Home on the Range

by Ruth Logan Herne

  “In the house,” she told him. “It’s in the first cupboard to the left of the sink.”

  What kind of therapist allowed strangers to roam through her house and belongings while creating a hermitage in the woods? It made no sense, did it?

  He went inside, found the lighter, and came back out. He crossed to the fire pit, bent low, and hit the trigger. A tiny flame teased, smoldered, then grew. He was just about to lean back, satisfied, when Hoyl offered his opinion from the tree above them. “You’re a jerk! You’re a jerk! You’re a jerk!”

  Surprised, he lost his balance and sat down hard.

  The flame went out, but the thin shavings smoldered, edged in red, while curling smoke rose upward.

  “Ultimate fail,” he grumbled as he shot a scorching look to the bird. “Chicken stew, pal. That’s all I’m saying to you. Chicken stew.”

  Cheyenne laughed and Elsa grinned. As he leaned forward to reapply the lighter, Elsa laid soft, cool fingers against his hand. “Let’s try this instead.” She motioned for them both to lean forward and blow, coaxing the smoldering wood flakes into flame. And when the three of them puffed air from opposing directions, a bright golden flame erupted from the center, licking and curling the dried bits of wood, sending defined smoke skyward. “Let my prayer rise up like incense before you,” she said softly, and then she smiled at Cheyenne. “We made fire.”

  “We did!” Cheyenne seemed genuinely pleased to be part of this little ceremony.

  “We should let it take hold a little more, and then the three of us are going to turn the past into the ashes it so richly deserves. God gives us the grace and talent to keep the good memories tucked inside ourselves, but I think he’d scoff at the idea of dwelling on the bad stuff. So we won’t.”

  Cheyenne looked a little skeptical. “We just do it? Is that allowed?” She kind of squeaked, as if she couldn’t believe it was all that easy, and Nick agreed. He didn’t think it was all that easy either, but then Elsa didn’t live with his daughters.

  “That’s where everything starts, isn’t it?” Elsa sat back on one of the old benches alongside the fire pit and held Cheyenne’s gaze. “With making a decision. And then we go from there.”

  “It can’t be that easy,” whispered Cheyenne, and the strangled note in her voice broke Nick’s heart. Why hadn’t Whitney seen what her desertion would do to their children, their family? Why hadn’t she weighed that into her decision?

  She saw. She knew. She didn’t care. Get with the program, won’t you? The internal voice sounded miffed with him, for good reason. Cheyenne wasn’t the only one who’d spent too much time mired in old thoughts and what ifs.

  Elsa waved a nonchalant hand. “The beginning is always easy, Cheyenne. We see what we have to do and recognize it. It’s the doing of it, day by day, building a base of goodness and joy, that takes the effort.”

  “The good choices thing.” Cheyenne looked over at Elsa and frowned. “I hear that a lot.”

  Elsa burst out laughing.

  Surprised, Cheyenne laughed too, and then Nick couldn’t help but join in, only nothing was funny. And yet, it was.

  “Oh, kid.” Elsa swiped a hand to her eyes, still laughing but dabbing moisture away at the same time. “There’s generally a reason we hear the Good Choices lecture repeatedly. It’s because we’re caught in the cycle of making bad ones.”

  Cheyenne’s wince said she’d been called out.

  “But here’s where we start anew. Right here. Right now. Mr. Stafford, can you grab us some of those bigger kindling sticks behind you, please?”

  “Nick.”

  She looked up at him and hesitated. Was she thinking getting too familiar was a bad thing? Because right now he was thinking he’d like to be a lot more familiar with the blond-haired therapist who wasn’t afraid to set fire to a bad past. She blinked, then smiled, and the smile didn’t need words. “Nick, then. Can you grab us some of that?” She pointed behind him and he stood, then paused, smiling down at her until a hint of color rose to her cheeks.

  He turned, walked across the pavers, and picked up a pile of thin, dry sticks, then applied them to the little fire. Within a minute the fire had grown to broader proportions, spreading to the edges of the fire pit wall.

  “Now let’s have those report cards.”

  Cheyenne carefully opened the big envelope. One by one she withdrew the folded sheets of paper and handed them over to Elsa. She sat back down, timid again, waiting, but then Elsa surprised her again.

  She handed her back one paper. “Last quarter, last year. Crumple it up and let it fly.”

  Cheyenne frowned. “You’re not going to read it?”

  “Didn’t you already tell me it was terrible?”

  “Yes.” Cheyenne made a face of disbelief. “Except adults always want to say stuff a thousand times as if you don’t get it.”

  “So you got it. You just didn’t care.”

  Cheyenne cringed and shot a look up to Nick. “Basically.”

  “Exactly why we’re doing this.” Elsa pointed to the paper. “We’re refusing to let this kind of thing bother us forever. It’s a ridiculous way to live, really, and who wants to be caught on that kind of treadmill?” She tipped her look to Nick, and he shook his head, hands splayed.

  “Not me. Anymore,” he added because he’d been caught in a similar cycle, so maybe Elsa had him stay for a reason.

  “ ‘Today’s a new day, with no mistakes in it yet,’ ” Elsa said lightly. “That’s from a book I read as a child, Anne of Green Gables, a marvelous story about an orphan girl who has to deal with a crazy number of changes and messes up repeatedly. Charming, actually.”

  “Messing up is charming?” Cheyenne hiked her brows in overdone surprise again and glanced at her father. “Not in our house.”

  “There’s an old saying that says laughter is the best medicine,” Elsa told her. “It means that embracing the joys in life is healthier than letting the sorrows drag us down. If we can learn to shrug off our frailties and foibles, the world becomes a much better place.”

  “What’s a foible?” Cheyenne asked.

  “A mistake. And our frailties are our weaknesses, the things that hurt us most. So if we take charge of the moment and begin anew, we’ve stepped forward. And that’s always the best way to go.” She directed her gaze toward the crumpled report card in Cheyenne’s hand and sat quietly, one brow lifted, allowing Cheyenne to make the decision, and when his oldest daughter tossed the negative report into the fire, Nick’s heart softened.

  Positive steps. Forward progress. Embracing the future.

  This was all stuff he knew. How had he let himself and his daughter get stuck in a hurtful past? He knew better.

  As Elsa handed Cheyenne one report after another, her smile deepened until he glimpsed the happy, carefree girl she’d been before Whitney took off.

  “So.” Elsa handed the empty envelope back to Cheyenne and stirred the flames with a fire stick once all the reports had met their fate. “We have the envelope.”

  Cheyenne nodded.

  “We can burn that too, if you’d like, but if you look inside, there’s nothing in it, so no real reason to waste it, right?”

  Cheyenne shrugged, looking at the plain manila envelope. “Right.”

  “So instead of burning it, we can refill it over time. Use it as a place to put good thoughts and feelings. Good reports, wherever they come from. If your grandfather compliments you, have him write it down, and if he’s too busy, then you write it down. If your dad tells you he’s proud of you, write it down and tuck it into the envelope, and pretty soon that envelope will be filled with the new you. The you that you want to be.”

  “Filled with reminders.” Cheyenne smiled at the thought, as if she’d just had an epiphany.

  “Exactly.” Elsa nodded. “We all need reminders, especially when we let old memories or bad memories take over. We allow them too much power and they become dangerous. We want the good, the bright, and the beauti
ful to have the power. Not the uglies.”

  “No uglies.” Cheyenne whispered the words, chin down, and Nick’s heart went out to her. His eight-year-old daughter was far too young and innocent to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, but hadn’t he done the same thing when his mother took off and left him behind? He had, and to hear his brother yap about it, Nick was still trying to fix that old wrong to this day. But then, Colt was flat-out stupid.

  “That’s the goal.” Elsa reached out and touched a gentle hand to Cheyenne’s soft cheek. “We banish the uglies and embrace God’s beautiful. Together.”

  Cheyenne took a deep breath, and when she nodded, Nick felt like he could breathe for the first time in years. “Okay.”

  Elsa stood. He did too. Cheyenne followed suit, clutching the envelope. She darted a quick glance to the fire and breathed deep.

  “When should we come back?” Nick asked, hoping Cheyenne wouldn’t buck the idea. She looked more at ease right now, but he knew his daughter. If she started obsessing about something, her anxiety grew.

  “How does a Tuesday/Thursday rotation work for you guys?”

  He shook his head. “Thursdays are good, but Tuesdays aren’t. The girls have gymnastics lessons then. And dance on Mondays and Saturday mornings.”

  “Busy schedules.” She looked up at him, but he noticed she kept Cheyenne’s reaction in her side vision, and when Cheyenne’s face darkened, Nick was pretty sure he’d just been accused, tried, and convicted in record time. “Can dance be switched from Mondays?”

  He shook his head. “Recital time is coming, but then they have the summer off.”

  “So Mondays and Tuesdays are out. Unless you come either before or after your lessons, Cheyenne.”

  Cheyenne looked surprised to be included, and Nick saw the obvious once again. He avoided including her on decisions because it fell into argument, so he made decisions without her. He was the grownup; that’s what he was supposed to do, wasn’t it?

  But seeing the growing interest on her face when Elsa included her, he recognized another mistake.

  “After dancing is good. I’m usually pretty tired after gymnastics class.”

  “Gymnastics puts a lot of stress on the body, so you should be tired,” Elsa told her. “Great workouts, but lots of pressure.”

  “Did you do gymnastics?”

  “Not me. We didn’t have the time or means to be that devoted to one kid and one sport, but I had a friend who went through two broken wrists, one dislocated shoulder, and three sprained ankles. She made it to Junior Nationals, so she was very good.”

  “Junior Nationals?” Cheyenne whistled softly, like she did for the ranch dogs. “What’d she do then?”

  “She quit.”

  Cheyenne stopped moving. “After making it that far?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?” Disbelief marked her gaze. “Why would anyone get that far and stop?”

  “She realized she was living her mother’s dream, not her own,” Elsa answered. “Her mother had worked with Karolyi, a very famous coach in Texas, and she was a true lover of the sport, but Ashley realized it was time to start living her own dreams.”

  “So she just stopped?”

  Elsa nodded. “Later she said that decision opened a whole new world for her. Now she’s married, she’s got two kids and another on the way, and you know what she does?”

  Cheyenne shook her head, still looking stunned by the thought of making decisions on her own, and that was Nick’s fault, all the way.

  “She runs an online gymnast outfitting company out of her house. She took her knowledge and applied it to a business she loves because it leaves her time to be home with her kids.”

  Cheyenne turned as another revelation brightened her eyes. “Like you, Dad.”

  “Right.” He smiled down at Cheyenne, but it wasn’t exactly the same. He’d magnified the problem by staying the course. He’d kept the girls in Whitney-inspired activities, even after they’d made their wishes known. “We’ll come by Monday after dance class, then. Around five thirty. Does that mess up your dinner time?”

  “An advantage of being alone is flexibility.” She aimed a smile at Cheyenne. “Five thirty is fine.”

  “See you then.” He put his hat back on his head and started for the truck, but instead of getting in his side, he rounded the hood, opened Cheyenne’s door, then gave her a hand up. She smiled up at him, almost shy, as if not expecting him to do the sweet, tender things he used to do automatically.

  The brightly plumed bird flew into a nearby tree just then. He flapped his wings twice as he settled on a limb, cocked his rainbow-colored head, and stared at Nick without calling him names. This time he didn’t have to. Nick had been kind of a jerk for a while now, and it was well past time to change. He waved a hand toward Elsa as he came back around the truck. “Thanks, Doc. We’ll see you Monday.”

  She nodded, quiet, but when their eyes met, he paused, wishing he had a private moment to say how good it felt to see Cheyenne’s real smile once more. “Well.”

  “Well.” She smiled slightly, and when she did he reached up and tipped the brim of his hat ever so slightly, total cowboy, as he smiled back.

  Her color rose as he climbed into the truck. As he backed around, the image he took with him was Elsa in her woodland garden, gazing at him as if he’d done something right at long last.

  It felt good.

  He went back to the ranch to pick up Dakota, and while the girls played with Noah in the late-day sun, he searched out his father in the downstairs office. “Can we talk?”

  Sam pointed to the chair. “Sit. I’m too tired to stand long, and if you’re going to yell at me, it’s better if you don’t loom.”

  As if his father allowed anyone to yell at him, ever. Nick ignored that and took a seat. “I’m thinking about building a house here, on the ranch, like you’ve suggested. Am I still okay to go ahead with that?”

  “Nothing would make me happier, Nick.”

  He’d made his father happy.

  Nick had expected at least a half-dozen “I told you so’s” because Sam thought living away from the ranch was dumb, and he hadn’t hesitated to tell him so. Facing the man who’d led the way in running one of the best ranch operations west of the Mississippi, he realized Sam had been right. Had he let Whitney color all his decisions?

  In a way, yes, because a husband was supposed to take care of his wife. That wasn’t just preacher talk; it made sense for a man to look after his own. Maybe if Sam had cared for Nick’s mother the way a real man should, she might have stayed.

  Or perhaps you married the wrong person for the wrong reasons and things played out the way they were going to anyway. Sound familiar?

  And then Sam kind of ruined the niceness of his calm reaction by saying, “I’m going to restrain my excitement because if I offer hearty approval, you’re liable to change your mind, but yes, it’s an excellent idea. What were your thoughts and which building lot would you like?”

  His father had subdivided several good sites edging the long, sloping drive nearly fifteen years before. To date, each one of the sites remained empty because no one in their right mind would choose to live under Sam Stafford’s critical eye. A combination of illness, sensitivity, and Angelina’s rolling-pin logic had cultivated Sam’s awakening faith. On top of that, Nick loved this ranch. He belonged on this ranch, and building a home here for his girls might reglue the bonds they’d let fray. Living here could give Cheyenne and Dakota some of the stability they’d been missing. “I thought I’d use the west-facing lot overlooking the southeast corner. I’ll give the house a deep setback to give us the best view.”

  “You talk to anybody about building yet?”

  Nick shook his head. “I wanted to get square with you first.”

  “Consider us square.” Sam smiled, then coughed, long and hard.

  “Are you all right?” Nick moved to his father’s side quickly. “I thought you were getting better.�
��

  “I’m fine.” Sam growled the words, always annoyed at any sign of weakness in himself or others. “It just takes longer to get over things when the liver’s not happy.”

  “What did the doctor say today?”

  “Same thing they always say,” Sam grumbled. “You’re sick, give your body time, you’re getting older, be patient, blah, blah, blah. That’s their way of saying they’re not sure what’s wrong or what to do, but they’re mighty quick to send a bill for services rendered. How’d the appointment with the shrink go?”

  Shrink? Elsa wasn’t a shrink. She was a degreed professional, deserving of respect even though she wasn’t exactly playing by the book. “She’s not a shrink, Dad. She’s a psychologist.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Do you want me to answer the question or not?”

  Sam huffed, then got quiet.

  “It went all right. Elsa—” He paused, then corrected himself. “Dr. Andreas seems nice. Quirky…” He thought of the bird and the dark paintings and the furtive movements of the dog. “Cheyenne seemed all right with her and that’s what matters.”

  “That’s not how it sounded before you left today,” Sam remarked. “Cheyenne threw a fit, and you almost had to hogtie her to get her into the car.”

  “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “You’d have to be dead to sleep through that racket,” Sam declared. “And I’m not there yet. So if this woman got Cheyenne to calm down and want to come back, I’m chalking it up to a miracle.”

  Nick stood and nailed his father a withering look. “I’d say the miracle is seeing you drag yourself into church these days.”

  “Angelina says it’s God’s grace,” Sam retorted, but they both knew the truth. Nick’s father had spent decades shrugging off faith and family until earlier this year. Then he got sick and Angelina reminded him that time might be running out. Maybe it was the illness, maybe it was prayer, but for some reason, he listened. At last. “By the grace of God, if he sees fit to give me enough time, I want to see my sons happy, and I want to make a difference in the town.”