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“Your father is waiting,” she said and turned toward the elevator that would take them up to the master suite.
He followed, willing himself to be as strong as Sarah pretended to be. He didn’t want to see his bigger-than-life father frail and dying. He wanted to remember him as an angry giant of a man who used his power and money to force people to be what he demanded. To find his father otherwise would make it harder to hold on to the revulsion he’d had for the man.
Sarah said nothing as the elevator car took them to the top floor. As the car stopped and the door began to open, she said, “Archibald—”
“It’s Pickett.”
She nodded, meeting his gaze, and said the one thing he didn’t want to hear right now. “He isn’t the man you remember.”
OAKLEYLEAPEDBACKas CJ shot out of the chair and lunged for her throat.
At first, she thought the scream that filled the room was her own as her brother grabbed for her, taking them both to the floor. His hands were around her throat. She fought to push him away as the scream grew louder. Stronger than she was, CJ gripped her neck even harder, cutting off her air. She clawed at his fingers. This time, he was going to kill her.
“Stop!” her mother screamed as she grabbed her son’s arm, breaking the hold he had on Oakley’s throat. He rolled to his side as she gasped for air, their mother standing over them. She looked horrified before she screamed, “What have you done to my son? CJ, are you hurt?”
Oakley rolled away from the two of them as their mother dropped to her knees beside her son. She caught his smug expression before he turned to their mother and said, “It’s not her fault. We were arguing. I forgot I can’t...” He awkwardly pushed himself into a sitting position, then, using his arms, dragged his lower body over to the chair. Locking the wheels in place, he tried to pull himself back up into the chair.
Their mother hurried to help him as Oakley sat on the floor rubbing her neck and watching his performance. Had she not been struggling to breathe, she might have clapped.
“What did she do to your arm?” her mother cried, spotting where Frankie Lees had dug into CJ’s flesh. “What on earth were you thinking?” she demanded as she strode over to glare down at her daughter. “You could have hurt him worse.”
Oakley could feel CJ watching her, waiting to see what she was going to say. “I thought I heard you leave for town.”
“I got down the road and realized that I’d forgotten my purse. Good thing I came back when I did.”
She said nothing as she got to her bare feet, realizing that she was still wearing her pajama bottoms and a large T-shirt and little else. She shot a look at her brother. He had on his innocent face, but the look in his eyes was pure hatred.
Her mother was breathing hard, scared and furious. What good would it do to tell her anything that had to do with CJ? She would just say that Oakley had provoked him, which was true.
As she turned to head upstairs, she heard her mother ask her son if he was all right. She couldn’t hear CJ’s answer. At the top of the second-floor landing, she stopped to look back down. Her mother was smoothing CJ’s hair back from his face and looking worried.
As Oakley headed for her room, she started to call Pickett, but remembered he had gone back east. She called Duffy. When he answered, she felt the pain in her throat, though it was nothing compared to the pain in her heart.
“Hey, Oak, you better not be calling to cancel tonight.”
She swiped at the hot tears that ran down her cheeks. She needed Pickett. He’d know what to say to her right now. He’d listen. He’d know that she was scared. “I forgot Pickett’s back east.” The words came out because she was thinking them. She heard the disappointment in her voice and hoped he hadn’t. She shouldn’t have called Duffy.
“Means it will just be you and me,” he said. “I’ll have you all to myself.”
She closed her eyes. What would she do if Pickett didn’t come back? “I have news, but I’ll tell you when I see you.”
PICKETTHADEXPECTEDto see his father lying in bed. As he stepped into the semidarkness of the master suite, his gaze went to the bed first, then slowly moved around the enormous room.
For a moment he felt duped. If his father really was so ill that he was dying, wouldn’t he be in bed, possibly hooked up to all kinds of medical devices with a nurse at his bedside? He started to turn, angry that he’d been sent on a wild goose chase, when something moved in a chair by the window.
Pickett must have made a shocked sound as the frail figure in the chair took shape in the dim light that stole in through the gauzy curtains at the window.
“Archibald?” The name came out on a hoarse, gravelly whisper. “I’m sorry. Pickett.”
In that little light stealing in, he got his first look at his father, Archibald the third. The face appeared skeletal, as did the rest of the diminished body. As Pickett stepped closer, he could see his father’s claw-like hand on the arm of the chair.
His first thought was that the man wouldn’t want him seeing him like this. His next was that the only reason his father would allow it was that he had very little time left and was desperate. To his surprise, Pickett felt his heart go out to the man he hadn’t spoken to in years.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, he braced himself for what he was about to see and moved closer. He recognized little about the wasted figure in the chair. He would never have known it was his father except for the rheumy blue eyes sunken in the colorless skin stretched over his skull.
Pickett was hit with the thought that if he had delayed his trip even hours, he might not have made it here before his father passed.
His father motioned for him to pull up a chair. He did and sat down, his Stetson in his hand, as he searched for words. But there were none. He’d left here having said everything he’d felt all those years ago.
