Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  “What?” Her eyes flared wide.

  “You don’t like the sound of that?”

  “I love it, but—you want to leave the country again? So soon after ...”

  “Evan Hall is in jail. By then, maybe he’ll be in prison. Most of the Warriors are cooling their heels with him. All that bullshit is in the past. And anyway, I’m not going to live afraid of what might happen when my back is turned. You showed me that we carry what’s important around with us anywhere we go.” He wiggled his eyebrows and dropped his pitch. “Plus, I want to get you somewhere you can wear tiny swimsuits all the time.”

  Her laugh seemed to brighten the lights around them. “Perv.”

  “Enthusiast,” he corrected. “We’ll go just for a week or two, during the dead time around here. The ground-break on the resource center won’t be until spring, and I’ll have you back in plenty of time. I want to make it a regular thing. You and me, every year, off on our own, someplace romantic, packed light.” Leaning on the bar, he got right up close and brushed his cheek on hers. “Come on, Mac. What d’ya say?”

  She turned her head just enough that her lips touched his. “Anywhere with you is romantic. I say yes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They’d re-opened the Jack with a big party, and the town had shown up for it, like they showed for everything. Even Ellen had been there, and she’d kept herself scarce since Reese and Gigi had come back together. He’d heard through the grapevine that she was doing okay, but he’d barely glimpsed her around town. She’d stayed at the re-opening only long enough to have a beer and offer him her good wishes with a kiss to his cheek.

  She was the one who’d backed off, but there was a pretty good chance he’d hurt her more than he’d realized at the time. That sucked, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, except be kind to her when he saw her. Not that he’d want to be anything less.

  The town had all celebrated on that one night, and the very next, everything had returned to normal. Except for the high sheen of brand spankin’ new on every surface, the fresh construction scents still hanging in the air, and a few details that had been altered or updated, the Jack was the Jack. As it had been and ever would be. Somebody dropping in after several months away might not even notice a change at all.

  Reese filled a pitcher from the tap and set it and an empty pint glass on a round tray lined with cork. Then he filled two pint glasses of club soda, added a couple of lime wedges, and set them on the tray as well. “Take the bar for me, dumplin’,” he said to Kelly.

  She glanced at a nearby table, where Heath, Victor, Emmett, and Paul were ensconced, and smiled. Heath had his chair tipped back, off its front legs, Emmett was sitting backward on his chair and resting his crossed arms on the back. All four of them were laughing at Paul, who flipped them a double bird. In the middle of the table before them was a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam, three currently empty shot glasses, an empty pitcher, three pint glasses skimmed with beer foam, and a half-empty pint glass with a drowned lime wedge.

  New table, new chairs, but they were in the exact same place, the exact same guys, doing the exact same thing. Their Friday night ritual, a thing since they were old enough to sit in this bar and drink, was just as it always had been.

  “I got ya, boss man. Take your break,” Kelly said.

  With a wink, he came around the bar and picked up the tray. He carried it to the table.

  “Hey, alright!” Victor cheered. “Finally takin’ a break?”

  Reese made a halfway shrug. “Thought I’d take a load off,” he said and emptied the tray. Before he took a seat with his buddies, he put the empty pitcher and Heath’s waning soda class on the tray and took it back to the bar.

  “You know, there are hotter waitresses in here than you,” Emmett chuckled, his Adam’s apple bobbing, when Reese pulled up a chair. “We always draw the short straw.”

  “Like any one of the fine girls workin’ here would look twice at your scrawny ass,” Paul sneered and got a return of double birds.

  “Speaking of hot girls, where’s Geej?” Emmett asked.

  “Watch yourself, man,” Reese warned. “My fiancée is not for you to lech over.”

  Emmett put his hands up in concession, and they all laughed. Heath picked up one of the glasses of soda and took a swallow. “Where is she?” he asked as he set his glass down. “I haven’t seen her much this week.”

  “She’s working on the rez a lot. Today, she’s been helping her mom get the house ready for Frannie to come home. We still on for tomorrow?” They all nodded.

  Victor added, “And I got a dozen or so strong backs to help, too. We’ll get it done.”

  The mobile home Elaine, Frannie, and Tyson lived in was small, and Frannie was coming home with some remaining significant issues of mobility and cognition. She still used a walker, and her short-term memory was still very weak. But she no longer strictly required in-patient care, according to the bean counters, and her unpaid bills were deep into six-figure territory, so nobody was willing to extend her care beyond what was absolutely necessary.

  With Mac’s initially reluctant but grateful okay, Reese had gotten his buddies together to at least do something about the housing situation. They couldn’t build new, and there was no way the Mackenzies would live off the reservation—and anyway, Mac very much did not want her family to live with them—but they could build on an extension. Enough to give Frannie a room of her own, with space to do the few things she enjoyed and that helped her keep connected to her life. At the long-term care center, she’d picked up a hobby of scrapbooking, and it helped her remember—but it required some room to spread out. An extra room meant Tyson could have his own room, too. That family needed a little space to breathe.

  Frannie would likely never work again. She struggled to keep a conversation going, because she forgot what she was talking about after a few minutes. Her problems were significant and her prognosis for a full recovery was dim, which had convinced the DA to remove the condition for treatment from her conviction, in exchange for an indefinite suspension of her license. She was dry now, because she’d been in the hospital for so long. Treatment wouldn’t work to keep her that way, because she couldn’t remember its lessons.

  But she was still Frannie, and keenly aware that she was different. She couldn’t retain the information about why she’d been hurt, but she knew she’d lost a whole lot of herself.

  That was a shitty way to live, and there was little hope for she’d regain much more than she had so far. But they could give her something new and bright and pretty. With fifteen or twenty strong men working on a cool autumn day, they could get that room built and ready over this weekend.

  Victor poured beer from the pitcher into the glasses of those who were drinking—which included Reese tonight. For the most part, he’d reverted to his pre-heartbreak days of not drinking that much, even while he spent his nights behind a bar. He didn’t feel any need to be drunk.

  Except for Friday nights with the guys. He didn’t mind getting a buzz on while they all sat together, catching up with their week or, more likely, just giving each other shit. But even then, he was as likely to keep Heath company in his abstinence as he was to tie one on with the others.

  “She’s got everybody talkin ‘on the rez,” Victor said as he doled out the fresh pints. “I don’t think Job knew what he was lettin’ himself in for letting her run with this community resource idea she’s got.”

  “What’s she doin’?” Paul asked.

  Reese answered with a smile. “With the center getting built and starting up in the spring, she’s got a bunch of other grant applications out, to keep it going long term, but she doesn’t want to wait to see if she gets more grant money. So she’s pestering everybody she can, scraping every cent from everywhere she can find, and guilting people into donating time and goods.”

  Victor nodded. “She already got the elders to give up the dinner in their monthly meeting so she could have that money t
o charter a bus to take people to Boise once a month, for hospital appointments, or just errands they need to do. Pretty soon, she’s gonna be breakin’ into people’s places and digging through their couch cushions for loose change.”

  “That girl’s a lot different than she used to be,” Emmett mused.

  “Nah.” Reese shook his head. “This is who she’s always been. She just didn’t know where to turn all this energy, so she let it burn her up.” In addition to the bus charter, she’d got several counselors to agree to work pro bono part-time on the reservation, with the promise that they’d start getting compensated once one or more of the grants she’d submitted paid out. She wasn’t taking a salary herself yet, but she’d already turned her idea into a full-time job. She’d come home the day before and told him the chief had scolded her for taking up more of his secretary’s time than he did lately.

  Mac had responded by hiring somebody from the reservation, and demanding that the council set her new secretary up with a desk, phone, and computer.

  This was what she’d been searching for all those years, what had sent her running and had drawn her back: a purpose. A way to help, to make things better, to fix what was broken.

  Heath grinned and punched Reese’s shoulder. “Look at you, man. You got it bad.”

  The others laughed. “Yeah,” Paul teased. “I think that’s what they call googly eyes. We lost another one, boys.” He picked up the bourbon and filled the shot glasses. Lifting one with mock solemnity, he said, “In honor of the next fallen brother. A sad victim of that old bitch, love.”

  Heath lifted his glass of club soda. “As the first to fall, I welcome you. It’s better over here, my friends. The grass is greener, the day is brighter, and the bed is softer.”

  “Damn, Heath, that was fuckin’ poetry!” Emmett put his mouth around the shot glass and took his whole shot in.

  Reese tossed back his shot, but he was already warm inside.

  *****

  Late in October, on the night of Mac’s thirty-fourth birthday, they went to the reservation for a family dinner. They’d just had a big party a couple weeks ago for Frannie’s homecoming and the reveal of her new room. That had turned into a wild bash, just about the whole reservation and half the town, too, showing up to bring food and gifts and booze. They’d ended up with music and dancing, everybody reveling in the dusty yard, wearing jackets and hats because they’d had a wintery snap, and the temperature had been in the low forties. Frannie had been confused and quickly overwhelmed, and she’d spent most of the evening hiding in her new room, playing trucks with her equally overwhelmed son.

  It was nearly twenty degrees warmer than that on this night—Nature was a fickle bitch—and Reese had his window open as they rode to the Mackenzie place. Tonight would be just Mac, her family, and him, something quiet that wouldn’t freak out Frannie or Tyson—or, for that matter, Mac, who hated parties as a rule.

  He pulled onto their yard and smiled to see the lights from the party were still up in the tree and draped across the front of the trailer. They were on, twinkling like rainbow stars.

  Mac saw him looking. “Frannie and Ty like them. Might as well leave them up.”

  “I like ‘em, too.”

  Mac sighed softly but didn’t make a move toward the door.

  “You okay?” he asked, reaching to take her hand.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Things are better here, with us, now. It feels shitty to say it, but since the wreck, things are better between me and mom and Frannie. I guess ... I don’t know. They need me too much to fight with me?” She sighed again. “I don’t know. But I still feel that weird twist in my belly when I’m about to go in. And it sucks that everything had to fall apart for me to find my way back in.”

  “That’s not your fault, baby. It’s just something good that happened from all this shit.”

  She nodded and sighed once more. Then she lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles. “I love you. I’m glad you’re with me.”

  “Always will be. Let’s go.”

  They got out of the truck and headed up to the front door.

  *****

  The dinner went well all the way until it was time for cake. Frannie was quiet. Since the wreck and her memory issues, her participation in most conversation was reduced to a keen but confused curiosity. She sat and watched other people talk, smiling slightly, her brow furrowed. When an effort was made to draw her in, she tried, but offered non sequiturs as often as cogent points. Mac saw the misery under that vague smile, and now Reese could see it, too. One of the therapists Mac had cajoled into working part-time on the reservation was a cognitive occupational specialist, who would continue Frannie’s work with memory. There were other people on the reservation who had traumatic brain injuries or had suffered strokes, so she had enough appointments already to fill two days a week.

  Tyson was his typically too-young self, but happy. Elaine, Mac, and Reese spent most of the meal talking about the wedding. The middle of November. A traditional service here on the reservation, a little ceremonial celebration here after, and then a full-on reception at the Jack that night.

  Then dinner was over, and Elaine said, “Let me clean up, and we’ll have cake.”

  “I’ll help,” Mac said and stood. “Will you take Ty to wash his face and hands, hon?”

  Reese nodded. “C’mon, Ty. Let’s you and me wash up.” He picked up the boy, who’d some time ago decided Reese was part of his family, and carried him to the bathroom.

  When he shut the tap off and reached for a hand towel, Reese heard shouting. Mac and her mother. Tyson heard it, too, and his big brown eyes got bigger.

  I can’t fucking believe this, Mother! What more will it take! Mac was crying. What the hell? Do you know what this’ll do to her now?

  You don’t understand, Georgia! You never have.

  Frannie’s voice entered the fray. Don’t yell. I don’t like yelling. Where’s Ty?

  It’s just me, Elaine said. I promise, it’s just me. Put it away. She doesn’t need to know.

  Mom, what? Frannie asked, sounding scared. What’s wrong?

  When Tyson began to whimper, Reese thought fast. “Okay, bub. You want to play in your room?”

  The kid nodded, flailing his head up and down, and Reese carried him to his room and turned on the light. “You stay here, okay? I’m gonna make it better.” He closed the door. Make it better. Right. Could he even get in the middle of this?

  Mac stood in the kitchen, in front of the fridge. She had a bottle of cheap vodka in her hand, and it was already fogging up—it had been in the freezer, obviously. Just like that, Reese understood everything. Elaine was still drinking. Hell, maybe Frannie was drinking again, too. Jesus.

  No. It’s just me, Elaine had said. That was what she’d meant—she was still drinking, but she was keeping it from Frannie. Hence the switch from light beer to cheap vodka.

  Mac turned a tearful face to him. “We need to go.”

  “What’s wrong?” Frannie asked again. She was agitated and angry. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing, Fran,” Mac said. “It’s okay. I love you. We just have to go.”

  She took a step toward the front door, but Elaine blocked her and held her hand out. “That’s mine. I need it.”

  Standing at the edge of the scene, Reese only had partial view of the faces of mother and daughters. Mac was frantic, Frannie was confused and upset, Elaine was guilty and distraught.

  “Mama, please,” Mac said, her mouth warped with grief. “Please try to get better.”

  Tears slid down Elaine’s face. “I don’t know how, Georgia. It’s too hard, and I’m too tired.”

  When the yelling stopped, Frannie seemed to lose interest. She turned and wandered back to the sofa, using walls and furniture to steady her legs.

  Mac watched her go, then turned back to her mother. “I will help you. I will do anything. I can’t lose anybody else to this poison.” A sob escaped her. “Please, Mama. I love you. I will he
lp. Please help me.”

  A river of tears ran down her cheeks, but Elaine reached out and took hold of the bottle. Mac broke then and let her hand fall away. Reese started to go to her, but stopped when Elaine walked to the sink. She opened the bottle and poured it down the drain.

  “Mama,” Mac sobbed and wrapped her arms around her mother. “Thank you.”

  Elaine stared at the sink, at the drain. “Now I don’t know what to do.”

  “I do.” Mac turned to Reese. “How would you feel about staying here with Frannie and Ty for a few hours? There’s a meeting in Orton tonight I can get her to.”

  It was her birthday, and she meant to spend it sitting in his truck making sure her mother went to an AA meeting. “Of course, baby.” He mustered up a smile for Elaine. “We’ll be fine.” He pulled his keys from his pocket and handed them to Mac.

  After they’d gone out the door, he stood at the front window and watched Mac pull away.

  “What’s going on?” Frannie asked, her voice pitched querulously. “Where’s Mom?”

  Reese turned. “They have an errand to run, Fran. Everything’s good.”

  A little round cake with yellow frosting sat on the Formica counter. A single cut made a radial line from the center. The knife lay discarded, covered with yellow frosting and crumbs of chocolate cake. Birthday cake.

  Mac hated her birthday, because so many of them had been hijacked by her parents’ drunken parties.

  This one had gone wrong, too. But maybe there was a first little glimmer of hope in this disaster. Maybe this was the bottom, the point where there was only one way left to go.

  Up.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Born and raised in Jasper Ridge, knowing Native people his whole life, Reese had thought he knew the Shoshone culture pretty well. Friends with Victor since grade school, he’d been sure of it. But loving Mac, being folded into her family, in the days before and now, he’d come to understand things in a different, more active way—and to understand how much he’d never understand.