"People care, Lizzy. People here care about you." He studied her face, pleased that the bruising on her cheek had turned the yellow of healing.
"Don't listen to me. I'm just being a brat," she finally replied. "You've been so kind to me, and here I am complaining."
He smiled. "You're just getting a little housebound crazy. You want to play a couple of games of gin rummy?"
"I'm really pretty sick of beating your butt every day at card games," she said with a wicked little smile.
"I think you cheat. It's the only thing to explain the losing streak I've been on for the past couple of days." His eyes twinkled teasingly.
"I think even if we played Old Maid, you'd wind up being her," she replied with a smile. The smile faded and she looked at him with curiosity. "Tell me about your marriage."
The question came out of left field and instantly tightened the muscles in his stomach. "What do you want to know about it?"
"Tell me about Janice. You never talk about her. You rarely even mention her name."
"She was beautiful and vibrant and very social. She loved eating out at the café and going down to The Corral and dancing the night away." He chose his words carefully, unwilling to malign the dead as the old familiar guilt welled up inside him.
"Your marriage must have been wonderful," Lizzy said softly.
He stared at her. Wonderful? Not hardly. "Our marriage was difficult," he finally answered as surprise flickered across Lizzy's features. "Janice was five years younger than me, and I think at the time we got married Janice wanted to be a bride but she didn't really have any interest in being a wife. She spent so much time with Cherry and Maddy there were times I felt like I married all three women. She hated the ranch, she hated her life here, and I think at the very end she hated me." He frowned, realizing he'd said far too much more than he'd initially intended.
Lizzy stared at him for a long moment, as if digesting what he'd just spilled out. "What happened on the night she died?"
Daniel got up from the chair and moved to stand at the window, where he stared out unseeing as miserable memories of that final night with Janice filled his head.
"I'd promised her when we got married that every Friday night we'd go to the café for pie and coffee and every Saturday night we'd go to The Corral and have a few drinks and dance. At the time it seemed an easy promise to keep, but on that particular Saturday in the late afternoon I had a horse go down with colic. I called Fred Jenkins out to check on the animal, and he thought maybe the cause was some new grain that I'd given her that had clumped in her stomach. I was frantic. When a horse goes down, it's always a bad situation. She was a good mare and in such obvious distress. Fred and I agreed that the best thing I could do was walk the horse. Thirty minutes walking and thirty minutes resting for however long it took to get her feeling better."
He turned from the window to once again face Lizzy, who was obviously listening with rapt attention. "I walked that mare for the next three and a half hours, until her discomfort was gone and I felt like we were over the crisis. By the time I came back into the house, it was almost seven-thirty and I was beyond exhaustion. I walked in to find Janice dressed to the nines and wearing her red high-heel dancing shoes, and I knew we were going to have a problem."
He could still remember the sound of one of her feet tapping impatiently on the floor, her lips pressed together thinly in controlled anger.
Take back the night, he thought to himself. If he could just take back that night. He doubted that he and Janice would have remained married for much longer, but at least she would have lived to find happiness someplace else.
"You didn't want to go to The Corral," Lizzy said, her voice whisper-soft.
He gave her a curt nod. "That was the very last thing I wanted to do. I was dirty and exhausted. I'd spent everything I had trying to bring that horse back from the edge. All I wanted was a hot shower and my bed. For the two years of our marriage, we'd never missed the Friday and Saturday night outings, but that night I wasn't going anywhere."
"And she got mad."
Daniel emitted a bark of bitterness. "We both got mad. She told me I was breaking a promise, and I told her she was a spoiled brat." Guilt surged up inside him once again. "We both said ugly things to each other." He raked a hand through his hair and shook his head. "I should have just sucked it up and gone to The Corral with her. If I'd done that, everything would have been fine. Instead she called Cherry to come get her, and you know how things ended."
Lizzy studied his face for a long moment. "And so it's all your fault."
He felt his jaw muscles tighten. "I should have just done what she wanted," he replied.
"And she should have been grown-up enough to recognize that you'd had a difficult day, that sometimes promises can't be met because real life gets in the way. Daniel, Janice's and Cherry's deaths weren't your fault."
He hadn't realized how badly he'd needed to hear those words from somebody, from anybody, until he heard them from her. "But, if I'd just gone with her then she never would have called Cherry, and both women would still be alive," he said, unable to let go of the weight of guilt in his chest.
"From what I heard about the accident it was snowy that night, and the ruling on the accident was not just inclement weather but also excessive speed. Were you in that car with your foot pressed down on the gas pedal? I don't think so. You weren't responsible for what happened that night, Daniel. How long do you intend to beat yourself up about something that wasn't your fault?"
He stared at her in stunned surprise, and something snapped and broke off inside him, something that alleviated the heavy weight of guilt that had been with him for so long. He sank back down in the chair next to her, and she immediately took one of his hands in hers.
"So, your Friday night pie ritual at the café wasn't about you loving your wife so much you couldn't let her go, it was an act of penance because you've felt so responsible for her death."
"For a while I felt as if everyone in town blamed me. I don't know exactly what Janice told Cherry about our fight, and I don't know how many people Cherry called before she got here to pick Janice up that night, but basically the information going around town was that I'd kicked Janice out of the house after I'd beaten her half to death."
She squeezed his hand. "Oh, Daniel, you have to let this go. You have to be happy again."
His heart swelled in his chest. "That's what you've brought back into my life, Lizzy. You've made me happy again. You've made me think about life's possibilities." God, he wanted to tell her he loved her. The words burned on the tip of his tongue with the need to be released.
"And I hope you continue on that path when I leave here."
His words of love instantly froze on his lips. He'd been foolish in allowing his heart to get involved with her. She'd made it clear from the very beginning that she had no intention of remaining in Grady Gulch, in staying with him.
"I'll keep that in mind," he said as he once again got up from the chair. He needed some distance. He grabbed the soup bowl that was on the bedside table. "You need anything?" he asked.
"No, I'm fine for now." Those whiskey eyes of hers stared at him intently as if trying to peer into his very soul.
"I've got a little surprise planned for you later, if you feel up to it."
She smiled. "Whatever it is, I'm in if it has anything to do with me getting out of this bed."
"It does. I'll tell you a little more about it later." With the soup bowl in hand he turned and left the room, a dull ache where his heart should be.
He reached the kitchen, rinsed the soup bowl and placed it into the dishwasher and then moved to the window to stare outside.
He hadn't been out of the house since Lizzy had come there from the hospital. He'd paid a man who often worked for him to come in and take care of the daily chores. Daniel didn't want to take any chances where Lizzy's safety was concerned. He intended to remain in the house until whoever had beat her up was caught or she left town.
And she was leaving town.
She'd brought him back to life, opened his heart to loving again, and soon she was going to leave town before they could fully explore a real relationship.