Timber Lake (The Snowy Range Series, #2)

by Nya Rawlyns

  It wasn’t like Paul to tip-toe around bad news, but with the stakes so ill-defined, who could blame him. Resigned, Michael said, “He’s gone, isn’t he.”

  Paul replied, “Time and space, son. Time and space.”

  Sinking back into the pillows, Michael’s thumb hovered briefly over the button that dispensed pain relief. Letting the device drop to the bed, he blinked away tears hiding behind the dam of his resolve and stared, sightless, at the ceiling.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Family Reunion

  Sonny had hoped for just his oldest sister Emily picking him up at the Philly airport. What he got at the carousel dispensing his beat-up luggage was a phalanx of Rydell women bearing down on him in a flying wedge that scattered travelers right and left. At the front was his mom and flanking her was his Aunt Martha, the indomitable House Representative whose name dropping had landed him in the wilderness in the first place.

  Aunt Martha never traveled light. Cameras and journalists sensing a feel-good story—this is our boy Seamus, the hero who rescued that poor man from that god-awful den of iniquity—crowded the periphery, waiting on his aunt’s say-so before shoving microphones down his throat.

  Resolute, he plastered an expression of relief and gratitude on his face to appease his mother and to give his aunt her much needed photo-op. Nudging him forward, Martha whispered in his ear, “You know what to do, hon. Nice sound bites for the six o’clock news.”

  His sister, Emily, shouldered a few of the news people aside to stand next to him, holding his hand in a show of family support. They’d all been trained well by their father’s legacy of public service, learning the value of image from the cradle forward. As the youngest, and the only male, it had often fallen to him to present the face of the Rydell clan in support of his aunt’s political aspirations.

  Mouthing platitudes—I was just glad to have been there, anyone would have done the same, terrible tragedy, the animals, the real hero was Michael Brooks who put his life on the line to save innocents... blah blah blah—Sonny waited for the feeding frenzy to die down, thanked the news hounds for their interest, and allowed his sister to lead him toward the exit and their van waiting at the curb.

  As he settled next to Emily, she smiled in understanding and said, “Could have been worse, baby bro. You didn’t give auntie enough warning to muster her usual over-the-top media event.”

  “Where is Martha, anyway?”

  “She’s got a thing in Trenton tomorrow so she’s headed there.” Emily patted his hand. “Don’t worry, kiddo, she’ll swing by sometime tomorrow evening to have a word. That’ll give you time to prepare.”

  Sonny swallowed his dismay and yelped, “Prepare? Prepare for what?”

  “Um, she wasn’t real forthcoming on that, but don’t be surprised if she’s on about your future again.”

  There was no chance to pump his sister for more information as the rest of his family piled into the van. Emily eased through the gap to the passenger side, mumbling to no one in particular, “Hope everybody’s insurance is up-to-date.”

  Sonny’s mother slid into the space Emily vacated and interjected, “Now dear, give the child a break. She’s eighteen, old enough to handle a little rush hour traffic.” She turned to Sonny and smirked. “I recall when you went solo, Seamus. I do believe we all survived quite well, didn’t we?”

  The girl was Emily’s oldest, with a freshly minted driver’s license in her purse. Sonny hoped the kid was up to the challenge. He smiled, remembering that trip from Newark Liberty International and the drive from hell down the Garden State Parkway with the Big Apple’s residents dumping out of the city in their usual Friday evening jailbreak for the shore. He’d been all of two weeks past his eighteenth birthday. And scared shitless. Not that he ever let on.

  That was more than ten years ago. Sonny sighed at how time passed so quickly, yet dragged when you were running like hell away from the man who’d taken the fall for him in a misguided attempt to protect him from exactly what was happening now.

  Michael had seen what he could not—the publicity, with its ripple of concentric rings of consequences impacting not just him, but his family and their reputations, along with his aunt’s political career and eye toward a Senate seat in the near future. By lifting the mantle of responsibility off his shoulders, Michael had done something so selfless that it rocked Sonny’s world.

  What he realized now was he’d been foolhardy and selfish, obstinate and immature. By stomping off in a snit, he’d drama queened himself into a hole that no manner of sorry was ever going to extricate him from. What he should have done was argue his case and convinced Michael that standing together, with him taking the responsibility for shooting that madman, was not just the legal solution, but the ethical one as well.

  “We’re home, dear.” Michael’s mother smoothed his unruly hair off his forehead and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  Sonny had fallen into a half-sleep of nightmares and subconscious problem solving. For now, the nightmares seemed to be winning. At his mother’s insistence he staggered up to his old room and collapsed on the bed, not even bothering to kick his running shoes off.

  Their house was a vintage Cape May Victorian with wrap-around porch and high-ceilinged rooms. His bedroom suite was on the third floor, a converted attic space that had been his haven from his female relatives for nearly twenty years. From his perch in a bay window, he could look out onto the canal and the pleasure boats coming in from the Delaware Bay just to the south. He’d missed this life, despite having chosen a separate course when he’d gone west to the University of Wyoming so many years ago.

  Their proximity to the wildlife refuge had been the spark that steered him from pursuing his mother’s dream of his attending Julliard to his own plans to study wildlife management. He’d won that war, but there had been quid pro quos imposed. It had been no mean feat to plea-bargain for a different career path. If he had known then what he knew now, he wondered if he’d have been so anxious to follow through on that jail break toward independence. His current reality was him ending up in a job with bureaucratic overtones ripe with the potential to fulfill the family’s legacy of service. At the time, he’d probably been the only one of the lot who hadn’t recognized that his Aunt Martha had engineered, oh his behalf, a circuitous path toward a political future.

  That future would have been reduced to dust had Michael not preemptively stepped in and made him the hero rescuer instead of the one who shot the torturer dead in his tracks. Idly, Sonny wondered about the proper term for what he’d done. Was it murder in some degree or justifiable homicide?

  Did it really matter? Dead was dead, and he got to spend the rest of his life knowing he’d done the right thing by taking away a man’s life. How did you reconcile with an act so heinous it reduced you to the level of the man torturing—and then ultimately killing—someone you loved?

  Michael realized it was going to mess with his head, coming to terms with the deed and the moral ambiguity surrounding it. His warden had already visited that conundrum when he’d shot the man and was still struggling to come to terms with it.

  That night, wrapping himself around Michael’s stocky frame in Timber Lake, the steam rising like a semi-sheer curtain all around them, that night had shown him a man breaking from the inside out because he’d been too late to save the innocent and the helpless. He’d been a man who understood he was the only one standing between a psychopath and a world unaware of his existence, yet completely at the mercy of his madness.

  That Michael should have been the next one to suffer at the hands of that lunatic was incomprehensible. His guilt, such as it was, rested on his not being able to protect Michael. If he hadn’t fallen asleep, if he hadn’t gotten into a snit over Michael’s arrogance in going off alone when he already knew the risks, or if he’d simply overturned his need to complete his experiment in favor of following Michael into the wilderness...

  Change any one of those and Michael might never hav
e been captured. They’d have gone back to civilization and reported the man’s whereabouts. Someone else would have taken on the responsibility for seeing justice exacted for the man’s crimes. And Michael would be whole, in mind and body.

  Sonny stared at the ceiling, content to mull over the grey, murky areas delineating right and wrong because it was easier to do that than to look at the fact he’d still be here, in his old room, contemplating his future no matter what the outcome at Timber Lake had been.

  In spite of his feelings for Michael, he had no legitimate reason to stay in Wyoming. Loving the man wasn’t nearly enough, was it? He still needed to work. His family was here, his responsibilities were here, his future was here and in Washington. Logic and reason had always dictated his choices. Reciting that mantra made for a convenient smoke screen, hiding his alienation from the pressures of performing to his family’s expectations while balancing on a high wire of expediency.

  Maybe he was a natural politician, after all. All he had to do was hunker down in an office on Independence Avenue, play his cards right and move up the ladder until he was old enough to pick up the mantle of his aunt and run for a seat in Congress. He would establish a platform of environmental responsibility and a network of like-minded caretakers, leaving behind him his own legacy of public service.

  Martha, with her eye to expediency, had conveniently groomed him for two eventualities: her dream of his following in her footsteps, or finding his own way through the bureaucratic maze to leave his mark on the nation’s policies via edicts and good management practices.

  Either path carried its own risks and rewards. But, bottom line, one thing had always been a given—he would do it alone, with no one to share his life and his bed.

  Wrapping his arms behind his head, Sonny settled in for another sleepless night.

  ****

  “Jesus, bro. Was that really necessary?” Emily had a bowl of popcorn on her stomach, her legs propped across Sonny’s thighs as they shared the loveseat in the basement rec room.

  Sonny clicked the sound down on the TV and frowned into his third whiskey of the evening. Though he seldom drank, after his marathon intervention by his mom and auntie meddler extraordinaire, he was pretty sure no one would fault him for unleashing his inner lush.

  “Don’t like being blindsided, Em.”

  “They mean well, hon.” She set the popcorn bowl on the coffee table and groaned as she sat up. “Don’t get old, Seamus me boyo, you won’t like it.”

  Feeling surly and out of sorts, Sonny slurred, “Bout time ssshit’s hit the fan. Nough’s enough.”

  Emily ignored the whine and continued to press her point. “Tell me again, kiddo. Exactly what’s so wrong with a helping hand? Martha’s got the ear of people in a position to do you a solid.” Sonny snickered at his forty-year old sister adopting the vernacular of her eighteen year old daughter. “It’s not funny. Besides, it’s the way it’s done in D.C. Always has been.”

  “Need to earn my way, Sis. Not have it handed to me because somebody thinks it’d be cool to have a fucking hero to trot out for photo shoots and sound bites.” He tossed back the liquor and eased off the couch, still arguing. “How many times in my life have I said it, huh? How many? It’s my life. My rules.”

  Emily popped a handful of popcorn into her mouth and chewed noisily while Sonny refilled his tumbler nearly to the brim. Instead of joining his sister on the couch, he slid to the floor and stretched his long legs under the coffee table, resting his head on her knee.

  A manicured hand massaged his scalp as he sipped the whiskey, following the burn in a throat raw from talking, then pleading and eventually shouting in an effort to make his case. His mother had banished him from polite company and then escorted his aunt to the limo waiting to take her back to Washington.

  The echoes of Aunt Martha assuring his mother it was just a phase, that the unfortunate incident had temporarily unhinged him, that maybe some counseling... the words registered as the final insult. In their eyes he was still a baby, Seamus Rydell, the youngest and only boy. Not a man, never a man. Certainly not one who deserved to find his own path, to set his own goals, to live his life as he saw fit.

  Sonny wished his grandfather was here. Though Gramps might agree with his Aunt about his prospects in Washington, he’d also been the sole voice of support when Sonny had campaigned to go to school in Wyoming. Of all of them, he’d listen and assess Sonny’s argument, instead of treating it like some juvenile hissy fit. He’d understand that a man had to make his own mistakes, not that turning down his aunt’s offer-he-couldn’t-refuse being a mistake in Sonny’s book.

  Emily clicked the TV off and took the tumbler out of Sonny’s hand, setting it on the coffee table. She spoke softly enough, he had to curl his body around to face her. “Sweety, you know I’m in your corner. I want to help you all I can.” The fine lines around her eyes and mouth seemed more pronounced as worry etched her features. “There’s something you aren’t telling me, Seamus.” She held up a finger to stem his denial. “Don’t lie to me. You know it never works. I need to know. What really happened out there?”

  That was the question he’d dreaded for the last two weeks. He’d danced around the probing questions and sly innuendo he wasn’t being forthcoming with all the juicy details. His family and the media had forced him to re-invent his story a dozen times, each one leading him in a slightly different direction until he hit a brick wall of continuity holes that were becoming impossible to rectify.

  Sonny mumbled, “I told you...”

  “Yes, you did. And now I’m waiting for you to tell me the truth.”

  “You don’t want to know the truth.”

  Em cradled his face, tilting his head so he had to gaze into eyes the same golden shade as his own. If someone photoshopped away twelve or fifteen years, he and his sister would look like twins. She said, “Then tell me about Michael Brooks.”

  “Michael?” Sonny shrugged, surprised at her interest. “There’s nothing to tell. He was assigned as my guide. I already told you how he got involved with the trapper. What else do you want to know?”

  With a small smile deepening the lines around her mouth, Emily said, “How about you tell me when you knew you were in love with him.”

  Bolting upright, Sonny sputtered, “Wait... what the hell are you talking about? I’m not...”

  Emily put a finger on Sonny’s mouth and hushed him with, “You are. Ass over teacups, kiddo. The others might not see it, but I do. Clear as day.” She chuckled, the sound warm and inviting, as if in her care he could entrust her with his feelings, at least about Michael.

  As much as he loved his sister, he wasn’t convinced it was safe enough for him to admit to a truth so personal, so he blurted, “But how?”

  “The look that comes over you when you mention his name. How you jump when the phone rings, like you’re expecting a call. How you pinch your face to hide the disappointment when it’s not for you.” Emily shook her head in exasperation. “You’ve been mooning around here ever since you got home. Sleeping away the days, pacing your bedroom at night.” She pursed her lips and gave him the look. “Mom’s been worried about you. So am I.”

  “It doesn’t matter how I feel, Em. His life is there, mine’s here.”

  “Oh really. Seems to me you made it pretty clear this evening that you were carving your own fate, making your own choices, and...” she smirked. “...doing it your own fucking way.”

  Sonny blushed crimson, the heat spreading up his neck to his ears. “Um, I guess I need to apologize to Mom and Martha.” He grimaced with embarrassment. “I was, uh, distraught.”

  Distraught. He’d used that term when teasing Michael on their way back to camp. Threatening him with consequences he wouldn’t regret if the man kept aggravating him. The kind of consequences that had both of them howling at the canopy of spruce and the blanket of stars, their chorus of passion competing with the yowls of coyotes and the high-pitched whine of wind skipping across the tr
eetops.

  “Baby? Hon, come on, tell me...”

  He didn’t remember collapsing into a ball, knees to gut, his arms wrapped around his head as he rocked in the agony of knowing he’d never again experience the glory of Michael’s caress, or put up with his incessant teasing. How could he go through life never sharing his warden’s commitment to being champion to those in his care? What had possessed him to turn his back on a man who put his life on the line to protect a selfish brat unwilling to see past his own ego?

  The sobs he shut down, because he was unworthy of that kind of release. He needed to hold it close, not let it out for the world to see. The last thing he needed was his sister’s sympathy or pity. On the balance sheet of epic fails, he had more than enough recriminations to last a lifetime.

  Emily peeled his arms away, securing them against his chest with her own. She whispered in his ear, “I’m not telling you this as your sister, or as a mother. I’m saying this as your best friend, Seamus. And as a wife. Love doesn’t come around often. When it does, you need to grab hold and not let go.”

  Choking back the sobs, Sonny said, “I already told you, it’s too late.”

  “That may be. But let me ask you something. Does this Michael Brooks feel the same way?”

  He took a possible murder rap for me. “I don’t know.” Liar.

  Squeezing his chest until he nearly swooned, his sister sternly barked, “Oh, I think you do, Seamus Rydell. When are you going to grow up and realize that it’s time to put your rules and woe-is-me attitude to rest? You want a life? I think you already have it, but you’re too afraid to jump in the deep end.”

  Sonny objected, “There’s alligators in the deep end.”