I frowned. “I guess. But you’re not allowed to speak ill of the dead. It’s disrespectful.”
He was silent for a moment. “How about if I wait until after the funeral?”
I couldn’t help cheering up a little, even on top of the heavy loss in my heart. “Silly. Campervans don’t get funerals. They go to the scrapyard. It’s like when dogs go to the farm upstate. Wait... did your dogs go to the city when you were a kid, since you already live on a farm?”
“I didn’t always live on a farm.”
That arrested my train of thought. I’d never asked Barrett a single thing about his past. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because I didn’t like to pry. The questions I hated answering the most were to do with my origins, and I guess I didn’t like to pressure other people in that regard, either.
“Do you prefer it, here?” I asked, instead of asking about his history.
“It’s home, now. I guess I never really loved the dust bowl I grew up in.”
“What was it like?”
“We had a highway and a church. There weren’t many houses. It wasn’t so much a small town as a road marker in New Mexico. I go back every couple of years to see my parents. I leave again as soon as I can.”
“What made you stay here?”
“I like cattle. They’re easy and they give my life meaning. I used to feel empty. Hollowed-out inside. Since I came here, I feel like there’s a purpose. Y’know?”
I knew. The emptiness had urged me back on the road a thousand times. Lemon Tree Ranch radiated soul-nourishment in ways I couldn’t even describe.
“I felt it, too,” I whispered, afraid of bringing it up because I’d thrown it all away. I was so adrift without my van. Now, I lived in a new and scary world full of uncertainty and I couldn’t even use the bathroom by myself, let alone drive away if I wanted to.
“Did it scare you?”
His question surprised me. It was like he could see into my soul. I nodded.
“There’s been nothing in my heart for so long. I’d convinced myself I liked it that way. Now suddenly there’s something else trying to take root inside me. And I was afraid, because I liked it. If it got taken away, I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”
“So you left, before you could get hurt.” He wasn’t asking.
“...I guess.” This was a hard conversation. I had to look inside myself at things I’d never seen before. “Everything I thought I had is gone.” My voice was almost a whisper.
Barrett shook his head. “Everything you ever had is right in front of you.”
I glanced up at him, not entirely sure I’d understood him right.
“Looks like you’re staying, now,” he remarked, his eyes flicking over the cast my leg was in.
“If you want me to go, I’m sure I could find—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence, young lady. We both know you’ve got no one and nowhere to go.”
I closed my mouth.
“When did you last talk to your parents?” he asked.
I stared at the bedsheet for the longest time before saying anything.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“My dad died when I was seventeen. A month later, my mom emptied my bank account and took off without saying goodbye. No one came to my graduation, and I don’t think anyone would come to my funeral.”
He was silent for almost a minute. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t remember the last time I’d told anyone about my parents. I hated the way it made me feel, like I owed the universe an explanation about why I tried to avoid going to stores or seeing the Internet on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day—holidays designed by a sadist to make people like me feel depressed, I’d long-since decided.
“You want a book to read?” Barrett asked suddenly.
I tried to read his face and figure out why he was changing the subject. His expression was the same as a moment ago.
“I can’t turn the pages.” I looked down at my busted arm.
“Well, crap. I’ll just have to read to you.”
He disappeared again and I tried not to think about the last time I’d seen my mom, the night before she ran out. She’d changed a lot since my dad died. Seemed to forget I existed.
Barrett came back and my thoughts derailed.
“I’ll read this one. It’s about a dog.” He held it up and I smiled. It was Call of the Wild.
“Isn’t that a kids’ book?”
He shrugged like it was irrelevant. “Who cares? It’s a good story.”
He began reading and I lost myself in the story he told and the sound of his gruff voice as he spoke.
Harper
“You have a visitor.” Barrett’s surprised tone mirrored how I felt. I looked up from the fiftieth home renovation show I’d seen that week and saw Alana in the doorway to my room. I hadn’t really seen much of her since I’d been here, presumably because she was busy getting ready to have a baby.
“Hey, it’s the belated welcome wagon,” Alana said, holding out a box of cookies. Barrett had the good sense to make an excuse and leave.
“Hi. Sorry, the bed’s a bit messy. That chair’s okay, though.” I pointed to where Barrett often perched.
“Thanks. Standing... not happening at the moment.” She eased herself into the chair and placed the cookies on the nightstand.
I eyed her belly. It seemed to extend an impossible amount. I’d never really been around pregnant women, before, and I wasn’t sure what the right thing to say was.
“It’s not contagious,” she remarked, breaking the tension, and we both giggled.
“Sorry. Last pregnant person I saw was in high school. She had to leave before she was as big as you. Pregnant. I meant pregnant. You’re not fat.” Oh, good job, Harper, my brain cheered sarcastically.
“Wouldn’t matter if I was. I was never that worried about my weight, but pregnancy has this strange way of making me stop worrying about what I look like. As long as the baby’s fine, I honestly don’t care if I’m a size twenty by the time I give birth. And I might be. I ate five hamburgers today and I’m still hungry.”
I never really thought about my weight much, but I knew a lot of other women found it a very difficult topic. It was another way I had a hard time relating to other people.
“How long do you have left?” I was sort of curious.
“I’m thirty weeks.” From my completely blank stare she added, “That means I have two and a half months before the baby comes. Give or take. They don’t follow schedules.”
“What if it doesn’t come out?”
“Don’t worry me! Lawson’s doing enough of that!”
“Sorry. It’s both of yours first baby, right?” I guessed that had to be nerve-wracking.
Alana paused for a moment, as if the question made her uncomfortable.
“Are you staying?” she asked, instead of answering me.
Now it was my turn to hesitate. “I don’t know. It depends if Barrett still wants me around.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Her brows crinkled in confusion.
“I screwed up. Real bad. Not sure he’s ever gonna trust me again.”
“I doubt that. I’ve never seen him so devoted to someone else, before.”
I looked up at her in surprise. “He’s not usually like this?”
“Not that I’ve seen. Mind you, I’ve only been here a couple months.”
I gazed at the cookies. “Are those really for me?”
She nodded.
“Could you open them, please?” I looked down at my useless arm in a cast.
“Sure.” She unfastened the packet and handed me a cookie. “I see you’ve got the same dross to watch that I have.” She made a face at the renovation show.
“I didn’t think they were too awful... I just wish they’d put something different on throughout the day. Words like “kitchen peninsula” are starting to filter into my brain and I don’t like it.”
Alana laughed and took a cookie.
“That’s the main downside of being on a ranch when you’re not very mobile. The daytime TV really sucks.”
I nodded in agreement. “Maybe we should start a book club.” I didn’t really read books, though, and even if I did, I doubted we would share the same tastes.
“Painting club would be more up my street,” she replied, and a distant expression crossed her face.
“You paint?” I was surprised.
“I hope so. I majored in fine art at Seattle.”
The surprises just kept coming. “I never really figured out how to do art,” I replied, feeling even more useless than ever.
“I could teach you,” she offered.
“When my arm’s healed, I might take you up on that.”
She smiled and nodded. “I promise it’s nothing like high school. I live in a judgement-free zone.”
“I feel better already.”
Barrett
I watched over Harper like a guardian angel. Clay and Lawson took care of the cattle for me. It made them busier than usual, but I don’t think they minded too much because it was obvious to everyone that my thoughts were only on Harper at the moment.
During the days, I read to her, brought her food, and I brushed her hair to keep it free of tangles. She couldn’t even use the bathroom by herself so I had to help her there, too. I found I didn’t mind. I wanted to take care of her.
At night, I watched her sleep until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, then I went back to my own room and crashed on the bed until it was time to see her again.
It took four weeks before we took her back to the hospital and they said her arm was healed. Her cast came off. She still couldn’t walk, and her leg was going to take a while longer to get better, but at least she could use both her hands, now.
“I have a surprise for you,” I told her, when we got back to the ranch that afternoon.
“Is it a bacon sandwich?” she asked, and I wasn’t sure if she was hopeful or teasing. Maybe I’d fed her a lot of sandwiches, but they were easy for her to eat one-handed and it was a fact that bacon made everything better.
“No. Come see.” I lifted her into the house, and took her into the living room.
“A wheelchair!”
“Now your arm is healed, you can turn the wheels, so I thought it’d give you a bit more independence than being in bed all the time.”
She threw her arms around me and hugged me tight.
“Thank you!”
“Not sure what to do about the stairs. I guess I’ll have to carry you up them still.”
I put her in the wheelchair and watched her getting used to moving it, thinking that in a few days, she would be hell on wheels, going everywhere and doing everything.
Harper
About a week after Barrett got me the wheelchair, I was strong enough to go out and about on the ranch. He’d started doing his usual jobs with the cattle again, so I’d had plenty of time by myself to practice moving. It was hard—I didn’t have bulging biceps to help and the wheelchair moved so slowly. My hands got tired easily, and it was especially hard on my recently-broken arm, which I was afraid of putting too much strain on.
I wheeled out and found one of the cows—steers? Heifers? I still wasn’t sure how to tell the difference—had gotten loose. It was heading down the driveway. I went off to tell Barrett. He was doing something with the cattle, as usual, and it took me two attempts to get the wheelchair over the slight concrete lip between the farmyard and the barn’s doorway.
“Hey!” I yelled from across the cattle shed when I finally got inside. “Barrett!”
Moving at a crawl, I tried to cross the building without running over any cow patties. It was fatal in a wheelchair, because of how close my hands were to the tires.
“Barrett!” I yelled again. He turned and saw me.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he began, but I didn’t let him finish.
“One of your cows is walking toward the highway.”
He swore, grabbed the handles of my chair and wheeled me straight out into the farmyard, before he ran to his truck. Feeling like a canoe in a world full of motorboats, I got out of the way and watched him hurry after the loose animal.
Once she was caught and brought back, he, Clay and Lawson all congregated around my wheelchair and began talking.
“Another fence cut?” Lawson groaned.
“When are they going to show themselves?” Clay demanded. “Usually a realtor would approach us by now.”
“Maybe it’s not a realtor,” Barrett said quietly.
The other two looked at him.
“You think she came here?” Lawson sounded surprised by whatever Barrett was hinting at.
“C’mon! When did you last see her?” Clay waved a hand dismissively.
“In court, the day of our anniversary.”
Wait... this was sounding a lot like...
“You’re married?” I stared at Barrett. I couldn’t believe it.
“Sweetheart, I think you’d better go inside,” Clay said, and someone tried to move my wheelchair so I wrenched the brakes on. I wasn’t going to be excluded so easily.
Barrett was married. Shit. This was unbelievable.
“I want an explanation.” I felt the fire in my chest before it burst out of my mouth. Three men stood in very awkward silence.
“I gotta see Jake about a horse.” Clay walked off.
“Me too.” Lawson disappeared into Clay’s house as well, and I was left alone with Barrett.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” I snapped. “Did you spend all this time and effort guilt-tripping me into staying here so you could manipulate me with no intention of committing to anything? Was it all just a big joke to you? Make me want to stay, make me dependent on you, so you could throw me away for the wife I didn’t know you had?”
He looked sad.
“That wasn’t my intention. My wife and I... we’re almost divorced.”
“I’ve heard that before. How’s about you try dating me when you’re actually divorced and we’ll take it from there?”
“She’s not cooperating.”
I actually laughed out loud. This was such crap. I wanted to go to bed and hide under the covers so he couldn’t see me cry, but I couldn’t go upstairs by myself and anyway, I didn’t want to be inside his house right now, pretending everything was fine between us when it wasn’t. If I could walk, if I had a vehicle, I’d be driving to California about now.
“Will you let me explain?” His voice had taken on an exasperated tone that suggested he had a good answer.
“I’m waiting.” I tapped my fingers against the armrests of my wheelchair.
“I met her at high school.”
“Good for you.”
“We got married when we were both eighteen. We were young and we didn’t know there was more to the world than our little corner of New Mexico. When we were twenty-one, she got into drugs. Made friends with some real bad people. She would disappear for weeks on end and come back asking for money. Eventually, I got tired of it. I told her, the next time she left, I wouldn’t be there waiting for her. The very next day, she’d gone again. It broke my heart to realize she cared more about drugs than she did about me. So I packed my bags and answered a “Help Wanted” ad at Lemon Tree Ranch. Been here ever since. We’ve been separated for years. I keep trying to get her to sign the papers but she wants a big settlement.”
“And she knows where you are?”
“Yeah; I had to put my address on the forms I filed at the courthouse.”
“So where is she now?”
“My honest opinion? She’s probably found a sugar daddy who can get her drugs.”
That whole explanation was heavy. And not what I had expected him to say at all.
“Can you prove any of this?” I hated being so suspicious but this was important and I needed reassurance. Anyway, it had come out of nowhere and I was wrong-footed.
“Come inside.” He didn’t try to push my wheelcha
ir—didn’t try to control me, which made me feel better.
I followed him into his house. He went to a shelf in the living room and pulled down a plastic box.
“Here.”
He put the box down on the floor beside me and I pulled the lid off. Inside, there was an old envelope, coarse to touch. I opened it and took out a photograph with a letter stapled to it. A surge of bile rose up as I realized I was looking at Barrett’s wife.
“Read the letter,” he urged me.
Dear Barrett,
I know you’re still angry with me. I’ve heard “on the grapevine” that you’ve got a good job in Arizona, now. Let’s make up. Let me be the wife I should have been, this whole time.
I have only just found out that the last time I saw you, my actions upset you. I am sorry, and I didn’t mean for you to get upset like that. You always were sensitive and I should have been more careful about your delicate mental state. I had to leave you because my mother got sick and urgently needed my help. When I was through taking care of her, you had already gone.
I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and honor our marriage vows. Let me know when I can move back in with you. My car needs repairs so I’ll need a little money to make the journey. A couple of thousand dollars ought to be enough. Send it as cash in a plain envelope so I can use it straight away and get to you faster.
With Love Always,
Your Wife.
“It says she was taking care of her sick mother,” I said, not commenting on the fact the rest of the letter was clearly the work of someone who needed a lot of help.
“Her mother’s been dead for twenty years.”
“Oh. Wow. So does she really believe this crap or is she just a manipulative narcissist?”
“Probably a little of both. Underneath everything, she’s an addict in denial.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I believed him, but I didn’t understand his need to keep this from me.
“It cuts me up to think about her. I don’t love her anymore, but she was a part of my past and that tie can’t be severed painlessly. You won’t want to hear it, but she was beautiful. Threw her whole life away for drugs.”
“That’s why she wanted cash, isn’t it?” I re-read the last paragraph of her letter.
Make Me Stay (Arizona Heat Book 2) Page 8
