Their Wander Canyon Wish

by Allie Pleiter

  Something was wrong. Really wrong. She looked caved in on herself, despite her carefully applied smile.

  “Hi, Mr. Wyatt,” Margie greeted. “Look at our new swing set!”

  “It’s a beauty,” Wyatt agreed. “You can show me how it works...in a bit.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. “You know how a swing set works. Everybody does.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Just give me a minute with your mom then, okay? I’ll come see it in a sec.”

  Thankfully, the girls accepted that and trotted off toward the play set. That departure didn’t buy him much privacy, however, because Wyatt had no doubt Katie was watching him from the kitchen window.

  He leaned in as much as he dared. “You didn’t come to the garage. Are you okay?”

  “Sorry. I should have called. I’m fine.” Her words were clipped, and she cast a quick glance over his shoulder toward the kitchen windows behind him.

  No way was she okay. “You sure?”

  She pivoted toward the yard, and Wyatt wondered if she was turning away from the house or toward the girls. “I was a little tired, that’s all.” She wrapped her arms around her chest. “Any progress on the carousel?”

  So we’re not gonna talk about it. “That new part just might do the trick.”

  “You’re doing a good thing there, Wyatt. You’re a good man.”

  As much as he liked hearing such praise from her, there was an undeniable touch of something—sadness? regret?—behind her words.

  Wyatt took a small step closer to her. “Mari,” he said, taking the risk of using the name she’d used in high school. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”

  She turned toward him, eyes suddenly sharp. “I’m a widow with two young girls. Of course something’s wrong. Everything’s still wrong.” As quickly as the outburst had come, her face tightened and he watched her shut herself back up. She gripped the handrail and one hand went over her eyes. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. It’s just... I’m...” She gave a sigh that was so full of weariness it made his chest hurt. “I still have bad days, you know?”

  She was so good at putting up the happy front for the girls, he’d forgotten how much Marilyn must have loved Landon. He hadn’t been gone even a year, and he was the father of her children. And not that love ever made much sense—Dad and Chaz were prime examples of that—but he still couldn’t see her with a guy like Sofitel. Out of curiosity, he’d looked into the guy. Landon Sofitel was all slick ambition. A real up-and-comer with a shiny life probably lots of people envied.

  While Marilyn had struck him as the shiny-life type at first, she didn’t seem that way at all now that he knew her. Wyatt couldn’t shake the feeling that what he saw in her eyes wasn’t so much grief as it was fear. The way she always looked around, the way she wrung her hands and tried so hard to look happy, gave off an anxious vigilance that never seemed to leave her. That spooked edge seemed to swallow her whole today, and it drove him nuts that she wouldn’t let him help.

  So he gave her the only boost he could. “I wanted to tell you. I made an appointment with the learning center over at WCC.”

  He was glad to see it bring a tiny bit of warmth back to her eyes. “You did?”

  “I figured I might as well see if you were right. Maybe they’ll help me even more than you have.” He couldn’t tell if thanking her for her suggestion would make things better or worse. “There’s a job at Mountain Vista a friend wants to get me in for, but it’s got all kinds of paperwork involved.”

  She literally winced at the name of the resort. What was up with that? “You know me and paperwork,” he joked, unsure how to handle her reaction. “I can’t exactly bring my helpers along to a place like that.”

  It seemed the wrong thing to say, although he was clueless as to why.

  “I’m happy for you.” Her words rang hollow and forced. He’d meant the news to make her happy, to let her know she’d been right to meddle, but it was as if he couldn’t crack the wall she’d thrown up in front of herself.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” He had the crazy urge to take her hand.

  “You don’t need to keep asking that, all right?”

  “Yeah,” he relented. “Sorry.” He backpedaled to safer ground. “Nice swing set.” That felt like useless small talk, but he wasn’t about to admit defeat and leave. There had to be something he could do, and he wasn’t about to let Granny Scowlface back at the kitchen window think she’d won.

  “We just put it up, too.”

  Her wistful tone caught Wyatt up short. “Wait... Are you leaving?”

  She shook her head no, but he didn’t believe it. It only told him that if she was leaving, it wasn’t by choice.

  “Come push us on the swings, Mr. Wyatt!” Maddie called from the yard.

  Wyatt held up a hand that he’d heard them. “In a minute, okay?” He turned toward her. Women came in and out of his life with a practiced ease, so the sharp prick at the thought of losing her and the girls startled him. He reached his hand toward her elbow. “Mari, please. Tell me what’s going on.”

  She pulled in the smallest of breaths, and after a half a second of connection he knew they both felt, she pulled away.

  Touching her—even just the smallest bit—unleashed some strange, tender urge that felt as un-Wyatt as anything. Defiance he knew well. But this weird protective thing? This you can’t hurt her battle cry that came out of nowhere? It stumped him worse than a dozen broken carousels.

  “Aren’t you gonna come push us?” the girls called insistently.

  She turned to him with eyes that held back tears. “Whatever you read, whatever you hear, don’t...” She never finished the sentence, just clamped her mouth shut.

  Wyatt turned to fully face her, not caring who watched. “Don’t what? Mari...”

  “We’re coming!” Marilyn called with a desperate cheer. “We’ll come push you on your swings.”

  Wyatt wanted to growl in frustration, but instead he walked down the deck stairs behind Marilyn to go push two little girls on the brand-new swing set. He’d said what he’d come to say, but he’d leave with far more questions and a lot more worry.

  * * *

  Maddie pulled her blanket up tight and clutched her stuffed animal. “I love our new swings.”

  Marilyn viewed the brightly colored play set as a planted flag of victory, a tiny bit of surefire happiness. At least for now. That, and the fact that she’d gotten called in for an interview with a local manufacturing firm, had to be enough good news to live on. “They are fun, aren’t they?”

  “Can we go back to the garage next week?” Margie asked with a yawn. “Mr. Wyatt says he missed us.”

  Marilyn smoothed the girl’s hair back, still damp and sweet smelling from the evening’s bath. “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see.” The urge to hide out here at Mom and Dad’s house hit hard. It could be days, or months, or hours until whatever the Denver paper was planning to write hit the news, if it ever did at all. She couldn’t live the rest of her life waiting for the ax to fall. She had to make a life beyond Landon. She just wasn’t sure she could get beyond Landon. And Wander was always watching.

  He’d left so many buried land mines behind. In Denver, and now here. It gave an irrational lure to the thought of piling suitcases into the car and running somewhere far away. Marilyn wondered, at that moment, if she’d subconsciously put up the swing set to make it harder to leave.

  Maddie flipped on her side on the twin bed a few feet away. “‘We’ll see’ always means ‘no.’”

  “Not always,” she countered, again wondering where Maddie got these flashes of entirely too-grown-up wisdom. When Maddie gave her a “really?” look, Marilyn added, “Just most of the time.”

  “I still wanna go,” Margie said. “Mr. Wyatt says he’s worried he’ll get homework from the learning center like me.”

&nb
sp; She’d been surprised when Wyatt told her he was making an appointment at the church’s learning center about the possibility of his having dyslexia. She’d been flat-out shocked when he told Margie, asking her if she’d show him the ropes. Whether or not he accepted whatever assessment the learning center offered Wyatt, Margie’s eyes at being asked to help a grown-up would warm her heart for years. For a man who adamantly claimed kids weren’t his thing, he sure had a way with them that went far beyond carousels.

  Wyatt saw the twins as people, as individual personalities. Not everyone did. Landon had treated the girls as a set, or as a novelty. Disloyal as it felt to admit, she’d always felt Landon merely loved the idea of having twins. His affection never seemed to truly extend to the girls as two unique and precious daughters. He never spent time one-on-one with them. He never spent much time at all with any of them.

  In fact, it broke her heart to realize she could not pull up a single memory of Landon pushing the girls on a swing. So now she didn’t know what to do with the picture of Wyatt laughing and making jokes and dodging in and out of the swings as if it was the most fun he’d had in years. Wyatt Walker, whose reckless exploits had fueled school gossip, who totaled a car an hour before prom and simply regrouped to take his date to the dance on the back of his motorcycle.

  Wyatt Walker, whose heart-stopping eyes had held her gaze for far too long and said a million things without words before he got back into his truck and drove off.

  “Do you, Mom?” Margie was tugging on her hand, pulling her back from her thoughts.

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you think Mr. Wyatt is nice?”

  Marilyn tried not to let the question throw her. “I think everybody is nice. I mean, Greg pushed you on the swings the other day, too, didn’t he?”

  Maddie grunted. “His mom made him.”

  “Who told you that?” Marilyn asked.

  “He did. He got pizza if he did it.”

  Ah, teenagers. They had all the tact of a Wander Canyon Ranch steer. “Well, I think you’re worth four pizzas.” She was pleased that made the girls giggle.

  “So, do you?” Margie’s persistence might also rival a Wander Canyon Ranch steer.

  She opted for the safest answer she could think of. “He’s been very nice to us, hasn’t he?”

  “I like helping in the garage. Can I draw him another picture tomorrow?”

  There was something wonderful about how Margie never hesitated to share her art with the world. “I don’t see why not.”

  “We can give it to him on our next visit. Can’t we go tomorrow?”

  Marilyn wasn’t sure she was ready to face Wyatt again. She didn’t want to face anyone. She wanted to hide under a rock until no one had any more secrets to expose about Landon. It felt as if the man she grieved as her husband didn’t even exist anymore. Did he ever? The swirl of doubts made her as dizzy. “I really don’t know. Let’s think about this tomorrow, okay? It’s time for two little girls to say their prayers and go to sleep.”

  The moments where Margie and Maddie ended their days with prayers was always a treasure to Marilyn’s heart. They gave thanks for the sweetest—and often strangest—things. Tonight Margie thanked God for earthworms and peanut butter—and Mr. Wyatt’s funny jokes. Maddie gave thanks for hair bows and Grandpa’s tickles. When each girl asked God to bless Daddy in heaven, Marilyn’s heart twisted in both regret and gratitude. Could their unvarnished memory of their father have any hope of staying that way? Their happiness means so much to me, she pleaded to Heaven as she kissed each forehead and switched off the light.

  She stopped at the top of the landing, continuing her prayer. I feel like a great big storm is coming that I can’t stop. Be my protector, Lord. Grant me wisdom and courage. And finally, she admitted, Show me what to do about Wyatt. I can’t trust all the things I’m feeling. The girls are hungry for attention. We’re all in such a vulnerable place. Guide us through this, I beg You.

  While some part of her yearned to go crawl under the covers herself, Marilyn settled for heading downstairs for a cup of tea and the chance to finish a few rows on the scarf she’d started knitting. Mom had encouraged her to take the craft back up, and she welcomed the chance to share something with her mother. She hadn’t told Mom and Dad anything about what Tessa had shared. They’d know soon enough. For now, the peace of a few quietly accomplished rows on the back deck under an indigo summer night sky with a cup of tea sounded like just the balm she needed.

  She winced at the sight of the papers on the kitchen table—Mom and Dad read the Wander Gazette when it came out twice a week as well as the Denver Courier daily. Marilyn tried to ignore them as she walked out onto the deck with her cup of tea. Mom and Dad sat on the deck with a cheery fire roaring in the fire pit.

  “Girls all tucked in?” Dad asked, stretching out his legs. His knee was bothering him again, she could tell. An irrational chill of what will happen when they’re gone and I’m all alone? shot through her. Some days grief was just a hailstorm of hard emotions coming up out of nowhere, and today was surely one of those.

  “Maddie thanked God for your tickles tonight,” she shared, pleased at her father’s resulting smile. “And Margie for your peanut butter sandwiches,” she added, not wanting to leave Mom out even though Margie hadn’t been that specific. They never spoke of it, but Marilyn knew it had to be a burden of sorts to have her and a pair of loud, messy children invade her parents’ quiet retirement.

  “What did Wyatt Walker want?” Mom’s attempt to keep the question casual didn’t quite succeed. She returned to her knitting as she asked, “Didn’t you just see him the other day?”

  Marilyn opted for the truth—or at least part of it. “He expected to see us at the garage today and was worried when we didn’t show up.”

  “He expected you?” Her mother’s eyebrows furrowed with her emphasis of the word. “Awfully strange place for girls that age, don’t you think? All that machinery.”

  “He made paths and safe places for them to walk and sit and watch with yellow tape on the floor.” She’d found it charming, but the moment the words left her mouth Marilyn realized how ridiculous that must sound. Who tries to childproof an auto garage?

  She picked up her own knitting. At the slow rate she was going, it might take her until Christmas to get this purple scarf done for Margie and a second pink one for Maddie.

  After a stretch of silence, Dad said, “You be careful.” His eyes told her he meant it in more ways than one.

  Marilyn returned the knitting to her lap. “You know, Dad, I think he’s dyslexic. I saw lots of the same problems Margie has when I helped him with the garage paperwork. I gave him some information and he’s going to get evaluated at the church learning center. You should have seen how sweet he was to ask Margie if she’d show him the ropes.” She wasn’t entirely sure that was her secret to tell, but the way Mom looked as if Wyatt was some bandit worthy of scorn made her blurt it out.

  Mom turned her work with a small harrumph. “I don’t see why you have to get wrapped up in something like that.”

  “I’m not wrapped up in anything.”

  Oh, but she was. She didn’t know what to do with the way she felt around Wyatt, with how much the girls had grown to like him. She was wrapped up in some unwelcome desire to be closer to him, in the comfort and freedom that messy garage somehow gave her.

  Tangled might be the better word. And when whatever was coming out about Landon finally surfaced, those tangles felt like they would tighten into knots.

  Chapter Twelve

  Someone was shaking her shoulder. “Mari, hon, wake up.”

  Marilyn had terrible trouble getting to sleep last night. The sweetness and innocence of the girls’ prayers kept clashing with her pain and fear, keeping her spirit in turmoil until the wee hours of Saturday morning. She must have slept in and the girls needed something.
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  “Get up, Mari.” Her father’s voice held an edge that made Marilyn’s stomach drop even before she fully opened her eyes.

  “What? The girls?” As she lifted her head from the pillow, she realized it wasn’t late at all. In fact, it seemed to be rather early. The ache in her body told her she’d been asleep only a handful of hours. “Are they okay?”

  “They’re still asleep. But you need to come downstairs. Coffee’s on and we’re going to have to figure out what to do.”

  A sensation of a threatening thunk, like a heavy lock clicking into place, filled her chest. It’s done. It’s happened. Already. For no logical reason she’d thought she’d have more time. But when were scandals ever slow-moving? No, they took on wildfire speed once the match was struck. She started to reach for her cell phone charging on the nightstand, but Dad’s hand stopped her. “Let’s not do that yet.”

  Marilyn sat straight up, wide awake. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  He straightened up. “Just come on downstairs. We’ll take it one step at a time from here.”

  “Landon?” The name seemed to burst out of her. “It’s about Landon, isn’t it?”

  Dad showed a moment of surprise at her guess, making her wonder if it had been the right choice to not tell Mom and Dad what Tessa had said was coming. He merely handed her the robe from the foot of the bed and gave a small nod. “Coffee’s on.”

  Marilyn stopped in the bathroom to splash some water on her face, then felt her chest tighten as she padded past the half-shut door to the girls’ room. The stars of their night-light cast yellow reassurance onto the walls. Oh, Lord, was the only prayer she could manage, and not much of one at that.

  The kitchen lights were fully on, not just the table lamp Mom usually lit this early in the morning. Dad handed her a cup of coffee. Mom sat with both hands wrapped around her mug. A copy of the Sunday Denver Courier lay open on the table. It didn’t take long for Marilyn’s eyes to find the words Mountain Vista among the headlines.