Page 7 of Wyoming True

He scowled. He knew that such a massive dose would indicate an equally massive problem. “Broken bone?” he asked.

She nodded. There had been several fractures, but he didn’t need to know that.

He glanced at her, curious. Away from people, she was a different woman. He was curious about the change in her.

“You don’t talk much,” he commented.

She was staring out the window. “I’m not used to people,” she confessed. “I keep to myself.”

“When you’re not hosting orgies.”

She tautened all over and couldn’t force herself to look at him. It wasn’t true, but she didn’t know him and she didn’t trust him. She turned her purse over in her lap and looked out the window.

He noticed her lack of response and put it down to acceptance. After all, she could hardly deny what she was. Everybody knew. He couldn’t understand why he was ferrying her around in his car, looking after her. It wasn’t like him to get mixed up with a promiscuous woman. God knew there had been enough of them when he was younger. But as he grew older, he grew more jaded, more disgusted. What sort of woman sold herself for trinkets?

He frowned as the thoughts ran through his mind. She was independently wealthy. Why would she even need to sell herself?

He glanced toward her set features with undue curiosity. There was one other possibility. Maybe she just liked men.

His broad shoulders shrugged. It was a modern world. If men could do it, so could women; he supposed that was what passed for equality. The days were long gone when a woman was sanctified for her impeccable reputation. But he wondered about the effect it had on children. His little mother had been sweet and kind and faithful to her husband. There had been no cheating. On her part, at least. He didn’t like thinking about his father.

His mother had been vocal about modern women and their lack of morality. Her life had been free of scandal. Jake’s had been, also.

He recalled the conversation he’d had with Cindy in the café. He’d been in high school when the community had turned against a woman whose little girl was in the fifth grade locally. Bess Grady’s mother slept with every man she could get. Bess, a shy little thing, went to school with some of the children of men her mother had seduced. Jake’s best friend had a brother in Bess’s class. He said she’d been punished day after day by those other children. Jake wondered if the girl’s parent even cared about making her part of the sordid mess she’d brought about.

When the scandal broke, because one of Bess’s mother’s lovers had been a well-known local politician and the affair cost him a state senate seat, the publicity had been terrible. Bess was shy and quiet and introverted. Being made a scapegoat for her mother had broken something inside her, done it very quickly.

A few days after the publicity became red-hot, Bess had taken several of her mother’s sleeping pills, and when they started to take effect, she’d slashed the artery in her neck with a butcher knife. Her mother came home the next morning, very early, after a night out on the town in Denver with one of her rich Catelow lovers, to find her daughter on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood.

For once, the mother was the source not only of scandal, but also of hatred from the community. It came out in gossip that the poor little girl had been tormented by the children of her mother’s lovers, for the breakup of their families. The funeral had been well attended, but not one local person except the minister would even speak to the mother. Her grief had been visible, along with her guilt, but small communities had their own manner of dealing with people who flaunted the rules and hurt the innocent.

One powerful family had gone after the scandal-ridden mother with everything they possessed. The errant mother, deserted by her local lovers in the face of so much bad publicity, had lost her home and her job, had been frozen out by people in every business she frequented. In the end, she’d given up and moved to Denver, apparently to live with one of her lovers.

Jake had heard that she died of an apparent drug overdose. He didn’t mourn. His best friend’s brother had a crush on Bess, who had suffered so much because of the hateful woman. It had been a hard blow for the boy.

He was also remembering Mina Michaels’s mother. Mina had endured her promiscuous mother’s lovers, some of whom had brutalized her. That had been years after Bess killed herself, however, and had no connection with Mina’s family. What a life it must have been for Mina. Poor little thing. He still missed her. He was happy because she was happy, living with Cort Grier and their son, Jeremiah, in Texas. But her loss still wounded him. He’d had great hopes when he’d started dating her. Sadly, her heart had belonged to Cort almost from the day they met.

Cort had been going around with the merry divorcée sitting beside him, which spoke volumes about her. Cort Grier had been a notorious rounder before his marriage, and he’d spent plenty of time with Ida Merridan while he was in Catelow visiting his cousin.

Jake wondered why he was bothering with this woman in the first place when he didn’t even like her. His pale silver eyes narrowed on the road ahead.

Ida, with no idea of what was going through her companion’s mind, noted the dark scowl on his handsome face.

“Listen, I can come back later and go to the pharmacy...” she began uneasily.

He took a sharp breath and glanced at her. “I don’t mind. Sorry. I was remembering the Grady girl.”

She winced. “Oh, that poor little thing,” she said quietly. “I remember her, too. She was in my grade at school, here in Catelow.”

He glanced at her. “I thought you grew up in Denver,” he prevaricated, because he didn’t want to admit he’d been talking about her to Cindy at the café.

“I did, but we lived here until I was in fifth grade. Bess was one of my friends.” She turned her eyes out the window. “We all hated her mother. Bess was shy and sweet and never hurt anybody. We did what we could to protect her, to shield her from the angry kids. But children can be so cruel. It was a shock, what she did. I mean, how many fifth graders do you know who commit suicide with pills and a knife?”

“There was an article in the local paper, a wire service article, that mentioned the death of a prominent man back East,” he remarked. “It was very detailed about how he killed himself. My best friend’s little brother was sweet on the Grady girl. He carried guilt for years because he told her about the story. He always figured she remembered it when she decided to end her life.”

“He shouldn’t have felt guilty,” she replied softly. “We all have a certain time on earth, things we’re supposed to do, purposes we fill. God decides when lives end and how. People may facilitate that, but in the end, we don’t really choose how we die.”

He was taken aback. He’d never pegged her as a religious person. “You don’t strike me as a religious fanatic,” he said abruptly.

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