Cowboy Comes Home

Meg went into the kitchen, took a look at the clock, then inside the refrigerator. Nothing seemed appetizing. Still, she had to eat. Keep up her strength.

She rubbed at one of her wrist tattoos. Weakness was insidious. It had grown inside her mother until she’d rarely left the bedroom. During Meg’s own bad times, she’d battled against the same urge to retreat. And given in far too often.

Not this time. She had nowhere left to run.

She took out the platter of leftover roast beef, added an overripe tomato, a stick of butter. The last of the lettuce had gone to brown slime. A plain sandwich would do, if the bread wasn’t moldy.

Room and board. Good Lord. She’d have to cook halfway-decent meals for Rio. Sit with him, eat with him, converse with him.

Incredible.

She reached beneath her sweatshirt, laid her hand against her flat stomach. Her hip bones were prominent. The waistband of her jeans gapped.

Rio, she thought again. Still stunned. Rio.

She shouldn’t have agreed to give him the job, no matter how much she owed him.

Too uneasy to sit, she carried the sandwich around the house, nibbling at it as she went from space to space. The little-used dining room. The study she avoided whenever possible. The front room, with a river-rock fireplace, her father’s dumpy chair and a carpet worn to the nub.

The entry hall was ill lit and gloomy. On her mother’s good days, she’d kept it swept and tidy. She’d send Meg out to pick wildflowers for the pitcher on the side table. Now the space was strictly utilitarian. There remained a heap of her father’s boots, a tangle of his outdoor clothing. Fishing rods and garden tools leaned haphazardly against the wall. Clods of dried mud had collected where she’d kicked off her own dirty boots.

The sight was dismaying. She’d have to do better. Tomorrow, she’d clean it all away. She’d open the doors and windows.

Meg took a voracious bite of her sandwich. Everything would be better.

The thought came unbidden: now that Rio’s home.

THE NEXT MORNING, at a window booth in Edna’s Eatery, long Treetop’s busiest diner, Virginia Carefoot made an unusual fuss over her son. Rio was self-conscious about the curious glances thrown their way, but he put up with the motherly concern. Virginia claimed she had ten years of separation to make up for.

She’d already coaxed him into ordering fruit and granola on the side of his Belgian waffle. She’d stolen a sausage off his plate, since the nitrates weren’t good for him. Now that they’d finished their meal and ordered refills on the coffee, she’d moved on to his appearance.

“I can’t get used to you with short hair,” Virginia said with her head cocked to one side. Her gaze was intense, as if she was memorizing his features. He supposed, like her, he looked older. “You’ll let it grow, won’t you?”

“I’ve had short hair for ten years, Ma.”

“But now you’re home. The army has no more say.” For someone who had kowtowed to a boss for as long as Rio could remember, Virginia was a proud woman with definite opinions. Although she tended to be as cautious with words as she was with actions. “You’re yourself again.”

“Maybe I want short hair.”

She shook her head. Most Crow men wore their hair long.

Rio couldn’t resist teasing her. “I thought I was myself. Making my own decisions.”

“Of course.” With a decisive click, she set her cup on the saucer. “But you’re also my son, and one of the Carefoots.”

Because it was easiest, Rio agreed. As a full Crow, she’d never really got his sense of estrangement. To her, he was a Crow first and a Carefoot second, and that was what was important. Having an Anglo father was merely a detail, best forgotten. Try as he had, Rio couldn’t compartmentalize his life the way Virginia did with her own. For as long as he’d known what was what, Rio’s parentage had remained an unspoken rift between them.

“When are you going to retire?” he asked abruptly.

Virginia drew back. “Why should I retire?”

“You’ve been working for the Stones for thirty years. Isn’t that enough?” He didn’t know how she’d lasted so long.

“Still, I’m only fifty-six.” She remained a good-looking woman, rounded but vigorous and tough from years of physical labor. Her hair was as much gray as black now, typically pulled back in a low ponytail or wrapped in a bandanna or scarf of some sort. There were a few more lines in her face than he remembered, but Rio didn’t really see them unless he looked. She was his mother—the rock-steady cornerstone that had kept him straight, growing up.

He’d shaken her only once, when he’d been arrested for arson that terrible night. Ten years later, after he’d been honorably discharged and had come home for good, she’d hugged him fiercely at the airport, and told him she was finally at peace.

He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that his days of lobbing grenades weren’t over yet.

“Is it money?” he asked. “Soon, if this book deal works out for me, you’ll finally be able to retire. I’ll help you out with expenses.”

He had to make the offer, even though he knew that money wasn’t what kept her at the Stone ranch. Every month of his time in the service, he’d sent her a portion of his paycheck, hoping she would use the extra cushion to gain her independence. But she hadn’t wanted that for herself. He had.

Virginia set her mouth so that deep lines carved brackets at either side. “I live very well, thank you. I have what I need.”

“You don’t have a home of your own.”

“No, but I’m at home.”

He scoffed. “The ranch.”

Her resolve didn’t waver. “I’ve loved it there, Rio.”

“Ma, there’s no guarantee—”

“Hush.” She gave him a warning glance.

Edna’s was half filled with breakfast lingerers. Rio, being new back in town, had already drawn a good amount of interest and conversation, including, to his chagrin, an impromptu “Support our troops” rally from four ancient members of the Treetop VFW who held down a corner table every a.m. Better that, he supposed, than a rehashing of the old scandal that had converted him from local success story to just another kid who hadn’t managed to rise above his so-called station in life.

Yet.

“I have all the guarantee I need,” his mother said stolidly.

“You have—” Nothing, he wanted to say, but that would upset her. Virginia truly believed that her place on the Stone ranch was secure.

“You have me,” he amended. “I’m your guarantee.”

“Yes, and I’m grateful for that. Having you home is all that’s important. If only…” Virginia paused, and Rio saw that she was considering how much to say. She was the practical type. She didn’t fight losing battles. Even when he’d signed up for the army, forgoing the college education she’d put such faith in, her disapproval had been muted by resignation.

“I just wish that you hadn’t agreed to work for that woman.” His mother looked down at her capable brown hands, unadorned except for a plain gold band she wore on the ring finger of her right hand. Her “wedding” ring, he’d always assumed. “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

“I need a place to stay and an undemanding job.”

“There’s the money market account.” She’d taken every cent he’d given her and invested it. She called the account her grandchildren’s college fund.

“No, I’m not touching that.” He had his own savings. He’d already dipped into the money to buy a state-of-the-art laptop computer. Although he could have also covered the cost of a room and meals for the next several months, he hadn’t been able to resist Meg’s ad. Two birds with one stone, so to speak.

His mother tried again. “You could stay at the…”

The invitation died on her lips, withered by Rio’s hard stare. He’d sworn he’d never step foot on the Stone ranch again. Not without an invitation. Definitely not as the bastard son of the boss’s housekeeper.

Virginia gave in with a grim nod, though she wasn’t happy about it. “All right. But keep your distance from her, if you can.”

“I intend to,” he said forcefully, much too aware of the old saying about the road to hell. “Remember, I have work to do.” Work that would keep him apart from Meg even if his intentions didn’t.

“Writing. I can hardly comprehend that, either. It doesn’t seem like a real job to me.”

“You’ve read the blog?” A couple of years ago, he’d begun writing entries for a soldiers’ group blog that had gained a large readership and quite a bit of notoriety. He’d sent his mother the Web site link from Afghanistan but she’d never really commented.

Virginia made a face. “It was too graphic for me.”

He smiled an apology. Much of the language had been rough, blunt. Soldiers weren’t polite. “I warned you to read only my stuff.”

“Yours was hard to take, too. In a different way.”

He waited, but that was all she’d say. Typical.

“It may get worse, you know, if I’m published.”

“Rio.” The way she said his name was like a scolding. “Please reconsider.”

“Why? You said it yourself. I’m on my own again. Free and independent. I’ve accepted my birthright—or lack of one. Do you want me to be ashamed of who I am?”

This was the closest he’d ever come to stating the bald truth to her face. He twisted in the leatherette booth, bringing his fist down on the table with more force than he’d meant to. The crockery rattled. He quickly quieted it. “For chrissake, Ma, this is a new century. There’s no real stigma to—”

“That’s enough.” Color flamed his mother’s face. “Can’t you write this thing without naming names? Anonymous.”

“This thing?” He hadn’t expected her to understand his compelling need to write his story, to leach the poison out, but he’d hoped that she’d be proud of the accomplishment, at least.

“The book,” she said heavily.

“It’s a memoir.”

Her gaze slid away. “Authors use pen names. It’s not unusual.”

He forced a negligent shrug. The blog had been written under nicknames—pseudonyms, of a sort—to protect the careers of the soldiers. It wasn’t required that he use his own name. His agent, however, had told him that being open to the publicity would be highly beneficial. As well, verification would be required.

Verification of the truth. A truth that would devastate several people who deserved it, but also his mother. Maybe even Meg, for all that she’d put on a good front of not caring what others thought of her.

“I’m thinking about it,” he conceded. “Or who knows? The memoir may not pan out.” He wasn’t even sure he could write a book in the first place.

“What about fiction?”

“I don’t think so.” There’d already been enough fiction in his life. His mother had accepted it, even perpetuated it. He wasn’t as willing.

“What does she say?”

“Meg and I haven’t discussed it. She doesn’t know that I’m writing a book.”

“That won’t last, not in Treetop.”

“We’ll see. The ranch is isolated. She doesn’t seem to have much to do with the townspeople.”

“Like her father.”

Rio had never thought of Meg as antisocial. But she wasn’t an ordinary girl, either. She was hard to know, difficult to get along with. Except when it came to the two of them, relating one-on-one. Their friendship had deep roots. The love was more complicated, especially after she’d rejected him the last time.

The real last time, he’d decided then, as she skipped town with another guy. That resolution had been easier to keep with thousands of miles between them.

Now, she was already working her way under his skin, into his blood. The old desires were tugging at him.

But, no, he wouldn’t take her back. Not again. Even in the unlikely event that she offered. If nothing else, the memoir would prevent that.

“I don’t trust her,” Virginia went on. “She’ll get you into trouble. Again.”

“I’m responsible for my own actions, Ma.”

Virginia gave an inelegant snort. “Responsible for hers, too.”

“Her name is Meg. You used to like her, or at least you tried to befriend her.”

“She was young then. A skinny child with no mother, growing up practically wild. I felt sorry for her.”

“That didn’t change just because she got older.” Older, but also tougher, wilder, even more daring. Sometimes, she’d scared even Rio.

Primarily, she’d confused him. He’d been dealing with his own adolescent turmoil. He hadn’t been equipped to handle the strange new way that Meg made him feel, with her ripening body and her growing awareness of how boys, even men, reacted to her.

Virginia was still fretting. “She’ll be a distraction for you.”

Rio looked out the window. Sure enough. A charge went through him at the mere sight of Meg.

“There she is now.”

His mother’s eyes narrowed. “Speak of the devil.”

Meg was across the street in the Food King parking lot. She loaded grocery bags into her trunk, her jacket hanging open and a long red scarf tied loosely around her neck. The wind caught at her hair, making his heart leap. Memories.

Good intentions…

“I’m going to help her.” He stood and pulled out his wallet. “Why don’t you come over and say hi. Meg asked after you.”

Virginia’s mouth was drawn. “I’ll finish my coffee.”

“Give me five minutes.” He loped across Range Street, the two-lane road that was Treetop’s main thoroughfare. The cold was biting. “Meg! Hold up.”

“Hey, Rio,” she said with a natural ease that was a big improvement over the previous day’s tension. She brushed her hair aside. “Morning.”

He pulled up, grabbed one of the remaining bags and set it in the back of her car. “Planning to feed an army?”

“Nope. Only you.” Her smile was a sun flickering behind clouds. “I remember how you used to eat. Like a voracious army, leaving no flapjack unturned.”

He looked into the next bag. A giant sack of green beans and a frozen apple pie. “Mmm, lunch. You’ll be sorry you hired me.”

She became brisk, shoving the last bag at him and rolling away the cart. “I’m already sorry, but not for that.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s—” She squinted. “Just second thoughts. Is that your mother?”

Virginia clearly sat in the diner window, her face a pale oval behind the dark glass. Looming large across the building’s low eaves the retro sign in tall turquoise letters spelled out EDNA’S. “We were having breakfast.”

Meg waved. After a moment, Virginia lifted her hand.

“You know what’s funny? I haven’t run into your mother since I’ve been back.” Meg slanted a look at him. “But I suppose I haven’t been off the ranch a whole lot.”

“Neither has she. You’re both homebodies.” He gritted his teeth. His mother’s idea of home didn’t match his own. And yet he couldn’t argue that she wasn’t content.

“That’s a new one for me.” Meg shut the trunk. “Speaking of home, I’m heading back there after a quick stop at the feed store. When will you be along? Do you need more time?”

He watched her fiddle with the zipper on her jacket.

“When do you want me?” The question felt loaded.

She knew it, too, answering him only with a wry expression.

“I can pack and check out in five minutes,” he said.

“You’re not staying at the Stones’?”

“No.”

She didn’t ask why, but a worry line appeared between her eyebrows. “I did some work on the cabin last night, but it’s still a mess.”

“That’s okay. I can help fix it up.”

This time, her smile stayed a while longer. Someday he’d get her to laugh again. “You’re sure in a rush to start shoveling shit.”

“Is that my job? Damn. You never said I’m your new Rooney. Next you’ll be peppering my snuff.”

“R-r-right. When you start walking bowlegged, I’ll let you know.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and got in the car. It was a red Camaro with Nevada plates, a dozen dings and rust spots past the point of well maintained. “Listen. There’s no rush. Come by any time next week, if you’d rather.”

So she wasn’t ready. “I want to get settled in.”

“What about your mother? Wouldn’t you like to spend more time with her?”

“She’s not going anywhere.” And neither was he. It was time to face the past. Maybe he couldn’t fix the things that had gone wrong or enact some kind of ideal reunion with his father, but he could learn how to live with the truth—openly. Writing the memoir could turn out to be a healing experience, not just a divisive one.

Meg said, in a rather stilted way, “Tell Virginia that she’s welcome at Wild River anytime, if she wants to visit with you.”

Rio nodded. Meg put up her window, withdrawing into the dark interior as she reached for the ignition. She must have known, or sensed, that his mother still blamed her for the supposed ruination of Rio’s future. He gave her credit for making the first overture, however small.

“I will,” he said, though she was driving away. He waved at the departing car.

From Edna’s, Virginia watched, her face placid but her worry palpable. Rio told himself he knew what he was doing.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT MORNING, Meg woke to the smell of frying bacon. She burrowed deeper into her bed, awash with memories of a time when her mother was alive and active. They had filled out the small kitchen table perfectly—two parents, a little girl who swung her legs against the chair rungs, and Rooney, a grizzled, guffawing “uncle” who used to give her quarters for candy and gum.

Mornings for the past few months had been ascetic. Caffeine was her only remaining vice. Sitting at the same table with the coffeemaker at hand, she’d made lists of chores, lists for the feed store and hardware store, lists of low-cost ways to advertise her training stable. She’d never been a list maker before, but she’d thought that having it all written down would get her going, and doing.

Some days, it worked. Others, not.

She’d learned soon enough that there wasn’t a list on earth that could write away her loneliness.

This morning was different. Rio was in the house. She was up and out of bed, showered and half-dressed before she realized it.

When she entered the kitchen, he was laying strips of bacon on a folded paper towel. Tall, brown, in a red plaid flannel shirt, jeans and stocking feet. A lock of black hair fell in his eyes. He looked up and flashed a white smile. “Morning, Meg. I started breakfast.”

“That’s not your job. But thanks.” Her stomach growled. “I guess I’m starved.”

“Good. You’re too thin.”

“Yeah, well, you look like you could use a few home-cooked meals yourself.”

“That’s what my mother says.”

Rio’s mother. He’d brought her up several times yesterday, as they were working on the cabin. He’d kept it all casual, but Meg had the feeling that he was planning to get them together and talking, despite their agreement that he was here for a job, not a lovey-dovey reunion.

She did have some fond memories of Virginia Carefoot. For a time, the woman had seemed like just about an ideal, motherly kind of mother to Meg, even when her own had still been alive. But then she’d grown up and Virginia had become quietly disapproving of the relationship between her upstanding son and the town’s bad girl. From a more mature perspective, Meg could hardly blame Mrs. Carefoot for that. She’d been dead right in predicting that Meg would lead Rio to a sad end.

“You go feed the horses,” she told him. “I’ll finish breakfast.”

“I already fed them.”

“Oh.” She glanced at the clock. “I overslept.” She would have sworn that having Rio on the ranch would keep her tossing and turning, but instead she’d conked out for a solid nine hours—the longest she’d slept in years. “I’ll start setting an alarm.”

“No problem. I can take over the morning feeding. I’m closer to the barn, in the bunkhouse. The horses wake me anyway.”

“Um, okay, then how about pancakes?” She reached for the canister of flour. A carton of eggs was open on the counter. She cracked several into a bowl, glad to have something to do with her hands. He was watching and that made her skittish.

“Sure, if they’re apple.”

“Why not.” Yesterday, she’d bought more produce than she had in the previous ninety days. A mixing bowl filled with Macintoshes sat on the table. “If you slice them up, nice and thin.”

He got a knife and sat at the table. She drained the grease from the cast-iron frying pan, the same one that had always been used at the ranch. She added milk and baking soda to the mixing bowl and began whisking the batter. “So…you seem to have settled in all right.”

Her scalp prickled from the sensation of Rio’s gaze on the back of her head. “I’m at home here,” he said easily. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Except you’re sleeping in the bunkhouse.”

“We did that a few times. Remember?”

Hell, yes, she remembered. As kids, they’d thought it was great fun to take over the cabin on the rare nights that Rooney was gone. They’d played at being cowboys, with a campfire and beans heated in the can and served on tin plates. They’d rolled out their sleeping bags and told ghost stories and dirty jokes that they hadn’t half understood, until finally they couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer.

But there’d been other nights, too, when they’d grown older. In the cabin, in the barn, even, once or twice, in Meg’s bedroom. Her father would have banned Rio from the ranch if he’d ever caught them. That had been half the thrill for her.

“I remember.” She poured a dollop of the batter into the pan and watched the sizzling edges as if they were mesmerizing. Remember was a dangerous word for them.

Rio nudged her. “The apples.”

She stepped away. “Go ahead.”

He laid slices in the frying pancake. “Remember when we tried to roast apples over the campfire?”

“Sure.” That word again—remember. Was he deliberately making her recall how easy things used to be between them? “We stuck them on sharpened sticks. They came out all black and crisp outside and raw inside.”

“Those were good times.”

“Yeah.” Meg retreated. Leaving Rio to flip the pancakes, she snatched one of her lists off the sloppy pile of notepads, instruction manuals and several outdated phone books on top of the fridge. “We should go over the day’s chores. Get it straight how things are going to be around here.”

“Fuel first,” he insisted. “I need a hot cup of coffee and a bellyful of apple pancakes before I can face my first day as your stable boy.”

“You started yesterday.”

They had emptied the cabin, scrubbed the floor and sink, scraped and painted trim, washed the window. Her final task had been to hang a pair of curtains she’d fashioned out of two linen dish towels printed with strawberries and watermelon slices. Rio had laughed and said that Rooney would have never stood for such a womanly touch, but fortunately he was secure in his masculinity.

That was when Meg had scrammed. After soaking in a hot bath and thinking a little too long about Rio’s very secure masculinity, she’d decided she’d have to reiterate their position as boss and employee. She would assign him duties that ensured there’d be as little contact as possible between them during an average day. They’d already become too chummy.

She ducked her head over the list as he put a platter of pancakes between them. Sharing a meal in the cozy kitchen wasn’t helping her cause.

“Today,” she announced, “you can work on repairing the fences.” That would keep him out of her way.

“Shouldn’t I muck out the stalls first?”

“But I was going to groom the horses.”

“Exactly. They’ll be out of their stalls.”

“Of course.” She forked two pancakes onto her plate and four onto his.

He buttered them and added syrup, looking too content for her peace of mind. “I don’t bite, Meg. Hell, I won’t even talk to you if you don’t want me to.”

She frowned. He’d had a knack for knowing what she was thinking and feeling. Except the one time that she’d held a huge secret so deep inside that not even Rio had suspected. He had known that something was wrong, but she’d led him to believe that she was just nervous about their upcoming high school graduation and her plan to leave home immediately afterward.