“I can run a shop,” Carrie snapped, because Josh made her sound as though she stood over a laundry tub all day and hadn’t a thought except how clean her floors were.
“A shop?” Nora said, one eyebrow raised.
“She buys dresses,” Josh supplied, again making Carrie sound insignificant.
Carrie started to get up, but Josh held her down.
“Nora, just give me the paper to sign and get out of here. There’s nothing here for you.”
At that Nora began to cry rather prettily into a lace handkerchief. “Josh, how could you be so unkind to me? I only came as an excuse to see my children once more. I miss them so much. I miss the sound of their footsteps in the night. I even miss the way Dallas used to wake up with bad dreams. I miss their voices. I miss—” She was crying too hard to go on.
In spite of herself, Carrie stretched her hand across the table to take Nora’s. Carrie had known the children only a short time, but she thought she’d die if she had to leave them. What must this woman be feeling to have her children taken from her? And why had Josh done something so cruel to a woman he’d once loved?
Josh caught Carrie’s hand before she could touch Nora.
“Your timing is off,” Josh said. “You’re getting lazy.”
To Carrie’s consternation, Nora’s face changed from misery to a smile in an instant. “But, darling, I don’t have you to rehearse with. How can I be good without the Great Templeton beside me?”
Carrie turned to look up at Josh, but he was looking at Nora.
“I want the paper,” Josh said.
Nora leaned forward, her arms propped on the table. Her gown was very low cut, not what any decent woman would wear before sundown, and it was obvious that she had no need to supplement her bosom with cotton. “I lost it, darling,” she purred. “I lost it down the front of my gown.”
Looking up at Josh, Carrie saw that he was looking down the front of his wife’s dress as though he meant to search for the paper. Carrie got up, left the house, and went to the shed that Josh euphemistically called a barn. She was throwing a saddle on Josh’s old workhorse when he entered.
“Carrie,” he began.
“Don’t you say a word to me. Not one single word. There is nothing you can say, darling—” She sneered the last word. “There isn’t anything you can say to me. You have lied to me for the last time.”
“Tem,” he said softly. “Dallas.”
Putting her head against the saddle for a moment, tears came to her eyes. “How dare you use the children to get what you want from me.” She tried to pull the cinch on the horse, but her vision was too blurry to see.
Josh came to stand beside her, brushed her hands away, tightened the cinch, then stood to one side. “You’re free to leave. I won’t try to stop you. If it doesn’t matter to you that I love you and that my children love you and that we’ve already made another child who will grow up without a father, then leave. I will make no effort to stop you.”
Carrie started to mount the horse. She put her foot in the stirrup, but then, turning, she flew at Josh, hitting him on the chest with her fists. “I hate you, hate you, hate you! Do you understand me? I hate you as much as I love you.”
When her first fury was past, Josh pulled her into his arms and held her while she cried.
“She’s so beautiful,” Carrie said. “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Rather like a coral snake. Beautiful and deadly.”
“You don’t really think that or you wouldn’t have married her.”
“I wa
s nineteen years old when I married her, how was I supposed to have any sense?”
“I’m only twenty,” Carrie sobbed. “Does that make me stupid?”
“Of course not. You have the good sense to be in love with me.”
Carrie hiccuped a laugh between her tears.
“That’s better. Now, I want you to come over here and sit down. I think it’s time we had a talk.”