“Jake…oh, Jake, I should have been with you for that,” Randy said, closing her eyes.
“He did say…more than once, ma’am…I need Randy. But he got through it, and if it’s any comfort…I think it gave him some peace, bein’ able to put a headstone on his ma’s burial place.”
“Oh, my God, that must have been awful for him,” Lloyd groaned, finally sitting down beside Katie. Katie rubbed a hand across his back, and Lloyd put his head in his hands.
“I just sat and waited for him to do what he had to do,” Cole told them. “He sat there by his ma’s grave most of the day, not sayin’ nothin’.”
“Jesus, Cole, I’m sorry for attacking you,” Lloyd told him. “You’ve been a damn good friend to me and Jake both. I just didn’t want to believe…” He couldn’t finish.
“I half expected it,” Cole told him. “And you don’t know how bad I wish it had been me them men made off with and not your father.” He looked at Randy. “Randy, Jake’s last words was to tell you…uh…tell you he loves you,” Cole told her.
Randy looked around the table, then let go of Peter’s hand and rose. “All of you listen to me.”
They looked at her in surprise. Lloyd got up again and moved to stand behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Mom—”
“It’s okay, Lloyd.” She thought a moment before speaking. “Lloyd called Jake a stubborn sonofabitch, and he damn well is. He’s the toughest man I’ve ever known. And any boy who can survive what he survived can handle a lot more as a man. We already know what a fighter he is.” She looked at Evie. “Jake is not dead, Evie. Your prayers are too strong for God to have let him die. And he said he’d come back to me.”
“Mother, you have to face the truth.”
Randy looked at Cole. “You said they dragged him off, but they didn’t kill him.”
“Ma’am, he had a broken leg, and then they dragged him. Ain’t no man gonna survive that. And even if he did, them men ain’t gonna let him live. There’s no sense thinkin’ otherwise.”
Randy turned to Peter. “I should think we have a right to demand to see a body,” she told him. “Don’t we? Can’t we send someone to Mexican authorities and explain what happened and demand to know just what happened to my husband after they took him away? It was Mexican citizens who took him, not the law.”
If not for the gravity of the situation, Peter would have smiled. Randy was not going to give up on Jake Harkner. “I can see what we can do.”
“You do that, Peter.” She looked at the rest of them. “Until we have a body—some kind of real proof—I refuse to believe my husband is dead. Jake Harkner knows suffering, and he’ll bear it if he sees any hope of making it back here to his family, to little Tricia and Sadie Mae, to Ben and to the grandsons he so treasures…and to me! He’ll come back for me! He always does. He promised me he’d be back, and I choose to believe that he will. And you, Evie, need to pray that whatever your father is suffering now, God will bring him help and solace and take away his pain.”
They looked at one another, trying to decide if Randy could be right or if she’d finally lost her mind. After all, how could Randy go on without the man who was her lover, her soul mate, her heartbeat?
“Ma’am, you shouldn’t get your hopes up,” Cole told her. “You don’t know them men down there. They’re bound to execute him. And they have a lot of power, even over the law.”
Randy looked at Cole. “But when they took him away, he was still alive. Those men don’t know my Jake. He is a mean sonofabitch,” she repeated. “Lloyd always says so. Those men are going to make him very, very angry, and we all know what Jake is like when he’s angry. Even I don’t want to be around him when he’s like that. And pain doesn’t frighten him. I, for one, will never believe he’s dead until I have proof.”
“Mother, don’t do this to yourself,” Evie begged.
“Evie Harkner Stewart, what happened to your faith? You’ve prayed your father through prison and that leg wound back in Guthrie, and me through surgery, and it’s your faith that helped you survive. You prayed your brother back to life last year, and you prayed for me when”—her voice wavered—“last winter. And your father and I found each other again, and our love has never been stronger. Now you need to believe your father is alive and pray that whatever he is suffering, God will help him through it and bring him back to us. And right now, I need to be strong. Jake would want that.”