Chance McCall (24 page)

For the first time, a glimmer of guilt hit Logan. He tried to speak and then swallowed. To save Victoria, they had to believe him.

“When I met her…I was the first.”

Margaret Henry gasped and met her husband’s eyes. The truth was there. She shook her head and walked away.

Logan cursed soft and long. He watched the end of his marriage disappearing into the darkness.

Chance staggered backward and leaned weakly against Charlie’s car.

“I don’t believe you,” he whispered. He didn’t want to. It meant that Victoria was…That more than once they’d almost…

“You have to,” Logan said. “You can’t love Victoria. Not in that way.”

“You beast!” Victoria cried. “You’re just doing this to keep us apart.”

“No, honey.” His regret was overwhelming. “I wouldn’t destroy myself just to hurt you…now would I?”

She stared at the truth in her father’s eyes and moaned. She turned, reached toward Chance, and then let her arms drop to her side as shock overwhelmed her. She swayed.

Their reactions were instantaneous as both men tried to catch her. She staggered backward, horror thickening her voice as she cried, “Don’t touch me, either of you! I don’t want Chance for a brother. I love him. I wanted to marry him! And now…because of you…I can’t. I’ll never forgive you,” she said. “Never!”

Logan winced as Victoria ran out of sight. He turned to Chance. He had to make the boy believe him. His daughter’s future depended upon it.

“Letty was seventeen. I’d been married less than a year.”

Chance stood transfixed, listening to the man turn his world upside down.

“I didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did. But she was so damn pretty…and Margaret hated sex. I needed…”

Chance staggered forward and set his fist against Logan’s chest. “You sound just like every man who’s come knocking on my mother’s door. They all need something. And they want it from her.”

The pain in the boy’s voice was impossible to deny. For the first time in his life, Logan Henry was ashamed of what he’d done, and he didn’t like the feeling. That made the rest of his story harsher than he intended.

“Yes, and she gave it out, willingly. She was hot, and I wanted it, but I knew it was a mistake. When I tried to break it off with her, she got hysterical. The next thing I know, she’s telling me she’s pregnant. We had a terrible fight. I told her that a baby wouldn’t keep me with her. Nothing would do that. I didn’t love her. I didn’t want her. I gave her ten thousand dollars. Told her to get rid of the baby and get out of my life.”

The pain swelled inside Chance’s heart. He’d always known that he’d been unwanted. But hearing it said aloud, in such a manner…

“Maybe she did,” Chance said. “Maybe I’m some other man’s kid. Didn’t you ever think of that?”

“Yeah,” Logan said. “And I tried to tell myself that the day a letter and a picture from Letty arrived in the mail. Your baby pictures and mine were so alike, even I couldn’t tell them apart. I was furious with her for tricking me. I thought she’d gotten rid of…”

It dawned on Logan how careless his opinion of Chance’s life had been. How selfish and cruel he’d been in wanting to end another life just to make his easier.

He flushed, unable to meet the look in the young man’s eyes. “Anyway, I found out she’d used the money to buy a house, and had you instead. I never spoke to her again. Oh…I saw you once or twice later…by accident, but she didn’t know it. I knew who you were, and I knew what I’d done to her. But, dammit…there were never any promises between us. And she knew I was married. At least she did by the time she got herself pregnant. It wasn’t my fault.”

Chance’s skin crawled. He’d spent his entire life in a house that this son-of-a-bitch had paid for. He wanted to throw up.

“Look,” Logan said. “I always knew where you were. I should have said something sooner…maybe paid to—”

Chance doubled up his fist and then took a step backward. This had to stop. He spat blood in the dust at Logan’s feet and pointed a shaky finger at him.

“I don’t want anything from you. Not now, not ever. Don’t think just because you’ve been caught, that it’s going to cost you. Believe me, living down the fact that you’re my father is going to be harder for me than for you. I always told myself that he was probably just some ‘good old boy’ having himself a Saturday night fling. I don’t want to face the fact that the man who spawned me is a genuine bastard. You leave
me
alone!
I’m
the one who doesn’t want to be bothered. Not by the likes of you.”

He turned and staggered, then caught himself by holding onto the fender. Somehow, he managed to crawl into Charlie’s car. He didn’t see the look of pain sweeping over Logan Henry’s face. And if he had he wouldn’t have cared. Everything inside Chance was cold and dead.

Chance turned the corner of his street and stopped his pickup truck, letting it idle as he tried to get up the courage to go inside his house and face his mother.

He’d returned Charlie’s car and retrieved his old truck without detection. It had taken all of his strength just to walk from one vehicle to the other. Every bone in his body ached from the beating he’d taken tonight. The tuxedo he’d rented would probably have to be burned. They’d never get out all this blood. But the tux was the least of his worries. Confronting his mother would be the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He had to hear the truth from her lips before he’d be completely and totally convinced that what he’d learned tonight was true. Then, and only then, could he face the world knowing that Victoria Henry would be off limits forever.

As luck would have it, Letty McCall walked into the kitchen and turned on the light as Chance walked in the front door.

“Dear Lord,” she whispered and stepped forward. “Chance, what happened to you?”

The pain inside him was so great that his answer came out without thought. “I met my father,” he drawled. “Hell of a guy.”

Letty staggered. Her face paled and she reached out. He stepped back, unwilling to be touched. As badly as he’d been beaten, the pain inside him was worse.

“What are you saying?” Letty whispered. “Where did you go tonight? How do you know…?”

“You want to know where I’ve been?” Chance shouted, and then winced at the pain in his jaw. “I’ll tell you where I’ve been. The same place I’ve been for the last few months. With a girl. And do you want to know who she is, Mother?”

Letty shook her head. The look on her son’s face was scaring her to death.

“Well, I’m going to tell you anyway,” Chance said, and jabbed his finger into his mother’s shoulder. “For the past few months I’ve been busy falling in love with my sister. Isn’t that a hoot?”

“No…. Dear Sweet Lord,” Letty moaned, and covered her face with her hands. “Are you sure it—”

“Her name was Victoria Henry, Mom. Does that ring a bell?”

“Logan!” The name came out in a whisper. Letty sank down into a crouching position on the cracked linoleum.

It was all he’d needed to hear, and what he’d feared most. The bastard had been telling the truth! Chance’s heart turned to stone. Every instinct he had told him to get out before he said something he’d later regret, but the pain he’d been dealt made him want to hit back.

“So! It’s true. You screwed the bastard, got yourself pregnant, and then tried to trick him into marrying you.”

“Chance! You don’t understand. I loved—”

“Don’t even say it,” Chance said. The hurt inside him kept growing. “Don’t tell me anything about that man. I don’t want to hear it. I just want to know one thing. Why the hell didn’t you do what he wanted you to do? Why didn’t you get rid of me, Mom? Why did you keep me and then drag us both through all this hell?”

Letty began to cry. Her head dropped to her knees as she curled herself up into a tiny ball.

Chance was too far gone to recognize her distress. He turned and started out of the house.

“Where are you going?” she begged. “Come back. You need to let me doctor those—”

“I don’t need anything. Not from you. Not from anyone. And I’ve spent the last night I’ll ever spend underneath a roof that Logan Henry paid for.”

He walked out of the house, ignoring his mother’s pleas to come back, and crawled into the back of his pickup truck. It might be dirty, and it was damn sure hard. But it wasn’t as dirty as he felt inside, and not nearly as hard as the knot in his gut.

He needed to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. There were too many aches to let him focus on the one in his heart. It was only after the sun awakened him the next morning that the tears fell. And then they were not for him. They were for what was left of his mother, who’d ended her life as his had begun: without thought.

13

Charlie Rollins
was running. The first customer he’d had when he opened up had been his last. The gossip had spread through Odessa fast. Bad news always did. The man who’d wanted gas had also wanted a reaction from Charlie. He knew the McCall boy worked for him. People were saying that the kid had been beat up bad and his mother was dead. People were saying that Chance had killed her by accident during a fight. People were talking. Charlie was running.

A police car was still outside the house, as well as an ambulance and the coroner’s car. A sick feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. Chance was like a son to him. And growing up in a place like this, with a mother like Letty…it didn’t bear thinking about.

He ducked under the taped off area around the house that indicated the place was still under investigation, and started toward the door.

“Hey! You can’t go in there!” a policeman yelled.

Charlie kept on walking.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the policeman repeated. “I said you—”

Chance walked out of the door…alone. Charlie stopped in mid-step and swallowed.

His face! What had happened to this boy? Yesterday he’d been a kid, excited about going to a damn high school dance. Today, a cold, hard man was all that was left of the Chance that he’d known.

Chance looked up. Charlie was standing just a few feet away. The pain that had frozen in his eyes began to melt. He shuddered and started to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Dammit, boy. Come here,” he said. Chance walked into his arms.

The comfort was awkward, as it always is between men, but the feelings were sincere and Chance could feel it. He wrapped his arms around the smaller man’s shoulders and hung on. Words wouldn’t come. Only the pain flowed, and with it came the tears that he couldn’t spill last night.

“She’s dead, Charlie. It’s my fault. I might as well have put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.”

“I don’t understand,” Charlie said, as he pulled away and drew Chance down to sit on the curb. “What happened? And what in hell happened to you? Did she do that or…?”

Chance smiled through his tears and scared the hell out of him. Charlie’d never seen so much hate and bitterness in one man in his life.

“Oh hell no,” Chance said softly. “My mother didn’t do this. My father did.”

Charlie’s mouth dropped. “Your…But I thought…What made him…?” He cursed and spat. “Who is he? I’m gonna take a bat to the son-of-a-bitch and he’s gonna know the reason why.” He jumped to his feet and began pacing a circle in front of Chance.

“Who is he? That’s going with me to my grave, Charlie. He doesn’t deserve to be named.”

Charlie felt the boy’s pain as vividly as if it were his own. “Did he hurt your momma, too?”

Chance smiled. The same sick feeling of dread slipped over Charlie again. This boy was ready to kill. He could smell it.

“Yeah, he hurt my mother, a long time ago. I guess me and every other sorry man walking just finished her off.”

Charlie knelt down in front of him. “I don’t want to hear you talk like that. You, above all others, have stood by that woman when she didn’t deserve it. And don’t argue with me about that. You know I’m talking the truth.”

Chance shrugged.

“I don’t know what happened between you and your momma last night, but I know you wasn’t to blame. I know you better than that.”

Chance looked up. Charlie Rollins was the only man who’d ever believed in him. But for Charlie, he would have been on the streets years ago, searching for happiness in a bottle, and looking for an easy way out of the constant poverty—just as Letty had done.

“She’s dead because she swallowed a bottle of pills and chased it with a fifth of whiskey. And she did that because of what I said to her. I’ll never believe anything different.”

“I can’t change your mind,” Charlie said. “Only time will do that. But I can help you make the necessary decisions.”

Chance stared. Decisions?

“Her funeral for one, and where you’re gonna live for another.”

It was the word
funeral
that tipped the scales. Chance staggered to his feet and just made it to the tree across the street before his stomach heaved…and heaved…and heaved. And then Charlie’s arms were around him, pulling him away from the end of his world.

“Dear Lord, we inter this precious woman to the earth from whence she came. Ashes to…”

The minister’s voice droned as Chance blocked out every sound save the one of clods of earth falling onto the lid of the coffin that would be his mother’s final home. Thoughts of his mother and heaven together were incongruous. They’d lived in hell on earth. It only stood to reason that they’d spend eternity in the same place.

He stared, dry-eyed and hollow, listening to the sounds of the minister’s voice but unable to absorb the words. Everything around him was surreal…larger than life. It was like watching himself in a play. Any minute now someone would yell “cut,” and things would be back to normal. But no one yelled. And no one cried for Letty McCall.

The only people in attendance other than Chance were Charlie Rollins and his wife, three drunks from Crosby’s bar, the night shift bartender, and a trucker who’d been passing through. Letty’s funeral was not a social success. It figured. Neither was her life.

“Boy,” Charlie said to him after the short ceremony, “me and the wife have talked it over. We want you to come stay with us until you decide what you want to do. It ain’t like we think you can’t manage on your own. You’ve been doin’ that anyway. We just—”