The Mechanics of Mistletoe

by Liz Isaacson

  He stewed on the way back to the ranch, and when he pulled to the house and stopped, he sent her money for the food she’d brought him. He faced the house, and he didn’t want to go inside.

  Ranger had covered his chores, and Bear needed time and space to think. He got out of the truck and went to the stables. He could escape out onto the ranch with Bertha for the afternoon, and hopefully, when he returned, things from that morning would make sense.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  About three o’clock, Sammy ducked out of the room where her father slept to call Jason. “Lincoln is getting off the bus soon,” she said. “Can you guys handle him for a little bit? We can close early, and maybe you can bring him to the hospital on your way home.”

  Jason lived on the north end of town, and he drove right past the hospital to get there.

  “Sure,” Jason said. “What time do you want us to close?”

  Sammy sighed and closed her eyes. She lifted her hand to her face, catching a whiff of grease and cardboard. “Whenever,” she said. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Jason said. “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s okay,” she said, looking back toward the room. “He’s asleep right now. The x-rays didn’t show anything. No broken bones, and the new hip is still in the right place.” That alone was a miracle, and one of Sammy’s biggest concerns had been alleviated.

  “What a miracle,” Jason said.

  “Yeah,” Sammy said. “We’re still waiting to look at the MRI, as that takes at least a week. They’re keeping him just to watch him for signs of a concussion, and we’re just sitting with him, so he doesn’t have to be alone.”

  She wouldn’t be able to stay all night. Once Lincoln arrived, she’d let him say hello to his grandfather, and then she’d take everyone home, feed them, and try to do their normal nightly routine.

  Homework, baths, dishes, bedtime.

  Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them come out. She’d already cried enough for this month, and in front of other people too.

  “I can bring dinner,” Jason said. “Gina would be all over that.”

  “We’re fine,” Sammy said, unsure of why she was refusing help.

  “I’ll call her,” Jason said. “She’ll be thrilled, Sammy. She’s been so restless waiting for this baby to come. Please, let her make you dinner.”

  Sammy’s frustration grew, but it wasn’t with Jason. It was with herself. “All right,” she said. “But nothing extravagant. Literally, frozen pizza is fine.” It was what she’d been feeding Lincoln a lot lately.

  Jason chuckled and said, “Thanks, Sammy. She’s really going to be so happy. I’ll let you know when Link and I leave the shop.”

  “Thanks,” she said, letting the phone drop to her side as the call ended. She didn’t want to go back into the hospital room. She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to go to the shop.

  She didn’t know where she wanted to be, but it wasn’t here. A seething, insatiable need to get in her truck and drive as far as she could, as fast as she could, began to boil in her stomach.

  Could she do it?

  Who would notice that she’d left town first?

  Her mother would be busy caring for her father for the foreseeable future, so she probably wouldn’t know. Sammy could drop Lincoln at school and go, and he wouldn’t know for hours and hours.

  Probably one of her mechanics would be the first to know when she didn’t show up for work. Tomorrow, she was opening the shop with Jeff, and she really disliked that it would be Jeff Walters who would be the first to know she’d left town.

  “Who do you want it to be?” she asked herself. Yesterday, she would’ve said Bear without hesitation. Today, though, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t need the big, bad Bear to come sailing in at the first sign of trouble in Sammy’s life. She could handle whatever life threw at her. She could.

  She had been for five long years, and she’d been doing it just fine without Bear Glover. Her heartbeat sounded like a gong in her ears, and Sammy stood in the hallway while she asked herself, But why should you have to?

  She turned away from the confusion and the questions and went back into her father’s hospital room. She didn’t have time to think about Bear right now. Her father and mother needed her. Lincoln needed her. She could deal with Bear later.

  Sammy helped her father into the house the following morning. She went to the shop but called her mother every hour to check on them. She left the moment Lincoln got off the bus, picked up food at a Tex-Mex restaurant, and ate dinner with her son and her parents.

  Bear texted, and Sammy’s heart leapt in her chest.

  How’s your dad?

  Good, Sammy sent back just before a terrible clattering sound filled the air, startling her away from her phone. “Lincoln,” she said, jumping up from the table. “What happened?”

  “I just dropped the silverware,” he said, looking at her with wide eyes.

  “We have to be more careful,” she said, her voice snappy. “Grandpa needs to rest.”

  “Sorry, Sammy.” Lincoln set his plate in the sink gingerly.

  “Let’s go,” she said, marching back to the table to get her plate and clean up. She hadn’t eaten much, but she wasn’t very hungry. The sun set earlier now that autumn had truly arrived, and when she and Lincoln pulled into their driveway, the motion-detection lights came on to illuminate her driveway.

  “Get your backpack,” she said. “You have homework to do.”

  “It’s Saturday tomorrow,” Link said. “Can’t I do it later?”

  Sammy didn’t want to argue. Her brain felt full to capacity, and the only word she had to describe how she felt was tired. No, exhausted. She was utterly and completely exhausted.

  “Fine,” she said. “Still bring in the backpack.” She got out of the car and headed inside. Lincoln came behind her, and once they were inside, Sammy moved toward the steps. “I’m going to go change.”

  “Can I have some ice cream?”

  “Yes,” Sammy said, because she didn’t want to deal with what might happen if she said no. She had no reason to deny him the ice cream, other than she didn’t want him to have it. Eating ice cream dirtied dishes, and Lincoln wouldn’t clean those up. Eating ice cream made people happy, and she didn’t want him to be happy.

  She slowed, realizing what she’d just thought. “That’s not true.” She quickly stepped into her bedroom and closed and locked the door. All she wanted was for Lincoln to be happy. She worked for that all day, every day.

  She didn’t change her clothes. Instead, she laid down on the bed and cried, wondering if she’d always feel this inadequate and this angry about the cards life had dealt her.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but she sat straight up when the car alarm started blaring through the neighborhood. Dashing to the door, she fumbled with the lock. When she finally got the door open, she called, “Lincoln?”

  A breeze brushed her face, and cold terror ran through her when she reached the top of the steps and looked down. The front door was wide open.

  “Lincoln,” she called now, pure panic pumping in her veins. At the bottom of the steps, she paused. The darkness beyond the front door yawned, the mouth of it huge and wide and terrifying.

  The motion-detector lights flashed on, and Lincoln came running up the steps. “The car is locked,” he yelled over the alarm. “Do you have the keys?”

  Annoyance sang through her, twirling with the adrenaline and making her voice extra loud when she asked, “Why were you out at the car?”

  “I left my backpack out there,” he said.

  “Lincoln.” She marched out onto the porch and fished the keys from her pocket. She clicked the buttons on the fob, and the alarm silenced. She spun back to Lincoln. “I told you to bring in that stupid backpack.”

  “I forgot,” he said, his lower lip trembling.

  “You’re not supposed to leave the house without
me either,” she said, grabbing his arm as she passed him. She closed the door behind them, Lincoln stumbling forward a few feet. “Repeat the rules to me.”

  Lincoln faced her, tears running down his face. Sammy instantly regretted everything that had happened that evening, starting with the way she’d jumped down his throat when he’d dropped some silverware in the sink at her parents’ house.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, stepping over to him and dropping to her knees. She gathered him into her arms and hugged him tight as he continued to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Sammy,” he said, his voice too high-pitched. “I just didn’t want you to be mad about the backpack. I thought I could just get it.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” She stroked his hair as she kept repeating those two words. Maybe if she said them enough times, they’d be true.

  The weekend passed, then another week. Sammy formulated a new schedule where she could leave the shop by four so she could have another couple of hours in the evening with her family. The shop was quickly falling behind on the cars that needed fixing. They just kept coming and coming, and Sammy wondered if she’d ever feel free form the mechanic shop.

  “All right, buddy,” she said as she entered Lincoln’s room on Halloween morning. “Let’s get your costume together.”

  He’d chosen to be a cowboy for Halloween, and earlier that week, he’d asked her for a hat “just like Bear’s.”

  Sammy’s chest had frozen for a solid minute while she texted Bear to ask him where to get a hat like his. They’d exchanged a few texts—maybe eight or ten—before the conversation ended, and Sammy honestly didn’t know what she and Bear were anymore.

  She picked up the red and black checkered shirt she and Lincoln had found at the second-hand shop in town. She’d splurged and bought the hat at the shop Bear had told her about. Lincoln was also wearing a brown belt with an enormous belt buckle, a pair of jeans, and his cowboy boots.

  All in all, it was an easy costume to put together, and Sammy put everything into a plastic grocery sack and put it in his backpack.

  “Sammy?” Lincoln asked as she picked up the backpack to take it downstairs for him. “Will we see Bear tonight?”

  “Oh, uh, I don’t think so,” Sammy said.

  “Oh.” Lincoln’s face fell. “He said he couldn’t wait to see my costume. I thought he was coming trick-or-treating with us.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “Over the summer,” Lincoln said.

  Sammy smiled and sat on Link’s bed. She patted the spot beside her, and he came over and flopped down, looking at her with wide, innocent eyes.

  How did she explain her on-the-rocks relationship with Bear Glover to an eight-year-old?

  “Bear’s really busy on the ranch right now,” she said. “Did you know they decorate for Christmas in October?”

  “They do?”

  Sammy smiled and looked at the floor, her memories of that light show at Judge’s house replaying through her mind. “They’re all really busy, Link.”

  He nodded, but he sure did wear his disappointment for the world to see. “Maybe we could go show him another night.”

  “Yeah,” Sammy said, though she knew that wouldn’t happen. She wasn’t going to drive up to Shiloh Ridge Ranch just to show Bear her son wearing a cowboy hat just like his.

  She got Lincoln ready for school and drove him across town. “Have fun,” she said as he got out of the car. “Don’t eat too much candy before lunch.”

  “I won’t. Bye, Mom.” Link slammed the door and ran toward the door that led past the cafeteria and right out back to the playground.

  The word mom rang in her ears and reverberated through the car. She pulled away from the curb when someone beeped at her, and she wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten to the shop. After almost six years. Lincoln had called her mom.

  A smile formed on her face, and she reached for her phone. Bear would—

  She stalled, her thoughts derailing completely. She hadn’t spoken to Bear in ten days. She scrolled through their texts and counted them.

  Eleven.

  Something cracked in her chest, and it felt dangerously like her heart.

  “Dear Lord, what have I done?” she whispered. The answer to that question was blatantly obvious—she’d pushed Bear Glover away.

  The worst part was that he’d let her.

  No, the worst part was that she didn’t know why she’d pushed him away. The reason lingered right on the edge of her mind, but she couldn’t grab onto it. It danced into the darkness every time she looked at it.

  Anger rose within her that this glorious, amazing moment had been tainted with self-doubt and insecurity. Anger, Sammy knew what to do with. She let it grow and burn out of control as she sat in her truck, and she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to be figuring out.

  The anger allowed her to focus on the task in front of her. Completing tasks passed the time quickly, and if Sammy could stay busy enough and angry enough, she wouldn’t have to wonder if she loved Bear, and she wouldn’t have to examine why she’d deliberately put distance between them.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Bear looked out the window at the gray sky. It echoed how he felt inside, and he struggled to pay attention to what Ward said. His cousin stood near the far wall in Ranger’s office, using a clicker to move through a set of slides he’d prepared for their annual budget meeting.

  Sometimes, when major decisions needed to be made around the ranch—like when Bear had torn down the original homestead and built a brand-new one three times as big—all of the Glovers got involved. There were twelve of them, and they all had a vote on huge things that would take a lot of ranch money and resources.

  Bear and Ranger got swing votes if necessary, as did Ward and Cactus, as they were the second-oldest brothers on each side of the family. They’d never had to use those swing votes, though, and Bear was grateful his family got along as well as they did.

  “Bear?”

  “Hmm?” He pulled his attention from the clouds, which should open at any moment and start to pound the ranch with rain. He looked at Ranger, but he nodded toward Ward, because it was him who’d spoken.

  “Sorry,” Bear said, his unrest quaking inside him. It had been three weeks since Sammy’s father’s accident. Bear had texted her a few times, but when he got one-word answers, no calls, no explanations, and nothing else, he’d stopped.

  He’d missed Halloween with Lincoln, and that actually sent anger through him. It was November now, and he knew Sammy celebrated her birthday this month. He desperately wanted to be there, and he’d actually been toying with the idea of presenting her with a diamond for her birthday.

  Not anymore.

  “Do you think we’ll need to call in the family for the Ranch Home?” Ward asked, exchanging a glance with Ranger.

  “I don’t see why we would,” Bear said. “Everyone approved this place, and we’re not building a new house. It just needs to be remodeled.”

  Ward nodded. “I could send an email at least.”

  “Sure,” Bear said, looking out the window again. “Send an email.” He didn’t care. He just wanted to drive down to town and see how Sammy was doing. Maybe it he went about four o’clock, he could hug Lincoln too.

  His jaw set, because he knew he wouldn’t do it. Sammy had been upset with him for stepping in and helping her father, who had fallen. She wouldn’t appreciate him just showing up at her shop out of nowhere.

  You’ve done it before, he told himself, but things were different now.

  “Okay,” Ward said. “I’ll get that out today. Our twenty percent investment this year went to Texas Instruments. We’ve seen the strongest return from them in the past decade, and we haven’t invested there in three years.”

  He continued with the investment portfolio, but Bear was familiar with all of it. Every year, the Glovers took twenty percent of their calf sales and invested it in a Texas-b
ased company. Ranger had learned this trick from his father, and Uncle Bull had been an amazing investor. He’d taken the money the ranch had earned from the oil sales and quadrupled it in only five years.

  Ranger and Ward now ran the investment arm of Shiloh Ridge, and that was how they kept their bank accounts healthy, everyone paid, and constant improvements around the ranch.

  “And last,” Ward said with a sigh. Bear turned back to the wall where he’d been presenting, a distinct impression that that frustrated sigh was meant for him. “We’re going to remodel the five central cowboy cabins this winter too. The flooring hasn’t been replaced in fifteen years, except for in cabin two, where we had that grease issue two years ago.”

  He flashed some pictures on the wall. “We’re doing new appliances in all five. New beds. New furniture, and we’re going with a microfiber faux-leather that cleans up incredibly well. New cabinetry and new countertops. All new paint, and all new floors throughout.”

  Ward turned and looked at the pictures he’d taken of the cowboy cabins, which gave Ranger room to ask, “We need new appliances? Those don’t look bad, and they all work.”

  “We’re going to do all hard floors,” Ward said. “We polled the men, and they don’t care about carpet in the bedrooms. It just gets worn out and dirty. We’ll provide rugs if they want them.” He looked at his bother. “I’ve already arranged with Pastor Summers to take the appliances, the beds, and the furniture. He says he has families around town that are in desperate need of them. Some people are still reeling from the tornadoes, apparently.”

  That was news to Bear, and he lifted his eyebrows. “The cabinets?” he asked, because the family motto of reuse, repair, and recycle was as ingrained in him as it was in Ranger.

  “Bishop is going to put them in the barns and stables,” Ward said. “We need more storage out there anyway, and this way, we don’t have to build it or buy it.” He seemed satisfied with himself, and Bear glanced at Cactus. He’d said nothing during the meeting, but that wasn’t that unusual.