Letting Go (Triple Eight Ranch) - By Mary Beth Lee Page 0,34
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“The first con I remember making with Tammy Jo was around the time I was seven. She and I convinced a church I was dying of cancer, and they held a benefit for us. Over time and towns, the benefits grew. Too big eventually. That might’ve been the article Joan brought in.”
“You were seven, Clarissa. Come on. This isn’t necessary.”
“Just listen. There’s more. That time, Tammy Jo had to go to jail, but they only kept her 180 days. When she got out, she made sure our cons weren’t quite so grand. We lived off the graces of good people all over the state of Texas, using my hypoglycemia to make people believe I was close to dying. They gave us food, rooms, cars. Sometimes, the people weren’t so good. We dealt with it and moved on. Tammy Jo said it was the price of doing business.”
She stopped and looked across the field beside the road. Wild flowers dotted the ground around them. A dog barked. In the distance, she could see horses running. A light breeze lifted her hair off her neck and she blew out a breath. She didn’t want to go on.
And like the knight he was, Jed tried to protect her.
“You don’t need to do this, Clarissa. You were a kid. Your mother…”
“This isn’t all about Tammy Jo. And I wasn’t always a kid. Eventually, I became a liability of sorts to my mother. She dropped me off at my grandmother’s when one of her cons decided he liked me a little too much. Instead of using the time with my grandmother to start over, I joined a group of girls who didn’t bother conning people. We stole right out in the open. They dubbed us the Barbie Bandits. We were young, pretty and we’d walk in to stores and take what we wanted without a worry in the world. That might also be the news clipping you ripped up.
“I got lucky after that one, though. Probation and juvenile court. My mother said I’d conned the entire juvenile court system into going easy on me. She was probably right. Once my probation ended, I ran. I started off using people, telling them horrible stories about my past, convincing them to help a poor girl out. Churches were the best places to score. It was like living with Tammy Jo all over again, only I was on my own.
“And then, about ten years ago, one of the kind strangers I’d conned nearly killed me. When I woke up in a hospital bed, I decided to try to start over. I tried to reach my grandmother to apologize, but I was too late, and Tammy Jo was the only one at the house.
“Since then, I’ve been straight. I work and I move on. Eventually I figure maybe I’ll find a place to stop, a place where maybe I can come to terms with who I’ve been and what I’ve done. But it can’t be here. This, you and everyone, you’re too close to who I was. I can’t find peace when the life I’m living mirrors the life I pretended to live for so long.”
To his credit, Jed didn’t kick her out of the truck. That’s the first thing Clarissa thought when she finally looked at him.
When he didn’t say anything for another minute, she started to worry.
“Jed, say something.”
At first, he continued looking into her eyes like he was trying to see into her soul, and then he did the strangest thing. He reached out and pushed a curl of her hair away from her cheek and said “You are so pretty. Mack’s right. You look like an angel.”
What was wrong with him? “Did you hear a word I said? I am a horrible person. I’ve done things…I can’t even...”
“You are an amazing, courageous woman who made some bad life choices and then started over.”
“Bad life choices? Jed, I stole from people. Blatantly. I was on CNN. I used my hard times to take from people. Old people, young people, sick people. I didn’t care.”
“And you’ve been beating yourself up for it the past decade while you tried to do things differently.”
Something turned in her chest, sank into her stomach, blossomed through her body. Hope.
“I…You…Jed, I’m not….”
“You are not the same person,” he said and then he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers in a soft kiss that made everything in her melt.
She knew she should fight him, should tell him to take her to