Wild Card

by Karina Halle

  I raise my brows. Both at the mention of church, and the fact that, at least according to Dick, he hasn’t been dating anyone. I’m not sure why I feel pleased at that, like it would make any difference whether he has a girlfriend or a fiancée or a wife or not. I mean, I have Samuel.

  Speaking of which, I’m sure if he knew I was going to be pretty much living with my ex-boyfriend while I’m here, he wouldn’t be too happy. Then again, by the amount of time he takes to respond to my texts in annoying one-word answers like “K” (is there anything worse?), he might not care that much.

  I exhale loudly, reaching for my glass. I’m not only going to be living in North Ridge for an unknown amount of time, I’m going to be living here of all places.

  Right next door to the boy that broke my heart.

  5

  Shane

  “I’m guessing you heard the news,” Grandpa says to me over a steaming cup of coffee.

  I nod, not wanting to talk about it, and gesture to his bowl of cut up berries, the only part of his breakfast he hasn’t touched. “You know you have to finish those. That’s the trade-off. You can have bacon and eggs but you have to eat your fruit.”

  He scowls at me, even though his eyes are still twinkling. “This is horseshit. I’m full. And I’ve gone all my damn life not eating fruit, and look at me, I’m fit as a fiddle.”

  I know none of that is true. We have a small orchard behind the worker’s cottage, old fruit trees bearing sweet apples, yellow cherries, and perfect plums. I never knew much about my grandmother because she died when I was three, but I knew that she was a supreme baker. She would win pie contests all across the province, back in the day when pie contests were a big deal and all that. I have no doubt he at least got his fruit that way for years.

  “And don’t switch the subject,” he says, pushing the berries toward me. I hesitate, then take them. I can never pass up strawberries.

  “I’m not switching anything. Vernalee is moving into the worker’s cottage. That’s great. She needs people right now, good people.”

  “Damn right she needs good people. Poor woman having to put up with that man.” He points his coffee cup at me. “You know, the minute I saw Constable Waters I knew he was trouble. I’ve seen a few men like him in my day and it’s always worse when they get into positions of power. The cops we had before, they were good men. They liked being in North Ridge. They raised families here. Not saying that we don’t welcome outsiders, but there’s a way about this town that we’d like to keep. Keep it honest, keep it kind, keep it humble. That’s what we stand for. And that damn man…he stood for none of those things. He came into this town and he ruined more than a few lives. He was a liar, and frankly, pure evil. And that’s the truth.”

  Any mention of that man makes my blood boil. I’m not short-tempered except when it comes to him, and I’ve spent the last six years thinking about all the things I should have done. “You talk about him as if he’s dead,” I eventually say. “He’s still out there.”

  “Well, he’s rotting in prison where he belongs. I can only hope our court system keeps him there. You have to wonder how many people he hurt before he got caught.”

  I can tell from the way my grandpa is saying this that he doesn’t know the full extent of what Chief Constable Errol Waters was capable of. Sometimes I don’t think I do either. But what he does know is that one day he beat someone to death. A native boy, out on his reserve, shooting cans drunk. Things got out of hand, but instead of arresting him, he beat the boy until he was dead, then tried to cover it up by saying he was defending his life. There were witnesses. Maybe he didn’t even see them, maybe he didn’t care. Thought they were beneath him, that he was above the law, that he could get away with murder. But they recorded it all, and because of that, Errol Waters was sent to jail.

  I’ve been in his shoes before. I know what it feels like to have anger and revenge take control of your body. But I had reasons for my actions, a sense of justice. All Errol had was hate. Hate for his wife, his daughter, for everyone.

  The thing is, that boy’s life could have been saved if I’d only had the guts to say something all those years ago.

  “I suppose it’s not the best thing to be talking about before we start our day,” he tells me before he slurps back the rest of his coffee. “How’s your headache?”

  I give him a steady look. “I don’t have a headache.”

  “You came back late last night.”

  My grandfather is in his eighties but he has the ears of a hawk. It caused a lot of problems back when we were teenagers and I was sneaking out to see Rachel or sneaking her in to my room late at night.

  Last night, after I took a jerry can and filled up their car with gas, I went right back to the Bear Trap. It was busy and full of people I didn’t feel like talking to, but I managed to keep to myself, drinking beer after beer until I was able to sleep some of it off in the back room. I guess old habits do die hard.

  “I feel fine,” I tell him. “Let’s get going.”

  Summer on the ranch keeps us pretty good and busy. At the moment we’re short-staffed, though we’re trying to rope Maverick into helping us on his days off. One of the tasks is to move cattle from one range to the next to prevent overgrazing. Though we own seven hundred acres, we have a tenure on 10,000 acres on bordering Crown Land that goes all the way around Cherry Peak, which means there’s a lot of ground to cover.

  Luckily today we’re moving some cows from an area about an hour’s ride from here to the next available grazing spot. This group isn’t large, and with just me and my grandfather, plus the dogs, Fletcher, Duke, and Darling, we should get the herd moved with ease.

  There’s nothing like being out on the open range to cure what ails you. But the fresh air, the rolling clouds in the distance, the way the golden grass makes the hills look like they’re cloaked in velvet, none of it is managing to clear my head.

  All I can think about is Rachel.

  Last night nearly killed me.

  I honestly thought that if I saw Rachel again, I would be okay. That I could handle it. That it wouldn’t hurt more than a mere scratch, that I wouldn’t drown in the memories and the way I used to feel about her.

  But none of that was true. It wasn’t a scratch—it was a knife to my heart. I wasn’t drowning in the memories—I was dying in them. And every single thing I felt about her came rushing back, a flash flood of desire and pain that nearly blindsided me.

  The worst part of all of this is, when it comes down to it…I don’t think I ever stopped missing her. The days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, seasons came and went, the years followed, and yet deep in the darkest parts of me, I’ve missed her. More than I would ever let myself admit.

  A pair of ravens fly overhead, their large wings making that distinguished whooshing sound, stirring up air like a storm, and my grandfather looks up. “Do you still believe in good luck, Shane?”

  I glance at him curiously. We’ve been riding for just over an hour now and are just about to the crest of a hill, the dogs at our heels. I watch as the ravens swoop down over the other side, disappearing from sight. The sky is tinged with red, deepening in the corners, haze from the wildfires that are raging in the province this time of year, caused usually by lightning strikes, sometimes by careless humans. I know for a fact that Fox is out there right now, fighting them, though it’s something I don’t tend to dwell on.

  My attention is brought to my grandpa. “Luck? What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” he says, leaning forward in his saddle for the last push to the top, taking the weight off the back of his horse, Manuel. “But I remember you kept that half a wishbone in a glass jar for many years.”

  It’s still in the glass. Tucked away in the closet since I can’t bear to look at it, because in the end, it was just another wish that didn’t come true. But it’s still there. I guess that says something.

  “It had sentimental value,” I finally say, and my grandpa nods, mulli
ng it over before clucking to Manuel.

  We reach the crest and look down at the land below us. It takes my breath away. The golden grass is tinged orange from the light, sweeping into forests of pine. In the distance, the always snow-capped peaks of the glaciers sit. In front of everything are the cows, all twenty-three of them. A fraction of our herd, but it’s enough to keep us busy.

  They raise their heads from the grass. This isn’t even Crown Land anymore, at least not the parcel of acres we’re allowed to use until mid-October, and the cows are looking at us as if they know they’ve gone out of bounds.

  Fletcher, my dog, a descendent of Blue, whines impatiently, ready to get herding. The dogs live for this life, thrive in having a job and a purpose. Sometimes, if I feel I’ve lost my way a bit, I look to them and try and find my path all over again. The passion for the every day, for what you’re born to do.

  But I wait for grandpa, because in the end it’s still his ranch and he doesn’t seem too quick to move.

  “You worry about your brother?” he asks me, staring at that mean red sun.

  “Fox?”

  “I would say John too, but he doesn’t need anyone’s worry. You want to talk about luck, he’s got that in spades.” John is Maverick’s real name. My father said the nickname stuck when he was five. Apparently he fell in love with Top Gun.

  “Sometimes,” I admit. “But Fox seems to know what he’s doing.” And that’s the truth. I know the ins and outs of his job, but I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the stamina and I’m not a thrill seeker. I’m content to invite danger and adventure but not court it for long periods of time. What Fox does, it puts his life at risk every day. I mean, the man jumps out of an airplane into a forest fire. I don’t know what sane person does that.

  But in some ways, I don’t really know Fox. We haven’t had the easiest relationship. Maybe it’s something to do with him being the oldest, therefore there’s the most distance between us. Sometimes I think it’s something deeper, like resentment that worked its way into his bones, the fact that our mother died because of me, but that might just be my own complex.

  “It’s good to worry though,” he goes on, resting his hands on the saddle horn. Manuel dips his head, content, smart enough not to try for the dry grass. “Just remember that life is out of our hands.”

  I wait patiently, sensing he’s going to continue. He always does. Grandpa will talk your ear off for hours if you’re not careful.

  “Fox was always troublesome, the minute he was born. I saw him in your mother’s arms and I knew it. There’s always a troublesome Nelson in the family. Little did I know that your father would have three of them.”

  How am I troublesome? I want to ask, but Grandpa goes on. “Fox was climbing out of his crib before he could walk. When he could walk, he was climbing up the couch. I swear he jumped in the lake and taught himself to swim. Whatever adventure he could find, he would find it. Your mother did what she could to protect him, but in the end, she couldn’t. Because beyond the best that she could do, it was out of her hands.”

  He looks at me and grins. It makes him look positively young. “Then came John, and it was the same thing all over again. He wasn’t as bold as Fox. Fox possesses a strange absence of fear. But John had the confidence. He always believed he could do something and he did it. Just like that. If he ever failed, he brushed himself off and smiled, as if it was the fella’s plan all along. It gave your mother a heart attack, I swear, just trying to keep up with those two. But she let life play out as it needed to.”

  I swallow. I don’t want him to go on. I can listen for hours about the way my mother was with Mav and Fox. But once it comes to me, I don’t want to hear it.

  “Then she had you,” he says after a long pause. “As you know, she didn’t know she could have any more children. We’d been told that John was the last. But you popped up. A surprise. And God, did your mother ever love you. She thought she was the luckiest woman in the world. You were a gift, Shane. A blessing.” He lets out a long sigh, his eyes drifting over the cattle and the blood-red sun. “And you were just like the other two, only quieter. You never cried. You were always so calm, like you were already lost in your thoughts. And though you weren’t climbing out of your crib, you weren’t afraid, either. You were the most serious baby I’d ever met and we all loved you for it. You looked at fear, weighed it carefully, and then faced it.”

  I’m clenching my jaw. I don’t want him to continue. I want to get the cows and go. Sensing my impatience and change of vibe, my mare, Polly, shifts underneath me, alert.

  “I know you don’t believe it,” he says. “I don’t know how to make you believe it. None of us do. But when your mother took her life, it had nothing to do with you, Shane. You were just a baby. And she was a sick woman. Lost to society, to the doctors, to us. We knew but we didn’t really know. But we were the adults. We should have realized how serious her depression was. And we didn’t. We failed her, not you. Never you, Shane. She loved you.”

  It takes me a moment to clear my throat, to find the words. “What does this have to do with luck?”

  “It does or it doesn’t,” he says after watching me for a moment. “But luck is something we latch onto because we believe in hope. And hope exists because we believe in something better.” He pauses. “The fault of man is that we never live long enough to be the person we want to be.” He looks at me. “Who do you want to be, Shane? The man who makes wishes on broken bones? Or the man who makes things happen?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say quietly. He’s talked circles around me.

  “You do,” he says with a dry laugh. “Oh, of course you do, boy. You always know what everyone means. Nothing slips past you, even when you want it to. I know what you and Rachel had was special, is special. And I’ve seen special. I’ve seen it with your father and mother. I’ve lived it between me and Anne. Cynics might tell you that young love isn’t real love, but when love is real, it’s real, and time and age don’t have a damn thing to do with it.”

  “Rachel and I broke up a long time ago,” I remind him.

  “And now she’s living next door to you.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “The amount of time doesn’t matter. What matters is she’s here. And whatever you both had, it was never settled. With any luck, you’ll finally settle it. I know that you’ve been dealing with demons your whole life, Shane. I see them on you, trailing like shadows. I know it makes you think you’re not worthy of love. But you are. And the minute you believe it, the minute things will change. You trust me, don’t you?”

  I give him a quick smile as an answer. I had a feeling today’s ride wouldn’t be like the others.

  But after we ride down the slope toward the herd and the dogs gather them up with ease, driving them home, the red sun at our backs, I see the ravens again.

  Omens of luck.

  I’m a man who wishes on broken bones.

  I’m a man who has a second chance to make things right.

  6

  Rachel

  I stare at the three dots on my phone’s messaging system. I swear, this feature was invented for torture purposes, so the person on the other end gets all the time in the world to wonder what the other is saying.

  And just like before, the dots disappear and I’m left in suspense. I squeeze the phone in my hand like a stress-reliever ball, taking a deep breath.

  Today is moving day, and as if that’s not stressful enough, I’m trying to talk to Samuel and my boss at the same time, and both of them keep typing their messages then erasing them.

  “They’ll be here any minute,” my mother yells from the kitchen. “Are you done in there? Stomach problems?”

  I’ve locked myself in the bathroom because it’s the only place I’ve been able to get any privacy. I’ve asked my boss if it’s okay that I stay a bit longer on account of my mother—I know she’s going to be in good hands living at the Nelson’s but I’m not leaving her anytime soon—a
nd he has yet to reply.

  I did the same with Samuel, and at first I got a Sure in response, which, I have to admit, didn’t sit well with me. Then I texted back, Are you really okay with it? I might be gone for another two or three weeks, at least until my mother has her surgery.

  And now, those three flashing dots.

  Finally, his text pops up.

  Do what you gotta do.

  That’s it.

  I text back: I miss you.

  Three flashing dots.

  Fucking hell.

  Then my boss, Ed, answers: Ideally, this isn’t the best situation and you’re going to be out of vacation pay within a week. But I understand you have to be there.

  Ugh. I’ve been working my way up at Campbell and Brown for two years now, lucky enough to score a job as receptionist straight out of university, and I’ve sacrificed my vacations out of the sheer fear that someone would swoop in and take over my job. That’s pretty much what it’s like in advertising; it’s as cutthroat as people make it out to be, and I think it’s taken a few years off my life.

  I don’t want to ask how Pete is handling my account because Pete is a go-getter who has always been clamoring for my job and he’s probably going above and beyond. Not that I haven’t, but when you’ve been busting your ass for two years with no vacations and late nights and as much overtime as you can handle, you can’t keep giving one hundred and ten percent.

  “Rachel,” my mother says again, and I sigh, checking my phone before slipping it into the pocket of my jean shorts. No three dots from Samuel, no reply. Whatever his response was, which should have been, I miss you too, has been erased.

  I have to admit, that stings.

  I step out of the bathroom. My mom is standing in the middle of the living room, looking especially small with all the boxes piled high around her. She gives me a tepid smile, and I realize that she looks close to crying. My mother never cried, not even when I left North Ridge, so to see her so vulnerable like this really hits me hard.