He meant to drive right on past the hospital when he got back into town, but he hadn’t heard any news, and it was just as easy to stop as call, especially on the chance there had been some improvement. He found Merilee—or the shell of Merilee—alone in the cool, antiseptic-smelling, closely monitored room. He straddled a chair, rested his forearms over the backrest, listened to a soft rush of air and a machine’s rhythmic beep. Watching her pale purple eyelids twitch, waiting for something else to stir, wondering what, if anything, was going on inside that crazy head—oh, yeah, he’d been there before.
“What’s goin’ on, Merilee?” He stacked his fists end to end and rested his chin in the curl of his thumb and forefinger. “Tell me. Maybe I can—” damn your thick head, Beaudry, don’t even think it “—help.”
Saying it was even worse than thinking it. Luckily, the only other ears in the room seemed to be shut down.
“But who knows, huh? Maybe you can hear me, so…well, your little girl’s safe. She’s a beauty. Looks just like you. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her much. Didn’t wanna scare her with a lot of questions right off. Is she old enough to tell me what’s goin’ on?”
He glanced at the monitor that made her heartbeat visible. A blip on the radar. She had that much going on. For now.
“Anyway, she’s with my mother. I told you about Ma. She runs the store here. I can’t remember what all I told you about Bear Root. Back when I met you, I thought I’d left home for good.” He straightened his back, drew a deep breath just to be sure he could and sighed. “Live and learn, huh?” He reached for her hand.
He’d lived ten years and learned many more hard lessons since his roughneck days, knocking around the Western oil fields with Vic Randone, the buddy he’d met up with in Alaska. He’d gone from knocking around to being knocked out—almost literally—by a beautiful, butterfingered waitress in a Wyoming truck stop. Merilee Brown. Talk about a knockout. The ghost of a woman nearly lost in hospital-bed sheets and struggling for every ventilated breath wasn’t much more than a sliver of the vibrant girl Sam remembered. His first glimpse of her laughing face had been branded into his brain. She’d slopped some water on the floor behind his chair—got him in the back with it, but he didn’t mind—and then came back and slipped in it and conked him over the head with a tray. He’d caught her and fallen for her in the same instant.
Merilee, Merilee, Merilee, Merilee, life is but a dream.
She was magic. She could be silly one moment and thoughtful the next. She wore her heart on her sleeve, but she changed it with her clothes. She was passionate about being passionate, and her passion show never failed to captivate Sam. She could get just as excited about the color of an apple as the purchase of a much-needed pair of shoes. She made no apologies for doing what she had to do to get what she wanted, but she gave easily, and she never kept score. She was everything Sam wasn’t, didn’t have the makings or the means to be, but always wondered what it would be like. Rubbing shoulders with magic was one way to find out.
Vic hadn’t been with him at the truck stop that day, but he was never far away, and it wasn’t long before they’d become a threesome. On the outside they were three carefree pals stopping over in Wyoming on their way to the rest of their lives. But on the inside, there were cares. Big, bad, unbearable cares. Merilee cared for living on the edge. Vic cared for money. Sam, who had cared for getting out of Bear Root, now cared for Merilee. With cares safely stowed in their separate little bags they’d left Wyoming for California, where Vic made some easy money, Merilee made some edgy choices, and Sam eventually made peace with becoming the odd man out by doing what generations of Indian men before him had done. He’d enlisted.
“And living with you and Vic, I sure learned.” With his thumb he sketched a slow circle on the back of her hand. “No regrets. A guy’s gotta get educated somehow.”
He fixed his eyes on the cool, thin hand lying in his—a china trinket on a wooden shelf. He had to force himself to look at what was no more than a mask of the face that had once left him breathless. He ought to regret leaving her, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Worse, he wanted to get up and leave her now. It hurt to look at her. She was in a bad way, and he could do nothing to undo whatever had been done. He wasn’t a doctor or a miracle worker or a magician. He was, like any man worth his salt, a guardian. And like any man who could survive on little more than the salt that measured his worth, he’d made keeping the peace his life’s work.
“So why are you here, Merilee? You didn’t want anything from me when you could’ve…” He shook his head. So he’d had some regrets, carried them around for a while, but not anymore. He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d last thought about her. “Why now?”
Because she’s dying now, and she has a kid.
Where had that come from? Dying? Hell, she’d made it to a hospital and gotten fixed up before. She’d do it again. She was young. And, yeah, she had a kid. She had something to live for besides Merilee.
The last time he’d seen her, it was all about Merilee. And Vic, she’d told Sam, she was “so into Vic.” Sam had actually tried not to see any of it coming. The drugs were their business. Maybe they’d been busier with their business lately, but he was pretty sure it was mostly weed. Harmless weed. Was that what was making them bug-eyed and jumpy and downright mean lately?
No, that was him. He was always on their case about “taking the edge off the day” the way everybody did, with a pipe or a little blow. They had it under control. Besides, Sam wasn’t exactly a saint. And they weren’t shutting him out. There was plenty of everything to go around.
Back then it was all about Merilee.
She’d looked bad the day he left, but not this bad. Not death’s-door bad. “You’re such a good man,” she’d said. “I’m doing you a favor. You’re doing yourself a favor. The marines build men, you know. I take them apart, piece by piece.”
She’d been right. After Merilee, boot camp had been a piece of cake.
But seeing her this way reminded him of his tour in the Middle East. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it, so he sucked it up—mind, body, soul—and packed it all in tight around his heart.
Chapter Three
Hilda topped off Dave Cochran’s sack of groceries with a plump loaf of Wonder Bread, put his card number through her new dial-up system and watched Star sneak Lucky an unearned treat while the phone sweet-talked a distant computer into approving the principal’s purchase.
“Is your school on break?” Dave asked absently as he slipped his wallet into his back pocket.
“Star’s visiting with her mother,” Hilda explained. She wasn’t sure what had roused her defensive instincts. Principals probably went to sleep at night counting children instead of sheep.
“What grade are you in, Star?” was his automatic follow-up.
“Second.”
“Mr. Cochran’s the principal of our school.”
“You only have one school?”
“The older kids go to Bear Root Regional, which is over in Medicine Hat. But our second graders go to Mr. Cochran’s school. The second grade teacher is…”
“We have two for second grade,” Dave said. “Mr. Wilkie and Miss Petrie. How many do you have?”
“Four, but there’s another whole school over on Water Street. I could go to either one. Can I give Lucky another treat?”
“Only for another trick. Star’s from…” Hilda dragged the dog treat jar across the counter and poised to spin the cap.