Return To Big Sky

by Jade Cary

  I excused myself and ran to the only mother I’d ever known. We embraced and I could see why my father had been in love with her for so many years. They had been in love. I saw it when I was young, not understanding what it was. I understood it now, seeing the love in Maria’s eyes. I hugged her close, the years away from each other disappearing.

  As we talked, the room got quiet, and over Maria’s shoulder I saw a boy walk in. He stopped in the doorway and scanned the room. There was something about him, in his stare, the way he loped down the aisle toward the casket. He was beautiful, with hair the color of clover honey, and eyes the color of the Montana sky. Everyone stared at the boy as he took Charles Asher’s hand in his own. A knot twisted in my gut at the sudden realization. I caught Jed’s eye across the room, and he raised his brow as if I was in on what everyone else knew, instead of the brunt of some asinine joke. The room was chilly and smelled of carnations and Tabu. Light beamed through the stained glass behind the dais where my father lay and where his son held his hand. The room fell silent as people took notice of what I was just learning, and they had always known.

  “Papa.”

  My eyes cut to the boy as he leaned over the body of my father and shook him.

  “Papa! Papa!”

  “Oh, mijo, no!” Maria gasped, rushing up the aisle to him, Jed running between a row of chairs to meet her. As Maria held the boy’s shoulders in comfort, she turned to me. Organ music, piped from some backroom boom box, bled into the quiet. Moisture dotted my upper lip and my forehead, and I felt like I was going to faint. A single tear fell down her face.

  “No, Maria,” I whispered. “Oh, God, no.”

  I ran out of the room.

  A Clear Understanding

  I raced out of the room and out the door. I’d come with Jed and didn’t have access to a car. No matter. I was too angry to sit, or to wait, or to formulate any kind of a plan. So, I ran, with no direction. I crossed the street, coming very close to getting hit by a soda delivery truck.

  “Chandler!” Jed called from behind me. I would not be answering to him, not now, not for a good while. In low-heeled boots, I could keep a good pace. The knit, plum-colored dress, which buttoned completely down the front and came below my calves, fit snug around the hips, reducing my running to short, quick strides. I turned in time to see that Jed had sense enough to wait for a few cars to pass before darting across the street after me, so by the time he crossed I was half a block ahead of him.

  The ranch was far from town, but thoughts of what to do next eluded me, so I kept running. As I crossed the next street, a big Ford half-ton pulled up next to me.

  “Chandler?”

  I squinted at the familiar voice. “Ryder? Ryder McKinney?”

  “Chandler! You stop right there!” Jed shouted behind me from down the street.

  “Hey, darlin’.” Ryder smiled, Kenny Chesney blaring from his speakers. “I heard you were in town. I was just on my way over to pay respects to your dad. Where ya headed?”

  She thinks my tractor’s sexy

  It really turns her on…

  “The ranch,” I said, getting in to the cab of the truck. “And hurry.”

  “You okay, sugar?”

  She’s always starin’ at me

  When I’m chuggin’ along…

  “Chandler, dammit…!” Jed yelled

  I turned around in my seat as Jed headed back to the funeral home and his truck, seeing I had my own ride. “Yeah, fine. It’s overwhelming, you know,” I said.

  “Yeah, honey…it is. I’m sorry. I liked your dad a lot. We all did.” Ryder scanned me. In all the fuss, I managed to notice that Ryder had become quite a handsome man. There was plenty of time to get reacquainted. Now, I needed to get home. Beyond that, I had no idea.

  “Missed you,” he went on, turning Kenny down. “You look fantastic. I heard you’re an architect now, or something? In New York?”

  “Yeah.” I stared out the window, willing him to talk less and drive more. He made small talk for the long, arduous drive, which I endured with as much grace as I could muster under the circumstances. I would save my rage for Jed Brooks.

  “Are you staying long?” he asked as he pulled his truck up to the house.

  “Just long enough to bury Charles, Ryder. I’m leaving Sunday”

  “Let’s get together before then, huh? I’d love to catch up.”

  “Yeah, Ry. Me, too. I’ll call ya…thanks.” I jumped out of the truck and ran into the house, and just as the door closed, Jed pulled up. He slammed inside seconds later.

  “Chandler…”

  “You knew.” I turned from him and walked into the middle of the living room. I wanted distance, commonly referred to as ‘room to spit’. He knew it, too. He knew me.

  “Knew what? Tell me what you think you know.”

  “He’s his fucking son, Jed. I can add.”

  “Yeah?” Like it fazed him not one bit. My rage grew.

  “Charles got her pregnant and then sent her away. I cannot imagine how Ramon must have felt. Or did he not know? Did he know he was raising Charles Asher’s kid, Jed? Huh?”

  Jed looked at me like I had two heads. “Chan…”

  “No! She became an inconvenience to him, that poor kid must have been a real burden, and then there was me. Don’t you see?”

  “Chandler, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “When were you going to tell me, Jed? Huh? Is this your idea of a fucking joke?”

  Jed shook his head and came closer. “Look at me, Chandler.” I turned away. I was giving him nothing. “Chandler, look at me.” When I didn’t, he did it for me.

  “I’m not going to pretend Charles is innocent, but when it happened she left. Charles didn’t want her to be ostracized, or for Ramon to be embarrassed, but he would have dealt with it. He set them up, nicely. And after Carlos…”

  Carlos. You’ll meet Carlos tomorrow. I blasted a laugh at the ceiling, but there was nothing funny about it. “Oh, Christ, Jed! Really? That’s Carlos?”

  “After Carlos was born, your father took care of his son. He sent you away so you wouldn’t have to bear the burden. Charles stood tall in the face of the stares, the gossip at the church luncheons…”

  “Well, bully for him. I’m to feel sorry for him now? Is that what you’re saying? And you. You knew this all along. And you didn’t tell me. So all that shit about my potential being somewhere off this ranch was just shit, huh?”

  “It wasn’t shit, and what the hell are you talking about, I didn’t tell you?”

  “You’re managing me, and it’s backfiring.”

  His voice softened. “Look, honey. You’re upset. I understand that. You are going to calm down about this, and when you do…”

  “… I’ll go to his funeral in a fucking string bikini! Arrrggghhh!” I pulled my hand back and slapped him hard across the face. Jed jerked his head front and center, his eyes wide, his mouth tight with anger. I didn’t care. I ran up the stairs to my room and slammed the door behind me.

  I stared out the window and tried to slow my breath. As a child, what I saw between my father and Maria made sense in the simplest of ways, and Ramon’s feelings never came to light for me. I never saw affection between Maria and Ramon, but there was something between Maria and Dad. In my young, innocent mind, she belonged to him, and he to her. I was too young to understand the finer points of love. But now, with a keen adult’s eye, things made perfect sense. They’d had a child together.

  He’s my brother. Carlos is my brother.

  Jed stood in the doorway of my room, his mouth set into a thin line, his eyes indigo slits. I was in a fog and all that had just transpired seemed to hover just above my reach.

  You’ll meet Carlos tomorrow.

  I still couldn’t piece it all together.

  “Jed…”

  He said not a word as he strode into the room, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me toward the bed.

  “Jed, no…wait! What are you doi
ng?”

  I got my answer when he sat on the edge of my bed and dragged me facedown across his lap. At the first connection of his hand, my eyes flew open. Many too numerous to wrap my head around followed, and my only answer was to cry out, kick, scream, swear. But not once did I tell him to stop. The fitted dress and the scrap of panties I wore underneath did nothing to dull his oak-like hand as it rained down across my buttocks; he was not going easy on me. I tried putting a hand back to stop the onslaught. Jed placed it in the middle of my lower back and spanked harder. And slower.

  “We’re going to come to a clear understanding, young lady—right now.”

  “Jed!” I yelped, screamed his name and cursed him and his relations going back six generations as his hand meted out a justice I was just beginning to fathom. I was shocked. I was embarrassed. I was a grown woman—a millionaire a few times over, if truthful. I’d grown a business, closed down bars, had one night stands, traded up my automobiles every two years, fed the homeless, run 10ks for cancer, traveled the Nile on a pontoon, eaten fried crickets in Vietnam, walked the Great Wall of China, shared ceremonial tea with monks in a temple on Hagura Mountain, and drove a race car around the Indy 500 track for eight laps, to name just a few ticks off the bucket list. Yet, here I was, draped over a man’s knee in Cameron, Montana, population 109, getting my backside paddled like an errant kid, and the only thing, the only thing, that came crystal clear to me, was that I had it coming. And my biggest worry, as I lay across Jed Brooks’ hard thighs with my ass in the air, was how I would face him once he set me on my feet again.

  The man could spank an ass, and he did it wordlessly and with a grim determination, I took note of. I was getting a good dose of Jed’s opinions about a woman striking a man’s face, and I vowed to remember this for the future—as I am sure was Jed’s intent. I had made a big mistake, and I had no idea from where inside of me this came. This was not me; this was not how I operated. Nothing made sense. I no longer knew myself, if ever I did.

  The high-pitched tone made when a hard object met a soft one echoed in the otherwise quiet room, interrupted only by screeches of pain and howls of humiliation. I began to yield. Each connection pierced my soul just a bit. I had slapped his face. He was exacting revenge for an assault. Like for like, an eye for an eye. I had this coming. It did not matter that I’d never been spanked before in my life; it did not matter that we were in the twenty-first century; it did not matter that one call to the sheriff after this was over would land Jed in a jail cell; it did not matter that once I was returned to my feet, I would quite possibly never speak to him again. My fear was that he would never speak to me.

  My rage turned to remorse and I dissolved in sobs over his knee. My body rocked with pent up emotion I’d been holding in for years. Odd that it was not the death of my father, but rather a good old-fashioned spanking from a man I’d loved forever, that set the torrent loose.

  I felt like I’d endured his hand for an hour, but it was probably less than a minute. As I lay panting over his knee, I realized the room had grown quiet, and before I could register any further protest, he pulled me to my feet as quickly as he’d taken me off them. I swayed and he tightened his hold on my arms. His face was set in hard granite, but his eyes held a tinge of compassion mixed with regret.

  My face was damp, and tears sat in my eyes. My lip quivered, not with pain but with my own brand of regret. I was a strong, successful woman of thirty, and my backend throbbed with the after-effects of what was nothing short of a child’s punishment. I swiped at my eyes and stared at the knots in the hardwood, mortified. I’d predicted this would be the worst part, and I was right. I tried a bit of indignation by struggling in his arms, but his hold only tightened. He pushed me off him so he could look into my eyes.

  “Make me do that again and I’ll have your delicates dancing around your ankles. You are in eighteen different kinds of pain, Chan, and I understand that, but you are not going to behave this way.” He spoke softly, the voice I’d come to love and trust vibrated in my ear as I rested my head against his chest. I reached back and gave my rear end a tentative rub. “You listen to me, now,” he said, meeting my eyes. “You are going to get through today, and then you are going to get through tomorrow. And then you’re going to get through the next day, and the next, and the next. None of this was about you, and none of this was in your control. What is in your control now is getting back to that funeral home so that Maria does not have to play hostess at the viewing of her lover in front of the whole goddamn town. Do you hear what I’m saying?” Hot words spewed from his tight mouth. “You will not, as a final raised finger to your father, do that to her. Or to Carlos. I will not allow it. Hear me on this, because I will have no problem taking you back over and doing this in a way that will open your ears in a hurry.”

  “Jed,” I gasped.

  He shook his head and pulled me against his chest. I slipped my arms around him. I would not survive losing any part of him over such an ill-advised mistake.

  “That hurt,” I whispered, in case he was unsure. I rubbed my injured pride, not ready to give way just yet.

  “I know. Doing that did not make me happy, sweetheart.”

  “Me, either.” I rested my forehead against his and he tipped my chin up to meet his eyes. That beautiful mouth turned up again. It was a sign, of sorts—a half-plea for a truce, a white flag delivered in the form of a mouth-twitch, a nod to bygones and all that. I knew what I needed to do, and I waited a few agonizing moments to make sure what came out of my mouth next, I meant. Decision made, I curled my fingers against his chest. “I apologize. I’m sorry.”

  Jed blew out a sigh and laced his hand into my hair. “I am, too.” He pulled me close and kissed me. My hands fisted the sleeves of his cerulean dress shirt, which lent a casual elegance to his dark jeans and tan boots. Folks didn’t get dolled up for funerals in Montana. This was as good as it got, and on Jed, it was better than good. I made note of this through a stinging heat that relentlessly bit at my ass. His mouth was tender on mine, soothing and possessive, all at once. I kissed him back, searching for forgiveness, and giving him mine for committing such a barbaric act upon my upturned person. My palm found his cheek, still blazing from the slap I’d given him, and I amended the idea of forgiveness. I kissed the corner of his mouth and worked my way to the red mark, placing feathery kisses across the heated surface.

  “Oh, honey…”

  “Shhh. It’s all right now.”

  New tears fell. He was good at this part. I felt bad enough, and he was being excessively kind. I filed that away for the future.

  “C’mon, let’s get going. You’ve got your father’s viewing to tend to.” I nodded and he kissed away the trail of tears I couldn’t seem to stop. I squeezed his hand and went into the bathroom.

  I was a fright. I stared into the mirror. The world seemed tilted off its axis as the humbled face of a freshly spanked woman looked back at me. How the hell did you manage to earn that…and from him? She mocked. I stuck my tongue out at the hoity bitch and fixed my face. It took me five minutes to refresh, and I met him downstairs.

  I pulled myself up into the cab of his truck. He turned to me. “Later, we’re going to talk about how this all went so shit-fire wrong, Chandler.”

  “I’m trying to figure that out myself,” I said, looking out the passenger window.

  “He sent letters, pictures of the kid. He got no response so he figured you weren’t happy about it.”

  “My God,” I said, remembering the stack of unopened letters I kept in a box high up in a closet in New York, waiting for…what—me to grow the fuck up? “What have I done?”

  “Whatever it was, you can fix it now. You’re here, babe. You’re home.”

  I loved Jed’s enthusiasm and his sunny outlook. But honestly, how would Maria ever forgive me?

  Maria

  I set a pitcher of strong margaritas down on the table between two chairs. The sun was going down, and I’d gathered a bunch of
old candles and set them around us. I scurried around with busy work so I wouldn’t have to face the one woman I owed the most to in apologies. When there was nothing further to do, I took the second chair and faced her.

  “I’m so sorry.” As Maria reached for her drink, I took her hand. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Darling, there’s been so much…”

  “No. Please, don’t let me off the hook.” I stared at my hands, trying to find a place to begin. “I guess as a child I knew there was something special between you and Daddy. It just seemed normal, somehow. I didn’t think much of it in terms of love, or whatever. I…” I watched my brother in one of the paddocks, Collin standing beside him, his bowed legs more prominent than I remembered as a kid. He barked instructions to Carlos as the boy twirled a rope over his head and tossed it in the general direction of a wooden calf-roping dummy. Carlos’s movements were uncoordinated and gangly.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “How?” she asked, incredulous.

  I held Maria’s hand in both of mine as I tried to put sense to it all, from my damaged, prideful point of view. I finished with, “I didn’t know, until today. I should have known. I ignored letters and didn’t return half of Dad’s calls.”

  “He never said. He never told me.”

  I shook my head. “My God…both of us so proud. I should have been paying attention. And Dad should have said, ‘Get your ass home and acknowledge this child’, but we both know I got my communication skills from him.”

  “Well, he made sure Carlos knew about you.”

  I watched the boy slap that wooden dummy with the bunched up rope over and over again, and listened to Collin’s patient instructions and encouragements to keep trying. “My God. What must he think?”

  “He knows you work far away and that you are very busy. Your dad made sure there was a gift for Carlos every year under the Christmas tree.”

  “Maria…really?”