FOR IT, I say.” Vertie Newsome raised her glass of iced tea and took a deep swig.
“I swear, you’d tell her to go for it if she were planning to bungee-jump off the Grand Canyon,” Irene Newsome said. “She can’t seriously consider taking a job working out there alone with those men and a herd of wild elephants.”
“Sure she can,” Vertie said. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d go for that Mace myself. Do you good to get mixed up with a man again, Tala. It’s been over a year.”
“Vertilene Newsome, I swear!” Irene said.
Tala leaned back against the down cushions on the white wicker love seat and sipped her hot spiced tea from one of Irene’s antique Belleek cups. Normally she enjoyed watching the sparring matches between her in-laws, but today she was just too tired. Besides, she needed to drive the fencing and cement sacks in the back of her truck to the sanctuary soon, so she’d have time to go home to bathe and change before her shift at the Food Farm.
She’d given the women a truncated version of her adventure in the sleet, but had changed her encounter with Baby to windshield wipers that had ceased to function outside the gates to the sanctuary.
“Of course, if I were you, Tala, I’d go for the younger one. Man, is he a major stud muffin.” Vertie smacked her lips. “I always like a real big man.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
One look at Irene’s scandalized face sent Tala into gales of laughter.
“Tala, you cannot take that job,” Irene said. “Think what people would say.”
“I’ve never much cared about that in the past.”
“That was because you had Adam behind you,” her mother-in-law told her. “Now you are a single mother with two children, honey. And whether you care about your reputation or not, they certainly do. Rachel especially. She’s right at that age where she wants to fit in. I really don’t understand why you won’t move in here with us. It’s not like you couldn’t have your own suite of rooms. You could come and go whenever you wanted.” She paused for a moment, then added, “With Lucinda in the kitchen, I know you’d put on a few pounds, and you’d see so much more of the children. You deserve the money Adam’s daddy took away from him when he decided to become a warden instead of a banker. I wish you’d let me give you at least a little money, make things a little easier for you.”
“We’ve been over all that before, Irene,” Tala said. She tried to keep her voice level, but she was so tired, she heard the edge of exasperation creep in. “Mr. Newsome left that money in trust for his grandchildren for when they went to college or wanted to start their own families. He didn’t want you to give Adam or me a penny. Adam refused to take anything from you, and I have to abide by his wishes. The children aren’t suffering, Lord knows, and I’m doing just fine. I promise you.”
“But it’s so unfair,” Irene said. “I know Hollis would have come around in time, when he saw how happy you made Adam. If he just hadn’t had his stroke so soon…I could make you an allowance and never even notice the money was gone.”
Tala covered Irene’s small hand with hers. “You’re spending a ton on the kids as it is, and I am more grateful than you’ll ever know. They need so much I can’t give them.”
“But with an allowance, you could quit your job, go back to school. It would be so easy…” Irene’s voice trailed off helplessly.
Tala leaned back. “I know it must seem crazy to you, Irene. It would be easy to let you spoil me rotten and make all the decisions the way Adam used to, but if I’m ever going to stand on my own feet, I have to start somewhere and just keep going until I get there—wherever there is.”
Vertie patted her knee. “Hush, Irene. She’s right. We are here to do what we can when we can, and for as long as we can. But it’s Tala’s life, and she’s got a darned sight more of it left to live. So if she wants to bungee-jump off the Grand Canyon, then I do say go for it.”
“And the first warm day you’ll fly off to Nepal or Bali and leave me to handle the town gossip,” Irene snapped, then looked contrite. “I’m sorry, Vertie, that was uncalled-for.”
“But true. All right, I promise. I will stick around at least until June when the kids are out of school. Then I’ll drag both of them off somewhere for the summer. Tala and you, too, if you’ll come.”
“Oh, no. I belong here.” Irene reached across and laid her fine-boned hand with its sprinkling of liver spots and beautifully manicured pink nails on Tala’s knee. “Do what you have to, dear. It would be marvelous for you to have the afternoons free. The children miss you at their practices. Vertie and I are a poor substitute.”
“You’d never know Rachel misses me,” Tala said. “She wishes I were the one going off to Nepal.”
“She’s just going through a bad time since Adam…died,” Irene said.
“Since some fool shot him to death over some out-of-season deer kill,” Vertie said. “He didn’t die, Irene. He got himself murdered, and the devil that killed him is still walking around looking for more deer to poach.”
“Please, Vertie,” Tala said.
“I’m sorry, but it makes me so damned mad. In my day we’d have caught the sum’bitch and strung him up to the nearest oak tree. The hell with due process.”
Tala stood up quickly, set the fragile cup on the table and bent to kiss Vertie’s cheek. It felt like crushed velvet—soft, but with a myriad tiny imperfections and striations. “I love you, Belle Starr, Queen of the Outlaws, and you, too, Irene.”
“So, you going to take the job?” Vertie asked in a raspy voice that showed how close she was to tears.
“Maybe. I’ll talk to Beanie on my shift tonight. Please don’t mention a word to the kids until I’m sure.”
“Of course, dear,” Irene said, then followed her to the door and touched her cheek. Her eyes were full of concern. “You’ve got dark circles the size of dinner plates under your eyes, and I swear you’ve lost some more weight. You have to remember to eat, Tala. Promise?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She kissed Irene’s cheek, walked to her truck, climbed in and waved to the two women standing at the top of the porch stairs.
They stood arm in arm, united for all their differences. Vertie, tall, angular and hawk-faced, her still-thick gray hair pulled back into a bun at the back of her neck, in her faded jeans, heavy fisherman’s sweater and white Nikes. Irene, shorter than Tala, and plump as a partridge, with her immaculately coifed golden hair, her beige wool skirt and baby blue cashmere twin set, wearing high-heeled taupe pumps that showed off the trim ankles that were her greatest vanity. As Tala climbed into her truck, the women turned and went back into the house. A united front as far as the rest of the world was concerned.
If either woman had an inkling how difficult it was for Tala not to be a full-time mother to her children, they would have shipped the pair of them home to her farmhouse in a heartbeat, and volunteered to ferry them home after their practices every afternoon.
But Rachel wouldn’t come back to the farm. She swore she’d never set foot there again so long as she lived. She never wanted to see the deer or the possums or raccoons again. So far as she was concerned, if Adam hadn’t devoted his life to wild animals, he’d still be alive.
And by extension, if he’d married some safe debutante instead of Tala, he’d never have felt he could follow his dream and become a warden. He’d have been a nice, rich banker living in a big house in town. Rachel was full of anger, and Tala didn’t know how to help her.
And the only night Cody had spent on the farm in the last three months he’d cried and had nightmares about his father all night long until Tala slept in the rocking chair beside his bed and held her hand on him. At least at his grandmother’s he could sleep.
As she started