Chapter 9 Lofton
LOFTON
“She’s gone,” I whispered. The weight of those two words nearly suffocated me.
His blue eyes sparkled as he blinked back tears, confusion painting his face. “Clara?” he croaked out, his forehead wrinkling in agony. “My Clara?”
I slid my hand across the faded wooden table to cover his. “She didn’t suffer. It was peaceful. She simply went to sleep and drifted away.” I don’t know why I thought that was any consolation. A loss like that was a tragedy, no matter how it happened.
Just like Marty.
“Lord help me,” he groaned. His hands shook as he combed his thin, gray hair. “Was she alone?”
She was, but I didn’t have the heart to confirm that to her beloved husband of almost fifty years.
I swallowed hard. “She lived a beautiful life surrounded by the people she loved. That’s what’s important.”
Grunting, he stood. He walked to the sink with physical ease, his body picking up the slack of his failing mind. Resting his calloused hands on the edge of the old beige countertop, he blew out a ragged breath. “I need to call the kids.”
My heart splintered as I watched tears roll down his cheeks.
“It’s already taken care of.” I placed my hand in the center of his back. Given the magnitude of him losing his soulmate, it was little comfort, but it was all I had to offer. “They told me to tell you they love you very much.”
The deep crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “They’re good kids. Just like their mama.” His voice broke into a sob. “Oh, my sweet Clara. What am I supposed to do without her?”
“Hey,” I breathed, careful not to let my own emotions bubble to the surface. This wasn’t the time for my sorrow. Pain, guilt, anger, maybe. But not sorrow. “Jenn and I are here for you, okay? Whatever you need, just say the word.”
He hummed in acknowledgment. “Did I ever tell you the story of how she duped me into marrying her?”
My nose stung as I nodded. “Best mistake you ever made.” I hooked my arm in his. There was nothing I could do. No magic words of comfort. No warm embrace could ease his pain. And yet, it was my job to try. “Why don’t we have breakfast and then go for a walk? The weather’s beautiful today.”
Twin rivers streamed down his cheeks, gutting me as they dripped from his chin. He wasn’t a big man. Five-ten to my five-eight. But he was still one of the strongest men I would ever know.
For a long minute, he stared out the kitchen window. His chest heaved, but his face was blank.
Eerily so.
I didn’t have to follow his gaze to know what he was seeing.
With a twelve-horse barn and a small quarter-horse breeding program, Beck Farms had once been a steady rhythm in the Tennessee equine community. Not big or flashy, just respected. The kind of place horse people talked about when they needed a sturdy colt or honest training.
There hadn’t been a single day of my childhood when the property sat quiet.
There was always a handful of farmhands, a trainer or two, maybe a farrier’s truck in the drive.
Seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, rain or shine, Lawrence Beck had always been the first one in the barn each morning and the last to shut off the lights at night.
But as his forlorn gaze drifted across the property, it was no longer that version of his legacy that he was viewing.
The before and after was heartbreaking to anyone who had ever set foot on the farm during its heyday, but that wasn’t the saddest part by a million miles.
If time were a thief, it had performed its greatest heist on Lawrence Beck.
He looked at me, a barrage of conflicting emotions clouding his eyes.
Then he smiled.
It was more devastating than the tears, because it was wholly empty, just like the man in front of me.
“Have you seen Clara this morning?” he asked.
My soul withered.
It was different every time. Sometimes he’d remember for hours, crying himself to sleep or into a fit of rage. Others, like today, the tears hadn’t yet dried on his cheeks before he’d forgotten again.
The truth was, Clara Beck had died two years earlier. He had already been in the fight of his life with his mind when we lost her to a heart attack in the middle of the night, leaving Jenn and I as his sole caretakers. He’d never stopped asking for her.
I could have told him again, but it would have done no good.
From a moral standpoint, there was a fine line between offering him honest dignity and treating him like a child, feeding him lies even if it was to protect him.
I kept hoping somewhere in his dementia-riddled brain it would finally stick.
That he’d store the information so we could selfishly have a reprieve from our positions as the messengers of doom.
But maybe the absence of that particular memory, and thus the inevitable pain that followed, was the most humane thing I had to offer him.
When I didn’t immediately reply, Jenn stepped up beside me. Grinning, she walked across the small kitchen to the microwave above the stove. “She ran out to the store for a bit. Don’t worry. She made your Cream of Wheat and bacon before she left. Extra crispy, just the way you like it.”
Pure adoration blazed from his eyes as he rolled his shoulders back, standing taller. “She’s a damn good woman, that Clara of mine.”
“The best,” I whispered, and the hole in my chest expanded. “Orange juice or coffee this morning?”
He chuckled. “You don’t want to see me without my coffee.”
It had been several months since I’d been home, but his answer was always the same.
Sometimes we’d humor him with options so he’d feel like he still had choices of his own.
A strict schedule dictated the rest of his days to keep him from spiraling.
Predictability and routine were the only things that kept a smile on his face.
As I prepared his coffee, he narrowed his eyes on the window and asked, “What is that?”
“Shit,” I breathed, peering around him hoping we weren’t gearing up for round two with the men of Guardian Protection.
Thankfully, it was just our old, rusty lawn mower in the field.
“That would be my broken-down chariot.” Jenn replied.
“I was mowing the front paddock this morning before it got too hot. Unfortunately, that was as far as I made it. It kept cutting off, but I didn’t have time to push it back into the barn before—” She flicked her gaze back to me.
“Her Majesty finally graced us with her presence.”
I rolled my eyes.
Daddy’s jaw hardened. “Well, you shouldn’t have let the field get that tall to begin with. Your Mama and I aren’t paying you an allowance for you to run around with Terry every damn weekend.”
Jenn glared at his back only to slap on a smile the minute he turned to look at her.
He continued his rant. “Call Chuck to haul the mower out of there before one of the horses gets hurt. And for Pete’s sake, check the ground after you move it. One rogue screw could be a death sentence for a horse if a hoof finds it.”
His former barn manager, Chuck, had retired to Ocala, Florida, at least a decade earlier, but there was no need to get into that.
Jenn and I exchanged a knowing glance before she replied. “I’ll take care of it. I swear.”
“Have Roger come look at it,” he ordered, planting his hands on his hips. “If he can’t fix it, buy a new one.”
Like that was going to happen. Roger was gone too, and if a new piece of equipment appeared anywhere on the property, he’d fly into a fit of rage about whether or not we could afford it.
He’d insist on getting his bank records out, then get overwhelmed with the process of trying to go through them when nothing made sense.
The easiest things to do would be to wait until Daddy went to bed, call Roger’s son, Keith, to sneak over and perform a miracle with that busted up relic of a mower, and then have it back in business first thing in the morning.
“You got it, boss,” I replied.
He let out a harrumph and hitched up his jeans before following me to the dining room.
Out of ingrained habit, he went straight to his chair at the head of the large oak table.
He’d entertained half of Dollton at that table.
Every member of the Beck team had been welcome in our house, morning, noon, or night.
Which made it even more sad as he sat down alone.
I placed his coffee in front of him, and Jenn followed it with a steaming bowl of Cream of Wheat and three strips of bacon so crispy it was nearly burnt.
She handed him the spoon directly. If she set it on the table, he’d never pick it up.
The coffee he’d sworn he needed to function would more than likely go cold and untouched as well.
Eating was a daily battle, and his frail body bore the scars.
The screen door creaked open just before I heard Terry’s voice. “Knock, knock.”
“In here,” Jenn replied.
He strutted around the corner, his thinning brown comb-over flopping against his forehead.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” my father grumbled. “Don’t you have a home, boy?”
“And good morning to you too, Lawrence.” He set a folded newspaper on the table beside him. “I saved the sports section for you.”
“Vols win?” he asked, stirring his breakfast without taking the first bite.
Football season was long over, and yet his answer was still. “Yep. Kicked the shit out of Bama.”
He nodded, lifting the spoon to his mouth for the tiniest bite.
“Hey there, Superstar,” Terry said, wrapping me in a hug. “We were all really sorry to hear about Marty, but it’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be home.” I patted his back, not sure if I’d lied or not.
Holding my shoulders, he set me away, his gaze landing on the steri-strips covering the cut on my forehead. “You sure you’re okay?”
I offered him a tight smile. “Yeah. It’s nothing.” That was definitely a lie.
My dad let out a loud whistle, silencing the room. “Has anyone seen Clara?”