More Than Neighbors

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She told him, and he said, “That’s a good choice. Lots of meandering, some up and down, a few creeks to cross. They offer to put him up on one of their horses?”

  “Yes.”

  “I could let him take Aurora.” He sounded thoughtful. “She’s used to him. He’s familiar with her. He’ll want to start getting up on different horses eventually, but if you’d feel better about it now...”

  “You mean that?” Her voice shook.

  “Of course I do.” A smile was in his voice. “Jennifer will be good for Mark.”

  “Do you think he’ll do okay?” she begged. Oh, boy. She hadn’t realized she was more nervous about how he’d do with the Weeks family than she was about him riding an enormous animal that could toss him in any momentary fit of pique then trample him into a bloody pulp. And her plea was an open admission to Gabe that she knew Mark was...different.

  What’s normal?

  “She’s a nice girl,” he said in that easy way he had. “Mark hung out with her for a good part of a day already.”

  “Yes, but they were mostly watching what was going on in the arena. And there’s another family going, too. She said something about a boy, but I don’t know how old he is.”

  “Remember, they’ll be mostly riding.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay. Shall I tell her they have to come by your place to pick up Aurora?”

  “No, I’ll trailer her over and drop them both off. What time?” She told him, and he said, “I don’t hear Mark begging in the background. Doesn’t he know about the invitation?”

  “No, I took the call, and I wanted to talk to you before I said a word to him.”

  Another chuckle. “Have you been up to Colville yet? None of the restaurants there are real fancy, but we could keep going after we drop him and have lunch.”

  Her heart added a few quick beats. Was he suggesting a date? “What,” she said, “are you afraid I’ll come home and wring my hands if you don’t distract me?”

  He laughed.

  “I’d love to have lunch. Thank you.”

  “Good.” And there was that smile again. She could see it as if he was here in the kitchen with her. “See you in the morning.”

  Leaving her phone on the counter, she went to the back door. She’d heard Mark go out with the dogs ten minutes or so ago. When she called his name, he appeared around the corner of the house.

  When she told him that Jennifer wanted him to go riding with her and her family, Ciara saw something on his face that shook her: vulnerability and...hope?

  Oh, God, she thought, Gabe is right. He does need friends his age. He needs more than I can give him.

  But...why would kids here be any different than the ones in his last school?

  Suddenly, she dreaded seeing his face tomorrow afternoon, after the outing.

  * * *

  TALKING TO CIARA was easy. Too easy, Gabe had begun to think. There were times he felt like a tractor long abandoned in a field, buried in snow all winter, gears rusting until they locked, only now they were grinding into motion. He kept pulling up memories from so deep, he hadn’t known they were there. The only thing he hadn’t talked about yet was his wife and daughter. A couple of times he’d used Ginny’s name as part of a story, and Ciara obviously knew who he was talking about, but that’s as far as he’d gone.

  He guessed she must wonder, but she hadn’t directly asked about them, for which he was grateful. He kept expecting she would, since she was willing to talk about her ex-husband, but then he noticed something: Ciara never talked about her childhood. When he asked about her parents, he got a terse answer.

  Her dad was an investment counselor. Mom? No, she didn’t work. No mention of sisters or brothers, which led him to think she didn’t have any, but he couldn’t be sure. Pushing wasn’t his way, although he’d made an exception for Mark, for reasons Gabe still didn’t fully understand. The curiosity he felt about Ciara...well, he was afraid he did understand that. It might as well be a flashing red light.

  Stop.

  But he was beginning to think he wasn’t going to.

  Over lunch in Colville, she invited him to dinner the following evening, and he said, “That’s nice of you, Ciara, but I’m thinking it’s time I have you two over to my place instead.”

  She went very still, and her eyes widened. “You do so much,” she said finally. Carefully.

  “Is having me to dinner strictly payback?” he asked.

  “You know it isn’t.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re sure?”

  She said that a lot. In this case, he knew she wasn’t asking the obvious: Do you really want to cook for us when you’ve been working all day? No, she was asking whether he really wanted to let them deeper into his life. Share a home where he never had guests.

  “I’m neat,” he said, answering indirectly. “I won’t have to frantically hide the empty beer cans and pizza boxes.”

  He loved the tiny dimple that formed in one cheek when she smiled widely. Along with the scattering of pale freckles over her nose, it gave her a puckish look.

  “If you had pizza boxes, I’d want to know where they came from. If there’s one thing I regret about Goodwater, it’s the lack of pizza delivery.”

  He chuckled. “Maybe we should open a pizza parlor in town. Make our fortune.”

  Too late he heard himself. We. Our.

  But she only laughed. “I think you need a slightly larger population than Goodwater has, if it’s a fortune you have in mind.” And then, smile slowly disappearing, she gazed into his eyes as if searching for something. He had no idea if she found it, but she nodded. “Mark and I would love to come to dinner. If you’d like me to bring a dessert—”

  “I would love for you to bring a dessert,” he said fervently, making her laugh again.

  He professed himself willing to kill the afternoon shopping. He didn’t admit that he most often worked seven days a week only because he didn’t have anything else to do. He could afford the day off, and many more like it, if he could spend them with her.

  When he told her he wanted to buy a Western hat for Mark for his birthday, she helped him guess at size to pick one out at the farm and ranch supply store. They browsed appliances because she thought she was going to have to replace her washer, at least, and maybe dryer, too. Unlike the dishwasher, those Ephraim had used, and although they weren’t as ancient as he’d been, they weren’t any spring chickens, either.

  She peeked at a fabric store but didn’t linger, to his relief. They had fun checking out antiques and secondhand stores and then stopped at a coffee shop. Before they finished their cups of coffee, her phone rang. It was Leslie Weeks, letting her know they were fifteen minutes or so out from the trailhead.

  He couldn’t help noticing that Ciara was really quiet during the drive, her body tense. Gabe finally couldn’t help himself.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Wrong? What would be wrong? I’ve had a lovely day.”

  He knew fake when he heard it, but didn’t say anything.

  After a minute, her shoulders slumped. “I want so much for him to have had a good time. I can tell the minute I see him if somebody has snubbed him or said something mean.”

  “I’ve never known Jennifer to be mean, and her parents wouldn’t allow it if she was.”

  “There’s the other family.”

  He knew them, too. “Haven’t seen the Saunders boy as much as I have Jennifer, but he’s only ten or eleven. He’ll probably be in awe of a kid Mark’s age.”

  “You think?” she said doubtfully.

  He did. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but Mark might do well spending time with kids who were a little younger. There wouldn’t be any of the boy/girl dynamics, for one thing.

  “Having horses in common will be a big help. It’s not like at his old school, where his interests weren’t the same as the other boys’.”

  “That’s true.” But the doubt was still there, and her hands
were clasped tightly in her lap.

  He laid a hand over hers. For a moment she froze, and he started to withdraw his hand, then she grabbed hold as if he were a lifeline. At least this way she wasn’t strangling the blood flow from her own hands, he thought philosophically.

  And...he liked holding hands with her. Hers were so smooth and delicate compared to his. Not entirely free of scars—he’d noticed a few burns on her fingers, which she said were from being careless with the iron. And once the sewing machine needle had stabbed right through one of her fingers, missing the bone, fortunately. He had nodded his understanding. Whatever your tools, you couldn’t let your mind wander when you were using them.

  He had to retrieve his hand to pull into the packed dirt parking area. “Looks like our timing is perfect,” he noted. A string of riders was heading down a long slope toward them, and he recognized the Weeks girl’s palomino before he could make out faces.

  The kids were all in the middle of the group, he saw with approval, the adults, experienced riders all, sandwiching them in. The Saunderses were out in front, Leslie and John Weeks bringing up the rear. He and Ciara got out and walked past the Weekses’ pickup and trailer. As the riders came within earshot, Gabe’s hello was enthusiastically returned.

  When he saw Mark grinning and waving, he relaxed a little himself.

  “See?” he murmured to Ciara. “Who can be sour when they’re on horseback?”

  Her own relief was in her laugh. “The Old West is better known for violence than it is for goodwill between all, and they were mostly on horseback, weren’t they?”

  “Then a horse was just a form of transportation. Now...” He didn’t quite know how to articulate the pleasure he took in sitting astride one of his two quarter horses.

  “You’re right.” She reached out suddenly and squeezed his arm. “Thank you, Gabe.”

  He frowned. “Nothing to thank me for. You came for a new start. That’s what Mark’s grabbing on to.”

  He felt her scrutinizing him but didn’t let himself meet her eyes. Gratitude wasn’t what he wanted from her.

  Not that he knew what he did want. He might decide on nothing but a neighborly relationship, he told himself and then grimaced at the untruth.

  As the group emerged from the trail, horses and riders milled around, raising dust.

  The Saunders family rode past Gabe and Ciara, offering friendly greetings. Even the boy grinned. Over her shoulder, Wendy Saunders asked, “You going to make it to the quilt group?”

  “You talking to me?” Gabe said with a grin.

  They all laughed.

  “Yes, I think so,” Ciara said. “It’ll be fun to meet everyone.”

  “Quilt group?” he asked in an undertone.

  “Oh, everyone shows off what they’re working on. They make crib quilts for babies in foster homes, too.”

  “And they gossip.”

  She smiled. “Best part.”

  Mark beamed as he reined Aurora to a stop in front of them. “That was fun! I bet I’m going to be really sore tomorrow, huh? Aurora was awesome! She did everything I told her to do. We cantered and trotted and scrambled up and down steep places and—”

  Sweat was drying on his mare’s strong brown neck and shoulders. They’d have walked the last distance to be sure the horses were cooled off before they had to stand in trailers for the trip home.

  Gabe cut into Mark’s long, hyper recitation of everything they’d done. “You’re the rider,” he said. “What’re you going to do next?”

  “Unsaddle her,” Mark said promptly.

  Gabe nodded in satisfaction. “Good.”

  Of course Mark kept talking while he unbuckled the girth and slid the heavy Western saddle off. For a minute Gabe thought the weight would bring him down, and he grabbed the horn to bear some of it, but Mark straightened.

  “I can do it. My legs are just wobbly. I’ve never ridden anywhere near that long,” he marveled.

  “Mom says we can go again in a couple of weeks,” Jennifer called from where she was sliding the saddle pad off her own mare. “You’ll come, too, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” he said confidently, before his gaze slid sidelong. “I mean, if it’s okay with Mom. And...” He hesitated.

  Gabe nodded at Ciara, who said, “Of course you can.”

  She looked almost dazed, he realized. She really had expected the worst. He wanted to tell her the worst would never happen to her son again, but couldn’t. When he was growing up, Goodwater had had its share of cruel kids, but he had a suspicion there was less of it in such a small community. Parents heard really quickly if their kid had been a shit. And, in general, around here people were decent to their neighbors whether they liked them or not. As he aged, Ephraim had done his damnedest to alienate most people, but Gabe hadn’t been the only one to bring him meals, do repairs on the place, give him rides to appointments. Gabe did believe Mark would be treated with more kindness here in Goodwater than he would have been in a huge, urban school.

  His jaw squared. By God, he’d be talking to some parents himself if it came down to it.

  Frowning a little at the strength of his reaction, he watched Mark lead Aurora up the ramp into the trailer and loosely tie her. He liked the way the boy’s hand slid along the horse’s back and down the slope of her rump as he came back out. There was assurance in that touch, and affection, too, telling Gabe he’d been right to trust Mark with his horse.

  He slapped the boy on the back then helped him slide the ramp into place and close the double doors.

  “Time to get on home.”

  He wished he’d be going to the Malloys’ for dinner, but thought it was just as well he wouldn’t. Spending too much time with them, he’d take to imagining too much.

  * * *

  CIARA HOVERED IN the kitchen. “Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?”

  Tenderizing steaks, Gabe shook his head. “You brought dessert. Wander around if you want.”

  “I’m afraid Mark already is,” she said ruefully.

  He shrugged. “He’s been in the house before.”

  She hadn’t thought about the fact that, when Mark stayed for lunch, the two of them must have come into the house. “Oh. Okay,” she said, feeling awkward because she wanted so much to poke her nose in every room and...well, be nosy.

  Gabe’s farmhouse was as basic as the old Walker place she’d bought, but larger and in better repair. She’d been surprised to see what had to be original kitchen cabinets, dating as far back as the 1940s, at a guess. The countertop was equally ancient, edged with metal. Somebody had updated the appliances, but otherwise...she was willing to bet this kitchen hadn’t changed since he’d been a boy, waiting for his mother to put dinner on the table. Hadn’t his wife wanted to put her stamp on the house? Hadn’t he wanted to build beautiful cabinets for his own house?

  She had no idea where Mark was, but she decided not to worry about it and stepped into a living room as dated as the kitchen. The walls were papered in gloomy stripes of tan and dark green. The wood floors gleamed; probably Gabe hadn’t been able to stand seeing good wood go uncared for. A massive sofa looked like it might have belonged to his grandparents. Heck, he probably headed straight for the single recliner that faced an aging television set.

  It was the framed photos on the fireplace mantel that drew her, although she almost tiptoed as she approached. He’d given her permission to look—in fact, wasn’t that what his invitation, followed by a suggestion that she wander, was really about?—but the minute she saw the woman and little girl in the photos, Ciara felt as if she was intruding anyway.

  His wife had been...maybe not beautiful, but pretty. Petite, fine-boned, with a chin that was just a little pointed and fine, pale blond hair cropped short. From the way the woman’s smile glowed, Ciara had to guess it had been Gabe behind the camera. That smile made Ciara’s heart cramp with pity and sadness for the quiet, guarded man she knew.

  She felt even more reluctance when she turne
d her gaze to several pictures that included his daughter. The first looked as if he’d taken it when he and his wife were bringing their new baby home from the hospital. His wife—Ginny—looked so happy. In another, Ginny had probably been the photographer. He was holding a blonde, laughing toddler high above him, and was laughing himself. It was hard for Ciara to look away from that one. His face was so open—and beardless.

  He wasn’t hiding, not then.

  For a moment she studied his face, like the Gabe she knew and yet not. That face was angular and very male. But the laugh displayed creases in his cheeks she hadn’t known were there.

  With some reluctance, she transferred her gaze to his daughter, who was darling. She might have been three or four in what looked like a studio portrait. Dressed in green velvet trimmed with lace, she looked like a tiny elf, taking after her mother with that pointy chin and blond hair captured in a side ponytail and carefully curled. Ciara knew how much she must have loved to twirl with that full skirt and shiny, patent-leather shoes.

  She heard a footstep behind her.

  “My wife and daughter,” Gabe said.

  She turned to see that he was looking past her, at the row of pictures he couldn’t avoid seeing every time he walked into this room.

  “They’re so beautiful.”

  “I thought so,” he said gruffly. After a moment—she thought it required an effort from him—he looked at her. “Ginny and Abigail. We called her Abby.”

  “Audrey told me what happened.”

  “It was so damn fast.” His jaw muscle spasmed. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t go on, but then he did. “We’d been to see the touring production of The Lion King in Spokane. Abby was singing one of the songs from it. She knew them all from the movie already.” A faint, reminiscent smile curved his mouth. “She couldn’t carry a tune, but that didn’t bother her.”

  Struggling against tears, Ciara nodded, unsure if he was even seeing her.

  “A traffic light turned green. The nearest vehicle on the cross street was a ways off. Plenty of time for the driver to see his light had turned red and stop. Police say he accelerated instead. He was drunk as a skunk. Slammed into Ginny’s side of our pickup.” He hesitated. “It was an extended cab. Abby was sitting behind Ginny instead of behind me. I’d...left a box of tools on the seat behind me.” He turned again to look at the pictures of his family.