She was a guest in her own life.
It was only temporary; she told herself that every day, and she browsed through the college registration materials to reassure herself. She’d start classes in the fall and would have something that was hers. She’d get there in a car that he’d more than half paid for, but once she was there, school would be her own private thing.
In the meantime, Heath took good care of her, and he went out of his way to make her feel like a real part of this life that wasn’t hers.
Only when they were alone did she honestly feel like she belonged in it, though.
She turned back to the table with a sigh. Reese had come over with bar rags and had pushed the guys aside to clean up Victor’s mess.
“You okay, Gabe?” he asked as he slopped up the mess.
“Sure. A little beer isn’t going to scar me.”
Victor picked up the upended glass and the near-empty pitcher. “Sorry. I’ll get us a refill.”
“No, shithead,” Reese countered. “You don’t go behind the bar. And she ain’t gonna talk to you anyway.”
Paul laughed. “Man, even in the middle of a town fight, you can’t get your dick down.”
“What?” Gabe was trying to follow along. “Victor—do you like Pearl? Or Ellen?”
“I’ll bring a fresh pitcher and glasses. And somebody should catch Gabe up on the Shakespearean saga of Victor and Pearl.” Finished with his cleanup, Reese held out a chair for Gabe, and she sat. Then, with a little bow, he was gone.
“It’s not a fuckin’ saga,” Victor grumbled. “We’re friends.”
Emmett and Heath had racked their cues and returned to the table. Heath came to Gabe’s seat and lifted her arm. Knowing what he wanted, she stood and let him take her chair, then pull her onto his lap. This was his way—even when there were seats available, more often than not he wanted her on his lap.
“We talking about Pearl again?” He rolled his eyes.
“Look, soap-opera boy, fuck off.” Victor looked like he might be thinking about walking away, but he stayed in his seat and pouted instead.
Reese came back with a full pitcher, a stack of glasses, and a new bottle of bourbon. Then he dragged a chair from a nearby table and made himself comfortable. “Kelly’s got the bar for a minute. I want in on the story.”
“You guys are assholes,” Victor snarled.
“Yeah, we are. But we’re equal-opportunity assholes.” Emmett laughed and poured bourbon for the table—except for Gabe. Everybody knew she didn’t like hard liquor. The men all drank as if the couple of inches of Jim Beam in their glasses were no more potent than water. Then Reese poured a round of beer. Heath had not been exaggerating when he’d said that people in Jasper Ridge were hard drinkers.
“Will somebody just tell the story?” Gabe finally burst out. She was starting to get used to the gossip, and as the subject of a lot of it, she thought it only fair that others did their time on the hot seat, too. “Victor, you tell it. It’s yours.”
He gave her a look equally grateful and stubborn. “It’s not a story. Pearl and I went out a little. We broke up, but we’re still friends.”
“Hell, that’s the Cliffs Notes version.” Reese took a long drink of beer. “They went out for five years. Then Pearl started workin’ up at the Moondancer, and she decided she wanted to catch herself a rich bastard. Now Victor trails around after her like a sick puppy, takin’ the scraps of ass she tosses his way after one of those jackoffs kicks her to the curb.”
Victor scowled silently down at his half-empty glass of beer.
Now she felt bad. Victor was right—these guys were assholes, because that was a sad story that shouldn’t have been subject to their ridicule. “I’m sorry, Victor.”
He only shrugged.
Gabe knew that Pearl was interested in finding a man at the ranch. She’d been far more discreet than other girls, and she wasn’t one to just jump in bed with a guy, but she was fairly forthright about her interest. She wanted away from the ‘two-bit town’ she’d been born in. She wanted a bigger life, but she didn’t know how to make it for herself, so she’d decided that she’d find a man to make it for her.
In the two months that Gabe had worked there, she’d seen Pearl turn her attention to two men, one a New York investment banker, and the other a Hollywood director.
Victor lived in a trailer on the nearby Shoshone reservation and worked on a road construction crew. The comparison, in that regard, was stark, and not in Victor’s favor.
For her part, Pearl shared an apartment with Ellen, above a souvenir shop on Ridge Road.
She could understand Pearl’s need to clear the past from her trail. But Victor was a good guy. Gabe thought the whole thing was sad. She sighed, and Heath’s hand smoothed over her back.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I just think everybody sticking their nose into other people’s lives sucks. What’s on the outside is never the real truth. Don’t people around here have cable? Or books? Or hobbies?”
She’d spoken so only Heath could hear, and he smiled. “I agree. You have a good heart.”
Missing their exchange, the rest of the table was still giving Victor shit. Reese said, “She’s on Catherine’s side, and you have the Cahill stain on you, buddy. I don’t see her even talkin’ to you right now.”
Gabe felt Heath sigh, but he didn’t say anything.
“How come you can?” Victor asked Reese. “You’re Heath’s friend, too.”
Reese finished his beer and stood. “The Apple Jack Saloon is Switzerland, and I am its president. I don’t choose sides. But the way this thing between Heath and Catherine is goin’, we might have a whole new caliber of fireworks come the Fourth of July.”
*****
Jasper Ridge did the Fourth of July up in a big way. For days beforehand, the town was festooned in red, white, and blue bunting and streamers, in glittery stars and flowing stripes. There were little fairs in Jasper Park and on the street each day. Each evening for the whole week, they had bands playing in the gazebo at the center of the park, and fireworks each night.
Gabe had grown up in Santa Fe, which wasn’t exactly a huge metropolis, but it was the capital of New Mexico and probably qualified as a city. It had some office buildings and strip malls, things like that. And its own rich and specific history that many found quaint. To Gabe, though, it had always just simply been the place she’d lived. City events, like the Fourth, had just been things to do, not particularly special.
Jasper Ridge events were full-participation extravaganzas. Only a couple of thousand people named the town as their home, and most of those didn’t actually live within the town limits, but when there was something to celebrate, they all came together to do it. Gabe had been in town for Easter and Memorial Day so far, and as she was actually a part of the preparations for Independence Day, she had come to understand that the town really loved a good party. And this one was an especially big deal.
There was a truce called—a literal truce; Heath, Logan, and their dad had met Catherine at the Jack to agree on it—so that everybody could enjoy the day. Pearl, Ellen, Britnee, and the others came down and helped build floats at the high school for the parade. Whether by accident or intention, Emma, one of the celebration organizers, assigned Pearl and Britnee to the same station as Gabe: making flowers out of mountains of tissue paper.
They came over to the table in the gymnasium warily, as if they expected Gabe to lash out at them. It hurt her feelings, but she smiled. “Hey guys. You on flower duty, too?”
“Looks that way,” said Pearl. “You know what you’re doin’?”
“I got a ten-minute tutorial on fluffing,” Gabe said and pulled layers of tissue apart in her half-finished flower to demonstrate. Britnee barked out a laugh. “What?” Gabe asked, defensive already.
“I’d’ve thought you were great at fluffing by now, sleeping with the cowboy every night.”
Gabe still didn’t understand, but Pearl gave Britnee
a look. “Don’t be a hag, Brit. Why don’t you go over there and get some more pipe cleaners. You know what a pipe cleaner is?”
With a dramatic sigh, Britnee sashayed to the supply table, and Pearl turned back to Gabe. “You doin’ okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m…I’m sorry I caused all this weirdness.”
“I get it. What were you supposed to do? I mean, if you’d’ve cheated on Heath…”
“It wasn’t about cheating, Pearl. He was trying to rape me.”
“Well, he was drunk. And he always gets his way, so I can see why he was confused.”
“It wasn’t confusing. I told him no. I told him to let me go.”
When Pearl waved off Gabe’s assertion with a ‘let’s agree to disagree’ flip of her hand, Gabe crushed the flower in her fist. But she kept her mouth shut. Since she’d arrived in Jasper Ridge, she’d been the cause of two scenes that were still grinding in the gossip mill—not to mention an actual feud. She didn’t need to start anything more.
She looked around to see if anybody was paying attention to them; nobody was. Britnee wasn’t going to be back with pipe cleaners anytime soon, either. She was flirting with Steve, one of the hands at the Twisted C, and she was working all her moves.
Pearl had more to say, and Gabe focused, trying to repair the damage to the flower—they were a pain to make and she didn’t want to start over—and to remain friendly with Pearl.
“Anyway, things’re a mess up at the ranch. We had a bunch of cancelations. Mr. Cross is telling everybody he knows, and they’re telling everybody they know, and now Catherine is holding back paychecks, and I heard her talking with Mr. Whitt about a loan, and everybody’s scared. I don’t much care about the temps like Britnee, but there’s almost thirty of us work up there full-time, and there’s no jobs down in town for any of us if the Moondancer goes under.” She laid her hands on the tissues she’d been folding and gave Gabe a significant look. “Did you have to hurt him? Maybe if you hadn’t hurt him. Maybe if you apologized for that, he’d back off of Catherine.”
“He was trying to rape me.” The flower was a lost cause by now. It was wilting in her grip.
“But out there by the chuck wagon? He probably wouldn’t’ve done anything. Not really. His wife was right there. His kids. I mean, think about it, Gabe. Don’t you think you might’ve overreacted a little? I mean, it’d be understandable if you had a hair trigger, after what your father did…”
“Go to hell, Pearl. Seriously—you can fuck right off.” Gabe threw the wad of former flower and hit Pearl in the face. Then she stormed out of the gym, feeling every single eye on her back.
So much for not adding grist to the mill.
*****
When Heath was feeling especially low or stressed, he saddled up his horse, Maggie May, and rode. So after Gabe got home from the high school, she wasn’t surprised when he showed up not half an hour after her and suggested they take a sundown ride.
He hadn’t even asked her what was wrong; he’d already known. Word had gotten to him almost immediately, and he’d come straight home from his shop, hugged her hard, and said, “Let’s take a ride.”
Riding wasn’t the calming comfort to Gabe that it was to Heath, but she was getting used to the saddle and could ride for a couple of hours before she felt it—which still made her ‘soft,’ according to all the hands at the Twisted C, but was an improvement. Phoebe, the mare that had been intended for Ruthie, had become her horse. She was a sweet girl, and patient with Gabe. Her spotted grey coat was called ‘dapple.’ Gabe had learned a whole new vocabulary since she’d come to Jasper Ridge.
They rode more or less quietly, talking only about the horses or where they were headed, until they’d left sight of the compound. Then, with the horses ambling side by side, Heath turned to Gabe. “You want to talk about what happened?”
Still stinging from the confrontation itself, and feeling sore about Jasper Ridge and its flapping gums, Gabe shrugged. “You obviously already know.”
“Your truth. That’s all I care about.”
She didn’t want to rehash the stupid fight. Instead, she turned and stared hard at him. “If I ask you something that might be hard, will you promise to give me an honest answer?”
He frowned, his brow furrowing under his hat. “Have I ever not been honest?”
“No, it’s just”—she heaved an aggravated breath—“do you think I overreacted? Is all this my fault?”
“Whoa,” he muttered, pulling on the reins. Maggie stopped. “Pull up, Gabe.”
She did.
They’d been walking west, into the lowering sun, which was nearly behind the mountains. When he turned, the brim of his hat slanted shade across his face, and his pale eyes seemed to glow. “Did you tell me what happened? Exactly what happened?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know damn well you didn’t overreact. He put hands on you.” Maggie shook her head fussily and made a noise like a complaint. Heath shifted his hold on the reins; Gabe saw that his knuckles were nearly white with the force of his grip. “He threatened you. If I’d’ve been there, a swollen sack would’ve been the least of his worries.”
“Nobody believes me.” Her throat tightened as she said the words aloud.
“I believe you, Gabe. And I’m not alone in that. What’s going on at the Moondancer is bad, but it’s Catherine’s fault. She should’ve had a leash on that bastard a long time ago. If he thought the ranch was his own personal petting zoo, it’s because she let him think so.”
“Ever since I got here, all I’ve done is cause people trouble. I just wanted to find somewhere I could be, but it’s like all my crap followed behind me. A thousand-mile shadow. I’m gonna overstay my welcome pretty quick.”
Heath nudged Maggie closer to Phoebe, so that they were nearly touching. He leaned over and rested his hand on Gabe’s thigh. “You listen to me. You have found somewhere to be. You’re with me. I love you.”
She smiled and curled her hand around his. “I love you, too.”
“This town always has some scandal boiling. I’ve been in the soup more than a few times. It always cools off. People find something else to obsess about.”
“What if the Moondancer goes under? Pearl said she heard Catherine asking some guy for a loan.”
A bitter scowl darkened his face for a second, but then he wiped it away and put on a smile instead. “You gossiping?”
She blushed, realizing that that was exactly what she’d done. “God. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I heard about that, too. Like I said, what happens to the Moondancer is Catherine’s problem. If it goes under, we’ll do what we can to help the people who lose their jobs. That’s the good thing about a town like this, with everybody so close they know the brand of your underwear—we might fight each other like crazy, but we pull together, too. And none of it is your fault. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good. C’mon. I want to ride into the woods and have my way with you.”
“You took me out here to have sex?”
He only winked and got Maggie moving with a click of his tongue.
Gabe held Phoebe back and watched him ride for a second. Then she let her horse follow.
PART FOUR
Chapter Thirteen
For generations, the Jasper Ridge Founders’ Festival had been the whole year’s highlight. The town had been formally founded on July 4, 1869. The following year, the federal government had declared Independence Day a national holiday, and since then the town’s celebration was bigger than all the other holidays combined. They partied for a week, with music and then fireworks in the town park every evening, a different kind of fair each day, and food and booze aplenty.
And then, on the day of the Fourth itself, they did it all a hundredfold bigger. The Jack ran dollar pints and shots all day, the Lunch Basket offered five-dollar family baskets, Piggie’s BBQ put out trays of wings for the taking. They did a big town parade and crowned their annual Miss
Jasper, and the fireworks that night went on for almost an hour—except the one year when Karl Riggs got drunk and upended the works into Jasper Park Pond about ten minutes into the show.
To an outsider, it probably looked like much ado about nothing. The musicians that played were local, the fairs showcased local arts and crafts and talents—the pie and preserve contest was a highlight, as was the Kiddie Rodeo—and the parade floats were all pickups pulling flatbeds festooned with chicken wire and tissue-paper flowers, or horses pulling carts and wagons. Miss Jasper rode to her plywood throne sitting on the back of Ron Webb’s convertible 2005 Mustang.
But to the town, it was a year’s worth of civic love.
The tradition had always been that any antipathies between neighbors, any complaints or grievances, any irritations or disagreements—all of it was tabled for that week of town spirit. For one week, the citizens of Jasper Ridge all remembered they were family and loved each other, no matter what had been going on between them.
Or they pretended as much, anyway.
By the time the Founders’ Festival was underway this year, the town was more divided than Heath could remember—to the point that the Cahill men had met with Catherine to reinforce tradition and agree outright to a truce for the week.
Catherine had arrived at the Jack for that meeting with Denny Whitt, setting off warning bells in Cahill heads, though nothing more had yet come from those strange land buys Whitt had made in the spring. Whitt was on Catherine’s side of the dispute, however, and helping her keep the Moondancer afloat. There had to be an upside for him; Whitt wasn’t the kind who helped anybody out of the goodness of his heart.
Heath couldn’t afford to spend much of his mind on the puzzle of Denny Whitt; he left that to his father and Logan. His head was consumed with anger and concern on Gabe’s behalf. That anybody could have been on Catherine’s side, that anybody could have seen what had happened to Gabe as anything but an outrage, made his blood boil, and the town seemed evenly divided on the matter. That was a whole lot of people Heath wanted to hurt.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 16