“Whom you rarely bother to see.” Elizabeth’s stomach tightened. But it seemed Dallas had been right. Her mother at a rodeo. “Why on earth are you here?”
“I’ve brought my prize-winning hydrangeas, the lavender ones. They won at the last county fair held in Barren. Bernice has entered her heirloom tomatoes.” A likely excuse for both of them. She and Bernice were here to judge, all right, but not the produce or flowers.
Elizabeth didn’t want this confrontation any more than she had at Olivia’s shop, yet maybe the time, as Dallas once said, had finally come.
Claudia sniffed at the parade going on without them. She drew Elizabeth around the end of the bleachers to a quieter spot. “How anyone could like this...sport is beyond me.”
“Something on which we agree,” Elizabeth murmured, still fearing her day could end in the emergency room with Jordan’s arm in a cast. She didn’t want to think about Dallas.
The air, which was already full of dust motes, carried the gamy aroma of untamed animals. In the background the bulls paced in their pens, pawing the ground. The horses in the paddock whinnied among themselves, stirring up more dirt as they danced in place as if to the strains of the national anthem now being played. The scents of grilling meat and cotton candy wafted to her from the nearby food stands.
“Elizabeth,” her mother said, “listen to me. You’d risk your reputation with this man? I did not raise my daughter to end up living in some hovel on a run-down ranch.”
Elizabeth stiffened. She must mean Clara’s, which wasn’t true. “You didn’t need to bring those hydrangeas. You and Bernice judge other people without any props.”
Claudia gasped. “You have a perfectly good home in town, Harry’s support...and your children’s welfare to consider. Isn’t that enough?”
Maybe, for Elizabeth, it wasn’t any longer. In the nearby ring the kids were lining up for the events. Having received a quick lesson from Dallas, Jordan stood in their midst, grinning, talking a mile a minute to his best friend, Nick, Olivia’s son. Elizabeth heard a lot of laughter and friendly taunts among the other contestants. Jordan’s eyes shone, and Seth had picked a spot at the fence rail to watch, his face poking between the boards. Stella stood with him. Everyone seemed to be having a grand time today, except Elizabeth right now.
She spoke loud enough to be heard above the din coming from the arena. “I’m not going to ‘end up’ anywhere but right where I belong. Please don’t bring Harry into this again.” She took a breath. “Actually, he’s making his own plans. He’s been interviewing and, according to Jordan, has a job offer in Wichita.” Far enough away to keep out of her hair, near enough for the kids. “He’ll be spending weekends in Barren to see the children.”
“Then, if you play your cards right, you’ll have an opportunity to win him back.”
“Mother. Harry broke my heart. He betrayed me. What do you not get about that?” To make her point, she spaced out her words. “I. Don’t. Want. Him. Back. Is that clear enough? You may think I’m the loser in our breakup, but I don’t. Our marriage was never the perfect union you hoped for—” she wouldn’t stop now “—the marriage you didn’t have because Dad walked out on us when I was six years old! I never saw him again. He was a stranger to me, and he’s been gone from my life for decades, but you’re still living with that history.”
Claudia turned a paler shade of tan. Elizabeth had to hand it to her mother. She kept herself in good shape, belonging to a gym she visited regularly, getting her hair done every week, spending time in the salon’s tanning booth, which wasn’t healthy but her decision. For any age, she looked great. But she was still alone. Still bitter after all these years.
“I’m sorry to remind you of that unhappiness,” she said, “but I’ve heard enough of your rules and regulations for my behavior. Stop trying to dictate how you think I should live.”
Her mother didn’t say a word, which gave Elizabeth the strength to continue. “I need to make my own happiness, Mom. You need to find yours. You’re still a young woman.”
To her surprise, her mother almost smiled. “Youngish, perhaps.” She wasn’t taking that declaration as badly as Elizabeth had expected. Then, unable to stay silent, she sniffed again. “And you think that happiness of yours will be with...what’s his name?”
“Dallas Maguire,” Elizabeth said, certain her mother already knew that. “Yes, I more than like him, but that’s our business.” She remembered being in his arms, their kiss and her laughter, then Dallas saying they could find their way somehow. “You’ve gotten ahead of yourself. I’m not the bright-eyed girl who married Harry—and, yes, that was a lovely wedding, thank you, which I know cost you a lot, but nothing in our marriage made the term happily-ever-after apply.”
In spite of her best efforts to mend things, Harry’s affair had destroyed their marriage. As town mayor he’d subjected her to undeserved public scrutiny, at least in Elizabeth’s mind. Was it partly because of her father’s abandonment that she, like her mother, had become so fearful of such exposure, of humiliation? Dallas had even suggested she might care more about her reputation than she did about her own kids.
That wasn’t true. Worried that gossip might reach their tender ears, she’d cared more about protecting them than she did herself. And yes, some people in Barren had judged her harshly, but not all people, not her closest friends, and no one had ever said a word to hurt her children. Why hadn’t she seen that before?
At the beginning of summer, wounded
