Page 10 of Cowboy Don't Go

The blood drained from Copper’s face and his throat closed up. He reached for the doorknob beside him. Suddenly the way his father looked—his thinning hair, his gauntness—it all made sense.

A rush of emotion flushed his face and threatened to spill out from his eyes. “No!” came his guttural denial. Not after all this. Not after all he’s gone through. “Why . . . why would you keep something like that from me? H-how long have you known?”

The lines in his face deepened. “Four months. Five. I forget. Could be a year. Time slides by in that place when you’re not looking.”

Suddenly, the room felt small and stifling. “Did they . . . have you been treated for it?”

“I wasn’t exactly a guest of the Mayo Clinic. They did what they could, but none of it seems to have worked.”

Shock filtered through his system. “Then we’ll get you in to see someone else. An oncologist up in Bozeman. Or . . . or here in Marietta.”

Ray lowered himself onto the chair near the living room window. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? We’re gonna fight this.”

“I did that. I’m done now.”

“No, you’re not,” Cooper insisted sitting on the coffee table opposite him. “You’re not. You’re still young. You’re only fifty-eight. You’ve got a whole life still ahead of you. And you still have this place. We’re going to clear your name. Start over. We’re close. I can feel it.”

“I said no.”

“What’s that even mean? No. How can you just give up?” He realized he was shouting now.

“You still don’t listen to me. Still the same stubborn kid.”

Cooper shook his head, confused. He was hardly a kid anymore and he’d done nothing but listen to his father for years now. But that didn’t mean Cooper had to accept what he was saying now. He had just survived eight years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and, understandably, that had taken its toll. But this . . . no. He couldn’t accept it.

“You really believe,” his father said, “I can start over here? Have any kind of life in this town? Where everyone thinks I’m . . . a cattle thief? What future do I have? What’s the point of it all?”

“You’re not a thief.”

“Your opinion doesn’t matter to any of them. And it will only keep ruining you in the process. You didn’t learn that well enough the first time?”

Yes, he’d left town. Got a fresh start. But time had a way of making people forget. Maybe. “I got hired out at the Hard Eight ranch,” he said, as if that proved something.

Curiously, his father’s already pale face got paler still.

“Dad? You okay?” Cooper asked, concerned.

“Why there?”

He shrugged. “They had an opening. Suited me.”

“That all?”

He couldn’t read the look on his father’s expression. “Yeah. That’s all. You must remember them. Will and Shay, the Hardesty twins were classmates of mine. Their younger brother, Liam, is running the show over there now. Since their father’s death.”

That turned his head. “Tom’s dead?”

“You knew him, right?”

Ray suddenly looked unwell.

“Hey. You must be hungry. Let me make you something.” His father said not a word as Cooper put together grilled cheese sandwiches and a small salad for the two of them.

As he grilled them on the stove, he watched his father stare out the window at their now fallow land. Cooper had allowed himself expectations about today—a happy reunion, relief that part of his father’s life was over, and hope for the future. But gone was the robust, engaged man—father—who’d left this place eight years ago. In his place, this shadow of his father instead. What had happened all those years ago was like a bomb had gone off in their life, scattering pieces of their history and their futures like so much shrapnel. Putting those pieces back together into any recognizable semblance of what once was seemed now likely impossible.

They ate at the small kitchen table, the same one where they’d always eaten after his mother’s death when Cooper was only five. Just the two of them. The dynamic duo. That was what his father had always called them. The table was French pine, now sporting the divots, old remnants of crayons, Magic Markers, and scars of his childhood. Here, his father had taught him to read, and write, how to build models of space monsters and how to balance a budget. Right here, he’d learned what hard work could earn him. And how much his father meant to him.

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