And, she added silently to herself, because you never know how much the people you love are going to hurt you until it’s far too late.
ALL HIS life, Harold Patterson had been the kind of man who, when faced with a particularly onerous task, would lay out the entire job in a very orderly fashion. Then he would set about doing each separate part of the chore, carrying each one through to completion before going on to the next. Today was like that. He had mentally organized each separate part of his scheme before ever coming to town Having gathered insurance forms, he headed straight for the bank.
When Sandra Rose Henning had graduated from high school, her scholastic standing should have made her a shoo-in to receive scholarship help. She was offered some, but not enough to make a difference. Faced with the grim reality of two disabled parents to support, she had chucked the idea of going on to college. In June, while her classmates were busily planning their fall school wardrobes, Sandy hustled down to the local First Merchant’s Bank and wangled herself a job as a teller.
Thirty-two years and fifty-five pounds later, she was still there, only now she was the manager of the Warren Branch. First Merchant’s had changed some over the years, and rumor had it that the bank was about to be gobbled up by an out-of-town conglomerate.
Still, scuttlebutt said that all of Bisbee’s neighborhood branches, strung like so many pop-beads along what had formerly been a ten-mile bus route, would soon be consolidated into a single large branch at the new shopping center in Don Luis. That rundown area, once a primarily Mexican enclave, was now the unlikely location of a new shopping area that boasted the town’s only Safeway, and soon, perhaps, the town’s only bank.
Sandy Henning wasn’t particularly worried about the coming merger. Regardless of what happened, she was sure she would still have a job. If it meant being demoted to “personal banker” or even going back on the teller line, that hardly mattered. Sandy liked people, and people liked her.
She was seated at her desk when Harold Patterson marched into the bank. She had been Harold’s “personal banker” since long before a worried banking industry had invented the term.
When she had been promoted and moved from the downtown branch to Warren, Harold’s accounts and business had followed her, even though, from a geographical standpoint, the bank in Old Bisbee was seven miles closer to the Rocking P which should have made it more convenient. But the uptown branch didn’t have Sandy.
Sandy’s heart went out to Harold as soon as she saw him. Despite his advancing years, he had always stood ramrod straight. Now, though, his shoulders drooped, as if the weight he carried on them was more than even his tough old spine could bear. And his step, while certainly not faltering, seemed somewhat slower, more hesitant.
Sandy rose to greet him. “Good morning, Mr. Patterson. How are you today?”
“Fair to middlin,” he answered. “Can’t complain.”
Although he could have complained, Sandy thought, and probably should have.
She and Holly Patterson would have graduated from high school the same year-if Holly had stayed around long enough to bother, that is. During their junior year, Holly had eloped with some high-flying, fast-talking real-estate developer from California. The marriage hadn’t lasted more than three months, but when it was over, Holly Patterson didn’t come home to what she had often called “backward Bisbee.” Sandy Henning had always considered Holly’s abrupt departure a case of good riddance. A week after Holly’s much-publicized return, a single glance at Harold Patterson’s haggard face did nothing to change the banker’s mind.
“What can I do for you today, Mr. Patterson?” she asked.
He fumbled in his pocket for a key ring and removed a small key. “I’d like to take a look at my box,” he said. “There are some items in there that I need to go over.”
Settling himself at a partially screened table, he removed his glasses and rubbed his bleary eyes while he waited for Sandy to bring his safety deposit box from the vault.
Holly’s demands were so outrageous that they should have been laughable. She wanted a full public confession of Harold Patterson’s alleged deeds. In addition, she demanded as damages to half the Rocking P. That was what bothered him most, rumors that with this so-called therapist as a partner, Holly expected to build a recovery center, a place for people who realized late in life that they too had been abused by members of their own families.
Those were the terms of settlement. If the case went to trial, her lawyer had told Burton that he - intended to go for blood-for everything they could get, for title to the whole shooting match if they could get it.
That wouldn’t happen because the case wasn’t going to trial. Because Harold Patterson himself was going to see to it.
It was easy for Ivy and Burton Kimball to tell him what to do. They weren’t caught between a rock and a hard place, and they didn’t know the whole story. In addition, they didn’t have Harold’s two prime pieces of motivation, either. For one, he wanted to live long enough to see his daughters together and reconciled for once in their lives.
And the other? With one major exception, he had lived his whole life as an honest, upright, law abiding man.
Before Norm Higgins planted him down in Evergreen Cemetery, Harold Patterson wanted his reputation back.
He had weighed all the risks. If he fought Holly in court and lost, he risked losing everything. If he settled, he handed over half the ranch to Holly-to the prodigal daughter who had turned her back on all of them for thirty- some-odd years-while dispossessing Ivy, the nonprodigal with the ranch, who had cared for her invalid mother through years of steady decline that led inevitably into helpless insanity, who had always put other people’s needs and wants before her own.
What would happen to Ivy if the Rocking P was cut in half or disappeared altogether? Like the baby King Solomon threatened to divide in the Bible, a ranch the size of the Patterson spread was of no more use cut in half than half a child would be. It took the whole ranch to make a living, to make a life.
Returning to the table with the box, Sandra Henning easily turned her key in the lock. Harold’s hand trembled as he attempted to insert his own.
It took three separate tries before the key clicked home. The long metal drawer flipped open, and the old man slumped back into his chair.
