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  Mercedes relaxed, the anger noticeably seeping away. Passing him, she put her bare arm on top of the stall gate in plain view of Darrel if he were to look their way. Brandon felt a strong and inappropriate desire to run his hand along her arm. Ridiculous. This wasn’t the old days, and they weren’t a couple. They were, more than anything, strangers.

  “Look,” she said.

  Brandon glanced back into the stall and saw that Darrel had placed the milk some distance away from the cow and was now rubbing her neck. The animal turned her head lazily in his direction, and for a moment he stood between the big head and body in a sort of hug. He buried his face in her neck. “Good girl,” he murmured. “You’re a good cow.”

  “Reminds me of my brother,” Mercedes said. “He was the same way with this cow’s grandmother.”

  Brandon’s eyes fell again on her arm, just a few short inches away from his own hand that now tightly gripped the wood. Might as well be a mile apart. Following his gaze, she dropped her arm to her side and stepped away, a clear message.

  “I’d better go,” he said. “I’m sorry for intruding. It won’t happen again.” It was a promise he didn’t know if he could keep.

  Mercedes nodded, her expression unreadable—she who used to be so open with him. Her black eyes glinted in the dim light. “Good night.”

  He turned and left the barn.

  Chapter 6

  Diary of Mercedes Walker

  July 1, 1994

  I hate having Daddy back. That’s the truth. I hate the way he orders me around when I visit. I hate the way he treats me like a backward child. But as I’ve said before, he is my father. There is duty in that even if I don’t want to accept it. Unlike Austin, I can’t seem to get completely away. At least Daddy isn’t often drunk. Wayne won’t give him the money, and the farm funds are going through Grandmother. She is still not talking to my father, and she never goes to the farm. I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t go if I didn’t feel I had to. On top of everything, Grandmother’s been ill. I’ve finally convinced her to go to Arizona to stay with her sister. A change of scenery should do her good. I’d rather do without her for a time than lose her altogether.

  Brandon is sweet to go with me to the farm. I think he might be hoping for a repeat of our romantic swimming day, but I’m too nervous that Wayne will find us there again. Silly, I know, but it made me feel weird. Next time we go, I’m going to make sure we take friends.

  Mercedes breathed a sigh of relief as Brandon’s car disappeared down the road. She’d followed him out to the front to make sure he’d really gone this time. Why had he stayed? Obviously, he’d felt compelled. Was it in the same way she felt compelled to check on the boys each night? She didn’t like to think of him like that, to assign him any emotion. He had no right to be there.

  Yet Darrel is his son.

  She’d seen the longing in Brandon’s eyes when he looked at Darrel, and it frightened her.

  The almost forgotten pain gripped her chest, squeezing nearly past endurance. At first her younger self hadn’t believed he wasn’t coming back. She’d had enough sadness in her past, too much to anticipate any more. Brandon was her future. He loved her. Or so she’d thought at the time. In the end he’d been like every other guy she’d met—except for Wayne, who now had to endure this heartache with her.

  I’m sorry, Wayne. She gazed toward the fields where he’d disappeared, imagined him checking the cattle to make sure the new calves were coming along. They represented a way to continue the farm, the cash from selling them promising to help pay the farm expenses. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when they hadn’t struggled to make ends meet, first with her parents and now with Wayne. It was part of farming. Her grandmother had offered Mercedes and her brother the farm shortly after Mercedes had given birth to Darrel, but it had only become entirely official at her death two years ago. Austin had immediately signed the deed to the farm over to Mercedes. He knew he’d always have a place here, but the title was meant for her and Wayne. Their children alone would inherit.

  Joseph or Scott. Not Darrel. His craving for knowledge of the outside world had told her he would not always stay on the farm.

  What might he become?

  She felt a longing to jump on Windwalker and ride out after Wayne, to let him reassure her that everything would be all right. To feel the wind rushing through her hair and cooling her heated body. But she had the milk to take care of and the boys to get ready for bed. She would have to wait for him here.

  Slowly she went back into the kitchen where Darrel had placed the milk bucket on the counter. “You want me to strain it, Momma?”

  She shook her head. “Call the boys and wash up. Your daddy will be here in a while.” Your daddy. How ironic those words were.

  If she could take it all back, she would. In a heartbeat. Yet if it hadn’t been for Darrel, would she have married Wayne and had the other children? Regret might have lodged in her heart for how she had come to this place in her life, but she could never regret the lives of her children. Or her time with Wayne, though she wished she could love him more.

  Stemming the panic bubbling inside her, Mercedes settled to work straining the milk. Many people now thought it unsanitary to drink milk fresh from a cow, with no preservatives or pasteurization, but to her there was nothing as natural and delicious. Each morning after it had sat in the refrigerator overnight, the cream would be at the top, and she’d mix it back in so the boys would get the full advantage of the nutrients. Of course she strained the milk for stray bits of straw or dust, and Darrel was careful not to let anything fall into it. On days when she planned to make whipped cream for dessert, she’d skim off some of the cream and save it to sweeten later with powdered sugar. The boys would live off whipped cream if she let them, and Mercedes felt satisfaction at passing down to her children one of the few traditions that her mother had passed to her.

  She put the milk into the refrigerator. The gallon saved last night for her neighbor and another from that morning were still there, reminding her that Geraldine hadn’t yet come for them. What could that mean? Geraldine was expecting again, her eleventh child, but she wasn’t due for weeks. Maybe she’d gone to visit her mother, as she did sometimes. Mercedes thought she recalled her mentioning such a thing on Sunday, but so much had happened since she saw Brandon in Safeway three days ago that she could be mistaken. If Geraldine had gone, her husband would likely remember to send someone for the milk this evening.

  “Momma, I’m hungry,” Joseph said as the boys burst into the kitchen. The younger two were dirty and needed a bath.

  “Of course you are,” she said, laughing, “because we only just ate. There are leftovers in the fridge.” Then, already knowing what he’d ask next, she added, “But you can’t have ice cream.”

  “Mom, do you think it’s really possible to travel faster than light?” Darrel picked up a book he’d been reading earlier at the table. Something with a cover that looked like science fiction. Mercedes smiled weakly. Brandon had loved science fiction, too.

  “Probably. But I don’t know when people will discover it. Maybe you will.”

  He considered her proposal seriously. “Maybe I could do that after I develop molecular nanotechnology.”

  Sure, all in a summer’s work. Or maybe a year, tops, Mercedes thought. The sheer power of youth was beautiful. She remembered what it was like to have such dreams. She’d once dreamed of saving lives, especially of women like her mother who were abused and thrown away. A mere session or two with her and the women would see the light and change their lives. Now Mercedes knew different. Her mother had been an educated woman, but she had a destructive element within her that would have taken years of help. Years that had not been available to her.

  Mercedes entered the house, but she wasn’t greeted with the aroma of cooking food. “Momma? I’m home.” She’d stayed the night with a friend in town so they could cut each other’s hair and then go out for a movie. Her mother had been having
one of her better days yesterday and was content to let her go. “You have a good time,” she’d said. “I’ll be fine.”

  Usually this late in the morning, Momma should have been in the kitchen whipping up a hot lunch for Wayne.

  The house was quiet. Too quiet. “Momma?”

  Could she be out in the fields with Wayne? She didn’t often help, but sometimes he needed a hand. Her mother didn’t love the farm, but she knew the jobs as well as anyone.

  Mercedes entered the kitchen. Everything was in place, except a single cup and saucer in the sink. That was odd. There should have been either no dirty dishes or many left from breakfast.

  Mercedes’ heart thumped loudly in her chest. “Momma, are you here? Are you sick?”

  A sense of foreboding made Mercedes’ feet slow as she walked down the hallway to her parents’ bedroom, the room her mother had been sleeping in alone in the months since her father had disappeared. She stopped at the closed door, unwilling to open it. “Momma?”

  Her hand touched the door, and it fell open under the pressure. Her mother was lying in the big bed, a sheet covering her body. Mercedes rushed to the bed. “Momma, you are sick! Why didn’t you call? I would have come home earlier.”

  Momma didn’t move. She lay more peacefully than Mercedes had ever seen her. “Momma!”

  No answer. And no breath lifting her chest.

  Mercedes finally understood that there would never be an answer. The empty bottle of sleeping pills sat upright on the dresser, with even the lid replaced. Everything in order.

  Mercedes sat on the bed and took her mother’s hand, pulling on it slightly, like a child unwilling to believe. “Momma,” she whimpered. Then she crumpled on the bed, sobbing into her mother’s neck as she had never done when her mother was alive.

  Her body was cold. So cold.

  How much time passed until Wayne found her there, Mercedes never knew. She ran the few steps to the door and fell into his arms. “She’s dead. I can’t believe it. She’s dead!”

  Wayne held her tightly. “I’m sorry, Mercedes. I’m so sorry.” He held her, smoothed her hair until her tears lessened and finally ceased. “He can’t hurt her anymore,” he said softly. “Think of that.”

  Mercedes let her head lay on his chest, glad to feel his warmth seep through her. “He’s not even here. He’s in Texas or wherever. How can he still be hurting her?”

  “You know as well as I do. She’s been hoping he’d come back. She loved him.”

  “She gave up, didn’t she?” She drew in a shuddering breath. “Why couldn’t she love me more than him? Then she wouldn’t have hurt so bad.”

  He lifted her chin and stared into her eyes. “That ain’t the way it works. Leastwise not with women like Lucinda. You’re not like that, Mercedes. You’re strong. Remember that. You will never lose yourself to the point where you feel there’s no hope left.”

  “How do you know? What if I’m just like her?”

  “You aren’t.” He said it with such conviction that she began to believe. “But if you ever need someone to talk to, I’ll be here.”

  “Thank you, Wayne.” Mercedes sniffed hard. She would probably have stayed in his arms longer if he hadn’t firmly set her away from him.

  “We need to call the doctor.”

  “We’ll be the talk of Riverton.”

  “I don’t think so. No one ever needs to know.”

  And no one but Wayne, Austin, Grandmother, and the doctor ever did. And Daddy, but that wasn’t until two years later. After the funeral Mercedes lived in town with her friend because it wasn’t appropriate for her to stay alone with Wayne on the farm, and he was needed there more than she was. Besides, in Riverton she could work full time. On weekends she visited her grandmother, but neither of them went to the farm the rest of that year.

  The doorbell drew Mercedes’ attention from the memories. Brandon, she thought.

  No, it was probably Geraldine or one of her children. Sure enough, a pimply teen was waiting at the door. Geraldine’s middle son, Jimmy. “Oh, good,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d come. You must be out of milk.”

  She looked for the bag of quilt fabric he was scheduled to bring, but there was nothing in his hands. For the first time, she noticed his face appeared anxious. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. Least I don’t think so.” He tossed his head so the longish blond hair in front fell back from his eyes. “But we was up at my grandma’s today helping with the planting, and we just got back. Momma’s started to have pains.”

  “Is the midwife there?”

  “We called, but Momma says she ain’t gonna make it, and my dad’s still in the fields.”

  “I’ll get the milk. It’ll only take a second.” Mercedes felt the rightness of being there for Geraldine. She’d attended most of Geraldine’s births. They lived only four minutes away by car, and Geraldine’s labors rarely lasted longer than thirty minutes. No time to get to the hospital. After having her first three babies in a truck on the way to Riverton, Geraldine had taken to having a midwife friend stay at her house for the last week of her pregnancy, usually calling on Mercedes to assist.

  “Geraldine’s having her baby,” Mercedes told the boys in the kitchen. “Joseph and Scott, after you eat, get yourselves a bath and brush your teeth so you’re ready when Daddy gets back.” Fortunately, at eight and almost ten, they were capable of bathing themselves. “Darrel, you’re in charge. If your father gets back before I do, tell him I’m at the Pinkhams, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be back to tuck you in.” As she talked, she was loading the Pinkham boy with two gallons of milk. “There’s another in here for you as well. Still warm from the cow. You go ahead and put these in your truck and come back for the last one. I’m going to get my first-aid kit and go on ahead in my own truck so you won’t have to drive me home later.”

  When she arrived at the Pinkhams, she found Geraldine attended by two young daughters, Grace and Camilla, who were twelve and fourteen. Their faces were more excited than nervous. Birth to them was as it is for any farm child, a natural event in life, perhaps even more so for these girls because their mother had ten children already and such short labors. Unlike Mercedes, who had struggled for more than fifteen hours with each of her babies, except for the last, which had only been four. Given the outcome of that pregnancy, she would gladly have suffered the additional eleven hours if it would have helped her child survive.

  “Oh, Mercedes, you made it.” Geraldine was lying on her side on the large bed, her forehead glistening with sweat and her white-streaked blonde hair lank and flat against her head. “Looks like this baby won’t wait another week. Probably all the excitement at my mother’s.”

  “Don’t tell me you were driving a tractor,” Mercedes teased.

  Geraldine managed a smile. “Momma and I were quilting, actually. And cooking up a storm. My sister was there. I brought back a lot of new material for you. Three bags.”

  “I think we’d better look at it later.” Mercedes eyed the birthing supplies at the foot of the bed. “Do you have everything we’ll need?”

  “I think so. We’ll have to use an old umbilical clamp, though. I’ve got a metal one left over from one of the others. The girls are boiling that and some scissors.” Geraldine’s face crumpled as another pain set in. Camilla held her mother’s hand, while the younger sister, Grace, watched, biting her lip and tugging a hand through her tangled blonde hair.

  “Go check on the clamp, Grace,” Mercedes told her. “It has to boil at least five minutes—ten is better. Then get the little kids in bed, okay? Read them a story or something.”

  “But I want to be in here. Momma said I was old enough this time.”

  “We’ll make sure to call you before the baby comes.”

  “Jimmy’ll be back. Tell him to take care of the kids,” Camilla offered. Grace nodded and left the room, looking slightly relieved, despite her plea to stay.

  Mercedes s
canned the supplies lying on the edge of the bed: linens, towels, pads, a plastic sheet, olive oil to smooth on the skin around the birth canal to prevent tearing. The girls had been thorough in gathering what was needed. As soon as the contraction passed, Mercedes would spread the sheet under Geraldine and have Camilla find a heating pad to warm the baby clothes for the impending arrival. There wasn’t much time.

  “Now, Geraldine, stop clenching your jaw.” She sat down next to her friend, who was still lying on her side, and began pushing with her thumbs on the pressure points on her back to help cut the pain. “Breathe with me. In, out, in, out. Good. That’s the way. Keep it up. Let the pain roll through you. After the contraction, I’ll need to see where we are.” Mercedes had helped numerous calves, kids, kittens, and puppies into the world, but none of those were quite like a human baby, and human mothers needed much more care. Over the years, Geraldine’s midwife had been generous with her knowledge, even requesting Mercedes’ presence at other births, and Mercedes felt confident she could help Geraldine alone.

  As if they had a choice.

  The contraction subsided, and Geraldine turned on her back, sighing with exhaustion. “It gets harder when you’re old, like me.”

  Mercedes grinned, pulling on a disposable glove from her first-aid kit. “Doesn’t everything? But at least you’ll have a sweet little baby here when it’s all over.” She shifted her position to better check Geraldine. “Sure enough, you’re all dilated. Whew, that was fast! But your water hasn’t broken.”

  “Remember that time when the baby came out in the sack?” Geraldine asked.

  Mercedes remembered all too well how the baby had come so fast that the midwife barely had time to catch the infant as it slipped into the world, how she had frantically ripped the sack so the baby could take his first breath. Mercedes remembered staring with a sort of horrified fascination and then felt the tears of relief on her cheeks as the baby choked and began to cry. That had been her second experience at a home birth. “I’d rather not repeat that,” she said. “I know how to break the water. We need to get this sheet on first.”