Good to go.
She called a cheerful “see you later” to Annabelle and went out the back door.
Pidge raised her big head from the water bucket, nickered a greeting, and waited.
Cassidy reached her, threw both arms around the animal’s sweaty, horse-scented neck, and hugged. “I’ve missed you,” she said, in a murmur, feeling strangely tearful.
Pidge nickered again and head-butted Cassidy a couple of times, though gently, as if to ask, Where have you been?
Cassidy untied Pidge, pressed her shoulder bag against her side with one arm, gripped the saddle horn with her free hand, shoved one foot into the stirrup, and swung up into the worn saddle.
She’d forgotten how good it felt, sitting on a horse’s back, and she took a few moments to savor the sensation and allow muscle-memory to kick in. Then she said softly, “All right, girl. Let’s go home.”
Pidge didn’t need further urging.
She snorted, let her belly swell and then contracted it again, and set out, her movements as slow and steady as if she’d been pulling a plow.
“Well, now,” said G.W. Benton, straightening his back and then adjusting his hat, when his seven-year-old son, Henry, tugged at his shirt sleeve and pointed out the horse and rider coming up Duke’s driveway. “Would you look at that?”
The question was rhetorical, of course, but Henry answered it just the same. “I am looking, Dad,” he said, since, like most kids, he was a literalist. Then, just as unnecessarily, he added, “Cassidy’s back.” There was a note of wonder in his voice.
Duke came out from under the hood of his beat-up old truck, smeared with motor oil and grinning like a fool. Wiping his hands on his pant legs, he strode off toward Cassidy, took hold of Pidge’s bridle, and waited for his niece to step down from the saddle.
“Where’s her stuff?” Henry wanted to know. He looked and sounded worried. “Duke said Cassidy would be sticking around here for a while.”
G.W. ignored the odd tightening in the pit of his stomach as he watched Cassidy land, as nimble as ever, let out a laugh, and accept Duke’s greasy hug. “I don’t imagine she wanted to ride all the way from town with a suitcase in each hand,” he told the boy.
Henry didn’t reply; he just bolted in Cassidy’s direction, full-tilt. She saw him coming, dropped to one knee, right there in the dirt, and opened her arms to catch him.
While Duke looked on, still grinning, Cassidy laughed and practically hugged the stuffings right out of the kid.
G.W. didn’t move a muscle at first; he just looked on. The hitch in his stomach moved to the back of his throat, and he wondered what it meant, if anything.
He’d known Cassidy McCullough all her life. She didn’t look much different than the last time he’d seen her, back at Thanksgiving, but something had changed since then. It was unsettling, felt almost like an ambush.
In the next instant, he decided the idea was crazy and shook it off.
He joined the welcome party, put out a hand to Cassidy just as she got back on her feet, one arm still looped around Henry’s skinny, little-boy shoulders, holding him close to her side.
She looked at G.W.’s hand, then his face.
A smile quirked at the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t move otherwise. “Hello, G.W.,” she said, very quietly.
G.W. let his hand fall back to his side. That sensation of being taken by surprise washed over him again, and he didn’t like it one damn bit. “Hello,” he replied, and the word came out sounding dry as sawdust.
What the devil was wrong with him, anyhow? Sure, Cassidy was all grown up, and she was beautiful, too, but both those things had been true for some time now. There was no good reason for his reaction.
She inclined her head toward Duke’s ancient pickup, with its raised hood, rusty patches, and broken tailgate. Except for a good set of tires, the rig was a wreck.
“Next time I visit,” she said, “I’ll rent a car.”
The next time she visited, G.W. reflected, nonplussed, she’d be married.
Since that thought didn’t set well with him for reasons he didn’t care to explore further, G.W. swung a glare Duke’s way. The man wasn’t poor, for God’s sake. He could afford a decent truck—a whole fleet of them, if the notion struck him. After all, Duke had enjoyed more than his fifteen minutes of fame during the three seasons his reality show, “Man Seeks Monster”, had been on the air. He was still making money in his sleep, now that the thing was being streamed on the internet at five bucks a pop, and then there were the fees he collected for speaking engagements and personal appearances at various conventions. On top of all that, Duke wrote a popular blog, posted a weekly podcast with listeners numbering in the tens of thousands, and collected advertising revenues on both fronts.
The man had plenty of money.
What he didn’t have, it seemed to G.W., was the sense God gave a fence post.
If he had, he’d have met his niece at the airport, like a normal human being would have done. Instead, he’d left Cassidy a horse.
Why all this ought to piss G.W. right off the way it did was anybody’s guess. It just did, that’s all.
“Now why would you want to rent a car?” Duke asked Cassidy blithely, already leading Pidge toward the barn.
Cassidy made no reply; she just watched them go, her uncle and the tired horse, shaking her head and smiling a little. Henry was still clinging to her, both arms wrapped around her waist, his blond, buzz-cut head tilted back so he could look up into her face.
G.W., still exasperated and not having a clue why, since he’d grown up with Duke and nothing the man did ever surprised him, no matter how off-the-wall crazy it was, slapped his hat against his right thigh and then slammed it back on his head.
“Is that truck going to be running anytime soon?” Cassidy asked mildly, indicating Duke’s disabled pickup with a nod of her head. If she’d noticed G.W.’s fractious mood, she gave no sign of it.
“God knows,” G.W. said, thrusting the words out on a long breath, like a sigh. Then, somewhere inside himself, he stumbled across a smile and dredged it up to the surface. “I didn’t know about the horse,” he said. In fact, though Duke had mentioned that Cassidy was coming home to plan her big-city wedding, G.W. hadn’t known when she was due to arrive, either. “If I had, Henry and I would have met your bus.”
Cassidy’s smile seemed to wobble a little. She looked tired, overheated, and pretty dusty, too. “That’s okay,” she said, very quietly. “I kind of enjoyed riding Pidge again. It’s been too long.”
Henry finally released his hold on Cassidy’s middle, but immediately grabbed her hand and started tugging her toward the house. He had a thing about women, Henry did; his mother had been gone almost three years by then, and he still missed her.
So did G.W., of course, though the raw ache had worn off at some point. Now, when he thought of Sandy, the memories were almost always good ones, from before she got sick.
Cassidy allowed Henry to haul her over to the side porch, and the door that led into the kitchen, and G.W. just naturally went along. He and Henry washed up at the sink, while Cassidy slipped away to the downstairs bathroom, ostensibly to do the same thing.
By the time they all reconnected in the kitchen, Duke was back from the barn. Once he’d scrubbed the grease off his hands and forearms, he opened the fridge door and rummaged around until he came up with two cans of beer, a soda for Henry, and a bottle of store-bought iced tea, the kind Cassidy liked.
At least he’d made some kind of preparation for company, G.W. thought, still a mite sour. Unless, of course, the stuff was left over from Cassidy’s last visit, in which case it had to be way past its expiration date.
“How was your flight?” Duke asked his niece, joining the rest of them at the round oak table that had been sitting right where it was for the better part of a hundred years.
Cassidy unscrewed the cap on her iced tea and raised the bottle as if making a toast. “Can’t complain,” she r
eplied. “Security was a total pain, like it always is, but I had an aisle seat and there wasn’t much turbulence. As for the bus ride from Phoenix, well, I could complain about that, but I’m not going to.”
Duke chuckled, raised his beer in acknowledgement of her gesture, and said, “Well, it’s over now. You’re here, safe and sound.”
“Not to mention saddle-sore,” G.W. observed dryly.
Duke slanted a glance his way. Temper sparked in his dark gray eyes. He opened his mouth, remembered Henry’s presence, and shut it again, but G.W. had a pretty good idea what his friend had been about to say—something along the lines of, What’s your problem?
Since G.W. couldn’t have said what his problem was, precisely, he was glad the question hadn’t been put to him.
“I’m going to be in second grade when school starts again,” Henry announced, after taking a long slug of cola. He never got the sugary kind unless Duke gave it to him; at home, he drank milk, water, or unsweetened fruit juice, so he was making the most of the opportunity.
Cassidy widened her eyes—they were blue, her eyes, thick-lashed and bright as a star-spangled sky, in spite of her obvious fatigue—and gave a low whistle of exclamation. “Seriously?” she replied. “Why the last time I saw you, Henry Benton, you were still in first grade.”
“That was way last year,” Henry said soberly. “At Thanksgiving.”
“Right,” Cassidy said, drawing out the word.
“You hungry?” Duke asked, all solicitous now that Cassidy had made her own way home.
Was there no end to Duke’s hospitality? G.W. wondered irritably. What other grand surprises awaited Cassidy—clean sheets on her bed? Freshly laundered towels in the upstairs bathroom?
Not that it was any of his business, one way or the other.
Duke’s unasked question suddenly had merit.
What the hell was his problem?
Actually, he knew what it was, but he wasn’t ready to admit that, even to himself.
“I’m starving,” Cassidy said, with feeling. “The six pretzels I was served on the plane wore off a long time ago, and I had to hurry to catch the bus.”
The bus.
That, to G.W.’s mind, was even worse than the horse.
Why hadn’t Duke at least borrowed a rig, if he wouldn’t buy one, and met Cassidy’s flight down in Phoenix?
Stop it, G.W. told himself silently. You’re acting like an old lady.
“Well, then,” Duke said, pleased with himself, “I guess it’s a good thing I whipped up a batch of my special chicken-and-wiener spaghetti casserole a while back and shoved it in the freezer. Half an hour in the oven, and supper’s on the table.”
Cassidy laughed, and the sound reminded G.W. of the bell in the country church down the road, back when it still had a clapper. Used to float on the air, the peal of that bell, beckoning the faithful—or the merely resigned--from far and wide.
“Sounds good to me,” she said. “In the meantime, I could use a shower.”
Duke was already out of his chair, turning stove knobs, cranking up the oven.
Cassidy got up, too, ruffled Henry’s stubbly hair as she passed him, and headed for the back stairway.
“You two are welcome to stay and eat with us,” Duke told G.W., once she was gone.
“Gosh,” G.W. said. He’d been standing since Cassidy rose from her chair. “Much as I enjoy your amazing culinary skills, old buddy, Henry and I have other plans.”
Henry looked downright discouraged. “You have other plans,” he said, leveling his gaze at G.W. for a moment before turning his attention to Duke. “Dad has a date.”
“It’s not a date,” G.W. said, too quickly.
Duke’s mouth twitched. He opened the freezer above his refrigerator and rooted around until he’d managed to extract a casserole dish wrapped in tin foil and secured with a few strips of duct tape. “Your loss,” he told G.W.
“If it’s not a date,” Henry persisted, “how come I have to be babysat?”
“You’re spending the evening with your grandma,” G.W. reminded his son. “That doesn’t qualify as being ‘babysat’.”
Henry rolled his eyes dramatically. “She’ll make me watch Dancing with the Stars,” he protested. “She has a whole huge bunch of episodes saved up on her DRD. And most of the dancers aren’t even stars—not really. They’re just people who get their pictures on the covers of those little newspapers at the supermarket all the time.”
“Life is hard,” G.W. said, suppressing a smile, “and then you die.”
“I hate it when you say that,” Henry replied.
“I’ll save you some chicken-and-wiener spaghetti casserole,” Duke promised the kid, all sympathy. In a good-cop-bad-cop scenario, he would have been the good one, while G.W. got to be the mean guy.
“Thanks,” Henry answered, ignoring his dad. Then he stomped outside, slammed the screen door behind him.
G.W. sighed. Squeezed the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger.
“You could use some sensitivity training,” Duke remarked affably, peeling the duct tape off the casserole.
G.W. opened his mouth, closed it again, and followed the trail Henry had just blazed. Only difference was, he didn’t slam the screen door.
***
Revived by hot water and soap lather, barefoot and clad in a faded pink and white polka dot sundress she’d found in the back of her bedroom closet, Cassidy returned to the kitchen, drawn by the scent of supper.
Duke hadn’t heard her coming down the stairs, so she paused at the edge of the room, watching as he lifted the spaghetti casserole from the oven. The concoction, innovative as it was, would probably taste even better than it smelled.
Standing there, unnoticed as yet, Cassidy let her thoughts drift back over the years she’d lived in this sturdy, roomy old house, and the people with whom she’d shared the space—Duke, of course, and her late grandmother, Molly.
Twelve years Cassidy’s senior, Duke had always been more like a big brother to her than an uncle.
Molly, widowed young, had been strong, forthright and beautiful, through and through.
The situation had been complicated, right from the beginning.
Cassidy’s mother, Heather, hadn’t planned on getting pregnant at the age of eighteen, but it happened. Already on her own, she’d married Cassidy’s father, Jack McCullough, Duke’s older brother, who was barely twenty at the time.
In short, it didn’t last.
One day, Heather had written a single word—good-bye—on a scrap of paper and taped it to the refrigerator door. Then, leaving her child and most of her belongings behind in the cramped apartment above the abandoned movie house, she’d simply left.
Maybe she’d caught the bus.
Maybe she’d hitchhiked.
Nobody knew for sure.
For a while, Jack had been sure she’d come home.
Instead, she’d stayed gone.
There had been postcards now and then, always mailed from a different place. The last one—Cassidy had found it among her grandmother’s things, years after Molly’s death—had simply announced that she’d remarried and wouldn’t be getting in touch again.
True to her word, she hadn’t.
Jack had tried, in those early weeks after Heather’s departure, but in the end, he couldn’t hold down a job and look after a small, baffled child, constantly crying for her mama. He’d taken Cassidy to his mother, enlisted in the Air Force, and gone away.
Oh, he’d sent home most of his pay. After more training and a brief visit home, he’d been “deployed”, sent to North Africa. He wrote often, and the allotment checks arrived on schedule.
A little over a week before Jack’s tour of duty would have ended, he was killed in action.
Naturally, Molly had been devastated, but she’d carried on. She’d had a ranch to run, a young son, and a granddaughter to raise.
Stoic in that way country women often are, especially when they’ve bee
n raised on the land, Molly had simply kept on keeping on. She bought and sold cattle, helped to mend fence lines, repaired leaky roofs and broken pipes, raised a garden in summer, and still managed to smile a lot more often than she cried.
Cassidy was seven when Molly came down with a case of pneumonia, entered the hospital, spent nearly two weeks there, and finally came home to recover.
Instead of getting well, though, she’d gotten sicker.
Duke had taken her back to the hospital.
This time, though, she never came home.
So many people attended her funeral that the services had to be held outside, since the church couldn’t hold them all.
After a while, letters started from the county began to arrive, then phone calls, then visits. Social workers had scoured the country for Heather, it turned out, but they’d had no luck finding her or any of her kin. That was when they’d started making noises about putting Cassidy in foster care.
Duke—he’d been christened ‘Pernell’, but he’d refused to answer to any variation of that from day one, so everybody had finally given up and let him name himself after John Wayne—was nineteen when his mother died.
Too young, certainly, to take proper care of a seven-year-old niece.
One thing about Duke, though: he was bone-stubborn. He and Cassidy added up to a family, by his calculations, and nobody was going to split them up.
Somehow, he’d prevailed against the system and, with considerable help from Annabelle, neighbors and friends, he’d raised his niece to adulthood.
Back in the day, he’d helped Cassidy with her homework every night.
He’d sat through every school program, every Christmas pageant at church, every dance recital, dressed up, smiling wide, and proud as all get-out. He’d combed the tangles out of Cassidy’s hair, bandaged her skinned knees, seen her through her teenage years.
When she earned a full-tuition scholarship and went off to college, Duke had taken a night job as a mechanic, in addition to his ranch work, and helped with her living expenses.
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