She didn’t. “What’s going on with you and Kayla?” She had her hands on her hips. Vertical lines stood between her brows.
“Nothing that needs to concern you.”
“It does concern me,” she said, “because they’re thinking about leaving.”
His head jerked around at that. He wanted to ask, When? Why? Where will they go? He wanted a way to patch the hole that her remark had torn in his heart.
But wouldn’t it be best if they left?
“Finn,” Penny said, “I like you. And I’ve put up with you and your darkness. The Good Lord knows we all have it. But the way you’ve treated her beats all.” She grabbed a couple of boards and headed toward the house.
Finn glared after her. Maybe he’d been cruel, but it was kindly meant. Kayla and Leo would be better off without him.
He glanced over at the pastor. The man was removing the door from the shed, focused on the task, but Finn had a feeling he’d heard every word.
That impression was reinforced when the pastor spoke. “Anything you want to talk about?” He asked the question without looking at Finn.
“No.” Finn walked over to his truck, started it and backed it up to the shed. He found a rope in the back. Tied one end to the truck hitch and the other to a side support of the shed. “Gonna pull it down. Watch out.”
He put the truck into gear and gunned it a little, watching his rearview mirror. With a scraping, ripping sound, the shed tilted and then collapsed, boards jumping and bouncing before they settled, the metal roof clanking down.
It wasn’t as satisfying as he’d expected it to be.
He stopped the truck, climbed out and limped over to the wreckage. His doctor was going to have his hide for working like this without a rest, messing up his leg worse than it already was. He tugged at the aluminum roof.
Without speaking, the pastor went to the other side and helped him lift the roof off and carry it out of the way.
“Thanks,” Finn grunted.
“Why’d you hurt her like that?” Carson went back to the demolished shed and pulled out a couple of jagged pieces of brick.
“To not hurt her.” Finn ripped at the corner of the shed that was still standing. The rough wood tore his hands. Good.
“What do you mean?” Carson tossed the bricks into a pile of debris.
“I was driving when my wife and son were killed!”
Carson didn’t speak, and when Finn managed to look at his face, there was no judgment there. But, of course, Carson was a pastor. He had to listen to all kinds of horror with a straight face.
Carson came over to help Finn tug at the stubborn corner post. “Does every person who’s driving have total control over every circumstance on the road?”
Finn felt like he was choking. The pastor’s words were bringing it all back, clear as if he were looking at a movie. He could hear his own voice, yelling at his wife. Her anger, the way she’d shoved at him.
He’d wanted to pull off the road. Why hadn’t he pulled off the road?
Because it was a narrow mountain road. There was no place to pull off.
No place to escape the bobtail truck that had come barreling around the curve at a faster speed than it should have.
Just before impact, he’d caught a glimpse of the driver’s face. He knew, now, that the driver hadn’t died; that after being acquitted of any wrongdoing—although Finn seemed to remember something about a warning from the judge—the man had moved out of state.
The moments after the truck had rammed into them, he couldn’t bear to relive. It was bad enough to have experienced the edge of it again when they’d had the near accident with Kayla and Leo.
“Well?” Carson gave the post a final tug and it came loose of its moorings with a scraping sound. He caught his balance and started tugging it toward the pile of debris. When he’d let it fall, he walked back toward Finn. “What do you say? Do you have total control?”
“No, but I should have.” He tried to pick up a couple of loose boards, but his leg nearly gave out from under him. With a groan he couldn’t restrain, he sat down on a stump. “I should have protected them.” The lump in his throat wouldn’t let him say more.
“I’m guessing you did the best you could at that moment.” The pastor looked at him. “We aren’t God.”
Finn cleared his throat. “Why did God let that happen?” The words came out way too loud.
Carson looked at him steadily. “Talk to me about it.”
“Me, Deirdre, that I can understand. We were fighting, and... But Derek was a kid. An innocent. He didn’t deserve to die before he got to live!” Finn heard the anger and harshness in his voice. Anger felt better than raw grief, but not by much.
He hadn’t known how angry he was at God until just this moment.
Carson wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt and sat down on a pile of boards, a couple of yards away from Finn, not looking at him. Instead, he stared out toward the mountains. “I wish I had an easy answer, but I don’t. Some things, we’ll never know, not in this life. But your son is with Him, and I have to believe your wife is, too.” He clipped off the words and looked away. “Some things we have to try to believe.”
In the midst of his own raw feelings, Finn wondered about the pastor. He was a widower. How much had Carson worked through about his own wife’s death?
Because he really couldn’t stand on his leg anymore, Finn stayed where he was. He picked up a board, took the hammer from his belt and started pulling out nails.
Carson carried load after load of wood pieces over to the debris pile. When he almost had it cleaned up, he stopped right in front of Finn. “You don’t have to suffer forever, you know. Maybe there was some sin in there on your part. There usually is. No one’s perfect, but we are forgiven.”
Forgiven. “Yeah, right.”
“It’s at the center of the Christian gospel. You know that.”
A high-pitched sound came their way. It was laughter, Carson’s girls. They ran toward the pastor, Leo right behind them. But when Leo saw Finn, he came to an abrupt stop. He looked at Finn a moment, both fear and reproach in his eyes.
Finn’s throat closed up entirely. He busied himself with kneeling down—and man, did that hurt—to pick up some nails. Didn’t want the kids to step on them.
“Daddy, come on! We caught a frog and a crawdad, and we wanted to keep them, but Miss Kayla said we better let them stay in the pond. But we took pictures, and Miss Kayla sent them to Miss Penny on her phone. Come see!”
A twin clinging to each leg, Carson looked over his shoulder at Finn. “Catch you later—maybe at the men’s Bible study. We deal with some tough questions. Thursday nights.” He lifted his hand in a salute-like movement and then followed his girls toward the car.
No way was Finn going to a men’s Bible study. Bunch of brainiacs analyzing the deep hidden meaning of some verse of Scripture that no one cared about.
Although come to think of it...now that he was getting to know Carson, Finn realized it wasn’t likely to be completely irrelevant.
It was only when he turned to head for his house that he noticed Leo was still standing where Carson’s SUV had already pulled away. Looking directly at Finn. His face held sadness and longing and hunger. “Mr. Finn,” he called.
That face and that voice made Finn want to run to the boy and scoop him up and hug him, tell him he was loved and that men—some of them, at least—could be protective father figures.
Except he wasn’t one of those men.
With what felt like superhuman effort, he turned away from Leo and started walking toward his house.
A sound made him look back over his shoulder. Something like a sob. If Leo was crying...
“C’mere, buddy.” Kayla knelt near Penny’s place. Her voice sounded husky as she spread her arms wide.
L
eo ran into them and she held him against her. Over the boy’s shaking shoulder, she leveled a glare at Finn. And then her face twisted like she was about to cry herself.
Everything in him wanted to run to them, to hold them, to explain. To ask if they could try again, have another chance.
But that wouldn’t be right, because for Finn, there couldn’t be another chance. He couldn’t take another chance.
He turned away and started walking.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. It felt like he was ripping his heart out of his chest and leaving it there on the ground, there with Kayla and Leo. But he was doing it for them, even though they didn’t know it.
* * *
Kayla tried to brace herself for the task at hand. Straightened her spine and made herself move briskly, cleaning the dinner dishes off the table. It was now or never, though; she needed to pack tonight and leave early the next morning.
She drew in a deep breath. “Come sit by Mom, honey,” she said to Leo. “We need to talk.”
Leo had seemed dejected throughout dinner, and now, as he plodded over to where she was sitting on the couch, he looked resigned. Kids could sense trouble, and it was pretty obvious things had changed here at the ranch. Leo knew: something bad was going to happen.
It was only now she realized he hadn’t looked like that in a while. Redemption Ranch had been good for him.
But no more.
“Honey,” she said, putting an arm around him, “we have to move away.”
She felt him flinch. He was so little to already understand what that meant.
He stared down at his knees. “Why?” His voice sounded whispery.
Because I can’t stand being around Finn, loving him, not able to have him. Because I can’t stand to see you get your heart broken over and over.
“We need to find a place where we can live full-time,” she said. “This job was just for the summer.”
“It’s still the summer,” he said in a very small voice.
“I know.”
Was she doing the right thing? There was no question that tearing Leo out of this life would be hard on him. Staying would be hard, too. She was just trying to find the thing that would be the least painful for him. The way he had been getting attached to Finn, the constant rejection was hurting him. He needed to be around men who wouldn’t reject him.
And Finn. The conversation she’d had with Penny had cinched her decision. “Don’t judge him too harshly,” Penny had said. “You and Leo remind him of his losses.” She’d hesitated, then added, “His son was just Leo’s age.”
Penny’s words had shaken her, put everything she knew about Finn into a different perspective. Even though she was furious at him for rejecting her and Leo, the deep shadows under his eyes spoke to her, tugged at her heartstrings.
If she and Leo caused Finn pain, it wasn’t right for him to have to keep avoiding them. He had been here first. It was his place. He was the veteran. He was the one with the real skills.
“We’re going to find another good place,” she said to Leo.
“But I like this place,” he said. “I like my friends.”
“I know you do. You’ve gotten so good at making friends. You’ll be able to make other ones.” She tried to force confidence into her voice.
This was killing her.
He shrugged away from her and slid down to the floor. He lay down next to Shoney, who, as usual, was at their feet. The shaggy black dog rolled back into Leo, exposing her belly for a rub. “Shoney doesn’t want to move.” Leo rubbed the dog’s belly and nuzzled her neck.
This was the worst part. “Shoney can’t come.”
“What do you mean?” Leo stared up at her, his eyes huge. Beside him, Shoney seemed to stare reproachfully, too.
“We’re going to be driving a long time, and we’ll stay overnight at some places that don’t allow dogs.” Kayla wasn’t sure where they were going, but she’d found a couple of promising job possibilities online. “Once we find a new place to live, we’ll have a lot of settling in to do. It wouldn’t be fair to Shoney to take her to a brand-new place and leave her alone a lot, even if we were allowed to have a dog wherever we end up.”
Kayla made herself watch as Leo started to understand. His eyes filled, brimmed over. She slid down to sit on the floor beside him.
“No, Mom!” Leo wrapped his arms around the dog, who obligingly nuzzled back into her son. “Shoney needed a home and we gave her one. We can’t put her back in the kennel.”
Kayla cleared her throat and swallowed hard. “We’re going to take Shoney to Long John and Willie to look after.”
“But Mr. Finn said they can’t have another dog. He said it would be too much for them.”
“Willie can keep her for a little while. Maybe after we get settled, we can get her back.”
Leo buried his face in Shoney’s fur. “We’ll never get her back.”
Kayla couldn’t even make herself argue, because she knew it was probably true. And how sad that a little boy would have that realistic of an outlook, that he wouldn’t be able to be comforted by kind platitudes.
She was kicking herself for letting them settle in this much. Why had she agreed to take Shoney? Of course Leo had gotten attached to her; they both had. But she should have thought ahead enough to know the job wasn’t permanent.
To know things probably wouldn’t work out, with the job or with Finn.
“I can help more.” Leo sat up. “I can take her for more walks. I can feed her and clean up after her. You won’t even know she’s with us.”
Kayla’s heart felt like someone was squeezing it, twisting, wringing. She shook her head. “You’ve been the best helper. But we still can’t take her.”
Leo buried his head in the dog’s side and wailed.
Best to do this fast now. She stood and knelt beside him, rubbing circles on his back. “Do you want to come with me? Help me bring Shoney’s stuff up to Willie’s place?”
“No! No! I won’t go!” He flung his arm to get her away from him, catching her cheekbone with his little fist. Pain spiraled out from the spot. That would be a bruise.
Leo’s upset escalated almost instantly into a full-fledged tantrum, and she couldn’t blame him. She felt like lying right down on the floor and kicking and screaming alongside him.
But she was the grown-up. Like a robot, she found her phone and called Penny over Leo’s screams and sobs. “Can you come up and look after Leo for half an hour?”
“You’re really going through with this.”
“I have to, Penny.”
Kayla loved the older woman for not arguing with her, for just saying, “I’m on my way.”
By the time Penny arrived ten minutes later, Kayla had gathered all Shoney’s things in a big box. Leo’s crying had settled down into brokenhearted sobs, and he wouldn’t let Kayla touch or comfort him. He just hung on to Shoney, who, bless her, allowed what amounted to pretty rough treatment without so much as a growl or nip.
“Have you tried to talk to him?” Penny asked, pulling Kayla into the kitchen area, where Leo couldn’t hear them.
“He’s too upset. He just keeps crying.”
“I mean Finn,” Penny said. “He’s going around looking like someone shot his best friend. If the two of you could hash it all out, you might have a chance.”
Kayla hated thinking of Finn being miserable. But he’d get over it, probably just as soon as she and Leo left the area. She shook her head. “The surprise was that he started to act like he liked me,” she said. “He’s an amazing man. He could have any woman he wanted.”
Penny dipped her chin and gave Kayla a pointed stare. “Doesn’t seem like he wants just any woman. What if he wants you?”
“He doesn’t. He told me.” Kayla shook her head. “And anyway, that just doesn’t happen for me.”<
br />
“Kayla. You’ve got to work on—”
Kayla held up a hand. “I know. I’m a good person. Working here, getting away from...” She waved a hand in the general direction of the east. “From what was going on back in Arkansas, it’s done so much for me. I appreciate your giving me a chance. I know you’re the one who talked him into it in the first place.”
“Do you know what happened with his wife and child?”
Kayla shook her head. “I don’t need to know all that.” She was curious, but knowing more details about Finn was likely to just add to her misery.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Look, I’ve just got to take Shoney down to Willie’s place before Leo and I both fall apart.” She turned away from Penny, clenched her teeth together and walked over to Leo. “Come on, buddy. Let go of Shoney.”
“No, Mommy. Please.” He looked up at her, his face swollen and red. “Please.”
She pressed her lips together to hold back the sobs and wrapped Leo in a hug. This time, his need for comfort overcame his anger and he collapsed into her arms, sobbing. They stayed that way for a couple of minutes. Shoney whined beside them and Kayla cried a little, too.
Be strong for him.
She drew in a gasping breath, then another. “Shoney will be okay. She’ll miss us, but she’ll be okay.” She stood, staggering under Leo’s weight as he clung to her.
Penny came over and reached out. “C’mere, buddy. We’ve got to let Mom go for a little bit.”
Blinking hard against the tears, trying to breathe, Kayla took Shoney’s leash off the hook by the door and attached it to the dog’s collar. True to form, Shoney jumped and barked and tugged. She loved her walks.
Penny turned away, holding Leo tight. And Kayla walked an eager Shoney out the door.
At the bottom of Willie’s porch steps, she knelt down and wrapped her arms around the shaggy black dog. “You’ve been a good dog,” she said, rubbing Shoney’s ears and the spots where her collar scratched her neck. Shoney collapsed down on her back, ecstatic with the attention, and Kayla tried to put all the love she felt into this last little bit of doggy affection.
The Soldier's Redemption Page 14
