Reason To Believe by Kathleen Eagle Read Free Book Online

had any use for a damn hay-burning Thoroughbred.
    "Auto repair business is good this time of year. I can't just take off for two weeks." But he felt pressed to add, "I guess I have been gettin' back into the, uh... some of the old ways a little more lately."
    "Really?"
    Oh, yeah, she liked that all over. "The sweats are good," he allowed, figuring at this point he had to milk whatever interest he could drag out of her. "I thought I'd forgotten how to talk Indian, but it comes back. You hang around the ol' man, it all comes back. Some things easier than others, but I figure I'll hang in there, you know, for something to do." He glanced away and added, unbidden, "Helps me stay away from the bottle."
    "That's good," Clara said, and she meant it, but her crisp tone invited no further discussion.
    And so the weighty silence took over again.
    It was a good thing he'd stopped drinking. But she didn't want to talk about it. The sweat lodge, yes; his first language, certainly. His bout with alcohol, not really. It made her feel stupid, knowing that in all the time they'd lived together, she'd never considered that he might actually be an alcoholic. It had never seemed that bad. Maybe once or twice a year he'd go off on a half-hour errand that became an all-nighter, or he wouldn't come home from work until Sunday morning. But usually she'd been able to find him and coax him home. In fact, she'd thought she was doing a pretty good job of keeping him away from the bottle. He'd only slipped when she wasn't looking.
    His DUI had come as a total surprise to her, mainly because she didn't find out about it until six months after the fact, when their insurance rates had skyrocketed. She couldn't believe he hadn't told her. More than once she had confidently made the claim that she and her husband never kept secrets from each other.
    God, she'd been blind.
    And she'd failed. She didn't want to think about it any more than she wanted to discuss it. Failures of that magnitude could not be erased.
    "I'd better get that bed made up. You must be tired, and tomorrow promises to be—"
    "It's early yet," he said, touching her knee to forestall her flight. "Annie doesn't have to miss school for this probation appointment, does she? She's already missed—"
    "There's no school tomorrow. Teachers' Convention. I can only take part of the day off." She settled back down, albeit tentatively. "I have to put the finishing touches on an exhibit," she explained as he withdrew his hand. Its warmth lingered, like a melancholy memory.
    She smiled wistfully. "Remember when Anna used to love to go to the museum with me, especially at night when I was preparing an exhibit? She thought it was wonderful that we had a special key. She'd tell her teachers that she could be in the museum when it was closed to 'regular' people."
    "She liked being around all that old stuff as much as you did."
    "She doesn't anymore." Her smile faded. "And I can't believe she got a deficiency report in history. She knows this stuff. She won't do her assignments, that's all."
    "I'll talk to her about it."
    "Oh, like that's going to turn her around."
    "What do you want me to do?"
    Good question. What did she want from him now? Not his touch, surely. Answers—sensible ones, at least— were harder to come by whenever he touched her.
    "Talk to her, I guess. Maybe she'll listen to you. She thinks it's all my fault." She shot him an accusatory glance. "Everything is my fault."
    "You want me to tell her it's my fault? I've told her that."
    "You haven't told her..."
    About the other thing Clara refused to discuss. He waited expectantly for her to name it, but be damned if she would. It was his juice, and he could go right on stewing in it.
    "She doesn't need to know any of the gory details, Ben. She's a child. My feeling is that we have to spare her as much of that as... as we possibly can."
    She paused, daring him with a cold look to come up with any more feeble objections. But of course, he