When nobody else spoke, Mac picked up her thread again. “There is good feeling between the town and the rez, it’s true—and it’s good. Most of the people on the rez have work or school or friends, some kind of connection in town. A lot of us marry off the rez. I’ve been around the world, around the country, and I know it’s unusual here, how well we all get along. I don’t diminish how important that is. But I know you see the difference, too. When you drive onto the rez, you see it. There’s no fence, but the line is there anyway. We’re poorer, sicker, bleaker. One step over that line. We’re dying, while Jasper Ridge thrives. That’s why Evan Hall was untouchable on the rez. People understand why he is the way he is. He’s part of our story, and he’s not alone. That’s why it’s a myth, that everything is perfect between the town and the rez.”
“I don’t know what you want us to say to all this, Gigi,” Logan said. He spoke carefully, like a man who was holding onto his temper with both hands and a rope.
“I’m not criticizing you, Logan. Honestly, I don’t mean it like that. You are a good man. This is a good family. And I am deeply grateful for the help you’ve given Reese and me, and my family, too. But we’re sitting here in this beautiful room in a beautiful house, on a huge ranch that covers the most beautiful, fruitful land in Idaho. You own it all. Land the Shoshone people lived and hunted on for millennia. And ten miles away, the Sawtooth Jasper reservation is full of people who can barely keep their shitty tin roofs over their heads. It’s not just my family. A lot of the people on the rez can’t find or keep jobs. There are a lot who struggle with addiction, who need better medical care than we have, but they can’t get to it. The rez school needs supplies and books and equipment. You know how much people struggle. You send meat over, and pull a wagon in at Christmas, all because you know. But you could do more. They’re your people, too, Logan. We’re your people. Your mother was raised on the rez. I know you don’t have close blood family there anymore, but you are still part of us, and vice versa. Most of us don’t have the luxury to live another way.”
Logan’s eyes shifted to Reese. He was hurt, and defensive, but Reese could see that Mac had struck something deeper than that instinct to push back. She had gotten through. He’d heard her, and he was smart enough to take a beat and master his hurt before he spoke.
“Do you have a point, with these observations?”
Mac leaned forward and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I do. I have an idea. I’m not sure how to make it work, but I know what could get it started. I think the idea first happened when I came home last fall. The years away made me see the reservation more clearly, the forest and not just the trees, if you know what I mean. And then everything that’s happened with Evan, and Frannie, and what Chief Stands said—all of that was little bits added in, ingredients I guess, but it was just this big bowl of bad feelings sitting in my gut for a long time. Helplessness. Then, tonight, after what my mom said, about how hard Frannie tries, how nothing’s ever enough, and it finally made an idea. I thought of a way to help.”
“Which is?” Morgan asked.
Mac turned to him and, and a little shy shiver went through her. Morgan intimidated her a little. But she didn’t slow down. “There are so many problems on the reservation. Too much booze, not enough work, not enough ways to get help to the rez or get people to the help. What we need is a place they can go. A better medical clinic, with more variety of doctors. Addiction counseling. Transportation. Legal advice. Job training. Day care and education. We need a place ... like ... a resource center. Yeah. The Sawtooth Jasper Reservation Resource Center. We need that. And the Cahills should pay for it.”
As she got that last sentence out she sat abruptly back, as if the shock of her own audacity had knocked her over.
Logan laughed, it burst from his chest like a cough, and Mac sat straight again, ready to rumble.
“Easy, darlin’,” he said, raising a hand up. “I’m impressed. That’s some big brass ones you’re swingin’. But maybe you’re not wrong.” Logan turned to his father. “Dad?”
Morgan smoothed a hand over his beard. “Gigi, sweetheart. There’s not enough money in all the banks in Idaho to fix the problems on Sawtooth Jasper or any other reservation. Those troubles are old and rooted deep.”
“I know that. Obviously I know that. But I’m not talking about fixing everything. I’m talking about helping where we can. And I’m not even saying the Cahills should pay for everything forever. But get it started. Build a building, buy some supplies, put some money in an account to hire some people. Then—there are, like, grants and things, right? I think you even do that—endow grants, or whatever it’s called? But the government, too, and like, I don’t know, the Gates Foundation. Stuff like that. Whoever’s in charge could find other ways to keep money coming in.”
“There’s not enough people on the rez to keep something like that busy, Geej.” Logan stood and went to the bar to refill his scotch. “Even if every single person used it, that’s still not even a thousand people. That’s not full-time work for all those doctors and nurses and counselors you want.”
“So, then, we do part-time hours. Have a pediatrician come in two days a week. Have job training in the evenings.” Mac stopped and sagged back in the sofa again. When she continued, a lot of the energy had left her voice. “I don’t know. I just thought it out for the first time tonight. I’m just saying ... please help. Please.”
Logan returned to his seat on the sofa facing Reese and Mac. He met his father’s gaze. “What do you think?”
Morgan shook his head. “You make this call, son. This is your heritage, and if you do something, it’ll be you and your brother and sister living with the choice.”
Logan nodded and studied the amber liquid in his glass. Mac sat quietly, losing confidence with each second the old clock ticked noisily by.
Reese was in wholehearted awe of his woman. It took incredible gumption to sit in the Cahill house and tell Logan he was neglecting his own family, that his wealth and privilege had made him blind to real need at his back door, and then to tell him, outright, what to do to fix it. She wasn’t wallowing in the desolation that had always haunted her, that had chased her away. She wasn’t running. This time, she meant to fight.
Finally, Logan finished his scotch in a swallow and leaned forward to put the cut-crystal glass on the gleaming polished table. Leaning on his knees, he said, “If we do this, you’ve got to come with a better plan than ‘build a resource center and fix all our problems.’”
“That’s not what I—”
Logan talked over her. “You need to come up with a real plan, one that can be executed, that shows you know you can staff the place, and where additional monies will come from. You need to research what resources, exactly, you really need and how much and how often you need them. You put together a proposal, show us you have real numbers and a full understanding. Show us you know what you’re doing, and we’ll help you do it.”
Relief rolled through her body in a visible wave, and Mac grinned broadly and surged forward. “Thank you! Thank you! I will find someone who knows how to do all that, and I will—”
“No, Geej,” Logan cut her off again. “You. This is your idea. You’re the one sitting here in my house telling me what an asshole I am not to help my mother’s people. My people.”
“I didn’t—”
He kept talking. “And you’re right. You’re the one with the idea. You’re the one with the balls to call me out. This is yours. You put that proposal together. I don’t want to see it from anybody else.”
“But I don’t know how.”
Logan leaned back and grinned. “Then you better learn, darlin’.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Meet me at the site.
Reese read Mac’s text and sighed. She never went to the site unless she had to be there. Which meant trouble. Again.
I was there a couple hours ago.
Is there another problem?
This mornin
g, he’d been informed of another delay. It was the end of August, more than three months since the fire, and they barely had a building up. The exterior base was up, and the floors, and the framing for eventual interior walls, windows and doors, but the place was nothing more than a plywood shell. Three damn months. And today, on his fucking birthday of all days, he’d learned that the windows the architect had suggested and the contractor had ordered had been discontinued. Those windows were historically accurate reproductions, and the window holes had been designed to their unusual size. They couldn’t just call up Lowe’s in Boise and place an order.
Just do it, cowboy. You ask too many questions.
At her light, bantering tone, he relaxed.
I asked one question.
And that’s too many. Hurry.
I’m at the bank.
Gimme a few seconds.
One one thousand, two one thousand ...
Smartass
She sent him a winking kiss emoji.
*****
“Mac?” It was nearly evening, and with the low sun and the trees behind the lot—and the lack of electricity, and the heavy plastic nailed over the holes that were supposed to be windows—what there was of the Jack was dim and quiet. Her Jeep was parked on the lot, though. “Baby? You here? You okay?”
“Upstairs!” came her reply. The sound was odd—louder than it should have been from that location, but muffled too.
The aroma of newly sawn wood overpowered his senses, so strong it pricked his eyes. Ordinarily, in any other context, he, like everybody else he knew, enjoyed the scent of fresh wood, and of construction in general. But not here. Here, it was all wrong.
He walked through his erstwhile and someday saloon, his boots thumping on the subfloor. It was like the skeleton of his home. He’d wanted the building replaced to every extent possible, wanted it to look, as much as it could, as it had always looked, but here, in the mid-stage of its rebirth, all he saw was bones.
A brisk wind—the day had been summery warm and muggy, but the forecast called for storms in the night—shook the plastic sheeting over the front windows and drew his attention in that direction. He smiled, seeing his birthday gift from Heath: a gorgeous ironwork sign, fifteen feet long and three feet high: The Apple Jack Saloon, est. 1872.
It was intended to top the covered porch, replacing the wooden sign that had stood for decades. His friends had presented it to him last night, carrying it in together, as a gift from them all, but obviously it was really from Heath, the blacksmith.
1872. The old building had stood, and been in continual operation as the town bar, since that date. Until May. No longer could he claim that point of pride. They’d been down more than three months, and when they opened, it would not be what it had been.
“Reese? I’m upstairs!”
“Comin’.” He brushed his hand over the sign and turned to go up what would eventually be a replica of the original staircase.
Replica. Reproduction. Replacement. Not what it had been.
He climbed the skeletal beginning of the new staircase and ascended to what would someday be his new home.
With only the framing up for any interior walls, Reese saw Mac right away: she was sitting on the plywood floor, in the middle of one of the big blankets they kept at the cabin for picnics and lounging. She had a little picnic spread out in the space that had once held the kitchen table: two champagne flutes and a bottle of what he could only imagine was sparkling apple juice. And a cupcake sitting on a paper plate before her. Two Coleman electric lanterns added their halogen glare to the scene.
He hadn’t seen her since they’d gotten up that morning. She’d spent half the day driving to Idaho Falls to check on her sister at the rehab center, and the other half deep in research mode, preparing the resource center proposal.
Reese was so fucking proud of her. The very next morning after that ballsy face-off with Logan, Mac had gone to Honor, the most savvy professional person she knew, and asked if she knew how she should start. Honor put her in touch with her friend in Boise who worked with the mayor, and Mac had spent the past few weeks learning how to write grant proposals. Chief Black Eagle, as impressed as everyone else with Mac and her idea, had given her a room in the tribal center to call her office, and now she was spending several hours a day studying, researching, and writing. And still working as the liaison at the Town Council office.
His girl was finally, at home, the way she’d been in Europe. Positively beaming light and energy. Full of purpose and direction.
She beamed at him now and struck a match to light the candle on the cupcake.
“Happy birthday, baby.”
“Hey you.” He went forward and kissed her upturned lips before he sat at her side. “They’re doin’ a dinner tonight at the ranch, you know.” And a whole damn party. Forty-three wasn’t a big deal, but the Cahill women were making one out of it. Emma and Gabe both loved an excuse to cook big.
“I know. But I don’t want to share you all night, so you’re just gonna have to eat your cake and have it twice. Make a wish.”
He blew out the candle without pausing to think. Wishes were for children.
“You didn’t wish, did you?”
He shrugged and hooked his arm over her shoulders. “I have everything I want. Why’d you want to meet here?”
“Like I said, I didn’t want to share you all night, and Emma and Gabe are going gangbusters. This is the only place we can have real privacy. And it’s our home.”
A melancholy chuckle came out on the shadow of his earlier musing. “Not much of a home. Don’t even smell right.”
She plucked the candle out of the frosting and picked up the cupcake. Leaning on his shoulder, she began to peel the paper back. “I think it smells good. Fresh wood and clean air. The old Jack smelled like a century and a half of mud, spit, tobacco juice, beer, whiskey, and smoke.”
That dead-on description brought a powerful wave of nostalgia to crash over him. “I know,” he sighed. “This’ll never be the same.”
He reached for the cupcake—it looked to be vanilla, and the frosting was chocolate, which was his favorite combination—but Mac pulled it back and sat up. “No, it won’t ever be the same. But I’m glad.”
“What?”
She set the cupcake, still perched on the crinkled paper cup, on the blanket and shifted her seat so she was facing him. “Can I say something that might sound harsh? I don’t mean it to be, but I’m not sure how you’ll take it.”
He girded himself. “It’s not like you can stop now. Go on.”
“All summer, you’ve been depressed about the Jack, and I get it. I really do. The only home you’ve ever had is gone, and you haven’t had your work, and the rebuild has been a pain in the ass, and money is pouring out but not coming in. I get it. But all you see is what you’ve lost. You think you got torn out by the roots.”
“I was.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about what she was saying. Not offended. Defensive, maybe. Mostly, he was waiting for her point. But she was wrong to minimize the shock of coming home to a hole where his life had been. “That’s exactly what happened.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. We’re still in Jasper Ridge. You’re still surrounded by all your friends. We’ve been staying this whole time with friends who are so close to you they’re your family. You haven’t lost any of that. And you’re rebuilding the Jack on the exact same spot. It’s going to look almost exactly the same.”
He pulled the most important word out and repeated it: “Almost. But not.” Feeling offended now, Reese stood and walked to the front, to the wall of plastic-covered holes that would someday be custom-sized and -glazed windows. “I thought you understood what I lost. I thought you got it.”
She followed and stood at his side. “I do. I know you lost so much. But that building that had stood here all those years, it wasn’t really yours. Somebody else built it. Other people owned it. Your grandfather restored it. All the things in the bar and
up here, so much of it was stuff other people chose. It was like the Colosseum, a relic of a world that’s gone. You have an opportunity, Reese. This is your blank slate. Every stick of this building is yours. Even making it so similar to what it was—that’s your choice, for the first time. Now the Jack will be truly yours. That’s what it smells like now—the future.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
“I know.” She took his hand and gave it a tug. “Come have your cupcake. There’s a party waiting for you. All people who’ve loved you your whole life.”
What she’d said—he’d need to think about it, fold it into his feelings, see if he saw and felt what she did. Her attitude about history and home was different from his, always had been, because her history and home was so much more fraught and painful and problematic than his. So he wasn’t sure how he felt about the things she’d just said, or if he agreed completely or in part.
What he felt, immediately, forcefully, and was love and joy that she had said it at all. In the midst of her own turmoil, the relentless demands and disappointments of her family, she’d seen him.
He hadn’t felt ignored all this time, or disconnected from her. They’d been together, happy and in sync, all summer. She was the brightest spot in these shadowy months.
And yet, there had been a part of him that had felt lonely. The loss of his home had worn hard, and he hadn’t known where to put all its weight. He’d put his energy to the rebuild, to erasing the loss, and to supporting Mac in her family’s latest crisis, easing her burden.
But she’d been easing his, too. Even in simply being patient while he groused about delays and expenses, his worries and disappointments. She’d let him do what he’d needed to do, been an ear and a shoulder, until this moment, when she’d lifted his head and said, look around.
She’d been easing his burdens all summer, and he hadn’t even noticed.
Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3) Page 28
