Heartache Falls (30 page)

“Maybe not, but—”

“No buts, Mac. Don’t you see the problem here? Because I’m still involved in Eternity Springs, you jump off and make this decision precipitously. Then time will pass and your storm of weirdness will end and you will realize you made a huge, horrible mistake.”

“Storm of weirdness?”

“And whose fault will it be?” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “It’ll be my fault. Mine. You’ll resent me. Maybe you won’t mean to do it, but it’ll happen anyway. We’ll be worse off than ever.”

She walked over to him, and her eyes looked a little wild as she clutched his arm. “Tell me it’s still a leave of absence. Tell me you haven’t actually resigned!”

“No, Ali, I haven’t resigned.” He tried to pull her down into his lap, but she drew away. “Nevertheless, I have made my decision.”

“See? That’s another thing.” She held up her index finger. She didn’t quite shake it at him, but she did use it to punctuate her sentences. “You’ve made
your
decision. Let’s get back to that part of this issue.”

Grim, Mac swallowed the words
Let’s not
and washed them down with another sip of scotch.

“I hate the way people have come to use
disrespect
as a verb,” Ali said, “but I’m going to use it that way now. You disrespect me, Mac Timberlake. You disrespect me every time you make a decision that affects my life without including me in the process. I’m tired of it.” She put her hands on her hips. “How dare you buy a building in Eternity Springs without consulting me beforehand! And the Heartache Falls property? Good heavens, Mac. You must have drained our savings completely.”

“I financed most of it,” he snapped back as he shot to his feet. Her charge touched a nerve. He was willing to take only so much grief. “And I wanted it to be a surprise. A gift for you. Actually, a really great gift. You loved that acreage. Don’t pretend otherwise. I’m not going to ask your permission to give you a gift. It isn’t like the old days when your family money propped us up. I bought it with
my
money and
my
credit.”

“Okay, fine. Just what am I supposed to do with this gift? Live in a yurt?”

“Actually, the yurt is pretty great, too. Very comfortable. Can’t beat the scenery. But no one is saying we have to live there. There’s a spot near the falls that is perfect for a house.”

“Oh? So now you’ve picked out the site for my next home? Gee, do you see a pattern here?”

“Wait a minute, Alison. I don’t get it. I don’t get you. You want to live in Eternity Springs, and you want to work in Eternity Springs. But when I provide you the perfect opportunity to do so, you pitch a hissy fit. What is it you want?”

“I want to be your partner!”

“You
are
my partner. You’re my wife.”

“Yes, and this isn’t the 1950s anymore. You don’t get to make all the decisions for me.”

“I
don’t
do that.”

“You’ve
always
done that. I’ve just let you get away with it. My bad.”

He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “You have to be the most frustrating, infuriating female ever born. Explain to me, would you please, why after all these years I still find you so utterly and completely fascinating?”

She stopped, stared at him, and he watched her anger deflate. “No fair.”

“Sorry,” he said with a shrug, even though he wasn’t sorry at all. He took a step toward her. “I love you, Alison Michelle Timberlake.”

Now she pouted. At least pouting kept her mouth shut.

“I’m sorry that my effort to surprise you shocked you instead. I hear what you are saying about partnership, and I promise to consider that from here on out.”

She sighed. “What about the leave of absence? Will you cancel it and return to work?”

He sighed right back at her and moved closer still. “You need to believe me, Ali. I’m certain about this.”

“Well, I’m not.” She wrinkled her nose. “Promise me you won’t make this leave of absence permanent without talking to me about it ahead of time.”

“I promise.” He took her in his arms. She remained stiff until he buried his face against her neck and kissed her. As she began to relax, he murmured against her ear. “I don’t want to be a judge anymore. I want to practice law.”

“In Eternity Springs? You’d have one client a quarter.”

“That’ll give me more time to help you run the New Place—or whatever you decide to name it. It needs a better name, don’t you think?”

Ali shut her eyes and shook her head. “Mac, that’s crazy. Just flat out crazy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know anything about running a restaurant.”

“Sure you do. You raised three children, two of them boys. Tell me our house wasn’t like a restaurant back when you had kids who needed feeding between football practice and car wash fund-raisers and band concerts and soccer practice and—”

“Okay, okay. Enough.” She rested her head against his chest and closed her eyes. “I need to think about this.”

“Isn’t it lucky, then, that I have access to the perfect place to think? There’s this spot near Heartache Falls where you can spread out a blanket.”

“I said think, Timberlake, not have sex.”

“That isn’t what I was thinking,” he protested. When she gave him a look filled with disbelief, he added, “There’s a nice big bed inside a comfy warm yurt for that. It’s too cold for that this time of year. I’d shrivel up and be of absolutely no use to you.”

“Hmm.” Ali pulled out of his arms. “Is the cold really that much of a detriment to your, um, capabilities? I seem to recall one Groundhog Day in college …”

His mouth twitched with a grin. “Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, I’m not twenty years old any longer.”

“In that case …” Her hand drifted down and cupped him. “We’d better not take any chances.”

Recalling that she’d locked the front door, Mac eyed a rectangular tabletop. “I have an apron that would fit you.”

“An apron?”

“Yeah. An apron. And nothing else.”

SIXTEEN

October

Chase Timberlake slipped his key into his parents’ front door, then glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about the cooler, Granddad. I’ll come back and get it.”

“Oh, just hush. The day I’m too old and decrepit to carry a cooler full of beer to a football game is the day I turn in my man badge.”

“You brought me beer?” Chase asked as they went inside.

“Root beer. I have a nice German pilsner for myself.”

“Gee, thanks, Granddad. I’ll be sure to remember that next time you don’t get the game because you have the wrong satellite provider.”

“I didn’t realize you were the gatekeeper to your mother’s house.” Charles Cavanaugh set the cooler on the theater room floor, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a ring of keys. Choosing one that matched the key Chase held, he observed, “I guess your mother gave me this just to placate me?”

Chase grinned. “It’s not the key I control, Granddad.
It’s the surround-sound remote. I programmed it myself. I don’t think Dad has figured out how to use it yet.”

“Smart aleck,” Charles said. “However, since you’re so smart, get to work. I don’t want to miss the kickoff. I have the feeling that the Buffaloes are gonna kick those Longhorns’ butts all the way from Austin to the Gulf of Mexico.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” Chase said. “The ’Horns are the luckiest team in college football.”

“Their luck ends today. I can feel it.”

As Chase and his grandfather settled in to watch the game, Chase couldn’t help thinking about Lori, since she was at Texas A&M and the Aggies and the Longhorns were big rivals. Chase and Lori stayed in touch on Facebook and from all appearances, her undergrad years were going well. He was glad. Lori was a special girl, real special. He was a long way from wanting to settle down, but if he’d been older—if she’d been older—she was the kind of woman who would make a man a good wife. She sorta reminded him of his mom.

Lori did have her goals, though. She wanted to be a vet more than anything. He hoped she didn’t let some Texas farm boy change that for her.
Like Dad changed Mom’s dream of going to cooking school in Europe
.

His parents had never admitted it, but Chase and his sibs had long ago realized that Mom had been knocked up with Stephen when they got married. He’d sometimes wondered if his parents would have ended up together had the pregnancy not occurred.
They seemed so different. When he was growing up, his mom had been laid back and easygoing. Dad was the definition of driven. That’s what made this mountain man fantasy of his beyond weird. When the game went to a commercial break, he asked, “What do you think is going to happen with my dad, Granddad?”

“Are you referring to his Grizzly Adams impersonation?”

“Who?”

Charles shook his head. “It was a television show long before your time.”

“Whatever. Do you think he’ll resign from the bench? Mom says no, that this is a temporary brain cramp and that he’ll be back to work just as soon as he’s had time to forget about Desai and Sandberg.”

Charles thought about it for a moment. “I tend to agree with your mother. She knows him better than anyone. That said, I’ve always thought there was something beyond ambition to your father’s desire for the bench. That may be the missing puzzle piece here.”

“Hmm.” Chase didn’t say any more because the game resumed and Colorado put together a great scoring drive on the nationally ranked Longhorns. Following the touchdown and after exchanging high fives with his granddad, he settled back into his seat fairly happy with his world. During halftime, however, when his mother wasn’t around to serve homemade sandwiches and snacks like usual during family game-watching gatherings, his thoughts returned to his parents. “I do understand why they’d want to live in the mountains. I can’t imagine living anywhere
else. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to work in a field that would allow me to live in the mountains. It’s weird, Granddad. I always felt like I was letting Dad down because I didn’t want to be a lawyer like Stephen does. Now it’s like Dad has come over to the dark side.”

“Your father always understood that your dreams and desires went in a different direction than his. Who knows? Maybe you, rather than your brother, are the son who most takes after his father. It’ll be interesting to watch and see what Mac decides.”

“Or what Mom decides for him,” Chase said with a rueful snort. “She’s gone just as crazy as Dad. She might throw down an ultimatum. It’s like they’ve got some weird role reversal thing going on.”

“Alison reminds me more and more of her mother every day.”

The resumption of football interrupted further observation about Chase’s parents. To Chase’s amazement, the Buffs did make a game of it, and they entered the fourth quarter down by a field goal. With less than a minute left in the game, the score tied, and the Buffs driving, Chase and his granddad were so intent on the game that they almost didn’t hear the doorbell. When Chase did hear it, he ignored it.

“Go answer that,” his grandfather said.

“Not now! Whoever it is can wait.”

Just then, the Longhorns called a time-out, so Chase made a rush for the door. In a hurry, he didn’t bother to check the peephole before yanking the door open. He didn’t recognize the woman standing on his parents’ front porch. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Mackenzie Timberlake.”

Hearing the crowd noise swell, Chase glanced back over his shoulder. “Come on in. Follow me.”

He dashed back to the theater room, all but dismissing the visitor from his thoughts as he arrived just in time to see Colorado let fly a pass toward the end zone as time on the clock ran out. An orange jersey and a white jersey went up, and two pairs of hands reached for the ball. Someone caught it, but at first Chase couldn’t tell who.

Then he saw the referee’s hands signal a touchdown, and he shouted, “Woo-hoo!”

Charles Cavanaugh pushed to his feet and yelled, “Touchdown!”

“Game over! We did it, Granddad! We won!” Chase and his grandfather exchanged more high fives and hoots and cheers. Eventually both men noticed the woman who had joined them.

“May we help you?” Charles said.

“Oops.” Chase winced. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“That’s okay,” the woman said, a touch of the South in her voice. “I obviously came at an inopportune moment.” Glancing at the television, she added, “I’m always glad to see the Longhorns get beat. I’m an Oklahoma fan myself.”

“I’m really sorry I abandoned you, ma’am,” Chase said. “You’re looking for my father?”

“Mackenzie Timberlake is your father?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled and met Charles’s gaze. “And he called you Granddad. Isn’t that handy!”

“Pardon me?” Charles asked, his tone suddenly suspicious.

The woman made a sweeping gesture toward Charles and Chase. “You’re family.”

Next she put her palm against her chest. “I’m family. I’m Mackenzie’s aunt Sally. I need to speak with him about his mother.”

Ali sat in a rocking chair in Nic Callahan’s house, cuddling one of the sleeping twins against her breast. She, Sage, Sarah, and Celeste had volunteered to babysit for Nic and Gabe and their guests from Texas, Gabe’s brother Luke and his wife and three children, so that the two couples could enjoy a meal at the Bristlecone. At this moment in time, after a relatively wild couple of hours, all five children were asleep, thank God.