Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  “But we don’t want to actively try to make it happen.”

  “Not right now. Maybe someday. But if not, that’s okay, too.”

  “Works for me.” He pulled her down again. “Wanna actively not try right now?”

  *****

  About a month later, early in August, Reese pulled his Dodge Ram—a new model of essentially the same truck he’d been driving his whole life, color and all—through the forged-iron gates of the Twisted C Ranch and drove down the ranch road to the Cahills’ big house. He and Mac had been guests here since the middle of May, near three months, and, based on the frustrating meeting he’d just had at the site of the Jack-that-was-and-would-again-be, they had at least another month before they had a place to live. Or, for that matter, work.

  Actually, the work part was beginning to be a real problem. Not only was he going out of his skin without something to focus his energy on, his coffers were dwindling in ways they never had before. His grandfather had turned a decaying dive of a place into a promising business enterprise. His father had been conservative but savvy and made that business run smoothly while building a legacy for his only child. Reese, also careful and smart with money, and with no family to support with it, had kept the Jack in top shape and let his accounts grow. That was why he’d been able to sweep Mac off for nearly three months of comfortable, worry-free European travel.

  But the Jack had been closed for three months. He had good insurance, which was paying for most of the replacements of the building and its contents, and included a living allowance for his displacement. But that allowance had a three-month limit. Moreover, he hadn’t been using it for his own expenses. He’d been paying his employees with it, keeping them employed and ready to come back to him. The insurance was good, but it didn’t cover everything, in the rebuild or living expenses. He’d been drawing steadily from his savings to cover what the insurance did not.

  He was also keeping Mac’s family fed and sheltered. Mac was working in Old Town again, this time at the Town Council office; Morgan Cahill had pulled a string and gotten her a part-time position as liaison between Jasper Ridge and the Sawtooth Jasper Reservation, but the pay wasn’t near enough to cover what Frannie had been earning with two full-time jobs, so Reese was throwing in the difference—and he was happy to do it. That was her family. His family. Their family. But it was an extra outgo when he didn’t have any income.

  The bills for Frannie’s care were piling up, with no end yet in sight. Six weeks after the wreck—no one called ever called it an accident, he’d noted—she was still in the hospital, but they were preparing to place her in a rehabilitation facility. Her legs were still pretty fucked up, and her short-term memory was gone. It was too early to say how much she’d get back of her old self, but it was safe to say she’d turned her whole life upside down when she’d flipped her Honda down a ditch. And everybody else’s life, too.

  He was starting to worry a little. Another month or two would be okay; he could keep everything going like it had been and not touch what he’d tucked away for a wedding and honeymoon, and he’d be able to replenish his accounts once the Jack was running again. But if it went on much longer than that—if, God forbid, they didn’t get the work done before Idaho winter set in and stopped them in their tracks for months—he didn’t know if he’d be able to come back from that.

  As he pulled up to the big house, he saw Honor at the back of her SUV, dressed in one of her lady-lawyer-goes-to-court getups—a tidy skirt suit and sky-high heels, her hair wound up on her head—struggling to lift a stack of two banker’s boxes. He jumped down from his truck and hurried to help her.

  “Hey, dumplin’. Hold up. I got ‘em.”

  She smiled and stepped back, adjusting the strap of her briefcase over her shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “Where’s your man, lettin’ you heave up a load like a pack mule in your condition?”

  She laughed and pushed the hatch down. “I’m nine weeks pregnant, Reese. I think the baby is the size of a cherry. I doubt my picking up a couple boxes is doing any harm. But I appreciate the help.”

  The boxes were pretty heavy, actually. Obviously full of files. “What is all this?”

  She sighed. “Files for the Pastora Farms case. I have to go through them with a microscope.”

  Honor had been working on a case against one of the biggest agriculture corporations in the country. Her case was civil, but if she won, there were criminal fraud implications. Pastora Farms was fighting back hard, so Honor had worked to get her case certified as a class-action. Now she was leading a team of lawyers from three states. Out of her tiny office in Old Town.

  And that was all he knew; she didn’t talk shop much.

  “Logan out on the range?” he asked as they wended along the flagstone walk to the front door.

  “I expect so. Where’s Gigi?”

  “She took Elaine and Tyson to see her sister today. She should be back in time for supper.” It was Wednesday, and the Cahills did a big family meal on Wednesday nights. Reese and Mac had been folded into all the family traditions this summer.

  They headed toward the house. “She’s with her mom? Do you think Elaine would eat with us tonight if she were invited?”

  Reese stopped in his tracks. “What’s up, Honor?”

  “I met with MacInnes today.” The assistant district attorney in Bonneville County, where Frannie’s DUI was still pending. Reese thought that was some hardcore bullshit—hanging a felony charge over a woman who couldn’t remember what she’d had for lunch, while she was still chewing it. She’d hurt no one but herself, and she would live the consequences of her actions for the rest of her life. A DUI on top of it seemed abusive to him.

  “Get it worked out?”

  “Maybe. I need to talk to her mom. I’m not sure how much Frannie will understand.”

  Understanding wasn’t Frannie’s biggest problem. Remembering long enough to process the information was. But it came to the same thing.

  “I’ll call Mac and ask her to bring them straight here.”

  *****

  Elaine was a small, bird-like woman who had little of Mac’s strength or energy. She let other people take care of things. She drank a lot, too, but quietly, privately. The woman had lived through a crushing amount of loss and deprivation and was still standing, so she wasn’t weak. She was simply small.

  At the Cahills’ table, surrounded by their wealth and plenty, she seemed nearly to disappear. She barely spoke. Her eyes darted with furtive curiosity around the room. She took something from whatever dish was passed her way but hardly ate.

  “I can’t believe she won’t just drop the charges,” Mac said as she took a basket of rolls from her mother and set one on her own plate. “Isn’t she suffering enough?”

  Honor took a sip from her water glass before she answered. “The Bonneville DA is up for reelection next year, and DUI is her signature issue. She’s not going to let anything go. But MacInnes is sympathetic. She can get her boss to sign off on the two-year license suspension and mandatory treatment.”

  “But it still goes down as a felony conviction.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  Mac sat back and crossed her arms. “Does everybody understand that Frannie can’t get through two sentences before she forgets what she was talking about? What is treatment going to do for her? She can’t remember what happened to her. Every day, several times a day, somebody has to remind her why her legs are broken.”

  “She was on the road at three times the legal limit, sweetheart,” Morgan said. He spoke quietly, even gently, but there was a steel thread in the words. He’d lost a grandchild to a drunk driver.

  Her dark eyes flaming with confrontation, Mac faced the Cahill patriarch, her own benefactor. “And she’s paying for it. We’re all paying for it.”

  Except for the innocent, blissfully ignorant tumult of the youngest children at the table—four-year-old Tyson, two-and-a-half-year-old Matthew, and Maria, who’d just had
her first birthday—the dining room went thickly silent as Mac and Morgan faced off.

  Elaine focused all her attention on Tyson, who sat beside her, on a booster seat, and slapped his hand around in his mashed potatoes.

  “Elaine.” Morgan said, shifting his regard from daughter to mother—a slyly rhetorical move on the old man’s part that Mac did not misinterpret. Reese set his hand on her knee as her eyes drew narrow.

  Mac and Frannie’s mother turned partially toward Morgan but didn’t meet his eyes. Or answer him. Her posture was that of a chastened child. Reese could feel Mac’s tension mounting.

  “Elaine,” Morgan repeated, with the same steely patience. Elaine finally met his eyes. “We’re talking of your girl. Why don’t you tell us what you think?”

  With a long, deep breath, Mac’s mother inflated her chest, and her shoulders finally rose and squared. She faced Morgan, and then met the eyes of all the adults at the table: Emma. Wes. Heath. Gabe. Logan. Honor. Reese. Mac. Back to Morgan.

  “Francine tries hard. She’s always tried hard. She’s never felt good enough for anybody, and nobody thinks she’s good enough, but she tries hard. I don’t know what I should say to you, Mr. Cahill.”

  “I told you to call me Morgan.”

  “You did. But I’m sitting here in a room almost as big as my whole house, at a table filled with food that could feed my family for a month. We’re not equals, Mr. Cahill. And you’re not treating me like one. I can hear it in your voice. You think I’m not good enough, either.”

  Now that she’d found her voice, her words thudded on the table with dead weight.

  “That’s not true,” Morgan said.

  “Mom,” Mac said, hints of warning and of pleading in her words.

  Elaine turned to her daughter. “It is true, Georgia. And deep down, you know. You agree. It’s why you left. It’s why you make your life away from home even now you’re back. We’re too broken for you. But you come from the same place. If we’re broken, you’re broken, too.”

  Reese clamped his hand down on Mac’s knee as she reacted to that. But he didn’t speak. This was not the forum for his voice.

  Mac didn’t speak either. Her shock and pain was too big for words. Reese wanted to gather her up and take her away from this scene, but he couldn’t rescue her. It wasn’t his place to rescue her from this. From her own mother.

  Her back straighter than Reese had ever seen it, Elaine turned to Honor. “Thank you, Mrs. Cahill, for all you’ve done for my daughter. I am deeply grateful, and I know Francine is, too. We understand how this world works, and that it isn’t fair and doesn’t have room for compassion for people like us. So please tell Miss MacInnes that Francine will accept that deal. We will do what we always do. We will survive in this world until we can’t.”

  *****

  “Hey. What’re you doin’ out here?”

  Reese had heard Mac pull up in her Jeep Wrangler—a few years used, but much safer and more practical than the old Harley she’d lost in the fire—after taking her mother and nephew back to the reservation. He’d been upstairs in their room and had expected her to come straight up. When twenty minutes had gone by, he went looking for her, and found her still out in front, sitting on a step in the flagstone walk.

  The August day had been hot and sticky, but a little kiss of autumn had floated in on an evening breeze. The lingering heat and fresh cool swirled together in an unsettled air and made even the crickets cross. Their strident leg-rubs sounded like griping tonight.

  He sat beside her. “Baby?”

  She stirred as if coming back from a long trip. After a deep, rousing breath, she gave him a soft smile. “Hey.”

  Heavy thoughts were obviously weighing her down. “Talk it out with me.”

  Turning back to stare out at the dark ranch, she didn’t answer for a while. Reese hooked his arm over her shoulders, and she leaned close. He let her be quiet, until she was ready to talk.

  “I’ve been thinking about what my mom said tonight.”

  He wasn’t surprised; he’d been thinking of it, too.

  “She’s right, you know. I am broken. We all are.”

  “Ah, Mac.” He brought her close. “You are not broken. A little scuffed, maybe. But you’re tough, like your grandma was.”

  A spectral smile wavered at her cheek. “Hubijo.”

  The Shoshone word stirred a memory; he thought she’d told him what it meant, but just now he couldn’t remember. So he held her and put his mouth against her head, and was quiet.

  “I need to do something to fix my family. My people.”

  “Are you sure that’s your job?”

  Her head moved against his mouth, nodding. “It has to be. Someone has to do something, and Mom’s right. People on the reservation feel powerless. They are powerless, and it’s been generations of feeling it weigh us down more and more until nobody can move. We’re a nomadic people sinking into the ground under the weight of everything we lost. I can’t fix everything, I’m not saying that. But I know how to start a change. I know what would help a lot. It’s been pinging around in my head as long as we’ve been staying on this ranch, and tonight, the thoughts finally got their shit together and made a real idea.”

  Reese sat up and turned her head to face him. “What are you talking about?”

  Her mouth shaped itself into something he’d seen before. Part grin, part grimace, it was the look of Georgia Mackenzie with her mind made up. “Where are the Cahills?”

  “Emma and Wes took the kids home. So did Heath and Gabe. I think Honor’s working. But Morgan and Logan are in the living room, I think.”

  “They’ll do.” She stood suddenly and held her hand out. “Come on. I want you with me.”

  “You’re not gonna tell me what’s goin’ behind those big brown eyes?”

  “When we talk to them. Let’s go.”

  *****

  Logan and his father were sitting in the living room, sipping scotch. Morgan was reading the paper. Logan was stretched out on the sofa, reading something on his tablet.

  They both set aside their reading when Reese knocked on the frame of the entryway and said, “Knock knock.”

  “Hey, you two.” Logan stood. “You want a drink, Reese? Geej, there’s seltzer or tonic, too.”

  “No, thanks,” Mac said. Reese shook his head.

  Logan sat again, and Morgan waved them to seats near his chair. “I’m sorry about how things went at dinner. I meant no offense to your mother, honey.”

  “I know.” Mac took the spot on the sofa nearest Morgan. “She’s okay. I didn’t come in here to ask you to apologize.”

  “But there’s something on your mind.”

  She nodded. “Yes. It’s been on my mind for a while, and tonight I figured it out. I’ve been trying to think of a way to talk to you about it, and I’m not sure I have it, but I need to try.”

  “Go on.”

  She cleared her throat and took a breath—and then turned her attention to Logan. “I started thinking about it when Chief Black Horse and Chief Stands were here, a few weeks ago. Right after we got back from our trip. You and Chief Stands had some words.”

  “I remember,” Logan muttered.

  “He said you only get involved in reservation business when one of your white friends is in it.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” This time, there was an impatient bite to Logan’s tone.

  “He was right, you know.”

  Reese turned to Mac and opened his mouth. A word of protest, or warning, nearly escaped his lips, but he caught it back. Let her fight this. Let her have her say.

  Logan’s eyes flashed. “You got more words comin’, or you just gonna drop that bomb and let it go off?”

  “I told you, I haven’t figured it out all the way, how to talk to you about this, but I don’t mean it as a criticism. Just an observation. You have tribal membership, and Heath and Emma, too, but you don’t use it. You’re not citizens. You say you’re members, like it’s a club.
You consider yourselves white, and that’s your prerogative. You can make that choice.”

  “We keep out of tribe business out of respect. We understand how much weight we can throw, and we don’t want to take over.”

  While Logan spoke, Reese glanced at Morgan. The old man, patriarch of this family and Jasper Ridge itself, sat back in his deep, tall leather chair, his arms relaxed on the armrests, and paid silent heed to the exchange.

  “I understand that,” Mac answered, “and I appreciate that you mean it as respect. But ... there’s this big myth that the people of Jasper Ridge and Sawtooth Jasper have always been friends, that the settlers here came in and treated the Native people good, and everything was peaceful and cooperative, and we’ve lived in harmony together ever since.”

  “That’s a myth?” Morgan asked, his voice low and weathered.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s a myth. I believe Matthew Cahill and the others were decent men, like you. But it’s not the whole story. Do you know who our chief was then, the one that brokered the peace with Matthew?”

  Reese did not. He looked to the Cahill men, but they were quiet. They didn’t know, either. Though Matthew Cahill was their ancestor, neither of them knew this part of the story. Because it wasn’t the Cahill story.

  “Piakuittsun Taikwawoppih,” Mac said, her tongue taking on its Native accent. The Shoshone language was beautiful and mysterious to Reese, with sounds he didn’t think his own mouth could make. “It basically means ‘speaker to the buffalo.’ It was said he always knew where the herds would be. You don’t know his name, not even an English version of his name. Nobody in Jasper Ridge does, but we all have Matthew Cahill’s name burned into our brains. Because the white story gets told. The Cahill story. But Logan, that’s not your whole story.”

  Logan stared but didn’t speak. Mac waited, gave him a space to say something.

  Reese again felt a powerful urge to stop her, or to say something that would temper her words. To remind her that they were living with the Cahills, enjoying their wholehearted support during their troubles. But he knew he couldn’t interfere here. This wasn’t his story, or his place. Mac needed to say this, whatever it was, wherever it went.