Cathy Thacker - Texas Vows - A McCabe Family Saga

So Sam had prayed hard for a miracle and pretended she would survive, even when he knew her lungs ached with every breath and her pain required larger and larger doses of pain-killers to keep it manageable. When the boys had entered her sickroom she had smiled and been the mom they needed and depended on. Only with Sam, in the last few days of her life, had she let down her guard and told him the truth, that the suffering she felt was getting to be too much. She felt so unbearably weary. Weak. Sick. It was time to move on, Ellie had whispered tearfully as he’d held her in his arms, crying, too. She was beginning to want to move on. And quickly after that, she did. Slipping away from them peacefully in her sleep. Leaving him to face their boys’ wrath—at having been misled about the terminal nature of her illness—alone.

It wasn’t easy seeing the disillusionment and disappointment every time he looked into his sons’ eyes, Sam thought as a single tear slid down his cheek. Harder yet realizing just how much of their family’s happiness had centered around Ellie. His family and friends kept telling him the numbness, the disorientation, the relentless anger over Ellie’s fate would go away with time. But it hadn’t, Sam realized as the spasms shook his body and a harsh racking sob rose in his throat. Instead it seemed to get worse, Sam thought as he sank helplessly down onto the cool tile floor, buried his head in his arms, and wept the way he hadn’t, even on the day of her funeral. He’d loved Ellie so long and so much, he wasn’t ever going to get over this.

THE FOOTBALL TEAM had just started running drills Saturday morning when the black Jeep Wrangler pulled into the parking lot on the other side of the chain-link fence. Mike Marten frowned and glanced at his watch. Whoever it was, was late.

Seconds later, a lanky six-foot-plus kid strode through the gates and down the clay running track that rimmed the football field. He carried himself with an accomplished athlete’s confidence and was dressed in a T-shirt, running shorts and athletic shoes. Mike Marten didn’t have to see his dark buzz-cut hair, good-looking mug or familiar blue eyes to know who it was. The seventeen-year-old kid had arranged to see Mike that morning, through Laramie High School’s front office and Mike’s assistant coach Gus Barkley, and he was the spitting image of his dad.

Will McCabe tensed as he neared. “Coach Marten?”

Mike nodded, and tried not to let the gut-deep resentment he still felt for the kid’s father affect his treatment of Will as the two of them shook hands. If there was one thing he prided himself on when it came to his work, it was his fairness to every one of his players.

“I’m Will McCabe. I called about getting a tryout for the football team.”

“Right.” Mike nodded, forcing himself to put his personal feelings aside. “You played quarterback at your school in Dallas?”

“Varsity, last two years,” Will confirmed with a man-to-man glance at Mike. “I didn’t get much playing time my sophomore year, but last year I started every game.”

Zeroing in on the pride in the kid’s voice, Mike blew his whistle and waved one of his running backs over. He nodded at the sidelines. “Grab a football. Let’s see what you can do.”

Mike put them through a series of increasingly complicated passes. Given his obvious tension, he had expected Will to start out nervously and maybe get better as he went along. Instead he started out great and continued at the same level, no matter what Mike asked him to do.

When the rest of the team finished a series and took a water break, something that had to be done frequently in the summer heat, Gus Barkley came over to the sidelines to stand beside Mike and watch. He shook his head in awe. “Man, that kid’s got an arm. Speed and accuracy, too.”

All should have been qualities Mike welcomed. That was hard to do when every time he looked at Will, he saw Sam, and by association, Pete.

Gus frowned, seeming to read Mike’s mind. Gus, too, had worried about the potential for animosity between Sam McCabe’s son and Mike. Mike had assured him it wouldn’t be a problem. Now that it was happening, he wasn’t so sure. Especially when the loss he felt had returned—at the mere sight of the kid—like a sucker punch to the gut. Mike frowned. He thought he had buried all that years ago, along with Pete.

“Want me to get him outfitted with some gear?” Gus asked, the anxiousness in his eyes contrasting to the easy-going camaraderie of his voice.

“Not until after I talk to him.” Mike motioned Will over to him and Gus, and let his running back know, with a nod in the other direction, that he could take a break with the other players. Will trotted over. He looked at Mike hopefully.

“No guarantees about starting or anything else,” Mike warned gruffly. He didn’t care how naturally gifted a kid was. That went for Will and everyone else. “Whatever you get on this team, you earn. And you haven’t earned anything yet. Got it?”

Will nodded and, to his credit, kept his composure despite Mike’s underlying message that this was not going to be easy. Will was not just going to be “given” a slot as starting quarterback on Mike’s team.

“You’re also going to need a physical before I can let you on the team,” Mike said, turning away from the disappointment in the kid’s eyes. Obviously he had expected to be praised for his performance on the field. In fact, had probably been used to that in Dallas. “Assistant Coach Barkley will take you inside the field house and get you the forms. You can come back when you’ve gotten them filled out, and not before.”

WILL KNEW IF HE WANTED to get a football physical fast, he’d have to arrange it himself. He could hardly ask his dad to do it, he was so preoccupied and out of touch with what was going on with the rest of the family he might as well have been on a different planet.

Of course, it hadn’t always been that way, with him and his brothers left to fend for themselves for practically everything. When his mom was alive all any of them had ever had to do with a problem was go to her. She’d be on the phone and two minutes later everything was all fixed. Didn’t matter what it was, Mom had known what to say and do to take care of it.

That had changed when she’d gotten sick, of course. But even when she was really suffering there at the end, she’d call the shots, while his dad stood around, helpless to do anything except comfort her physically and fly in more specialists.

On the domestic front, his Dad hadn’t a clue. And thanks to the succession of ridiculously bad and bossy housekeepers, he still didn’t. Will knew the reason why his dad wanted those idiotic ladies there. It made it easier for him to go off to work and forget all about the rest of them, the way he always had before Mom died.

Only it wasn’t like before, Will thought as he turned his Jeep Wrangler into the hospital parking lot. Life was hell. Home was worse. The best he could do was try to make this year as bearable as possible by finding a girlfriend and playing football. Then go to college and never look back. Maybe never even come back.

JACKSON MCCABE was waiting for Will, as promised, in his office at the hospital. Young, handsome, successful and newly—happily—married, Jackson was everything Will wanted to be when he grew up. “Thanks for doing this for me, Jackson.” Will handed over the forms. “I know it’s a Saturday morning and you’re a surgeon not a family doc, but I really need this physical right away. Otherwise, I can’t show up for practice Monday morning with the rest of the team.”

“Not a problem.” Jackson gave Will a look that let him know he understood how chaotic life had been for him and his brothers since their mom had died and that he didn’t mind the last-minute call one bit. He ushered Will onto the scale. “What are second cousins for, anyway? Besides—” Jackson shifted the metal weights on the bar until it hung perfectly in balance at one hundred and eighty seven. “I know what a stickler Coach Marten is for the rules.”