Page 30 of Dependable Cowboy

He quit spinning with Kara, setting her down. She clung to him, dizzy.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“No means what it’s always meant, Wayne. You pop up out of the blue without calling or attempting to contact me in any way after so ridiculously long…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he stated with a placating tone, his hands motioning as if fluffing a pillow. “I know. Things kind of went off the rails for a little while. You know how life can get a bit messy sometimes. But I’m back. So I came to tell you in person. I’m back.”

He smiled and opened his arms as if she should fall right into them. She didn’t.

“You haven’t answered my question yet. Where. Have. You. Been?”

His smile dropped off his face. “Come on. Don’t get all bent out of shape over it.”

Joy shoved her hands onto her hips and wordlessly gestured for Kara to step behind her. Her daughter glanced back and forth between Joy and her father and slowly obeyed.

Wayne didn’t even seem to notice.

“I’m beyond bent out of shape,” Joy informed him. “Bent out of shape doesn’t evenbeginto cover it?—”

“Hold up, it’s not that bad,” he interrupted her, so she cut him off right back.

“Hold up nothing. I didn’t know where you were or what might’ve happened to you. I searched for months and months and even went to the police to file a missing persons case. But there was no sign of you anywhere. I thought you might be dead. After so long, I had to assume that you were.”

“Aww, that’s sweet that you worried about me, baby. But I’m fine. Fantastic, even. That’s why you two have gotta come back home with me. Life will be just like I always promised it would.”

Still, he refused to mention anything about all the time that she and Kara suffered without him. No explanation. No apology. No apparent regrets. It was too much, and Joy was completely done with him. She couldn’t possibly continue in a marriage where her supposed partner couldn’t be bothered to not only show up for two years but to come clean about it after the fact, either.

Who did that? And how could he think it would be okay with her?

And that wasn’t even considering Aaron and how she felt about him.

“I wondered if you’d abandoned us, then I wondered if you had died or been killed,” she continued as if her former husbandhadn’t spoken. “So, recently, I started the procedure necessary to separate myself from you. To legally divorce you.”

Wayne’s eyes widened as if his mind had never formulated any such possibility.

“Divorce me?”

“What else was I supposed to do with a husband who had been gone for so long? If I’d received a call, a message, an email, a letter, a carrier pigeon—anythingat all—then I would’ve kept looking. I wouldn’t have stopped at anything until I’d located you. Until I’d tracked you down.”

It was the truth. Despite all the turmoil with his addiction and him not being a good provider, she would’ve offered him a second chance. Maybe multiple second chances. But when she came to a certain crossroads, she at last understood that she had to cut her losses.

“But you gave me nothing, Wayne. No signs of life. Not even a cryptic lead that could’ve amounted to something. That’s why I moved back to Rocky Ridge. So I could continue to raise Kara and move on with my life. My attorneys sent the official papers by certified mail to California last week.”

“Official papers?” he repeated at a shout.

“Don’t fight,” Kara cried out, moving to the space between them, tears flying down her cheeks. “Please don’t fight.”

“Kara, come here,” Joy told her, but her daughter was too upset to listen.

It struck Joy all the sudden that Wayne had found her here. How had he done that?

But before she had the chance to ask, he strode up to her door and with a terrible roar, thrust his fist right through it. Joy stiffened in terror as Kara screamed.

Wayne ignored their daughter. Acted as if she weren’t even there.

“Divorce me? Divorceme? How could you?” He dragged his fist back through the splintered pine, knocking the entire thing halfway free of its hinges. Shards and slivers of wood rained across the linoleum, and Kara dropped to her knees and covered her head right there in the middle of the floor. But he just went on ranting as if endangering his little girl was no big deal. “How could you, Joy? You’re my wife, and you swore that you always would be.”

Scared to death for her daughter, Joy seized her around the shoulders and tugged her away. Kara didn’t resist her, clinging to her mother as much as she had clung to her father minutes before. Placing herself between Wayne and her daughter, Joy did her best to figure out what to do.

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