A Rancher To Remember

“Thanks.” She looked at it, then tucked it into her pocket.

Lloyd gave them both a nod, then headed over to the pickup truck. Was it just him, or did Lloyd look like he was just about running to get out of here? Sawyer wasn’t sure he blamed him.

“I guess that leaves just us,” Sawyer said. “I feel like I should apologize for this.”

“Whatever,” she said. “It isn’t your fault.”

“No, but it’s highly inconvenient,” he replied. “Apparently, I usually work here. A lot of use I am like this.”

“You’re Lloyd’s nephew,” she said with a shake of her head. “You’re family.”

“Right.” He wished that meant more to him right now.

Sawyer scooped up one toddler then looked down at the child attached to his leg. He kept his leg straight, lifting her along with him as he headed back toward the house. The toddler squealed in delight, and he couldn’t help but laugh softly.

“So, one of them is Lizzie, and the other is Bella. I haven’t figured out which is which yet,” he said. “Do you know, by any chance?”

“I last saw your girls when they were newborns,” Olivia replied. “So I’m not much help. Wait—” She reached out toward the toddler in his arms and took her hand. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Lizzie...” the girl whispered. Olivia shot him a grin, and then bent down to the other toddler. “Is your name Bella?”

The other girl grinned impishly. “Lizzie!”

Olivia straightened and laughed softly. “Never mind. I thought I was onto something.”

“I tried that,” he admitted. “And Lloyd says he can’t tell them apart, either. When we figure it out, I’m going to have to mark them somehow.”

“What...like with a permanent marker?” she asked, shooting him a teasing look.

“You’re joking, but it’s not a bad idea,” he countered. “Apparently, I could tell them apart before, but now...” Sadness welled up inside of him, and he tried to push it back. “They say it’ll come back to me. Until it does, a nice B or L on their hands would be helpful.”

Sawyer disentangled the little girl from his leg, and then put his other daughter on the ground next to her. They scampered on ahead.

“Do you remember the accident?” Olivia asked.

“No,” he said. “The first thing I remember is waking up with blood on my face, and riding to the hospital in town. I don’t remember anything before it.”

“Nothing?” she asked, squinting over at him.

He shook his head. “Well, I mean, I remember some funny little things, like which cupboard holds the salt shaker. If I’m not thinking about it, I can go through the motions for some basic chores like washing dishes or making coffee.”

“So, the muscle memories are in there,” she said.

“Seems like,” he agreed.

“I’m a nurse, you know,” she said. “I work in an emergency room, and I’ve dealt with people with partial memory loss after a head injury, but never anything this complete. In the cases I’ve worked with, the patients usually get their memories back within a couple of hours.”

“Yeah?” He eyed her curiously. Maybe she could be helpful after all.

“What did the doctors tell you—exactly?”

“It’s a brain injury. Kind of like a bruise. But it isn’t getting worse, and it should heal in a week or two. My memory should return. They said they’ve seen it before.”

“Okay, that’s a good sign,” she said with a nod. “I’m sure relaxing a bit will help with that.”

He shot her a rueful look. “Try relaxing when the most important parts of your life have been erased from your head. Besides—I want to get out there. Do something. Feel useful.”

“That’s your way,” she said with a low laugh.

“What do you mean?”

“You like to work. You always did. You worked harder than any cowboy here.”

That wasn’t a bad thing. He smiled at the description. “It could be worse.”

“You need to relax,” she said, and her tone wasn’t amused.

The toddlers stopped at the steps of the house and turned around, heading back toward them. Their curls bounced as they ran, and one of them came straight for Olivia. She bent down and swept the girl up in her arms, planting her on her hip. The move was so natural that he found himself smiling at her.

Sawyer caught the second girl, and picked her up, too. It was easier with two adults. They weren’t outnumbered, and Olivia seemed more natural with the girls than Sawyer was.

“What’s your name?” Olivia asked brightly.

“Bella.”

“Yeah, you’re Bella?”

“Bella.”

Sawyer looked at the toddler in his arms. “Hey, Lizzie,” he said softly.

“Daddy...”

Sawyer looked over at Olivia, his heart speeding up. “Did we just do it?”

“I think we know who’s who,” she agreed.

“Okay, don’t put her down,” Sawyer said, waggling a finger at Olivia. “We’re finding a marker.”

“That was a joke,” she laughed.

“It was a good idea. I need to tell them apart.”

Sawyer led the way up the steps and into the side door of the ranch house. He might not remember much, but he did have a mental picture in his mind of a junk drawer of some sorts that had a big felt-tipped marker inside. He looked around the kitchen, unsure of where to start, so he began at the first drawer he saw, pulling it open, then closing it when it wasn’t the right one. On the fifth drawer, he found it.

“There we go.” He pulled out the marker with a grin. “If there were a mother I’d have to explain myself to, I might be a little more worried. But I’m their dad, right?”

“So I’ve been told,” she replied with a small smile.

“Yeah, well, as their dad, I figure telling them apart is pretty important. I need something that won’t just wash off.”

“Okay.”

“So I’m making a responsible parenting decision here.” He held up the marker, watching her for a reaction.

“You’re their dad,” she said with a nod. “It’s your call.”

While he didn’t remember anything about them, being their father still mattered. In fact, as confused as he was, focusing on being their father had been what had held him together so far.

Sawyer pulled off the cap and took Lizzie’s hand. He wrote a small L on the back of her hand, and then blew on it to dry the ink. Lizzie looked down at her hand in curiosity, and he put her down on the kitchen floor, then reached for Bella’s hand. She held hers out happily, and he wrote a small B.

Bella pursed her lips to try and blow, and he laughed, then blew on her hand to make sure the ink was dry.

“There,” he said. “That’s one problem solved.”

It felt good—a victory. Olivia put Bella down, and the girls scampered off to a bucket of toys in the corner and dumped it out. He watched them for a moment... It still felt unreal that he was a father and that these little girls were actually his.

“What was I like?” he asked, glancing toward Olivia.

“You were serious,” Olivia said. “And stubborn. Really stubborn. You knew what you wanted and you didn’t let anything get in your way. You wanted to help your uncle grow this ranch—you thought you could double the herd size with the right support.”

“Hmm.” A goal. He liked the sound of that. “How did you and I know each other?”

“We met at the diner where I was working. We just kind of...clicked. It went from there.”

“And you live in town still?” he asked.

“No, I moved for college,” she said. “Right after you got married. I live in Billings now. I work at the hospital there.”

He frowned slightly, taking her in—the tangled curls, the soft brown eyes, the pink in her cheeks. “What was my wife like?”

Olivia’s expression froze, and then she glanced away.

“Perfect for you,” she replied. “Mia loved horses and cattle. She wanted a ranch life. And she was quiet enough to balance you out.”

“I take it you didn’t want the ranch life like we did,” he said. “Since you moved.”

“I wanted...” She looked around the kitchen, her gaze turning inward. “I didn’t want to stick around Beaut. I guess I just wanted more.” She winced. “That sounds insulting. I don’t mean it to be. I just didn’t want a rural life. I wanted a new start. I wanted...streetlights and a nightlife, and more people. I was tired of living in a place where everyone knew my personal business, or thought they did.”

She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her looks that kept his eyes riveted to her. There was something there, just beneath the surface, that he could almost remember. He hadn’t felt that about any of the other people from his forgotten life that he’d met so far. But he had a foggy memory—a black coat and a woman facing away from him. He put out his hand and touched her. She turned—

Then nothing. He couldn’t get any more of it, but it felt connected to her. Or was the memory of his wife and talking to a woman bringing it back? He couldn’t tell. Not remembering was a strange weight. He was sad—or was that sadness some part of a memory that he couldn’t place, like the woman in the black coat? He wished he knew. It was confusing and frustrating. All he had was these shards of memory that didn’t fit anywhere, and sadness so deep that it made his chest sore.

“Will you help me to remember it?” he asked quietly. “That life with my wife. My daughters.”

“I wasn’t here for most of that part,” she said with a quick shake of her head.

“Right...” So she might not be able to help with that as much as he’d hoped, but still, when he looked at her, that memory of the coat kept brushing so close that he could almost touch it. “What about our friendship? I have a feeling that you mattered to me, too.”

Olivia blinked up at him and she opened her mouth to say something, then stopped.

“Did you matter to me?” he asked. He needed to know that much.

She nodded. “Yes. But Mia was the one who deserved you.”

What did that mean? He was about to ask, but then one of the toddlers threw a plastic cup across the kitchen and it clattered into a corner, breaking the moment. Sawyer and Olivia both looked in that direction, and Sawyer cleared his throat.

“It’s a lot to ask to help a man get his memory back, I know...but I need help.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she agreed.

“Thank you.” And he meant it from the bottom of his aching heart. For the first time in his limited memory, he felt something close to comfort.

Chapter Two

It was odd to be standing here with a man she’d known for so long, talking like virtual strangers. Sawyer wasn’t quite the same as Olivia remembered him. She figured that would still be true even if his mind was fully intact. He might not have his memory, but these last hard years hadn’t been erased; she could see that in the lines on his face and the strands of premature gray around his temples.

Sawyer crossed the kitchen to the coffee maker and reached for a stack of filters. Olivia watched him work for a moment. He’d bulked up a bit since the last time she’d seen him, making him move with more confidence. His hands—she noticed them as he fiddled with a coffee filter—looked tougher, more calloused. He glanced instinctively toward the toddlers, who sat in the middle of a plastic minefield of toys.

“You used to like baseball,” Olivia said.

“Did I?” Sawyer glanced over his shoulder. “Playing it or watching it?”

“Both,” she replied. “You played in high school, at least, but that was before I was in high school, and before we properly met. You’re older than me by a couple of years, by the way.”

“Right.” He smiled.

“We used to play catch in the park, you and me. When you weren’t working. You worked a lot.”

“Did you play baseball, too?” he asked.

Olivia would have...but there had been some women who’d liked to play with the local team who’d been part of spreading those rumors about her, and avoiding them had been simpler and less painful than standing her ground and facing them down. At that point she’d been so tired from the constant badgering around town, that she’d just let people believe what they wanted to about her. If they wanted to think she was sleeping around, then so be it, because no one was listening to her anyway. It was easier in the moment, at least. But it had confirmed that getting out of Beaut was the only option she had.

“No, I wasn’t into baseball,” she said. It wasn’t entirely true—but it wasn’t really a lie. Joining the team would have been fun under different circumstances, but all she had was reality, not a fairy tale. And in her reality, baseball hadn’t been right for her at all.

“Huh.” Sawyer cast her a peculiar look, then turned back to making the coffee again.

“Why?” she asked. “Do you remember something?”

“No, you just really tensed up when you said you weren’t into baseball,” he replied. “What’s up with that?”

“Stuff I’d rather forget,” she said, forcing a smile, then nodded toward the coffee maker. “You remember how to make coffee.”

Sawyer nodded. “I realized that yesterday. How did I take my coffee when you knew me?”

“How have you been taking it so far?” she asked.

He screwed the lid back onto the coffee canister. “Lloyd has been handing it to me black.” He flicked the button on the coffee maker and turned back toward her. “I’ve been following suit when I make it myself. Is that how I liked it?”

Olivia shrugged. “When I knew you, you used to take a dribble of cream and about five spoons of sugar.”

He frowned slightly. “That sounds gross. Are you sure?”

“Maybe you changed how you took it,” she suggested. “I mean, maybe you started worrying about your health.”

Or maybe Mia had started worrying about it. Olivia couldn’t speak for what had happened in his marriage.

“I’ll try it both ways,” Sawyer said. “Maybe you’re right.”

And maybe she wasn’t... She’d adored Sawyer, but had she known him as well as she thought?

“How much did you and I hang out?” Sawyer asked.

Was he thinking the same thing?

“Quite a bit, back in the day,” she said. “After you graduated, a lot of your friends had left for the city, and I didn’t have a lot of friends anymore, besides Mia. So you and I kind of bonded over the lack of other options.”

“That doesn’t sound like a great foundation.” But a smile tugged up the corner of his lips. “What do you mean, anymore? What happened to your friends?”

“I wasn’t terribly popular,” she hedged. “I was quiet. Kind of boring. And senior year, everyone decided to pick on me.”

“Oh...” His gaze filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a good thing, in a roundabout way,” she countered. “For us, at least. We might not have given each other much of a chance if we’d had other options. We wanted opposite things out of life, so we were a bit of an odd couple.”

“Did we date?” he asked. “You called us a couple.”

“No, I meant that in the most platonic way possible.” She felt her smile slip.

“But you were friends with my wife,” he said. “I’m just trying to piece it all together here.”

“Before you two started dating, Mia hung out with us a lot, too, and she was crazy about you. She harbored this huge crush, and it took you a while to clue in.”

Sawyer met her gaze, but didn’t answer.

“So, maybe you had more options than I did,” Olivia conceded. “But Mia was beautiful and fun, and she could ride better than you.”

“I don’t know why, but I feel mildly insulted with that,” he said with a soft laugh. “How well do I ride?”

“Better than you play baseball,” she joked. But then she remembered that he didn’t know, and she sobered. “You’re a really good rider. You always have been. You go on the cattle drives to move the herd, and you come back with all these stories about hungry wolves and belligerent cows.” She paused, remembering the way his eyes would sparkle when he embellished his tales. “You taught me to ride.”

“Am I a good teacher?” he asked.

“No.” She crossed her arms, as if she needed to defend her position on that. But he really hadn’t been. He expected his students to function on instinct, like he did.

“No?” He laughed softly. “But you said I taught you. That’s something.”

“You’re bossy,” she countered. “You yell a lot when you’re teaching. After that first ride, I wouldn’t take your calls for a week.”

“Oh. Sorry. Obviously, we made up.”

“Just barely.” Olivia chuckled. “We had fun, mostly. When you weren’t bossing me around and telling me I’d get myself killed. We were good friends.”

“So, this is your chance to turn the tables, I guess,” he said, sobering. “I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“I’m a nicer teacher,” she said with a short laugh. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll take my revenge.”

The coffee maker burbled as it dribbled fresh brew into the pot, and Bella toddled up to her father and held a plastic toy up for his inspection. Sawyer bent down, looked at the toy seriously, then said, “Very nice. I like it.”

Bella looked at the plastic block in her fingers as if seeing it again for the first time. Then she smiled up at Sawyer, her blue eyes glittering.

The girls remembered their father just fine, and they obviously recognized their daddy in this broken version of him. Olivia recognized the old Sawyer in him, too. She always had been able to get him to relax. But there was something different there, as well...something foreign around the edges. When you stripped away someone’s memories, maybe it loosened up other parts of their personality that had been held down.

Or maybe there had been sides to him that she’d never known...that he’d never opened to her. That was possible, too.

But she had been his friend, even if she’d kept her distance in the last few years.

Olivia pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and glanced down at the screen. No missed calls. That meant that despite all the messages she’d left for her brother, telling him she was going to be in Beaut, Brian hadn’t called her. She’d come back to town for Brian...to try and mend this rift between them. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have returned. Her life here was over—this town couldn’t be home for her again.

“Sawyer, I’m going to go make a call,” she said.

Sawyer looked up from where he crouched next to his daughters. “Sure.”

Olivia slipped out the side door and walked a few paces away from the house. She could hear the growl of a tractor’s engine somewhere in the distance, and the sunlight warmed her shoulders. There was no breeze right now, just sunny warmth, and she dialed her brother’s number once more.

It rang four times, then the voice mail kicked in: “Hi, it’s Brian. You know what to do.”

She hung up. She’d already left three messages.

Lord, what do I do? she prayed. He won’t talk to me, and I’m kind of intimidated here. He’s my little brother, and he can’t stand me. Do I deserve this?

Olivia had said she was leaving Beaut in order to go to school, but there was more than a simple desire for an education and a career that pulled her away. This town was the kind of place that had a long memory. Olivia had always thought of herself as pretty tough, but those rumors had been devastating. People looked at her differently. They whispered when she walked by. It didn’t matter that the rumors weren’t true—they were juicy, so they had spread like wildfire. They had affected the way Olivia saw herself, eroding her sense of self-worth. Just as soon as she and her mother had scraped up enough money for college, she’d left for Montana State University and never looked back.

The problem was, she felt guilty. She’d had good reason to leave Beaut, but she’d left Brian behind, and she’d always been a little extra protective of him. From where Brian stood, Olivia had abandoned both him and their mom. They hadn’t known she was sick yet, and when Olivia left town she’d thought she had decades left with her mother in her life. And now that she wanted to make up with her brother, he wasn’t interested.

Still, Brian didn’t know that she might have a solution to their mutual money problem...

As if on cue, her cell phone rang, and she looked down, hoping to see Brian’s number. It wasn’t—it was the Whites. She sighed and picked up the call.

“Hello?”

“Olivia.” It was Irene. “You must have arrived in Beaut by now.”

“Yes, I’m here,” she said. “I arrived this afternoon.”

“Have you spoken with Sawyer yet? I mean, I hate to hound you, but Wyatt and I are just sitting here waiting, and the wait is worse than when Wyatt was running for office!” Irene laughed at her own little joke.

“Right.” Olivia sighed. “Well, I’m going to need a bit of time. As you know, I haven’t been back to town in years, and I cut a lot of ties when I left, so...”

“Will Sawyer not talk to you?” Irene asked.

“No, it isn’t that, it’s just... I appreciate that you’re willing to help Brian and me with the hospital debt, and believe me, I don’t want to jeopardize that. But I need to be able to do this in my own way.”

“We don’t mean to be demanding, but we are offering you a rather large recompense for your time,” Irene said.

“But it is my time,” Olivia replied, then tried to soften her tone. “I want to help you reconcile with Sawyer—you know that. But this can’t be rushed.”

“We’d just like a general timeline, so we aren’t jumping at every phone call,” Irene said.

Was that a reasonable request? Probably, but the situation here in Beaut was not what any of them had anticipated, and Olivia suddenly felt tight-lipped about the details.

Sawyer was incredibly vulnerable right now, and he’d asked her to help him remember...not to complicate his life further with his late wife’s parents. If they knew he didn’t remember them, they might seize the moment to press him when he had no ammunition to fight back. She couldn’t let that happen. When his memory returned, she could present their case, but until then, she couldn’t take advantage of his weakness for her own gain—or for the Whites’.

“I’m not playing games. I don’t know how long this will be, but I will call you the second I have news.”

Irene sighed, then there was the muffled sound of her covering the phone and the murmur of voices. Then she came back on the line. “We appreciate anything you can do on our behalf, Olivia. You’re like a daughter to us.”

A daughter who had to do them favors to get one in return...but still. They’d kept Olivia close after Mia’s passing, and in a way, it seemed to keep Mia’s memory alive for all of them.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I can,” Olivia said. “I promise.”

After saying goodbye, she hung up the phone, and stared at it in her palm for a moment.

The Whites wanted results, and they were used to getting them. Wyatt White was a senator, and his wife had been the financial engine behind his political career. They were used to having to wait on results for things like elections, but not being forced to wait by people like Olivia.

She was putting off the very people who could lift the burden for her and Brian, but her conscience wouldn’t allow her to do any less.

Father, guide me, she prayed. She needed God’s blessing more than she needed the Whites’ money.

* * *

Coffee had been something familiar—making it, waiting for it, listening to the sound of the burbling coffee maker... And Sawyer had so little that was familiar. Olivia said he used to like his coffee sweet and creamy, so he was giving it a try. He took a sip, and made a face. Too sweet, a bit filmy on his tongue.

The screen door clattered shut behind Olivia as she came back into the kitchen.

“Don’t like it?” she asked. “Which one is that?”

“This is cream and sugar,” he replied, and turned to dump the mugful of coffee down the drain. He poured a fresh mug and took a sip of the black coffee. It tasted fresh, bitter, smooth. “Mmm. Yeah. This is good.”

Olivia pulled out her phone, glanced down at the screen, and then pocketed it again. She looked distracted, and he felt a wave of misgiving.