Tag: NaNoWriMo

Bess slammed the kitchen cabinet shut and whirled to slam the coffee cup on the counter. It made a loud clack and skidded sideways before she caught it between her shaking fingers. On the other side of the kitchen, Judd made his own noises as he scraped his knife through the steak in front of him so that it crunched against the plate. They were both breathing heavily as if they had just been in the ring for ten rounds.

It had begun simply enough. Bess, who had awakened from another dream where Daniel’s kind face stared back at her from eyes that would never blink again, got up, put on her most comfortable lounging dress, and shuffled into the kitchen with the distinct purpose of cleaning out and defrosting the refrigerator for Agnes, who had mentioned needing to do the task the day before.

She was on her knees, reaching deep into the back of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator with her cleaning cloth in hand, when a familiar grip wrapped around her arms and pulled, not exactly gently. She was twirled and yanked into Judd’s wall of a body.

On instinct, Bess stiffened and reached her hands to his chest, pushing against him to free herself. Because the only real gentleman Bess had known was Daniel, her shove had all the force of her muscles and ingrained fear. Unfortunately, Judd had already begun to relax his grip on her, so that her push sent him off balance, and he stumbled back, only catching himself against the red stool with its pull-out steps that Agnes used to reach the high cabinets.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Bess said through tight jaws, feeling her body shake with remembered encounters that had been such a part of her growing up that they were now ingrained in her DNA.

Judd crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared at her. “Stop trying to do more than you should be doing, and I won’t have to keep trying to save you from yourself.”

Bess had taken a bold step forward then, poking her finger into the middle of his chest. “Nobody said you were in charge of me,” she told him. “Just leave me alone.”

His nostrils flared with the force of his breath. “If you live under this roof taking advantage of my mother’s hospitality, then I am going to be in charge of you. House rules.”

He was angering her out of all proportion so that all she could see was red. She grabbed the nearest thing at hand behind her, which turned out to be a large soup spoon, and jabbed it just at the base of his throat. “If I weren’t very pregnant,” she hissed, “you wouldn’t sleep so well at night. Nobody touches me, understand?”

Judd stood stock still, but a series of emotions, from rage to something almost tender, flashed across his black glare before he stepped back away from her reach. “Stay out of my way, then,” he ordered gruffly. “I came in here to fix my breakfast.” He turned away from her, paused, then looked at her across his shoulder. “No one’s going to touch you without your permission anymore.”

It was an apology after a fashion, but not nearly enough. So, instead of offering to cook for him as she might have done in the past, Bess had returned to the very task he had pulled her from to start the argument in the first place, ignoring him entirely. That stalemate raged on when Agnes entered the kitchen some time later.

She took one look at Judd brooding over a cup of coffee and Bess straining on tiptoe to reach the back of the freezer and whistled so loudly that all the dogs around the house set to with a mighty roar of accompanying howls. Judd placed one hand over an ear and glared at her. Bess yelped and leaned against the counter for support.

“Well,” Agnes told them, “now that I have your attention, can somebody please tell me why the two of you can’t seem to get along?”

Judd picked up his breakfast dishes and sauntered over to the sink, right beside Bess, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He laid the dishes on the sparkling porcelain and leaned against the sink with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Ask her,” he had the audacity to reply, nodding his head in Bess’ direction.

She didn’t take time to think, just slammed her foot as hard as she could on Judd’s instep, then stalked over to Agnes. The fact that the infuriating man didn’t even wince further fueled her temper. “Your son doesn’t want me here,” she told her mother-in-law. “He can’t seem to get it through his thick skull that I don’t exactly want to be here either. I can take care of myself. I have been taking care of myself since I was old enough to tie my shoes and fry eggs. The only reason I am even here is because I thought I owed it to Daniel. I’m not so sure anymore.”

“If I didn’t want her here, why would I be trying to get her to take better care of herself, for goodness’ sake?” Judd exclaimed to his mother, ignoring Bess completely.

Agnes looked as if she were trying her best not to laugh and failing. She tucked her chin into her chest and studied the linoleum for several moments before finally looking Bess and Judd in the eye again. “Well,” she said in a voice that was calm as if she were discussing the weather, “the two of you are just going to have to learn to get along. My grandchild is going to bind the three of us together for better or for worse for the rest of our lives. It might as well be for the better.”

“She purposely misunderstands everything I say,” Judd complained.

“He’s a bully,” Bess said at the same time.

Agnes looked at the two of them and did burst out laughing then. “I’m going to treat you like I would a couple of strays who can’t seem to behave. Judd, I want you to take Bess into the city today and do some shopping for my grand-baby. We don’t have a thing left in this house for newborns. I gave it all away years ago. And I know Bess could use some more maternity outfits for the remainder of her pregnancy.”

Bess would have laughed at the image of Judd standing in the middle of a department store looking for baby things except she realized with dead certainty that Agnes was not joking.

“What do you do with the strays, Agnes?” she asked. “Throw them in one of your pens together until they either come out friends or kill each other?”

The older woman smiled. “Oh, I’m usually right outside the fence with the hose, dear, just in case,” she said. “But, I can trust you two not to kill each other, can’t I? After all, Judd won’t want to have to arrest himself.”

Bess glanced at Judd then. His face was ruddy, his black eyes glaring at his mother. But, he slowly pushed himself off the counter and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I need to take care of a few things at the office. I can be back here in an hour to pick you up, Bess, if that will work for you?”

Bess nodded her assent, too stunned to speak. Without waiting for anymore words, she turned on her heel and exited the kitchen, wondering how she was going to survive an entire day in the company of Judd Taylor without either pummeling him or giving in to her curiosity and kissing him until she wiped that perpetual smug look from his knowing face.

—

The closest city to their small town was an hour’s drive up a highway lined with cotton gins, gnarly mesquite trees, and tilled-dirt fields with the promise of fruitful crops come spring. Bess studied the blue sky on the horizon, listening to the clop, clop of the tires on the pavement.

“Where are we headed exactly?” she asked.

Judd ignored the question. “I never mean to antagonize you,” he said, his eyes glued to the road ahead of him. “I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something you’re not telling us that might hurt you eventually.”

“Hurt me or hurt you, Judd Taylor? Sure you aren’t just bringing work home with you?”

“No more than you trudge around with the weight of your past reflecting on everything you do.”

Bess clenched the door handle with knuckles gone white. “Just what is it you think you know about my past?”

Judd pulled over on the side of the road, where there was a rest area, a copse of trees with a couple of concrete tables and benches. He turned in his seat and faced her, draping one strong arm over the steering wheel. “I know you’ve been hurt. I know Daniel is just the latest in a long line of men who’ve abandoned you. I know it’s almost impossible for you to trust anyone.”

It bothered her that he could read her so well. Her skin literally crawled with the knowledge. “Maybe it isn’t important that we trust each other,” she said, not bothering to deny his speculations.

His eyebrow jerked up. “What do you plan to do, Bess, once the baby is born?”

“Do you think I’ll just run off and never let you see the baby again? Do you think I would have even let you know about my situation if that were the case?”

He reached across the span of the car and took a curly strand of Bess’ hair, twirling it around his finger. “We’ve lost Daniel, Bess. I don’t think we can lose you and the baby, too. Not now.”

She pulled back from the tentative contact. “You just admitted you barely know me. How do you know what it would feel like to lose me?”

His hands were back on the steering wheel.  “You’re right, of course. How could I know?” He put the car back into drive and pulled back out on the highway.

They didn’t say another word to each other for the rest of the long drive, which gave Bess ample opportunity to stew on the secrets she kept and to ponder what would happen if just for once in her life she opened up to another living soul, maybe to a taciturn sheriff with his craggy face and searing, black eyes.

The front door bell rang, and since Bess was curled on the sofa sketching some ideas for Michelle’s new dress, she was the first on hand to answer it. Rachel Bree stood outside the door, keeping a cautious eye on Jethro, who stood just behind her making a low, warning growl in his throat.

“Jethro,” Bess chided, and the bloodhound immediately lay down on his belly in the dirt, thumping his tail so that a cloud of fine sand circled the air around him.

She stepped aside to let Rachel into the house, noticing the cute capris pants and matching top tied in a knot at her waist. That’s when she remembered Rachel’s invitation to join her for a Saturday matinee. Bess glanced down at the tent-like lounger Agnes had loaned her and grimaced.

“Rachel, I totally forgot about your invitation. Can you give me a minute to change?”

Rachel gave Bess a warm hug. “We’ve got plenty of time. Do you want me to help you pick something out?” She motioned over her own outfit and wiggled her eyebrows. “I am known in some circles for my great fashion sense.” She laughed heartily.

Bess grabbed Rachel’s hand and pulled her toward the bedroom. “Two minds are always better than one, though I have to warn you that I don’t have much to choose from.”

When they entered Bess’ room, Rachel’s eyes immediately went to the beginnings of the new dress that Bess had sprawled across the bed and rocking chair. “What’s this?” she asked.

“I know you can’t tell much yet. I’m making a new dress out of a couple of old ones Michelle brought over yesterday. I’m thinking of streamlining this black skirt, with slits so that the gold sheen can peek out from them as she moves. I thought I’d make a waist-length, long-sleeved jacket out of the rest of the sheath dress and jacket there. Do you think the top of the dress should be black as well, or leave the white top for contrast?”

Rachel’s mouth was standing open. She closed it and grinned. “I don’t know how you came up with that from this. You really have a talent. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision about the rest. Now, what are you going to wear today? We’re going to see that hunky Robert Redford in a western about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, if that’s any help.”

“If you mean do I have any cowboy maternity wear, then we’re out of luck.” Bess pulled a calf-length dress with an empire waist from her closet and held it up to herself. “Will this do?”

Rachel felt the smooth material. “That’s very nice.” She sat down on the edge of the bed as Bess changed, fingering the bits of Michelle’s dresses next to her. “Is Judd around?” she finally asked.

There was something about Rachel that made Bess peel away her usual habit of suspicion so that she knew Rachel’s question was something she couldn’t help asking instead of wondering if Rachel only befriended Bess to get closer to Judd. She managed to pull the dress over her head before joining Rachel on the bed. “He took Lillian out to supper last night. I don’t know where he is today.”

Rachel’s shoulders slumped. “I’m being silly, I know. He’s twelve years older than I am, and he’s hardly ever noticed me. Besides, here you are living in the same house with him, and look how pretty you are.” She tugged on her straight, brown hair. “Maybe I could dye my hair blond like yours or black like Lillian’s.”

Bess made a face. “Look, Rachel, you seem pretty happy to me without a man. I don’t know much, but I know that changing yourself for some guy always winds up hurting you in the end. They still wind up disappointing you.”

Rachel’s eyes studied Bess with a certain squint in them. “I’m sure there are a few really interesting stories behind that wisdom, but I won’t pry. And I won’t sit around pining for your brother-in-law either.”

Bess took Rachel’s hand in hers and squeezed. “I bet we can find a half dozen men this afternoon who would love to take you out on a date. Are you game?”

“Okay. You ready?”

They walked into the living room to find Judd sitting in his recliner glancing through a magazine as if he had been waiting for them. The two women glanced at each other at the sight of him and burst out laughing. Judd threw the magazine to the table beside his chair and grimaced.

“What’s so funny?” he muttered. When they didn’t answer him but only laughed harder, he cleared his throat. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute, Bess.”

She didn’t like the gleam in his black eyes. Cocking an eyebrow at him, she crossed her arms over her chest and told him. “Whatever you have to say, Rachel can hear too.”

Judd looked a little uncomfortable as he rose to his feet, smoothing his hands on his worn jeans. “Lillian said you were rude to her yesterday.”

Bess glanced at Rachel, who rolled her eyes where Judd couldn’t see. “And she was polite?” she just managed.

He shuffled from foot to foot and glared. “I just want it to be clear that Lillian has as much right to be here as you do.”

That stung. Lillian wasn’t exactly carrying around a six-pound bowling ball with part of his genetic material inadvertently attached. She forced a bland smile on her lips. “I’ll keep that in mind. If you give me fair warning, I can manage to stay in my room whenever she visits.”

Judd shoved the fingers of his right hand through his hair. “I don’t mean you have to go that far.” He placed one large, booted foot on the hearth and leaned against the mantel. “Do you have to be purposely obtuse?”

Maybe because Rachel was there as backup, but for reasons Bess could not even later explain, she smiled sweetly and exclaimed in a Scarlet O’Hara drawl, “Only when it comes to you, dear man.”

His jaw clenched. He glared at Bess and then Rachel. And then he pushed himself away from the mantel and stalked from the room, muttering something about his brother’s dubious taste in women.

Bess turned to look at Rachel, a sense of triumph reflected in her baby-blue eyes. Rachel’s open face was pale, her mouth open in a large O.

“What?” Bess asked her.

“You actually got to him,” she answered.

Bess felt a stab of guilt. “Yeah, I tend to do that, even when I’m not trying to. What a burden I must be for him.”

Rachel shook her head. “You don’t understand, Bess,” she said. “Nobody every gets to Judd. He’s like a stone wall.”

“Even stone walls get cracks now and again.”

Rachel looped her arm in the crook of Bess’ elbow. “You’ve officially cured me of my Judd crush,” she announced. “I could never stand up to him like you do.”

Bess was confused. “What makes that so important?”

“Only a woman who could stand up to him like that stands a snowball’s chance of nabbing and keeping Judd Taylor’s attention.”

“Lucky me,” Bess scoffed.

Rachel gave her a hard look. “Yes,” she said, “lucky you.”

Bess felt a stab of shame. “Are we ready?” she said, desperate to change the subject.

They went to the movie, where they met up with another group of women from the church, young singles and newly married girls, all of whom had grown up together in the small town. Somehow, they managed to include Bess in their conversations, even when they were discussing events that happened years before.

At the tea room, the light conversation became serious when a willowy red-head named Cynthia brought up Daniel to Bess. “Aren’t you angry?” she said. “There’s a group of us going up to Washington to protest the war in a few months. You should join us.”

Bess, whose only concern with politics had ever been the bureaucracy of the foster care system, shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m not the type of person to protest anything. And besides, it would seem like betraying Daniel somehow, don’t you think?”

Cynthia’s voice rose as she warmed to her theme. “It’s betraying all of the soldiers if we continue to let our government lie to us.”

Bess’ hand went to her belly, where the baby shifted in its own protest. “Daniel didn’t think he was being lied to. He loved this country.”

“I love this country,” Cynthia practically shouted.

Rachel laid a hand on the other woman’s arm. “Cynthia, you’re yelling at a pregnant woman, whom, I might add, you’ve just met.”

She blushed. “I’m sorry, Bess,” she gushed. “I get really worked up about this. My brother is a medic on his second tour over there. My parents think I’m crazy.”

“Frustrated,” Bess told her, “frightened for your brother, but not crazy.”

“Can we talk about something else?” one of the other girls asked. “It was bad enough that the movie ended with the heroes dying.”

“That’s what you get for not knowing your history,” someone else accused.

The rest of the table laughed at that, breaking the tension. Bess settled back into her chair and sighed her relief. These women knew more about Daniel than she did, the woman who was carrying his child. For someone who thought she was past feeling useless emotions like guilt, she certainly was wallowing in it enough lately.

Funny how the weight of that emotion seemed even heavier than the baby she had growing under her flawed and sealed-up heart.

 

“Well, what do you think?” Michelle stood in front of Bess with two dresses that could not be more different. One was a sheath dress with a square neckline that also had a thigh-length jacket with cap sleeves. The satin material was an iridescent gold that shimmered with the light. The second was an a-line dress with a crinoline underskirt. The bodice had a scoop neck and quarter-length sleeves. The dress was a contrast with its black skirt and white top.

“They’re both beautiful,” Bess told her. “Are you sure you want me to take them apart?”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Michelle assured her. “You don’t know how many times I’ve worn these things.”

“Okay then,” Bess agreed, taking the dresses out of Michelle’s hands and laying them aside. “I should get your measurements.”

She finished with the task just as Agnes came into the kitchen. She exclaimed over the dresses and then offered to make some herbal tea. As the women sat around the table drinking it, Michelle turned to Bess and asked her again where she had learned to sew.

Bess swallowed back the emotions the memories caused. “She was the first person to really care about me,” she managed.

“One of those lifetime friends,” Michelle said. “My best friend and I have been exchanging birthday and Christmas cards since the third grade. She always makes me smile.”

“Unfortunately,” Bess told the table top, “she hasn’t been around for a very long time.”

“I’m sorry. That must hurt.”

Bess shrugged. “Like anyone else, I learned a long time ago that life is one, long series of hurt. Making the best of bad situations is the only thing that gets you through most of the time.”

Agnes sighed. “I don’t know. I find that leaning on Jesus is what gets me through.”

“Amen to that,” Michelle agreed. “You know Michael has a really great sermon about how this life is all about our becoming our best selves in light of our heavenly home. And a big part of that sermon concentrates on how walking with Jesus each and every day, about the little things and the big things, is so important to keeping ourselves close to God and His purpose for us.”

Bess felt her spine stiffen. In her experience, Jesus, like her absent parents, had never been around when she needed Him most. Looking at Agnes and Michelle, she wondered if these women had ever had to fight off the unwanted advances of a foster brother or been beaten within an inch of their lives by a man who claimed to be their protector. She forced a smile to her lips. “I enjoy your husband’s sermons,” she said.

Luckily, this seemed to satisfy Michelle, who launched into the story of how she met Michael and what their married life in service had been like. Before long, more than an hour had passed, and it was time for Michelle to leave for a meeting at the church.

Agnes walked Michelle to the door while Bess began ripping out seams, eager to get started. Agnes came back into the kitchen whistling a tune lightly and sat down at the table to watch Bess work. For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the threads Bess carefully pulled from the fabric.

Then, Agnes sighed out a long breath. “So, what do you want to know about Jesus?” she asked, striking straight into the heart of the matter.

Bess paused in her task, keeping her eyes cast down. “I don’t think I said there was anything I needed to know.”

Agnes sighed again, but she didn’t say anything else, so that Bess was finally forced to look at her to alleviate her own discomfort. It struck Bess then that Daniel had his mother’s eyes, and they were staring at her across that table with as much love as her husband had offered that day outside the base when he’d said his last goodbye.

“You’ve got scars, Bess,” Agnes said, “scars so deep, I reckon only God Himself knows the truth of them.”

Bess grimaced. “Judd calls them secrets. I call them best-left-buried.”

Agnes grabbed Bess’ hand and squeezed it. “Nothing buried ever heals, my darling. When you’re ready, you start unearthing those scars, reveal them to the healing light.” She raised her other hand when Bess opened her mouth to protest. “Now, I’m not saying you have to say a word to me or to Judd. I’m advising you to open up to the heavenly Father. You’d be surprised how much better you’ll feel.”

Bess bit her lip. The baby kicked, as if the little peanut also had an opinion on the matter. She laid her free hand on her belly and asked Agnes. “You really believe somebody is up there listening?”

Agnes nodded out the window, where the afternoon sun blazed across the sand dunes between the fields. A road runner, swift and sure-footed, zig-zagged across the drive and ducked into a canopy of flowering cacti at the side of the road. “How can I look out on all that vibrant color and movement and light and not believe that a Master Creator is responsible for it all?”

Bess pulled away from Agnes’ grasp and stood up with an effort. She stepped to the window and kept her eyes focused on the horizon, rubbing the small of her back with one hand. “If you’d lived my life, you’d know that Master Creator has a wicked sense of humor. If He’s up there, He has a funny way of showing that He cares at all.”

“Don’t you know that He came down to earth and lived just like you and me, that He died on the Cross for your sins and mine, even though He never committed a sin Himself? Hasn’t anyone ever told you about Christ’s grand love for you, Bess?”

Bess whirled around to face her mother-in-law, even though she knew her eyes were spitting fire at the anger she felt swelling in her chest. “Where was He and His love when my friend was murdered?” she asked. “Or any of the other thousand times when I got knocked around by this so-called life I’m living? Thanks for the well-meaning lecture, Agnes, but I think I can live without the love of God. Much more of it is going to finish me off.”

Before Agnes could say anything more, Bess waved her hand dismissively in the air and hurried to her bedroom, shutting the door firmly and sitting down hard on the bed. She sat straight-backed and tense for several minutes, barely breathing, sure Agnes would follow her. But, when no one came, she finally relaxed. She lay her head down on the pillow, surprised to feel tears running along her cheek and into her ear. Eventually, she slept.

When she ventured back into the kitchen two hours later, all ready to apologize for her rude exit, she was surprised to see a beautiful, black-haired woman sitting at the table, her hand laying possessively on Judd’s arm. It took Bess a moment to recognize the woman from the drugstore. Agnes had said her name was Lillian, and that she had an interest in Judd. Bess paused in the doorway, unnoticed, as she took in the scene in front of her.

“It must have been so awkward having her show up like that,” Lillian was saying as she leaned ever closer to Judd’s straight form in the chair next to hers. “I mean, your brother hadn’t even written to say he had married, right?”

Judd shrugged. “Why do you think I called in a favor with my buddy in the Houston PD to check out the marriage license?”

“Surely he could run a background check for you as well? You don’t have any idea what kind of person she could be.”

“You could ask her,” Bess heard herself saying before she could bite her tongue. She stepped into the kitchen as startled eyes glanced in her direction.

“Mother said you were taking a nap,” Judd said, laying a hand over Lillian’s.

Bess bit back a grin. Poor man, she thought. She had taunted him just that morning about not having a wife, and here he was presenting an excellent candidate as if to tell Bess, I told you so. “I was. Do you want me to go back to bed so you can continue to talk about me behind my back?”

Lillian made a strangled noise at the back of her throat and looked at Judd as if to say he had allowed a maniac under his roof. Judd pushed back from the table, effectively breaking Lillian’s hold on his arm, and rose to his full, formidable height.

“Why don’t we talk about you right to your face, Bess? Why not have a seat and give us a few details about yourself besides the obvious? Then, we wouldn’t have to speculate on your background or character.”

Bess felt her face going red as her hands balled into fists. Even the baby protested with a double-punch to her kidneys. She just managed not to flinch from the shot of pain that caused before stalking over to the counter to pour herself a glass of lemonade from the refrigerator. She didn’t say a word as she fetched a glass, opened the old but serviceable Frigidaire, and poured the freshly-squeezed liquid from the milk-glass pitcher. She turned so that her back was against the counter as she took a slow sip, her eyes slashing between Judd with his jutted chin and Lillian with her smile like a Cheshire cat.

“Now that your brother is dead,” she finally said, “I am the only one in the whole, wide world who gives a darn about what happens to me, which is okay because I can take care of myself. I think that’s all you really need to know.”

“What’s so terrible that you can’t just say it?” Lillian demanded, standing up beside Judd and positioning herself just under his shoulder.

Bess took another sip before trusting herself to answer, hating that the hand that held the glass of lemonade shook. “Not so much terrible as private.”

To his credit, Judd was beginning to look a touch uncomfortable. He stepped to the side as if he had just then noticed Lillian’s proximity to his person and shoved his hands in his pockets. “By all means, keep your private life private,” he muttered, then turned on his heel and stalked off toward the living room, leaving a stunned Lillian in the kitchen.

She frowned at Bess, marring her perfect features. “You think you’re going to hook him with this little game you’re playing,” she hissed, “but Judd’s much smarter than that.”

Bess sat the glass down on the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. “I suppose so, or else you’d have married him a long time ago.”

Lillian’s mouth dropped. She took two steps toward Bess, thought better of it, and pivoted on her heel to follow Judd into the living room. The screen door creaked then, and Bess turned to see Agnes coming into the kitchen with a basket full of eggs.

“Be warned,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper as if the flare up of a few hours before had never happened, “I just spotted Lillian’s car in the driveway.”

Bess nodded in the opposite direction. “They’re in the living room no doubt discussing what a rude creature I am.”

Agnes frowned. “I don’t know why she’s here. She stopped dropping by unannounced ages ago, and I can’t imagine Judd inviting her.”

Bess wasn’t about to admit to her teasing of Judd about his bachelorhood earlier that morning. “Maybe she’s determined to save you two from me. She seems to think I harbor evil designs on you and Judd, mostly Judd.”

Agnes began washing the eggs in the sink, laying them on an old flour-sack-turned-tea-towel to dry. “I suppose she’d be suspicious of any pretty, young thing that came to visit us here. I wouldn’t take it too personally, dear.”

“Of course not,” Bess agreed, even though she knew it was a lie.

She was relieved when Judd came in a moment later to explain he was taking Lillian to supper in town. Shortly after, she feigned a headache and returned to her bed, feeling every bit the coward and hoping for the strength to face Judd and Agnes the next day, especially since both of them were asking her, each in their own way, to face her true self, the one beneath the layers of bravado and emotional calluses that were the armor she used to survive the cold, lonely world.

She clenched her hands into fists and resisted the urge to turn around and look Judd in the face, all defiant as if she might actually get her way in an argument with him. “Pardon me?” she bit out.

Suddenly, he was standing right behind her. She could feel the strength of him and did her best to keep it from seeping into her skin. Once the baby came, she wouldn’t have anyone’s strength to lean on but her own. No sense getting used to something she’d never actually had.

His hands were wrapping around her arms then, and she felt herself being lifted to standing as if she were a feather and not a five-foot-seven pregnant woman. “I said,” Judd repeated, turning her so that she had no choice but to look him in the eye, “are you just stupid, or are you trying to lose this baby?”

His eyes flashed that black fire, and Bess felt her shoulders relax as she realized his fear. It made overlooking his rudeness a little easier. She laid a protective hand on her stomach and sighed. “Your brother died for no good reason in a country I’d never even heard of before, and this baby is the only thing you and your mother will have to remember him by. Why would I do anything to hurt this little peanut or myself?”

He released her arms, but those eyes roamed over her from head to toe as if he still wasn’t sure she was all right. Finally, he asked in a deceptively soft voice. “For us to remember him, but not you?”

She refused to rise to that bait, stepping even farther away from him to sit down in one of the kitchen chairs. She ran her hands over the clean table top, flattening her palms against the cool wood and studying her nails. “You don’t talk about him,” she said in her own soft voice, sighing out the words to loosen the knot at the base of her spine. “He worshiped the ground you walked on. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t sign up just to impress you. Agnes has told me all kinds of wonderful things about him since I’ve been here. Don’t you have any memories you’d like to share?”

A glass shattered against the far wall, causing Bess to flinch as if the next thing might be a fist to her head. Instead, the chair next to hers scraped against the floor and Judd collapsed into it, shoving his big hands through his hair and cradling his head. “You think I don’t know,” he said in a strained voice that startled her, “what Daniel would do to impress me? It never mattered how often or how much we praised him, he never felt good enough.”

Against her better judgment, she reached the inches across the space between them and laid a tentative hand on his arm. He turned his head in his hands to look at her. “He said you’d never find a girl as pretty as his to have as a wife,” she said, “so maybe he finally felt like he’d impress you after all.”

He sat up, placing one warm hand over hers. “Perhaps not as pretty,” he smirked.

“What’s going on here?” Agnes asked from the doorway, and Judd pulled back from Bess as if she burned.

“I got a little hot-tempered, I’m afraid,” Judd explained, rising to his full height and walking to the corner for the broom and dust bin to clean up the broken glass.

Agnes took the broom from his hand, making shooing motions toward him. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t you have some work to do in that messy study of yours?”

Bess watched Judd leave the kitchen, taking her first full breath. “It’s my fault,” she told Agnes when she was sure he was out of ear shot. “I asked him about Daniel and upset him.”

Agnes threw away the swept-up glass, then joined Bess at the table. “We lost their father when Judd was just fifteen. He became more like a father to Daniel than a brother. There’s ten years between them, you know.”

“Why hasn’t Judd married?” Bess asked.

Agnes looked out the window toward the dog pens in her backyard zoo. “There was a woman once when he was 21. He even bought her a ring. But one day she just up and left. There’s never been another.”

“Why did she go?”

“He never said, and I never asked.”

“Secrets,” Bess whispered.

Agnes grinned. “Well, you didn’t think you had the market on them?”

Bess swallowed back a lump in her throat. “Some things are just best left buried.”

Agnes’ bony hand snaked into Bess’ palm and squeezed. “Only if you don’t bury important parts of yourself along with them, dear.” She stood. “I best get supper started. Judd will work up an appetite tamping down all those emotions you keep stirring up in him.”

Bess bit her lip. “I don’t mean to be contrary. He just seems to bring it out of me.”

“It’s good for him, Bess,” Agnes told her. “He was getting far too settled in his ways if you ask me.”

“I think he hates me,” Bess gave voice to her fear. “He’d be happier if I wasn’t here.”

Agnes gave her a shrewd look. “He’d be happier if you shared a little more of yourself. It would make him feel like you wanted to be a part of us. It would help him to understand why his baby brother chose you.”

Bess didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept her mouth shut and got up to help Agnes with the cooking. They prepared a supper of salmon patties, green beans, beets and homemade biscuits and then sat down with a subdued Judd to eat it. As they lingered over apple pie and coffee, Bess tried to get up the courage to share something about herself with her new in-laws. Funny, she thought, she had not thought herself a coward until she met up with the likes of Judd Taylor.

But, her struggles proved unnecessary when the phone began its tinny trill, and Judd answered it only to be called away on an emergency. She helped Agnes with the dishes and then excused herself to her bedroom, where she crawled under the covers for an early night still searching for a piece of her sordid past she might be willing to share with a man who made her want to be liked by a member of the opposite sex for the first time in a very long time indeed.

Bess was awake before the rooster crowed the next morning, feeling a tiny foot pressing against her side. The baby was beginning to move around more and more, making her think of the way Daniel was always fidgeting with something, never still. She was rubbing the slightly sore spot where the baby’s last kick had landed when she stepped into the kitchen and was startled by Judd’s arrival through the back door.

He had on the same clothes as the night before. His hair was matted against his scalp and pointing in crazy directions as if he had been running his hands through it. His usually pressed shirt was wrinkled and spotted with splatters of something dark like mud or blood. But mostly, she noticed that his eyes, usually blazing with life, were dull and listless.

He barely seemed to notice her presence, but shuffled to the counter to start coffee brewing, letting out a big yawn that stretched his jaws taut. Bess kept her distance lest she startle him and cleared her throat before speaking. He slid his eyes in her direction with as little motion as possible and barely nodded in acknowledgment of her.

“Let me do that,” she said, taking a step in his direction. “You look worn through.”

He pushed himself away from the counter and leaned against the wall instead, closing his eyes as he spoke. “Pile up on the highway,” he muttered. “Two dead, and a couple of kids orphaned by it to deal with. Some days, I really hate this job.”

Her hands gripped the coffee pot handle until her knuckles were white. “How old were they, the children?”

“Teenagers, out where they shouldn’t have been. Mom and dad had an argument in the car after having to make the trip to pick them up. They’re going to feel guilty for the rest of their lives. What a waste.”

He stopped talking, and Bess concentrated on the coffee, trying not to think about what Judd had just said. Flashes of that rainy night when she’d found Grandfather slumped over in the barn, his eyes open wide like a guppy, flooded her mind. The policeman on the scene had been a high school friend of her father’s. He kept patting Bess’ head and calling her a poor child. The social worker, a tall, beak-nosed woman with her hair pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, had shoved a rough finger onto Bess’ cheek to swipe away her tears and ordered Bess to stop crying, which was only for babies.

She shook herself to rid her mind of the memories and heard the deep, steady rhythm of Judd’s breath, as if he had fallen asleep standing up. His eyes popped open as she was looking at him, and he cocked his head. “What are you doing up at this hour?” he demanded.

She pointed toward the table. “Just be glad that I am. Have a seat, and I’ll make you some breakfast. I assume you didn’t plan on going straight to bed, since you started to make coffee?”

He nodded. “I just came home to change out of these,” he indicated his uniform. “The driver that caused the accidents last night was high as a kite on an as-yet-to-be-identified substance. I want to make sure he gets arraigned today.”

Bess studied him for a minute as he remained against the wall, the lines around his eyes, the shadow of hair across his chin where he needed to shave. “If you had a wife,” she told him, “she wouldn’t let you work this hard. It can’t be good for you.”

“I’m married to the job,” he shot back, levering off the wall and pulling himself to his full height.

She chuckled at the defiant set of his jaw. “And I’m sure the job is great comfort on cold winter nights.” And then because it suddenly seemed important that Judd didn’t have someone to look out for him besides his mother, she added, “Not all women run away, you know. Some of them stay.”

The words worked like an adrenaline shot. Judd’s eyes flashed fire and his hands curled into fists. “I’m going to get changed,” he said, ignoring her comment. “I’d take some scrambled eggs and bacon if you don’t mind.”

He was gone then, leaving Bess to prepare the breakfast. Her hands shook at the knowledge of her own temerity. If she wasn’t careful, Judd was going to think she wanted the job of taking care of him for the rest of his life.

The thought that maybe she did was what sent her hiding back in her bedroom with his breakfast on the table before he returned from changing his clothes. By the time she emerged to see about her own breakfast, Judd was long gone.

 

The dream was always the same. She was standing in the middle of a tiny apartment that reeked of booze and smoke and sweat, her breathing shallow and rapid, her heartbeat loud in the silence. Her hands shook so that she placed them on her faded jeans to steady them. That was when she noticed the blood, caked inside the folds of her knuckles and embedded around her nails like polish.

Slowly, the room came into focus, and she looked with horror at the still form on the bed in the corner. The pale body, curled as if in sleep, with its long, black hair fanned out like a blanket, didn’t look like her best friend. There were bruises where once the skin had been smooth and beautiful, like porcelain.

The man on the floor at her feet was responsible for her friend lying dead. His closely-shaved head lay in a pool of dark blood. The bat on the chipped linoleum beside him was what she’d used to knock the life out of him. She could hear the sirens and knew she had to escape. No one would care that he had beaten her friend to death and planned to rape her next. No one would care that he was well over 30 and she was just 14. They would shuffle her in the system and forget about her until some other predator managed to leave her in her own pool of blood.

Usually, the dream ended there, and she would wake soaked in her sweat and spend the rest of the night counting by sevens until the dawn light peaked its way through the windows of the bedrooms she always shared with others. This night, the girl in her dream reached her blood-soaked hands to a protruding belly, rubbing it absently as the sirens grew louder. That was when the form on the floor groaned and moved, rising suddenly, his eyes yellow and piercing, and lunged toward her, toward her baby.

She woke to piercing screams, moments passing before she realized they were her own. Her bedroom door, which she had locked for the sheer luxury of having the ability to do it, came crashing open, slamming against the wall so that the doorknob left a circular dent in the sheet rock. Judd, dressed only in striped pajama bottoms, his broad chest bare, hurried into the room with a gun raised by his head. Even though she’d obviously awakened him from a deep sleep, he wasn’t even breathing heavily.

Bess pushed her sweaty hair away from her eyes and sat up in the bed, pulling the covers up to her neck, even though her flannel gown already covered her completely. “I’m sorry,” she rushed to explain. “It was just a bad dream, a really bad one. I usually don’t wake up screaming like that.”

He glanced around the room as if he didn’t quite believe her and then slowly lowered his gun. She held her breath, expecting him to interrogate her with fifty questions. Instead, he stood at the foot of her bed and just studied her for the span of two breaths.

“You’ll be all right now?” he finally asked.

As she opened her mouth to answer, Agnes appeared in the bedroom door. “What’s happening in here?” she asked, her voice groggy with sleep. “Would you like some warm milk, dear?”

“Yes,” Judd answered for Bess, turning toward his mother. “And I could use some, too. I’ll help you.”

Bess watched them walk out of the room, so stunned by Judd’s behavior that she forgot to be shaken by her nightmare. Before anyone returned with a glass of milk for her, she had laid back down, snuggled into her pillow, and fallen into a dreamless sleep.

The next morning she woke feeling so rested, until the memory of the night before came flooding back full force. She was almost too embarrassed to go to the breakfast table. In the end, she chided her sudden shyness when she had faced many more challenging situations in the past with more gusto, dressed in a bright yellow sundress with matching sweater and walked into the kitchen as gracefully as her bulging belly would allow.

She was surprised to see Judd still at the breakfast table. He looked up when he heard her enter, his usual smirk pasted on his face. His black eyes were pinched as if he had not slept well. Bess decided to feel pleased instead of guilty. After all, he’d given her plenty of restless nights since her arrival.

Before she could even pour herself a cup of decaf, he motioned for her to take the seat across from him with such a scowl that she obeyed without thinking about it. He was going to interrogate her after all.

In typical Judd fashion, he cut right to the chase. “So?” was all he asked.

She shrugged. “Hormones.”

He stared at her until she was forced to look away, to the polished wood of the round table. Still, she kept her mouth shut, letting the silence stretch into minutes. Finally, he sighed and stood up, his chair making a loud scrape in the quiet kitchen. She did look up then, surprised that he would give up so easily.

But then, he probably already knew everything about her. It would be simple enough for a sheriff to discover everything in her files. Why he was waiting to confront her, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t in any hurry to find out.

He stopped beside her, towering over her, the warmth from his body emanating toward her too-cool skin. “Everyone has a past, Bess,” he said. “Secrets, now secrets are suspicious.”

Before she could say anything, he turned on his heel and left the room. Bess glanced at her shaking hands and took several breaths before she felt calm enough to move. He wasn’t going to throw her out, at least not until the baby was born. Why did she feel disappointed in herself for not telling him what he wanted to know anyway?

—

Bess hated dirty things. Too many years of having basically nothing to call her own had made her almost obsessive about keeping everything around her sparkling clean. That’s why she was scrubbing the cabinets when Agnes came into the kitchen later that afternoon with the pastor’s wife right on her heels and didn’t even notice the other two women until Agnes spoke.

“Heaven’s sake, Bess,” she exclaimed, “you ought to be resting after the night you had, not slaving away in my kitchen.”

Bess unbent herself from the lower cabinet where she had been concentrating on the well-worn handle and rubbed her lower back. “I don’t mind,” she said. “Cleaning relaxes me.”

“Well, relax yourself over to a chair. Mrs. Jones has come for a visit.”

Bess smiled at the thin pastor’s wife, thinking that she looked like a stiff wind would blow her away. Bess sat down and watched Michelle and Agnes talk without adding anything to the conversation, which was another one of her habits born of survival.

Her ears perked up, though, when the talk turned to an upcoming charity ball. Michelle was lamenting her lack of a proper wardrobe, and Agnes joked that the younger woman could combine two of her formal dresses people had seen her in before to create something totally new.

When Michelle sighed that she couldn’t sew on a button, much less dresses, Bess heard herself telling the other two women, “I could do it.”

“What was that?” Agnes asked lightly.

Bess cleared her throat at the shocked faces looking at her. “I did alterations at my old job at the laundromat,” she explained. “I never exactly had the resources to try something like you’re talking about, but I’m sure I could do it.”

The pastor’s wife gave her a genuine smile. “Are you really willing to try? I wouldn’t want to put you out, now of all times.”

“Look,” Bess told her, flexing her fingers above the table, “my hands are just itching to get started.”

Agnes stood up suddenly, disappearing into the laundry room, and then re-appearing with a pile of clothes she sat carefully on the table in front of Bess. It was a stack of Judd’s work and uniform shirts, along with several pairs of socks. Agnes grinned so that her strong teeth sparkled.

“I just hate doing the darning and mending. I always put it off until the dead of winter when there just isn’t anything left to do. Would you mind, Bess?”

“I’ll love it,” Bess assured her, sorting through the clothing with experienced hands. “All I need is your sewing basket and a toothpick.”

“A toothpick?” Michelle exclaimed.

“It makes repairing buttons so much easier,” Bess said. “I’ll show you.”

When Bess had finished her demonstration, Michelle asked if she could bring the two dresses over the very next morning. “How did you learn to sew, Bess?” she asked. “I didn’t understand a bit of my home-ec lessons, except for the cooking sections.”

Bess knew her eyes took on a far-away, revealing look when she spoke about this, but she had a firm policy of telling as much of the truth as necessary or keeping her mouth shut, and ignoring Michelle’s question would be just too rude in the present circumstances. She cleared her throat.

“A good friend,” her voice broke on the word, “taught me when I was 13 and full of rebellion. She made it challenging so that I even learned how to sit and listen better in my classes at school after.”

Michelle laid a cold hand on top of Bess’ and smiled knowingly. “What a wonderful gift. She must be very dear to you.”

Bess swallowed several times before she could speak.  “She was. Very dear.”

The moments stretched out as if the other woman was waiting for more details, but she wasn’t going to get any. Besides, making a dress for Michelle was one thing. Having those kind eyes turn to her in judgment if Michelle knew the whole truth, well, that was more than Bess could bear.

When Michelle finally left, Agnes claimed she needed a nap and headed off to her room for that purpose, leaving Bess to work on the clothes or around the house as she chose. Wanting to spread out the mending, she darned two pair of socks and fixed up one shirt before quitting for the day. That left her with quite a few hours still on her hands.

Her eyes wandered to the kitchen floor, whose many dimples and crevices were covered in a fine film of sand, even though Bess knew Agnes had cleaned just the day before. She scraped her foot across one of the piles of dust settling into the kitchen from the open back door.

Though she had needed a sweater when she woke up that morning, it was October, and the afternoon sun was blazing through the screen. She took off her sweater and tried unsuccessfully to block out the musty scent of the sand pervading everything, even making her teeth gritty.

Finally, she gave in to impulse and went to her room to probe her luggage for just what she needed. The faded toothbrush with the wide-smiling cat, Felix, on its handle, was her favorite cleaning brush. She went back into the kitchen, located a bucket under the sink, and just managed to settle herself onto the floor by using one of the chairs to hold onto as she descended.

She had begun on the floor with the toothbrush in the corner by the sink. The bristles worked into the wavy surface of the linoleum so that the fine imprint of dirt in them lifted. She was halfway through the room, sitting back on her heels, pushing the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand, when a gruff voice barked at her from the opposite door.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Up until the moment the gray-headed doctor allowed Bess to hear her baby’s heartbeat, she had somehow managed to think of her pregnancy as something that might or might not come to be. After all, plenty of women failed to carry their babies to full term. Why worry about something that might never happen?

But as soon as she heard her baby’s heart beating so quickly, the little flutters in her stomach that were steadily growing stronger became real. Before long, she was going to have a little person who was half her, someone she was responsible for bringing into the world.

Poor kid, she thought, with no better choices than being raised by a single mother who had no real clue about being a parent since she’d never had any or being left with the Taylor family to face the knowledge that its mother couldn’t be bothered.

She couldn’t let a child she’d brought into the world feel the bitter pain of abandonment, even if she turned out to be the worst kind of mother imaginable. She knew that the moment she faced the reality of that beating heart. She also knew she was going to have to do something to improve her ability to take care of her baby. And, she didn’t have a very long time to improve herself.

Agnes was outside in the waiting room when Bess finished the appointment. She laid aside the magazine she had been reading and gave Bess a warm hug. “So, how was it?” she asked at Bess’ ear.

Bess swallowed back the lump in her throat. “He was nice, like you said.” She waved the prescription in her hand. “He wants me to start taking these, but I’m sure I can do without them.”

They walked out of the doctor’s offices as this last was said, and Agnes waited until they were in the car before she turned and looked Bess squarely in the eyes. “I’ll bet those are prenatal vitamins, yes? I’ll see that they’re filled for you.” She flattened her hand, indicating that Bess should lay the slip of paper into her long fingers.

Bess hesitated. “I have to be able to pay for these things,” she said.

“You should be able to apply for a widow’s pension from the army,” Agnes told her. “Have you looked into that, Bess?”

She felt her face turning red. “No. I mean, we weren’t married for very long, after all.”

“But you were married.” Agnes started the car, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the V8 engine. “I’ll put Judd on it. He’ll see that you get what you deserve in no time at all.”

What she deserved? Bess shuddered. “At any rate, Agnes, I can’t imagine it being enough money to raise a child on. I have to get some work.”

“Didn’t you come here so Daniel’s family could help you, Bess? Please, let us do this.”

Bess bit her lip, tasting the metallic traces in her blood. “I came because I thought maybe you would want Daniel’s baby,” she admitted. “But now that I’ve heard the heartbeat, I can’t just walk away. I know what it’s like to live without a mother.”

“When did you lose her, your mother?” Agnes asked.

Bess didn’t want to lay open her past, not when she was so uncertain of her future. “That’s all water under the bridge, Agnes. What I need right now is to figure out how I’m going to take care of myself and a baby. I won’t be reliant on you and Judd, especially Judd, no matter what it takes.”

“I’m sorry Judd has been so hard on you, dear.”

Bess shrugged, holding back uncharacteristic tears. Pregnancy and hormones, she thought. At least she hadn’t been cursed with morning sickness. “Judd’s actions certainly aren’t your fault. Really, you’ve shown me more of a home than I’ve had in a long, long time.”

“You’ve livened up the place. Judd and I were turning into a couple of sticks in the mud, if you want the truth.”

They pulled into a parking space in front of the drug store then, and Bess noticed that the shop next door was a laundromat with a Help Wanted sign. After asking Agnes not to wait for her, Bess entered the shop, inhaling the familiar scents of clean linen and flowery soap. Even the whirs of the washing machines and clacking tumbles of the dryers gave her a sense of calm she had not felt since boarding the bus in Houston to head to this West Texas town.

A rotund man with thick, black hair sat at the desk in the small room at the back of the building. He looked up with an irritated glance when Bess stepped into his office.

“Yes?” he barked. “Don’t tell me dryer number three is too hot still. I’ve had that repairman out here twice in the last few weeks already!”

Bess straightened. “I’m here about the job, sir,” she said. “I have experience. I’ve run a laundromat in Galveston, and I can do alterations.”

The man studied her from head to toe and snarled his lip. “Not in that condition, you can’t,” he snorted.

Bess felt her heart sink. “I’m a hard worker and in good health. And I need the work,” she plowed on.

He tapped the pencil in his fingers against the desk, thinking. Finally, he shrugged. “I’ll give you a two-week trial. Minimum wage only.  Eight sharp. Tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Bess grinned, feeling a weight lift from her shoulders. “You won’t be sorry, Mr.?”

He was looking at his paperwork again and didn’t lift his head to answer. “Bryan. Ed Bryan.”

Mr. Bryan didn’t say anything else but continued scratching on the papers in front of him. Bess left the laundromat and stepped into the drugstore, where she saw Agnes standing in conversation with a sophisticated-looking woman in an A-line dress, a choker of pearls around her long neck, her black hair coiffed into perfect curls. When Agnes introduced the woman to Bess, the stranger pushed her ruby-red lips into a semblance of a smile that did not reach her eyes.

The woman made quick work of finishing her conversation with Agnes and walked away with a swing to her hips that spoke of natural grace or much practice.

“Lillian is a sharp lady,” Agnes told Bess, watching the perfect hips sway out of the drugstore. “She’s had her eye on Judd since I can’t remember when.”

Bess raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised he isn’t married to her already.”

Agnes shrugged. “I suppose he’ll be ready when he’s ready. Were they interested?”

The abrupt change of subject caught Bess off guard. “What? Oh, well, after a fashion. I start a two-week trial tomorrow. That is, if I can borrow the car.”

Agnes studied her for a moment as if trying to decide something important. Then, she shrugged. “We’ll figure something out, I’m sure.” She held up the small, white bag in her hand. “I’ve got your prescription all filled for you. Shall we head back to the house?”

When they arrived home, Bess was disappointed to see Judd’s police vehicle in the drive. She’d hoped to have some time to collect her thoughts about motherhood and her working future before having to deal with her less-than-friendly brother-in-law. He hadn’t said more than two words to her since speeding off after church the Sunday before, and she was still more than worried that he had discovered something about her past he was just waiting to drop like a bomb.

As if he had been waiting for them, Judd opened the screen door as the two women exited the car. His head was uncharacteristically bare, the straight, black hair slightly damp as if he had just washed it. He was in his working cowboy clothes, a worn, chambray shirt, Levi’s with leather chaps, and boots creased and bent as if his feet had been poured into them.

“Lillian invited you to supper tomorrow night,” Agnes greeted him, stepping aside so that Bess could precede her into the house.

Judd shook his head. “I’m busy,” he muttered.

Bess raised an eyebrow, then bit her tongue to resist saying anything and unnecessarily taunting a man who was obviously twitching for a fight. He seemed to sense her thoughts anyway because he stomped into the living room after the two women and told their retreating backs. “I already have a date.”

Agnes turned to face him with a bright smile on her face. “Is it with Rachel Bree? She’s such a sweet child, and she’s always had a crush on you.”

Judd opened his mouth as if to say something else, then clamped it shut with such a look of regret on his face that Bess decided he didn’t have a date at all, unless it was with a typewriter working on the endless police reports she’d heard him griping about a few nights before.

“I thought I’d make some chicken fried steak for supper. Maybe some apple pie for dessert,” Agnes was saying, wisely changing the subject.

Bess wondered if her mother-in-law was trying to butter Judd up before telling him about Bess’ new job. Did he even have to know about it, Bess thought. She followed Agnes gratefully into the kitchen, hoping to help with the meal and avoid any further conversation with Judd.

She was doomed to disappointment. He strode right behind the two women and plopped himself down in one of the kitchen chairs, straddling it so that the leather on his chaps creaked. Agnes and Bess worked in silence for several minutes, as Bess felt his eyes boring into her back and wished Judd would just evaporate into a wisp of smoke.

“How did the doctor’s visit go?” he finally asked, causing Bess to jump so that she almost spilled the pot of water and potatoes she was placing on the stove to boil.

When Bess didn’t answer Judd right away, Agnes did it for her. “Mama and baby are healthy as expected, and we got some pre-natal vitamins to help keep it that way.”

Judd studied his clean, square fingernails. “Was that before or after Bess wasted Ed Bryan’s time about a job?”

For several heartbeats, nobody moved. Bess listened to the sizzle of the water on the bottom of the potato pan she’d just turned the flame on, to the ticking of the radio clock perched on top of the refrigerator, and the distant howl of one of the dogs in the pens just outside the back door.

Agnes slapped a well-floured steak into the grease already popping in her cast iron skillet, glancing at Bess and frowning slightly. She nodded finally as if to say, this one’s on you, and went back to breading another seasoned piece of meat.

Bess forced herself to look Judd in his black eyes. “How could you know about that already?” she said in a voice not nearly as forceful as she would have liked it to be. “I didn’t even tell him my name yet.”

Judd shrugged. “It’s just as well because I already told him you weren’t available. A laundromat indeed.”

Bess squared her shoulders. “It’s honest work, and it’s work I can do. Well.”

Judd stood up deliberately and placed the chair he had been using under the table with careful precision, almost as if he were trying to hold in his formidable temper. Still, the eyes that turned on Bess flashed fire and burned. “I already told you that baby deserves to be born healthy. Having its mother work anywhere isn’t conducive to that goal, especially not doing a lot of heavy lifting.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You aren’t the boss of me,” she said distinctly, exaggerating the movement of her lips.

He stepped up to her until their toes touched, towering over her. A normal woman would have flinched. The situation brought back too many memories of bullies using their size to make her feel less important. Bess pushed her belly toward him so that Judd, surprised, practically scrambled away.

They stood facing each other, both breathing heavily as if they had just done thirteen rounds in a boxing ring. Finally, Judd sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Let me do this, for Daniel,” he said. Then, through gritted teeth. “Please.”

Bess bit at her lip. “I need money to raise a child, and I need a job to make that money. What, exactly, do you expect me to do?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “We can handle helping you out until you’ve had the baby and then had time to get back on your feet. And there are much better jobs when the time comes than working for Ed Bryan’s sweatshop.”

Bess wasn’t about to admit to Judd Taylor that for her skill-set, a sweatshop was about as good as it gets. Instead, she shuffled her feet and tried to think of an argument that might persuade the tall, stubborn man in front of her into changing his mind.

Finally, all she could come up with was a final plea. “I need to work,” she practically whined, hating the sound of her misery so apparent in the tone of her voice.

As usual, Agnes seemed to sense more than Bess was willing to tell. She stepped up behind the younger woman now, laying a protective hand on Bess’ back that moved in comforting circles. “You could use these next few months to learn a new hobby or skill,” she said. “I read in that magazine at the doctor’s office today an article all about how what the mama reads and puts her mind to while she’s pregnant can have a real positive effect on a baby’s brain.”

“There you go,” Judd said, sounding relieved as if Bess’ distress had actually mattered to him, which couldn’t be possible. “Learn macrame, improve your typing speed, study Greek for all I care. Just do it here at the house where mother can keep an eye on you and feed you right.”

“Speaking of food,” Agnes chuckled, “this dinner is about ready for the table. Would you set the places, Son?”

And just like that, the question of Bess’ working was decided for her. She watched Judd putting plates, napkins and silverware on the table and tried to figure out how one man could be so determined to hate her and yet take care of her all at the same time.

It was going to be a long, long winter.

Sunday rolled around all too quickly, and Bess sat in the back of the family’s Ford Sedan feeling under-dressed even in her best maternity wear. She looked out the side of the window, watching the rows of plowed fields swirl by outside the window in their delicate arcs so that they formed a kind of wave behind her eyelids that made her dizzy.

But the dizzy sensation was preferable to looking at the back of Judd’s creamy Stetson as he drove the family in to town for church services. Ever since the sort of peaceful ending to their conversation the night the pastor and his wife had visited, Judd had made himself scarce around the house, blaming a court case in the next county and the extra tasks of winterizing the ranch for the cold weather that was only weeks away. Still, every time she came into contact with him, she felt as if he were looking so acutely at her that he was seeing right through her, right down to her deepest, darkest secrets.

She saw his eyes in the rear view mirror, probing her as she adjusted herself in the seat to take the pressure off her lower back.

“You might want to roll up that jacket in the seat beside you. Put it behind you for the lumbar support,” Judd ordered more than suggested so that the thoughtfulness of the suggestion was marred by the bite in his words.

“Really, Judd, she’s your sister-in-law, not some handcuffed criminal,” Agnes scoffed.

He shrugged his shoulders. “It was just a suggestion,” he finally managed.

They were pulling up to the church then. Instead of the over-the-top spirals and stained glass windows Bess was expecting, she was surprised to see a rather plain, brown brick building with two annexes that made a sort of v-shape on either side of the main structure. A small crowd of men in three-piece suits, women in flowery dresses and children like miniature copies beside them visited in clusters outside, slowly milling their way into the church.

Agnes grabbed Bess by the arm as they exited the car. “I want you to meet some of our young adults,” she was saying as they neared the church. “They were all friends of Daniel’s, and they’ll want to meet you.”

Bess felt her stomach grow cold, but she managed to paste the smile on her face that had seen her through every adoption day and doomed-to-fail job interview. It was the facade that shielded her from the judgments and stern looks masking disappoint. It helped her lie to herself about needing any other person’s acceptance.

She was surprised when the young men and women Agnes introduced her to moments later gave her such warm smiles and welcoming hugs. A little bit of the ice she had encased around her innermost self melted. She especially liked a young woman with dark hair and pudgy arms who tugged on Bess’ curls and proclaimed that Bess was the perfect image of the girl she’d always imagined Daniel Taylor loving. The woman’s name was Rachel Bree. She taught kindergarten at the elementary school. Without giving Bess much of a choice, she grabbed her by the hand and dragged her into the sanctuary for the service, holding tight to Bess’ fingers as if she sensed the new girl could use a true friend.

Bess lost track of where Judd and Agnes were sitting as she concentrated on Rachel’s rapid-fire chatter. In the few minutes before the chords of the first hymn swelled to fill the sanctuary, she learned that Rachel had known Daniel since they were diapered babies drooling over the shared toys in the church’s nursery, that he had taken Rachel to freshmen prom because no one else had asked her, and that Rachel had had a secret crush on Judd Taylor since she was fourteen, but that she didn’t quite have the courage to do more than smile at him.

The music was pretty, Bess thought, though most of the imagery of the words went right over her head. When the man stood in front of the congregation talking about the breaking of Christ’s body and the drinking of His blood, she passed along to Rachel the golden serving platters without partaking, hoping that she wouldn’t be judged for her lack of participation.

Reverend Jones took his place behind the pulpit looking somehow taller and more confident than when Bess first met him.  His sermon was on a passage in the New Testament where Jesus went to the house of a tax collector. As Michael explained, the idea that Jesus would associate with such a person, who was considered an outcast by the elite religious leaders of the time, only made those leaders more furious with the Christ. But, Michael emphasized, Jesus proclaimed that He had come to save those who were in need of a physician, who knew how desperately they needed the kind of saving grace Jesus had to offer.

Bess, who had always been one of those outcasts, wondered what it might have felt like to have a famous man like Jesus agree to come to her home for a meal. She suppressed a grin at the thought of someone like Jackie Kennedy sitting down to the franks and beans that were about the best food Bess could afford to serve most of the time and just managed not to laugh out loud at the image of the meticulously dressed woman perched on one of Bess’ mismatched chairs at her shared apartment, trying to eat off the Melamine plates which were faded and cracked with fissures from years of use.

She wondered at the idea that the Jesus Michael Jones described seemed more interested in loving people than judging them. It seemed to Bess that most of the other lectures she’d heard about the figure in the white robe ended with her feeling just that much more like a failure. How could she love her enemies and submit to a strict pattern of behavior when most of the time she was too busy just trying to survive?

Rachel turned to Bess as soon as the service was over, grabbing her arm and squeezing lightly. “You have to come to the movies with us next Saturday afternoon,” she enthused. “There’s just a small group of us, really. We watch the matinee and then go to Mrs. Hudson’s tea shop for a good, old-fashioned gab session. You’ll have a lot of fun. I promise.”

Bess studied Rachel’s brown eyes for a moment with their long lashes. They were kind eyes without a hint of the sarcasm or pity that Bess was so used to and always determined to avoid. “Okay,” she conceded. “I’d like that.”

Agnes found her then, looping a bony arm through Bess’ elbow. “So, did you like the service?” she asked, almost holding her breath in anticipation of the answer.

She could just lie and say yes, but because Agnes had been nothing but welcoming since Bess arrived unannounced at her doorstep, she felt the older woman deserved better. “I’m not sure I really understood that much of it,” she admitted, “but it gave me some things to think about.”

Agnes managed to keep the smile on her face, even though the light seemed to fade a bit in her eyes. “Well, maybe we can go over your questions later, if you’d like.”

Bess felt her back stiffen. Going to church with the family seemed like the right thing to do, at least until the child was born, but she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to explore the ins and outs of the family religion. After all, she’d never been a religious person.

In the orphanage, it had been Bess who usually managed to volunteer for infirmary duty on Sunday mornings. So, as the other children shuffled off to the church just two blocks from the facility where they ate and slept and learned their reading and arithmetic, Bess huddled in a corner of the usually frigid sick room with Matron Seals, playing gin rummy between emptying sick pans and ignoring the swigs of cough syrup the matron gulped when she thought little Bess wasn’t looking.

Agnes’ grip on Bess’ arm tightened, and she realized the other woman was still waiting for an answer. “I’m sure I’ll get the hang of things eventually,” she told Agnes noncommittally.

Judd joined them then, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke. Bess held back an amused smile as she watched the otherwise animated Rachel draw in on herself. She would have tried to help Rachel out of that shell, she thought, except she wouldn’t wish Judd Taylor on her worst enemy, much less a potential friend.

“I’ve got to get back to the office,” Judd said without preamble. “I’ve got just enough time to take you two home if we get going now.”

Agnes nodded, still studying Bess’ face with an expression that promised further discussions about church if Bess didn’t figure out a better way to avoid them, and then she turned toward Judd and began to follow him, pulling Bess along. Bess shrugged her shoulders and waved apologetically to Rachel, who was watching the trio walk away with an amused expression on her face. She smiled broadly at Bess as if to say she understood exactly how the Taylor family operated and then turned herself to join another group of hangers-on outside the church building.

The car was silent on the ride back to the house except for the rhythmic clop-clop of the tires on the pavement and then packed dirt as they made their way back to the homestead. Judd’s knuckles gripped the steering wheel so tightly that they turned white. Agnes kept her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead as if she were deep in thought about something.

Bess was the first one out of the car when Judd braked in front of the door minutes later. She leaned over to rub on Jethro’s warm head while Agnes said a few words to her son before exiting the still-running car herself. Judd took off in a cloud of dust as he sped back toward town. He didn’t even wave goodbye.

“Did someone rob a bank or something?” Bess asked, trying to break the sudden tension she felt as the car faded out of sight down the long drive.

“What?” Agnes turned her gaze to Bess finally and shook her head as if to clear it. “Oh, no. Judd is just always in a hurry, that’s all.”

And then Agnes launched into a rapid-fire discussion of what they could prepare for lunch, about the knitting project she was doing for the mission barrels at church, and about Bess’ doctor visit the following morning. Through it all, Bess couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever Judd had said to Agnes in the car before taking off again had somehow shifted the other woman’s opinion of her.

Had he found out about that she wondered. No, she assured herself, those records were sealed. Still, when Judd hadn’t returned that night when Bess finally dragged herself off to bed, she couldn’t shake the feeling in her gut that, as always, the other shoe was about to drop, squarely, on her curly, doomed head.

 

 

The evening sun blazed a canvas of purplish-red across the sky as Bess stood in the backyard and breathed in the clean scent of the clothes hanging on the line. She had volunteered to take them down in part to escape the cloying atmosphere inside the house.

No, that was the wrong. The happy whistles Agnes made as she cooked and cleaned, the photos of Daniel and Judd roping calves and winning at rodeos hung on the walls, the piano with its worn keys, were all the trappings of a normal life. Only Bess, whose world had been one of mere survival for too long, would find the Taylor house oppressive somehow.

Jethro loped over to her, nudging Bess’ thigh with his strong, square head. She patted the slick fur, flexing her fingers across the ridges of the bloodhound’s thick bones. “Such a good boy,” she told him.

“He doesn’t like just anybody,” Judd’s voice said from behind her.

She felt her back stiffen and her momentary peace evaporate. She took a deep breath and continued with the clothes line, hoping that if she ignored him, he would just go away. The cicadas began their chirping song. A breeze kicked up the sand that was everywhere around them. She could feel him standing beside her, smell the musk scent of his cologne and something that seemed to be all Judd, a mix of leather and the earth.

Finally, she couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “Are you out here to interrogate me some more?”

He cleared his throat. “You deserve the benefit of the doubt, I suppose.”

She turned to look at him, not sure she had heard him correctly. He was looking out toward the horizon, his thick jaw clenched, the vein at the base of his neck pulsing. Bess doubted he could maintain treating her civilly, but did she really have a choice?

“Truce, then?” she pushed through tight lips.

He crossed his arms and sighed. “A mother-to-be deserves a safe environment, whether she’s related to me or not.”

Bess took the last shirt off the line and started to bend to pick up the full basket. Her hands collided with Judd’s, and she pulled back as if she had been scalded. He chuckled and headed back into the house without waiting for her. Bess stood with her heart beating rapidly in her chest, wondering why the irritating man flustered her.

When she stepped into the kitchen, Agnes was already ironing the shirts, trousers and dresses that had been flapping in the wind since early afternoon. She had a perfectly serviceable gas dryer in her laundry room, one her boys had purchased for her on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, but she preferred the smell of the sun in her clothes, she’d told them. And so, the appliance sat gathering piles of the magazines Agnes collected to donate to various mission projects.

She looked up at Bess and smiled that toothy grin which promised warm oatmeal on cold winter mornings and sturdy hands to tuck one in at night and nodded toward the nearest kitchen chair. “I wanted to ask you about our Dr. Warren, Bess,” she said. “He’s been our family doctor since the boys were born. I thought we’d make an appointment for you next week, if that’s all right.”

Bess shifted on the chair and chewed her lower lip. The only doctors she’d ever seen were brusque critics with cold hands who couldn’t be finished with her quickly enough. “I hadn’t really planned on seeing one,” she mumbled.

Agnes’ hands stilled. She studied Bess for a long moment so that the younger woman felt as if Daniel’s mother was reading into her very past. “The last thing Dr. Warren would ever do is make you feel judged. He really cares about his patients and will come to their aid at all hours of the night. I don’t think the man has had a warm supper in forty years.”

Bess rubbed her belly. “I’m sure the baby is healthy. I feel just fine.”

“But don’t you want to be sure, dear? There’s no need to have any surprises. I can assure you of that. When Judd came, I was so long in labor, Dr. Warren had to perform a C-section.”

Bess smiled. “So, he was stubborn from the womb, then?”

Agnes chuckled, then waved her finger at Bess. “No distracting me, now, girly. I want you to see a doctor. Let’s make sure you are as healthy as you feel. Would you prefer a female physician?”

Bess’ head jerked up. “They have female doctors?” she asked. As soon as the words left her lips, she wanted to bring them back again. Of course there were female doctors. Now, Agnes would know that Bess barely had a high school education.

But, Agnes didn’t poke fun or even acknowledge Bess’ stupidity. Instead, she kept her face passive and simply repeated, “Would you prefer a female doctor, Bess? Many women are more comfortable with one these days.”

Bess glanced around the kitchen, with its chipped but clean white cabinets and avocado-green counters. She had only been in this house for a few days, but already it was the closest thing to a home that she had ever experienced. Using the doctor Agnes preferred seemed a small enough thing to do.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll see Dr. Warren.”

Agnes went back to ironing. “Good. I’ll call his office first thing in the morning.”

The doorbell rang, and a few moments later Judd walked into the room, followed by a balding young man and a thin, blond woman. Agnes introduced them as her pastor and his wife. Michael and Michelle Jones. Bess forced a smile to her lips. She’d had even fewer reasons to like religious people in her life than doctors.

“We look forward to seeing you on Sunday,” Mrs. Jones said, smiling so that her round cheeks puffed into two red balls.

Bess glanced at Judd, who was studying the tablecloth as if he couldn’t even look at her. She had been on the verge of making an excuse not to go to any sermon, but the thought that skipping was exactly what Judd would expect her to do made her re-think her decision.

“I look forward to being seen, then,” she said, satisfied when Judd’s head jerked up, caught her eyes briefly and skidded to the screen door.

The couple stayed for supper, discussing the next summer’s mission trip to Guatemala, the upcoming Christmas pageant, and the church’s need for more volunteers to teach the children’s Sunday school. Bess kept her eyes mainly on her plate and tried not to think about the well-meaning men and women who would come to the orphanage and preach about Jesus and then go home to their love-filled houses without realizing that the soul was the last concern of a young heart that didn’t know what it meant to belong.

When they finally left, Agnes went straight to bed, leaving Bess sitting in the living room alone when Judd came back inside after seeing the couple to their car. He sat down in a chair across from Bess, his posture reserved and perfect. One long finger tapped the edge of the chair, and the silence of the room lengthened.

“It’s almost killed my mother, losing Daniel like that,” Judd said. “He didn’t even write to tell us he’d married.”

“You hadn’t wanted him to enlist,” Bess nodded. “I guess he was punishing you.”

“Guess. You don’t know?”

Bess squared her shoulders. “It was a whirlwind romance.” She bit her lip, hating the disbelieving look Judd did nothing to hide. So much for his truce. “If I am going to stay here, I suppose I owe you some sort of explanation. My story isn’t exactly pretty.”

He held up a hand. “You look tired, Bess. Go to bed.”

Before she could register her shock, he stood, smoothing his hands on his thighs and shaking his head at her look of disbelief. “Your marriage certificate checks out,” he said. “Besides, Agnes deserves to hear your story, don’t you think?”

Bess swallowed. “Yes, but she hasn’t asked me for it.”

He didn’t even blink. “Well, when she does.”

“You’re so sure she will?”

He smiled. “I’m sure you’ll tell her, eventually.”

As she made her way to the bedroom, thinking about the kind way Agnes managed her household, getting even the dogs to behave without raising her voice, Bess figured that Judd was probably right. Before all was said and done, Bess was almost guaranteed to empty herself to the other woman.

The only problem was that once the words began, Bess feared that her emotions would spill out and swirl around her until she was lost inside the black hole of sadness that was her life. What would kind Agnes do then?

Bess slept for the first time in a long time without images of her boyish, blond husband lying in a pool of blood waking her to a cold sweat. Some days, the fact that she’d ever met a man like Daniel, much less been married to him, seemed more like a dream than reality.

She had been working at a laundromat, where she also did alterations, living in a one-bedroom apartment she shared with three other girls in order to make ends meet. The roommates had gone to a country and western bar for the evening, where they worked at flirting for their drinks and enjoyed dancing to the easy rhythms.

Daniel had walked into the bar looking like a movie star with his tall Stetson perched at an angle on his buzz cut, his body lean and fit. All the girls stared as if they’d never seen a man before. Bess, nursing the only beer she’d planned to drink all night, watched him stride to the bar and thought she’d never seen a man more confident.

The last thing in the world she had expected when Daniel spotted the group of women ogling him was that he would walk right up to their table and ask Bess to dance. She followed him into the simple two-step, her skin tingling where his warm hand held hers.

From that moment, they had been inseparable. She loved to hear about his youth, about early mornings fetching eggs from the chicken coop and feeding his mother’s rag-tag collection of strays, the ones who wandered into the yard and found themselves housed in large pens where they could safely be dogs. He talked about his mother with a soft voice that made Bess feel as if she were wrapped in a warm blanket. He worshiped his brother Judd so that Bess pictured a man seven-foot tall and built like a tank, impenetrable.

She never spoke about her past, only about her dreams, which were simple but so far from reach. She wanted to know what it meant to have a family. She wanted to go to sleep at night without wondering if she’d have money for food the next week. She wanted her own bed, one she didn’t have to share with another girl and even then only on a rotation schedule so that no one slept on the floor every night.

Daniel didn’t believe in intimacy without wedding vows, and so Bess really wasn’t all that surprised when, after a particularly intense kissing session, he proposed they go to the courthouse the next day to see about a license. It had been a muggy night, with the dark sky twinkling a thousand stars and the ocean making its own music as the waves spit foam toward the blanket they had laid on the brawny sand.

“I ship out in a couple of weeks,” he told her, his breath warm against her ear, sending shivers down her neck and spine. “I love you, Bess.”

She couldn’t say the same. She wasn’t even sure she knew what love really was. But, Daniel was so handsome and so very kind, much kinder than any of the other men she’d ever been around. It seemed poor sportsmanship to deny a man who was headed off to war, anyway.

So, they’d been married three days later, and Daniel had splurged on a room at the Hotel Galvez, an elegant building with thick carpets and decorations that oozed money. Bess had leaned more heavily on Daniel’s arm as they walked through the fancy lobby, feeling shabby in her clean but out-of-fashion dress suit, hoping silently that no one noticed the scuff marks on her sensible heels.

—

A knock sounded on the bedroom door, pulling Bess from her memories. She didn’t want to get out of the warm bed, so she called out. The door opened wide, and Agnes stepped into the room, a tray laden with food in her hands.

“You slept straight through the night, dear,” she explained as she approached the bed. “You must be famished.”

Bess pulled herself up against the headboard, her mouth salivating at the sight and smell of pancakes and biscuits, eggs and bacon. Her eyes grew wide.

Agnes chuckled. “You just eat what you want and don’t worry about the rest.” She walked over to the window and pulled the curtain aside, letting in a bright shaft of light. “Would you like some company, or do you prefer to eat alone?”

She couldn’t know that Bess had eaten more meals in the quiet of her own mind than in the company of other people. Still, she felt her old defenses go up around her. The sooner she let people in, the sooner they were back out of her life again.

As if she could sense the indecision in the younger woman, Agnes stepped closer to the bed. “I’m anxious to hear about my Daniel.”

Bess forced a smile on her face and nodded.  This was going to be tricky, but she’d known that before she’d boarded the bus back in Houston. If Judd knew just how little Bess had known of Daniel before marrying him, he’d probably boot her out of the house regardless of what Agnes had to say about it. She had plenty of practice telling people what they wanted to hear in order to survive. Somehow, this situation felt different.

“Eat,” Agnes ordered when Bess sat perfectly still on the bed. Because Bess thought the older woman might pick up the fork and start feeding her as if Bess were a child, she dug into the stack of pancakes and took a large bite. “Those were my Daniel’s favorite,” Agnes said.

Bess nodded, savoring the buttery, fluffy perfection in her mouth. “For good reason,” she said, then, “I like dogs, too.”

The older woman smiled, and her teeth flashed a blazing white against her deeply tanned skin. “I’d let them all roam free if the coyotes wouldn’t get them. I’m lucky my sweet husband, God rest his soul, let me put those pens up. Daniel’s job was to feed them every morning. Did he tell you?”

“There you are,” a deep voice interrupted their conversation, and Bess looked toward the door, where Judd stood scowling at her. “The pastor’s wife is on the phone for you, Mom. I think it’s about the meal on Sunday.”

Agnes motioned for Bess to continue eating as she rose and left the room, and Bess hoped that she would close the door on her way to the phone, shutting out the tall man with his black eyes. Unfortunately, Judd took the opportunity to step further into the room, where he crossed his arms over his chest.

Bess laid her fork on her plate and took a deep breath. “Look, it’s pretty obvious you don’t want me here, but this situation,” she motioned to her belly, “isn’t going anywhere. I can do this alone, but this baby is going to be better off if I don’t.”

He shifted on his feet and sniffed. “You do look a touch pale, kind of like you’ve been living under a rock.”

She snorted. “Oh, I like that. I’m sure you think I crawled out from the gutter and scammed your brother into marrying me, too! Your mother is right. The two of you are nothing alike.”

He clenched and relaxed his fist, then harrumphed.  “I’m alive, for one thing.”

Bess had had enough. She focused her most intimidating glare on him, studying his stature from the top of his head to the tips of his shiny boots. “If you can call it that,” she spat.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and jangled the change in them, making a light clinking sound in the tense atmosphere. Then, his shoulders dropped just a smidgen and something like a grim smile played across his thin lips. “Daniel always had a soft spot for stray things. You’re right. The baby deserves to be born in a healthy environment. But, I’ve got my eyes on you. Depend on it.”

Before she could respond, he spun on one heel and stalked out of the room. Bess felt the baby move inside her, distracting her from the spiral of fear that the encounter sent up her spine. A tear escaped her, dropping onto her bump of a belly, staining the faded flannel of her gown, a sign of weakness she could ill afford.

She swiped at her eyes and blew the air between her lips to stop the pain. Judd Taylor wasn’t the first bully she’d had to deal with in her life. One particularly large boy in the home still had a light scar under his right eye where the metal chair she’d lobbed at him made contact and sliced open his cheek, splaying blood across the polished white rec room floor.

A laugh exploded from her chest as she imagined Judd Taylor with the syrup from her pancakes running in trickles down his head. If it weren’t for the baby in her belly, she’d have dumped her entire breakfast on top of the man.

As it was, she was going to do her best to avoid him for now. And once the baby was born and she was physically recovered, well then, she was perfectly able to take care of herself. And she would worry about what was best for the baby when it was finally living outside her body.

She refused to acknowledge the voice that kept telling her even the taciturn Sheriff would make a better parent than little orphan Bess, the laundromat queen. Avoiding that voice got her out of the bed, forced her into Agnes’ company, where she searched for every chore to keep her busy until she fell into the bed again in the early evening, enjoying another deep and dreamless sleep.

(Okay, so in a moment of craziness I decided to take on the challenge of writing a novel in a month and sharing the experience with you. If you are usually reading my blogs on Christian living, don’t give up on me. Instead, you can safely ignore any posts labeled with the NaNoWriMo tag if you have no interest in reading a novel in progress. For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy reading this first draft of a new novel that I literally plan to write a new segment on each day for the month of November. Your comments can even help me determine just where the story goes. Thanks in advance for joining me on this journey.  –Ramona)

Bess pulled at a loose thread sticking out from the frayed edge of her jacket, trying hard not to look at the profile of the taciturn man in the driver’s seat beside her. Judd Taylor was lean and muscular with a face only a mother could love, all sharp angles and rough like leather. She hadn’t expected to find her brother-in-law when she walked into the small town’s police station looking for her husband’s family. But, as she fumbled through her explanation of why she was looking for the Taylor family, Judd had pushed past the receptionist and demanded to know just who Bess was.

The hand she held out to show him the marriage certificate, along with the telegram from the Defense Department, shook visibly as he snatched the papers from her and studied them with black eyes that flashed fire. Judd had taken two deep breaths before he nodded toward the office labeled Sheriff and then waited to follow her into it.

The door closing behind him snapped, causing Bess to jump. She placed a protective hand on her protruding belly and took her own deep breath.

Judd sat down behind his desk and stared at her until Bess was forced to look away. “We had the funeral two weeks ago,” he finally said, his voice hard like flint. “Where were you?”

Bess swallowed at the bile that rose in her throat. “Your brother was such a good man,” she said. “I didn’t have the bus fare then, for the funeral.”

Judd grimaced. “If you’re expecting to find a million dollar spread, you need to know Daniel was prone to exaggeration.” Before she could react to this insult, he added, “Is the child his?”

Bess placed her hand on her belly and glared at the intimidating man. “I’d ask why else you’d think I was here,” she said, proud that her voice didn’t waver, “but you’ve already made that clear. I thought your mother would want to know. I don’t really have anyone else.”

He raised a bushy eyebrow, which only piqued her temper. “Are you even old enough to drive?”

Bess pulled on one of her blond curls, an abundance of which clung to her head in a pixie cut. “I’m 20-years-old, as if that’s really your business.” She turned toward the door. “This was a mistake.”

For such a tall man, he moved like lightening. He was standing in front of the door, his hands on his hips. “Agnes will want to know you,” he said grudgingly.

Agnes was Daniel’s mother. He’d talked about her on warm evenings in Galveston as he and Bess had sat out on the seawall and watched the foamy waves crash into the sand. Theirs had been a whirlwind romance. Daniel had married Bess just two weeks before he was shipped out to Vietnam in a justice of the peace office just off the strand. A month later, Bess finally visited a doctor to verify she was pregnant. And now, before her pregnancy was even six months along, her husband was dead, killed taking a randomly-numbered hill that his unit gave back to the enemy just two days later.

Without another word, Judd had led Bess to his patrol car, opened the passenger-side door for her and then eased behind the wheel to drive her to the family homestead. He glanced at her now as the car turned off the paved highway onto a caliche road that wound through cotton fields and past a large chicken farm whose pungent odors wafted through the car and caused the nausea to rise in Bess’ throat.

“You look a little green, Mrs. Taylor,” Judd told her, snarling her name as if he had to rip it from his throat. “Could it be that you’re a city girl?”

She had lived on her grandfather’s hardscrabble farm and then in the sterile, crowded environment of the children’s home. For several hard months when she turned 16, she’d even lived under a bridge on the outskirts of Houston with a group of other teenagers trying to avoid the evening ward whose hands groped and breath stank.

Judd Taylor didn’t need to know anything about any of that, however. “You try being pregnant,” she shot at him and crossed her arms over her chest.

He made a noise that might have been a chuckle, except Bess was sure he never even smiled. He pulled into a dirt drive and wound his way a half mile up it before reaching a single-story house that sprawled across the landscape amidst several animal pens and weathered tin sheds. A black and brown bloodhound bound up to the car, his deep-throated barking ringing through the car windows.

“Jethro is more bark than bite,” Judd told her, stopping the car and opening the door in one fluid movement.

Bess took a few deep breaths. Before she could get out of the car, the screen door to the house opened. A tall, thin woman stepped out into the yard. Her silver hair was pulled into a tight bun on the top of her head. Her skin was deeply tanned and stretched tight across her bones, which seemed to push out at all angles from her head to her large feet. She wore a decade-old day dress, a faded yellow, that swung around her ankles. She said something to Judd which Bess couldn’t hear. Judd pointed toward the car, pushing the cowboy hat he wore to the back of his head, revealing his cold, black stare.

Agnes placed a hand to her mouth and practically ran to the passenger side of the car. Before Bess could do anything, Agnes pulled open the door and bent inside the car to embrace Bess in a boney hug. When she pulled away from Bess, both women had tears in their eyes.

Bess struggled out of the car and stood beside the other woman, doing her best not to look toward Judd, who presumably stood studying her as if she were a criminal suspect.

“At least you’re glad to see me,” Bess heard herself exclaim before she could still her tongue.

Agnes laughed, a deep, healthy sound that was almost like music. “Don’t mind Judd, dear. He and Daniel were practically opposites in almost every way. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. It takes my Judd a while, but once he warms up to you, he’s the best friend you could have in this life.”

“I hope it’s all right that I came,” Bess said. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Agnes was pulling her gently toward the house. “Of course you’ll stay here. I want to see my grandbaby grow.”

They were even with Judd then, who made another noise deep in his throat.

“I am used to hard work, Mrs. Taylor,” Bess said, forcing herself to look Judd straight in his black eyes. “It won’t take me long to settle. I should have a job by the end of the week.”

“How do you plan to get to this job?” Judd barked. “You may not have noticed, but we aren’t exactly within walking distance to town.”

Agnes slapped at her son’s arm. “There’s plenty you can do just making sure I get a healthy grandchild, Bess,” she said. “But, enough about that later. You must be tired. Where did you come here from?”

Now that she was finally at her destination, Bess felt her nerves and tiredness catch up with her. “I’m sure you want to know all about me and Daniel, Mrs. Taylor. I’m afraid there may not be all that much to tell.”

Agnes shook her head and laid her hand on Bess’ back, rubbing it so that Bess felt strangely comforted. “You just get yourself some much-needed rest for now, child. Let me show you your room.” 

She walked Bess down the long hall and stopped in front of a room just as Judd exited it. There was a twin bed with her small suitcase placed on top of it. A simple nightstand and large armoire, along with a wooden rocking chair completed the furnishings. The walls had once been a vibrant green but had long since faded. A two-year-old Farmer’s Almanac calendar was the only thing hanging on the walls. Somehow, Bess thought, the room was exactly as she had imagined it would be. 

“If you need anything, you just holler, ” Agnes said from behind her. “My room is just across the hall there, and Judd’s is just next door.”

Bess swallowed. She hadn’t realized the dreaded man lived with his mother. 

“Somebody has to work the cattle and manage the men,” Judd said as if he had just read her mind. 

Bess felt her cheeks grow hot. “It’s a lovely room. Thank you.” She stepped inside and turned before closing the door. 

“Supper is generally around seven, if the criminals behave,” Agnes told her, smiling kindly so that Bess’ chest squeezed in response. 

Bess nodded and closed the door without looking at Judd again. Still, as she closed her eyes after changing into the one flannel gown she owned, she was troubled by images of the tall, muscular Sheriff who was sure to make the last months of her pregnancy a real hell.