he said that the hospital was discharging you today.” He offered her a smile. “Guess that means that you and the little guy passed the hospital’s inspection.”
His attempt at humor fell flat, as he knew it would. He hated that she had to go through this, that Hollis had never proven worthy of the love she bore him.
His attention was drawn to the sleeping infant in the bassinet. He lowered his voice so as not to wake Wayne. “Hey, is it my imagination, or did he grow a little since I last saw him?”
“Maybe.” Kasey struggled not to give in to despair, or bitterness. She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
It was clear that she was upset and struggling not to let her imagination take off.
But it did anyway.
Still, Kasey tried to beat it back, to deny what she felt in her soul was the truth. Her last sliver of optimism had her asking Eli, “Is he going to be waiting for us at the ranch?”
Dammit, Hollis, I should have taken a horsewhip to you instead of just let you walk out like that. You’re hurting her. Hurting the only decent thing in your life. She deserves better than this. Better than you, he thought angrily.
It hurt him almost as much to say it as he knew it hurt her to hear it. “No, Hollis isn’t going to be there.”
Suspicion entered eyes as blue as the sky on a summer’s day, momentarily blocking out her fear. “Why? Why are you so sure?” she asked, struggling to keep angry tears from falling.
When Hollis had come to see her, not on the first day, but on the second, he’d been full of apologies and even more full of promises about changing, about finally growing up and taking responsibility for his growing family. All right, he hadn’t held Wayne, hadn’t even picked him up when she’d tried to put the baby into his arms, but she told herself that was just because he was afraid he’d drop the baby. That was a normal reaction, she’d silently argued. First-time fathers had visions of their babies slipping right out of their arms and onto their heads.
But he’d come around, she’d promised herself. Hollis would come around. It would just take a little time, that was all.
Except now it seemed as if he wasn’t going to come around. Ever.
She felt sick.
“Why?” she repeated more sharply. “Why are you so sure?”
He didn’t want to say this, but she gave him no choice. He wasn’t good at coming up with excuses—with lies—on the spur of the moment. Not like Hollis.
“Because he came by at two this morning and asked me to look after you and the baby.”
“All right,” she said slowly, picking her way through the words as if she were navigating a potential minefield that could blow her apart at any second. “Nothing he hasn’t said before, right?” Her voice sped up with every word. “He’s just probably got a job waiting for him in another town. But once that’s over, he’ll be back.” A touch of desperation entered her voice. “He’s got a son now, Eli. He can’t walk out on both of us, right?” Her eyes searched his face for a confirmation. A confirmation she was silently begging for.
More than anything in the world, Eli wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear. That she was right. That Hollis had just gone away temporarily.
But he couldn’t lie, not to her. Not anymore.
And he was tired of covering for Hollis. Tired of trying to protect Kasey from Hollis’s lies and his infidelities. Tired most of all because he knew that he would be lumped in with Hollis when her anger finally unleashed.
He looked at her for a long moment, hoped that she would find it in her heart to someday forgive him, and said, “I don’t think that he’s coming back this time, Kasey.”
She didn’t want to cry, she didn’t. But she could feel the moisture building in her eyes. “Not even for the baby?”
The baby’s the reason he finally took off, Eli told her silently.
Rather than say that out loud and wound her even more deeply, Eli placed his hands very lightly on her slender shoulders, as if that would somehow help soften the blow, and said, “He said he was taking off. That he wasn’t any good for you. That he didn’t deserve to have someone like you and Wayne in his life.”
Yes, those were lies, too. He knew that. But these were lies meant to comfort her, to give her a little solace and help her preserve the memory of the man Kasey thought she’d married instead of the man she actually had married.
“‘Taking off,’” she repeated. Because of her resistance, it took a moment for the words to sink in. “Where’s he going?”
Eli shook his head. Here, at least, he didn’t have to get creative. He told her the truth. “He didn’t tell me.”
She didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense to her. “But the ranch—with Hollis gone, who’s going to run the ranch?” She was still trying to recover from the delivery. “I’m not sure if I can manage that yet.” She looked back at the bassinet. “Not if I have to take care of—”
This felt like cruelty above and beyond the norm, Eli couldn’t help thinking, damning Hollis to hell again. “You’re not going to have to run the ranch,” he told her quietly.
Because this was Eli, she misunderstood what he was saying and jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Eli, I can’t ask you to run the ranch for me. You’ve got your own spread to run. And when you’re not there, I know that you and your brothers and Alma help your dad to run his. Taking on mine, as well, until I get stronger, would be too much for you.”
He stopped her before this got out of hand. “You’re not asking,” he pointed out. “And I’d do it in a heartbeat—if there was a ranch to run.”
“If there was…” Her voice trailed off, quaking, as she stared up at him. “I don’t understand.”
He might as well tell her all of it, this way he would pull the Band-Aid off all at once, hopefully minimizing the overall pain involved. As it was, he had a feeling that this would hurt like hell.
Eli measured out the words slowly. “Hollis lost the ranch in a card game.”
“He…lost the ranch?” she repeated in absolute disbelief.
Eli nodded. “In a card game.”
It wasn’t a joke. She could see it in Eli’s face. He was telling her the truth. She was stunned.
“But that was our home,” she protested, looking at Eli with utter confusion in her eyes. “How could he? How could he?” she repeated, a note of mounting anger in her voice.
Good, she was angry, he thought. Anger would keep her from slipping into a depression.
“Gambling is an addiction,” Eli told her gently. “Hollis can’t help himself. If he could, he would have never put the ranch up as collateral.” Hollis had had a problem with all forms of gambling ever since he’d placed his first bet when he was seventeen and lied about his age.
Stricken,
