glanced down at her uniform, then back at him. “Well, you did.”
Even as the words came out of her mouth, Alma almost winced. Could either of them have sounded any more stilted, any more awkward, than they did?
That last summer, before Cash went away to college, leaving promises in his wake, they had talked about everything under the sun and the stars. There wasn’t a topic they hadn’t touched on.
More than talk, there had been trust. She’d trusted him the way she had never trusted anyone else, not even her brothers. And he had opened up to her, sharing his thoughts, his dreams for a future together with her. When he spoke, he’d created vivid pictures with his words. It had been exciting just to listen to him.
Together, they were going to change the world.
He’d even, at the last minute, she recalled with a pang, urged her to come with him.
But that was one of the impossible dreams.
“I don’t have any money saved,” she’d protested. Just as it had been with her brothers, every penny she’d earned had gone to help pay off her mother’s astronomical medical bills.
It was either that, or stand by and watch her father lose the ranch in order to be able to settle the outstanding account. She couldn’t allow that to happen just because she wanted to follow Cash to California.
“The money doesn’t matter,” Cash had told her with the conviction of the very young. “We’ll find a way.”
She’d wanted to believe him. Wanted, in the worst way, to go with him.
But her sense of honor, her sense of responsibility, had prevented her from impetuously leaving everything behind and following Cash. She just couldn’t bring herself to turn her back on her father at a time like that, even though she knew that he would urge her to follow her heart and tell her that he understood.
It didn’t matter if her father understood. She wouldn’t have been able to live with herself.
And so, she’d had to learn how to live without Cash.
The last night they were together, Cash had watched her solemnly and she remembered thinking that she had never seen such sadness in a person’s eyes. He’d promised her that he would be back for her.
He’d sworn that he would come back for her.
He’d told her that once he had his law degree and was working for a firm, she could stop working and go to school to get her own degree. He’d told her he would pay for it.
She’d hardly heard him. Her heart was aching so badly at the thought of living a single day without him, she could barely stand it. When she couldn’t stop the flow of tears, he’d tried to comfort her. And, as sometimes happens, one thing had led to another.
That was the first time they made love.
He’d left her, with great reluctance, the next morning, promising to be back, to make her proud of him and to love her forever.
Watching him go, his secondhand car growing smaller and smaller against the horizon, Alma had been certain that her heart would break right there and that she would die where she stood.
But she didn’t die.
And her heart only felt broken.
Somehow, she’d found a way to continue. She wrote him every day. What kept her going in the beginning was waiting for his letters.
The wait grew longer, the letters grew fewer. And shorter. Until they stopped coming altogether.
She remembered that now, remembered how she had felt when she finally made herself admit that he wasn’t coming back, not to the town, not to her.
Alma squared her shoulders. “Well, I’ve got work to do,” she told Cash stiffly. “So if you’ll excuse me—”
They sounded like two strangers who didn’t know how to end an awkward conversation, he thought. And that, too, was his fault.
Just like the Douglas murders were his fault.
“Sure. Sorry,” he apologized. “Didn’t mean to keep you from anything. Maybe we can get together later,” he suggested. If there was a note of hope in his voice, it had slipped out and attached itself to his words without his knowledge or blessings.
Alma’s voice was completely flat and without emotion as she echoed the word he’d used. “Maybe.”
When pigs fly, she added silently.
“Nice seeing you again, Alma,” Cash said by way of parting. “Really nice.”
And then he was gone.
Alma didn’t even look up.
“Well, that was awkward,” Larry announced the moment Cash was no longer in the office.
The last thing she wanted was to have a discussion about this—any of this—with Larry. She was fond of the man, but he had a gift for always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and she wasn’t in the mood to put up with that.
“Larry, I brought brownies in yesterday morning. Why don’t you go and stuff them into your mouth?” she suggested, accompanying her words with a spasmodic smile she didn’t mean. “They’re in the cupboard.”
“No, they’re not,” Larry told her matter-of-factly. There was a touch of sheepishness in his voice when he spoke. Alma eyed him suspiciously and he instantly confessed. “Hey, I was here after hours and I got hungry.”
“You ate them all?” she asked incredulously. Why wasn’t this man fat? Instead, he was as skinny as a rail. “There were sixteen brownies,” she emphasized. She’d brought them in for the others, but then she’d stopped at the diner to see Miss Joan, and Harry had told her about Cash. After that, things were a blur. She’d completely forgotten about the brownies until this moment.
“I know,” Larry answered. “I counted them. They were probably the best brownies I ever had. Thanks,” he added. He had the good grace to look contrite and embarrassed by his apparent gluttony.
“Larry—” She began to complain that he hadn’t left any for the others, but at this point, it was all moot. She just sighed.
“Don’t pick on him, Alma,” Joe said. He scooted his chair to Larry’s desk for a moment. Reaching over, he patted the other man’s stomach. “He’s a growing boy.”
Annoyed, Larry pushed his own chair back, away from Joe. “Cut it out,” he warned.
“All right, kids, knock it off,” Rick ordered, deliberately using the word kids despite the fact that he was only a couple of years older than any of them.
When he glanced at Alma, there was compassion in his eyes. He’d been raised by his grandmother and he’d protectively looked after his little sister during those years. He was more geared in to the workings of a female mind than the average male and he sympathized with what she was going through.
