Home Again with You

by Liza Kendall

  Ugh.

  Jules shook her head to clear his image out of her mind yet again, and refocused her thoughts on her morning chores: feed and water Don Quixote—the donkey—and the horses, let them out to graze in the paddock while she dug out their stalls, and then groom them as necessary. She’d need to change the bandage on Curly’s right-rear fetlock and check the cut over Shiner’s left eye . . .

  She needed to pick up more saddle soap and clean the tack this afternoon, too. Jules rolled up the sleeves on her oversized flannel shirt as she walked. Goose bumps erupted on her bare arms, but they would fade as soon as she began work.

  She fished a plain rubber band out of her pocket and secured her hair in a messy knot, then kicked a branch out of her way with the toe of one rubber riding boot. Chico the squirrel chattered at her from the same tree branch he occupied most mornings, and she tossed him the usual pecan. A cautious creature, he waited until she’d gone a few steps before he skittered down and pounced on it.

  Her fanny pack held a bag of baby carrots and another Ziploc of apple slices for the horses. Dad would fuss at her for spoiling them, as usual. And as usual, she’d smile, nod, and ignore him.

  He’d seemed tired and grim yesterday, his John Deere hat tugged low on his forehead and his shoulders uncharacteristically slumped as he sat on the mounting block, staring at nothing. But he’d denied anything was wrong when she asked.

  Jules walked into the cool, dim barn and inhaled the loamy, musky, overpowering scent of the horses stabled there: twenty-three of them—plus Don Qui, who worked to calm them when necessary and was everyone’s buddy—in adjacent stalls on each side. The stalls, like the rest of the property, had seen better days.

  The once-glossy dark green paint was peeling from the old-fashioned oak enclosures, and generations of horses had gnawed or rubbed or otherwise made their marks, like kids writing on the wall that Johnny was here.

  How she’d love to replace the old, dingy stalls with new prefab ones: iron grills and sliding doors. Better drainage in the cement floors . . .

  Out of habit, she went straight to Don Quixote’s stall, dropping a kiss onto his furry forehead and rubbing his brown ears. Don Qui wore a colorful Mexican halter embroidered with flowers and beads. His eyes were rimmed with the same white that adorned his muzzle. It looked almost like eyeliner. The rest of him was a lovely reddish chocolate brown. He had a tuft that stuck up between his ears.

  “Hi, you funny old thing. Did you keep all the horses in line overnight? Any incidents to report?” The donkey evaluated her with his wise old eyes and rubbed his muzzle on her shoulder. He took her affection as his due and chewed phlegmatically on his hay.

  Don Qui was the only creature she’d told about what had happened in Dallas. Otherwise, it had stayed in Dallas. Pure humiliation. The biggest mistake of her life. She hadn’t told her friends or her aunt Sue. Jules just wanted to forget about it.

  “You stink,” she told him affectionately. “You need a bath.”

  He backed away from her, looking woebegone. A bath was an inexplicable tragedy in his life.

  Jules laughed and moved on, waving hello to Midnight, Dusty, Frost, and Blossom, who nickered as she made her way to the tack room and office. Frost. The old sweetie. Much nicer than his former owner. She banished Rhett Braddock from her mind yet again. What a jackass. And how she’d idolized him as a young girl. Disgusting.

  Her dad was seated in the tack room, at the corner desk that was always a chaos of papers and scrawled-upon envelopes and Post-it notes. Behind him, on the wall, looking completely out of place, was a large abstract painting done up in blacks and blues. But Grady had painted it himself and given it to Dad for Father’s Day one year, and Dad insisted on giving it a place of honor.

  Maybe it was the blue streaks next to Dad’s skin that made him look so odd.

  He was staring at the cement floor, pale under his farmer’s tan, his hands clasped loosely between his denim-clad knees. She’d never seen so much gray in his sandy hair, and the creases that radiated from both eyes had deepened.

  “Dad?”

  He raised his head and nodded at her, his hazel eyes bloodshot.

  “Dad, is something wrong?”

  He sighed, nodded, and cleared a bunch of feed and equipment catalogs off the folding metal chair next to his. “Siddown, Jules.”

  “O-kaaay.” She sank into the chair, narrowing her eyes on him.

  With a thunk, Dad dropped the stack of catalogs under his desk.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  He took a deep breath. “Well, baby doll, a number of things.”

  Baby doll. He’d called her that ever since she could remember. It was sweet, it was endearing, and yet it kept her infantilized. Kept her forever a toddler in his eyes.

  “First . . . I’m not well.”

  “What? What does that mean?” She searched his eyes for reassurance, and sure enough, he dredged some up for her in the form of a tired smile. It wasn’t convincing.

  “It means Doc found a lump in my neck . . . that sore throat wasn’t a cold. Doc’s thinking it’s a tumor in my thyroid . . .” His gaze stayed locked with hers, but his voice trailed off.

  “Are you talking about . . . ?” Cancer? Jules shook her head, refusing to allow the words into her ears or her mind.

  Dad coughed and looked down at his hands.

  “No. No, no, no . . . that can’t be right. You’re the healthiest guy I know. You’ve been active all your life. You don’t even have any vices! Who’s telling you this? Doc Hernandez? Maybe he’s wrong.”

  Dad nodded. “He’s not wrong, though we’re still figuring things out. Taking appointments, figuring out what stage it’s at so we can figure out how to handle it.” His voice caught, and for the first time that hoarseness he’d been battling for months had real meaning. “I’m real sorry, darlin’.” The anguish on his face was for her. Jules forced herself not to break as she watched him work hard to keep his composure. Oh, Dad, say you’re kidding me. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. Jules jumped to her feet. “Get a second opinion!”

  “I have, honey. And I’ll be heading down to MD Anderson next week.”

  The name hit her like a blow. MD Anderson: the cancer treatment center in Houston.

  “Does Mom know?” she managed, through a clogged throat.

  “She does.”

  “Since when?” Jules realized that her mother had been carefully avoiding her, and felt utterly betrayed.

  “Couple of weeks. I asked her to let me tell you.”

  Weeks? Jules tamped down utter panic and disbelief. “What about Grady? Does he know, too?”

  “Yes, honey. Same story.”

  “Why wouldn’t you tell us all together?” Jules tried to bend her mind around it. Her dad swallowed hard. He appeared to search for words that wouldn’t come.

  “How bad is it?” Jules asked. There’s more to this than he’s saying.

  “Well, like I said, we’re gonna get me some more tests and some more consults, you know . . .” Dad shifted uncomfortably. “But that’s not the whole of it.”

  Jules pressed her hand to her heart. “Tell me. Dad.” Tell me there is zero chance it’s terminal.

  “Jules. Honey, I’ve sold the stables—”

  “What?” Jules couldn’t even process the statement.

  “—but you don’t have to worry about a thing, all right? The deal is that you get to keep your job here. That way—”

  “What are you talking about? Sold the stables to whom?” Jules couldn’t stop her voice from rising and then cracking.

  “Braddock. Calm down, baby doll. Your job is safe. That is inked into the contract. You stay on as manager here, all right?”

  Braddock? He’d sold to Declan? Dad is sick with cancer and the stables are gone, sold to the Braddocks
? She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her entire life was turning upside down. “None of this is all right, Dad! None of this makes any sense at all! How is this even—”

  She stopped.

  Her dad was struggling with his emotions, his mouth a grim slash. “It gives me some peace to know that if things go south—I don’t expect that, but it’s all got me thinkin’—that you’ll be taken care of. Far’s I know, what I got—it’s completely treatable.”

  She got up and put her arms around him, forcing the ugly feelings of betrayal to the back of her mind. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—I’m more upset about your health than anything else.”

  He squeezed her tightly and stroked her hair. “I know, honey. I’m gonna be just fine, you hear? But I won’t be able to work round here like I used to. Not just because of this, but also because even though I’ve tried to ignore it, I just don’t have the stamina to run an operation like this anymore. Truth to tell, I haven’t been able to make ends meet for a while, now, and it’s only going to get worse while I’m taking care of my health. The doctor visits, the treatment, medication after—it’s expensive. But more than that, this is a wake-up call. Your mom and I are getting older and this isn’t going to be the only medical emergency we ever have. That is the hard, ugly truth. Your mom and I—we’re gonna have some real tough times ahead financially.”

  Jules’s bitterness grew. Her mother and brother—Really, Grady? How could you?—had known all of this while she’d gone blithely about her work, whistling while the blue Texas sky was falling in the west, along with the sun.

  They’d known that Dad was sick. They’d known that the business was in trouble. And they’d known that he was selling it out from under her without giving her a chance to manage it to profitability herself. If they’d given her the control she’d been asking for, maybe they’d have the money to easily pay for her dad’s treatments.

  And she had so many ideas! An indoor riding ring. More boarders. More lessons—they could take on another instructor for a percentage of the fees. She’d been talking to her dad about these concepts for the last two years . . . and he’d nodded and said he’d take this and that under advisement, or that he’d think on it. He’d flapped her away like a mosquito.

  This wasn’t just about her being the baby of the family. It was about her lack of a college degree. Because she lacked some piece of paper and a few hours in a classroom, they thought she was helpless to fend for herself. And that was just plain bullcrap.

  Get over yourself, Jules. This isn’t about you—it’s about Dad!

  She wondered, again, what kind of a daughter she was. To be resentful about the stables instead of being more freaked out about Dad’s condition. What was wrong with her?

  Grady would smirk and ask if she wanted a list or pictures of everything “off” about his little sister. The big jerk. How could he not have said anything about all of this? It broke the sibling code. He also knew how much her life revolved around the stables and the horses.

  She realized that he’d been avoiding her, too. She was going to kick his butt! She had a mind to go right down to the fire station and do it immediately.

  Then Jules realized she was lapsing again: thinking about everything but her father’s cancer. She took his hand, traced one of his weather-beaten cheeks with her other hand; brushing over the bristles that were now gray. She’d been fascinated with their texture as a child. His eyes, hazel like her own, watered, and he averted his gaze. He cleared his throat. “Love you, honey.”

  “I love you, too, Dad. So much.”

  “You all right?” he asked.

  No. Not by a long shot. But she didn’t say the words aloud. She gave him another hug, nodded that she was okay, and sprinted to the feed room to call her friend Mia, a nurse at Mercy Hospital. She needed to hear her voice, calm and soothing with just a bit of huskiness.

  Mia was with a patient, but called her back within five minutes. “Hey, Jules. What’s up?”

  “I . . .” Her throat clogged with tears. “Mia, look, I know how busy you are. But can I swing by? Just for a few?”

  “Of course,” Mia said without hesitation. “Come on over. Just have one of the nurses at the station page me if I’m not with them, okay?”

  * * *

  Our Lady of Mercy Hospital had seen better days, but Silverlake hadn’t yet started its planned renovation of the facility. It was a boring, blocky building, six stories high, with groaning elevators, uninspired artwork, and sickly green walls. Even floral arrangements delivered to the hospital seemed eager to check out and escape.

  Old Kingston Nash had paid for a wing of Mercy, back in the day, but he’d recently—and inexplicably, to most of the townsfolk—switched his charitable allegiance to the firehouse, of all things. Since he’d had a war going on with Silverlake Fire and Rescue for more than a decade, people wondered if he was in his right mind . . . but the old man was so crotchety that nobody had the nerve to ask him. The town council just thanked the good Lord that he’d stopped ranting at their meetings.

  Jules found Mia at the nurses’ station, inputting patient records into a computer. Her red hair was in a messy French braid, strands pulling loose everywhere. Her face was drawn, she had blue shadows under her eyes, and her freckles stood out in stark relief against her pale skin. She looked as if she hadn’t slept properly in weeks, and she was thinner than usual, too.

  “Mia?” Jules touched her shoulder. “You okay?” She’d been through an ugly divorce from her ex, Rob Bayes, recently . . . and Rob had left Silverlake, leaving her in debt, childless after too many heartbreaking attempts, and harboring a secret that Jules wasn’t allowed to share with a single soul.

  “Fine, why?” The faraway look in her friend’s eyes faded as she focused on Jules. “You, however, are not. What’s going on?”

  Jules cast her eyes toward the other nurses.

  “Yeah . . . come on.” Mia led her to an empty patient room, where they sat on a couple of hard guest chairs, and Jules couldn’t help spilling everything. “My dad . . . he looks so old and sad . . .”

  “Tumors are often highly treatable, hon. He’s probably going to be just fine.”

  “He looks exhausted—”

  “Totally normal, under the circumstances.”

  “—and he sold the property out from under me, and I’m so, so, so, angry . . . and that makes me feel so bad. Because obviously he wouldn’t have done that unless he felt that he had to . . . he says he just can’t keep up with it any longer . . . and I’ll still be manager . . . but I wanted to take over one day. I wanted it to stay in the family. I wanted it to be, well, mine . . . and—” A wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm her. “Oh, man, I do not feel good.”

  Her friend nodded and slipped an arm around her, squeezed her shoulder.

  “Mia, what is wrong with me?” Jules wailed. “How can I be so selfish; thinking about the stables and myself, and not my dad, during a time like this?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with you,” Mia said crisply. “You’re stressed. You’re in denial. It’s very common to think about everything but the elephant in the room. It’s okay.”

  “It is? I feel like a horrible, terrible, no-good person . . . a shallow, little . . . baby doll.” She spat out the term.

  “You are not a horrible, terrible, no-good person. You’re a very good person, Jules. You’re like the patron saint of animals in Silverlake,” Mia said soothingly.

  That’s when Jules realized that Mia hadn’t sounded all that surprised at the news. “Did you know? Before me?”

  Mia hesitated. “Jules, I do work at the hospital. There’s a grapevine. I’m sorry.”

  “And you didn’t tell me immediately?”

  “I couldn’t, Jules. I’m bound by patient confidentiality, HIPAA, all of it. You know that.”

  Jules struggled with a mixed bag of emotions. “I do kno
w,” she said after a long pause. “But I want to be mad at you. I want friendship to kick HIPAA’s butt. Do you get that?”

  “Yes,” Mia said. “I’ll understand if you’re mad. And I’m sorry.” She waited. Her rock. Her friend.

  “I don’t want to be mad at you. I love you. You’ve been my best friend since forever.”

  “I love you, too.”

  And that’s when Jules let out a long, anguished wail and burst into a storm of tears. “Is my dad going to be okay?”

  Chapter 3

  Once she’d recovered, Jules went back to the stables and checked the tack room, but Dad was gone. Grady’s painting reflected her mood: somber and bruised. She was staring at the desk that would now never really be hers when a bouquet the size of a sofa appeared in the doorway. And it apparently had legs of its own. The bouquet staggered toward her. It was a little alarming.

  “Where would you like these?” said a male teenage voice.

  She blinked at them. Roses, hyacinth, lilies, and an assortment of exotic blooms, most of which Jules couldn’t even name. Gorgeous greenery woven throughout. The scent of the flowers was so strong that it overwhelmed the powerful smells of the barn: old wood, saddle leather, sawdust, hay, horse hide, and animal by-product.

  “Are you sure those are for me?”

  “Yes, Jules. They’re for you.” The sofa-sized arrangement filled her entire desk as Sam, the youngest brother of Grady’s firehouse teammate Tommy, set it down.

  “Who could these be from?”

  “Read the card?” Sam suggested.

  She rescued her laptop from underneath the monster bouquet and set it in her chair before locating and opening the small white card from Petal Pushers. “‘Hello,’” she read. “‘I’m sorry. XO, Rhett.’”

  All the blood drained from her head and her knees went weak; she sat down, right on top of the computer she’d just dropped into her chair.

  “So?” Sam asked. “Who’re they from?” With Grady at the firehouse, Jules knew everyone on the squad almost as well as her own family. Tommy and his two younger brothers were carbon copies in looks, and it seemed that nosiness also ran in the family.