The Cowboy Finds a Family

by Anne McAllister

  One night they were playing checkers in front of the fire when Ian told him about checker games he won against Fiona. “I used to win a kiss for every piece I got.” Ian smiled. “I thought I was so clever, getting all those kisses. It never occurred to me she had a vested interest in being a terrible checker player.”

  Mace laughed. “Jenny and I used to play checkers at her house before we got married,” Mace told Ian. “We didn’t have the money to go out and her dad said we weren’t just going to go sit in the truck. He never let me get away with anything,” Mace grumbled, remembering those checker games when he’d so rather have been doing something else.

  Ian puffed on his pipe and smiled slowly. “He let you marry her.”

  Later when Ian told him about meeting Fiona at a freshman mixer and understanding the meaning of “love at first sight,” Mace talked about the first time he saw Jenny.

  “It wasn’t love, then,” he said. “I was too young. Too dumb. But from the beginning she wasn’t like any other girl I ever met. She had this sparkle, this eagerness, this sense of life.”

  And sometimes without Ian mentioning Fiona at all, Mace found himself talking about Jenny.

  He told Ian about Jenny’s faith in him, her willingness to give up her scholarship, her plans for college, to marry him.

  “She didn’t have to. She wanted to.” He shook his head. “She could have had so much more if she hadn’t married me.”

  He talked about the years they struggled, the cattle they bought, the winter storms that took their toll, the mother cows and calves they lost.

  “I wanted that herd more than anything. It was going to provide our future,” he said. “It was going to be the security we could depend on. No getting fired. No getting let go. I wanted to give her and our kids what my dad could never give us. And she agreed.”

  He talked about the house they built, the home they made.

  “It wasn’t much to start with. I cut the logs myself, me and Taggart and Jed. Got a mill to do the finishing, then we built it ourselves. Jenny made all the curtains. She hooked the rugs. She even helped shingle the roof. Got frostbite on her fingers we were so late getting it on that year. And she never complained a bit.”

  He talked about realizing his dream. “The herd’s getting pretty good-sized now. It’s still touch and go. Probably always will be. No money in ranching these days. But it’s there. It happened. It’s real. Because of her. She gave up everything she wanted for my dreams.”

  Mace stared into the fire a long time before he said, “Now it’s my turn.”

  “Your turn?” Ian repeated softly, cocking a questioning brow.

  Mace looked down at his hands, not at the fire, not at Ian. “She wants a family and I can’t . . . have kids.” It was the first time he’d said the words. It felt like he was hauling them up from his toes with rusty pliers. They hurt all the way. They made his eyes sting and his throat close. He couldn’t speak again for a long minute.

  Ian said nothing, just rocked in the chair, quiet, accepting.

  Mace cleared his throat, fought for words even as he couldn’t believe he was speaking them aloud. “There’s no way I can give her her dream.” His mouth twisted and he slanted a glance Ian’s way. “Let her go.” His fingers curled into fists. He drew a deep breath and forced himself to go on. “That’s why I’ve been living here. After I found out—after we got the tests back and knew there was no hope—I moved out. We’re getting divorced. It’s better that way,” he said firmly, glancing up at Ian, then looking once more at his hands. “When I’m out of the picture, she’ll be free to marry again . . . somebody who can give her kids—who can give her her dream.”

  He was surprised at the words that had come out of his mouth, words he’d never expected to say to anyone. But somehow Ian’s presence just drew them out. And he realized that he was hoping desperately that Ian would tell him he was wrong, that there was hope, that there were answers.

  Ian sat in the rocking chair, puffing on his pipe and staring into the fire as he always did. He made no judgments. He asked no questions. He gave no answers.

  Mace slumped back on the cot and stared at the dying fire. Ian’s rocker creaked. Outside the wind soughed through the trees. An owl up in the big old Douglas fir hooted forlornly. In the distance he heard a coyote howl.

  Then the rocking chair stopped creaking. Slowly, as if he felt every one of his seventy-odd years, Ian rose to his feet and started toward the bedroom.

  As he passed, Ian touched Mace’s shoulder lightly. “You’ll miss her, son. You’ll miss her.”

  *

  It was all there in black and white.

  The herd, the land, the house. The assets of the fourteen-year marriage of Jenny and Mace Nichols. Along with Travis’s recommendations for an equitable split.

  “Not by any means what you deserve,” he’d written in an email she’d got yesterday, “but at least enough to get by adequately.”

  Even so, Jenny knew it would hurt Mace’s prospects. She wasn’t sure he could keep the ranch even if she tried to give him every break she could and still have something left for herself.

  “You don’t owe him a thing,” Travis had told her during their first meeting.

  But Jenny disagreed. She owed him the happiest years of her life.

  “Try to see that he gets the ranch,” she’d told her lawyer that afternoon. He had stared at her, dumbfounded and in horror. “Just see that I get a minimal amount to live on. I can work. I’ll manage.”

  It would actually be salutary, she thought now as she waited for Tom to pick her up for another trip to Bozeman. If she was forced by her circumstances to keep herself busy, she wouldn’t think about everything she had lost. She’d think about important things—like keeping a roof over her head.

  She knew she wasn’t going to get much room for her money, and she knew it was going to be expensive. She knew she didn’t want an apartment. Living in a human equivalent to a chicken coop didn’t appeal.

  “I’d go crazy,” she told him when he suggested they check out another new building on the edge of town.

  “You could at least see the mountains from your deck,” he argued.

  But Jenny was adamant. “It would be worse. I would see what I was missing.”

  So they narrowed their search to the new listing of rooms available in houses near the university.

  The room she had turned her back on last week began to look like a palace compared to the ones she saw this time. But, just as the landlady had predicted, that room had already been snapped up.

  “Wish you’d called me Wednesday,” the landlady said when Jenny stopped back. “I’d rather have had a nice quiet girl like you.”

  Jenny wasn’t sure how the lady could tell she was such a nice quiet girl just by looking at her and said so as they walked back out to the car.

  Tom smiled and lifted her hair away from her cheek. “Trust me. It shows.”

  His fingers lingered longer than they needed to. But his touch was gentle. He was kind. He even had a dimple in his cheek when he smiled.

  Jenny managed a smile, too.

  He laced his fingers through hers. “Come on. We’ll find something.”

  They spent all afternoon going from one place to another. They went, Jenny said later, “from bad to worse.”

  She was sure there were lovely places to live in Bozeman. But none of them were for rent that day. By the time they had exhausted and rejected all advertised possibilities, even going back to take another look at a few of the less crowded apartment complexes, Jenny was even more depressed.

  “Things might look better over a piece of pie and a cup of java,” Tom suggested.

  Jenny shrugged, then mustered a smile because it wasn’t Tom’s fault things weren’t working out. Maybe it would be a good idea—a chance to step back and consider things. “All right.”

  He took her to a small cafe downtown. “What kind of pie do you want?” Tom asked after the waitress seated them.<
br />
  Jenny didn’t want any pie. She wasn’t hungry. But she said, “Raspberry.”

  “Make that two,” Tom told the waitress. “And two coffees.”

  The coffee gave Jenny something to hold on to. The pie gave her something to fiddle with while she considered her options.

  What options? she thought.

  The apartments depressed her. The rooms were tiny and looked out onto trash cans or worse. Maybe Taggart’s parents wouldn’t mind renting her a room. They lived in Bozeman now.

  But did she want to foist herself off onto people she’d known all her life? Did she want to see their concerned faces, sense their worry, hear the silence of things unsaid whenever she came into a room?

  No, she couldn’t ask Taggart’s parents. She poked at her pie and tried to think of something else.

  “I have an idea.” Tom had been so quiet she’d forgotten he was sitting across the table from her.

  “You know someone in Bozeman with a room to rent?”

  “Not in Bozeman.”

  “Belgrade, then. Or even Manhattan.”

  “I was thinking maybe Des Moines.”

  “What?” She stared at him.

  “I was thinking you might consider moving to Des Moines.”

  “Iowa?”

  Tom slanted her a grin. “That’s where it was the last time I looked.”

  Jenny shook her head. “Why on earth would I go to Iowa?”

  “Besides the fact that I’m there, you mean?” He took a long swallow of his coffee, then set the cup down and faced her squarely across the table. “Think about it,” he said. “Why shouldn’t you go? You want a fresh start. What could be fresher?”

  “But I don’t know anything about Iowa! Other than you and Felicity I don’t even know anyone from Iowa. I don’t have a place to stay. What would I do? Where would I work?”

  “Well, I’d invite you to stay with me . . . but I know you wouldn’t do it,” Tom said even before Jenny could open her mouth to protest. “And you’d be right,” he went on. “It’s too soon. But you know I’m interested. You have to know I’m interested.” His gaze leveled on her, making her face warm. “Don’t you?”

  Jenny shifted uncomfortably. “We’ve . . . gone out.” She mashed a raspberry with her fork.

  “And I’d like to keep going out. I’d like us to get to know each other better. But I have to go home next Saturday.” He had already extended his stay once, Jenny knew. But the college where he taught began school before Labor Day. He was cutting it close as it was.

  “I . . . I’d like that, too,” she began carefully. “But I don’t think . . .”

  “If you were closer we could take things slower,” Tom said. “But at least we’d be ‘taking things.’ You could stay with my parents at first, if you didn’t find a place you liked right away. They have a big house. They would love to have you.”

  “They don’t even know me.”

  “They have always welcomed my friends and Felicity’s and my other sister’s. They’d like to have you. I’d like you to meet them. I’d like you to meet Katie.”

  His daughter, he meant.

  “Oh, Tom.”

  “I think you’d like her,” he said quickly.

  “I’m sure I would.”

  “And I think she’d like you. There are jobs. If you wanted to work as an aide again, I’m sure you could find something. And if you just want to take classes, well, there’s plenty of colleges. You could go to Drake or one of the other area colleges. You can go where I teach if you want. I’d like to teach you.” The innuendo was mild, but she heard it. The smile he gave her then was gently teasing.

  Jenny shook her head.

  “Too soon,” Tom said, studying her expression. He sighed. “All right. But it would be a start. You’d have a place to stay. I could show you around, teach you the ropes. Help you get settled. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Jenny still couldn’t quite imagine it.

  Tom, on the other hand, seemed to have imagined it very well. In fact he seemed to have it all worked out.

  “And—” he reached across and took her hand in his “—you wouldn’t ever have to worry about running into Mace.”

  No Mace.

  No mountains.

  No cabin.

  No looking at things and thinking about what might have been.

  “You get a chance to make things happen,” Tom said softly. “Not just regret what didn’t—and never will.”

  Jenny’s mind was a whirl. She shook her head, trying to settle things down, sort things out. “I don’t know,” she said at last, staring into her coffee mug. “I don’t know.”

  Tom squeezed her fingers in his. “I know you don’t. But think about it. I’m going home on Saturday. You could come with me.”

  Jenny lifted her eyes and stared at him.

  “You could,” Tom repeated. “Just think.”

  *

  Mace heard the truck coming long before it got within sight of the cabin. When he saw Noah, he wondered if he’d forgotten to go down to help out at one of the schools or if something had happened to Jenny.

  His heart lurched. He was down the steps and halfway to the truck by the time Noah climbed out.

  “Ian here?”

  Mace nodded, relieved. Noah wasn’t there to see him at all. He tipped his head toward the house.

  “Thanks.” Noah walked past him up the steps.

  At the sight of him, a smile wreathed Ian’s face. “Well, look who’s here. You running away from your responsibilities, too?”

  Noah shook his head, his mouth twisting. “Maggie called this morning. She asked me to come up and tell you—” he hesitated “—there’s been a bad earthquake in Tres Molinas.”

  Mace, his hand braced on the doorjamb, saw Ian’s face go white at the news about the village he and Fiona had lived in.

  Now Ian asked, “How bad?”

  Noah shook his head. “Don’t know for sure. Reports are just coming in, and frankly not a lot of them are coming in here. We’re not thought to have a big interest in that part of the world. But,” he added quietly, “Maggie’s been checking wire services online. From what she said, it sounds pretty rough.”

  For a long moment Ian didn’t move. He shut his eyes and simply stood there, face bleached, drained, body sagging.

  And then he opened his eyes again and drew a breath. Mace could see his chest expand, could see his spine straighten.

  But he still looked old. He still looked tired, even as he exhaled sharply and nodded. “Right. I’ll get packed.”

  Jed nodded. “Reckoned you would.”

  Mace wasn’t convinced. He followed Ian into the bedroom where the other man tossed a duffel on the bed. “I thought you weren’t going back there.” He’d seen Ian’s grief up close. He didn’t know how much more the older man could take. “You don’t have to, you know.”

  “Yes, I do.” Ian was taking his clothes out of the dresser as he spoke. “I’m needed.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re needed here, too,” Mace said lightly, wanting to ease his pain. “I can always use a good hand.”

  Ian turned, his mouth curving into a smile. “Thank you for that. It’s good to know I could make it as a cowboy. But I’ll be a better hand there. It’s what I’m called for. It is, as Fiona always said, my life. Our life,” he corrected himself quietly.

  Mace hesitated. “You’re sure. I mean . . . on your own?”

  He had heard enough over the days they’d been together to know that Ian and Fiona had been a team. They’d been so much a part of each other in their work, in their lives, in their love, that her death had come close to crushing him. He was doing all right now. Mace didn’t want to see him go back and be destroyed.

  “I won’t be on my own,” Ian said. Mace saw a clear light in his eyes as he spoke. “I thought I would be,” he admitted. “That’s why I came back—because I couldn’t face being there without her. But I’m not ever going to be
without her wherever I am. She’s here.” He tapped his chest lightly, then touched his head. “Inside. Always will be.”

  He drew another breath, an even deeper one, and let it out slowly, settling in, gathering strength.

  “I don’t like what happened. I never will. It doesn’t seem fair her dying and me still being here. But no one ever said life was fair, did they?” He smiled wryly, his gaze meeting Mace’s squarely.

  Mace shook his head. “No, no one did,” he said, his voice hollow.

  “Fiona knew that. Even when it ended sooner than we wanted, she wasn’t sorry we’d stayed. I was. I was angry. But now, well, I can put my anger to use, perhaps. Work it off. I have to go back. Fiona and I have work to do.”

  Fiona and I. As if she really was still with him. As if she was a part of him. As if he was a part of her. Two parts of a whole. Always.

  A marriage that even death couldn’t break.

  Ian tossed the rest of his belongings into his duffel bag and slung the strap over his shoulder.

  Then he straightened and met Mace’s eyes.

  “For better or worse, isn’t that in the ceremony?” he said. “I forgot for a while. You might have, too.”

  They looked at each other. Then Ian took a step forward and gave Mace’s shoulder a squeeze. “Take care of yourself.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Becky had been waiting for this day all week.

  Actually she’d been waiting all month. Not that she was ready for school to start. Becky was never really ready for school to start.

  But she was ready to climb Horse Thief Mountain with her dad.

  It was a tradition.

  Every year, on the weekend before school started, she and Taggart would climb to the top of the mountain that rose high behind the land that an earlier generation of Joneses had bought, the land her grandfather had sold to Mace and Jenny.

  They’d been climbing Horse Thief since she’d started school—since she’d had to stop going down the road from rodeo to rodeo with him and stay, instead, with her grandparents at home.