The Cowboy Finds a Family

by Anne McAllister

  He’d taken her that first time because he’d wanted to show her where he was going. She hadn’t been very big and her legs hadn’t been very long, and Taggart had had to piggyback her almost as much as she’d walked. But it had been worth it.

  When they got there, the world was spread out at their feet.

  It went on for miles and miles—as far as Becky’s eye could see.

  Taggart had set her down and then hunkered down beside her and pointed. “See that road?”

  She’d nodded. She could remember it stretching like a silver thread down through the valley until it disappeared into another set of mountains.

  “That’s the road I’m traveling. It connects with the interstate. Interstates go everywhere. It’s the road we took when we went to Spokane. The same one we took to go to San Francisco. And Vegas. They all connect. So I’m not gone. I’m just down that road somewhere. And if you ever need me, I’ll get on that road and come right back to you.”

  He’d turned his head and his face was so close to hers, she could feel his breath on her cheek. His hat had shaded them both from the sun. “Got that, pard?”

  She remembered how her throat had felt so tight she could hardly get her voice up past it. But she’d nodded because she knew he wanted her to.

  She knew he had to go. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t miss him.

  “Got it,” she had whispered when she finally dragged her voice up from her boot heels.

  She remembered how he’d nuzzled her cheek with his nose. She hadn’t wanted to giggle, but it tickled, and she couldn’t help it. It was just a tiny giggle, but she was glad after she’d done it, because it made him smile.

  “I don’t want to leave you any more than you want to stay,” he had told her then as he sat down on a rock and pulled her back against him, between his knees, so that the two of them could sit spoon-fashion looking out over the valley to the end of the world.

  “But things aren’t always the way you want them to be. Life changes. You got to go on, though, you know?” He had a hand on her shoulder, and he’d given it a gentle squeeze.

  Becky had nodded again. “I know,” she said. She had still been a little croaky, but she was finding her voice easier now. She wrapped an arm around his thigh and leaned her cheek against his knee. “It’s okay, Daddy.”

  “Course it is, pard.” And she had felt him drop a kiss on the top of her head.

  And it had been.

  Mostly.

  He had called her every night. She told him all about school and her teacher and the dumb boy who cried when his mother left him every day.

  “She should’ve taken him up on Horse Thief,” she’d told her father. “Then he’d know she was just down the road from him.”

  The knowledge had sustained her until her father’s car accident. For a time the very thought of roads had been a scary place. But after the accident, he hadn’t gone out rodeoing anymore. He’d stayed home with her. And things had been good.

  Mostly.

  For her anyway, if not for him.

  And that was when they’d met Felicity.

  Her dad was happier since they had Felicity. Becky knew that, and she was glad. After all, hadn’t having Felicity for a mom been her idea in the first place?

  Well, actually she supposed it had been Susannah’s.

  But Becky had done the dirty work. She was the one her dad had yelled at when things went wrong. She deserved some credit.

  Last year she’d got some credit. Last year had been the best year of her life.

  Both Taggart and Felicity had climbed Horse Thief with her. They’d stood there, the three of them, as a family, and they’d faced the world together.

  Now they had the twins.

  Becky didn’t know how her father planned to get them up there, but she was sure he’d manage. She was even willing to help carry one of them or feed one of them or change one of them, preferably Abby, who didn’t pee on you, if he wanted her to.

  She got out of bed early because she knew he’d want to get back before the twins needed a nap.

  Taggart was sitting at his desk going over some breeding charts. He didn’t even look up when she came down the stairs.

  “So,” she said, “what time are we going?”

  He looked around. “Going where?”

  “Up Horse Thief.”

  He blinked.

  Becky felt a lead ball start to form in her stomach. “It’s Friday,” she said firmly. “School starts Monday. We always climb Horse Thief.”

  Taggart rubbed a hand down his face. “Aw, hell, pard. I can’t do that today.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re buying new stock. I’ve got to go over these charts before Robertson calls.”

  “But after—”

  Taggart rubbed his face with his palms. “After, pard, I’m takin’ a nap.”

  Becky looked at him, horrified. “A nap?” Babies took naps!

  But her dad just nodded. “I’m bushed. I got—” he considered for a moment “—three and a half hours sleep last night. Four hours the night before. Less the night before that.”

  “I didn’t keep you awake,” she said frostily.

  “Willy’s getting teeth. Abby had an earache. You can’t blame ’em. You did your fair share of it when you were that age,” he told her.

  She dug the toe of her boot into the rug. Did she throw up the time he let her get sick at the rodeo from eating too much junk food? Did she remind him of how he’d missed winning her that big stuffed rabbit at the rodeo in Cheyenne because he was so busy ogling some slinky cowgirl he couldn’t have hit the broad side of a barn with a handful of rice, let alone a bottle with a tennis ball?

  Becky scowled at him.

  “Besides,” he said, “Uncle Tom is leaving late tonight. We’re having dinner at Grandma and Grandpa’s in Bozeman.”

  “So we could be back by then if we went now.” It seemed logical to Becky.

  “We can’t go now, pard,” he said in his annoying patient father tone. He rattled the breeding charts. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You could’ve done it yesterday!”

  “Would have. But I didn’t have time.”

  “You never have time anymore!” She felt tears welling and sniffed them back hard. She wasn’t going to cry! She hadn’t cried when he left to go down the road—and she had been little then.

  She wasn’t about to cry now.

  “We’ll go another time. Tomorrow. No,” he said wearily, “not tomorrow. I’m helping Jed cut hay tomorrow. Sunday? Maybe we can make it Sunday.” He looked at her hopefully.

  “Sunday?” she said doubtfully.

  Upstairs she heard one of the twins start crying and Felicity’s footsteps going down the hall. In another minute, Becky knew, the other one would yell.

  Yep, there it was. Right on cue.

  “Taggart?” Felicity called. “I’m feeding Willy. Could you change Abby?”

  Taggart looked at his daughter as he got to his feet. “See?”

  Becky stepped back and watched him pass, standing still under his absent ruffle of her hair. Then she turned to stare at his back as he slowly climbed the stairs.

  “Yeah, I see,” she said.

  *

  Jenny wasn’t taking much.

  Her clothes. Some books. The afghan that her mother had knitted her. Pictures.

  She hesitated over those.

  A woman beginning a new life probably shouldn’t take pictures of the old. But as she turned the pages of the albums she had put together over the years, she knew she couldn’t leave them behind.

  There were so many good memories in them, she thought as she paged through album after album. Of the ranch. Of the mountains. The cattle. Lots of Taggart and Felicity and Becky, even a new one when the twins were born. Jed and Brenna, Tuck and Neile. Noah and Tess and their children.

  Mace.

  She sucked in a deep breath and shut the album she’d been looking at, then packed it
away at the bottom of her case.

  She walked around the house, going slowly from room to room, saying good-bye.

  To the bed where she and Mace had made love so many nights—and a few days—for so many years.

  To the stove where she had burned the roast the first night they moved in and where she baked the Christmas cookies that Mace was always trying to nibble before she got them decorated.

  To the fireplace that they had built together, stone by stone, and in front of which one night last year they had loved one another all night long.

  To Butch and Sundance’s bedroom—she refused to call it the spare room; it would be a lie—where they had hoped and dreamed, and lost it all.

  She wasn’t sure when the tears started. Maybe they’d been rolling down her cheeks for days. Sometimes it felt like it. Sometimes it felt like inside she would never stop crying.

  But then she heard the car coming up the road, and she swiped determinedly at her face.

  “You’ll be fine,” she told herself. “Fine.”

  She dashed cold water on her face and blotted it with a towel. Then she picked up her suitcases and went to the door to smile at Tom, getting out of the car.

  Jenny hoped someday it would be true.

  *

  It was the last straw.

  Watching her dad walk up the steps to change Abby after he’d just told her there was no way he could climb Horse Thief with her was bad enough. Banging her fist against the barn door until she got a jagged splinter in it just added insult to injury. Having to dig it out with a needle by herself because Taggart was still messing with one twin while Felicity was taking care of the other only added fuel to the fire.

  But when Becky finally got the splinter out and put the antiseptic on it and then discovered that they were out of Band-Aids, well, there were no words . . .

  It was a small thing.

  It was her life in a nutshell.

  “Damn it,” Becky said, and didn’t even care if they heard her. It wouldn’t matter; they wouldn’t notice if they did.

  Felicity always bought Band-Aids. Felicity’s belief in Band-Aids was one of the things that had made Becky sure the quality of life in the Jones household would improve when Taggart married her. And it had.

  For two years they’d had Band-Aids.

  And now?

  Now they had twins.

  Becky sighed as she sat by herself, her arms wrapped around her knees, and stared out across the valley from the top of Horse Thief Mountain. Below her she could see the road snaking along the valley floor, reminding her of how her dad had said it all connected—and he’d come to her whenever she needed him.

  He hadn’t come with her today. He didn’t even know she’d left. Jenny was moving away. Becky had heard Felicity and Uncle Tom talking about that. And Mace? Mace was miserable. You could tell just by looking at him.

  Becky thought her world was coming apart.

  *

  Mace didn’t realize how much he’d come to count on having Ian there until Ian was gone.

  He went back down the mountain with Noah and silence seemed to fill his place. The rocking chair sat empty. The pipe smoke faded. The cabin seemed to echo.

  There was no one to joke with. No one to talk to. No one to listen to. No one to share a meal with.

  All there was was time to think.

  Mace thought. He thought about Ian and Fiona. About their marriage. Fiona’s illness. Ian’s anger. Not at her. At life.

  He thought about Fiona’s insistence that they stay. About Ian’s reluctance. About Fiona’s persuasion. What had Ian said she’d told him?

  “It’s not just my life. It’s our life. We’re married. We’re in this together.”

  And Ian had agreed with her. They’d stayed. She’d died. He’d been angry again. Mace knew Ian was hurting still.

  And yet . . . he went back.

  When Noah came and told him about the earthquake, he didn’t even hesitate. “We have work to do,” he’d said. “Fiona and I.”

  And he went to pack.

  Fiona was with him. Inside him, where he’d never lose her. For better or worse.

  Mace thought about that. He thought about the other marriages he witnessed every day. He thought about Taggart and Felicity. About Jed and Brenna. About Noah and Tess. He thought about Maggie and Tanner and about Noah’s other brother, Luke, and his wife, Jill.

  He didn’t know everything, but he did know that things hadn’t been easy for any of them. And yet they were determinedly couples. You couldn’t think of one without the other. They were—like Ian and Fiona—two parts of a whole.

  One of the guys—he couldn’t even remember which one—had once said to him, “She makes me whole.”

  Once he’d have said that about Jenny and himself.

  Once, in fact, he’d have put Jenny and himself at the top of the list—the strongest, the happiest, the most resilient of couples. They’d done everything together. Loved and laughed. Fought and made up. Struggled and coped.

  Together.

  Until this.

  This.

  His infertility. His. Not hers.

  “It’s my problem,” he’d yelled at her when she’d told him they’d deal with it.

  “It’s our problem,” she’d countered quietly.

  He hadn’t believed her. He’d been too caught up in his own pain, his own feelings of inadequacy, his own rage at the injustice of this affront to the very essence of his masculinity.

  He hadn’t had space in his heart to allow her to share his anguish. He’s shut her out, denied her pain, rejected the notion that she had as much at stake as he had.

  And now?

  Now he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted her in his life.

  In the void Ian had left, Mace had nothing. No hope. No future. No one.

  Ian didn’t have Fiona anymore, either. Not physically. But he would always have her in his heart.

  “I’ll always have her,” he’d said to Mace one night when he was staring into the fire. “We kept the faith with each other. We’ll always be together one way or another forever.”

  “I thought we were in this together,” Jenny had once said to him.

  Mace hadn’t believed her then. He wanted desperately to believe her now.

  Had she meant it? Would she really rather have him than a houseful of children?

  Did he dare hope?

  Whether he dared or not, he had to face the reality of what he’d done. He’d walked out on her. He’d turned his back on her.

  He’d denied her. He’d denied them as a couple.

  God help him, he had told her to find another man.

  *

  Becky heard the footsteps coming.

  She didn’t turn around. It would be more hikers. There had been a couple earlier. Then even a whole family had come. There were a lot more hikers than when she and her dad had first started climbing Horse Thief. It wasn’t special anymore.

  And wasn’t that the truth? she thought glumly. Though she had to admit, she was glad she’d come. It was hard to feel the world was really pressing down on you when you got up above it this way.

  It was hard to feel that Willy and Abby were the worst things to ever happen in the universe when the universe was so big, and Willy and Abby were really pretty small.

  It was hard to blame Felicity for forgetting Band-Aids when Becky thought about all the things she did do. She had a whole house to run and babies to look after and bookwork to help Taggart with. And besides, she had bought Becky a new shirt with a really cool bull rider on it just last week. It was even hard to hold a grudge against her dad when she remembered how he’d been the best dad in the world for most of her life and this morning how really, really tired he looked.

  “Hey, pard.”

  The soft words behind her made her almost jump out of her skin. She jerked around to see Taggart coming up behind her. He was sweaty and a little out of breath. He looked like he used to when he got tossed off
a bull he’d ridden the full eight seconds—dazed and a little bit relieved. She gulped nervously. She hadn’t told him where she was going.

  Why should she? she had rationalized. He wouldn’t care. He probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone!

  Obviously he had.

  “I thought you didn’t have time to climb today,” she said, looking at the toes of her boots, then glancing back at him, marshalling what little defense she could manage. She could see from his expression that he was worried, and she knew it was her fault.

  He sat down beside her before he spoke. And when he did, he didn’t look at her, either. “I was wrong,” he said gruffly.

  Becky’s head turned. Her eyes widened. He was staring down into the valley, looking at the road that had taken him away from her years ago.

  Did he remember what he’d told her then? About the roads all connecting? About him just being on down them somewhere, but always close enough to come if she needed him?

  He must have. She’d needed him. He had come.

  “Daddy?”

  “Ah, hell, pard!” He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “We didn’t know where you were!” He reached for her and put his arms around her. He pulled her up onto his lap and hugged her hard, pressing his face into her hair and rocking her the way he hadn’t rocked her since she was a really little girl.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” Becky mumbled into his shirt. She could hear his heart hammering, heard the catch of his breath in his throat. She loved the feel of his arms around her, burrowed closer and was even happier when his embrace tightened.

  “I’m sorry, too, pard.” His voice was a whisper, too, rough and broken. She thought he might actually be crying because she felt something wet on her ear.

  She reached up and touched it wonderingly. “I wasn’t running away,” she told him. “I was coming back. I just needed . . . needed to do this. To see the world is bigger.” She didn’t know if that made sense to him. Maybe he didn’t even remember.

  “We both needed to do it.” He smiled a little crookedly. “Your going on your own just pointed it out.”

  “I was mad.”

  “I know.” He sighed and rubbed his cheek against her hair. “You had a right to be. Things have been . . . a little rough lately. I realize that. I didn’t mean to turn you down. I never want to turn you down, pard. I just—just—”