by Maisey Yates
West and Emmett were still sitting there at her desk when she exited the chief’s office.
“Is she going to make trouble for you?” West asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Pansy said.
“It does,” West responded.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. She can do whatever she wants. I don’t have any control over her. I don’t have control over you either.” Pansy turned and addressed Emmett. “But I’m willing to stick my neck out for you, so I hope that you don’t disappoint me.”
She stared at the kid, and he stared back. She didn’t know if he had ever been challenged like this before. She wondered if his mom had ever done anything with him. Or if she had simply left him to his own devices.
She couldn’t say that her childhood had been perfectly well-ordered. Though Ryder had done his best.
Their lunch had been a peanut butter sandwich every day, until Iris had gotten tired of it and started preparing real food. And they hadn’t always looked the best. But the boys had done what they could. They had all taken care of each other. And no one had been left to their own devices. Not ever. It just wasn’t how they were. And it wasn’t how she was going to be with Emmett. She knew that West wasn’t going to be like that with him. If they did the right thing now they could make a difference. And that was...that was the point of all of this. It was easy for her to lose sight of that.
But it was the point.
“I have work,” she said. “If anything else comes up I’ll let you know.”
“I guess I’ll see you back at the house,” West said.
“Yeah.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Emmett asked.
She and West looked at each other and Pansy exploded with a denial. “No. I live at the ranch. He’s my landlord.”
“You have a cop living at your ranch?”
“Yeah,” West said. “What’s the big deal?”
“You.”
“I told you,” West said. “I didn’t do it.”
“Have a good day,” Pansy said, walking out of the police station and leaving them there. She needed to get away from West. She needed to get out. Most of all she needed to try and figure out how to get her head on straight. Because in the last twenty-four hours things had gotten very strange and she didn’t know how she was going to set them to rights again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“YOU WANT to stay here?”
West posed the question to his half brother as they drove out of town toward the Dalton ranch. He was still wrapping his head around the whole situation and what he was going to do about it. But the first thing to do was to establish what the hell the kid actually thought was happening.
“Look,” Emmett said. “I’m not about to stay where I’m not wanted. But I wanted to see what the hell you were doing. You were in that fancy mansion in Texas, and you talked about me coming to live with you.”
“I know,” West said. “And I got sent to jail. I’m sorry about that. I know that you were mad at me, because I know that you blame me a little bit. I blame me too, hell. Mostly because it was my own bad decision making when it came to wives that led me there. But I didn’t break the law. It’s not my fault that I got put away, and I didn’t mean to put off having you come stay with me.”
“Your wife didn’t want me to come.”
“I know. And I was going to override her on that. You’re family.”
“Isn’t a wife family?”
“I guess. But mine wasn’t really. She didn’t have a lick of loyalty to me. That’s for damn sure. I might not have known that at the time, but it turned out to be true. I’ve been looking for you. I promise you that. I filed a missing persons report and everything.”
“You’ve been out for months.”
“I know.” He maneuvered his truck effortlessly around the sharp corners of the two lane road, his tires hugging the yellow double line. “I don’t really know how to do this whole family thing. Not any more than you do. You think Mom was any more interested in raising me than she is you? She wasn’t.”
“You have this whole other family,” he said. “But I don’t.”
“Yeah. Well. You probably do have another family somewhere. Who the hell is your dad anyway?”
Emmett shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure she knows.”
He remembered vividly when his mother had told him she was pregnant. He’d been eighteen, and it had been a hell of a shock. He’d already been in Texas, and as a result he hadn’t had a whole lot of opportunity to get close to Emmett.
“Yeah. I didn’t know who my dad was either. Not for a long time. But she knows. You could ask her.”
Emmett snorted. “I don’t think she wants me to know.”
“Well, if he had money she’d want you to know. I mean, she would’ve gone and asked him for it. She got a payoff from my old man’s wife.”
Emmett said nothing for a moment. “And you...you speak to them?”
“Yeah. We’re about to go talk to them now.”
“Doesn’t that make you mad? That his wife paid Mom off?”
“No,” West said. “She was protecting her own. It was Mom’s job to protect me. Tammy Dalton just did what she felt like she had to do. Hank’s the one who behaved badly.”
“Hank is...your dad.”
“Yeah. He’s not a bad guy. I mean, not really. They’re all pretty decent for a collection of rednecks.”
“Aren’t you a redneck?” Emmett asked.
“I suppose. I figure I’m pretty decent for one too.” West took a breath, then drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “They’ve got a school there.”
“I don’t want to go to school.”
“Tough shit,” he said. “If you want to live with me, there’s going to be some expectations of you. Look, the school at the Dalton ranch is different. There’s not a lot of homework or anything like that. There’s some physical work. You can learn a trade. There’s art...”
“I don’t want to do art.”
“Well, you don’t have to. You can figure out what you like. You can go to a regular school if you want. But I thought this might be a good chance for you to get a little bit more.”
“Why can’t I just work on your ranch?”
“Because.” He didn’t really have a better answer than that, even though reasons moved around in his head. No one had cared what he did. Not at all. And he knew that that didn’t help you get on any kind of good path. But he had the opportunity to get more. To get better. All the things that West had had to fight for, he could help Emmett get.
“You been doing a lot of camping, right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Emmett said.
“Right. Well, how many times did you come up on a trail that was all closed in and overgrown?”
“Lots of times.”
“You can get through those paths, but isn’t it easier to go through a spot that’s already been forged?”
“I guess.”
“I was you,” West said. “I know you might find that hard to believe, but I was. And I had to walk a trail that was all overgrown. I had to find my way through all that stuff. I knocked it all over for you. I cleared the way. I can show you how it can be easier, and I can help you. But you have to let me.”
Emmett frowned, but didn’t say anything more. When they arrived at the well-manicured Dalton ranch, all white fences and even the clipped green lawn, Emmett looked a little bit stunned.
“They have a lot of money,” West said.
He’d had nothing. And he’d also had an excess. Now he was somewhere in the middle, but even still, the Dalton family spread was pretty impressive. The house even more so. It was tacky rich. Gilded trailer park living, and he had to admit that part of him loved it.
When West found financial success, he’d done his best to assimilate. To blend i
n. He had been looking for a kind of suburban normalcy with his success. Hank Dalton obviously had no interest in normalcy, and there was quite a bit of him that respected the hell out of that.
He looked out at one of the arenas and saw his half brother Gabe out there, with a few of the boys from the school, his wife, Jamie, riding a horse in the arena, likely demonstrating something. Jamie was not wholly unlike Pansy, he thought. Small and determined, and stubborn as hell.
He didn’t know why he was thinking about her right now.
Except that he was appreciative of her stubbornness, because she had gone to bat for Emmett today and he was grateful for that.
As they approached the house, he looked to the left and saw Hank Dalton sitting in his big chair underneath the giant gazebo that overlooked the lawn. “Come on,” West said. “Let’s go meet Hank.”
They got out of the car, and West walked Emmett over to where his dad was sitting. It was strange to him, to think of this man who had his same eye color as his dad. But he could see it. It was the oddest thing. To recognize his own features in the face of a stranger.
“Hank,” West said. He still didn’t call him dad. Probably never would.
“What can I do for you?”
“I want you to meet Emmett,” West said.
“Is he your boy?”
West looked at Emmett, and realized that there would be nothing at all strange to Hank about the possibility that Emmett was his son. Not that West would had to have been eighteen when he was born. Not that he wouldn’t have brought him by to meet Hank until now. That the kid didn’t live with him. No, none of that would be weird to Hank.
“My half brother. Other...half.”
Hank laughed. “Shit, boy. Had me worried for a second that it was another one of mine.”
As far as West knew, Hank had given up his philandering a while back, but he didn’t know how long ago that while was.
“My mom’s kid,” West said. “He’s going to come live with me for a while. I was hoping he could...come to school here.”
“That depends.” Hank met Emmett’s gaze. “Are you a troublemaker?”
Emmett shifted. “I think so.”
“Good,” Hank said. “We only have space for troublemakers here.”
He could tell that Emmett and Hank would get along just fine. The thing about Hank was he never had trouble getting along with people. It was controlling his behavior, and not doing anything terribly selfish and hurting people with his thoughtlessness, that was the real issue.
“I suppose I need to talk to Gabe,” West said.
“Probably,” Hank said. “Though, this place is still mostly mine.”
“Gabe runs it as far as I can tell,” West said.
“I reckon so,” he said.
“So that’s Hank,” West said. And then he turned back toward the arena. “And now we’ll go meet my half brothers.”
“This is so weird,” Emmett said.
“Yeah?” West asked as they walked toward Gabe.
“Your half brothers, your dad. And we’re half brothers, but they’re not related to me.”
“Yeah, that is the thing about being half brothers. I have a half sister too.”
“Geez,” Emmett said.
They went over to the arena, and Gabe turned. The boys did too, but they immediately turned back toward Jamie, who was now whipping through a barrel course in the arena. “I think I have a new student for you,” West said.
“You do?” Gabe asked.
“Yeah,” West said. “This is my half brother. Emmett.”
Gabe stuck his hand out. “Pleased to meet you.”
Emmett shook it, giving him a slight side-eye as he did. He imagined that he hadn’t been treated with this much respect by adults in a long time. If ever.
That had made a big difference in West’s life. Getting a job on the ranch in Oregon when he’d been young, and then when he’d been eighteen and going out to Texas, finding more men who had treated him like he was a man too. Like he was worthy of respect, rather than a boy who was just in the way.
He’d always had that burning desire for independence in his chest. And who wouldn’t, with the childhood he’d had? But he hadn’t been able to find that kind of respect in his own home. Other places, he found it. And it had shown him the kind of man he wanted to be. He could do that for Emmett. And all these people would too.
“Your mom’s kid?” Gabe asked.
“Yeah, your dad had to verify that too.”
Gabe huffed a laugh. “Does your mom know you’re here?”
“No,” he said. “She doesn’t know where I am.”
Gabe met West’s eyes. “I am going to need some guardian stuff.”
“I’m his guardian.”
“Legally?”
“No,” West said.
“Well, you’re either going to have to do that, or get your mom to sign some things.”
“She’ll sign anything,” Emmett said. “She doesn’t care about me. She just wants me out of her hair.”
West would have loved to argue with that, but it was true. She didn’t want them around. She wanted to be able to do her own thing. She loved to talk about her kids when they were doing well. But that was it. She did not like to take care of them. She didn’t like to deal with their failures.
She wanted them to be convenient accessories. Evidence of the fact that maybe she hadn’t just wasted her life on men who didn’t much care for her, and the endless grind of jobs that she hated.
They were a double-edged sword for her.
Incontrovertible evidence of the passing years, but also a potential reminder that she’d done something that had mattered.
But whatever they were, it was only ever when she felt like it, and on her terms. That was just a fact.
“Well, today, Jamie is demonstrating some riding techniques. We ride a lot of horses around here. You ever ridden a horse?”
Emmett shook his head. “No.”
West felt that like an echo of failure down through his soul.
“You’re going to learn,” Gabe said.
“What is this?” Emmett asked. “Cowboy school?”
“Might as well be.” Gabe grinned. “Join the other kids.”
“Okay,” Emmett said, taking a step toward the other boys. They jostled, and moved slightly away from him.
“Are they going to be dicks?” West asked.
“For a while. But then they’ll get over it.”
And that was true, West knew that it would be.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets, not quite willing to leave just yet. And shocked that he wasn’t. That he was nervous for his half brother. Emmett could find a place here, if he wanted to.
West just had to hope that he would want to.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANOTHER DAY, another panel interview, this time with more people. Pansy was entirely unimpressed with the timing of the event. And she knew that Barbara would be there, raising hell.
In fact, it went even worse than Pansy could have ever imagined.
It was clear that Lana was on her side. And there were obviously a few people who appreciated the route she’d taken with Emmett. But Barbara wasn’t the only one that had concerns over her leniency.
It made Pansy want to scream.
How could so many grown people who had benefited from having a support network in their lives not understand that a boy like Emmett needed a community to come together around him, not shun him?
They kept saying that by not punishing him she was going to turn him into a hardened criminal, but Pansy had a fair idea of what made a criminal, and in her mind it was more things like this. Desperation and a lack of hope. A lack of accountability. If nobody cared about you then you didn’t care about anyone in return.
T
he kid needed to feel a sense of responsibility to the community. To the people in it. Carl Jacobson was going to help with that. By having Emmett work off his debt, Carl was going to make Emmett feel a sense of responsibility for the place.
People like Barbara would make him feel poisoned against it.
She had said as much, and she knew that the people who liked her anyway thought it was great.
And those who didn’t were yet more skeptical.
The ultimate decision lay with the city manager, but, the way that all of it went, each panel meeting and the final community meeting would bear weight.
She didn’t know how Officer Johnson’s panels were going. But considering he could show up and be a man she imagined it was all going well.
He hadn’t made a controversial decision, recently or ever.
And his general normalcy was going to serve him well.
He looked like every police chief they’d ever had. He did things the same as everyone else. Or at least, people could assume that he did things the way they wanted because they didn’t know how he did things, because he didn’t do much.
She was feeling surly by the time she dragged herself back to her house. But some of the surliness abated when she pulled up and saw Emmett working on digging fence postholes with West.
“I didn’t know I was getting a new fence too,” she said.
“I figured you might as well. I had extra supplies,” he said.
“Well that’s...nice.”
“I am pretty nice,” West said. “Once you get to know me.”
“Pity I don’t have a reason to get to know you,” she shot back.
He gave her a half grin, and a kick of something she didn’t want to acknowledge made her stomach feel fluttery. She liked sparring with him.
But she felt down and crispy after her day, and there was something about flinging herself at him that made her feel something. Something better. Something better than stale and sad and alone.
“No,” he said, that grin sliding into something wicked. “No reason at all.”
“Are either of you hungry?”
She asked the question to avoid having to deal with the heat that was coursing through her body. Because feeding people was as decent an answer to unpleasant emotions as anything.