by Helm, Nicole
“Count to ten, sweetheart. Slow, with each breath. Focus on your shoes. In, one, two, three…”
She managed to suck in a breath as he counted, then one out as he reversed the numbers.
“Ten, nine, eight…”
He made it worse and fixed it, all at the same time. Slowly the panic eased, the pressure disbanded. Still, she kept her head between her knees because oh God.
He kneeled in front of her like she was a child. Or someone he was dealing with on a call. He was in his uniform still, so it suited all in all. “What’s all this?” he asked gently.
“Nothing.” Nothing. She’d lost it, but she’d get it back together. She’d fix it with Sadie and—
“It looks a bit like a panic attack, sweetheart.”
“I’m not your sweetheart,” she snapped, lifting her head. “And I don’t have panic attacks. And my mother didn’t swear!” She was seriously losing it. And Ethan was just there, being all calm. Which was her job.
“I-I. I apologize. I was just…” She couldn’t even come up with a good excuse.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Ethan said, and his voice was warm and soothing but completely devoid of emotion. Cop to hysterical victim. “Adults can have breakdowns too.”
“It’s not a breakdown,” Pen said, doing her best to sound calm and in control. “It’s not a panic attack. I was upset. I’m better now. Thank you.”
Ethan took her hand in his, and then the other. He gave them a squeeze, just squatting there like it was an easy pose to hold. When he met her gaze, some of that detachment had faded into a warmth that almost made her feel better.
“It’s okay to be having a rough time.”
She really wanted that to be true, but it was dumb. She hadn’t been this out of control after Henry had died. Anxious and devastated. But she’d held it together for her girls. For her babies.
Why would she fall apart now? She’d healed as much as someone could in three years. She was home. Things were as good as they could be.
That thought made her want to sob. Why didn’t she feel good? “I don’t understand. Everything… Everything is as it should be.”
He rubbed his thumbs over her knuckles, a sweet, caring gesture. A man-to-woman gesture that lightened the weight in her stomach and created a little buzz against her skin, especially while she held that brown gaze of his.
“Sometimes it’s when everything is as it should be that we have to deal with the things we haven’t yet.”
“I dealt with losing Henry. I had to. I had therapy, Ethan.” She wanted to sound condescending but she was pretty sure she just sounded desperate.
“What did you mean before? When you said that your mother didn’t swear?”
“I…” Pen blinked. Everything lately had been about her mother, hadn’t it? And a creeping anxiety she remembered from the first few months after Henry’s murder had taken over, but this time her anxiety wasn’t about the girls’ safety or even her own. It wasn’t about leaving the house or going to sleep.
It was all about living up to Mom.
She’d dealt with losing her husband. In part because of therapy, in part because of her girls, and in part because she was old hat at grieving. She knew what it was to lose someone and always feel sad and jilted over it.
She’d accepted that when it came to losing Henry, especially the way she had, but had she ever accepted it when it came to losing her mother?
She stood up abruptly. “I have to go inside.” She managed to tug her hands out of his though it hurt her broken arm. She turned away from him. She needed…space. She needed to be alone. She needed…
A million things she didn’t have time for. She rushed inside, only ran smack dab into her father.
“My office, girl.”
“Dad. You’re home.” She forced herself to smile at him. She could fool her father. She’d been doing it for fifteen some years.
“Now,” he said in that voice that brooked no argument. The one he pretty much only used on Sadie and Mack. Since he almost never used it on her, she didn’t know how to fight it.
So, she walked with him to his office. He pointed to a chair in front of his desk. She took it, working on excuses and assurances.
He took the seat behind his desk, looking big and imposing with the rolling hills out the window behind him. The sun was setting, earlier and earlier every day. A depressing thought.
“Your sister is worried about you.”
Pen plastered a smile on her face. “No need for that. I was just getting sentimental. You know how Christmas is.”
“That’s not what she explained to me.”
Maybe Sadie should keep her big mouth shut.
“She said you got upset over the idea of Susannah swearing.”
“Daddy…” She didn’t know how to explain, and he looked so sturdy sitting there. Not pale and weak like he’d been after his surgery. It reminded her of before. Before Mom had gotten sick when she’d thought her father had to have hung the moon.
“I’ve been thinking about Mom lately. A lot.” The words sounded foreign to her ears. Telling her father this was unprecedented. She didn’t talk to him about missing Mom because it upset him.
Fritz sighed. “Christmas always does that for me. She loved the tree lighting. Loved all of it. I miss her always, but a little more this time of year.” He sounded wistful, but not as pained as he had years ago.
“It’s not missing her. It’s…” Pen swallowed. Why was she even considering laying this at her father’s feet? He had his own grief, his own stress, his own—
“I know you’ve always tried to fill her shoes,” Dad said gently.
Tried. Which meant failed.
“She told me I had to. She… The last thing she said to me… Take care of everyone, baby. That’s all I’m trying to do. I got a little upset is all. But I’m taking care of everyone even with this stupid thing and—”
“You…” Dad shook his head and got to his feet. He crossed the room and practically lifted her out of her seat and engulfed her in a tight bear hug that had her wincing at the discomfort in her arm.
“What?” she asked into his shoulder, the sound muffled.
He pulled back. His eyes were brimming with tears, which wasn’t unusual when he spoke of Susannah. “That was one of the last things she said to me, too. ‘Take care of them, Fritzy. You have to take care of all of them.’”
“Me too.”
Pen jolted in Dad’s arms and turned to find Sadie standing there, tears in her eyes but none having fallen over.
“What?” Pen demanded. That didn’t make sense. Mom had entrusted her with the caring.
“‘Take care of your father and the farm. Be good to your sisters.’ Daddy didn’t want me in there that last day, so she was still kind of lucid when I talked to her.”
“I don’t…”
“She wanted us all to take care of each other, darlin’. Not you to shoulder all that weight.”
Pen sank back into the chair now that her father wasn’t holding her. She didn’t understand how…
“I should have seen it. You were so strong, too strong, and I was a mess. So I… I leaned too much on you.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Pen said immediately. “Not ever. You did the best for us. You always have.”
“Not always,” Dad said, sharing a look with Sadie.
Which was about stupid farm stuff. Not important stuff. Not family stuff. Oh, Pen loved the farm—she did. But not the way Sadie and Dad did, like it was some kind of limb they couldn’t live without.
“I was just upset is all.”
“You had a panic attack,” Sadie countered.
Pen opened her mouth to argue, then wondered why. Why was she trying to prove she didn’t have some unresolved feelings about losing Mom? About being the caretaker?
Mom had asked all of them.
“I think we all did a pretty good job of taking care of one another then,” Fritz said. “We won’t stop n
ow. You will ask for help, young lady. You will talk to someone when you’re sad. Let the rest of us handle Christmas.”
“I am. I had Colt bring up the decorations and Sadie was going through them with me. You take the girls to school. I sit around doing nothing.”
“You should relish a little nothing. Even before Henry died, you did a lot of the heavy lifting with those girls due to his hours. He was a good man, a good father, but a lot fell on you. Take a break. Be a little lazy.”
“Lazy? I wouldn’t even know how.” The thought terrified her to her soul.
“You couldn’t breathe, Pen,” Sadie said softly. “I’ve never seen anyone get so pale. You’ve got to take it easy. On yourself. You’re the only one who holds yourself to some impossible standard.”
“Mom was…” The impossible standard. I can’t be her. I can’t even come close.
“Susannah wasn’t perfect,” Dad said, and Pen’s mouth dropped open. She saw Sadie’s had too.
Dad cleared his throat. “She was perfect to me. But she did in fact swear. At me, usually. Sometimes she got so wrapped up in a case she’d forget to eat, or tell you three to do your homework. She didn’t tell anyone she was sick until a month after the doctor told her. Your mother had her faults. She was wonderful, and everything to me. But trying to be her is silly. You’re you. And that’s just what we and your girls need.”
Pen wanted to believe it. She knew she should.
“I’m tired,” was all she managed to say.
“Take a nap,” Sadie said with an encouraging smile. “We can handle everything. I promise.”
So, for the first time in her life, Pen ignored her responsibilities and let someone else take care of them.
Once she got into bed, she fell asleep immediately.
Chapter Six
Ethan turned the can of Coke over in his hands. Even though he was sitting out under the stars with Colt, he couldn’t get the picture of Pen pale and gasping for breath out of his mind.
“You going to drink that or spray it all over?”
Ethan looked down at the can and grimaced. He set it down on the patio. He hadn’t come over to Colt and Sadie’s cabin for the fun of it. Not even to try and keep away from Pen, though it wasn’t a bad side effect.
He had to be clear and concise and not let this maybe hang between them. Not on the house issue. “I can’t take you up on your offer, Colt.”
Colt kicked his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. He didn’t say anything as he stretched his arms out and then folded them behind his head.
“You can’t take my offer to help you build a cheap house on family property?”
“It’s not my family’s property. You know…” Ethan didn’t want to go into this. Didn’t want Colt jumping into protective brother mode. But it was important Colt understood this wasn’t a slight. It was just reason.
“My father will go after me when he gets out.”
“And he’ll go right back to jail where he belongs if he does anything.”
“Maybe,” Ethan agreed. But he also knew the law could be twisted and manipulated by lawyers and judges. His father would have gotten away with forcing himself on that teenager if the girl’s parents had had any say in it. They were too embarrassed to press charges. When a friend at the police department handling his father’s case had told Ethan what was going on, Ethan had done his level best to work with everyone he could to convince that poor girl to press charges.
She finally had. But his father’s sentence was insulting at best. Five years. It should have been ten for the age gap. More for manipulating that girl into thinking she’d been asking for it.
Ethan tried not to be bitter about it. The justice system was unfair. Always had been and always would be. He tried to take pride in the fact he’d had something to do with getting his father put behind bars, even if it wasn’t long enough. It was something to be proud of because no one, not even Susannah, had been able to do that.
But Ethan had no doubt his father would find a way for revenge. Only he’d pretty it up in scripture and talk about vengeance and not sparing the rod. In his pulpit, he’d been an engaging minister with a loyal flock.
At home, he’d twisted the words of the Bible to suit his whims, and his punishments. And he knew how to make people think they were the ones in the wrong no matter what.
Ethan might be an adult with a badge, but his father was the kind of man who knew how to hurt people. And it wouldn’t be Ethan he hurt. It would be the people Ethan loved.
“I don’t want to be living this close. The Martins and you already have a big X on all y’all’s chest for Susannah helping me get out of there, for Susannah running him out of town. Put me on your land? It’s asking for trouble.”
“Then I’ll ask for it. Because you’re my brother and I don’t plan on being scared of your daddy. Just like Susannah wasn’t.”
If it had just been Colt, Ethan would believe him. He’d trust his brother to do all the protecting. But it wouldn’t be just Colt soon enough. “What if you and Sadie have kids?”
“Well, we are in fact planning on that…eventually. I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”
Ethan wanted to smile at the discomfort in Colt’s tone, though he tried to hide it. But there was nothing funny about this. Nothing funny about risking Colt’s future.
“He could use them. Use the girls. He’s… He isn’t like your father was, Colt. He’s not a drunk and he’s not angry. He’s calculated. He got Amy committed. She wasn’t crazy. She didn’t need to go to that place. She needed to get away from him, but he made her…” Ethan was getting too lost in old things. He needed to focus on the facts. On the now.
“It’s a shame about your sister, Ethan. But I’m not a teenage girl.”
Ethan took a deep breath and let it out. “But you might have teenage girls.” He forced himself to meet Colt’s frustrated gaze in the dim porch light. “I’m a cop, Colt. I’d like to believe I can save everyone, but I know I can’t. Instead, I know what men like my father can do. Will do.”
“You can’t let him dictate your life.”
“If I did I wouldn’t be here. I would have gotten out of Last Stand and away from everyone I loved a long time ago. This isn’t letting him dictate my life. It’s taking necessary precautions. It doesn’t guarantee that he won’t still try to hurt someone I care about to get at me. I’m not being a martyr here. I’m being as reasonable as I can.”
Colt didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. There was nothing to say unless he wanted to keep arguing against reality.
“I’m going to head back.” Ethan stood to walk back across the land between Colt’s cabin and the Martin farmhouse. “I’ll extricate Sadie and send her home to you.”
But Colt hadn’t quite given up on the conversation. “It isn’t right, Eth.”
Ethan winced a little at the pain of that, but luckily he’d stepped into the dark so Colt wouldn’t see it. “No. It isn’t fair. Neither is life. We both know that. Not much you can do about it.”
Colt muttered something that sounded an awful lot like we’ll see, but Ethan knew arguing wouldn’t change anything. He’d keep the course and always do his best to protect the people he loved from anyone who might wish him or them harm.
The end.
He walked back to the Martin house, taking his time even though it was a cold December night. The stars were bright and though it was winter, life teemed around him. Because life always kept going on, no matter what happened.
When he finally made it to the house, Pen was sitting out on the stair of the back porch. She was alone, the windows behind her shining bright, but she was wrapped up in a blanket because it was darn cold out.
“What are you doing?”
She smiled a little sheepishly. “Well, after this afternoon it might surprise you to know everyone is treating me like I might break. So, I’m watching the stars and trying not to go crazy and clean the whole house one
-handed to show them what’s what.” She patted a spot on the stair next to her.
He didn’t want to take it, but he did so anyway.
“I just wanted to thank you for this afternoon.”
“Well, that’s stupid.” He hadn’t meant to snap, but thanks always irritated him. Thanks from her made him downright pissed.
She made a huffy sound, which almost amused him enough to take away the pissed. But the last thing he wanted was her thanks.
“It isn’t stupid. I know you would have done it to any stranger on the street, believe me, I can tell the difference between cop and Ethan.”
“There’s a difference?”
“To me there is. Between Mom and Henry and you, I learned to tell the difference pretty easily. And that’s who you were—cop. But I needed someone to be that instead of… Well, someone I have to take care of. I don’t have to take care of you.”
Something lodged in his chest and he really didn’t know if it was a good feeling or bad feeling, just that it was stuck there, a weight against his lungs. “No, you don’t.”
“I guess I have some unresolved…mom things.”
“Who doesn’t?” Ethan muttered.
“I’d ask about yours, but you won’t tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Nothing about the time before Susannah really did.
“Of course it matters. But I understand not wanting to… Well. I understand.” She made a pained face. “Sometimes telling yourself it doesn’t matter doesn’t make it so. And sometimes you deal so well with some things, because you never dealt with others.”
“Will it do me any good to repeat what I said the other night? You don’t have to be Susannah. No one expects you to be.”
She sucked in a breath. “I need to hear it, I guess. I think… I think I turned missing her into wanting to be her.”
“There are worse things.”
“I just thought coming home was right. I was so sure everything was good. But I don’t feel good.” She blew out a breath like it was some great, horrible admission. “And I don’t want my daughters to know that. I don’t want Sadie or Dad to know that. I know they’d love me anyway, but…I want to be the strong one. The one in control.”
