Chapter 23
Four days later, Phoebe held her phone tightly in her hand and walked out to the same area where she and Tillman had shared their first kiss.
She’d talked to him several times on the phone, and she thought that things were actually working out for him, although her prayer was that he would do the right thing. That he would show loving compassion to Nicole. As much as Phoebe wouldn’t mind having Nicole completely out of the picture, since she represented Tillman’s past, someone he had been intimate with, someone he had done the same things that he had done in the moonlight with Phoebe. She didn’t really want that reminder in her face all the time, but God loved Nicole too, and in Phoebe’s mind, Nicole was struggling.
“Hey there, sis.” Phoebe turned to see Tobias walking up to her.
Of all of her siblings, Tobias was the one she could really use as a sounding board and a fount of wisdom. He had been working almost nonstop on the structures that needed to be built for the rodeo. Several fences, a good many pens, and he had made the concrete forms that would help support the job johnnies.
He also had been making hay in the area where they were going to have folks park.
She hadn’t spoken with Tillman much about the rodeo; everything had been about Erin and how she had been doing, the custody of the children, and Nicole.
“Hey, Tobias. It’s good to see you. You’ve been working really hard.”
“I’ve enjoyed it. Although, I have some things I need to do with Mrs. Wells that I’ve been putting off because of this. So once the rodeo is over, you might not be seeing me much.”
“I heard her granddaughter was coming to live with her.” She’d forgotten about that in all the hubbub of everything else happening.
Tobias was silent for a bit, and then he said, low and slow and so casually that Phoebe almost missed the implications, “She is. I might marry her.”
Phoebe had to do a double take.
“Do you know her?” To her knowledge, she’d never met Mrs. Wells’s granddaughter before.
“No.”
“I thought you said you might marry her.”
“She’s in a tough situation, and marrying her will solve some problems.”
“That’s a crazy reason to get married. You can’t have a marriage based on...solving some problems.”
She clamped her mouth closed. Tobias didn’t need her lecturing him. He needed her support, her encouragement, her standing shoulder to shoulder with him, knowing that he had someone beside him who would support him no matter what. He didn’t need her censure or her discouragement.
“I know. Sometimes I think Mom and Dad would roll over in their graves if they knew what I was doing. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s the right thing to do.”
“If it’s the right thing to do, Mom and Dad would be behind you one hundred percent.”
“I suppose only time will tell.”
She hated to say anything more, so she tried to keep her mouth closed. But Tobias deserved a good woman. After what he had been through, he deserved someone who was going to love him the way he would love her and be completely devoted to her.
Tobias, of all her brothers, would make some woman an absolutely amazing husband. He was as close to perfect as a man could be. And that was from someone who had lived with him as close as people could be for years. Tobias was the real deal, he was loyal to a fault, considerate, kind, and somehow always able to figure out what the people around him needed and then find a way to give it to them. The world needed more men like Tobias. She hated to see him throw himself away on... “Did you say she had children?”
“Yeah. Four or five. I’m not sure. There are a couple different dads involved. It’s a mess.”
Phoebe clamped her tongue between her teeth deliberately. Hard, until she tasted blood. She was not going to give him a hard time. Was not.
“If there’s anything I can do to help you, let me know. Once the rodeo is over, hopefully life will settle down a little bit.”
“Actually, I think your life might get more interesting.”
“It might,” she said, and she couldn’t keep a little smile off her face. Now that they knew that Erin was out of the woods and was going to recover—she’d been taken out of the ICU yesterday and was likely to be released from the hospital tomorrow—everything else would work itself out.
At least she hoped it would.
“You want to talk about it?” Tobias asked easily, hooking an arm over the fence as he leaned a hip against it and looked out in the pasture at the black forms of the cows milling about, munching on grass, one of the most relaxing sounds in the world if Phoebe had anything to say about it.
“I don’t know that there’s really anything to say. I’m happy for Tillman, because Erin is going to be okay. And he has Rowan with him. Apparently there was some kerfuffle with the child services when they found that Nicole was passed out, either drunk or high, no one was really sure, and they released Rowan into Tillman’s custody. Then there was an emergency meeting between the judge and the two lawyers. Nicole lost custody at that time, and now Tillman has charge of both children.”
“That’s exactly what he wanted, isn’t it?” Tobias asked easily.
“Yeah. But Nicole’s a mess because her boyfriend broke up with her, which apparently is what led her to do what she had done that caused her to not notice that Erin was not just sick but deathly sick.”
She took a breath. She knew she needed to be fair about it. As much as she wanted to be hard on Nicole for her choices. Especially what her choices were whenever her children were in her custody. Phoebe had never walked in her shoes, and she could hardly be the one to judge. Other than she knew that children should be protected at all times.
“I know Tillman is struggling because he sees an opportunity to be exactly where Nicole was with him. Where he gets full custody, and she can visit the children if she drives the entire way to see him and then only have supervised visits.”
“You don’t think that’s fair?”
“I don’t know. I just want Tillman to make a decision based on, first of all, the safety of his children, but from a place of kindness and compassion, and not out of anger and bitterness. He... He has the opportunity to pay her back for every unkind thing she did to him with the children, and I think he wants to be better than that. I want him to want to be better than that.”
“I see. That kinda surprises me. I would think you’d want the ex out of the picture.”
“Oh, I do. So I’m struggling in my own heart. Because...it would be really nice if he was able to get full custody, and Nicole had nothing, and we could try to be a family together without her. It’s...what I would prefer but not what I think is necessarily right.”
“I think that it’s pretty mature of you to be able to see that.”
“I know that some people get divorced, and their exes get along with their current spouses, and everything is just hunky-dory and A-OK, and I guess I’m just not like that. I don’t want to have a weird marriage where I’m married to my husband and his ex-wife is a big part of our lives, and...I suppose that’s the adult thing to do, but sometimes I don’t feel very much like an adult.”
“I think we all sometimes come to a point in our lives where we want to just be children, selfish, immature, and do what makes us feel good, rather than doing what makes the most sense, or what is best for others, or, in this case, the children.”
“Yeah. I guess I just wish that if the Lord was going to give me a beautiful love affair, He would give me one that’s clean with no mess, you know? Give me a man who doesn’t have kids, who doesn’t have an ex, doesn’t have a whole lot of baggage...except I love Tillman. And I want him. And he comes with an ex and with baggage and with drama and with everything else that seems to be a part of his life, and I need to love all of that too and accept it and do my best with it.”
“Well, I think you’ve come to the right conclusion anyway. Or at least you know what the right thing to do is. Now, it’s just a matter of getting yourself to do that.”
“How did you know?”
“Sometimes I struggle with that too.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed it. Everything always seems so easy to you.”
“Maybe I’m good at acting differently than how reality is. Because, things are hardly ever easy for me.”
Her phone rang, and she pulled it up immediately, hoping it was Tillman and relieved when she saw it was.
“I’m heading back. Let me know if I can help you any,” Tobias said, touching her shoulder before he walked away, his hands in his pockets, his head pointed down to the ground, shoulders slumped.
She wondered what he meant about marrying Mrs. Wells’s granddaughter, and the idea of his wife having children to several different fathers, and him getting himself into a mess... Tobias was always so levelheaded. He said he hadn’t even met her, so it wasn’t like he could have fallen in love with her. What was he thinking?
And...was he going to leave the ranch?
She shoved that thought aside, intending to bring it back out sometime when she could think about it, as she swiped on her phone, putting it to her ear and saying, “Hello?”
“Hey, sweetheart.”
She smiled. She thought that she loved her name on his lips, but sweetheart was even better. “Hey there. I’ve been hoping you would call.”
“Yeah, sorry. I just got done talking to the doctors. They’re going to discharge Erin first thing in the morning. Rowan and I are sleeping at the Ronald McDonald house, and I was planning on coming back to the ranch as soon as we’re out of here.”
“Of course.”
“Erin might need a little bit of extra attention. I...”
“Don’t worry about it. If she needs nursing care, I’ll do it, you can do it, or anyone on the ranch will help us.”
“I know you gave me a full update on how things are coming for the rodeo this morning, any news?”
“Nothing new. Tobias worked all day making hay, and the field is completely cut and cleared. We’re ready to put up the one-wire fencing to keep the cars in. We should have enough acreage for twenty thousand cars. If there’s more than that... They might have to park along the road.”
“Let’s hope they do. That’s what I want, more than what we anticipate or expect.”
“I love how you’re so gung ho about it.”
“I’ve had a lot of time in the hospital to spend on the phone, and I’ve been calling everyone I know. I’ve got a lot of confirmations, and the buzz is all over social media. That doesn’t cost us a thing.”
“No. But the things that did cost us, the flyers, a couple of billboards, and a few spots on the radio, have all been paid for, and we’re getting a lot of interest on the website that Sondra made.”
“That’s awesome. I think it’s going to be bigger than we even anticipated.”
“I hope so. We could really use some good news.”
“Well, talking about that, I talked to my lawyer just before five this evening, before the doctors came in, and I didn’t have a chance to call you with the news.”
“Okay?”
“I want to talk to Nicole, and I want you to be there with me. They... They feel pretty confident that I can get full custody, and Nicole will be relegated to supervised visits. It’ll probably be a year or more until she could hope for anything else. That’s if I want to throw the book at her. Or...we can figure something else out.”
“Do you think she’s safe? As in, do you think she’s going to go downhill again?”
“I’m not sure. She called me before the lawyer did, and she was sobbing, begging me to take her back, apologizing for blowing up her family, and...”
Phoebe felt fear screech through her. Tillman had the opportunity to put his family back together. She should encourage him to take that opportunity. The children would love to have their mom and dad together. To be brought up in a home where both parents were there, loving them and taking care of them.
“I don’t want to lose you. But...maybe that would be for the best.”
“No. It is not. I made that mistake once. And I do believe that she’s sorry for what she did. But I don’t believe she’s changed. She hasn’t apologized for any of that. And I haven’t seen any kind of change in her. Plus, our divorce is final. She was with someone else. There is...no going back. Not for me.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, part of her sad for the children. But if Nicole hadn’t changed at all, it would not be best for them to be put through that again. Where their mom and dad got back together, and then they broke up again as soon as Nicole found someone she liked more.
Not that Phoebe was sure that that would happen, but it sounded kind of like Nicole hadn’t had a fundamental change, just she was sorry that things didn’t work out in her favor.
“My main concern is she can’t be smoking weed and watching kids. Especially not while she’s drinking an entire bottle of wine. I knew she had a bit of an affinity toward alcohol, which I suppose is fine if that’s her thing. People drink alcohol all the time. But the problem is, alcohol is one of those things that can get away from you pretty fast and screw things up even faster. It... It’s probably better to stay away from it, because once things are screwed up, they’re really hard to put back together.”
“You would know,” Phoebe said, knowing that Tillman had already been through it once.
“Anyway, Nicole and I had a long conversation, and I just basically said that I wanted to do the right thing by her. I didn’t want to keep a mother away from her children. I... I didn’t want to invite her to live out at the ranch, because I thought that would not be good for us, but I did tell her that perhaps her moving to North Dakota could be a fresh start for her, and we would be closer, so it would be easier to share custody of the children, once she was cleared by professionals saying she no longer had a substance abuse issue.”
“That was wise on your part. The safety of the children should be first.”
“That’s what I told her. I... I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said a few weeks ago about being filled with anger and bitterness and needing to let that go in order for God to fill me with something else. Without that, without prayer, then God helping the bitterness to leave, I might not have been ready this afternoon, but I was able to tell her that I didn’t want her to be shut out of her children’s lives. I wanted her to be as involved as she wanted to be, but that had to be after she took care of herself.”
Phoebe felt tears pricking her eyes. Tillman had handled that way better than she would have suspected he ever could. If she had given him a script, she couldn’t have given him a better one.
“I’m so pleased with you. So happy that you were able to rise above your circumstances and instead of treating her the way she treated you, treating her better. Showing love and compassion. You’re an amazing man.”
“It’s because of you. I told you, you make me better. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if you hadn’t pointed me to Jesus. That’s what I needed. Someone to show me that the way I was living wasn’t the right way. Even though I knew it, I just needed that push. That nudge toward the Lord, and that was all you.”
She appreciated the fact that he was giving her credit, but he didn’t understand that it took the right kind of man, the right kind of attitude to take a push like that and do what was right with it. He had.
“I love you.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when he answered, “I love you too. I can’t wait to see you again. I can guarantee you I’ll be looking you up first thing when I get there tomorrow.”
“Maybe I’ll be waiting for you.”
“All right. I can take that.”
Phoebe smiled in the darkness. She’d never felt like this before. Maybe it was the infatuation phase of falling in love, and perhaps the feelings would fade eventually, but it didn’t matter. Whatever they eventually settled into, she knew that Tillman would stand beside her for the rest of her life. And that was all she really needed. That and Jesus.