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“Go on.”
“I found out just days later that she’d drowned in the ocean. No one told me if it was an accident or not. I think they feared I would blame myself if it wasn’t. And Ididblame myself.” He shook his head. “I realize now I never should have pushed her to even try to have a life with me. Not with all she’d been through.”
“Do you still love her?” Charlotte asked.
He thought about that for a long moment before answering. “I think I love the idea of her. I loved the girl she was before everything happened, and when she got back, I just wanted to fix her and make everything right again.”
“Which makes a lot of sense. You are the kind of man who wants to fix those around him and make everything better. I don’t know that she could be better after what happened to her.”
“I don’t know either, but I had to try. But maybe I should have been a little less forceful in my attempt.”
“You can’t blame yourself. You were doing everything you thought was right to make her happy again.” Charlotte sighed. “It must have been a very difficult situation for everyone involved. How did your parents feel about you marrying her?”
“My parents were very hands off about everything after their first four children. I don’t remember ever being disciplined as a child, unless one of my older sisters did it.” Earl shook his head. “Her parents were very protective of her. She and her sisters always walked in pairs, and they were never alone outside the house. They came from a wealthier family, not like the family Ada came from, but definitely wealthier than mine. She and her sister were walking together, and something caught her eye in a store window. She stopped to look, and it took a minute for her sister to even realize she was missing. When she did realize, Patsy was gone.”
“I’m sure that was really hard for her sister.”
“Do you ever wonder about your parents? The people who gave birth to you? Why were you left on the side of the road?”
She shook her head. “I’ve always wondered. There may be a woman out there who is heartbroken, looking for her child still. Or there may have been seven of us, and I was the one who got forgotten as they left, and by the time they came back, I was gone. More likely, I was one too many mouths to feed, or my mother wasn’t married. It doesn’t really matter now.”
“I guess not.” But he had to wonder if there was a way to go about finding her parents. He stopped himself though. If he and Patsy had moved west, it would have been to escape the past. There was no reason for him to dredge up the past for someone else.
“So, it sounds like you did some soul-searching outside, am I right?”
He nodded. “I thought about everything that’s happened to both of us over the years. I…I want to make love with you. More than anything else in the world. But I need you to know I’m not sure I love you yet.”
“I don’t know if I love you either. But we’re married, and I see no harm in finding comfort in each other’s arms.”
“It wouldn’t bother you?” He was growing more excited by the idea every minute.
“Not at all. I think it’s something that will come very naturally between us. We enjoy touching each other and kissing one another. Why wouldn’t we want to make love?” She shrugged. “I didn’t love Howard when I married him. It came with time. We married because I wanted to be respectable, and he was looking for a wife.”
“Do you ever regret marrying him?”
She shook her head. “No, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have Walt, and that boy is everything to me.”
Earl smiled at that. “I think he’s pretty darn special too. I just wish he’d speak.”
“I think he’s close. I don’t know why he stopped talking.”
He took a deep breath. “How would you feel if I slept in my own bed tonight, and maybe we plan to make love tomorrow night? Or even the next? Maybe it should be my celebration after branding. I don’t want you to think I’m not attracted to you, because that’s not it at all. I want you. I just have to get my mind to quit making me feel like I’m betraying Patsy.”
She nodded. “I think that sounds good. I’m sorry if it felt like I was rushing you. That was never my intention. When you said that you had been thinking about it this morning, I took that as an invitation, and I shouldn’t have.”
He leaned down and brushed his lips across hers. “Thank you so much for understanding.”
“Of course! I know Howard would have wanted me to remarry. Not for Walt, but for the sake of the ranch. He would have hated all of his years of hard work to have gone down the drain.”
Earl was again perplexed by her relationship with her first husband. Something wasn’t right there, and he didn’t think she even realized it.
Chapter Nine
After two days of branding and castrating calves, Earl felt like he’d been trampled by the entire herd. He walked into the house, shaking his head. “I’ve never dreamed of working that hard in my life.”
It was late Tuesday night, and Charlotte had supper ready for him, as she always did. Once he was seated, she put supper on the table in front of him, Walt watching him as if he was a hero.
“Fried chicken?” he asked. “You remembered!” He’d told her during one of their late-night talks that fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy was his favorite meal.
