Ry wondered what it would be like to have once been the foreman of this ranch, the person in charge of everything, and now be reduced to mail runs, trips for ice cream and lots of porch time.On top of that, it would be an exquisite kind of hell to understand everything going on around you, yet be unable to communicate much of anything without a struggle.
Dexter held up his left hand and pointed to his wedding ring.“Did you ever?”
“Get married?”
Dexter nodded.
Ry settled back in the chair as the lively beat of the music competed with the steady chirp of crickets.The mingled sounds felt cozy.He relaxed his head against the ladder-back of the chair.“Yes,” he said.“I got married.”
“Is it broken?I mean, no good?”
“She died.”
“Too bad.When?”
“Eight years ago today.May 24.”
Dexter was silent.Inside, the music ended, and someone laughed.The instructor said a few things, but Ry couldn’t make out the words.Then the music began again.“Five hundred—no—fifty.Fifty-two years,” Dexter said at last.
Ry was beginning to get the hang of talking to Dexter and deciphering his cryptic messages.“That’s a long time to be married.”
“Yep.”
“I envy you that.”
“Yep.”
Ry allowed himself a rare moment of nostalgic longing.He hadn’t been raised to believe in roots and long-term relationships.His father’s job had required moving his family many times, and when Ry was fifteen his parents had divorced.Ry and Linda had occupied at least five apartments in their brief marriage, and they’d agreed to postpone having children until they were “settled.”Ry had always suspected they wanted to be sure they’d stay together before they took that drastic step.
He’d never had an attic or a basement stuffed with years of collected memories, never had an “old neighborhood” to go back to.He’d prided himself on being pared down, flexible, eager for challenge and change.A marriage that lasted for fifty-two years was almost beyond his comprehension.If he married today, he’d have to live to be eighty-seven to accomplish that.His thoughts drifted to Freddy, whose image was never far from his mind.She was the sort of woman who would expect her marriage to last fifty years.
“Dexter?”A woman came around the end of the house holding a glass in each hand.“Oh, is that you, Mr.McGuinnes?”
He stood.“Please call me Ry, Belinda.”
She mounted the porch steps slowly but surely.“Would you like some iced tea?”she asked, holding out the glass.
He was pretty sure she’d intended one of the two iced teas for herself and that she’d expected to join Dexter on the porch.“Thanks, but I was about to go inside.It’s been a long day.”
“If you’re sure,” she said in her musical voice.“I wouldn’t want to drive you away on such a lovely evening.”
“Maybe tomorrow night I’ll be more awake and I can enjoy this porch as it should be enjoyed.”Sitting here with Freddy wouldn’t be a bad way to spend an evening.
“Oh?”She paused in the act of handing Dexter his iced tea.“Doesn’t your plane leave tomorrow?”
“I’ve decided to stay on a while longer.”
“Good,” Dexter said.
A pang of conscience assailed Ry as he said his goodnights and walked toward the front door.Dexter wouldn’t be so friendly if he knew Ry’s ultimate plans for the True Love.And Belinda wouldn’t be offering him glasses of iced tea.Duane wouldn’t have suggested bronc-riding lessons, and Leigh wouldn’t have agreed to help him improve his horse-handling skills.As for Freddy, she would have seen him impaled on a giant cactus before she would have given herself to him as she had tonight.He felt like a fraud, and he didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
That night, while going over some figures on the office computer, Freddy noticed that the calendar page for the day seemed to be missing.She hunted around, even checked the wastebasket, but it was definitely gone.It wasn’t a big deal, except that it said something about the kind of person Ry was.She’d loaned him her office for the day, and apparently he’d made notes on her calendar.Then he’d torn off the page and taken it with him instead of writing his information on another sheet.It was either insensitive or secretive, and she didn’t much care for either trait.She’d been right to repel his advances, she thought as she turned off the computer for the night.
Freddy spent the next few days staying out of Ry’s way.Strangely, considering his last kiss, he seemed to be avoiding her, too.Leigh worked with him first thing every morning, and he spent a good part of the day practicing what she’d taught him.During the brief glimpses Freddy had of him, she noticed how tanned his face had become and how his body, already lean, seemed tougher now.
On one hot, cloudless day that heralded the blistering summer to come, she rode out with Duane to check a break in the barbed wire that Duane thought looked deliberately cut.One of the cattle had become tangled in a loose end and had required considerable doctoring.
After assessing the damage, she had to agree with Duane that the wire had been cut.
