The Rancher She Loved

“Are you going to let me in?” she asked, a smile tugging her lips.

Mentally smacking his head, he widened the door and stepped back. “I put the footlocker in the spare bedroom.”

“The one where Tammy slept. Great.”

She started forward, and Clay caught a whiff of that perfume.

And reminded himself that Sarah might smell and taste sweet, but underneath, she was anything but. She’d dissed him in print, and only a fool would forget that.

Best to let her take the trunk with her and sift through the contents someplace else. He opened his mouth to say so. “You want a cup of coffee?” came out instead. “It’s leftover from breakfast,” he added so she wouldn’t think he’d made a pot special for her.

“That’d be great. I drink it black.”

By the time he microwaved and brought the steaming mug to the spare bedroom, she was seated cross-legged on the braided rug in front of the open footlocker. She was holding on to Tammy’s journal, running her fingertips slowly over the Stay out! warning, like a blind woman reading Braille.

She startled when she noticed him in the doorway, but also looked relieved that he’d come back. When she started to stand, Clay gestured at her to stay where she was and brought the mug to her.

“Thanks,” she said with a fleeting smile.

Her fingers were ice-cold and her face pinched and anxious. Clay realized that, as eager as she was to learn about Tammy Becker, this was scary for her.

He hadn’t intended to hang around, needed to contact the men who’d replied to his Craigslist ad and research new rodeo producers to contact. But Sarah looked up at him, her eyes wide and pleading for him to stay. Tethering him.

“This was Tammy’s journal,” she said in a voice that shook with feeling. “I’ve been so anxious to find out everything I can about her. But now...I don’t know why I’m so hesitant to read it.”

God help him, he couldn’t leave her, not like this. “You want company?” he asked.

“I’m sure you have other things to do.”

“Nothing that won’t keep a few hours.” He grabbed the flimsy chair from behind the student’s desk. Straddling it backward, he sat down.

Sarah shot him a grateful look that made him feel good about staying, and opened the journal. “She started writing in here in January, 1982, on her fifteenth birthday. Listen to this. ‘Marsha gave me this diary for my birthday. Rad! Mom and Dad said no boys could come to my party. They are so lame! The party was fun anyway. Marsha, Steffie and Jillian came. They’re super lucky because they all have boyfriends. I don’t, but I want one. When I get one, I’ll have to sneak around. Mom and Dad don’t want me doing anything except go to school, do my homework and go to church. Boooring.’”

Sarah glanced at Clay and shrugged. “That’s it for the first journal entry.” She thumbed through the pages. “She didn’t write much in here.” The pages rustled as she flipped to the end. “About a year later, she stopped altogether.”

For a moment she was quiet, reading. “Listen to this, Clay. It’s one of the last entries. ‘My period was supposed to start two weeks ago. I’ve been a few days late before, but never this late. What if I’m pregnant? I can’t be, or Mom and Dad will kill me.’”

Sarah bit her bottom lip. “She must’ve been so scared and lonely. Here’s what she says a week later. ‘Our youth group took a field trip to Regina, Canada. The bus ride took almost eight hours! Mrs. Guthrie made the boys and girls sit separately. She’s almost as strict as my parents.

‘After dinner, B and I snuck away from the other kids. We bought a pregnancy-test kit. You can get them in the drugstore up here—wait till I tell my friends. I couldn’t take the test in my room, because I’m sharing with Misty Jones. If I spent too much time in the bathroom, she’d wonder what I was up to and tell on me. She’s such a goody two shoes.

‘So I took the test in the bathroom of a gas station while B waited for me outside the door.’” Sarah took a sip of her coffee. “I wonder who B is?”

“Probably the guy she was sleeping with.”

“You mean my biological father. I’d sure like to know his name.” She returned to the journal entry. “‘The worst has happened. I’m pregnant. The whole rest of the trip and all the way home, I prayed and prayed to God to take this baby up to heaven. If He doesn’t, B and I don’t know what we’ll do.’ That’s the last thing she wrote.”

With a heavy sigh, Sarah closed the book. “Poor Tammy.”

Clay was more interested in Sarah. Compassion and caring brushed her features with softness. Her eyes were shadowed and sorrowful, as if she knew exactly how Tammy had felt. For all Clay knew, she could’ve experienced a teenage pregnancy herself.

“Do you know anyone else who’s gone through something like that?” he asked.

“A girl in my college dorm. But she was almost twenty-one. She and her boyfriend got married and as far as I know, they’re happy. When you’re sixteen, pregnancy has to be that much more difficult and lonely.”

Clay knew something about teen pregnancy. “It is. My junior year of high school, one of my female friends got pregnant.”

Sarah’s expression shifted to surprise, then something much different. “Was the baby yours?”

The cool lift of her chin rankled. Figured she’d think that. “She was just a friend, Sarah. We never even kissed each other. My dad didn’t want me getting into trouble like him. He raised me to be careful, and I always have been.”

“With all the women you’ve slept with, you’d be crazy not to.”

She sounded offended, almost angry. But her article had ruined his life, not the other way around. Clay bristled. “What have you got against me?”

“Nothing.” Her lips clamped shut, but only for a moment. “What did your friend do about the baby?”

“Like the girl you knew in college, she got married. Because she and her boyfriend were so young, their parents had to sign a document that it was okay. But the marriage didn’t work out, and a few months after their son was born, they split up. The baby’s father paid what he could to help out, but he didn’t have a high-school diploma, and didn’t earn much. My friend ended up moving back in with her parents while she earned her GED and got on her feet financially.”

Sarah looked thoughtful. “Do you think...do you think Tammy’s parents accepted her pregnancy?”

“If they had, would she have given you up for adoption?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She hugged the journal close, the yearning on her face making Clay’s chest ache. “I would guess that the family left town because of Tammy’s pregnancy, except my birth certificate says I was born in Saddlers Prairie. But if they stayed here, why did they sell the house, and why did they leave this trunk and Tammy’s bedroom furniture here? If this stuff is even hers.”

She set the journal aside and massaged her temples, as if so many unknowns gave her a headache.

Clay could only wonder at the answers to those questions. Despite himself, he was beyond curious. He wanted to know what had happened to the Becker family, and especially Tammy. “She mentioned church a couple times, and her youth group. Maybe you can find out which one the family belonged to, and do some research there.”

“Good idea. There can’t be that many churches around here.” Sarah gestured at the papers in the footlocker. “Maybe there’s something in here about where the family went.”

She rolled onto her knees in an easy move Clay envied. If he tried that, his bad knee would scream. Kneeling in front of the footlocker, she began to pull things out and stack them around her.

From where Clay sat, he had a great view of her backside. From time to time, her blouse rode up, revealing tantalizing glimpses of smooth skin. He told himself to look away, but didn’t.

In no time, record albums, three-ring binders, spiral notebooks and a couple of skinny high-school yearbooks piled up around her. One too-tall stack toppled sideways, just missing Sarah’s barely tasted coffee. Which was probably cold by now.

“Why don’t you give me that mug,” he said.

“Oh. Sure—thanks.”

She arched backward and massaged the small of her back, causing her breasts to jut out. Clasping the handle of the mug, she reached across the mess, and handed it over. Her skin was warm now.

Clay was hot enough to boil water, and the brief slide of the backs of her fingers against his palm only upped his temperature.

Oblivious to his feelings, Sarah pored over an old report card. “This is from January of her junior year. I was born that August, which means she was barely pregnant. She may not even have known yet. She got an A in English, but almost flunked math. I was the same way.” Sarah glanced around and frowned. “I don’t see any other report cards. I wonder if they got tossed out, or maybe she dropped out of school before the end of her junior year.”

“Could be either one. Why don’t you check those yearbooks and see what you can find out? I’d start with the one from her junior year.”