Part of the Bargain

“Too late,” laughed Ken. “You already broke the code.”

Libby lowered her taco to her plate and lifted both hands in a gesture of concession. “All right, all right—but have a little pity on me, will you? I’ve been living among dudes!”

“That’s no excuse.”

Libby shrugged and took up her taco again. “I tried. Have you been doing your own cooking and cleaning all this time?”

Ken shook his head and sat back in his chair, his thumbs hooked behind his belt buckle. “Nope. The Barlowes’ housekeeper sends her crew down here once in a while.”

“What about the food?”

“I eat with the boys most of the time, over at the cook shack.” He rose, went to fill two mugs from the coffeepot on the stove. When he turned around again, his face was serious. “Libby, what happened today? What upset you like that?”

Libby averted her eyes. “I don’t know,” she lied lamely.

“Dammit, you do know. You fainted, Libby. When Jess carried you in here, I—”

“I know,” Libby broke in gently. “You were scared. I’m sorry.”

Carefully, as though he feared he might drop them, Ken set the cups of steaming coffee on the table. “What happened?” he persisted as he sat down in his chair again.

Libby swallowed hard, but the lump that had risen in her throat wouldn’t go down. Knowing that this conversation couldn’t be avoided forever, she managed to reply, “It’s complicated. Basically, it comes down to the fact that Stacey’s been telling those lies.”

“And?”

“And Jess believes him. He said…he said some things to me and…well, it must have created some kind of emotional overload. I just gave out.”

Ken turned his mug idly between his thumb and index finger, causing the liquid to spill over and make a coffee stain on the tablecloth. “Tell me about Jonathan, Libby,” he said in a low, gentle voice.

The tears that sprang into Libby’s eyes were not related to the tang of her father’s red-devil taco sauce. “He died,” she choked miserably.

“I know that. You called me the night it happened, remember? I guess what I’m really asking you is why you didn’t want me to fly back there and help you sort things out.”

Libby lowered her head. Jonathan hadn’t been her son, he’d been Aaron’s, by a previous marriage. But the loss of the child was a raw void within her, even though months had passed. “I didn’t want you to get a firsthand look at my marriage,” she admitted with great difficulty—and the shame she couldn’t seem to shake.

“Why not, Libby?”

The sound Libby made might have been either a laugh or a sob. “Because it was terrible,” she answered.

“From the first?”

She forced herself to meet her father’s steady gaze, knew that he had guessed a lot about her marriage from her rare phone calls and even rarer letters. “Almost,” she replied sadly.

“Tell me.”

Libby didn’t want to think about Aaron, let alone talk about him to this man who wouldn’t understand so many things. “He had…he had lovers.”

Ken didn’t seem surprised. Had he guessed that, too? “Go on.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can. If it’s too much for you right now, I won’t press you. But the sooner you talk this out, Libby, the better off you’re going to be.”

She realized that her hands were clenched in her lap and tried to relax them. There was still a white mark on her finger where Aaron’s ostentatious wedding ring had been. “He didn’t care,” she mourned in a soft, distracted whisper. “He honestly didn’t care….”

“About you?”

“About Jonathan. Dad, he didn’t care about his own son!”

“How so, sweetheart?”

Libby dashed away tears with the back of one hand. “Th-things were bad between Aaron and me b-before we found out that Jonathan was sick. After the doctors told us, it was a lot worse.”

“I don’t follow you, Libby.”

“Dad, Aaron wouldn’t have anything to do with Jonathan from the moment we knew he was dying. He wasn’t there for any of the tests and he never once came to visit at the hospital. Dad, that little boy cried for his father, and Aaron wouldn’t come to him!”

“Did you talk to Aaron?”

Remembered frustration made Libby’s cheeks pound with color. “I pleaded with him, Dad. All he’d say was, ‘I can’t handle this.’”

“It would be a hell of a thing to deal with, Lib. Maybe you’re being too hard on the man.”

“Too hard? Too hard? Jonathan was terrified, Dad, and he was in pain—constant pain. All he asked was that his own father be strong for him!”

“What about the boy’s mother? Did she come to the hospital?”

“Ellen died when Jonathan was a baby.”

Ken sighed, framing a question he was obviously reluctant to ask. “Did you ever love Aaron Strand, Libby?”

Libby remembered the early infatuation, the excitement that had never deepened into real love and had quickly been quelled by the realities of marriage to a man who was fundamentally self-centered. She tried, but she couldn’t even recall her ex-husband’s face clearly—all she could see in her mind was a pair of jade-green eyes, dark hair. Jess. “No,” she finally said. “I thought I did when I married him, though.”

Ken stood up suddenly, took the coffeepot from its back burner on the stove, refilled both their cups. “I don’t like asking you this, but—”

“No, Dad,” Libby broke in firmly, anticipating the question all too well, “I don’t love Stacey!”

“You’re sure about that?”

The truth was that Libby hadn’t been sure, not entirely. But that ill-advised episode with Jess at the end of the swimming dock had brought everything into clear perspective. Just remembering how willingly she had submitted to him made her throb with embarrassment. “I’m sure,” she said.

Ken’s strong hand came across the table to close over hers. “You’re home now,” he reminded her, “and things are going to get better, Libby. I promise you that.”

Libby sniffled inelegantly. “Know something, cowboy? I love you very much.”

“Bet you say that to all your fathers,” Ken quipped. “You planning to work on your comic strip tomorrow?”

The change of subject was welcome. “I’m six or eight weeks ahead of schedule on that, so I’m not worried about my deadline. I think I’ll go riding, if I can get Cathy to go with me.”