie okay?”
“Fine, why wouldn’t she be? A little drunk. How drunk are you?”
“Shut up.”
Chase was glad to do that and went right to bed to prove it, leaving his younger brother still at the window, morosely looking at the rain until he fell asleep in the chair. A crack of lightning woke them both up a few minutes later, along with waking up their father two doors down.
ON THE STAIRCASE, Laurie let the tips of her fingers slide along the wall so that her arms were spread out as if she were about to take off and fly. When she reached the first floor, she wandered into the dining room, touching things, letting her hands slide up and down the curved tops of the walnut chairs, clicking her fingernails over the spines of the books on the living room bookshelves. She lay down on her back on one of the sofas and stared out the window at the rain coming down, spreading her legs as if for a man, imagining making love in this storm, in this room, on this couch, in the darkness lit by lightning.
She got up and went to a window, naked and invisible to the world.
Finally, she walked lightly through the foyer, past the mirrored, walnut tallboy against the wall, stopping for a long admiring look at herself, turning to the right and the left and then all the way around to see herself from every angle, trying to view her body as men saw her, voluptuous and lush, a special woman to stroke and please and pamper and adore. She sighed with the contentment of the moment. Then she walked on and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen and went to the sink to get a drink of water, running her fingers under the water first, then drinking slowly, breathing between every sip. The thunder was crashing all around, blocking out every other sound, and intermittent lightning illuminated patches of the world outside her windows.
She felt safe inside the great vault of a house, and protected by the storm.
And yet, what she wanted to do in that instant was leave. Not forever. Just for this moment, this wild moment when she felt the thunder in her bones. She wanted to run outside, naked, into the rain and lightning and let it pour on her and flash around her and scare her, and she wanted to keep running until she was out of Rose, out of her marriage, out of her life, away from her child, just for a little while.