by Cindi Madsen
“Is she okay?” she heard Mom ask, even though she was clearly trying to whisper. But with Grandma and Grandpa being a little hard of hearing, it came out as more of a yell-whisper.
Was she okay? It was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?
“Seems okay,” Grandpa said. “Ran into Royce at the grocery store, and I think that was hard.”
Sadie groaned. They were already going to start speculating about her love life, and there was no doubt the entire town would be buzzing about it, too. Everyone had thought the rodeo star and the town’s singing sensation—if you counted state fairs, rodeos, and ball games—were going to make it. While most everyone in Hope Springs had speculated on what exactly had happened to break them up right before Sadie left, none of them knew the truth as far as she could tell. The only person who knew everything was Quinn, and she was so loyal she’d take it to her grave. There were definitely whispers about how Sadie thought she was too good for the town, though. Yet another reason she’d only been home twice since she’d moved away, both super-short visits where she’d honed her hermit skills.
Sadie pushed into her bedroom. Or maybe she’d traveled through the wormhole again. It still looked like the bedroom from her high school memories. There were the red curtains she’d sewn in class, because yeah, that had been required in the high school curriculum in this town. When the curtains were closed, you could see how crooked they were at the bottom. Posters of famous country singers lined the wall. Faith Hill, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, and Keith Urban. That last one was up there because, yes, he was a good singer, but he was also nice to look at. He was still nice to look at, but nowadays, she was more of a Brantley Gilbert girl. How could she resist a male country singer with a bad boy look?
On the other side of the room were lots of pictures tacked to the wall, most of them of her and Royce. The two of them after one of his big rodeo wins, the time she’d sung at open mic night in a club in Casper, prom, posed together in their graduation robes. Each moment had been frozen in time, and now they served as a reminder of all the things that had gone wrong. She should’ve taken them down last time she was here, but she’d been depressed over how she’d almost signed a contract with a record label only for the band to break up. That was the first time her singing dreams had slipped through her fingers.
Sadie pushed her suitcase aside, sat on the floral, pillow-topped mattress stripped of its bedding, and flopped back on it. She wondered why Mom had never taken down the pictures and done something else with the room. It had been easy enough to avoid, since they’d often meet up for Christmases in Casper, where they’d get a nice hotel room and Sadie could spend the holidays with both her mom and grandparents and her dad and stepmom, who lived there. Somehow her parents had actually managed to have a civil divorce and were one of those broken-up couples who could still be in the same room as each other and be fine. Mom always said they’d just been too young. It was why she’d ingrained in Sadie career first, everything else could wait.
After seeing firsthand how hard Mom had to work to get through school while juggling a job, as well as being a single parent, Sadie understood why she felt so strongly about it. After all, Mom had done some modeling when she was younger and had even been offered a contract with an agency—a contract she’d given up to stay in Wyoming and get married. Now she worked long hours for little pay.
Sadie had sworn she wouldn’t squander any opportunity that came her way—that she’d follow her singing dreams and make enough money doing what she loved so her mom wouldn’t have to work anymore. Obviously that hadn’t happened. Yet. Until it did, she refused to be a financial strain on her family. Especially since she knew it was hard enough for them to keep up on all the bills as it was, and that was before Grandma’s trip to the hospital and all the extra medications she had to take now.
Sadie sat up, resolve filling her. The job hunt would start first thing tomorrow, no taking time to wallow. She wasn’t even sure where to start looking for a job, but at this point, she was desperate enough she’d pretty much take anything.
Chapter Three
Sadie took her mug of coffee out the back door and headed to the corral that attached to the small barn. Grandpa used to run horses on a big spread of land—one hundred and twenty acres that had now been separated into plots and sold off one at a time, all but the twenty closest to the house. He’d sold most of the horses, too, but he’d kept two. Apollo, the dun, and Casanova, the black stallion. People still paid Grandpa to have their horses breed with Casanova, because he produced good foals.
Casanova came trotting over, and Sadie set down her coffee and threw over a few flakes of hay. “You get with any hot ladies lately?” she asked as she ran her hand down the horse’s nose.
He leaned into her hand, and she scratched his cheek the way he liked.
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re looking kind of old.” Since she remembered when he was born, that made her feel a little old as well. Twenty-five was far from getting up there, but lately she’d been very aware of how many years had passed since she’d set out to become a singer. Being in a short-lived music group with two girls who were barely twenty had only made her more aware of her age. Their inexperience was probably why they cared more about fighting and the spotlight than just getting a record out so their careers could start.
Stupid girls. Wait till they’ve been trying for several years and they realize opportunities like that don’t come along every day.
Sadie turned when she heard the back screen door close, and Grandpa nodded at her. “Mornin’. Getting close to afternoon, actually. I wasn’t sure you were getting up today,” he teased.
After working late shifts for the past few years, she thought being showered and dressed by ten a.m. was a bragworthy accomplishment. “Good morning.”
Casanova whinnied at her for attention, and she scratched his cheek again.
“Where’s Apollo?” Just as she was starting to worry that something had happened to the mare, she came trotting out of the barn, a sturdy fence between her and Casanova.
Grandpa threw the horses more hay, and Sadie picked her mug back up and took a sip. She glanced at the now-empty chicken coop, remembering all the times Grandma would send her to get eggs and the chickens would scratch and peck at her.
She gestured to the coop. “You ever miss them?”
“Do I miss those peckers?”
“Grandpa!” Sadie laughed. She’d gotten in trouble at school for using that word, in addition to the many other colorful terms he’d taught her while she’d been helping him on the farm.
“Nah. Not at all, actually. Miss having more horses sometimes, though. Royce invites me to the ranch here and there so I can still play cowboy with him and Cory. I can’t keep up, but it’s nice of them to humor me.”
She could picture Grandpa riding beside Royce, and while she was still irritated about how frustrating her ex was yesterday, warmth filled her chest. She knew how much Grandpa liked to get in some cowboy time. “I’m sure you do fine.”
“I’m old and slow.” He tossed in a couple more flakes of hay.
Sadie wanted to ask a hundred questions about Royce, but she wasn’t sure she could handle the answers or what they’d do to her emotions. It wasn’t a good subject to go into, especially not with Grandpa. Although her grandparents had always been supportive, she had a feeling they’d wondered what she was thinking running off to the big city to try to become famous. Mom had encouraged it, of course, but after Sadie had been in Nashville a few years, even she’d mentioned that maybe college was the way to go—just to have something to fall back on.
Between work and auditions and performances that didn’t pay much but gave her “great exposure,” she’d doubted she could fit in college. She’d explained that the first few years were more like an internship that’d eventually pay off, and it’d come so close to being true. Maybe this next time around she’d take classes on the side—somehow she’d fit it all in.
But now she was getting ahead of herself, the way she often did. “So, I was planning on going around town and applying for jobs today,” she said to Grandpa. “Mind if I take the truck? Or do you need it?”
“Go right ahead. Keys are in the ignition.” Of course they were. This was Hope Springs, where people weren’t worried about locking their vehicles or taking their keys inside.
“Thanks, Grandpa.” She gave him a quick kiss on his whiskered cheek and headed back through the house. She wiped off the bits of hay that had gotten on her frilly white button-down top and black slacks—she was probably overdressed for most of the jobs she’d be applying for, but she needed to make a good impression. First impressions were long gone, so she could only hope to sway someone into seeing that she was qualified, regardless of a résumé that claimed otherwise.
I’ve sung in front of large crowds and jaded record execs. I sang a Blue cover in front of their fans and all of the media outlets covering his induction to the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. I can handle a few interviews in Small Town, USA.
…
Royce looked over the lined-up teens, five girls and six boys, ages fourteen through seventeen. This part was his least favorite, where it was more about showing tough love and laying ground rules, and he didn’t know the kids well enough to relax his guard. He eyed the tall scrawny kid in the middle, who had his arms crossed and an exaggerated scowl on his face so he could show everyone how unhappy he was to be here. The other kids were still a little standoffish, but settling in. Elijah—who’d spat to call him Eli—had bad attitude written all over him, and he wasn’t about to let it go.
Mom lifted her clipboard. “Eli, Addison, and Brady, you’re team one. Your job today is to clean the cabins, then we’ll take you over to the horses and introduce you, and tonight you’ll peel the potatoes for dinner.”
Eli rolled his eyes.
“Anyone who doesn’t pull their weight gets extra chores,” Royce said, directing the comment at the kid, who immediately clenched his jaw. “We’ll check over the work, and if you don’t do it right, you’ll be redoing it. But if you do it fast—and you do a good job—you’ll get time to go to the river later.”
“Ooh, the river,” the kid mumbled. “Yeah, that sounds fun.”
Royce’s patience was wearing thin, especially after the exhausting morning he’d already had, on top of the late night he’d pulled.
Mom must’ve seen it, because she stepped in front of him, handed out the rest of the chores to the other two groups, and dismissed them. For now, each group needed to be supervised. The last thing they needed was a fight breaking out or for one of them to get angry and try to tear the rooms apart. They’d had plenty of both through the years. Dad had been better at handling it. He was more patient than Royce would ever be. That familiar longing of missing his dad settled into his lungs. There were still some days when it was harder than others, and the beginning of a new session always brought on the harder ones.
Mom tucked her clipboard under her arm and gave him a consoling smile. “It’s always like this at first. They’re a good group.”
“That Eli kid worries me.”
“He’s a big grouchy pants, that’s for sure.”
“‘Grouchy pants.’ That the textbook term?”
Mom laughed. “He’ll come around. I put him with Addison because I think he’s got a crush on her, and she’s feisty enough to deal with his crap and give it right back. She wants to go down to the river and explore, too, so she’ll keep him in line.”
Royce expected Mom to head off to check on the groups, but she turned to face him, and there was something about her expression that made his muscles tense. “What now?” he asked. “I don’t think I can handle one more problem.”
“I had to take Oscar to the vet this morning.”
Relief flooded him that the problem wasn’t as bad as he expected, although he knew Mom would be devastated if anything happened to her mangy cat, despite the fact that he was the most high-maintenance animal they had. “Is he okay?”
She waved a hand through the air. “Oh, yeah. I was worried because he’s been all sluggish and sneezy and goopy eyed. Doc said he’s got a respiratory infection, so he’ll have to be on antibiotics—not to mention he’ll be pissed off at me for days for taking him in. But that’s not why I brought it up. While I was there, I just heard that”—she wobbled her head, and apprehension crept into his gut—“Sadie’s back in town.”
Royce let out an exhale. “I know. I ran into her last night, actually.”
“And…?”
“And nothing. I saw her, we…” He didn’t want to tell Mom they’d argued, and that made it sound like a bigger deal than it was, anyway. “We just said hi and went our separate ways.” Sadie’s wide green eyes came to him again. He glanced toward the hills, doing his best to keep the talk casual. “They said she’s back, back? Like going to stay?”
“Sounds like she’ll be here for a while, anyway.”
Dammit. He could wait out a visit—it wasn’t like he went into town all the time. But if she were going to be here for more than a week or so, it’d be impossible to avoid her.
It doesn’t matter, he told himself. I moved on from that girl years ago. Only his insides felt like they’d been tied in a knot, and little moments from their past were flashing through his mind again like a happy forgotten slide show.
He focused on the end of their relationship, on the night she’d told him she couldn’t marry him. A week later she was gone, almost as if his question had caused her to flee as fast as possible. And now everyone in town was going to be buzzing about it, stopping him to ask what he thought of Sadie being back, watching every word and movement so they could add it to their theories, and he didn’t have time for that.
He rubbed the back of his stiff neck. “Well, I’ve got to get to work.”
Mom nodded, took a step toward the cabins, then abruptly stopped. “It was hard enough to find the time to drive Oscar into town, but since we’re shorthanded, and I still need to have individual meetings with each kid, I was hoping you could maybe pick him up?”
He hadn’t even broken the news to her about how she was practically legally bound to stay on the land until he found help, and he didn’t want to unless he absolutely had to. “You just want him to scratch and bite me instead of you,” he teased. The cat was named Oscar after Oscar the Grouch, and he lived up to his name.
Mom smiled. “Sometime before the clinic closes, which is five thirty.”
“I’ll squeeze it in. I’ve been meaning to see if anyone from the office wants a side job anyway. Maybe that’d be enough help to get us by for now. In the meantime, we can make Mister Bad Attitude clean out the stalls. Maybe shit shoveling will teach him some manners.”
Mom pointed a warning finger. “One, you owe a dollar to the swear jar, and two, you be nice and give the kid a chance.”
Royce shook his head but couldn’t help cracking a smile. Mom and her swear jar. And her belief that there was a nice shiny person inside everyone, even if you had to dig to find it. Admittedly, he had seen a lot of pretty miraculous transformations, but there were a few now and then who left with the chips on their shoulders still fully intact, mostly because they absolutely refused to engage. “Yeah, yeah. I’m sure we’ll be great buds by the end of his stint.” Maybe if he ever got enough sleep that his patience wasn’t so stretched thin it was practically nonexistent, it’d help.
Still, sometimes he thought he was the worst possible choice to be in charge of the camp.
…
“Sadie Hart, is that really you?”
Sadie barely restrained herself from dropping the swear word on the tip of her tongue. You know the type of girls who make high school miserable? Who turn everything into a competition and manage to insult you but make it seem like they don’t realize it’s an insult? Well, the pretty brunette staring at her was one of those girls.
“Gracie Walker. Hey.”
“I heard you were back in town.” The twangy accent was thick with this one. “Whatever happened to Nashville? Last I heard, you were part of some cute girl band.”
See? An insult wrapped in a package with a big ol’ bullshit bow. “I’m back home for a while.”
“So you’ve given up on the singing thing? That’s a shame. I remember all those times you sang the national anthem. I bet they’ll let you perform again at the ball games and such. You better ask real quick about the Fourth of July rodeo, ’cause it’s comin’ up pretty soon, and they might’ve already booked someone else.”
This was her ninth—or was it tenth?—stop. Most of them had gone about like this, with slightly less passive-aggressiveness. She’d filled out several applications and handed out résumés, even though everyone had claimed they weren’t hiring. When she’d stopped at the diner to eat lunch, she’d asked there, too, but they told her they weren’t in need of any more waitresses, even part-time. Considering how much she sucked at waitressing, that was probably for the best.
So she’d wandered into the bank, and now she wished she’d just skipped it. Gracie had never liked her much because she’d always had a thing for Royce. It was funny how that determined a girl not liking her, even all these years later when she wasn’t even with him. In fact, she was almost sure Gracie was married now. She wanted to ask if they could just grow up and get over it, but she really, really needed a job, so she put on a sugary smile. “Yeah, maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll have me back.” And eventually, I’ll get a recording contract and make you eat your words. “Before that, though, I need a job. Who would I talk to about the openings here?”
“That’d be me.”
“Great.” Damn it! “Do you have any openings? I’m willing to start at the bottom and work my way up. I’m great with customers, have lots of experience directing calls, and—”
