Long Road Home

by JoAnn Ross

  “No.” A cattle truck, loaded with fifty thousand pounds of beef on the hoof, roared past between them in the other lane. “But at least we can talk in quiet.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Fine.” Austin pulled off the road onto the gravel shoulder. “I’ll talk and you can listen.”

  “And if I don’t want to?”

  “You can always cover your ears.”

  Sophie tilted her head. “That reminds me of something Mom would’ve said.”

  “I know.” Austin managed a smile. “She was a lot better at it than I am.”

  Heaving a huge sigh, Sophie trudged across the road and climbed up into the passenger’s seat. When Austin gave her a pointed look, she scowled back but fastened her seat belt.

  Neither spoke as they drove past the Bar M, headed toward the river. There was a small, grassy park on the bank, with picnic tables, a drinking fountain with icy water from the spring right beneath it, and horseshoe pits. She pulled into the empty parking lot and cut the engine. Then rolled down the windows and opened the moonroof, allowing the tangy scent of pine and the rushing sound of the river into the truck.

  “I know no one will ever be able to replace your mom,” she said carefully. The sun was lowering. One wrong word and Sophie could bolt, possibly getting lost and, even worse, be forced to spend the night out here in the woods alone.

  “Duh,” Sophie muttered, staring straight ahead.

  “But Rachel, Mitzi, Winema, and I are going to do our best. Just like Sawyer, Cooper, Ryan, Dan, and my dad are going to try to help fill in for your dad.”

  “It won’t be the same.”

  “No. It won’t. Winema is wonderful and I’ve always loved her as much as I would a mom. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still miss my mother. Less as I’ve gotten older, but when I was Jack’s and even your age, I thought about her every day. And missed her.”

  Sophie turned to look at Austin. “Did you hope she’d come back?”

  “Every day for years.” Which was something she’d never told her dad. And had even stopped mentioning to Sawyer when she’d been Sophie’s age. “Sometimes, while I’m out working with a horse in the corral, or baking for the bookstore or the New Chance, I’ll wonder if maybe this will be the day she decides to check in and see how I turned out.” And hadn’t so much of what Austin had done all these years been about trying to prove to an absent mother than she’d grown up to be worth keeping?

  “You could go see her.”

  Austin had often thought of that. Too many times to count. “She knows where I am,” she said mildly. “If she wanted to see me, I suspect she’d have come by now.”

  “Maybe,” Sophie allowed. “Maybe she feels guilty and doesn’t know how to come back home.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too.” Had Sophie always been wiser than what Austin would have expected a twelve-year-old to be? Or was she special? Of course she was. She was Heather’s daughter. How could she not be exceptional?

  “Why does shit happen?”

  The pain in the question tore ragged strips off Austin’s already broken heart. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “Do you think it’s like God’s plan?”

  “No.” Austin had thought about that. “I think it’s more random than that. I don’t believe God would take your parents.”

  “I saw a movie where these kids’ parents were killed in a plane crash on Christmas Eve, and the grandmother told them that the mom and dad died because God wanted them in heaven with him.”

  “No one has the answers, but that sounds pretty selfish of God to me.”

  “Yeah.” Her shoulders slumped. “That’s what I thought.” She picked at a hangnail. “Then I wondered if it was my fault.”

  “Oh, honey.” When Austin reached out to her, the girl pulled away, back against the door, away from comfort. Perhaps because she didn’t think she deserved it? “Of course you’re in no way responsible.”

  “I got mad because Mom wouldn’t let me spend the weekend they were in Ashland with Madison Graham instead of at Cooper and Rachel’s.”

  “She didn’t tell me about that.”

  “We had a fight. The Grahams were going to be away at some sort of business conference that weekend, and Mom didn’t trust me enough to let me sleep over without ‘parental supervision.’” She made air quotes with her fingers.

  “I doubt she was worried about your behavior,” Austin treaded carefully, wishing she’d had advance warning of the death and could have at least gotten some advice from that therapist Cooper knew.

  “But things happen. I was at a party in the eighth grade when Karyn Morse’s parents were out of town. Of course, I didn’t tell Winema or Dad, and neither of them thought to ask if the party would be supervised. But they found out when some high school guys showed up at the house and got wild enough the Morses’ neighbors called the police. You can imagine how horrible it was to have Cooper’s father, who was sheriff at the time, call my dad to pick me up at the jail.”

  “Wow.” Finally, something she’d said that impressed the tween. But did it have to be her hour-long stint as a jailbird? A stint that could have been shorter, but Buck had decided to let her stew for a while to teach her a lesson. It had worked.

  “Yeah. Wow,” Austin repeated. “I was grounded for two weeks. During the summer.”

  “I told my mom I hated her.”

  “I suspect everyone tells their mom or dad that. I did.” And had wondered for years if that had been the reason her mother had left. Fortunately, one autumn afternoon while baking apple pies with Sawyer’s mom, she’d shared that worry. Mrs. Murphy had assured her that her mother’s leaving had nothing to do with her. “Not everyone is cut out for ranch life, dear,” she’d said mildly. “But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love you.” She’d reached over and brushed some flour off Austin’s cheek with what had felt like a mother’s tender touch. “But your father, Winema, Mr. Murphy, and I certainly do.” Remembering that frozen-in-time moment had Austin hoping that she could be half the surrogate mom Sawyer’s mother, whom they’d lost way too soon, had been to her.

  Sophie went back to picking at the hangnail again. “And I said I wished she weren’t my mom.” When she lifted her face, tears began trailing down pale cheeks. “So, maybe God punished me by taking her away.”

  “Oh, no.” This time Austin wasn’t about to let her back away. She scooted over on the bench seat and took Sophie in her arms, holding her tight to try to calm the tremors. “It was an accident, darling. A horrible, terrible accident. And all any of us can do, what your mom and dad would want us to do, is to try our best to move on and find a way to be happy again. Because that’s all Heather ever wanted for you. From the moment she knew she was pregnant.”

  “It’s hard.”

  “Yes, it is. Horribly hard.”

  “Maybe Mom would want me to be happy, but I don’t want to. It doesn’t feel right to even think about being happy when she and Dad are dead. I want to be mad.” She pulled away again and wrapped her arms around herself, as if trying to hold her tumultuous feelings in. “Because if I’m mad, then I won’t be so sad I start crying and, like you said, never stop.”

  The tears were flowing again and her nose had started running. Unfortunately, Austin had left the house without her purse. Which also meant that she was driving without a license. Which was the least of her problems. Especially since she had an in with the sheriff.

  “But I know she doesn’t want me to be angry and mean to Jack, and just in case she’s watching, I don’t want her to feel bad.”

  Austin was madly trying to think of what to say to that when Sophie said, “So, I guess maybe I could try not to be so mad. But.” She lifted her chin in a determined gesture so much like her mother’s Austin had to fight back waterworks. “We are not going to let Jack put Dad in a zombie suit just so he has something to laugh about.”

  “Maybe you can play the Halloween video at the kids’ funera
l.” Heather had dressed totally out of character as Cruella de Vil in a black-and-white wig, long red gloves, and a faux fur Dalmatian coat that she had, of course, made herself.

  “That’s another thing. Do I have to do that stupid kids’ funeral? I’m not a kid. I’m almost thirteen.”

  Another important milestone Heather would miss. “No, you’re not a child. But your brother is, and I’m pretty sure Jack will feel a lot better if you’re there with him.”

  “I can sure see why you and Mom were best friends,” Sophie huffed. “Because she was just as good at playing the guilt card.”

  Austin surprised herself by laughing at that. “We can’t help it,” she said. “We’re Catholic. It’s probably in the genes.”

  Although Sophie didn’t laugh, her lips did move just a bit at the corners. And she’d gotten some color back. And that, Austin figured, as she started the engine and headed back to the ranch, was a start.

  22

  ALONG WITH COMING over to keep Jack occupied, Dan had brought along a hand who’d taken care of feeding the horses that evening. When he’d assured Austin that all the day-to-day ranch work would be taken care of by his crew until everyone’s life settled down, she nearly burst into exhausted, grateful tears.

  This was one very strong part of why she’d never wanted to leave River’s Bend. It was a strong, interlinked community where not only did everyone know their neighbors, along with celebrating the happy events, they looked out for one another during the hard times. Which inevitably came.

  After a comfort-food dinner of stewed chicken and noodles Winema had cooked, Sawyer and Austin drove the children back to Cooper and Rachel’s house. The seemingly never-ending day had worn everyone out. Jack had fallen asleep the moment he’d been buckled into his car seat and didn’t wake even when Sawyer carried him upstairs to Scott’s bedroom, where Jack had spent last night in the bottom bunk.

  How different that night had been, Austin thought sadly.

  She was trying to decide whether she should go into the guest room with Sophie, when the girl solved the problem by walking into the room and shutting the door in her face.

  It was dark by the time Sawyer drove them home.

  Insisting she didn’t need him to walk her to the door tonight, Austin jumped out of the truck and went inside. Winema had gone home, and the locomotive-loud snoring coming through her father’s door told her that he’d been just as wiped out as the rest of them.

  She washed her face, brushed her teeth, put on her pajamas, and climbed into bed, but made the mistake of turning on the news to see what they were reporting about Tom and Heather. When they showed the flattened minivan, Austin knew that image would stay frozen in her mind for as long as she lived.

  *

  AFTER DROPPING AUSTIN off at her house, Sawyer drove on to the foreman’s cabin, where he found Ryan’s forest-green Expedition, with an empty utility trailer hitched to it, parked in front.

  “You come to rustle my cattle?” he called out as he opened the door. Then stopped and stared around in stunned surprise at the inside of the cabin that, except for a stove, fridge, microwave, and his bedroll, had been deserted when he’d left the house this morning.

  The furniture was covered in bark-brown leather, wide cushioned, and worn enough that he wouldn’t need to feel like he had to shower before sitting on it.

  Austin’s wildflowers claimed the center of an old pine table that he recognized from the Bar M. It’d been distressed from generations of Murphys living with it, and Sawyer knew if he looked closely at the kitchen table, he’d see his initials and USMC on the underside. He’d carved those the summer he’d turned twelve and, drawn by the posters while delivering copies of the afternoon River’s Bend Record, had dropped into the Marine recruiting office.

  Patterned rugs in earth tones were scattered over the floor.

  “What the hell?”

  It was like a reverse robbery. Instead of coming home to an empty house, he’d walked into one that looked as though it belonged in one of those magazines rich folk bought about how to decorate their weekend country cabins.

  Brown muslin curtains framed windows that offered an expansive view of the foothills and mountain in one direction, the sprawling Merrill ranch house in the other. He glanced up at a second-story window, remembering climbing up the old oak tree to Austin’s window when they’d been kids. He’d stopped those night visits during high school, when being alone with her in her bedroom tempted the bad, sex-crazed devil who’d taken up residence on his shoulder.

  He checked out the bedroom, which had a black iron queen bed and the knotty pine dresser he’d grown up with. One of the other bedrooms had bunk beds and another had two twins covered with pink and purple girly-looking floral comforters. If he hadn’t known better, from the bedding and furniture, he’d have sworn a real family lived here.

  Ryan was sitting on the floor surrounded by hand tools, screws, and bolts putting together a white bookcase in the room with the twins. “The women put you up to this, didn’t they?”

  “Don’t blame me.” Ryan held up his hands, one of which was holding a screwdriver. “I just did what I was told. Besides, not only was I outnumbered by Layla and Jenna, who hatched up the plan with Rachel, Mitzi, and Gram, it was hard to argue when I agree with them.”

  “I was going to buy furniture.” A bed, anyway.

  “Well, now you don’t have to. Look,” he said, “Cooper called and told me about how the social worker’s going to pay you a visit. Everyone decided that if you were going to pass muster, you had to look halfway civilized.

  “So, while you and Austin were running all over town taking care of the funeral and legal stuff, Brody, Jake, and I were picking up a few things from the ranch and buying out the basin’s craigslist.” Jake being Cooper’s father-in-law from when he’d been married to Ellen Buchanan. “They brought along their trucks to help haul it all back here. Then the women swept in like Ninjas and did their decorating thing.”

  Sawyer had returned to River’s Bend wanting to be left alone. Sure, he’d admit having been conflicted where Austin was concerned, but he’d figured that they had plenty of time for him to get his head back on straight, banish the big black dog that had been following him around for months, and start living again.

  “This wasn’t what I’d planned,” he said, as much to himself as to his brother.

  “Hell, kid,” Ryan replied, with all the superiority of their two-year age difference, “you should’ve figured out by now that the gods laugh when men plan.”

  Like their mom dying too young and too hard. Or the fog of a war Sawyer still couldn’t understand. Families shattered by the men who’d been cut down in the prime of their life during battle. Tom and Heather leaving behind two kids who needed him to step up.

  Semper fidelis wasn’t just some motto signifying dedication to the Marine Corps and country. It was a way of life. And as much as he’d tried to convince himself that he was just a civilian now, the fact was that Semper fi wasn’t relative. It was absolute.

  While he still intended to start his own spread, fate had stepped in and given him another mission. Taking care of two kids would not only be a monumental task, it was the most important he’d ever undertaken.

  And failure was not an option.

  Fortunately, he thought as he crouched down and started putting books onto the shelves Ryan had just finished putting together, he wouldn’t be doing it alone.

  *

  AUSTIN TOSSED AND turned for what seemed like hours, finding sleep an impossible target as past memories kept turning in her mind like the facets of a kaleidoscope. Finally giving up, she went downstairs to the mudroom, put a corduroy barn jacket on over her pajamas, and pulled on her boots. After grabbing a box of long matches, she went outside to the back porch and lit a candle in the iron lantern.

  She was sitting on the porch swing, rocking slowly, looking up at the swirling sky of diamonds, when she heard the familiar crunch of boots walkin
g toward her.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Sawyer’s voice came swirling out from the darkness. “I couldn’t sleep, and when I saw the candlelight, I thought you might be up for some company.”

  “I am.” She scooted over, making room for him. “I made the mistake of watching the news.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “The minivan was such a cheerful color. When Heather first picked it out, Tom was embarrassed to drive it. He called it the Banana Mobile.”

  Sawyer sat down beside her and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “A yellow minivan doesn’t exactly say cowboy tough.”

  “No. But Heather said just looking at it made her happy. Which was all he needed to hear.”

  “They had a special bond.”

  “They did.” As she and Sawyer had once. Until they hadn’t.

  They sat there, side by side, not saying anything as the night sounds filled in the silence. In the distance they could hear the river continuing its journey to the sea. The hoot of an owl, the lonely call of a coyote, and a whistle of the midnight southbound train.

  “I was drunk,” she said into the darkness. Sawyer didn’t say anything, but Austin sensed him listening. “The night I married Jace.”

  Again, no answer, but she knew that she had his full attention.

  “I thought,” she continued haltingly, “after that kiss at the hospital, that maybe you finally saw me as more than just the girl next door. That you were thinking you might want me.” She paused, needing a moment to get the rest out. “The way I wanted you.”

  “I did.” His deep voice was like Irish coffee topped with cream. Warm, smooth, and potent, awakening parts of her body that had been sleeping far too long.

  “But the email—”

  “Was a mistake. And a lie. I didn’t mean a word of it.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Well, in a way I did. Some of it was true.”

  And wasn’t that a revelation? “What part?”

  “The part about the kiss being an impulse.”

  “One you regretted.”

  “Yes. No. Damn.” He stood up and walked over to the edge of the porch and put his hands on the railing. “Look, I didn’t regret the kiss,” he said, still not looking at her. “What I regretted was the timing.”