My Favorite Husband

“He’s eight, and he’s a sweetie. Let me tell you the story from the beginning, so you’ll understand why this is so important.”

“Fire away. Maybe when I hear familiar stuff, my memory will start coming back.”

That might be, but she’d be willing to bet Travis Rider wasn’t familiar with anything she was about to tell him.

Katie wheeled around a corner, and Rider grunted. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll try to be more careful.” Though he couldn’t have been slung around too much the way he was wedged in. “Okay,” she began. “Twenty—eight years ago, I was born to Ralph and Nadine Logan in Hillsdale, Oklahoma. My impending birth was the reason they got married. I’m not quite sure how I happened. I know they don’t believe in birth control, but I’d have sworn they didn’t believe in sex, either. Anyway, they must have lost control a couple of times because I had a sister three years later. Katherine and Rebecca, they named us, though we go by Katie and Becky. At least, she went by Becky until she died three months ago.”

Katie bit her lip. It was still hard to talk about Becky without crying. Too bad she hadn’t inherited her parents’ stoic control.

No, she corrected herself, it wasn’t too bad. She’d rather cry her eyes out than be like them.

“How’d Becky die?” Rider asked softly.

“Defective space heater. She and her husband, Darryl, died in their sleep. Nathan was spending the night with one of his friends. But I’m getting ahead of my story.”

She checked the traffic, then accelerated up the entrance ramp onto Highway 75.

“Central Expressway’s always busy,” she grumbled. “If you’ve forgotten the traffic jams on this highway, you’re really in bad shape!”

He laughed. It was a nice laugh. Without his mem ory, Travis Rider seemed to be a decent fellow. “I guess I’m in bad shape, then. I don’t remember. So tell me the rest of your story.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m sure my parents loved us in their own way.” Actually, she wasn’t at all sure of that fact, but it might be true. “However, neither of them ever forgave the other or me for what happened. The humiliation of having to get married and then the arrival of a seven-month-old baby.”

“Your parents must be pretty old—fashioned. Even as little as I remember, that doesn’t matter to most people anymore.”

“My parents are old—fashioned, stern, rigid people, especially my father. And Mother goes along with anything he says. They were both determined that neither of their children would make the same mistake they made. We worked hard, studied hard, came straight home from school, had no friends, ate everything on our plates, didn’t talk at meals, or between meals for that matter, didn’t make any decisions, not even what to wear to school or how to wear our hair. We had no affection, only rules.”

She paused, wondering if she was saying the right words to make him understand the cold, lonely world she’d grown up in.

Rider laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she flashed him a quick smile.

“How did you ever get the courage to escape?” he asked.

“I wasn’t very old when I figured out that the way we lived wasn’t normal. I saw how other kids lived, and I wanted to be like that. At night, Becky and I would huddle under the covers and talk. I became pretty rebellious. As soon as I graduated from high school, I ran away from home. I promised Becky I’d make enough money to send for her.”

“And did you?”

“Yeah, kind of. I made my way to Dallas and worked as a waitress, two jobs at a time, and by the end of a year I had a tiny apartment, a car with four bald tires and no heater and a little money in the bank. But by then Becky was pregnant. How she ever managed to accomplish that while living in the same house with Mother and Father is beyond me! But she did, and she and Darryl ran away and got married and moved in with Darryl’s parents until he graduated from high school.”

“Nathan,” Rider guessed.

Katie smiled, her eyes on the yellow line of the highway, but her thoughts going back to the first time she’d seen the wrinkled red baby. “Yep. Nathan came into the world. They let Darryl and me both be there for his birth. Becky said she wouldn’t go through with it if they didn’t.” She blinked back the sudden mist that threatened her vision. “You never saw three prouder parents! All the time she was pregnant, Becky swore she’d see to it that her baby always felt loved. After he got there, it wasn’t even a matter of choice. Nobody can help but love a baby. Well, nobody but my parents.”

“Who love in their own way,” Rider reminded her.

“Yeah, well, sort of, I guess. Anyway, Becky was happy, and I decided I would be, too. I made up my mind to do everything I’d always thought about doing, to live life with no restraints and no one telling me I couldn’t do something. I got a job as a flight attendant and flew around the world for a couple of years.

That was fun. Then I spent a year in the Amazon rain forest with a study group. After that, I backpacked across Europe, went on a fossil dig in Africa, helped with a housing project for the poor in Mexico, learned to ski in Colorado and to surf in California, and anything else I took a notion to do. It was great. Whenever I got bored or started feeling hemmed in, I’d just go on to something else. And in between, I worked at odd jobs in Dallas and always managed to make time to spend with Nathan.”

“Sounds like you and Nathan are pretty tight.”

“Yeah. He kinda likes his Aunt Katie.”

“So what’s the custody deal about? Wouldn’t your sister have wanted you to have custody?”

“She and Darryl always said if anything happened to them, I should take Nathan.” Her hands gripped the steering wheel convulsively, hanging on. “But they were so young, they thought they were invulnerable. They never got around to putting it in writing. Darryl’s parents know, and they’re going to testify for me.”

“That should work, shouldn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. My parents are determined to get custody so they can correct the frivolous, permissive way Becky was raising their grandchild. They’re pillars of the community. My father’s a vice president at the bank and a deacon in the church. I wasn’t there when Becky and Darryl died, and my parents snatched Nathan up and filed a motion for temporary then permanent custody. Darryl’s parents heard about it in time and intervened to at least get visitation for me and for themselves.”

“Are they trying to get custody, too?”

“No, they’re testifying for me and they don’t want to muddy the waters. Anyway, they’re in their sixties, retired, and they’d never say they’re too old, but they did say they thought Nathan needed a younger parent. So my father managed to snare temporary custody, and then he refused to let me see Nathan.”

“How could he refuse if the court gave you the right?”

He really did have amnesia, she thought wryly. “Men like my father have no problem defying court orders. He didn’t bring Nathan to Becky and Darryl’s funeral, and every time I drove up there, he wouldn’t open the door. The permanent custody hearing was scheduled for sooner than 1 could have gotten a contempt motion on the docket. Tomorrow the judge decides the permanent custody. And my parents are saying my life—style shows I’m flaky, irresponsible and not stable enough to raise a child.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Rider said carefully, “but I have to admit, it doesn’t sound as if you could ever be a member of the PTA and coach the soccer team.”

Katie clenched her teeth. He might have amnesia, but he was still a jerk.

“I can do whatever it takes to make sure Nathan is happy. Since Becky and Darryl died at the same time and I was secondary beneficiary on both policies, I had enough money to buy a house.”

“So if they made you secondary beneficiary, doesn’t that prove they intended for you to take care of their son?”

“My lawyer says it shows intent, but it’s still not legal proof.” Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel, squeezing the hard surface in frustration.

“They thought they were being so careful. They were worried that if they made Nathan the beneficiary, if anything happened while he was a minor, our parents might somehow get control of the money as courtappointed trustees or something.”

“If they were worried enough to take out insurance policies and think it through to that extent, why didn’t they make a will?”

“They didn’t take out the insurance policies. They both worked at the same plant, and the insurance came with the job. They thought it all out because it was right in front of them, a choice they had to make. Writing a will, finding a lawyer, getting an appointment—that’s different. That’s something you have to think about and plan, and they weren’t planning to die.” Flooring the accelerator, she swung around a car that was going entirely too slow.

Rider touched her forearm. “Easy, honey,” he said. “I don’t plan to die any time soon, either.”

“Sorry.” She raised her foot a good quarter inch, forcibly reminding herself that speed for fun was one thing, but speed to release anger wasn’t very smart. “Anyway, to continue with my respectability saga, I’d been friends with Jo—with Fred for years, and he helped me arrange to take a crash course in being a medical transcriptionist, then he helped me get a job at Springcreek General Hospital.”

“Where I’m a resident. Is that where we met?”

Katie swallowed hard and kept her eyes riveted on the road ahead. She’d become so engrossed in making Travis Rider understand and believe the truth, that telling a lie—even in a just cause and even after she’d told so many tonight—suddenly didn’t feel right.

“If not for this custody thing, I’d never have met you.” That was true enough.

“Katie…” He sounded oddly tentative. “Did we get married just for this hearing? Is this a marriage of convenience?”

“I’d never marry anyone for that kind of a reason.” In fact, she’d never actually marry anyone—give up control of her own life—for any kind of a reason. When the caseworker had admitted that being single would be a strike against her, she’d impulsively told the woman she was engaged, knowing she’d have to lie because it would never happen for real.