Huckleberry Lake

by Catherine Anderson

  With Jonas’s help, she’d come a long way. But now she felt as if she were back at square one. Her dad’s negative input pounded inside her brain, and her competitiveness had returned, as strong as, if not stronger than, it ever was. Erin wasn’t sure how that had happened, but emotionally she felt as if she were trying to row a canoe upstream against white water.

  With shaky hands, she drew out her phone and dialed her shrink.

  Jonas answered on the third ring, sounding all professional. Over time, he’d become her friend as well as her psychologist, and one of the reasons she trusted him so much was that he gave her a hard time, she gave him one back, and neither of them ever took offense. They both knew that no matter how nasty a comment might sound, or how upset either of them might be for an instant, it meant nothing. Jonas didn’t pussyfoot around with her. That worked for Erin. In a clinical environment with a therapist who was always rigidly polite, she didn’t feel relaxed and couldn’t share her feelings. With Jonas, there were no holds barred.

  Erin cut right to the chase. “I think I’m backsliding.”

  “Erin? Is that you?”

  Frustration turned her voice thin and reedy. “Of course it’s me. Who else could be backsliding?”

  “Everyone in this town in one way or another.”

  Jonas had a way about him that always soothed her. “I need to see you. Tonight, if possible. Name any time that works for you. I’ll be there even if it means missing supper. Dinner, I mean.”

  “Six o’clock works. No need for you to miss supper. I’ll order a pizza from the restaurant downstairs. And I’ll grab a couple of beers from my fridge. We’ll eat while we talk.”

  “Thank you for working me in. I’ll see you at six sharp.”

  As Erin ended the call, it occurred to her that it was Saturday. How many psychologists made themselves available on the weekend? He’d probably charge her double. She’d pay whatever rate he came up with and be glad of it. At this point, she felt as if she’d fallen out of the white-water canoe and was drowning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Erin finished her workday on the ranch as if she were killing poisonous snakes. At the back of her mind, she knew she was in a fever pitch, and if Wyatt was watching, she was only cementing in his mind all the reasons he’d listed for firing her. But she couldn’t make herself stop. She felt like a windup toy being controlled by an invisible someone who wanted to destroy her.

  She didn’t shower or change clothes before she drove into town. If she went inside the main house, she was afraid she would see her uncle and unload both barrels on him. How could he consider letting her go without giving her warning? Wyatt was the foreman and therefore her boss, but Uncle Slade owned the ranch and outranked everyone. He could have taken her aside and expressed his concerns without using Wyatt as a middleman.

  Jonas lived in the apartment above the Straw Hat and also worked with his patients there. As Erin walked through the restaurant, packed with evening diners, she felt so embarrassed she wanted to die. Almost everyone in town recognized her now, even if she didn’t always know them. And most people also knew that Jonas Sterling, the hometown shrink, saw all his patients in his upstairs living quarters. Gossip probably already abounded about her turning in her badge. Now she was fueling the fire even more by rushing upstairs as if demons chased at her heels.

  Once at the landing, Erin nearly burst through the door without knocking just to get out of sight. At the last minute, she knocked on the panel of wood with more force than she intended, sending lances of pain from her knuckles to her elbow.

  Jonas answered Erin’s knock and ushered her inside. Grinning broadly, he said, “I was expecting you. You could have just walked in.”

  “My mother would have a coronary,” Erin retorted. “She’s a female version of Hitler when it comes to ladylike behavior.”

  Jonas, often referred to by local women as the epitome of a Greek god, ran a hand over his tawny hair. His hazel eyes filled with sympathy. “Have you ever considered all the mixed signals you got from your parents as a kid? Your mom trying to make you into a perfect little lady and your dad doing his damnedest to have you act like a boy. It boggles my mind, and I didn’t live through it.”

  Erin had never thought of it quite that way. “Mostly, I just realized I’d never please either of them.”

  “But you’ve never stopped trying.” He didn’t state that as a question, and Erin jerked around to meet his gaze instead of taking her usual chair. He shrugged and said, “You knocked instead of walking in. Still trying to make points with Mama?”

  “I already know I’m a basket case. That’s why I’m here. It doesn’t really help to have another person pointing it out to me.”

  Jonas went into the kitchen at the back of his apartment. She heard the door of his refrigerator open. “Ah, but I’m not just pointing it out. I’m asking you to analyze your screwed-up childhood so you can start to understand why you’re a basket case. Have you ever studied a basket? It’s made from dozens of fibers, all woven together. When you and I start picking at one of the fibers that make you who you are, you start to feel as if you’re coming apart. I never promised you therapy would be easy. You’re going to hit some rough road.”

  He returned to the office/living area with two cans of beer that were already developing condensation from the heat of his hands. “Want a glass?”

  Erin normally drank her beer straight from the can. Like a guy. Her stomach clenched as that thought settled into her brain. And then for no reason she could pinpoint, she burst into tears. Jonas flopped down on his leather castor chair and said, “Take a seat, Erin. Or should I say sit before you fall down?”

  Erin plucked six tissues from the box. She’d breathed in a lot of dust that day, and now that she’d started crying, the inside of her nasal passages felt as if a child had been making mud pies in there. She clapped the squares over her nose and honked into it. Just like a guy. And that thought only made her cry harder. Jonas just reclined in the chair, propped his feet on the desk, and watched her sob.

  “I’m sorry. Your pizza is going to get cold,” she told him. A box bearing the Straw Hat logo sat on the blotter in front of him. “José’s pizzas are expensive.”

  “They’re also worth the money. Don’t worry about that. Just let the pressure off so we can talk. If it gets cold, I’ve got a microwave.”

  Erin eventually calmed down and collected her composure. “I’m sorry. I try never to cry.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do that. Is that another gift from your father, trying never to cry?”

  “That isn’t what I’m here to talk about! My uncle told the foreman to fire me. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Okay. That’s bad news.”

  “It’s total bullshit. I’ve been outperforming every man on the ranch. Working even when I felt so tired I was about to drop.”

  “Just relax for a moment, Erin. Have some beer. Enjoy my paintings. Try breathing in and out, slowly.”

  Erin took two gulps of beer and then stared at a framed canvas over his sofa that depicted a fawn, peeking out through pine boughs. It made her think of Wyatt, who seemed to love wildlife, and that only brought fresh tears to her eyes. Then, through the blur, she saw another oil of a mountain stream lined with clusters of aspen. That made her think of the log down by the creek, where she and Wyatt always seemed to end up having unpleasant conversations.

  She leaned back in the chair and faced her therapist. “Can you fix me, Jonas?”

  He smiled slightly. “No. I’m sorry. But you’re not here to be fixed. You’re here to figure out how to fix yourself. Even after all that fixing, you’ll never be perfect. None of us are, so that isn’t our aim. The goal here is for you to be happy with yourself.”

  She took a deep breath and released it. “I don’t know where to start. My life is such a mess right now. I turned in my badge.
Just up and quit a really good job. I didn’t even give Sheriff Adams notice. That’ll look bad if he’s ever called upon to give me a reference. Quitting without warning makes me look flighty.”

  “I heard that Sheriff Adams offered you vacation time to think it over and said your job would still be waiting for you when you came back.”

  “It’s amazing how efficient the gossip network is in this town. Sheriff Adams did make that offer. But the whole time he was assuring me I could have the job back, I felt claustrophobic. I don’t want to go back. I’m done, Jonas. I’m not cut out for the work.”

  While Jonas ate pizza, Erin ranted about her position at the ranch and how hard she had tried to do a stellar job. While chewing industriously, Jonas occasionally nodded and smiled, but sometimes he also frowned at something she’d said. Erin was accustomed to his low-key manner.

  He left half of the pizza for her, settled back with his beer, and asked, “Why did you turn in your badge?”

  Erin told him how Jenette’s misfortune had driven home to her that she would never be able to protect anyone, with a badge or without one. “It was a climactic event for me. It forced me to accept that I’d gone into my profession for all the wrong reasons. And right before I decided to throw in the towel, I was so disgusted by that kid and so angry with him that I had violent thoughts. A good cop handles his emotions better than that.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘handles her emotions’?” He pushed aside a pile of paperwork to rest his arms on the desk. “There are a lot of really great female cops.”

  “I’m not one of them. I excelled at everything I was expected to learn. I think I’ve done reasonably well at the job. But it was never my dream. But you know that already.”

  “Yes, but I wonder if you really know that. You say the words. At some level, you’re cognizant of the fact that your father pushed you into being a cop. But judging by what I see, you’re very upset for someone who realized she made a mistake and finally rectified it.”

  “The moment I put my badge on Adams’s desk, I felt like such a failure. I worked so hard to become a good cop. And there I stood, throwing away my dream.”

  “But you just said it was never your dream. It was your father’s dream for you. I worry there’s a part of you that doesn’t see that.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Remember the basket. How it’s made from dozens of fibers and will start to fall apart if we remove any of them? That’s you, Erin. And one of your fibers is entitled Deputy. You’ve jerked out an element that was part of who you are.”

  Erin thought about how frantic she’d been feeling over the last few days. “Oh, God, you’re right. Now I’m not sure who or what I am. So it’s all-important to establish myself as something else, someone else.”

  “A rancher,” Jonas summarized for her.

  “And that’s going wonderfully well. I work too hard. I work too fast. I forget all the absurd safety rules. In short, according to my uncle and his foreman, I’m a liability.”

  Jonas merely smiled in his usual, unruffled way. “Keep going. You’re on a roll. Do you really want to be a rancher? It’s a lot of hard work.”

  “Not if you work smarter instead of harder,” Erin retorted with a sneer. “Or so I’ve been told at least a dozen times.”

  Jonas linked his fingers behind his head, looking as relaxed as a man could get. “There’s actually something to that saying. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but I grew up on a ranch. Not a huge one like Wilder’s, but my father owns a large chunk of land. We kids all had daily chores, and my mother often worked at my dad’s side. She may not have created that saying, but I sure did see her invent ways to work smarter.” His eyes twinkled with humor. “One time when she had to feed animals when there were no hay bales out by the fence, she hauled them out on an old Radio Flyer red wagon. It took her a while, but she got the job done.”

  Erin tried to smile. “I’ve met your mom. She’s not a large woman.”

  “And neither are you.”

  “I competed and placed in the—”

  “I know you placed in an Ironman triathlon, Erin. But that doesn’t make you large. It only means you’re determined and won’t quit no matter what.”

  “I was never allowed to quit,” she shot back.

  “And who’s ruling your world now?”

  “Wyatt Fitzgerald.”

  “Really? You just said he’s about to can you because, according to him, you don’t follow his rules. So who’s actually running your show now, Erin?”

  She stared at him with a sinking sensation in her chest. “I know what you want me to say. You’re pathetically obvious sometimes even though you think you’re being subtle.”

  “If you know what I want you to say, then you already thought of that person yourself. That means I’m probably on the right track.”

  “My father,” she pushed out. “He’s been running my life ever since he noticed I was alive.”

  “And you’re still letting him do it. You’re thirty-two years old. You’re independent. But you’re still letting his expectations run your life.”

  “Thank you for sharing that illuminating observation. But it’s nothing new. Would I be here if I didn’t realize I’m a mess?”

  He sat forward to rest his bent arms on the desk again. “You might be surprised by how many people in this town don’t realize they’re a mess and want me to fix everyone else around them.” He shook his head. “In that way, you’ve got a big jump on them. You recognize that you’ve got issues.”

  “But I don’t know how to fix them.”

  “How about just letting go of them?” He put more weight on his folded arms and looked her directly in the eye. “How about going back to the ranch with a different perspective? We’ve talked a lot about when you trained to be a cop. You said you had to learn to drive at recklessly high speeds. How to stop. How to put a vehicle into a slide without rolling it. Where to hit another vehicle to send it careening off a road.”

  Erin nodded. “That’s right. But I don’t see how any of that pertains to my problems now.”

  “Those things pertain because during that driving course, you listened to your instructor.”

  “Well, of course. My life depended on it.”

  “And you don’t think your life may depend on anything Wyatt tells you?”

  Erin slumped her shoulders against the back of her chair. “You don’t understand the situation. He isn’t briefing me on truly dangerous stuff. He’s pissed off because I walk up behind horses and might startle them. Because I lift things he believes are too heavy for me. Because I sometimes run instead of walk to get my work done faster.”

  “I see. So essentially he thinks stupid, trivial stuff is dangerous, so why should you listen to him?”

  “You’re starting to piss me off.”

  Jonas smiled. “Am I only just starting to? Damn, I must be slipping.”

  Erin pushed to her feet and paced in a tight circle. Then she sat back down. “I hate you sometimes.”

  “I know. You’re not an easy nut to crack, and sometimes I have to be a little mean to make you see things without wearing your father-colored glasses. Becoming a police officer was a big deal to you. Wasn’t it?”

  “I wanted to be good at it, so yes.”

  “Because that was what your father wanted. Right? So, tell me, Erin. What does your dad think about you turning in your badge and becoming a rancher?”

  “Beats me. I haven’t told him yet.”

  “When you do tell him, how do you think he’ll react?”

  “He’ll be furious because I’ve thrown my life away.”

  Jonas tapped a pen on the blotter. “Correction. You’ve thrown away the life he wanted you to have. And now you’re having issues with ranch work and your supervisor because his complaints about your per
formance all seem stupid.”

  Erin clenched her teeth.

  “Are you seeing the parallel I’m trying to draw?” Jonas asked.

  “Like I said, subtlety isn’t your strong suit. You’re saying that becoming a good deputy was all-important to me, because that’s what my father wanted, and becoming a rancher isn’t all-important to me, because that isn’t what my father wants.”

  He nodded. “So the question you need to ask yourself is, do you really want to be a good rancher?”

  “I feel at peace doing that kind of work.” She hesitated and then backed up mentally. “Well, I did feel at peace. Not so much now.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Because I’m facing a double standard. Every time I turn around, I’m told that I should do this or that differently from the way men are doing it. Not because I can’t do it the regular way, but because I’m a woman.” Erin gestured behind her. “Line up a hundred women and ask them how pissed off they’d be if they were treated that way. I’m not second-rate. I don’t need a special set of rules just because I’m a female.”

  “Do you see any of the men walking up behind a horse without letting it know they’re there?”

  “No. But none of the horses ever kick, either. They’re wonderful animals. I’m still getting used to them, but I can see myself becoming a big fan of equines with time. I just need to get over being scared of them first.”

  Jonas turned to his computer and swiveled the monitor so she could see it. He typed something in the search line, clicked the mouse button a couple more times, and images popped up on the screen. Photographs of people with awful bruises and wounds. Erin hadn’t seen anything that gory since leaving her law enforcement job up north.

  Jonas enlarged an image of a woman with the center of her face mutilated. “Kicked by a horse,” he said. Then he clicked on an image of a man that was nearly as awful. “Kicked by a horse.”