Backlands by Michael McGarrity Page A

and blood. It made him plenty irate.
    When Emma finished talking, Patrick took a long minute to stifle his aggravation for fear she’d fall silent at any hint of displeasure and send him away before he learned more. Instead he asked, “How much will there be to care for him?”
    â€œEnough to see him to his eighteenth birthday,” Emma replied.
    â€œI didn’t ask how long it would last. I asked how much.”
    â€œWhy do you need to know that?”
    â€œThe boy will be living with me. It’s helpful to know.”
    Emma took a moment to consider her answer. “It’s money for Matthew only.”
    â€œI understand that. I ain’t gonna steal from him, Emma. How much?”
    â€œYou’ve always put your own needs first, which is why I’ve made these arrangements. He’ll have fifteen hundred dollars a year.”
    â€œThat’s more than most ranchers earn,” Patrick said, taken aback. “The boy won’t need near that amount to get by on.”
    â€œThen with luck there will be money left to give him a good start on his own. Will you stop calling him
the boy
?”
    â€œI meant Matt,” Patrick amended. “So if Matt needs something, I go hat in hand to the banker fella and your lawyer and ask for it, correct?”
    â€œIt will only seem humiliating if you take it that way,” Emma said sharply.
    â€œBut that’s the way it is.”
    â€œI don’t care one smidgen about your wounded pride. Matthew’s trust will be managed in confidence by two men I have full faith in. I warn you not to raise a stink about it.”
    Patrick shrugged, galled by her attitude. “It’s your hand to play.”
    â€œYes, it is,” Emma replied firmly.
    Patrick pointed at the trust papers in Emma’s hands and shook his head. “How did we get to such a sorry state with all of this rigmarole between us?”
    Emma frowned at him, glared at him. “You know what I lived through as a girl. You saw it with your own eyes. Before we married, I made you promise never to raise a hand against me or take me against my will. Never, never, never, and still you did.”
    Patrick looked away. “Does Matt know?”
    Emma’s eyes widened in surprise at the question. “Heavens no, and he never will.”
    â€œWell, that’s something, I reckon. Maybe he’ll warm up to me in time.”
    â€œPromise me you’ll do your best by Matthew.”
    â€œI swear to it,” Patrick replied. “But I’d rather have you stay around to raise him up. That would be best.”
    Emma glanced warily at him. “I think you actually mean that.”
    â€œI do, in more ways than you know.”
    It earned him a genuinely agreeable smile, one he hadn’t seen on Emma’s face in years. It was too dangerous to say more; he might start begging for forgiveness. He reached for his hat. “I’ll be going.”
    He said good-bye at the front door, heard it close slowly behind him, and walked down the street without looking back. He’d never felt so alone, not since he was a miserable young child in the gold-mining camps of northern New Mexico, virtually abandoned by his lunatic aunt and her drunken lover. He’d survived by trusting no one, caring for no one, believing in no one.
    Only with Emma had he come close to breaking free of the suspicious, doubting nature entrenched in him since those harsh early days—but never for very long and never completely.
    It pained him, angered him, to still love the woman who’d walked away from him, and it pained and angered him even more to relive time and again his shameful drunken idiocy that had caused it.
    He walked down Main Street toward his hotel wondering how long it would be before a rider came to the ranch to report Emma’s death. Or would he find out at the Engle post office the next time or two he collected the mail? Or maybe Matt would just