for starters. How was she supposed to live without showers, razors, tampons?
"No way." She curled her hands into fists and screamed at the top of her lungs. "CAROL!!!"
Chapter Three
Carol? Jack thought. Who the hell is Carol?
He stared at his wife in confusion, unable to think of a single damn thing to say.
She looked ... different. The hard, calculating look usually in her eyes had softened. She looked frail and frightened and alone.
He had an inexplicable desire to brash the hair from her face and tell her everything would be all right.
His mouth twisted into a grim parody of a smile. God, how she would laugh if she could read his mind right now.
She would never accept comfort from him, and the realization that even now, after years of silence and hurt, he still wanted to be in love with her was enough to make him sick.
His broad shoulders hunched in defeat. Jackson Rafferty, you 're a goddamn fool.
She hated him; she had since the moment he'd told her the truth about himself. In that split second the love in her eyes had metamorphosed, congealed into something cold and dark. Not once in all the years of their marriage had the hatred lessened. She despised him and his cowardice with an intensity that continued to amaze him. Wound him.
Amarylis had married Jack for one thing, and one alone. Security. She'd come from a family labeled poor white
23
24
trash by the whole county, and Jackson Rafferty had been her ladder out of poverty. When things had changed, when he had changed, she'd felt betrayed, and in the years since, her sense of betrayal had grown, turning finally into an icy knot of hatred. She had never?would never?forgive his weakness. It had taken her dreams of respectability and wealth and left her with nothing but a crazy shell of a man and a broken-down sheep ranch in the middle of nowhere. He knew all that, and more. So why did he see in her eyes right now an impossible softness? Amarylis was never frail and frightened; he knew that. It was all in his mind, as were so many things.
He ran a shaking hand through his hair. Too well he knew what she was capable of doing to him, and he wouldn't let it happen again. Her contempt and hatred wouldn't push him over the edge. He had the children to fight for, even if he didn't have himself.
"I'm not your wife, you know. What's her name, Amaretto?"
Jack's head snapped up. "Huh?" "She died. Go ahead and mourn her passing. There's been a mix-up. I never agreed to any time change. Eighteen seventy-three." She shuddered. "How am I supposed to function without a microwave and a computer? And what about my work?"
"You mean the household chores?" He frowned. "But you don't do anything."
She drew in a tiny, squeaking breath. "Nineteenth-century chores?" she said, gasping. "What do I do, make soap from tree bark and scrub floors? Oh my God. Carol! Get down here. Now!" She looked wildly around the room, as if she expected someone?or something?to answer her cry. The name, Carol, vibrated on the air, then died away, plunging the bedroom back into its thick, awkward silence.
25
The lamp beside the bed sputtered. Light wobbled, splashed across the red and white wedding-ring-pattern quilt and glittered on his wife's classically beautiful face. Her eyelids quavered for a moment and closed. The dark brown lashes looked like smudges against the paleness of her skin.
He thought he heard her mumble "shit" as she sank tiredly back into the pile of feather pillows, but that wasn't possible. Amarylis Rafferty?the perfect southern lady even on a backwater sheep ranch?never cursed.
Jack scoured his brain for something to say. But it had been years since he'd spoken civilly to his wife, and longer yet since she'd wanted to hear it.
He had just decided to try something incredibly banal and inoffensive, like Are you thirsty? when footsteps sounded outside the door. After a flurry of whispers, a knock thudded.
Jack tensed. All thoughts of comforting his wife vanished. He remembered in a rush just who she was and the pain she was more than capable of inflicting on all of them.
A headache pounded behind his eyes. He rubbed his throbbing temple. The kids were his life; all he had or ever hoped to have. He had to protect them from their mother's vituperative anger and explosive hatred, and there was only one way to do that. No matter how much it pained him, how much each aching silence cost him, he had to appear detached and uncaring. Because if Amarylis thought?even suspected?how much he loved his children, she'd find a way to make them all pay. The children most of all, for in hurting them, she hurt Jack. And hurting Jack was always her primary goal. She wanted him to remember, every day in every way, that he'd betrayed and ruined her, and that she would never forgive him.
He still remembered the last time he'd tried to shield the
26
girls from his wife's biting tongue. She had smacked him?a stinging, flat-palmed crack to the cheek?and told him that if he said another word, ever, she'd leave.