Dead Ringer

“Easy for you to say,” Wade said under his breath.

“You need to be more careful. If the doctor had overheard you...” His father shook his head as if Wade was more stupid than he’d even originally thought. “On top of that, the nurse said that Ledger McGraw stopped by to see your wife after you left,” Huck said.

Wade swore and kicked at a chair in the hallway. It skittered across the floor, before Huck caught it and brought it to a stop with a look that told him to cool it. Wade wanted to put his fist through the wall. “He just won’t stay away from my wife.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Huck asked, sounding as angry as Wade felt.

“I’m going to find the son of a bitch and kill him.” He smacked the wall hard with his open palm. The pain helped a little.

“This is your problem—you go off half-cocked and just screw things up,” his father said. “Listen to me. You want to get rid of him? I’ll help you, but we won’t be doing it when you’re out of control. We’ll plan it. As a matter of fact, I have a way we can be rid of Ledger McGraw and the rest of them, as well.”

Wade stared at his father. “What are you saying?” He narrowed his eyes. “This is about the long-standing grudge you hold against Travers McGraw.”

“What if it is? I don’t just whine and cry. I take care of business.”

He shook his head at his father. “I know you said you used to date Marianne before she married Travers, but—”

“But nothing.” Huck wiped a hand over his face, anger making his eyes look hard as obsidian. “She was mine and then he had to go and marry her, and look how that turned out.”

“You might be crazier than she is,” Wade muttered under his breath, only to have his father cuff him in the back of the head as they headed back to Abby’s room.

* * *

ABBY LISTENED TO the rain on the roof for a moment before she realized that she was alone. She rolled over to find the bed empty. More and more Wade was having trouble sleeping at night.

He’d said little after bringing her home from the hospital. Once at the house, he’d insisted she go to bed. He’d brought her a bowl of heated canned soup. She’d smelled beer on his breath, but had said nothing.

“I’ll let you get some rest,” he’d said after taking her soup tray away.

Sometime during the night she’d felt him crawl into bed next to her. She’d smelled his beery breath and rolled over only to wake later to find his side of the bed empty.

Now she found him sitting outside on the covered porch. He teetered on the edge of the chair, elbows on his knees, head down as if struggling with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Abby approached him slowly, half-afraid that she might startle him. His volatile mood swings had her walking on eggshells around him. The floorboards creaked under her feet.

Wade rose and swung around, making her flinch. “What are you doing?” he demanded gruffly.

“I woke up and you weren’t in bed. Is everything all right?”

“I just needed a little fresh air. You don’t have to be sneaking up on me.”

Abby desperately wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, to plead with him to tell her what was making him so miserably unhappy. She blamed herself. They’d been good together once. Hadn’t they?

But clearly he was in no mood for the third degree. Also she’d learned to keep her distance when he was drinking. But she knew he was hurting. Because of her fall? Or because of something else?

It was raining harder now. She hugged herself, the damp seeping through her thin nightgown. There’d been a time when he would have noticed just how thin the fabric was, how it clung to her rounded breasts and hips. Back then he would have pulled her to him, his breath warm against her neck. That husky sound in his voice as he told her how much he wanted her, needed her. How he couldn’t live without her.

Wade didn’t give her another look as he sat down again, turning his back to her. “You should go to bed.”

She felt tears burn her eyes. Wade kept pushing her away, then losing his temper because he thought some other man might want her.

“I saw Ledger McGraw looking at you when you came out of the grocery store,” Wade would say. “I’m going to kill that son of a—”

“You can’t kill every man who looks at me,” she would say.

“You like it when he looks at you.”

She would say nothing, hoping to avoid a fight, but Wade would never let it go.

“He wants you. He isn’t going to give up until he tears us apart. Not that he would ever marry you. He had that chance already, remember? Remember how he lied to you, cheated on you—”

There was nothing she could say to calm him down. She knew because she’d tried. “Wade, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Right, I’m ridiculous. I’m no McGraw, am I?”

“I married you.”

“Only because you couldn’t have Ledger.”

She would try to hug him and he would shove her away, balling his hands into fists. “You never got over him. That’s what’s wrong with our marriage. You’re still yearning for him. I can see it in your eyes.”

He would shove her or grab her, wrenching her arm. It would always end with him hurting her and then being sorry. He would berate himself, loathing that he was now like his father. He would promise never to do it again, beg her forgiveness. Plead with her not to leave him.

And each time, she would forgive him, blaming herself for setting him off. Then they would make love and it would be good between them for a while.

At least, that was the way it used to be. Lately, it took nothing to set Wade off. And there was no pleading for forgiveness or any making up afterward.

“It isn’t like anyone else wanted to marry you,” her mother told her when she’d seen Abby wince from one of Wade’s beatings. Her mother loved to rub salt in the wounds. “It’s plain to see that you aren’t making him happy. You’d better do whatever it takes or he’s going to dump you for a woman who will. Then where are you going to be? Divorced. Left like a bus at the Greyhound bus station. No man will want you then.”

Abby had bit her lip and said nothing. She’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it. That was her mother’s mantra.

“And stay clear of that McGraw,” her mother had warned. “Men always want you when you’re with someone else. But the minute they get you, they lose interest. So don’t be thinkin’ the grass is greener with him. You already know you can’t trust him. Look how he broke your heart. Just be glad Wade was willing to marry you since you weren’t exactly white-wedding-dress material, now, were you?”

Now she stared at the back of her husband’s head for a moment, then padded barefoot back to bed. If only she could remember how she’d gotten hurt. She had a feeling that would have answered all of her questions about what was happening with her husband.

* * *

“ABBY’S STARTING TO REMEMBER,” Wade told his father the next day. He’d been relieved that he had to work. The last thing he wanted to do was sit around with her. He felt as if he was going to come unraveled at the seams as it was. She knew she hadn’t fallen off a ladder. He saw it in her eyes and said as much to Huck.

“So what? It isn’t like she’s going to tell anyone,” his father said. “If she was going to do that, she would have done it a long time ago.”

“She’s going to leave me.”

Huck swore. “She would have done that a long time ago, too. She’s fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Everyone knows.” As he’d wheeled Abby out to his patrol car parked at the emergency entrance, he’d seen the way the nurses were looking at him. Everyone knew now that he was his father’s son—a bastard who mistreated his wife. He was thankful he and Abby hadn’t had a kid. What if he took his anger inside him out on his own son?

“Snap out of it!” his father barked as they stood talking by their patrol cars. “You’re in the clear.”