Page 70 of Roads Behind Us
Finally, I could see it, could see past all the pain.
I wished Merv could see it too. I hoped someday she would. Maybe when her house was finished and she lived on the property again instead of in the run-down trailer she’d insisted on buying after my dad passed. I still had no clue why she’d punished herself like that. And when Candy and the baby died, she became almost a recluse. I had the feeling she was in the same fight with God I had been in the last three years, and if that was the case, she’d need to figure out how to let the Almighty off the hook when she found him.
I’d come around to it, and if I could forgive, then so could she.
The ranch was the only place I wanted to be. This land was slowly bringing me back to life. Rye and his crazy ideas had lit a fire under my ass again. Last year, after I’d made the decision to let go of the sheep farm that had been a burden my whole life, I got lost again, just like I’d been when Candy and Duo died. And then I broke my leg and the world had become a shitstorm once more.
But now, the wavy, nauseating heat lifted from the road in front of me, and I could see the many paths just waiting for me to stand up and choose one. Rye, my brother and sister, and Athena hadn’t let me get truly lost. They pulled me off the pavement and gave me reasons to look for the sunrises and sunsets again every day.
And Bea, she’d shown me that those sunsets could light my world on fire again.
Plus, there really was a fuck-ton to do.
Sitting on a folding chair in the shade at the mouth of the barn, I used two small, stacked hay bales as a desk, logging expenses into a spreadsheet on Rye’s laptop. But really, what I’d been doing the last hour was watch my little girl learn to command Tulsa, wishing I could be out there in the ring with her.
Rye and Presley had the physical tasks covered while I recovered, but I was itching to feel dirt under my fingernails again. I missed my nightly showers when I could feel the strength in my mind and my body after a hard day’s work. There was a certain euphoria after a shower like that, when I’d sit on the porch, watching the sky darken and feeling accomplished. Even if I’d failed at the larger task of life, I still felt proud of the work I’d done with my hands. It was when I drew the best. I had clarity then, could see what I wanted to bring to life in my sketchbook easily.
I set down the computer and picked up my sketchpad to start on a drawing of my brave daughter as she listened to the guys while they instructed her and taught her how to be a rider. She had no fear, and she looked so confident that I thought the pride inside me might break open my chest to get out of my body. Seeing her like that reassured me that she could handle some teenage boy. If he put the moves on her on their date, I hoped she’d use the same confidence to punch?—
“Whatcha drawin’?”
Bea’s quiet voice behind me nearly caused a heart attack.
“Jesus! Warn a guy before you sneak up on him like that.” I couldn’t put my finger on why, but all day, it felt like I’d been being watched. How ridiculous was that though? No one cared about my mundane, disabled activities.
Bea laughed softly. “Then what would be the point of sneakin’?”
“S’pose you’re right,” I said. “but if I’d been standin’, you would’ve brought me to my knees just then.” I looked up at her, and she stroked two fingers over the brim of my hat. “I thought you had work to finish.”
“I do, but I was gettin’ kinda lonely over by the cabins all by myself. Plus, it’s not safe for me to do any hard labor without at least a buddy. Wanna be my buddy?” She smiled as she collected her long hair in one hand, then twisted it into a bun and secured it on her head with a band she wore around her wrist. “I have to tell you, this hat is really doin’ it for me.”
Was I blushing? I totally was, and her smile grew naughtier.
“There’s no one at the cabins today. Mine, for example, is empty.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
Reaching out, I tugged her closer by the belt loop on her jeans. “I’ve got a better idea. Pull up a chair. There’s a show for you right here. Look.” I waved my arm out toward Athena as she led her mare into a controlled canter around the edge of the ring. Rye and Presley watched from the middle, turning in circles, looking for any sign that the horse might buck or spook. “The guys have been workin’ with both of them separately for several weeks, but this is their first ride together.”
“Really?” Bea squinted beneath the shade of her hand. “She looks so good.”
“She really does,” I said as Bea snagged an old feed bucket from the side of the barn. She flipped it upside down next to my chair and sat on it.
Crossing one leg over the other, she propped her elbow on her knee and leaned forward to watch. “Athena’s so beautiful up there. She looks like a proper cowgirl.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, but I was watching Bea as she watched my little girl. She was proud of Athena too. I saw it all over her face. “What about you?”
She didn’t take her eyes away from Athena and Tulsa. “What about me?”
“Ever ride?”
“Oh God, no. I’d fall off.”
I shook my head. “No you wouldn’t.”
Athena slowed Tulsa to a walk to cool down, and I turned toward Bea. Presley stayed in the ring with the new dynamic duo, but I saw Rye out of the corner of my eye, walking over to the fence to grab his water bottle.
“Oh, young squire?” I called to him.
He stopped in his tracks with the water bottle almost to his lips. “Uh, yes, my liege?”
