Cowboy Christmas Blues

by Maisey Yates

  “That was my mom. She’s having... She has a lot of anxiety. She tries to combat it with the earrings. She tries to keep herself busy. But clearly, nothing is helping today. She likes to take flowers to my sister’s gravesite on Christmas Eve. But she doesn’t feel like she can make it today.”

  “Is that in the cemetery?”

  “No. Her ashes are in the mountains. So she wants me to take some flowers up there.”

  He didn’t tell her that it was a place he never went to. He would deal with that shit when he was able to process it. He would deal with it hopefully after he had done what his mother had asked him to.

  “I can come,” Annabelle offered, her touch on his arm soft and reassuring, the look in her dark eyes so genuine and sweet it made him feel like a terrible person for not wanting to take her up on it. For wanting to say no immediately and forcefully. But maybe it would be a good thing to bring her. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to think much about where he was and what he was doing. He could drop off the poinsettia and leave.

  “Sure,” he said, keeping his tone casual, as if this wasn’t out of the ordinary at all. “We can get dressed and drive over to my parents’.”

  Annabelle got out of bed and started to collect her clothes, which had been strewn all over the floor. Then she paused. “Cooper, where do your parents think you’ve been the last couple of nights?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I assume they think I found someone to sleep with.”

  “But they haven’t said anything to you.”

  “No. Because I’m thirty-two years old. And they’re pretty used to me not being around all the time.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “I would just think that they would wonder.”

  “Well, if they are, they’re going to have to go on wondering.”

  He was being short with her, and she didn’t deserve that. He should tell her to just stay home, but he wasn’t going to.

  They dressed silently and then she got into his truck, where they continued the silence as they drove from Annabelle’s neighborhood, down Main and out of town toward his parents’ place. “I won’t be long,” he said, getting out and heading toward the house.

  She was probably right. There would probably be questions. And it was entirely likely that his mother would spot Annabelle out in the truck. But, whatever. It would all be over soon enough. And then explanations wouldn’t matter at all.

  After Christmas he would leave. He would leave this town. He would leave Annabelle. He would go back to the way things were, and he would forget. He was tied to Gold Valley as long as he had his parents. Was tied to it by his remaining family, and by the fact that his roots were here. But he did a pretty damn good job of pretending that wasn’t the case most of the time.

  He would forget. He would spend months not thinking about it. Roaming around from town to town and state to state, wherever his work took him.

  He didn’t have any reason to enmesh himself any deeper in his hometown. And he wouldn’t.

  He went up to the door of his parents’ house and knocked, even though that was kind of silly, since they were expecting him. Since he had grown up there.

  But as he stood there with his knuckles smarting slightly from the way they had connected with solid wood, he reflected on the fact that it was basically a commentary on how things were. He came back. But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t home. Not anymore.

  He heard his mother tell him to come in, and he pushed the door open.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said, stepping into the kitchen, where she was sitting at the table, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. She looked like she hadn’t slept. She had probably been up all night worrying about Lindsay’s poinsettias. And the fact that she didn’t think she could deliver them.

  “Everything okay?”

  They weren’t supposed to talk about things like this. Even though he knew his mother struggled with this kind of anxiety, and that sometimes it prevented her from doing the things she wanted to do. That it came out of nowhere. That she was sometimes completely felled by random bouts of depression and grief for varying lengths of time.

  They didn’t talk about it. Just like they didn’t talk about how badly everything still hurt. Not really.

  They operated as three completely independent people rather than a family.

  As if they had lost their glue.

  Loving someone who was sick was a strange thing. The world revolved around that illness. And their family had revolved itself around sadness and hospital visits. Tests, all clears and relapses. In many ways, that hardship, that illness, had been a glue of sorts. And when it was over...

  They hadn’t known who they were anymore.

  “I just can’t seem to get myself together today,” she said, looking as pale and worn as the faded yellow curtains behind her.

  “That’s okay.” He crossed the room and placed his hand over hers. “I can do it for you.”

  She smiled up at him, squeezing his hand. And he felt like...like he actually might have fixed something. Even if it was a small something. Even if it was a fix that wouldn’t last. Today, he was here, and his mother had let him know what she needed. He was able to come through for her.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s in his shop.”

  “He doesn’t want to go up?”

  She shook her head, her lips tight. “Your father doesn’t go there.”

  He felt something stab through his chest, hot and sharp.

  Neither he nor his father could bring themselves to visit the spot where Lindsay had been put to rest. It was only his mother that went. Only his mother that brought flowers. She carried that, all on her own. He wondered if his father was even conscious of that. Or if it was another casualty of their lack of communication. Their inability to share with each other. The ways that they had pulled away since they had lost Lindsay.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll do it.” He saw the poinsettia sitting on the counter, and he was crossing the room to get it when he heard footsteps behind him.

  He turned to see Annabelle standing in the kitchen doorway, looking sheepish and a little lost, her dark hair disheveled, like she’d just rolled out of bed. Which she had. With him.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Mason,” Annabelle said.

  “Annabelle,” his mother said, surprised. “Is everything all right? Are you here with your father?”

  “No,” Annabelle said. “I just... I came with Cooper.”

  His mom looked between Annabelle and him, and he was shocked enough by the announcement that he forgot to be irritated.

  “I thought you were going to wait in the truck,” he began.

  “I would have,” Annabelle said, leveling those brown eyes on him. “But I was... I wanted to make sure you didn’t need help carrying anything.”

  “It’s fine. Just... Give me a second.”

  Annabelle nodded and slunk out of the room, and his mother looked up at him quizzically. “Is that where you’ve been the last couple of nights?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he responded. “It’s not going to turn into anything more.”

  “It’s Annabelle Preston, Cooper. And she’s not going to be anything more to you?”

  “How can she be? I’m never home. I don’t have a home, not really. I’m not signing on for the...for the family thing. She’s a great girl...”

  “Her father would kill you,” Connie Mason said, her blue eyes full of concern and no small amount of anger.

  “He doesn’t need to know. I didn’t intend for you to find out. Because...there’s no point. It can’t be anything.”

  Silence fell between them, uncomfortable and thick. And normal. Sadly, just normal. Because none of them knew how to talk to each other anymore. They wanted to protect their wounds, and not harm
anyone. It had turned into a silence that might be worse than anything else.

  “You’re really never coming back to us, are you?” she asked.

  He frowned. “What do you mean? I come back to visit whenever you ask me to.”

  She sighed heavily, looking down into her teacup. “Not really. Not all of you.”

  He had about a thousand things to say to that. That he didn’t have all of them either. That it was completely understandable they had all changed. That if they hadn’t, there would be something wrong with them.

  But words wouldn’t come. He didn’t know how to talk about his feelings. He sure as hell couldn’t figure out how to do it on command.

  “I can’t,” he responded. Then he grabbed hold of the poinsettia and turned away, walking back out of the house into his truck, where Annabelle was just reclaiming her seat.

  It wasn’t until they got back on the highway that he turned to Annabelle. “Why did you come in? I told you I would only be a minute.”

  “And I didn’t want to wait. Sorry. I hope I didn’t make a whole lot of trouble for you. I just... I was worried something was wrong.”

  They started driving down the highway, headed to the remote place where they’d sprinkled Lindsay’s ashes.

  “Something is wrong,” he said. “My sister is dead. I have to take flowers to her grave on Christmas Eve. My mom is right,” he continued. “It doesn’t get easier. It only gets worse. People say time heals, but I think it all just gets more final. And the longer you go hurting like you do, the more you realize...it’s going to live with you forever. That’s a hard pill to swallow.”

  She said nothing for a while. Finally she spoke.

  “I imagine it comes in waves,” she said softly. “I know... I know it’s not the same, the way that my mother abandoned me. But it’s the closest thing to that kind of grief that I have. And sometimes I think I’m fine. But then sometimes I see a mother and child together and the longing I feel takes my breath away. Sometimes, when I’m with friends and they talk about the ways their mothers irritate them I feel jealous. This kind of horrible acrid jealousy that I can’t overcome. And I never knew her. I never got the chance to love her. The only thing that I even care about is the theoretical idea of having a mother. There’s not a specific one that I even miss. I can’t imagine how it must be for you.”

  His stomach tightened, her words landing on tender places inside him. That longing. He understood it well. Not just for his sister to be here, but for the family he’d once had. A family that had been centered on sadness and heavy things since he was fourteen and his sister had been diagnosed.

  A longing to be someone who wasn’t touched by grief.

  But the longing felt eased just then. In this moment, with someone to share with. He hadn’t talked to anyone in so long, and he talked to Annabelle. She talked to him. It was as strange as it was wonderful.

  “The worst thing of all is knowing that something terrible is going to happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it,” he said, turning the truck off the highway and up a long, winding dirt road that he knew would eventually lead to the place where his sister’s ashes were.

  “I know...”

  “No,” he said, cutting her off. “Nobody does. It’s the helplessness of it. The finality. You can’t argue with that kind of sickness. You can’t argue with death. A long illness like that... You hope for a miracle. You wait for one. Because obviously this kind of thing happens to other people. It doesn’t happen to you. Not to your family. As long as somebody is ill you can sit around and make bargains with God. You can hope that you’ll be an exception to the statistic. But death...you can’t argue with that. And after so many years of arguing against illness...it’s just... It’s almost impossible to accept. But the hope is gone. It makes you want to go back and stop hoping like that sooner.”

  “But that wouldn’t change anything either,” she said softly. “And then you’re living without hope.”

  “Hope didn’t change anything,” he said, hearing the harshness in his tone. “So what’s the point of it?”

  They were silent as they continued on up the dirt drive all the way to the top. When they reached a dead end, he parked. He grabbed hold of the poinsettia that was sitting in the bench seat between them, all bright and defiant in the face of death and winter. “It’s this way.”

  They walked silently together up a narrow, worn path that led to a creek shrouded in trees. This was the resting place that Lindsay had chosen before she died.

  Suddenly, the unfairness of that hit him fresh, like a slap in the face.

  It was the first time he had been up here in eight years, and of all the realizations he had expected to have, this one felt like it came from nowhere.

  At twenty-six years old, his sister had picked out the place she wanted her ashes to go. Had had to make that decision because she knew that she wasn’t going to beat her illness. Knew that her time was rapidly running out.

  It wasn’t fair. None of it was.

  It wasn’t fair that she’d had to do that. That she’d had to find it in herself to think of those things. To accept her prognosis with the grace and dignity she had.

  He didn’t think he would have accepted anything of the kind with grace and dignity. Hell, he knew he wouldn’t. He hadn’t accepted that she was going to die. Not at all. Not until it was too late. And even then...

  He didn’t like being in this place where he had to accept it. Where he had to be fully aware of it. Where he couldn’t pretend that she might still be back home waiting.

  As if sensing his thoughts, Annabelle said nothing. She simply stood beside him. Looking down at the fast-moving creek, her cheeks red from the cold, her hair blowing in the breeze.

  Suddenly, he was so damned tired of silence.

  “Lindsay loved it up here,” he said, his voice shattering the cold winter air like it was a pane of glass. “She said it’s where she and Grant had their first kiss. I suspect it was more than that, but she said kiss.”

  Annabelle laughed, the only warm thing in this frozen landscape. The only warm thing inside him.

  “Of course, I didn’t want to hear about any of that. But I’m glad she had him.” He gritted his teeth, emotion swelling in his chest.

  He had no idea how his former brother-in-law had survived the pain of losing her. And he didn’t know, because he never asked. Because he just left. And he sure as hell never talked to the other man about that kind of thing. They didn’t really make an effort to see each other, but every so often they had a drink.

  He’d called Grant once when he’d come into town, and Grant had made some excuse about finishing his last stretch at the power company before going to work full time at his family ranch.

  “She was loved,” Annabelle said. “I know she still is.”

  He nodded. “More than most, I think.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annabelle told him. “I’m sorry that there’s nothing deeper or more substantial to say. But I don’t understand why things like this happen. I don’t understand why you or anyone else should have to deal with something like this.”

  “There’s no answer,” he said. “That’s the problem. I can’t make sense of it. I’ll never be able to make sense of it. Though...being with you helps.”

  “Does it?”

  “I didn’t think anything could,” he said. “Mostly, coming back...there’s too much bad to make the good worth it. But not right now.”

  “Is that why you don’t like being here?” He knew that she meant Gold Valley, not here specifically.

  “It feels final when I’m here,” he said. “It reminds me that there’s nothing left to hope for. That there’s no more wishing and praying for an illness to go away. She’s gone. And...so is my hope.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that.”
<
br />   He frowned. “No. I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

  “No, I...I know what you mean. She’s gone. And that’s a terrible thing to face. But there’s still hope left in the world.”

  “Useless hope,” he said. “Hope that doesn’t change anything.”

  “Except how you live.”

  Neither of them said anything after that; they just stood there. And it surprised him the most that he felt strangely at peace here. He had expected something different. Had expected to be overwhelmed by grief. Had expected for everything to feel final and wrenching and awful as he stood here leaving poinsettias for his sister.

  But it didn’t. Instead he felt connected to her in a way that he hadn’t in years. In a way that went beyond the pain of loss. He could picture her like she’d been when they were kids, running through the trees, her blond hair a tangle of curls in the wind. And even the way she’d been as a teenager. Even after she’d been sick. She hadn’t only been sick. She’d been more than that. She’d fallen in love with Grant. She’d lived as big as she could.

  “Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit?”

  He thought about it. And he realized he didn’t want her to. Before Annabelle he hadn’t felt any peace since coming back to Gold Valley. He was afraid if she left his side now, she’d take it right back with her.

  “Stay. I’m alone all the time.”

  She stood next to him, rested her head on his shoulder, and they simply stood. No words. Nothing. Just standing together.

  Tonight was Christmas Eve. It was their last night together. Tomorrow would give way to the chaos of Christmas and then to him leaving.

  But tonight. They had tonight.

  And in spite of the heaviness that he felt at the thought, he felt something else, too.

  He refused to call it hope.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SOMETHING HAD SHIFTED between them out there at Lindsay’s memorial site. It wasn’t really a grave. It had been beautiful, a mountain haven with a creek running through it and majestic evergreens all around. Beautiful and sad.

  But not just sad.