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“I wish Ty were attending a college closer to home.” She murmured her wish aloud.
“If you had listened to me, he would be,” Chase snapped. “But, no, you insisted that Ty make his own choice.”
“I know.” Her answer was stiff, not inviting further discussion of the subject. There had been too many arguments over this issue of college already.
“Then stop complaining.” His attention never left the ranch road.
“I wasn’t complaining,” Maggie retorted. “I was merely wishing.”
“Well, I wish to hell he’d never gone to college at all!” Chase ground out the angry words.
“You’ve made your opinion quite clear before.”
“Dammit, it is a waste of time.” His hand slapped the wheel. “If he wanted to be an engineer, a teacher, a doctor, then this schooling would be valuable to him. But, dammit, he wants to be a rancher. He told me so! And the way to learn the ranching business is through practical experience.”
“Why? Because that’s the way you learned it? Does that mean it’s the only way?” she countered in a rush of temper. Knowing how futile it was to argue with him, Maggie squared around in her seat and stiffly crossed her arms in front of her. “There’s no reasoning with you, Chase,” she said tautly. “As far as you’re concerned, there’s a right way and a wrong way—and your way. And if it isn’t yours, it’s naturally wrong.”
“I know one damned thing for sure. My way works.” It was a flat, hard answer.
The last twenty miles of the journey passed in charged silence. Chase wished the first word on the matter had never been said. He was never able to explain to Maggie how much he wanted to be wrong about this. Talking about it increased the tension between them instead of dissolving it. She always pushed at him, never giving an inch, never conceding he might be right, never acknowledging any validity in his concerns. She couldn’t see that he needed her understanding; she was too busy defending her son’s action.
He stopped the car by the front steps of The Homestead and kept the engine running. Maggie had opened the passenger door before she realized
he wasn’t coming with her. A curtness was still in her expression as she gave him a questioning look.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“No.” Glancing beyond her, Chase saw his daughter come running out of the house to greet them. “If I’m late for dinner, go ahead and eat. I’ll warm up something when I get back.”
Although she was too angry with him to ask where he was going, Maggie was troubled by his action. He drove away the minute she shut her car door—without stopping long enough to greet his young daughter. She couldn’t recall Chase ever being so rushed that he didn’t have time for a word with little Cathleen.
“Daddy!” Cathleen wailed and began stomping her feet on the wooden floor of the porch in a tantrum when her tears didn’t bring him back.
Driving back to the two-lane, Chase followed it to a small collection of buildings out in the middle of nowhere. It was a boom-and-bust town called Blue Moon, lying by the road in one of its bust cycles. Another house had been abandoned to its weed-choked yard, its back broken and sagging. The sunburned paint on the sign above the grocery store and service station was peeling and faded. A pair of cars sat abandoned behind the building, wheelless and rusted.
The building next door appeared to be in better repair, except for a broken sign that had been snapped in half by an accumulation of ice followed by a high wind. It identified the building simply as Sally’s. Chase parked the car in front of it alongside two dusty ranch pickups and went inside.
Half the tables were covered with gingham cloth and the other half were bare. A lone pool table sat in a far corner of the long room, a cowboy crouched over it taking aim on the cue ball. The jukebox in the corner was playing a cheating song.
Chase walked to the counter where an auburn-haired woman sat on an end stool. She smiled at him, a glint of sad longing showing briefly in her blue eyes.
“Hello, Chase.” She slid off the stool and walked around behind the counter. “What can I buy you? Beer? Whiskey? Coffee?”
He glanced at the half-finished cup of black coffee she’d been drinking. It didn’t look nearly strong enough. “Whiskey with water back,” he ordered and crawled onto the stool next to the one she’d vacated.
She refused the money he laid on the counter when she set his drink in front of him. “The first drink’s on the house.”
His mouth twitched in grim remorse. “I guess I haven’t been in since you started serving liquor, have I?” He bolted down the drink. At first he felt nothing; then it began to burn his throat.
When he looked at her above the brim of his hat, she was calmly watching him. Chase wasn’t sure whether it was the whiskey or the calming influence of her presence that seemed to soothe him. There was a time before Maggie came back to him when he had considered marrying Sally. There was a pleasing quietness about her that was always comfortable and settling.
“I don’t particularly like the idea of you running a bar, Sally,” he said, accustomed to his opinion carrying weight.
“It was a business decision,” she reasoned, not taking offense the way Maggie would have. “My clientele consists mainly of cowboys, and they’re a drinking crowd. As much as they liked my food, they started driving elsewhere. If I wanted to keep the doors open, I didn’t have a choice.”
“You’ll let me know if anybody gives you trouble.”
Again there was that quiet smile that seemed to soften the lines around her mouth and eyes and make them attractive. “The boys get rowdy sometimes, but no one’s stepped out of line. The place has sorta become a second home to most of them. I usually have plenty of defenders on hand if I ever need one.”
