Dakota Dreamin' (Americana 41 - South Dakota )

CHAPTER ONE

FINGERS OF SHOCK continued to send tingles down her spine as Edie Gibbs stared at the check in her hands. Her mind refused to assimilate the number of digits in the dollar figure. She lifted a hand to touch her fingertips to her temple and let them glide into her soft brown hair.
"I…I don't think I quite understand, Mr. Wentworth." At last she found her voice, husky though it was, to address the lawyer sitting in the wing-backed chair her late husband had always occupied. "When you phoned and asked to discuss my…my financial condition, I thought—" A bewildered laugh escaped her throat. "It took all of our savings to pay the funeral costs. Here I've been worrying how I was going to earn enough money to keep the house. I thought you were going to inform me about a monumental pile of debts. But this?" Her confused hazel eyes sought the attorney's face as she lifted the check in a questioning fashion. "Is it real?"
"I assure you it is very real." The gentleness in his expression said he was pleased his news was good.
"But I didn't know Joe had any insurance." Edie stared at the slip of paper that represented so much money. "We talked about it a long time ago, but we couldn't squeeze the premium payments into our budget." Which raised another question. Again her gaze lifted to the attorney in curious demand. "Where did Joe get the money to pay them?"
"I was just coming to that." He opened the briefcase sitting on his lap and took out a sheaf of papers.
"May I look at that, mom?" Her daughter reached over to take the check from her numbed fingers. The action drew an abstracted glance from Edie that touched the pony-tailed girl seated on the couch before her attention was claimed by the documents the attorney was handing her. She glanced through them, but the legal jargon was beyond her comprehension.
"What does all this mean?" Again her hazel eyes darkened with confusion.
"I believe your late husband did a lot of tinkering in his workshop," he began.
"That's an understatement," Edie declared in a silent and rueful laugh. "Joe spent nearly every spare minute he had in his workshop. He'd come home from the garage, shower, eat and disappear into the shed until it was bedtime." There was nothing malicious or resentful in her statement. It had been too much a part of the accepted routine. "He loved working there. That was his escape."
"It was a profitable escape. In with those documents there are registrations of patents, some of which your late husband was able to sell to auto manufacturers in Detroit," John Wentworth explained.
"Patents?" Edie was beginning to think she would never escape this whirl of confusion. None of this was making any sense. "Joe didn't even have a high-school diploma." Something he had been very self-conscious about. Without it he hadn't been able to obtain any job other than that of a garage mechanic, a trade at which he had excelled, but hadn't found much pride in. "He tried. He took night courses at school whenever he could, but…" Edie let the sentence trail off unfinished to gaze at the documents she held.
"Whatever your late husband lacked in formal education, he more than made up for in natural inventiveness," the attorney assured her. "The royalties off these patents will provide you with a very comfortable income for a good many years, Mrs. Gibbs. Plus I have a national firm negotiating to purchase the rights on two more of his patents."
This was more than she could take in. The silence from her daughter and stepson indicated they, too, were finding these announcements difficult to comprehend.
"I don't understand." She shook her head in bewilderment, the softly curling length of her brown hair barely brushing her shoulders. "Why…why didn't Joe tell me…tell us about these patents?"
"I really can't answer that," John Wentworth sighed. "I know he seemed very self-conscious about his inventions, as if they were a fluke. He was determined that no one should know about them."
"And the money from these patents went to pay the premiums on the insurance policy?" Edie made the statement into a question, seeking a reconfirmation of his earlier explanation.
"The vast majority of it, yes," the attorney nodded. "He seemed determined that you would be taken care of in the event anything happened to him. It was almost as if he had a premonition." He removed another set of papers from his briefcase and handed them to Edie. "These are a summary and a projection of your annual income under the present agreements."
He leaned forward to go over them with her. Edie listened and followed his moving finger down the list, but it was all a haze, something not quite real. She had been so braced for bad news that being presented with a pot of gold was something that seemed too good to be true.
Beneath her suntanned complexion was a white pallor of shock. Features that were usually so animated with her irrepressible zest to meet life and its problems head-on were blank of expression. Her youthfully slim but mature figure was clad in the somber colors of mourning, but she seemed too young to be a widow, the attorney thought—or to have a grown daughter for that matter. Either way, this very attractive woman was not at all the way he had pictured Joseph Gibbs's wife. But it had been said that opposites attract. He noticed the stunned light in her large eyes.
"Let me make a suggestion, Mrs. Gibbs," he said. "I'll leave these papers for you to look over. You can call me in a couple of days. I'm certain you are going to have some questions, and it would be wise if we discussed the possibility of some financial investments for your future."
"Yes. I would like a few days to think about it," Edie agreed a little numbly and belatedly started to rise.
"I'll walk Mr. Wentworth to the door, Edie," the young man seated on the couch volunteered.
"Thanks, Jerry, and I will call you, Mr. Wentworth," she added.
Her confusion began to sort itself as the front door was opened and closed, but Edie still felt stunned by the unexpected turn of events. At the sound of approaching footsteps, she lifted her gaze from the papers in her hand.
"Did you know about this, Jerry?" It was possible since her stepson had often helped Joe in his workshop on weekends. Her gaze curiously searched his face, his features steady and reliable like his father's. Except his blue eyes often held the twinkle of humor, his mouth smiled easily, and his sandy brown hair was shaggy in a carelessly attractive way.
"I remember once he was trying to modify one of the new emission-control devices, but, no—" he shook his head and paused by her chair to take the papers from her hand and leaf through them "—I didn't know anything about patents."
"You'd better take this check, mom." Alison shoved it into her hands. "I can't believe we have so much money. Last night I couldn't sleep, worrying that I might have to sell one of my horses. Now…we could buy a whole stable full and not put a dent in that check."
"I was afraid we were going to have to sell off the acreage," Edie admitted. "I know we've been able to board enough other horses to pay for the upkeep of our own, but the mortgage payment on this place, the utilities, groceries, all amounted to so much that—"
"You don't have to worry about that now, Edie." Her stepson said the very thought that was echoing through her mind.
"I know," she murmured. "But why didn't he tell us? Why didn't your father tell us?"
"Dad…was too easygoing," Jerry said without criticizing. "You always were the battler in this family, Edie. You managed the money and kept the bill collectors at bay during the hard times. Remember that time I got picked up for drinking on my sixteenth birthday? You were the one who went to bat for me with the judge."
"But what has that got to do with this?" she argued. "Think of how much money it cost him for this insurance policy. We could have used that money…or some of it. We could have taken a vacation or bought a new car," she added, remembering the clunker Joe had always coaxed into running.
"Just before I left for the marines, dad and I had a little talk—really one of the few we ever had. He told me that the one thing he had always regretted was marrying my mother when he was just sixteen. He not only had to quit school and get a job to support her, and later me, but he told me that he had to abandon his dreams." Jerry sat down in the chair the attorney had vacated and leaned forward, clasping his hands together in a thoughtful attitude.
"That was one reason he was always so determined that the two of you had a chance at life." Edie knew that story, and she was warmed by the memory of how profoundly her late husband had meant it. "He told me that, too."
"What he probably didn't tell you," her stepson continued, "was that he felt guilty for marrying you."
"Guilty?" She was startled. "Why?"
"After my mother died in that car accident, dad didn't know how to cope with raising a kid on his own. Then he met you, Edie. He married you a week after you graduated from high school. He said he stole your dreams, too. Right away you had a child to raise, debts to pay, a living to earn and no time to be young and in love."
"But Joe needed me. So did you," Edie protested. "I never felt that I missed anything."
"It always bothered him that the two of you never had a honeymoon," Jerry added.