Page 37 of Defending Casey

Chapter 7

Going home that night,he’d almost turned down the road to his childhood home.

He was going to talk to his father someday, but like a bear, his father didn’t like being woken up in the middle of the night.

When Hale confronted him, he wanted the man completely awake. He wanted his father to know what he’d done and how much damage he’d caused. Hale had no idea if the man was capable of redemption or if his father even cared to try. Either way, he wanted his father to see the confrontation coming.

There had been enough surprises since Hale had returned to Fool’s Gold.

Turning onto the driveway for the Redmond Homestead, Hale smiled at the sight of the house up ahead on the rise. The simple two-story house was his.

Had been for the better part of the decade.

Signed over from his mother’s trust to him on his eighteenth birthday. The home he had intended to live in after graduation and raise his family in, after he married Casey.

But like so many plans he’d made in those years after they lost his mother, they’d gone awry.

Putting the truck in park, he turned off the engine and swung the door open.

Where Casey lived, there were a number of properties close enough to her home that even at night there was always a whisper of sound coming from some direction.

Out where he was, the world was near silent except for the occasional sound of grasshoppers.

Closing his eyes, he reached into his past to remember what it was like to come out to his grandparents’ house and stay for the weekend.

The late evenings spent on the porch. His grandma singing folk songs and the scent of his grandfather’s pipe wafting in the air. Sometimes the men in the bunkhouse would light a fire in the pit and tell tall tales that enthralled him and kept him up way past his bedtime.

Those nights were long gone.

But in some ways, it was just out of reach.

The bunkhouse hadn’t been maintained, but his ancestor had built the walls from stone. At least that part of the structure would be sound. The guts of the bunkhouse and the roof would need a complete rebuild, but he could do it.

He could give Nora that kind of childhood. A childhood that warmed his heart and soul.

And the barn. A horse of her own.

Chuckling at the list he was making for himself, Hale was glad that he’d tucked away every penny he could over the years.

He heard a lonely wolf howling in the distance and smiled. “I know how you feel, man.” Hale stepped down out of his truck and closed the door behind him.

The news talked about gray wolves returning to Colorado and he felt a kind of kindred connection to the animals.

He’d found his way back too.

Maybe there was hope for lonely beasts after all.

The echoof his footfalls against the wooden floors only reinforced how hollow his home was.

As he moved through the main room, he imagined what it would look like with Nora and Casey’s things in his home.

Yeah, he would bring them out as soon as he could. Even though the house had been cleaned and maintained over the years the curtains and cushions were worn with age and sun.

Having Casey’s opinion on what he needed to buy was something he was looking forward to. After all, this house was going to become a home again. He just needed his family with him.

Hale stepped into the shower and let the hot water pummel his back.

Like white noise blocking out the world he remembered what Casey told him about why she’d broken his heart years ago.

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