Wolf Creek Homecoming

by Penny Richards

  “Far from well, but better.”

  “That’s good.”

  An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. “Rachel mentioned that you got married again last year,” Gabe said, hoping to fill the growing silence left by his habitually reticent brother. That hadn’t changed.

  Caleb nodded. “My first wife, Emily, died during childbirth. I married Abby Carter, a newly widowed woman Rachel suggested I hire for my daughter’s wet nurse.”

  Gabe raised his eyebrows. “That’s a bit unconventional, isn’t it? Not to mention extreme.”

  “More than a bit,” Caleb agreed. “But we didn’t have much choice when Sarah VanSickle started spreading rumors about us, even though I was staying in the bunkhouse with Frank and Leo.”

  “So Sarah’s still doling out misery, is she?” Gabe asked, recalling more than one occasion when she’d caused unnecessary suffering.

  “Yep. I keep thinking she’ll get her comeuppance, but so far, she just goes along, giving everyone a hard time along the way.” There was more silence.

  “So tell me about your...Abby. How are things working out?” Gabe asked, in an attempt to keep the struggling conversation going.

  “Very well. She’s a wonderful person and a great mother.”

  Gabe saw a gleam in his brother’s eyes he’d never seen before. Happiness.

  “I love her very much,” Caleb added, almost, Gabe thought, as if his brother expected him to make some sort of snide comment about the situation. “We had a son born two days before Christmas.”

  “A son! You have a son and a daughter?” Caleb nodded and Gabe smiled, unexpectedly pleased for the brother who had borne the brunt of their father’s domineering personality. “I envy you.”

  Caleb looked up to meet Gabe’s smiling gaze. “You do?”

  “Even I had to grow up eventually, Caleb,” Gabe said, poking a bit of fun at himself. He knew what most people thought of him.

  “Why have you come back, Gabriel?” Caleb asked, done with idle chitchat.

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure I can explain. A while back, I realized that I’d done just about everything and seen all the places I wanted to see, and Lucas Gentry’s shadow was still hanging over me. I was as miserable away from Wolf Creek as I had been here.

  “Believe it or not, I’ve given our childhood a lot of thought the past several months, and I came up with some reasons why I felt that way. A few months back, I got the notion to come and see if there was any way for us to make sense of our past. I even hoped that maybe I could make up for the things I’ve done.”

  Caleb’s eyes reflected his impatience. “Words are fine, Gabe. You were always good with them, but actions speak a lot louder. It’s easy to come home when you’re down-and-out. It’s easy to claim regret and say you’re sorry and then saddle up and leave again, convinced you did all you could or should to fix things.”

  For the first time, Gabe realized just how deep the chasm was between him and his brother. “I know what you’re saying is true, and that I’ve given you plenty of reason to feel the way you do, but I have no intention of leaving.”

  “What!”

  Gabe met his brother’s astonished gaze. “I’m staying in Wolf Creek. I’m twenty-nine years old. Wouldn’t you say it’s time I found a good woman and settled down?”

  “What will you do? How will you live with no money?” Caleb asked, unable to hide his shock.

  “You’re the one who said I was down-and-out, not me. I have a bit stuck by. As for what I’ll do, I have no idea.” He managed a wry smile. “It’ll be a while before I’m able to do much of anything, but when the time is right, something will come along.”

  Another silence ensued. Finally, Gabe gave a heavy sigh, grimaced in pain and curved his arm around his battered ribs as if to protect them.

  “Look, Caleb. I’m truly sorry for the way I acted when we were kids. I think I was trying to get Lucas to notice me, to acknowledge I was alive. If it took acting up to do it, so be it. I’m sorry my behavior left most of the work and responsibility on you. In a strange sort of way, though, I think you actually benefited.”

  “How do you figure that?” Caleb snapped. “I was the slave who worked and you were the spoiled brat who got by with everything and did next to nothing.” His lips tightened with the stubbornness he was known for. “I’ve hated you for that.”

  “I can’t say that I blame you,” Gabe said. He understood Caleb’s feelings, but just as Rachel’s disgust had been hard to swallow, Caleb’s words hurt, far more than Gabe had expected.

  “Just think about it a minute. You were the one learning how to work, how to become a productive citizen, while I learned nothing except how to goof off and finagle others into doing my chores. I thought it was funny then, but not now. I cheated myself out of a lot of lessons.”

  Caleb stared at Gabe as if he’d never seen him before.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, and I’ll understand if you say no, but I’d like to ask your forgiveness. I’d like the opportunity to get to know you and your family. Believe it or not, I want to be an uncle, and I’d really like it if you and I could find some common ground to build a relationship on.”

  * * *

  Rachel returned from a visit with one of her patients just before noon. She found her father sitting at the kitchen table in his wheelchair, slicing a skillet of corn bread into wedges.

  “Hey, Pops!” she said, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “How is everything?”

  “Just dandy. How is little Jimmy doing?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “Good. Food’s ready,” he said, indicating a pot of pinto beans and salt pork Rachel had set on the back of the woodstove before she left earlier in that morning. “Will you get Danny and Gabe while I finish up here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Rachel,” he said, his voice stopping her.

  “Yes?” she said, turning.

  “Caleb came to see Gabe this morning. I have no idea what they talked about, but I thought you’d like to know.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Thank you.”

  Thoughts of what might have transpired between the brothers filled her mind as she went to fetch Danny. She found him reading one of the books he’d received for Christmas and more than ready to eat, since there were cookies to be had afterward.

  Rachel went to Gabe’s room, knocked on the door and opened it at his summons.

  “Pops has dinner ready,” she said, noticing that he was dressed in the extra clothes she’d found in his carpetbag instead of Edward’s castoffs. She couldn’t help noticing how well they fit his lean, broad-shouldered body. No doubt they’d been tailor-made for him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded. “I wanted to tell you that I’ll be leaving after we eat.”

  “Leaving?” she echoed, disbelief in her voice. “You’re in no condition to be on a horse.”

  “I don’t plan to be. I’m not leaving town, just checking into the boardinghouse. I think I’m well enough to take care of myself if I don’t do anything stupid.”

  Though she’d wished him gone a hundred times, now that he planned to go she was filled with something that felt far too much like disappointment for her peace of mind.

  “And how do you propose to pay for it?” she said, her voice sharper than she’d intended as the nebulous distress vanished in the face of her irritation.

  “I had some money stuck in my boot the thieves didn’t find,” he explained. “It will see me through for a while. Besides, I think you’d agree that I’ve disrupted your life enough.”

  Indeed he had, she thought, though she would never admit it. “You have not disrupted my life.”
r />   His smile mocked. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  Embarrassment flushed her cheeks. “Caring for people is what I do.”

  “And I’ll be the first one to attest to the fact that you’re a fine doctor,” he said in a gentle voice. “But let’s be honest here.”

  “By all means. If that’s possible,” she said, unable to mask the sarcasm in her voice.

  “Touché.” Meeting her irate gaze was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “Again, I know I treated you badly in St. Louis, and I should have said goodbye in person instead of leaving you that note.”

  Rachel began to laugh, a terrible parody of the sound. “You think I’m angry at you because you left me a note?” she cried.

  “Weren’t you?”

  “Angry?” She shook her head. “No. Try furious. Or hurt. Or better yet, devastated.” She took a deep breath, and feelings and words that had festered far too long erupted from her lips.

  “Silly, naive me! I was bound to fall for your smooth-talking ways. I believed everything you told me, and it was all lies. Every single word of it! So tell me, Gabe, where was your honesty back then?”

  The vitriol in her voice caused all the color to drain from his face. “I have no excuse, except...”

  She made a slashing movement through the air to silence him. “You’re right. You have no excuse. Lucky, lucky me! Handsome, worldly Gabe Gentry, the boy every girl in Wolf Creek longed to snare, looked me up.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “I can’t believe I was so gullible. I actually scoffed at the tales I’d heard about you, because you seemed so kind, and my memories of you were good. So I listened to your lies and fell for your pretty words. I gave you everything I had, Gabe. Everything. My love, my—” her voice faltered “—my entire being. You played me for a fool, and when you got what you wanted, you left without a backward glance, off to the next place of interest, the next easy mark.”

  “I never thought you were an easy—” He tried to interrupt, but again she held up her palm for silence and drew in several deep, steadying breaths. As quickly as it had come, her anger disappeared. He almost wished it hadn’t. The anguish in her eyes was almost his undoing.

  “Do you have any idea what you did to me?” she said, her voice breaking. “Do you have any idea how ugly and discarded and used I felt?”

  Truthfully, he’d never considered that. For the first time he realized how badly his casual treatment had wounded her. There had been other girls, other times, and never once had he considered how his cavalier dismissal might have made them feel. He’d always assumed that they expected no more or less than he was willing to offer. He’d used his God-given looks and charm with utter disregard for anyone’s feelings but his own. All his life it had been about him. About what he felt, what he wanted.

  The knowledge shamed him.

  A glib apology couldn’t begin to cover his faults, but still he searched his mind for words to ease her pain, knowing deep in his gut that there were none.

  “I think I understand what you felt and why you still feel the way you do.”

  The harsh laughter was back. “You understand nothing!” she said in a tone of deadly quiet. “Nothing. But you’re a man, and men get to walk away. Women are the ones who pay, and I’ll pay for my folly the rest of my life.”

  She swiped at her tears with her fingertips. “Thanks to you, I learned never to trust anything a man says.” Empty of words, she felt the heat of anger drain away and turned to leave the room.

  Gabe’s voice followed her. “You must have trusted at least one man.”

  She turned back to him with a blank expression.

  “You must have trusted one other man,” he repeated. “You must have trusted Danny’s father.”

  She paled, and turning left him standing near the fire.

  He closed his eyes against the pain.

  She’d loved him.

  Was it possible that he’d loved her but had been too immature and wrapped up in himself to realize it? He didn’t know. All he knew was that staying would have meant putting an end to his roaming ways, and he hadn’t been ready to do that. So he had moved on. He had walked away from the one bit of goodness in his sordid past, possibly the best thing to ever happen to him, and, he suspected, the one person who might have saved him from himself.

  She’d moved on, too. She’d found someone who wasn’t afraid to settle down. Someone who would cherish her enough to make her his wife.

  Someone who had fathered her son.

  That indisputable fact, more than anything she’d said to him, brought the most grief. The love he’d tossed away so carelessly, another had gained. Staying in Wolf Creek wouldn’t be easy, for a lot of reasons.

  * * *

  When Rachel entered the kitchen, she was greeted by two pairs of questioning eyes. She wondered if either of them had heard the actual words of the argument, or if they’d just heard her voice raised in anger.

  “He insists on moving to the boardinghouse after lunch,” she offered, hoping the statement would be enough of an answer to assuage their curiosity, at least for now.

  “Ah,” Edward said, but the look in his eyes told her that he knew there was more than she was letting on.

  “He isn’t well yet,” Danny said.

  Rachel stifled a sigh. Danny was becoming far too attached to Gabe. Another reason he needed to move on.

  “That’s what I told him, but he’s a grown man and can do as he wishes.”

  * * *

  Though he would rather have walked over hot coals barefoot, Gabe went into the kitchen for lunch. The time for running away from his mistakes had passed. Rachel’s color was still high, and her full lips were compressed into a tight line of disapproval. From Edward’s forced smile and Danny’s wary expression, Gabe knew they’d overheard the argument. Just another reason to be gone, he thought, easing himself into the straight-backed chair.

  After Edward prayed, and everyone’s plate was full, he broke the deafening silence.

  “Rachel says you’re planning to move to Hattie’s this afternoon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course, it’s up to you, but I’m not sure that’s wise,” Edward told him. “You still have a long way to go to be really out of the woods. Why don’t you stay until the weekend—three more days—so that we can monitor your progress a bit longer?”

  “I’m not sure that’s wise, either,” Gabe said cryptically.

  “But you can’t leave today.” Danny’s voice was as near a whine as Gabe had ever heard. “You promised to play Chinese checkers with me this afternoon.”

  Despite telling himself that he wouldn’t, Gabe looked at Rachel. It was very possible that she was recalling—as he was—her scathing commentary about his lies, but she was concentrating on buttering a wedge of corn bread and didn’t look up except to shoot her son a brief, grim look.

  Drat it, he had promised! Though he would feel better if he left, was his peace of mind worth breaking a vow to a child? Hadn’t he and Rachel just argued about how little his word meant? Hadn’t he done enough hedging and misleading? Gabe’s fingers tightened around his fork. Making atonement required much more and was far harder than he’d expected, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”

  He forced a tight smile. “That’s right,” he said. “I did. I’ll stay at least tonight, and then we’ll see.”

  * * *

  After lunch, Danny took Gabe into the parlor and set up the Chinese checkers while Rachel began to clear the table.

  “You may as well sit down and tell me what happened,” her father said. “You know I won’t let up until you do.”

  Rachel cast him a woebegone look. Edward’s persistence in getting to the bottom of things was legend. “I thought it was pretty obvi
ous that Gabe and I had words.”

  “Indeed. But if I were a wagering man I’d bet it wasn’t about his leaving.”

  “And you would win that wager,” she said, turning her back on him.

  Edward waited while she washed the glassware and then the flatware. Finally, she turned with a sigh and her signature, narrow-eyed look. “You are the most exasperating man I’ve ever known.”

  “That’s what your mother used to say,” Edward said, holding out his coffee cup for her to refill. “But I would have thought Gabe held that honor.”

  “You’re right. He does. He is.” She gave a reluctant, halfhearted smile. “Which makes you the second most irritating man I’ve ever known.”

  “So what were the fireworks all about?”

  “He said he knew he’d behaved badly and apologized.”

  “And you yelled at him?”

  Rachel’s eyes widened. “What was I supposed to do? Tell him all was forgiven?”

  “Yes.”

  Rachel sucked in a shocked breath and stared at him for a few seconds more. Then, with an angry shake of her head, she turned back to her dishes. “You expect too much.”

  “You’ve had years to come to terms with what happened, Rachel. Not forgiving isn’t like you. You’re one of the least judgmental, compassionate people I know, except evidently when it comes to Gabe, and maybe yourself.”

  “How can I forgive myself?” she asked, scrubbing at a fork with excessive force.

  “How can you not when you asked God for His forgiveness and He’s given it,” Edward countered, his voice gentle.

  “I’d like to think so,” she said with a sigh. “But how can He?”

  “It’s what He does.”

  Again, Rachel stared at her father for long considering moments and went back to her dishes once more.

  “Danny is very taken with Gabe,” Edward offered.

  “I know. It’s...concerning.”

  “He’s looking for a father figure.”

  She whirled to face him. “You’re his father figure.”