The Marriage Pact

Tripp leaned back against the counter while he waited for the coffee to brew, folding his arms. He probably appeared calm, but he sure as hell wasn’t. “How long has this been going on?”

His voice, like his manner, was deceptively mild.

Jim likely wasn’t fooled, but it was hard to tell with him. He tended to play his cards close to the vest—everybody’s business was nobody’s business; that was his credo. In other words, he operated on a need-to-know basis, and there was plenty he didn’t think anyone needed to know.

After a beat or two, he smiled again, but he still took his time answering. “I’ve known for just shy of a year,” he finally admitted and, sparse as the reply was, it was plain to Tripp that his dad didn’t like giving up even that much.

Stunned that Jim—even Jim—could have kept something so important to himself for so long, Tripp had opened his mouth to raise more hell when the old man cut him off with a dismissive wave of one hand.

“Some things are—well, private,” he said.

Behind Tripp, the ancient coffeemaker, pulling its weight since pre-Y2K days, chortled and thumped and steamed on the counter, like a small volcano about to blow.

“Private?” Tripp repeated, disbelieving.

Jim kept his gaze averted. A ruddy flush climbed his neck. “I’ll be all right,” he insisted, so quietly Tripp had to strain to hear him. “And I’d sure appreciate it if you’d stop repeating practically everything I say.”

Tripp shoved away from the counter and the noisy coffee machine, scraped back a chair across the table from Jim and sank onto the hard wooden seat. “Well, now,” he replied tersely and with a fair amount of irony. “Whatever disease it was that damn near killed you, and probably still could, is private. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

Jim met Tripp’s eyes with stubborn reluctance. “I could do with a mite less attitude, if it’s all the same to you,” he grumbled in response. A muscle worked in one side of his jaw, as though he was chewing on a chunk of rawhide, then he went on. “The worst is over, son. I’ve done everything the doctors said I ought to, and I’m on the mend now. I just seem to tucker out a little sooner than I used to, that’s all.”

Tripp stared at his dad, imagining some of the things the man might have endured alone, depending entirely on his own stoicism, his damnable pride. In those moments, Tripp didn’t know if he wanted to put a fist through the nearest wall or bust out bawling like a little kid.

In the end, he did neither; he simply waited for the rest of the story.

Meanwhile, Jim’s neck went from red to a purplish-crimson. “Turned out to be my prostate that was causing all the trouble,” he finally said. The words might have been dragged out of him the way he held on to each one of them like a grudge that went back for generations.

Tripp took a few moments to absorb the hard-won answer, exhausted by the effort of getting it. “I’ll be damned,” he ground out, once the information had begun to penetrate, “if it wouldn’t have been easier to drive half a dozen mules out of a knee-deep mudhole than get an answer out of you.”

With that, his vocal chords seized up again, and the breath rushed out of him, as though he’d been thrown from a horse, landed on hard-packed dirt and gotten his throat stepped on in the bargain.

On the one hand, he knew his dad hadn’t gotten sick on purpose. On the other, he felt ambushed, cornered, kept in the dark. Combined, those emotions stung through his blood like venom.

Tripp had been in this place twice before—the first time when his mother had died suddenly, and then again, strangely chilled even in the stifling heat of a foreign field-hospital, watching helplessly while the closest friend he’d ever had, or ever expected to have, breathed his last.

For once, it was Jim who got the conversation going again.

“Coffee’s ready,” he said amiably. From his tone, a person would have thought they’d been talking about something ordinary, like that year’s hay crop or local politics.

“Screw the coffee,” Tripp replied, jolted all over again. He sucked in a breath and leaned forward in his chair. “What the hell, Dad?” he demanded in a raspy whisper. “All of a sudden, you’re as delicate as somebody’s spinster aunt, so hung up on modesty—or whatever—that you’re embarrassed to mention your prostate?”

Jim said nothing, the bullheaded old coot.

Equally stubborn, Tripp pressed the issue. “It’s not as if I didn’t know you had one. And guess what? So do I.”

Since the remark was rhetorical, and since he was Jim, Tripp’s dad didn’t comment right away, although he still looked sadly exasperated. He shoved a hand through his shock of gray-white hair and, at last, made an effort to explain.

“I didn’t figure on it taking so long to get my strength back, that’s all,” he confessed. “I wouldn’t have said a word about it, being sick, I mean, if I could have managed the ranch on my own.” A sheen of moisture glistened in his eyes, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “As it turned out, I couldn’t. Too many things were slipping around here, too fast.” Jim paused again, colored again, this time in shades of defiance. “Just the same, I knew damn well I wasn’t going to die, knew it from the first. I won’t say there weren’t some tough days, and some hard nights, too, because there were, but I’ve been through worse—a lot worse.” He stopped once more, regrouping. “Like losing your mother. Ellie was my North Star. You know that.”

Tripp felt a familiar stab of sorrow, because Ellie Galloway, his mom, had been true north on his inner compass, too. Even after all this time, there were still moments when he couldn’t believe she was gone.

He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just scowled. Jim wasn’t off the hook, and Tripp wanted him to know it.

Jim made an impatient sound low in his throat. “What was I supposed to do, Tripp? Tell me that. Should I have asked you to come home the minute all of this started, so we could both be miserable?”

Not in the least mollified, even though he knew he would probably have done pretty much the same thing in Jim’s place, Tripp didn’t answer. He stalked over to the coffee machine, sloshed some java into a chipped mug and then set the stuff in front of his dad with a solid thump of crockery meeting tabletop.

He didn’t return to his chair.

Jim took a sip of coffee, savored it for a moment or two and said, “Thanks.” Another sip followed, and another. Eventually, though, he continued, “I guess I could have spoken up a little sooner.”

Tripp, standing at the long row of windows now, his back to Jim, watched Ridley gamboling around the side yard, evidently chasing a bug. “You think?” he snapped.

The coffee, strong and black the way he liked it, must have rallied Jim considerably, because he sounded almost like his old self when he replied lightly, “Then again, I might have been right to hold my tongue, after all. I figured you’d get your britches in a twist once you knew, no matter when you found out, or how, as far as that goes.”

Shaking his head, Tripp turned from the windows. “You’re the only father I’ve got,” he said, calmer now—or maybe just spent. The day had been a long one, after all. He’d been shaken by the encounter with Hadleigh and now...this. “So, yeah, I’d have freaked out in any case. Then I would have stepped up and done what needed doing on this ranch, so you could concentrate on getting well.”

Jim was looking away, probably because his eyes were misty again, and he considered Tripp’s words in solemn silence before offering a concession—of sorts. “I reckon we’ve both got a point.” He blinked a couple of times, then faced his son. “You had a right to know, and I had a right to keep my own counsel. I guess we’ve just been coming at things from different directions.” A pause. “What do you say we meet someplace in the middle?”

Tripp nodded, gulped once, got out a hoarse “Fair enough.”

“Well, then,” Jim decreed with obvious relief, “that’s settled.” He levered himself to his feet. “Now, if you can see your way clear to feeding the horses, I’ll see what I can do to rustle us up some supper.”

Once more, Tripp nodded. There was no point in pursuing the subject any further, not that night, anyway.

So, grimly silent, he helped himself to Jim’s denim jacket, found hanging in its usual place on one of the pegs beside the back door, shrugged into it, straightened the collar.

They still had issues, father and son, but in time, they’d come to terms, hammer out some kind of mutual understanding.

But time wasn’t a fixed commodity, was it? One minute, a person was there, living and breathing. The next, he or she could be gone for good.

Time. Let there be enough of it.

Resigned, Tripp left the house, crossed the back porch and descended the somewhat rickety steps to the yard. Ridley stopped exploring the flower beds and the base of the picket fence and trotted over to Tripp’s side. They both headed for the barn.

The chores were familiar; Tripp could have done them in his sleep.

With Ridley tagging after him, clearly curious about the huge nickering critters standing in the stalls, Tripp filled the feeders with good grass hay, made sure the outdated aluminum water troughs were topped off and paused to greet each of the six horses with a pat and a kindly word.

Later, as he and the dog returned to the house, Tripp stared up at the night sky and watched as the first stars popped out.

Maybe, he thought, things would turn out all right.

In fact, he meant to see to it that they did.

Jim would recover, Tripp assured himself. With more rest and less worry, he’d be his old ornery self in no time at all.

As for making friends with Hadleigh...well, that would be a challenge, for sure and for certain.