A Family For Rose

by Nadia Nichols

  “Tess,” she choked out as her throat cramped up.

  “She waited a long time for you to come back,” a man’s voice said.

  Shannon knew that gruff voice as well as she knew the old dog she held in her arms. She looked up, blinking through her tears. Her father stood in the doorway, folded-up newspaper in one hand. She rose to her feet and swiped her palms across her cheeks to blot her tears.

  “Hello, Daddy.”

  His expression was chiseled in stone. For the longest moment Shannon thought he wasn’t going to respond, but then he gave a curt nod. “Fool dog still looks for you every afternoon, about the time the school bus used to drop you at the end of the road. She never stopped waiting for you to come home.”

  His words were like a knife twisting in her guts, but of course, that had been his intention. To hurt her. Shannon would’ve dropped down beside the old dog and bawled her heart out if he hadn’t been standing there.

  He was thinner, older, but still tough. A couple days’ worth of stubble on his lean jaw. His hair had gone completely gray and was cut short, like he’d always kept it. Neatly trimmed mustache. Sharp blue eyes that could still make Shannon feel guilty about things she hadn’t done and never would. Blue jeans, worn boots and a reasonably clean white undershirt. Handsome in a steely-eyed, weathered way.

  “You might’ve let me know you were coming. Phone still works,” he said.

  Shannon shoved her hands into her pockets and lifted her shoulders in an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry. It was a spur-of-the-moment trip. I brought Rose with me, Daddy. I thought you might like to meet her.” She raised her voice and turned toward the car before her father could send them both packing. “Rose, come on and meet your grampy.” The car door opened. Rose stepped out and stood in the dust of the yard, staring up at them. To her father, Shannon said, “She’s a little shy with strangers, but it doesn’t last long. C’mon up here, honey. It’s all right.”

  Rose just stood there, watching them.

  “Where’s Travis?” her father asked in that same flat, hard voice, eyeing the car.

  “I left him, Daddy. I should’ve done it a long time ago. We’re divorced. It’s over. I guess that’s why I’m here. I didn’t know where else to go. Come on, Rose. It’s okay.”

  Rose climbed the porch steps one at a time, holding on to the railing. She stared gravely at her grandfather with her dark blue eyes. Peaches-and-cream face. Tawny curls. How could he not fall in love with her? Shannon thought. How could this sweet little girl, his own flesh and blood, not melt his heart?

  “Hello, Grampy, I’m Rose,” she said, and, like they’d rehearsed, she held out her small hand to him.

  He took it in his strong, calloused one after a startled pause. “Hello, Rose,” he said, and released her hand awkwardly. Shannon was relieved to see his expression had softened.

  “Is this your dog?” Rose asked him.

  “That used to be your momma’s dog. Her name’s Tess.”

  “Her eyes look funny.”

  “She’s blind,” her father said bluntly. “That happens sometimes with old animals.”

  “Do you have horses?”

  “A few.”

  “Are they blind, too?”

  “No, but they oughta be. They’re old enough.”

  Rose’s expression became pained. She looked at her mother. “Momma, I really have to go pee.”

  “The bathroom’s inside, up the stairs and on your right. Go on. And don’t forget to wash your hands after.”

  The screen door banged behind her and light footsteps raced up the stairs.

  “Been a long time since there were any kids in this place,” her father said.

  “I passed a house being built on the way in,” Shannon said, figuring it was best to get it out of the way. “In that pretty spot where I used to wait for the school bus.”

  Her father nodded, rubbed the bristle of gray stubble on his chin and carefully studied the distant mountains. “I sold ten acres out by the black road to someone you used to know. Billy Mac, from the rez,” he said. “He paid some cash up front and he’s paying cash for half of each month’s mortgage payment, giving me the balance in work. I charged him interest just like a bank would. Seemed fair.”

  For a few moments Shannon struggled to process what he’d just said. Billy Mac! Then the blood rushed to her head and her Scots/Irish spirit took over.

  “You sold ten acres of land along the Bear Paw to Billy Mac? A guy you wouldn’t even let me date in high school?”

  “Property taxes were due and the town...”

  “Billy Mac?”

  “I needed the money to pay back taxes, and you left, Shannon. I didn’t drive you off, you left of your own free will.”

  Shannon pressed her fingertips to her temples. “You’re taking half the mortgage payment in labor?” Shannon glanced around at the neglected slump of the place. “Doesn’t look like he’s in any danger of drowning in his own sweat from all the work he’s doing around here. How much did you sell him the land for? Two hundred an acre?”

  Her father never flinched. “He’s working hard and doing all right by me. I got no complaints,” he said. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and rounded his shoulders. He refused to look at her, just gazed across the valley. The silence between them stretched out, long and awkward.

  “I’d have bought that piece of land from you, Daddy,” Shannon said quietly. The anger drained out of her and, with it, the hopes and dreams of her fairy-tale homecoming. “You know how much I loved that spot.”

  “Too late for that, isn’t it?”

  “Too late for a lot of things, I guess.” Shannon felt empty inside. She’d been a fool to think that coming home would make life better. If it weren’t for Rose, she’d get back into her car and leave this place for good.

  “How long were the two of you planning to stay?” he said, still not looking at her.

  “I was hoping you might let us stay for a night or two,” Shannon said. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  They heard Rose’s footsteps descending the stairs at a gallop. “You can stay as long as you need to,” he said. Curt, clipped, brusque. He wasn’t going to bend. Wasn’t going to soften. Wasn’t going to cut her any slack. Never had, never would.

  “Thanks, Daddy,” Shannon said, biting back the angry words that burned on her tongue. “We won’t be much bother. We might even be of some help. I still remember how to do chores, how to drive the mowing machine and how to pitch bales of hay. I noticed the fields hadn’t been hayed yet. It’s getting late for the first cut and there can never be too many hands at haying time.”

  Rose pushed the screen door open and rejoined them on the porch. She dropped to her knees beside the old border collie. “Hello, Tess. I’m sorry you’re blind.”

  “Be gentle with her. She’s very old,” Shannon said. “Fifteen years, anyway.”

  “I’ll be gentle, Momma. Do you think she’s hungry?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m hungry, too. We haven’t eaten since forever.”

  “That’s not true, we ate lunch. You didn’t finish yours, remember? I said, ‘If you don’t finish your sandwich, Rose Chesney Roy, you’re gonna get hungry real quick.’ And now you’re hungry and we don’t even know if your grampy can feed us.”

  Her father bristled at her words. “You like beans and franks?” he asked Rose, gruff as a bear.

  Rose nodded up at him, wide-eyed. “And I like burgers and french fries.”

  “You’ll have to settle for cowboy fare tonight.”

  “Okay,” she said eagerly, scrambling to her feet. “Can you teach me to ride tomorrow, Grampy?”

  He matched Rose’s intense blue gaze with one of his own and fingered his mustache. “This is a real busy time of year. I doubt I’ll have a chance.” They heard
a vehicle approaching and Shannon turned to see a dark pickup truck bouncing down the last rutted stretch of ranch road, kicking up dust. “That’ll be Billy Mac. He’s been staying here while he builds his house.”

  The anger that had drained from Shannon returned with a vengeance and heat rushed back into her face. “Billy Mac’s living here? With you?”

  Her father nodded. “Bunks in the old cook’s cabin. Likes his privacy.”

  The truck pulled up next to Shannon’s car and the engine cut out. Door opened. Driver emerged. Stood. Looked up at them. Shannon stared back. It had been ten years and people changed, but the changes in Billy Mac were the result of more than just the years. He stood just as tall, with those same broad shoulders and the lean cowboy build that had made him a star quarterback and rodeo rider. But he wasn’t a kid anymore. Whatever he’d been through in the past ten years had turned him into a man. He reached his fingers to the brim of his hat and gave her a formal nod.

  “Hello, Shannon,” he said. “This is quite a surprise.”

  “Hello, Billy. You sure got that part right,” Shannon replied. Her face burned as she remembered like it was yesterday his passionate and unexpected kiss, and how she’d slapped him afterward. “This is my daughter, Rose.”

  Billy nodded again. “Nice to meet you, Rose.”

  Rose skipped down the porch steps and stuck her hand out. “Momma told me it’s polite to shake hands when you meet people,” she said.

  Billy took her little hand in his own for a brief shake. “Your momma’s teaching you good manners.”

  “Supper’s about ready,” her father said. “Come on in.”

  Billy hesitated. “The two of you have some catching up to do. I don’t want to intrude.”

  “You’re not intruding,” her father said, then turned before Billy could respond. The screen door banged shut behind him.

  “Nobody argues with Ben McTavish,” Shannon said. “You should know that by now. You’re working for him, aren’t you? Come on in.” As much as Shannon dreaded sharing supper with Billy Mac, she dreaded sharing it alone with her father even more.

  Billy’d gained a limp—probably from getting thrown off some snuffy bronc or bull. The injury made climbing the steps slow.

  “Are you a real cowboy?” Rose asked when he reached the top step.

  “Not anymore, Rose, but I used to be a fair hand at rodeo.”

  “What’s rodeo?”

  Billy glanced at Shannon. “Your momma hasn’t told you what rodeo is?”

  Shannon smiled and tousled Rose’s curls. “I’ve been remiss.”

  Billy gave Rose a solemn look. “Better ask her to bring you to the next rodeo, so you can experience it firsthand.”

  “Can we go, Momma?” Rose asked, excited.

  “We’ll see. Come on, supper’s ready and we need to get washed up.”

  Billy opened the screen door and held it while Shannon, Rose and Tess went inside. Shannon had envisioned dirty dishes stacked in the sink, counters crowded with empty cans of food and trash everywhere, but the kitchen looked much the same as it had when she’d left. More tired and worn after ten years, but surprisingly neat. Her father was adding another can of generic pork and beans to the pot on the old propane cookstove.

  “Won’t take long to heat,” he said.

  “I thought Rose and I could share my old room,” Shannon said. When he didn’t respond except to nod, she took her daughter’s hand and led her up the stairs, remembering the feel of each worn tread, the creak of the floorboards, the way the late afternoon sunlight beamed through the west-facing hall window and splintered through the railings at the top of the stairs.

  “Is this where we’ll be living, Momma?” Rose asked as they stood in the open doorway of the small room at the top of the kitchen stairs. The room was just as Shannon remembered. Just as she’d left it. Bed neatly made. Braided rug on the floor beside it. Posters of country-and-western singers pinned to the walls. High school text books stacked on the battered pine desk, as if waiting for her to return and finish up her senior year, as if she could step back in time and magically erase that unforgivable mistake she’d made, running off to Nashville with the slick-talking Travis Roy.

  “I don’t know, Rose,” Shannon said, because in all honesty, she didn’t. “We’ll be staying here for a few days, anyway.” She felt a little dizzy, standing in this musty-smelling time capsule. A little sick at heart and a little uncertain. Coming back home hadn’t been such a good idea, after all, but she was here. The only thing she could do was try to make the best of it. She had to get beyond the little house Billy Mac was building on the very spot she’d coveted—and the fact that Billy Mac was downstairs in her father’s kitchen.

  Billy’d had a tough-guy reputation in high school, maybe because being born on the rez had left him with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. But he’d been a wonderful athlete, and handsome enough to make all the girls swoon. He’d had his pick of them, too.

  He’d asked Shannon out a couple of times, but even her father had heard that Billy was a player and warned her away from him. Though she’d heeded his warning, that hadn’t stopped her from being attracted to him, and it hadn’t stopped Billy from trying.

  Though she’d been a year younger, Billy’d been her lab partner, and they’d shared an edgy class fraught with a different kind of chemistry that could have taken her down a completely different path and very nearly did. But along about then, Travis Roy moved to town, asked her to sing with his country-and-western band and then dazzled her with promises of a life of fame and fortune in Nashville.

  Billy had asked her to his senior prom, but she’d gone with Travis, instead, and not just because of Billy’s reputation with the girls. Travis’s band was playing at the prom, and she’d written a song for him to sing. He was going to dedicate it to the graduating class as well as the song they’d recently recorded for an agent from Nashville. The song that was about to pave their way to fame and fortune. But Billy’d been at the high school dance, and he and Travis had gotten into it out in the parking lot. Billy’d flattened Travis in a fit of jealousy, busted his nose, then had the audacity to tell her he loved her.

  As if that wasn’t enough, he’d showed up at the ranch a few weeks later under the guise of apologizing and found her crying on the porch after yet another argument with her father about her wanting to head to Nashville with Travis. He attempted to comfort her and one thing lead to another, culminating in The Kiss.

  It was a kiss she’d never forgotten, a kiss that ignited enough passion to make her momentarily forget she was with Travis, but she’d come to her senses, slapped Billy and stuck with Travis, believing her life would be far more rewarding in Nashville with a country music star than with a guy whose sole aspirations were to win a rodeo belt buckle and to have his own ranch someday.

  Shannon already knew about ranch life. She’d lived it for seventeen years and wanted something a whole lot more glamorous for the next seventy.

  Shannon didn’t dwell on the fact that, had things turned out a little differently, if Travis hadn’t come to town, she might have ended up being a rancher’s wife. She’d never tell Rose about any of this, because there were some things a mother didn’t talk to her daughter about, but she still remembered that kiss and how it had made her feel. Ten years hadn’t dimmed the memory.

  Rose fidgeted. “I’m hungry, Momma.”

  “Me, too,” Shannon said. “I’ll let the room air out while we eat supper. We can share the bed tonight, so long as you promise not to thrash around too much. You kick like a little mule.”

  “I won’t kick tonight, Momma. I promise.”

  Shannon raised the window and leaned out on the sill, looking across the valley toward the craggy bluffs lining Wolf Butte, hazy and grayish blue in the afternoon sunlight. She drew a deep breath of the clear, cool air and let the wind draw it fr
om her lungs.

  She felt like weeping, but couldn’t. Not with Rose watching. She was still an outcast, unwanted and unloved. Daddy’d been happier to see Billy Mac than he had been to see his own daughter after ten long years. He’d let them stay as long as they needed, but they weren’t welcome here. He’d made that plain enough.

  “Momma?” Rose’s hand slipped into hers. “Can we go eat now?”

  “Yes,” Shannon murmured past the painful cramp in her throat and turned away from the window to accompany her daughter downstairs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BILLY WAS SETTING the food on the kitchen table, cowboy style: pot of beans next to the pot of franks next to the plate of sliced white bread. Stack of mismatched plates, a coffee can full of silverware. Plastic tub of generic margarine. Plastic salt and pepper shakers. Roll of paper towels. Jug of milk. Four chipped cups that would do double duty for milk or coffee. Shannon smelled the sharp aroma of coffee as it started to perk.

  Her dad was nowhere in sight.

  “Your father went to the tractor shed,” Billy said, reading her questioning expression. “Said not to wait on him. He didn’t know how long he’d be.”

  Shannon felt another bitter stab. He’d gone to find one of his bottles of whiskey. He used to have them stashed all over the place, hiding bottles the way squirrels hide their nuts. He was sitting out there somewhere, drinking cheap hooch to avoid his daughter and granddaughter.

  “Come wash your hands in the sink first, Rose,” she said as her daughter started to sit at the table. They shared the soap, warm water and towel. Billy removed his hat before sitting, revealing a short haircut that didn’t quite hide a nasty six-inch scar on the left side of his head above his ear.

  Rose stared at it as she climbed into her chair. “Does that hurt?”

  Billy shook his head. “Looks worse than it is. The doctors had to put a metal plate in my skull. Here, Rose, have some beans.” He dished some out for her, adding a hotdog and a slice of bread.