17. Retreated #2
"I know." The tears spilled over and she let them.
"Jake, I'm so sorry. I left here with every intention of getting lost so Marlene would never see Stetson again.
" She peeked down at our son, and her face crumpled and rebuilt itself.
"And then in that motel, Stetson wouldn't sleep.
He kept crying and holding up that little wooden goat your dad whittled—wouldn't let go of a piece of your family in his fist like it was his, because it is his.
I sat there and understood I wasn't protecting him from Marlene.
I was stealing him from you. From all of you.
" She swallowed hard. "Running is playing Marlene's game.
Isolated is the only way she wins. Coming home is the counterattack.
I'm a McCall now. Stetson too, even if he doesn't have your last name yet. "
"Yet," I said, hoarse.
"Yet," she agreed. “We ran. But we ran back, all the way home.”
She came into me then—or I pulled her—and Stetson and Bah squawked at the disruption.
I wrapped my wife up and held on so hard she yelped, my face buried in her wild hair, two days of terror leaving my body in one long shudder that I didn't bother to hide from her.
Let her feel it. Let her know exactly what she meant to me.
"There’s a first I’ve been saving. A big one. Do you want to know what?" I asked into her hair.
"Yes."
"I love you."
Her breath jolted, and I said it again, slower, so there'd be no mistake the rest of our lives about when and where and how much I meant it.
"I love you, Autumn McCall. Since a couch and a camera shutter, when you took my photo with Stetson sleeping on my chest. I have loved you through a year of 'just friends,' and I will love you through everything an Eaton can throw our way—as long as I'm on the list of what you stay for. Every single time."
The barn light glistened in her eyes. The last wall of her defense came down without a sound.
"I love you too. For me, I think it started the same exact night, when you held my son in your protective arms. I've been terrified every day since that I’d lose. But I'm done being scared of love. You're the reason the running's broken, Jake. You broke my best skill and built me a better one."
"Dada!" Stetson hollered, arms up, finished being left out.
I brought him onto my hip, and inhaled his baby scent.
Bah screamed the outrage of an interrupted dinner, and my wife laughed and cried at all of it.
For a fragile second, I wondered if everything would be okay now.
The only thing I had left was hope that everything in my world stood right here with me where it belonged.
Then Autumn stepped back, dug into her coat pocket, and pressed folded bills into my free hand.
“What’s this?”
"The money left from the coffee can. I know you want to build us a house here on Double M.
Take this and pour it into the foundation.
I mean it." Her jaw set, and through the tears.
"I want my running-money under our house, in the concrete, where I can stand on it every day for the rest of my life. "
I put it in my pocket, over my heart, where it would ride until the mixer truck came.
Later, at Dot’s table, over the kind of supper my mother produces out of thin air, Autumn set her palms flat on the wood.
“I had a lot of time to think.The custody suit was never the plan. Marlene must have known it would get dismissed, she’s smarter than that.
She probably only filed to distract us, to drain us.
The news story is to shame you and split the town.
See, this is what she does. She’ll keep pulling little threads until everything falls apart.
She has a whole plan, A to Z. A was the custody petition.
B was your reputation. And we’re only on—”
She stopped, mouth open, eyes fixed on the distance. “Oh my God. Why didn’t I think of this months ago?”
“Think of what?” I asked, finally understanding how cunning Marlene can be.
“She’s done this to me before, and I never told a soul.
” A story tumbled out of her fast. “When I was pregnant she came to the Ropin’ Roadhouse where I worked with Nanette.
She sat in the back booth like a health inspector, ordering tea she never drank, and waited for closing time.
She invited me to sit and she slid an envelope across my table.
It had a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, and a paper to sign: leave the state before the baby came, no Eaton on the birth certificate, never contact the family.
She said—I’ll never forget this—‘Every problem has a number, dear. Be smart. You were never going to be one of us. I would never have allowed my son to make you a part of this family.’ She never thought I was good enough for Brantley.
I pushed the envelope back and went and cried in the stockroom, so ashamed you’d think I’d been the one offering money, not her.
” Her eyes came up frosty blue. “If there’s one thing Marlene protects, it’s her reputation.
She sits on boards, she makes hefty donations.
She’s a major figure in the women’s shelter, Jake.
What if… What if I could prove she tried to pay me off?
Nanette’s daddy has cameras over every booth in that bar, and Roper Ripley has never deleted anything in his life.
Keeps the drives in his office safe, years of them, labeled in marker by day.
There has to be a video of Marlene Eaton in her church dress trying to pay off her son’s pregnant girlfriend to erase her grandchild? ”
“Cash is still in Sheridan, looking for you and Brantley.” I pulled out my phone and called.
He answered on the second ring, and when I’d laid out the mission he whistled down the line. He put Nanette on and she and Autumn talked through dates Marlene could have been there so they’d have a starting point to look.
“We’ve got her now. You know we’ll scour Dad’s tapes until we find the proof. Oh, but I was so worried about you. Don’t ever run again, hear me?” Nanette scolded her through the line, three hundred miles away, a repeat of my words.
Cash got back on the line. “Jake, I have other news. I was going to call you and the sheriff tonight, waiting on a few more pieces of information to come in. Brantley Eaton cleared out of Sheridan before the leaves turned. He broke his apartment lease. Let his gym membership lapse in August. Friends say his truck has been gone since Labor Day, and another ex-girlfriend who hates him says nobody’s seen or heard from him in a month, until today when he reached out to her from Billings.
He’s not in Wyoming, Jake. He’s in Montana. ”