Blake eventually left to find Dee in the kitchen. She turned the pieces of fried chicken in a cast-iron skillet. Cooking to cope. She and Bud married long after Erin left with Ron and several years after Bud’s first wife passed. Dee’s sympathy was for Bud, not the man who spent the last years making Bud’s life a misery of worry, regret, and hope that one day the guy would clean up his act and bring his granddaughter home. “How long’s it been since Bud heard from Ron?”
“Years. He hasn’t seen Gillian since she was a toddler. Since I married Bud, long before then, actually, Ron’s never called or come back to town.” Dee set the metal tongs on the counter and turned to face him. “He blames himself.”
“Bud had nothing to do with this. Erin and Ron made their choices.”
“Yes, and that poor girl paid the price.” Sadness infused Dee’s words and filled her eyes with concern.
“We don’t know everything that happened. The article is very brief. Yes, he hit her, and she shot him, but beyond that we don’t know anything about what her life with him has been like,” Blake pointed out.
“Bud tried to find her years ago now. He never felt right leaving her with Ron. What if she doesn’t want to come? What if he never gets a chance to make this right?”
“She shot her father. Maybe she needs time to recover and come to terms with what she’s done.”
“Do you think she did it on purpose?” Dee’s eyes filled with worry and uncertainty.
“If someone hit me in the past and hit me again, and I had a gun in my hand, I’d sure as hell shoot the bastard.” The anger roiled in Blake’s gut for the man who pushed his daughter too far.
Dee pressed her lips together and nodded, silently agreeing with him.
Blake didn’t feel bad for speaking his mind. Ron turned out to be the worst sort of man. You do not hit girls. You certainly never beat your child. The drugs had warped Ron’s mind, or maybe he was just rotten to the core. Either way, Blake hated him for treating Gillian so poorly.
“Well, I guess we’ll get the whole story when she gets here.”
Blake headed back out to the stables and his beloved horses, haunted by thoughts of the woman with the tiny feet lying atop the car’s smashed roof. He hoped she was okay, because he knew after a fall, whether from a window or a horse, everything changes.
Chapter 3
Gillian shifted in the bed, trying to get comfortable. Nothing worked. Everything ached, from her pounding head to her throbbing ankles. She could barely move, with her leg in a brace, one arm in a cast, the other wrapped in a bandage, and nearly her entire back and part of her head stitched. No high-tech safety glass in her eighty-year-old building. The brittle window broke into sharp pieces and sliced her to ribbons.
Last night, she’d stood in the bathroom with her back to the mirror and tried to count how many cuts crisscrossed her back. She’d closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight of all those cuts sewn together over the hours the doctors had worked on her. The overwhelming fear she’d felt the night she’d shot her father choked her. She tried to breathe but ended up hyperventilating. She’d never had a panic attack, but she imagined that’s what it felt like.
This morning, she surfed the channels, trying to find something to distract her from the fact that Justin had been placed in protective custody with CPS. Damnit, she needed to get him out of that foster home and back in her arms.
Too much time to sit and think in this hospital bed. Her mind conjured those final moments with her father. The gruesome cycle of one snapshot after another played nonstop in her mind, like one of those View-Master toys that came with a disc of pictures that told a story. His fist inches from her face, right before he punched her. Her father pointing the gun at her. The flash and smoke exploding from the gun barrel when she shot her father. The blood in full bloom on his chest. His face contorted when he rushed her and pushed her out the window. His ominous black figure standing in the window as she fell.
“Gillian.” The doctor said her name like he’d already tried to get her attention.
“What? Yes.”
“How are you feeling today?” he asked, full of false cheer.
“Fine.”
He frowned. She said the same thing every time he asked. He’d tried to get her to open up about what happened, the days, weeks, and years leading up to the shooting. She’d given him the gist of life with her father. Moving from one place to the next. Scrounging for money to pay the rent and buy food. Living on just this side of starvation and homelessness when she was too young to understand that others had a place to call home all the time and a refrigerator full of food that didn’t come from a drive-thru or discount store.
She knew that life, and she’d tried so hard to make sure she and Justin didn’t end up on the streets. As it was, they lived one paycheck away from that devastating life.
She’d given the same watered-down version to the police the other day, though they’d insisted on more details. To get out of trouble, she’d reluctantly supplied them with enough information to condemn her father and keep herself out of jail. Not that she wasn’t justified in killing him. He came after her. Not the first time either. She’d suffered the slaps, the punches, and the beatings too many times to count. She’d feared him, probably from the day she was born, but nothing like the other night. She’d seen death in his eyes and known it was her or him.
Her own father made her make that choice.
He also freed her. She no longer had to fear him taking Justin away if she didn’t stay and help with the bills, keeping him from ending up in the gutter, where he belonged. As much as he’d hurt her, he’d had an obsessive need to keep his children close. He’d sworn that if she ever took Justin, he’d find them, and she’d never see Justin again. When she was eighteen, he found her stash of money and clothes, along with her map and checklist for running away to give Justin a better life. He’d made sure she never tried to do that again. She felt the agony of that beating in her bones even now.
She’d tried to give Justin a good life, within the boundaries of the leash of threats her father kept tight around her neck. Every time she’d pulled, gotten just a little further in trying to take Justin away, he’d pulled that leash tight. Thoughts of what he could do to her and Justin made her fear actually leaving. The one threat she could never let happen—her father taking Justin and eventually losing him to the broken foster care system—made her give in every time. No way would she have allowed Justin to be left in a system where at best he’d have been ignored by strangers, or, worse, hurt and abused. She’d met other kids in the system and heard their awful stories. What if she’d tried to get him back and they’d deemed her unfit? She couldn’t take that chance. Justin was better off with her loving him despite her father’s erratic and hurtful behavior.
Her sweet baby. The only person who ever loved her. Her saving grace when everything seemed hopeless. Her eye of the storm when hurricane Ron blew in and turned her life upside down again and again. She’d do anything, everything, to protect him.
“Do you need any more pain meds?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been through a major trauma. Your injuries are severe. It’s understandable if you need something to take the edge off.”
“No more drugs. I need to go home to Justin.”
“I just finished my interview with your social worker. She’ll be in to see you in a moment.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That while your injuries are severe and will make it difficult for you to care for Justin for a few weeks, they will not prevent you from doing so.”
“I can take care of him,” she assured the doctor, staring him down to make sure he knew she meant every word.
“I’m sure you can, but you’ll need help.”
“I don’t need any help. I don’t need anyone.”
The doctor unclipped a fat envelope from his clipboard and handed it to her. “Your grandfather sent you this. Sometimes, Gillian, the only thing you can do is pick the best option available to you even if you don’t like any of them.” With that, the doctor stepped out as the social worker walked in. Great, they were tag-teaming her.
Above the doctor’s name and the hospital’s address, her grandfather had neatly printed her name. She opened the envelope and gaped at the stack of money inside. She pulled out the small piece of paper with her name on it and unfolded it. A man of few words, her grandfather had written only, Please come home.
Those simple words tore at her aching heart. She fought back the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. She’d never had a home. Not one that looked like those happy places on TV sitcoms. Not one like other kids had, with a mom and dad and dinner on the table every night. A home was supposed to be a safe place. She’d never had one of those.
“Gillian, I spoke to your grandfather this morning.” The social worker broke into her thoughts.
Yeah, because she’d refused to talk to him herself. Like a petulant child. She deserved a little hostility, given the situation. She didn’t know him, had never met him, and figured he was either dead or indifferent. Either way, it didn’t matter much to her. Why should she care if he didn’t? The call was too little, too late. Why did he all of a sudden care? What did he want?
She eyed Mrs. Carr, the social worker, who put up her hand to stop Gillian from yelling at her. “Don’t worry. I didn’t say anything about Justin.”
Gillian didn’t want her grandfather to know about Justin and try to gain custody because he thought her unfit to care for her little boy.
“He’s very concerned about you. He wants you to come to Montana. He’s willing to come and get you himself if that’s what you want. There’s a flight schedule in there, including enough cash for the plane ticket and extra for anything you might need to make the trip.”
“Who says I’m going anywhere?”
“Your rent is two months past due. You’re about to lose your apartment unless you can come up with the money immediately. In your condition, you will not be able to work for weeks. You don’t have the money to support yourself and Justin until your injuries heal, when you can work again and earn a paycheck.”
“I can work. Maybe not at all the jobs I do, but I can earn enough to take care of us.”
“Gillian, Justin is in a safe home at this time, where he will be cared for and fed. While the doctor assures me it isn’t beyond your ability to care for Justin, it will be extremely difficult for you to do so without a place to live and money to buy food. If you want to keep Justin, I’d take the money and go to Montana. Your grandfather is offering you a place to stay for free. You need someplace to rest and heal and decide what you want to do next.”
Montana? That was a long way away. Still, maybe that’s what Justin needed—to escape this waking nightmare.
“If you want Justin out of foster care when you leave this hospital, I need to know you’re taking him to your family in Montana. Otherwise, he’ll remain in foster care until you can prove that you are back to work, have a place to stay, and can afford to feed and care for him.”
Unacceptable. She’d never leave Justin with strangers. After what happened, he needed her even more. As far as she was concerned, the only family she had left was Justin. She wouldn’t let them take him from her. No way. She’d do anything to keep him.
“I can always call your grandfather back, tell him about Justin, and send him to Montana without you. But I don’t want to do that. It’s your choice.”
“Not really a choice at all, is it?”
“Not everyone is out to hurt you and make your life a misery, Gillian. Your grandfather sounds like a good man. Give him a chance. Who knows, you might find exactly what you’re looking for in Montana.”
The only thing she wanted was a safe place for Justin to grow up happy and healthy. A place where he could run wild and be a little boy for as long as possible. A place where he’d learn to smile again. And maybe, if they were lucky, a place with kind and decent people to show him how to be a real man.
Chapter 4
The sky was so bright the blue of it hurt her eyes. Gillian stopped the truck two miles from the ranch to take a minute to gather her courage. Mid-March, she looked out across the two-lane road at the rolling green hills running toward the trees and up to the mountains that surrounded the more-green-than-brown valley as the grass rose up, breaking free of winter’s icy hold. She’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life. She hadn’t realized places like this existed. Oh, she’d seen pictures in books, but they’d seemed like a fairy tale compared to the cramped apartments in whatever low-rent town or city she’d existed in until two weeks ago. She hadn’t known that grass could be three shades of green as it waved in the wind, or that trees could be so tightly packed you couldn’t see through them.
She’d never seen dark the way she did out here. Last night, she and Justin slept in the truck along a dirt road just off the main highway. She hadn’t wanted to waste any more of their money on a motel. The stars had shined so brightly, and by the millions that she couldn’t conceive that she’d lived her whole life in one city or another and missed out on seeing such a spectacular celestial show.
Despite her terrible circumstances, she’d always loved San Francisco. One day soon she’d miss the smell of the ocean on the breeze and the way the fog rolled in like a wall of mist. Or how it sometimes snuck up on you like a ghost.
She’d miss the people from all walks of life and just about every country in the world. She’d miss Chinatown and getting chow mein and eating it on the wharf. She’d miss the bark of the sea lions and the scream of the gulls. But not today. Today she had a clear blue sky, clean air, and enough open space that she felt like spreading her arms wide and just taking it all in.
The mountains stood tall and foreboding. They made her think the land had risen up and warned, Stay back, like the walls she’d erected around herself.
She shifted on the bench seat and tried to avoid hitting the cuts on the backs of her legs. She hadn’t seen another car in more than twenty miles, and there was nothing out her window but the land. Strangely, she felt that for the first time in her life she could breathe. She wanted to open the window and take in the cool mountain air. Justin slept quietly beside her, so she kept the window closed and the cold out. She thought about waking him before they reached the ranch. He’d love the meadow and tall mountains. She decided to let him rest. He’d earned it.
A hawk lifted off from the trees in the distance, soaring higher and higher into the air, a graceful flight that left her feeling sad. She wondered if she’d ever have that kind of feeling of soaring, flying, freedom.
The only feelings she could remember were fear and desperation. A constant in her life for so long, in the end she’d simply turned everything off inside herself. Each day was survival. Each day was work to earn enough money to feed herself and Justin. Each day was hoping for something, anything, that would whisk her away from the life she’d been living. That day had finally come.
All it took was a gun and a fall from a second-story window.
She hoped today would be the start of her new life after the fall. After the death of that life.
She pulled on her father’s old quilted flannel jacket she’d had to bring with her for the cold weather. It wasn’t adequate to keep the bite of the wind away, but it was all she’d been able to find among their meager belongings that would provide any kind of warmth. She hated wearing his things, because of the gruesome memories the smell and sight pulled from her mind. Cigarettes, pot, sweat, stale beer, and whiskey scents clung to the jacket and made her want to gag. She swallowed hard, holding back the bile rising in her throat. No amount of washing would ever eradicate those smells from the material. But she’d had no c
hoice. Her limited wardrobe consisted mostly of jeans, T-shirts, and a couple of hoodies. Her meager funds weren’t enough for the trip, food, and a new coat.
She looked back up at the towering mountains and felt their isolation to her soul.
“You can’t sit here all day. You’ve come this far. Get your ass moving.”
She wondered what her pride was going to taste like. In order to make this work, she’d have to swallow a lot of it. She was willing to gorge on it for Justin’s sake. He was the only reason she’d accepted her grandfather’s invitation to come live at his ranch. No way Justin stayed in foster care. No way they’d send him to a stranger’s house alone, even if it was a relative. He deserved better than the life they’d been living. She’d make sure he got it.
She turned the key, and the engine came alive with a rumble. Pain shot up her arm, and she winced and breathed through it. Nothing else she could do. Pain had become her constant companion. Like every other day of her life, she wanted to be left alone. The pain didn’t care. It had settled into her bones and muscles for a long stay.
She checked the rearview before she pulled back onto the road. She caught sight of her gruesome appearance in the mirror and turned away quickly. She controlled her emotions and grabbed the sunglasses off the dash. She put them on to hide some of the damage, then tucked her long mane of blonde hair into the collar of the jacket and zipped it up. Not exactly her best look, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. The jacket covered the major portion of the damage done to her body, and the glasses hid part of her black-and-blue face, giving her a chance to conceal her expression when she met her grandfather. Cowardly, but she wasn’t strong enough right now to take any criticism or pity. Pity would be worse.
The pounding in her head started hours ago. She needed a hot shower, a hot meal, and a pain pill. Not particularly in that order. She’d settle for whatever her grandfather was willing to give, since she didn’t have enough money to get back to San Francisco. She could probably get to the next town. Careful with her money, she had to be. She’d made sure Justin had a new warm coat and plenty of food. He was her first, last, her every priority.
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