SIX
TY leaped up off the couch as if he’d accidentally sat on a hot ember. He nearly dumped his plate.
“Like I said, I’m exhausted. Done in. I have to go to bed.”
Amy squinted at him narrowly. This was a repeat of when she had kissed him! He was letting her know, in no uncertain terms, he was not interested in her in that way.
“I’m going to have to figure out a way to get to my dad tomorrow,” he said as if he had to rush off to bed and think hard about that.
“Your dad?” she asked, astounded.
“He and his lady friend live on the old Halliday homestead place. It’s a few miles from here. I’d better make sure they’re stocked up.”
Amy felt shocked. She’d assumed Ty was alone in life. Really alone. As alone as any person she had ever met. But his dad lived a few miles away, and he’d never even mentioned it?
She suddenly felt embarrassed that she had blurted out her whole life story to him. In fact, over the past three days, she had revealed quite a bit about herself.
But he hadn’t! She had just assumed they were getting to know each other, but in actual fact he’d been getting to know her.
Enough to know he wasn’t interested in that way. She watched him take off down the hall to his room, heard the finality in the way the door snapped closed.
Ty Halliday was telling her to back off and that was his right.
It was the situation here that had made her feel so instantly enamored with him. It was seeing him laughing with Jamey, frowning over the Scrabble board, kneading bread until his arm muscles rippled, looking after her hand with such tenderness, stepping up to the plate to uncomplainingly shoulder every single thing she couldn’t do because of her injury.
But the kicker had been to see Ty Halliday on a horse. It went beyond horsemanship.
It went straight to spirit.
She had witnessed the grace and the power of man and horse melt into one seamless entity.
Watching Ty ride was going to that place she had been to so rarely: a place of being fully engaged, fully connected, fully alive.
And she thought she might as well just die now if she did not learn how to get there, too.
But it was precisely the same mistake she had made before. She was looking for a hero, someone to rescue her from her life.
And Ty would certainly fit anyone’s definition of a hero. Seeing him in his element and watching the ease with which he had slipped into hers, given the forced closeness of their circumstances, her total reliance on him, it was natural that she would be feeling things with a strange and sizzling intensity.
It was not unlike a hostage bonding with their captor.
And if there was one thing she was done with, it was being taken hostage. She had to take responsibility for her own life. No more waiting to be rescued.
Knowing exactly what she had to do, she marched into the kitchen.
The phone was still unplugged from the wall.
So, despite the physical closeness of his father, Ty really was more alone than most people. She doubted he had even given a thought to his phone being unplugged—him being unable to be reached—since he had pulled that thing from the wall. If he was concerned about his father, why didn’t he phone him?
None of her business, she told herself firmly. She was in no position to advise Ty on family matters when she had allowed her own to become such a mess.
Now, taking a deep breath, Amy plugged the telephone back in and dialed the familiar number. She was aware her heart was beating too fast. She was aware that all her life she had been telling people how to treat her.
Now she had ridden a horse. Now she had breathed his essence deep inside her. Now she had to step up and claim her own space.
“Hello, Cynthia, it’s Amy.”
“I have been so worried! I was within a hairbreadth of calling the police.”
Cynthia’s tone was wounded, and of course she would not have called the police. It was just her way of letting Amy know she felt her negligence was nearly criminal. She bit back the impulse to apologize.
Instead, she pictured walking up to that horse and not giving an inch.
“Cynthia,” she said firmly, “while I appreciate your concern, I’m fine. Jamey is fine. I just wanted to let you know we won’t be there for Christmas dinner. You’ve probably seen on the news that the roads are closed out this way. I’m at the end of a long driveway. It’s going to take a while to dig out.”
“But where are you? The call display still says Halliday, not McFinley. You said you were house-sitting for people called McFinley. I’ve called the number listed for them in the phone book. And there is no answer. And there is no answer at the house you called from with the so-called washer repairman. So where are you? And who was that man who answered the phone? Please don’t play me for the fool. I know it wasn’t a washer repairman. Have you met someone on the internet? It’s not safe!”
A thousand explanations ran through Amy’s head, and then feeling sweet relief she realized she did not have to make any of them.
“Cynthia, I need you to listen carefully. I love you and I appreciate your concern for me and for Jamey. But I am an adult woman. I do not need to report to you.”
“Please just come back!”
“I won’t be coming back. Not to live there.”
“But John and I are in such a comfortable position to look after you.”
“I don’t want to be looked after.”
“Think of Jamey! We are in a far better position to give him everything he could ever want than you will ever be!”
There it was, what was always there: the underlying lack of faith in her.
“Cynthia, I want to be respected. I want to look after myself.”
There was a long pause. “Really, Amy, this is no time to make a philosophical stand. The well-being of my grandson is at stake.”
Truer words had never been spoken. And Amy did not want to teach her son that she could not stand on her own two feet, that she was a dependent personality without the guts or the wherewithal to make it on her own.
Ty Halliday had just done her a big favor by rejecting her interest in him! He’d set her back on the correct path.
“Jamey will miss you on Christmas. We’ll come for a visit as soon as the weather permits.” As she hung up on her mother-in-law, Amy felt she had never been more on her own path.
She heard Ty get up in the morning, rustling around. She had the feeling he was trying very hard not to wake her.
And
