The Rancher's Homecoming

by Arlene James

  A cheerleader in high school, she’d lost none of her perkiness. She bounced over to Wes and threw her arms around him, then did the same with Rex and Callie, enveloping Bodie along with her.

  “She’s adorable, Callie, adorable.”

  “Thank you, but she’s not so adorable when she’s cutting teeth.”

  “You like kitties?” Meredith crooned, tickling Bodie under her chin. “I think my kitties will love you.”

  Rex made a snorting sound, which earned him a playful slap on the arm from his sister. Bodie looked at Callie as if to ask what was going on. Callie just shook her head. Bodie suddenly launched herself at Rex, who caught her just in time and clutched her against his chest. She stuck her hand in her mouth and almost casually swung a little foot at Meredith.

  Wes chortled. “Better watch it, Meredith. Rex has a protector now.”

  “So I see.”

  Callie put her hand over her mouth, for it did seem that Bodie had sent a warning kick at Meredith, and it wouldn’t do for her to see her mother grinning as if in approval. Both Rex and Meredith looked as tickled as Wes.

  Reaching for her daughter, Callie said, “Come here, Miss Mess.” To her surprise, Bodie turned away from her, looping an arm around Rex’s neck.

  “She’s okay,” Rex said, crooking his arm around her. He lifted his chin at Meredith, adding, “Besides, I might need her.”

  “You might,” Meredith teased, but then she took her father’s arm, saying, “Come on, Dad. Let’s get you checked in.”

  Wes sighed. “If we have to, we have to.”

  Rex stayed behind with Callie and Bodie in the waiting area. Bodie stood between Rex’s knees, bouncing up and down and gnawing on the seam of his jeans, making a big wet spot.

  “Are you sure she’s not bothering you?” Callie asked anxiously.

  “She’s fine. It’s okay for her to get the denim in her mouth, though, right?”

  “She’s had worse in her mouth, trust me,” Callie muttered.

  Rex chuckled. “You’re a great mother. Dad says you’re far better with Bodie than my mama was with me.”

  That shocked Callie. “Really? I always thought Gloria was the perfect mom.”

  “She was great,” Rex said, “but apparently there was a learning curve.” Callie felt her eyes fill with tears. “Hey,” Rex said, reaching for her hand. “Even the best mama has to start at the beginning.”

  “That’s just such a relief to hear,” Callie told him, laughing and blinking away the moisture.

  “Mama,” Bodie said very clearly then.

  Callie gasped. Reaching down, she swept Bodie up into her arms and began dancing her around the waiting area while Rex laughed and clapped his hands.

  “Mama loves you,” Callie whispered, coming to a stop in front of her chair again.

  Rex stood and patted Bodie on the back, grinning. “What’s not to love? We have here a beautiful baby girl with her first two teeth who can now say, ‘Mama.’ Sounds perfect to me.”

  “Mama!” Bodie exclaimed triumphantly, and Callie put her head back, laughing. Delighted, Bodie said it again, “Mama!”

  “Well, she’s got that down,” Rex quipped. “We’ve got hi, bye and mama. What’s next?”

  Callie felt the joy drain out of her. For most children, next would naturally be dada, but not for Bodie. Sadly, not for her fatherless little girl. Callie shook her head.

  “I don’t know. It’s probably my imagination, but sometimes I think she may be trying to say ‘Night-night,’ too.”

  “Nie-nie-nie,” Bodie muttered, digging a finger into her mother’s chin. She then laughed as if she’d done something very clever.

  “Well done, Miss Bodie,” Rex said, patting her again. “Very well done.”

  She suddenly made a grab for his ear with one hand and his neck with the other. Callie scolded her.

  “Bodie! Stop.”

  Rex laughed, gathering her into his arms. “That’s it, kiddo. Go where the compliments are.” More, Callie thought, to disengage her hold on his ear than to thrill her, Rex dandled the baby over his head then had to dodge the drool that splattered his shoulder. “Ladylike little thing, aren’t you,” he quipped, bringing her down to rest in the crook of his arm.

  Bodie promptly scrunched up her face and turned bright red.

  “Uh-oh,” Callie gasped. “I think a diaper change is in order.”

  Rex started to laugh. “You think?”

  Callie took her daughter into her hands, careful to avoid her bottom, while both she and Rex laughed until tears ran down their faces.

  Callie dipped down to snag her bag from its place on the floor beside her chair. “Want to learn how to change a diaper?” she teased.

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “Coward.”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  She looked around in search of the nearest ladies’ room.

  “Over there,” he said, pointing. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  Still grinning, he took the bag and led the way down a short hallway. Just as they reached the door, it opened and an older woman came out. Dressed in a neat gray suit near the same shade as her short, wispy hair and wire-framed glasses, she wore bright pink lipstick.

  She took one look at the three of them and exclaimed, “Oh, what a pretty baby!”

  “Thank you,” Callie said, reaching for the bag that Rex passed to her.

  “She has her mama’s hair and eyes,” the woman announced. Then she looked at Rex and added, “But I think she has her daddy’s mouth.”

  “Oh, he’s—” Callie began.

  “She’s much better looking than me,” Rex said at the same time.

  The woman started to giggle, and Callie muttered, “We need a clean diaper.”

  “Obviously,” Rex added.

  “Go see about Wes, please,” Callie hissed around a smile.

  He executed an about-face. “Going to see about Wes.”

  Bodie squeaked and reached for him, bucking in her mother’s arms. “Not without a clean diaper, honey,” Callie told her, exasperated by the child’s sudden attachment to Rex.

  The smiling woman adjusted her glasses and said, “He seems like a keeper.”

  Callie just nodded and pushed through the restroom door with her shoulder. He might well be a keeper, but she wouldn’t be the one keeping him, no matter how irresistible he might seem or how fond of him her daughter might be.

  She just hoped that Bodie wasn’t growing too fond of Rex—or Wes, for that matter. As she cleaned Bodie and wrestled a new diaper onto her, Callie told herself that she had no reason to worry. Bodie wouldn’t remember Rex and Wes after she and Callie had gone on to whatever place God had prepared for them.

  No, the only heart Callie had to worry about becoming overly fond of the Billings men was her own.

  Chapter Seven

  “Wow.”

  Rex followed Callie’s gaze as she trailed the colorful maze of tunnels, scratching posts and activity centers that filled the walls and much of the floor of the living room of the apartment, which was on the ground floor of the building.

  “Dad did mention that my sister is an animal lover.”

  Callie grinned. “I think the word he used was nut.”

  Rex chuckled. “Well, Dad always did like to cut right to the heart of a matter.”

  “You’re sure she only has two cats?” Callie asked worriedly, looking around again in awe.

  “Just two,” he confirmed, slipping past her with suitcases for her and Bodie. “That’s all her lease allows.” He pushed the door almost closed with his foot to keep the aforementioned cats from escaping their palace.

  “All this for two cats,” Callie said, shaking her head. Even Bodie seemed to
be taking it all in from her perch on her mother’s hip.

  “The good news is that you’ll hardly ever see them except at feeding time. The litter box is on the enclosed patio, and they have a pet door to let themselves in and out. The bad news is that all this doesn’t leave much room for company, so the only TV is in her bedroom.”

  “Make yourself at home in there,” Meredith said, pushing through the door behind them, grocery bags weighing down her arms. She kicked the door closed behind her. “I have a sitting area so feel free to go in and watch TV anytime you want. When I’m not sleeping or dressing, that is.”

  Rex rolled his eyes, and Callie laughed. “I don’t need TV. I have a baby, plenty to read and meals to cook.” She turned a circle, looking around her again, and asked, “When was the last time you dusted all this?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Meredith answered, carrying the groceries through the dining area into the kitchen.

  “Actually, I do,” Callie refuted calmly. “I’m not sure how Bodie will react to cat dander.”

  “Ooh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Meredith admitted, looking around the end of the kitchen wall.

  “I’ll get the rest of the stuff out of the car,” Rex said quickly.

  As he went out the door, he heard Callie talking to Meredith about cleaning supplies. He’d thought he was being generous when he’d set her salary, but he really was not paying that woman enough. The last time he’d mentioned cat dander to his sister, she’d nearly taken his head off. Meredith kept a clean house—she was a nurse, after all—but she’d given over her whole living room and a large portion of her life to those cats. Maybe Callie could at least bring some perspective to the situation.

  He carried in the remainder of the groceries and put Callie’s and Bodie’s bags in the extra bedroom, while Meredith and Callie laughed together in the kitchen and put away the groceries. Rex stood in the pathway between the dining area and the kitchen to ask where Callie wanted the portable crib.

  “Feel free to move the furniture if you need to,” Meredith told her, waving her into the other room. “You’ll find a luggage stand in the closet.”

  Callie carried Bodie out of the kitchen, past Rex and just down the hall to the small guest room, where a double bed and a long, low dresser took up most of the space.

  “Well, I guess we should push the bed into the corner, slide over the nightstand and put the crib below the window in front of the one closet door. We can put the suitcases in the other end of the closet.”

  “Works for me.”

  “Need any help?”

  “Naw, I got it.”

  “I’ll go help Meredith then.”

  He nodded and started scooting the bed against the wall on one side. When he had the furniture positioned, he went back out to the truck and got the portable crib. Ten minutes after he had it set up, Callie disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. Ten minutes after that, she remerged to say that Bodie was sleeping and that she would be starting lunch.

  “What can I do?” Meredith asked.

  “Don’t you have to work later?”

  “Not for a few hours.”

  “I’m guessing that means you got up early after working late to meet us and check your dad into the chemo unit,” Callie said.

  “Well, yeah, of course.”

  “Go sit with your brother,” Callie directed. “After lunch, you can take a nap.”

  Meredith looked at Rex. “Dad’s right. She’s pure gold.”

  Callie laughed. “I don’t know if Billings’ standards are just low or if you’ve all simply had to do for yourselves too long. Either way, thank you. Now, go away and let me work while my baby is sleeping.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Rex said, turning down the hallway toward his sister’s room. Meredith followed, but by the time they reached her room, both cats had joined them, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

  Tux, the black-and-white tom, hopped up onto the love seat while Tiger, the yellow-striped fellow, paced back and forth in front of the armchair, as if to say that Rex must not sit until their mistress had chosen her spot. She took the love seat, and both cats claimed space around her. The bed sat on a raised platform behind them, while the television hung over the dresser in front of them.

  “Talked to Ann lately?” he asked conversationally. Their sister rarely contacted him, but to be fair, he wasn’t very good about staying in touch with either of his sisters.

  Meredith nodded. “She called last night to ask what I think Dad’s chances are.”

  “Of beating the cancer, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  Rex tried not to ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “So what do you think his chances are?”

  Meredith petted her cats, one with each hand. “Better than fifty-fifty, I’d say.”

  Only better than fifty-fifty? Rex felt as if a fist closed around his heart. “I thought, because they didn’t find it in his pancreas...”

  “It’s tricky,” she told him softly. “Besides the liver, every one of the lymph nodes that they took was positive for cancer.”

  Rex sighed and pushed both hands through his hair. “No wonder they insisted on starting the chemo so soon after surgery.”

  “I wish it could’ve waited a few weeks,” Meredith said. “My leave still hasn’t come through, and I’m not sure it will until the next hiring rotation.”

  “We’ll manage,” Rex assured her. “You’ll run interference for us this week, and Callie will be there when we go home.”

  “I’m so thankful you have her because you’re going to need her,” Meredith warned.

  Rex nodded and tried to focus on more pleasant subjects, such as how much of the cat paradise in the front room Meredith intended to move to the Straight Arrow with her. They were arguing good-naturedly about where she could build her cat playground at the ranch when Callie came to tell them that lunch was ready. The three of them sat down to a light meal and casual conversation.

  It was the last truly easy moment of the week. Rex didn’t expect the accommodations at the hospital to be hotel quality, and he was tired enough to sleep well the first night. But the reality of his father’s disease made itself felt in a new way repeatedly throughout every day. Even as they steadily pumped the chemotherapy drugs into his body, one specialist after another came to Wes’s room, including a dietician, who asked to speak to Callie after learning they had a cook. They arranged the meeting, and Rex went down to the common area to play with Bodie while Callie met with the dietician.

  He hadn’t realized that babies could be so engaging. Bodie, of course, was incredibly bright; she was much brighter than the average child, he felt sure. She mimicked his facial expressions, laughed when he made funny sounds and gave slimy, messy kisses that completely melted his heart even as they turned his stomach a little. Fear tainted every moment, however. What if he dropped her or scared her? What if she filled another diaper before her mother returned to deal with it? What if she started to cry?

  His relief warred with his disappointment when Callie finally returned. Then Bodie both thrilled him and broke his heart when she tried to hang on to him rather than go to her mother.

  “Bodie Jane Deviner, behave yourself,” Callie scolded, pulling the child away from Rex. Bodie huffed such a pathetically false wail of protest that even Rex knew she wasn’t really crying. Callie had to disguise a smile of her own in order to deal with the babe. “That’s enough now.”

  Bodie rubbed her eyes with both fists, showing the true source of her distress. She obviously knew that if she went with her mom, at some point she’d have to take a nap. No doubt that apartment seemed pretty small to the two of them by now, and Bodie was too young for the playground in Meredith’s complex.

  “There’s a park we could take her to after dinner,
if you’re interested,” Rex heard himself say.

  Callie smiled. “That might be a good idea if it’s shady enough.”

  “I think it is.”

  “Okay, but first someone needs a n-a-p.”

  He chuckled. “We’re spelling now, are we?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Definitely brighter than average, and a bright spot in an otherwise dark week. Just like her mom.

  * * *

  The heat felt absolutely suffocating, even after dinner, but just seeing something green made Callie feel better.

  “Why is the city so much hotter than the country?” she asked, lowering her body gratefully onto a bench in the shade of a well-groomed tree.

  “I don’t know. It’s a different kind of heat, isn’t it?” Rex replied, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. “I guess it’s all the concrete, metal and glass.”

  Callie fluffed her bangs off her damp forehead, grumbling, “I don’t understand why anyone lives here.”

  He spread his hands. “Shopping, entertainment, beautiful homes, state-of-the-art hospitals, jobs, friends, family, schools, libraries, museums, sports. Cities do have their advantages.”

  “I guess. I just know I’ll be glad to get home again.”

  “Me, too.”

  That surprised her, and she couldn’t help staring at him. “I thought you’d be reluctant to leave city living behind.”

  He shook his head. “Not this time. I’m sick to death of all the needles and pills and monitors. I don’t want to see another doctor or technician for years. And I want my father back.”

  “Meredith says it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Callie warned.

  Rex sighed. “I know. We’ll have to do this again in a few weeks.”

  “What happens if he doesn’t make it, Rex?” Callie asked gently.

  He shrugged, then ran his hands through his hair. “The same thing that happens if he does. Eventually, one way or another, we all go on with our lives. Meri goes on nursing. Ann keeps climbing the corporate ladder. I go back to practicing law. What other choice is there?”