Christine Rimmer - The Marriage Agreement

Marsh shook his head, sipped from his drink, decided that the remark about calling him tomorrow must have been something she’d said without thinking, without meaning it. She wouldn’t be calling him. He’d never hear from her again.

Which was probably for the best.

He certainly wouldn’t be idiot enough to try calling her again.

The past truly was another country, one he had no business trying to revisit. They were two different people now, with nothing to connect them except memories that were better left to fade, finally, into nothing.

Marsh finished his drink. Then he called the hospital. He spoke to the night nurse assigned to his father’s care. Blake Bravo was sleeping peacefully, the nurse said.

“If he asks, tell him I’ll see him tomorrow.”

The nurse said she’d be happy to pass on his message.

The misty drizzle had stopped by the time Tory got home. Betsy said she had checked on Kim fifteen minutes ago and Kim was sound asleep.

Tory paid Betsy and walked with her out the front door. The night air was moist and warm and the wind had died down. Tory stood on her front walk, watching Betsy stroll away up the street. The girl turned and gave Tory a carefree wave before she disappeared into her own house.

Betsy was fifteen. The same age Tory had been when Marsh first asked her out…

Tory shook her head. Better not get started down memory lane again. She turned and went back up the curving walk to the house. Inside, she locked up and turned off the lights.

She looked in on Kim before she went to her own room, creeping in and then waiting in the dark by Kim’s bed, until her eyes adjusted. Kim lay on her side, facing the wall, the yellow comforter she had chosen herself, when the two of them redecorated her room just last fall, pulled up close around her chin.

Mother love welled up in Tory. So sweet. And yet painful, too. A child grew so fast. Nine years took forever—and went by in an instant.

When Tory’s parents had learned that their daughter was going to have a baby, they had first tried to convince her to give the baby up. Tory had refused. And eventually her parents accepted the inevitable. In the end Audra and Seth Winningham had been honestly supportive, helping to take care of Kimmy in the first years, so that Tory could finish high school and even earn a business degree at OU.

And Norman, after all, was the third largest city in Oklahoma, a progressive university town with a population nearing ninety thousand now. Tory’s single-mom status may have been looked at askance by the people in her nice upper-middle class neighborhood at first. But over time she had found acceptance.

It had been rough, yes, in the beginning, being a mom at seventeen. All her high school friends felt sorry for her. They were out, running around, having fun. And she was home with a baby, longing, hungering, praying for Marsh to come back to her.

Kimmy stirred, sighing, pushing down the covers and flopping one arm out behind her. Tory resisted the urge to cover her again. The room wasn’t cold. And covering her might wake her.

Quietly Tory turned and tiptoed out.

Tomorrow, she thought, as she crossed the hall to her own room. I will call Marsh tomorrow, in the evening. I’ll make arrangements to meet with him again. And I’ll do a better job of it this time. This time I won’t run out without telling him what both he and Kimmy need for him to know.

“You get together with the redhead?”

Blake was sitting up in bed, looking considerably better than he had the afternoon before. The oxygen tube was gone from his nose. Though the old man still wheezed with each breath, Marsh was beginning to think that maybe the heart surgeon had been right. Blake Bravo wasn’t quite ready for the grave, after all.

“Well, Mr. Big Shot? Did you see her or not?”

“Feeling better, huh, Dad?”

“You’re not going to answer me, are you?”

“No. I’m not.”

“You didn’t see her.”

Marsh said nothing.

“Wait a minute,” Blake wheezed. “I get it. You saw her. But she held out on you. You didn’t get your surprise.”

“Dad.”

“What?”

“Either drop it or explain yourself.”

“Where the hell’s the fun in that? I’ll give you a hint—no. On second thought, I won’t. Go see her again.”

To keep himself from saying something he would later regret, Marsh stepped over to the window and looked out. Today the sky was a broad expanse of clear blue, dotted here and there with small, cotton-like clouds. Spread out below was a parking lot. And near the building, attractive landscaping: nandinas, a redbud tree, flower beds mulched with cedar chips.

He waited, looking out, observing the progress of a big black Buick as it rolled between the rows of parked cars and finally nosed into an empty space. A man got out and strode toward the building.

Marsh turned to his father again. “You are feeling better, aren’t you?”

Blake grunted. “Doctor said this morning that they’ll be sending me home soon—as long as I make sure there’s someone there to look after me.”

“I’ll see about hiring you a live-in nurse.”

“Forget that. I don’t want any stranger in my house.”

Marsh looked at his father levelly. “Don’t get any ideas about me taking care of you. It wouldn’t work.”

Blake closed his eyes, wheezed a sigh. “Don’t worry. I know it. You and I wouldn’t last twenty-four hours under the same roof.” He looked at Marsh again, pale eyes stranger than ever—far away. And far too knowing. “Doesn’t matter. Let it go. We’ll see how right that doctor is….”

Marsh shook his head. “You do feel better. You look better.”

“I don’t want a damn funeral, you hear what I say? Who the hell would come to my funeral anyway? I want cremation, and I want you to dump my ashes in Lake Thunderbird. Got that?”

“You’re not going to die now, Dad. Your doctor said so.”

“What the hell does a doctor know? What do you know? You’re dense as a post, you know that, Mr. Big Shot? You haven’t even figured out the secret that little redhead’s keeping from you.”

Marsh turned back to the window.

“Go see her again,” Blake commanded.

Marsh studied the redbud tree below. He’d always liked redbuds, liked the twisted forms the trunks could take and the pretty heart shape of the leaves.

Marsh stayed in his father’s room for another hour. It was a true test of self-control, and Marsh was pleased to find himself passing it. His father jeered and goaded, and Marsh looked out the window. Somehow the time went by.

Finally Blake dropped off to sleep again. Marsh sat in the chair in the corner and watched him for a while, listened to the labored, watery sound of his breathing, wondered what he was going to do about home care now that it looked as if Blake was going to cheat the devil, after all—at least for a while.

Marsh also wondered at himself. That he had come here, in the first place. That he found he felt accountable for the care of a hardhearted SOB who had made his childhood a living hell and driven his mother to an early grave. Evidently, some bonds were nigh on impossible to completely sever. A man felt a responsibility to a parent, period, even if that parent had always been a damn poor excuse for a human being.

When he got tired of sitting, Marsh left the hospital room. He hung around in the waiting area for a while, got out his cell phone and called Chicago.

He spoke with his second in command at Boulevard Limousine. Nothing going on there, other than the usual—drivers who didn’t report in when they were supposed to, one breakdown on a trip in from O’Hare. But somehow they always found another driver to cover, and breakdowns, with the fleet of top-quality new vehicles he owned now, were few and far between. This most recent one had caused a delay, but only a short one. They’d immediately dispatched a replacement vehicle, and the problem car had been towed to the shop.