Second Chance in Dry Creek
“Babies are babies. They haven’t changed in the past twenty years.” Calen resolutely stepped closer to the car and crouched a little, holding out his arms to where Gracie sat with his granddaughter. “If you slide her out, I should be able to take her without even waking her up.”
It would come back to him, Calen told himself, hoping no one noticed the sweat forming on his forehead. He saw the mothers at church picking up their toddlers all the time. No one seemed to have a problem holding one. Even the fathers managed.
Gracie had barely let go of Tessie, laying her gently in his arms, when the girl jerked awake and screamed. She turned to Gracie so quickly and with such force that Calen almost dropped her.
“I’m sorry,” Calen said, as his granddaughter wrapped herself around Gracie’s neck and clung to the woman as if she was her only security in this frightening storm. “My hands must be cold.”
Gracie managed to give him a sympathetic glance while she began to rub Tessie on her back. “It’s not that.”
“Family services is not going to be impressed,” the sheriff muttered as he walked a little closer, too.
Calen was feeling a touch of panic.
“Maybe she’s hungry.” He should have thought of that earlier. Children liked to eat. He patted his shirt pockets. Sometimes he had a piece of hard candy there.
He found nothing.
Calen looked over to ask if anyone else had candy, but what he saw left him silent. It was like looking at one of those old masterpiece paintings of the Madonna and child. Gracie was humming a tune as she soothed Tessie. The girl had a good hold on the woman’s braid and had pulled it around to the front. But they were both calm, and Tessie had given up her terrified grip.
“I think—” Gracie said softly as she motioned for the sheriff to come closer. “Here—let’s see if she will go to you.”
Calen stepped back and watched as the sheriff confidently held out his arms to the girl. The sheriff had young daughters of his own and no doubt knew a few tricks.
No sooner had Gracie started to slide Tessie toward the sheriff than the girl started to screech even louder than before. The lawman stepped back in surprise.
“I didn’t mean any harm,” he sputtered. “Kids like me.”
“It’s not you,” Gracie said confidently. “The girl is just afraid of men in general.”
“But—” Calen started to protest. How was he going to take care of her if she was panic stricken around men? There were over a dozen men who lived in the bunkhouse. He might be able to get a trailer and park it near the ranch, but then who would watch Tessie while he worked? Would she learn to trust him? He suddenly realized this was all going to be more complicated than he had thought at first.
And then he saw the answer.
“She likes you,” Calen said to Gracie in relief. “Maybe I could hire you to come with us and help me take care of her—just while Renee is in the hospital.”
Gracie looked at him in astonishment. “Me? It’s been years since I had little children around. The mothers do everything different now. Diapers are different. Baby food—I don’t even know what has changed there. I think they puree their baby food now.”
“Looks like you’re doing fine to me,” the sheriff said staunchly.
“I’ll lend you a book if you need one,” Tyler offered as he stepped over. “In fact, I think Angelina just got another baby book.”
“But she’s not due for five months,” Gracie protested, at least momentarily distracted from Calen’s offer.
Tyler shrugged and grinned. “She believes in preparation.”
Gracie’s face softened.
“So, you’ll do it?” Calen pressed. He figured he better take advantage of the sentimental moment. If the woman had time to think, she’d refuse. “Ten dollars an hour sound okay?”
“I can’t take your money.”
“Well, I have to pay you something,” Calen insisted, feeling a little frantic. He knew that if Gracie made a deal with him, she would honor it. She never went back on her word; she’d even stayed married to Buck Stone when anyone with any sense would have left.
“I could go up to twenty dollars an hour,” he offered. Now wasn’t the time to look for a bargain, he told himself. He’d go to fifty if he had to, but it would only make her suspicious if he put that figure out right away.
“I really couldn’t—” Gracie began.
Tyler interrupted then, with a glance at them both. “What my mother is trying to say is that you shouldn’t have to pay for a favor like this. Not when you need help and we’re set up to give it to you. But if you want, you could always take her to the harvest dinner at church instead to—to reciprocate, as it were. Neighborlylike.”
Calen watched Gracie’s mouth open and close and then open again. He figured she was as speechless as he was. Then Calen felt a slow grin spreading across his face. Tyler always did have a good head for when to throw a hook into the water.
“I’d be more than happy to take you to the harvest dinner,” Calen said, crouching down so he could look inside the car and make direct eye contact with Gracie. He didn’t want any misunderstanding. “I’ll even get you a corsage to wear.”
Gracie tried to say something, but only a squeak came out.
It sounded as though Tyler choked back a laugh, but Calen wasn’t sure because the man sounded perfectly solemn when he said, “Well, it’s a date then.”
Gracie’s face was reflected in the light from the side of the barn, and she looked a little flustered as she shot Tyler an indignant glance.
Then she cleared her throat and looked right at Calen. He remembered she had a certain regal way of holding her head when she was embarrassed, and he was seeing it now.
“We can talk about that later,” she said, then pressed her lips together for a second. “First, we have to figure out whether I should keep Tessie out here at my place, or if we should take her in to see her mother now at the hospital.”
As soon as Gracie took charge, Calen knew everything was going to be all right.
He stood up. “We need to take her in. It might be her only chance to see her mother for a while. I don’t know how much the tyke knows about what’s been happening, but I think she’ll want to see her mom.”
Gracie nodded. “I agree. But tomorrow, we’ll call Mrs. Hargrove and ask if she can keep Tessie until we sort everything else out.”
With that, Gracie swung around, preparing to get out of the car with Calen’s granddaughter in her arms.
Calen didn’t nod, but he didn’t protest, either. He wondered what he had gotten himself into. In the various times he’d thought about going up to Gracie since she’d been back, he had never imagined anything like this. There was going to be no way he would look good in Gracie’s eyes if she saw Tessie shriek every time he tried to hold her. After a while, the woman was bound to ask herself if there was something wrong with him. Maybe it would be best if Mrs. Hargrove was the one to help him after all.
Not that he had time to worry about his pride now, he told himself. They needed to go into Miles City and see how Renee was doing.
“I’ll drive us there,” he said.
“I don’t see how you’re going to do that.” Gracie stood. “There’s no room for a child’s seat in your pickup. Not that you even have a child’s seat.”
Calen grimaced.
“I didn’t think of that,” he admitted. Then he looked in the window of the car. “But we can use that one. It buckles right in. We’ll go in—”
Calen looked around. Both Gracie and Tyler drove pickups, too.
“I’ll drive all of you,” the sheriff finally offered. “I’m set up to carry anyone in an emergency.”
“Well, this qualifies,” Calen said as he stepped close to Gracie. Tessie’s eyes grew wide, but she seemed to feel safe as long as she was in Gracie’s arms.
“Hold on,” he said as he swept them both up together. “Let’s get you to the house so you can get some shoes on. No point in anyone catching pneumonia.”
Calen liked the heft of the woman and child in his arms. Tessie’s face was so close he could feel her warm breath on his neck. He shifted them both slightly in his arms and thought he heard the girl giggle softly.
“You like that?” he whispered.
He regretted the question, because it made Tessie hide her face in Gracie’s shoulder. It only took him a couple more steps to reach the porch, anyway.
“I’ll go help the sheriff move the child seat.” Calen set Gracie firmly on the bottom step to the porch. Tessie wiggled in her arms, trying to avoid looking at him.
Calen quickly dropped a kiss on the girl’s head. She froze but didn’t make a sound. So he kissed the top of Gracie’s head, too.
He wasn’t sure which of the two was more stunned.
“I’ll get the door for you,” Calen said then, signaling both of them that he was stepping around them.
Two steps brought him to where he could reach the knob. A twist of the hand and the door swung open.
“I won’t be long,” Gracie whispered, and then slipped into her house still carrying the girl.
He closed the door after they were inside. He stood on the step a moment, rubbing his cold hands. Hopefully, Gracie and Tessie would take a minute to warm up while he and the sheriff got ready to go to Miles City.
A smile split his face then. He had kissed Gracie Stone. Well, sort of.
He walked back to the sheriff.
“You got a heater in your car?” Calen asked. The man had his flashlight shining around in Renee’s car still.
“Top of the line.” The sheriff nodded proudly as he looked up.
“I want to be sure my girls are warm enough.”
The sheriff grunted at that. “Gracie stopped being a girl some time ago.”
“Not to me.” Calen reached into the back of the car and unbuckled the car seat. Tyler opened the opposite door, and there was no missing the grin on his face. Gracie’s son must have heard him.
“We’ll have to go fishing again someday,” Tyler said. “I always did enjoy sitting on the creek bed with you.”
“I’ll be there the first warm day we have next spring. I haven’t been fishing the past year or two, and I miss it.”
Tyler nodded. “I think my old fishing pole is in the barn loft.”
Calen wished it was that easy to slip back into his early relationship with Gracie. Not that they’d exactly been friends in high school. She’d always been Buck Stone’s girl, and he’d been a little tongue-tied around her. He glanced over at the house. Why was it that a man like him couldn’t seem to get the words out of his mouth to impress a woman he cared about, when he could flirt with all of the others with ease?
He finished unbuckling the child’s seat and pulled it out.
“I guess this goes in the back?” Calen asked as the lawman opened the door to the county car.
The sheriff nodded to him. “You’ll sit up front with me.”
“Okay.” Calen figured that if he was in the front, he wouldn’t have to worry about impressing Gracie with his witty conversation during the trip into Miles City.
He felt his shirt pockets again. He wished he had one of those hard mints at least. But there was nothing there. In high school, he always had wrapped candies to give to the girls. He knew that was why they came around him so often, but he’d never told Buck that. He grinned just remembering it.
He glanced over at the porch again and his grin faded. He wondered what secret Buck had that had gotten him Gracie. Calen would have traded all the hard candy in his pockets back then to know what she had seen in his friend and not in him.
Chapter Four
Gracie sat in the back of the sheriff’s car and looked straight ahead. Tyler had gone home and the rest of them were headed to the hospital. It was bitter cold out, but the heat inside the vehicle was stifling, so she had removed her jacket. Now she wished she’d taken time to find a cotton blouse to go with her jeans instead of pulling on the first thing she had seen in her closet, a heavy black turtleneck. The waiting room at the hospital would be chilly, though, she reminded herself.
A few months ago, when her oldest son, Wade, had hurt his thumb, she’d dragged him there to see a doctor, and the automatic door in the reception area had seemed to open whenever anyone walked in front of it. The room got so much fresh air it was hard to heat or cool. She could still hear the incessant sliding of that door in her mind.
“Hold on,” the sheriff said as he turned off the gravel road, taking a shortcut to the highway. Bits of gravel pinged against the underside of the car, but Gracie hardly noticed. The darkness was thick except for the focused beam of the county car as the sheriff drove them down the dirt road, following the path that the Elkton Ranch trucks used every fall as they took their cattle to market.
The sheriff’s actions reminded Gracie of how important it was to get to the hospital quickly.
She suddenly felt apprehensive. Who knew what was happening with Renee? And it wasn’t just her wound that could be giving her trouble. When Gracie had taken Wade to the clinic, the receptionist had recognized the Stone family name. Gracie wondered if Renee would face the same kind of questions from the staff that she had fielded on that day. There were not many criminals around here, and they stood out.
Gracie didn’t know why people were so curious about her time in prison, but they were. Maybe it was all the cop shows that were on television. The news that she had been declared innocent had stirred up almost as much gossip as when she had been found guilty ten years ago. She frequently spoke about the Bible study group she’d belonged to in prison, but she never talked about the rest of her prison experience. She didn’t want to even call up those memories. Once she started, the hopeless faces all came back to her. Susie, who had the teenage sons that refused to come to visit her. Martha, who worried about her elderly mother. The woman from Idaho who longed for the ocean and had died of an overdose in her cell after someone had smuggled drugs in to her.
In an abrupt motion, Calen turned around to look at her, and she wondered if she had made some distressed sound without being aware of it. Just thinking about her days behind bars made her sad.
“You okay?” he asked.
She couldn’t see his eyes in the dark, so she couldn’t tell if they were full of pity. But then, he couldn’t see her face either, so he wouldn’t notice the tears that had sprung to her eyes. He probably thought the sheriff’s sudden turn with the car had startled her. He should know a rancher like her knew the usefulness of all the dirt roads around here.
“Everything’s fine,” Gracie said, forcing herself to be cheerful, as she glanced over at the dark shape beside her. Tessie was napping in her child seat.
“I know it’s late,” Calen muttered apologetically, still watching her. “You must be tired.”
“Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”
“Something worrying you?”
“Just my sons. They—” Gracie caught herself in time. Calen didn’t need to know her sons were pressuring her to get married again. No one needed to know that particular fact. “They can be a little stubborn at times when they get an idea into their heads.”
Calen chuckled then, his voice suddenly warm and relaxed. “What is it this time? I remember Tyler laid out his plans once for how he was going to raise a llama on your place with no one knowing. He figured he’d build a shelter for it down in the coulee where we were fishing, and feed it with oats he’d sneak away from the barn.”
“I didn’t know.” Gracie felt exposed. How could this man know more about her youngest son than she did?
“I think it was supposed to be a Christmas surprise. Nothing ever came of it, though.”
“Ahh,” Gracie murmured. Her sons always had wanted a spectacular Christmas. Maybe that’s why Buck had been so set against the day. Her late husband had been jealous of anything that took attention away from him. All he ever allowed in the way of a holiday celebration was to have their closest neighbors, the Mitchells, over for dinner. And, since Gracie had found out he’d been having an affair with Tilly Mitchell, she didn’t suppose she could count his neighborliness as being selfless, even in that regard. Gracie had always used her best china, too, for those dinners. She shook her head at how naive she had been.
After a moment of silence, Calen turned to face the front again.
Before long, the sheriff drove the car onto the freeway. He cleared this throat almost at the same time and looked into the rearview mirror. “Did Tessie talk to you while you were in the house changing your clothes?”
“No,” Gracie conceded. She wasn’t sure, but she thought even a two-year-old should have a few dozen words in her vocabulary. Maybe Tessie couldn’t talk normally. The toddlers at church were always chattering away.
“Well, she’s been through a tough night,” the lawman said.
No one had anything to add to that.
After a few more miles, Gracie noticed the extra straps on the back of the front seats. She had expected the mesh division that separated the rear seat from the driver, but she hadn’t realized they’d also added new straps to these sheriff cars.
The county had gotten a new car for Sheriff Wall in the time since he had arrested her ten years ago. The vehicle still had the same smell to it, though. It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but it did make her realize that fear had an odor all its own.
Tessie wasn’t the only one who had been through a lot tonight. Gracie figured the toddler’s mother was only at the beginning of her ordeal. Gracie knew what it felt like to be arrested, and she figured Renee would find out before long. Everything changed once a person was on the wrong side of the law. A prison was designed to make a person feel trapped and helpless. Even though Gracie had been innocent, that did not mean the same problems that the other inmates faced didn’t weigh on her mind.
“Renee’s going to be worried about her daughter,” Gracie said. “They probably won’t let us see her yet, but one of the nurses can give Renee a message.”
She wondered if that same receptionist would be on duty. If so, maybe the Stone family’s notoriety could be used for something positive. If the woman took a message, Gracie might even answer one or two of her personal questions.
Gracie didn’t know what would happen to Tessie if her mother went to prison, but armed robbery would carry a long sentence. She would not put that into words, but everyone in this car was probably thinking the same thing.
Gracie looked up at Calen. His shoulders were slumped a little as he sat in the front seat, his head bowed slightly. She wondered if he was praying. She hoped so. At least Renee and Tessie had him to take care of them.
And, we all have You, Father, she prayed. She hadn’t had the assurance of God’s love when she had gone to prison. And it would have made a huge difference.
She sat back then, trying to picture Calen as a father. Or even a husband, for that matter. She finally gave up and smiled. The stories Buck used to tell of him and Calen in high school did not match up with the man she’d seen tonight.
“Do you still have that trophy Buck gave you?” Gracie asked after a few minutes.
Calen grunted and turned around again. “That thing will be at the bottom of my closet until the day I die. Unless I sell it for junk metal first. Only Buck would give me a brass trophy that said Number One Romeo of Custer Country.”
The man’s voice sounded better, at least. Gracie was glad they did have some good memories they could share.
“He found that trophy in some pawnshop,” Calen continued. “But he had the words re-done. I think he gave up one of his good knives in trade for it. Just to give me a hard time—calling me Romeo.”
“Well, you always were popular with the girls,” Gracie teased him softly.
“Not with the one that mattered,” he shot back too quickly to have thought about it.
She didn’t know what to say to that. She ran through the names of the girls in their class, trying to figure out which one he’d been sweet on. She was surprised Buck hadn’t told her. Even though everyone knew Buck was her boyfriend, he didn’t like her being around other people and she missed out on most of the gossip. For all of Calen’s flirting, she couldn’t remember ever hearing that he had been serious about anyone.
By the time she had decided to ask him who he meant, he’d already turned around and the moment was gone. Then a semitruck passed and made too much noise for talking. She watched the red taillights for a while. There was seldom much traffic on the freeway going through this part of the state, and it was particularly deserted in the middle of the night.
Gracie settled back against the seat. She hadn’t thought about those old high school days for years. The only time she had seen Calen during her marriage was that one night when he’d brought Buck home after her husband had passed out from drinking too much in some bar. She’d been so embarrassed; she’d told Calen more than she should have about her life with Buck. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that her husband hit her regularly, but she knew the ranch foreman had sensed her unhappiness. She’d felt close to him that night. That’s when he’d given her the number for his private phone at the Elkton bunkhouse.
Funny how she’d thought of that phone number so often back then that she’d memorized it. She’d almost dialed it a time or two when Buck had gotten particularly out of hand, but she never did. She was saving it as a last resort.
It wasn’t long before Gracie saw the outlines of buildings that, even in the dark, marked the outskirts of Miles City. The hospital was at the main exit. She could tell from the green numbers on the dash of the car that it was a little after two o’clock in the morning. She hated to wake up Tessie, but they needed to be inside asking about the child’s mother as soon as possible.
“They have coffee in the vending machines inside,” Calen said as the sheriff pulled into the parking lot. Light streamed out of the windows of the hospital. “And I have lots of dollar bills.”
Gracie nodded. The rest of the night promised to be long.
* * *
The sheriff stepped out of the car the minute it stopped and headed toward the hospital.
Soon after that, Calen closed his door, wondering if he should offer to carry Tessie. He didn’t want to startle his granddaughter.
“I should have a stroller.” He opened the door for Gracie so she could bring the sleeping child out of the backseat with her. “She’s too heavy for—”
“For someone my age,” Gracie said with a grimace as she swung her legs out of the car and then stood up, settling Tessie against her shoulder.
“She’s too heavy for anyone,” Calen corrected, as he moved close enough to grab Gracie if she needed help.
By that time, the sheriff was almost to the hospital.
The lawman stopped and turned. “I’ll send word when I’ve had a chance to see Renee.”
Then he stepped up to the entrance door.
“You can go with him if you want,” Gracie offered as she looked over at Calen. “I know you’re worried.”
They were still yards from the hospital and going slow.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave you alone to carry Tessie.”
Calen wasn’t used to someone else taking on his responsibility, even temporarily. Especially when the wind had started to blow and a few drops of cold rain had already landed on his face. Then he saw, under an overhang, just what he needed—a hospital wheelchair.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, as he ran over there and rolled the chair back to where Gracie stood.
“Next best thing to a stroller,” Calen said. “Tessie will be fine in one of these.”
Gracie looked relieved when Tessie was settled in the chair.
“I can push it,” he said then. The girl was still half-asleep, but she didn’t seem to care who was behind her as long as Gracie walked along beside her and held her hand. They moved much faster with the chair.