Page 32 of Rancher's Return

“I’ll drive my truck.”

He remembered their house. A small, modest place right in town that had always felt quintessentially warm and familial to him. There was something about the smallness of it. It gave off a sense of togetherness. They were a nice family. They always had been.

“I don’t know... My parents and I have never really talked about any of this. They didn’t want to upset me. You know my mom was there when I confronted you...”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it. I don’t need you to protect me from whatever they feel. They’re allowed to feel it.”

She nodded. “I actually want to protect them.”

“I get that too.”

They got out of the car, and walked up to the house together. He let her knock. When the door opened, both her parents were standing there. Jim and Nancy. They’d been the nicest people. Always welcomed the whole group of them into their house. Fed them, laughed with them.

It felt appropriate to say nothing. He didn’t know why. When he looked at them, it was with all the awe and reverence he felt when he walked into an old church. A hushed quietness and a sense of something he couldn’t quite define.

This really was staring down the past. Nancy was looking at him like she wasn’t sure what to make of him. And then she took a step forward and reached her hand out. Her fingertips connected with his face, softly. She traced a line on the side of his mouth. And her eyes filled with tears. “He would be your age now.”

He felt that, like a punch to the gut. A real, profound connection to that grief. As if it was fresh and new.

He nodded. “It’s been a while.”

“He would probably have some gray hair,” she said.

“Maybe so.” He could hardly speak around the lump in his throat.

And then she did something he didn’t expect. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. “Just let me hug you,” she said. “For a second.”

Buck had been through a lot. He’d cried about the loss of his friends. He’d cried when he got drunk and fucked-up on dark nights after that. But he’d not cried since he’d gotten sober. He had stopped indulging in self-pity. But this time, when he felt tears sting the backs of his eyes, it wasn’t self-pity. It was the bittersweet ache of knowing he was giving her a chance, just a moment, to feel like she was hugging her son. It was realizing he was an emblem of the past in this moment in a different way. One he never had been before.

When she released her hold on him, he looked over at Jim. The man didn’t say anything. But he nodded twice.

“Come on in,” Nancy said.

They walked into the house and took a seat on a blue faded couch that he was fairly certain was the same couch that had been here twenty years before.

“What is it you have to say, Buck Carson?” she asked.

“I moved back to town about a month ago,” he said. “I thought it was time. Time to stop running. Time to reconnect with my family. I adopted three boys, and they’re teenagers.”

“Lily is dating the oldest,” Marigold said.

He waited for them to get upset about that. But they didn’t react. Then he explained the business partnership. And how it had come up.

“But mostly, I wanted to say what I couldn’t say back then. I’m very sorry. For what happened.”

Nancy shook her head. “Nobody should bear the blame for that, Buck. Nobody. You were all too young to know how your actions could hurt you. It was a terrible thing. It still is. I grieved all the things my son could’ve had. But those eighteen years, that was his life. And I have also worked very hard to look back on that life as a wonderful, joyful thing. He had friends he cared for very much, and you were one of them. You were part of why his life was good. You weren’t just a part of the end of it.”

Buck sat there, completely astonished. This wasn’t just forgiveness. It was something else. It turned him into someone with the capacity to heal and not just hurt. It changed all the memories. Everything he had ever thought about that relationship.

It changed everything.

“Just one minute,” she said.

She got up off the couch and walked out of the room. And no one said anything in her absence. When she came back, she was holding a baseball glove. He recognized it right away. Jason had played for the school. He had loved it.

“Lily doesn’t play baseball. But you said you have three sons. Do any of them play?”

“They haven’t really had the chance yet. They... They all had it pretty tough.”

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