Accidental Cowgirl

by Maggie McGinnis

  He pulled a pine bough up to peer under it and was greeted by a chorus of tiny mews. The momma cat had just laid down, and her kittens were obviously hungry. Decker tried to count how many kittens there were, but with all of them tumbling around, it was impossible to tell. He watched for a moment as they settled down, then lowered the branch. He remembered how intrigued Kyla’d been by the baby foxes, and he’d be willing to bet that if she’d found these kittens, she’d want to take each and every one of them home with her.

  As Decker headed back up the gully toward the clearing, a glint of glass caught his eye. He looked to his right and squinted. He pivoted to change direction, heading toward where he’d seen the reflection. Straight ahead of him was a badly weathered structure built with what looked like leftover bits of lumber and mismatched windows. What the hell? Was somebody living out here without their knowledge?

  He didn’t see a stovepipe, and as he got closer, he realized the cabin was probably only twelve by twelve feet big, so it didn’t look likely that someone actually lived in it. The side facing him had a big window looking out toward the gulley. The other three sides looked practically built into the hill. It was covered with spider webs and leaves, and when he stepped close enough to peer inside, the dust was so thick he couldn’t see a thing.

  Decker stepped carefully around the little structure, pushing away branches and thorns as he walked. The cabin had to have been here for fifty years. The roof was tilting to the left, and one of the walls was starting to buckle, but the four-paned windows on each side were intact. He scanned the ground around the cabin, but could see no signs of anyone being here recently. As he came around the front and examined the door, he found a padlock.

  A shiny, almost-new silver padlock.

  Chapter 28

  Decker stared at the padlock, then around at the surrounding woods. Who in the world did this place belong to? He stepped to the left and rubbed a thick layer of dust from the window beside the door. He leaned down and peered into the dusty cabin, but couldn’t see much in the gloom. He tried the window to see if it would open, but it was shut tight. He really didn’t want to have to break a window, but if he had to, he would. Dammit, this was Ma’s property. No way was somebody going to get away with being out here on the sly.

  He stalked around the cabin again, trying the other windows. Two of them were locked, but on the big one, he lucked out. With a groan and a squeak, it lifted enough for Decker to see inside. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, but once they did, he got an eyeful. The walls were covered with girlie posters and calendars, and there was a beat-up metal desk against one wall. A ratty old recliner was shoved in one corner with an ancient quilt over the back of it.

  Decker took his hat off and scratched his head. How the hell had someone gotten this stuff out here? The cabin sat miles from the ranch, and the closest road was … wait. Decker looked back up toward the clearing. There was an old county road about a mile from this spot, running at the eastern edge of the property. Christ, the thing hadn’t been maintained for twenty years, though. It was practically a cow path with grass growing down the middle. Had someone actually hauled furniture in here from a mile out?

  He rattled the window frame to see if it would handle his weight, then hauled himself through the window. He stood in the middle of the little cabin and looked around. Beer cans lined the exposed two-by-fours on one whole wall, while another one held a bunch of clear bottles with black labels. He stared at the bottles for a long moment before reaching out to pluck one off the shelf. He’d never forget the labels. His father’s go-to drink.

  Holy shit. Decker spun around slowly, taking in the posters, the beat-up old desk, the recliner and quilt he now recognized from the old basement rec room. This must have been his father’s hideaway cabin.

  He thought back to when they were kids and Decker Senior would saddle up Apollo and disappear for a couple of days, usually after he’d blown up about something stupid like rice for dinner instead of potatoes. The one time they’d tried to follow him to see where he was going, they’d turned around and hightailed it home when a shot rang out and they’d heard the bullet sing high over their heads. This must have been where he was headed.

  Decker sat heavily in the creaky wooden desk chair, head cocked in disbelief. He ran his gloved finger through the dust, leaving a jagged line. He leaned back and studied the front. There were three dented-up drawers, and as much as he didn’t want to open them for fear of what he’d find, he couldn’t stop himself. He pulled open the top drawer slowly, but it was filled with a jumble of pens and sticky pads and paper clips.

  The second drawer was locked, but it took Decker only a moment to pry it open. In contrast to the dust and dinge of the cabin and desktop, in this drawer was a neat stack of color-coded folders thick with papers. He realized his heart was tripping along faster than normal as he viewed the folders. What had his father been hiding out here? Was he about to find out more secrets than he’d already had to deal with this summer?

  He sat back and opened the first folder to find a stack of accounting-style paper etched with his father’s neat block lettering. He scanned the first page, then the second, then flipped quickly through the rest of the folder. Sighing, he put it aside and opened the second one. It was filled with a similar pile of neatly organized pages, and it told a similar story. The dollar amounts varied, and the “Owed To” column changed names often enough, but the plot was clear. When Decker Senior had married Ma, Whisper Creek had been a thriving, profitable enterprise. Ten years later, he’d been up to his eyeballs already.

  It looked like he’d put the ranch up for collateral at least six times that Decker could count. Five of those times, he’d managed to find the money to pay off the debt before anyone took hold of the ranch. The sixth time, though, was March of this year, one month before he’d died.

  If nothing else, Decker Senior had been quite studious in recording his mounting debt. Where once there had been money, now there was none. Where once there had been property, now there were liens. As much as he’d hoped the bookie might be inflating his father’s debt, it looked like Decker Senior had indeed died with one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of someone else’s money on his head.

  Decker thumped his feet to the scarred wooden floor, throwing the folders angrily onto the desk. He couldn’t believe his father had done this. Had he ever loved Ma? Or had he seen her land as a gold mine and courted it right out from under her?

  From the looks of the figures in the folders, he’d been gambling heavily at least since Decker and Cole had been in elementary school. Decker cringed at the number of times he’d put the ranch up as collateral and had managed to get out from under the debt just in time to avoid losing it for good.

  Not this time, though. No, this time he’d gotten completely over his head and had been about to lose everything. Decker narrowed his eyes as he stared at the swimsuit calendar above the desk. Miss August peered suggestively back at him. Jesus, his father’d been out here as recently as four months ago?

  Looking down at the folders, Decker had a horrible thought. Had he gone for that godforsaken drunken drive on purpose? Had he steered into that goddamn tree in hopes of ending it all and leaving someone else to deal with his debt? Had he been that much of a goddamn coward?

  Decker stood up and shoved the chair at the desk, wanting to break something. He’d known about this debt since the first visit from the Vegas chump, but seeing it in black-and-white, in his own father’s handwriting, was a whole different matter. He grabbed a whiskey bottle from the ledge and flung it against the far wall. It shattered with a satisfying crash. He grabbed another, and another, and flung them both.

  “You. God. Damn. Selfish. Bastard!” he yelled as he flung bottles. “You had the world! The world! You had a wife! Sons!” He pitched more bottles at the wall. “I’m sorry about Emily! More sorry than you can ever know! But dammit, making me leave wasn’t the solution! She was gone. Gone! And you
still had two sons who needed you!” The crashing was almost constant now as he whirled around the room, grabbing bottles and baseball-pitching them at the walls. His boots crunched on glass shards, but he hardly noticed.

  He aimed a bottle at the window, and it flew through, scattering glass outside and in. “It was never enough, was it, Dad?” Crash, crash, whirl, crash. “Never enough!” He flung the last bottle he could find, then collapsed in the wooden chair, head in his hands. “We were never enough, Dad, were we?”

  He took off his hat and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “I was never enough, was I, Dad?”

  Half an hour later, Decker let out a deep breath as he gathered up the folders on the desk, shaking glass shards onto the floor. He had to show Cole what he’d found, and then they had to figure out how to make sure Ma never saw these pages. As he pushed the second drawer shut, he figured he’d better be sure there was nothing in the bottom drawer, so he pulled it open.

  At first he thought it was empty, but when he stuck his hand in, it landed on a soft, flat book of some sort. Decker pulled it out, afraid to know what he’d found now. As he sat back in the chair, he opened the cover warily. In his father’s handwriting was the date April 1, 2013. The first line read, April Fools’ Day. Named after me, I’m pretty sure.

  Twenty pages later, Decker leaned back as far as the chair would allow, placing the book open on his chest and blinking his eyes quickly. Holy mother of God.

  Dad’s accident hadn’t been an accident at all. He’d spent hours up here in this cabin writing up his confessions in this journal while he downed his last bottle of whiskey, and then he’d gone home and taken that truck out for one last ride. He’d never intended to come back here, never intended to pay off the debts he’d rung up.

  Never intended to speak forgiveness to the son he’d sent away.

  * * *

  “Ma? Are you in here?” Jess heard her voice echo through the kitchen.

  “Right here, honey.” Ma pushed open the swinging doors, a basket of laundry in her hands. “How was your walk?”

  “Good. I think that’s my favorite trail.”

  “Kyla need some space, did she?”

  Jess sat down in one of the stools at the counter. “The poor thing was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. She practically shoved Hayley and me out the door so she could have some peace. I hope she’s still sleeping.”

  “You didn’t lose Hayley while you were out there, did you?”

  “Nope. She’s back down in the barn. I think she might sleep there tonight. She cannot get enough of these horses!”

  “Well, that’s good. I love when other people love my horses as much as I do.” Ma started folding towels on the counter. “I picked up some treats for Kyla at the bakery this morning. I know how she loves those cupcakes Jenny makes.” She paused her folding. “Other than tired, how is she?”

  Jess sighed. “I wish I knew, really. She’s been all brave-faced since we got back from the hospital. I know she’s got to be hurting, but she keeps saying it’s nothing compared to her car accident.”

  “It’s all about perspective, I guess. But glory, that girl’s got way more perspective than one body needs.”

  “That’s for sure. I think she got more of it here than she expected, too.” Jess almost clapped her hand over her mouth after the words had escaped. Just what Kyla needed was for her to come blabbering to Ma about her feelings for Decker.

  “I imagine my son had something to do with that, no?”

  Jess watched Ma calmly fold washcloth after washcloth, like she couldn’t care less what Jess’s answer was. “Maybe a little.”

  “Decker’s had a lot of … perspective … as well. Not sure what he tells people, but his road hasn’t been easy, either.” Ma looked up. “Doesn’t excuse bad behavior, if there was some, but I’m just saying.”

  “I think Kyla’s just in a really vulnerable place.”

  “So is Decker, honey. So is Decker.”

  Jess fiddled with a salt shaker. “Does it have anything to do with Emily?”

  Ma kept folding, but a little faster. “See her gravestone, did you?”

  “I did. There was a big bunch of daisies on it.”

  Ma smiled softly. “Cole brings those up every couple of days. They were her favorites. She used to bring me bunches of ’em all summer long. So many that I ran out of vases.”

  Jess stilled. Good Lord. Emily was Ma’s daughter. And she’d died at age ten, according to the gravestone. She felt tears prick the backs of her eyes as she watched Ma carefully, unsure of what to say. “I’m so sorry, Ma.”

  “She was a treasure, that one. Full of piss and vinegar, always getting in trouble, always talking her way out of it. She had her father wrapped right here.” Ma held up her pinky finger. “That girl could do no wrong.” A cloud seemed to come over her face at those words. “She used to drive Cole and Decker crazy. She’d follow them around, mimicking their every move, ’til they hid on her or tossed her in the hayloft and took away the ladder.”

  Jess laughed at the image of Decker and Cole swinging their little sister up into the scratchy hay. It was such a typical big-brother thing to do. “She must have hated that.”

  Ma smiled. “Oh, she’d screech and squawk and yell for help, but she ate up every minute those boys paid attention to her.” She paused her hands on a pile of towels. “They loved her so.”

  “Did she get sick?” Jess hated herself for asking, knew it was none of her business, but in her heart, wondered if Emily’s death might have anything to do with the way Decker’d been playing hot and cold with Kyla all week. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen or so when Emily’d died. That was quite a time to lose a little sister, and scars like that healed—or didn’t—in curious ways.

  “No, honey. She didn’t get sick.” Ma sat down on a stool, eyes far away. “She got mad. She got good and mad and wanted some attention. So she snuck into the barn and decided to prove she could ride a horse that Cole’d been trying to break. A monster, that horse. Had a bad owner, and we were trying to get him better. But no one but Decker could do anything with him.” Jess put her hands over her mouth, dreading what was coming next.

  “Well, it worked. She got herself on that damn horse. But he took off and she just held on for dear life when he ran.” Tears glistened in Ma’s eyes, and Jess got up to put an arm around her shoulders. “Decker tried so hard to get to her. Soon as he heard the hoofbeats, he lit out after her on Chance. But by the time he found them, that horse had dumped her in the pond, got her tangled in the lines. Decker dove in after her, but it was too late. She was already gone.”

  Chapter 29

  “I’m so sorry, Ma. I had no idea. I never should have asked.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong by asking, honey. Anybody sees a ten-year-old in a graveyard, they’re gonna wonder what happened.”

  “How did you ever go on afterward?” Jess had tears in her own eyes, and she hadn’t even known the child.

  “We didn’t at first. We almost got swallowed by the grief of it. Emily’s father never really did go on. He just shut himself away and did some horrible, horrible things. Me and Decker and Cole leaned on each other as hard as we could. Decker blamed himself for a long, long time.” She blotted her tears again. “Aw, hell, what am I saying? That boy still thinks it’s his fault.”

  “Is that why he left?”

  “He didn’t leave, honey. He got chased off this land by his own damn father.”

  Jess sat back down hard. “His father made him leave? Because of Emily?” Jess stared at Ma, trying to reconcile the woman she’d grown to know in the past two weeks with a mother who’d let her husband drive away her own child.

  “I never knew, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Jess shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “Baloney. I saw that thought flash over your face.” Ma patted her hand. “But it’s okay. Shows you know how wrong it would have been for me to e
ver, ever stand for it.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jess knew her voice was small.

  “No apology necessary. Decker’s father had me believe he’d taken off of his own accord. Made up a story about some long conversation they’d had. Told me we needed to let him go, let him find his way in the world, stop torturing him with memories of his baby sister at every turn.”

  Ma looked out the window, eyes angry. “And I bought it. I fell for it, even though I was good and old enough to know better. I should have seen through that … bullshit, should have known Decker would never have abandoned us like that.

  “He loves this land more than I do, if that’s even possible. There was no way he’d have left by choice. But I was too blinded by grief still to see it. All I could do was hit my knees every night and ask the Lord to please let me at least keep Cole, if I wasn’t fit to have the other two.”

  “Oh, Ma. I don’t understand how he could do such a thing.”

  “In his mind, it was the only solution. He blamed Decker. Blamed him for losing track of his little sister long enough that she had time to get on that horse. Blamed him for not saving her once she was in the pond. And he made no secret of it. So every time he looked at Decker, he was just consumed by the rage of it. I couldn’t make him see reason, no matter how hard I tried. But I never, never thought he’d do what he did. Never knew a human could be capable of it. Never knew a father could write off his own son.”

  “When did you find out?” Jess whispered.

  “Not ’til the night he died. He was in a bad, bad place. He’d been drinking for hours. Said he had to get something off his chest before he went to bed. He told me what he’d done. He cried, he swore, he all but handed me a gun to shoot him with. And it’s a good damn thing there wasn’t one in the house, or I might have taken him up on it.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, wringing them gently. “I went upstairs afterward, thinking I did not know this man I’d married, thinking I couldn’t be with him one more moment on this earth, and then I heard his truck start. I looked out the window and saw his taillights heading down that driveway, and somehow I knew I wasn’t ever going to talk to him again.” Her voice hushed to a bare whisper. “And I was right.”