The Way Home (50 page)

Meg didn’t want that wall weakened. She’d spent the past few weeks trying hard not to feel anything, starting with the pain of losing her baby. The realization that she’d also lost her husband had sent her scurrying to build the wall higher, making it easier for her to cower behind it, eyes closed, her hands clamped over her ears.

But the scene with Ty this morning had shown her that she couldn’t hide forever. It wasn’t fair to him. Life went on, he’d said. She couldn’t imagine what kind of a life she’d have without him, but she’d been selfish long enough. It was time to let him go, even if it tore her heart out to do it.

Meg looked at the clock again, feeling her heart bump with worry. Where was he? What if something had happened to him? What if there’d been an accident? Jack had been working with him, she reminded herself. He’d have gotten Ty to Doc Corey’s. Then it occurred to her that Jack might not have been at the farm today. Or maybe they’d
both
been hurt in the same accident.

Before Meg’s imagination could run completely wild and present her with ever more terrible possibilities, she heard the distinctive sound of the roadster’s engine as it pulled up in front of the house and stopped. He was home! She was out of her chair in an instant, the book she’d been trying to read thumping unnoticed to the floor.

After yanking open the bedroom door, she hurried down the stairs. The front door opened as Meg reached the bottom of the stairs and she stopped, one hand pressed to her heart, holding her breath, half afraid of seeing some terrible injury, too caught up in her fear to realize that Ty would hardly be driving himself home if he was terribly injured.

But there was not a bandage in sight. From what she could see in the dimly lit entryway, he looked perfectly healthy. Unaware of her presence, he shut the door behind him and shrugged out of his jacket, hanging it on the coat rack in the comer. It wasn’t until he turned toward the stairs that he saw Meg standing there, her white nightgown very visible in the darkness.

“Hello.” He stopped abruptly, swaying just a little.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, all her worry turning into quick anger.

“At the farm.” He spoke slowly, as if the words took some concentration. “With Jack,” he added, in case that was important.

Meg stepped off the last stair and moved toward him, her nose wrinkling when she got close enough to smell the whiskey.

“You’re drank!” She was horrified.

“Not nearly as much as I’d like to be.” There was an edge to his voice that might have given her pause at another time. But she was too busy absorbing the shock of seeing him drunk to register anything beyond that.

“You don’t drink,” she protested foolishly.

“Not often.”

And not enough,
he thought, looking down at her. If he’d had enough to drink, then maybe he wouldn’t notice how softly appealing she looked in that plain white nightgown. He thought of telling her as much, but from the way she was starting to frown, he didn’t think she’d appreciate the compliment.

“Good night, Meg.” With a sigh, he stepped around her and started up the stairs. But he’d only reached the third step when his head started to spin. He grabbed for the railing as the world tilted. That would teach him to drink on an empty stomach, he thought. Then Meg was beside him, taking his arm and putting it over her shoulder.

“Hang on to me,” she said sharply.

“If you insist.” Though the dizziness was gone, Ty had no objection to keeping his arm around his wife. His very pretty wife. She was even pretty when she was scowling, the way she was now. “I could have made it on my own,” he felt obliged to point out as they neared the top of the stairs.

“You’d most likely have fallen and broken your fool neck,” she snapped, sounding angry.

Ty couldn’t ever remember seeing Meg angry. Lately, of course, he hadn’t seen any real emotion from her at all. But even before the miscarriage, he didn’t think he’d ever seen her angry. He might have given some thought to the significance of this piece of information if they hadn’t reached the top of the stairs and come face-to-face with his mother.

“Where have you been?” she demanded furiously, her attention all for Ty.

“I’ve been at the farm. With Jack.” Hadn’t he answered this question once already?

“Tyler Douglas McKendrick, you’ve been drinking!” She sounded, if possible, even more offended than Meg had.

“Yes.” He smiled at her. “Rather a lot. But not as much as Jack. Jack’s sleeping in the bam tonight. I thought about sleeping in the bam, too, but the hay was scratchy so I came home.”

“You should get to bed at once. I’ll take care of this,” Helen said, acknowledging Meg’s presence for the first time. She gave Meg a regal nod and reached for Ty’s arm, but Meg shook her head.

“I’ll get him to bed.”

“I’m his mother,” Helen began, her cheeks flushing with annoyance.

“I’m his wife.”

Ty thought of pointing out that he was more than capable of putting himself to bed. Despite his early determination to get roaring drunk, he’d soon discovered that he had little taste for actually doing so. He’d stopped after a few drinks, and then watched while Jack systematically drank himself into a stupor. He’d put his best friend to bed in the bam, almost envious of the oblivion he’d managed to achieve. Other than a mild buzzing in his ears and a pleasant who-gives-a-damn feeling, he was quite sober.

“Considering the state of affairs between the two of you,” his mother was saying, “I think Tyler would prefer — “

“We are still married,” Meg said firmly.

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Helen snapped.

Ty frowned but before he could say anything, his father’s quiet voice came from his parents’ bedroom. “Come back to bed, Helen.”

She hesitated a moment, her mouth pulled tight with anger. She looked at her daughter-in-law, but there was no give in Meg’s steady gaze. With an annoyed huff, Helen spun away and stalked down the hall. The door closed behind her with a quiet
click
that spoke volumes.

Ty’s arm still rested on Meg’s shoulder and he felt a slight tremor go through her, as if she’d just narrowly escaped some danger. His frown deepened. Just what had been going on between her and his mother? She’d said they were getting along, but the scene he’d just witnessed didn’t look like “getting along.”

“Let’s get you to bed.”

All speculation about her relationship with his mother vanished from Ty’s thoughts as she turned not toward his sister’s old room but toward their bedroom, where she’d been sleeping alone these past few weeks.

He allowed her to guide him into the room and sit him on the edge of the bed. She knelt at his feet and began unlacing the heavy work boots, tugging at the laces with quick, angry movements. Ty watched her, noticing the way her hair spilled onto her shoulders and swung forward to conceal her face. It was like a fall of golden silk in the lamplight, and he reached out to touch it.

“Don’t!” She jerked away from his fingers as if scalded.

The rejection was so immediate, so complete that it felt as if he’d just been kicked in the gut. His hand dropped against his thigh, the fingers curling into a fist.

“I’m sorry,” he said dully. God, he should have had more to drink.

“Sorry.” She snorted her contempt of the word as she yanked off first one boot and then the other, tossing them toward the foot of the bed. She stood up but she didn’t move away from him as he’d expected. Instead she planted her hands on her hips and looked down at him.

“Do you know what time it is? I thought you’d been hurt. Killed, even. And then you come home, drunker than a waltzing pissant and not hurt at all.”

Her tone made it difficult to determine whether she was most angry because he was drunk or because he wasn’t hurt. And what the devil did she care, anyway? Ty thought, feeling his own anger stir to life. She’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want anything to do with him.

“Next time I’m late, I’ll try to make sure it’s because I’ve broken a major bone,” he said with heavy sarcasm.

“Better that than drunk,” she shot back.

He stood up, deliberately using his height as an advantage, but Meg didn’t back up even an inch. She tilted her head to stare up at him. There was color in her cheeks and her blue eyes flashed fire. She looked more alive than he’d seen her in weeks. But he noticed that only peripherally.

“I don’t see what difference it makes to you whether I’m drunk or not.”

“I won’t have you drinking. I won’t tolerate it the way my mother did with my father. If you’re that unhappy, why don’t you just come out and tell me you want a divorce?”

Divorce.
The word hung in the air between them, shocking them both to silence. Ty felt his head spin. A divorce? Was that what she wanted? Did she hate him so much? Blame him so much for the miscarriage?

“God.” He sank back down on the bed, shoving his fingers through his hair, cursing the lingering fuzziness from the whiskey that made thinking difficult. Or was it fear that made it hard to think? Had he really lost her so completely?

“I — I know I should have said something before.” All the anger was gone from her voice, leaving it soft and sad.

“A divorce.” He rolled the word on his tongue, finding the taste of it sour and ugly.

“It was selfish of me to let it go so long,” she was saying. He saw her link her hands in front of her but it wasn’t enough to conceal their trembling. “I knew how you felt.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.” Her voice quavered on the word and then steadied. “I don’t want you to feel bad about … about how you feel.”

“How I feel about what?”
Damn the whiskey anyway.
Ty rubbed his fingers over the ache starting between his eyes.

“About me.About … the baby.” Her voice nearly broke on that one, the closest he’d seen her come to crying since the miscarriage.

“I’m sorry about the baby, Meg,” he said slowly. There was something here, something not right in what she was saying.

“I’m sorry, too.” She drew a shaky breath. “I know it was my fault and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I — “

“Forgive you?” Ty’s voice was so harsh that she jumped. Her eyes jerked to his face and for the first time in weeks, he could see what she was feeling, see the pain she’d been living with. “Forgive you?” he said again, more quietly. “Meg, there was nothing to forgive.”

“I lost the baby.”

“You had a miscarriage,” he corrected her. “The baby wasn’t a — a trinket that you set down and forgot, Meg. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have seen a doctor sooner.”

“Doc Corey told you that wouldn’t have made any difference.” He reached out and caught her hands in his, drawing her closer despite her automatic resistance. “There was something wrong, honey. Nothing could have changed what happened.”

“I should have — “

“No.” His fingers tightened over hers. “There’s nothing you ‘should have’ done. You did everything you could have. It just wasn’t meant to be. I never, for even a second, thought it was your fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine.”

“Yours!” She’d been staring at their linked hands but now her head jerked up, her eyes startled. “How could it be your fault?”

“I shouldn’t have gotten you pregnant in the first place.” He looked away. “You were too young.”

“Oh, Ty, there’s women a lot younger than me having babies all the time.”

“I still should have done something to prevent it,” he said stubbornly. “And I should have brought you home sooner. I
knew
you were worried about me flying. If you hadn’t worried so much, maybe the baby would have been all right.”

“That’s not so. And even if it were, it would be my fault for being so foolish. Max told me that you were the best pilot he’d ever seen. I should have believed him.” Meg leaned toward him, her body tense with the need to convince him. It had never occurred to her that
he
might be feeling guilty.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have made love to you after we found out you were pregnant,” he said slowly. “Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe, if I’d — “

“There wasn’t anything you could have done, Ty,” she said fiercely. “There wasn’t anything anyone could have done. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

The words seemed to echo in her head. Meg stared at Ty, stunned by the sound of them. She lifted her hands to her face, pressing her fingers over her mouth, feeling something hard and tight start to dissolve inside her.

“It wasn’t my fault,” she whispered.

“No one ever thought it was, sweetheart.” He stood up and reached out to put his arms around her, his touch tentative, as if he expected her to pull away. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

“Oh, Ty.” All the pain she’d tried so hard to deny rose in her throat, nearly choking her. She came into his embrace, her fingers clutching his shirtfront as the first sob broke from her.

Meg had no idea how long she cried. It seemed as if there were an ocean of tears inside her and she’d been near to drowning in the pain of holding them back. Ty didn’t try to stop the flood. He simply held her and let her cry it out, his arms strong around her, his cheek pressed against the top of her head.