Another contemplative pause. The sun had gone down enough that all the red rock formations were gilt with the last gold of sunlight. “After I left the center, I drove around the park a little. It’s so…obvious here.”
“Obvious?”
“Time. Life. It’s so obvious here. All of these arches, all the patterns and colors in the rocks, all of it. You can see how every little thing makes a difference. That’s what I thought that day—God, just last April—that here you can really see how everything changes everything. Little bumps and huge crashes, they all shape what comes next.”
She pointed to the enormous arch, longer and flatter than many others. “That one there? There’s signs around that say that it doubled in size overnight, back in the Forties or something like that. A big hunk just crashed out of it. I wonder how long the cracks or whatever that made it crash were there, inching along over years, or centuries, nobody knowing, until one day, BAM!”
He smiled at her enthusiastic onomatopoeia. “You’re right. It’s…humbling, I guess. But I don’t think I understand why this is so important to you right now.”
She turned and faced him for the first time since they’d come onto the trail. “Everything changes everything. That’s what I realized that day. Everything that happens in our past shapes our future. And the things that happen next can change how we understand what happened before. The past can change, too, because it’s only memory. What my father did—it took away my past. That’s just a truth. I can’t ever again see the life I had the way I saw it when I lived it. Now I see the cracks that were always there. No matter how good a memory was, how beautiful or happy it was before, now I see that it was ready to crash down on me.”
She took his hands in hers. “I’m going to have that dream I have because it still hurts that he did that to my family. It will always hurt, and I don’t want it not to hurt. But what he did sent me to you. I had to find somewhere new, somewhere I could make a life that started from my after, and I did. I’m a Cahill now.”
With a smile, she set his hands on her belly. “We made a new Cahill. I love my life with you. You told my father the truth—you didn’t make my choices. We chose together. I didn’t know you before Ruthie died, and you didn’t know me in Santa Fe. I love who you are now—and when you become who you’ll be, I’ll be with you, and I’ll grow with you and love you for it. In every moment, we’ll love each other for who we are, not who we were. You are my somewhere.”
Christ, he was an idiot. Closing his eyes to find composure before he spoke, Heath took a deep breath. He cleared his throat. He caressed his wife’s beautiful, round belly.
“I love you, Gabe Cahill. Forever and always. You’re so young that sometimes I forget how old you really are. I won’t again.”
She lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles, in an echo of the first time she’d ever kissed him. “Good. See that you don’t. Now, can we please go home where we belong?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
On a Saturday at the end of February, during one of those late-winter spells when Nature loosened her fingers from around the throat of the world, when the sky opened its blue eyes and the earth took a deep breath and shook off the long stillness of the cold, when people threw open all their windows and let the curtains billow with fresh new air, Heath sat astride Maggie, side by side with his brother and father, on the bluff overlooking Cahill Creek, where the Twisted C and the C Bar G ranches ran up against each other.
The land that Denham Whitt had bought rolled out below them. Charlie Granville was in the process of buying the parcels back from the state, which had seized them from Whitt.
Whitt’s trial had ended in early February. Life in prison, with parole in twenty-five years.
They’d ridden out simply to enjoy the warm Saturday; it was something of a tradition to share the first spring ride together. Emma often joined them, but this year, she and Wes had taken the kids to Sun Valley for the weekend.
When Logan had called down to ask Heath if he was up for a ride, he’d hemmed and hawed a bit. He’d wanted to go out, no question, but Gabe was only a bit more than two weeks from her due date, and it made him nervous to think of riding out on horseback for a day. They’d already had one long late night at the hospital the week before, over what had been declared false labor, and she had been crabby and uncomfortable ever since.
Very uncomfortable. And very crabby. She was over being pregnant, and she was over his fussing, and when she’d heard him talking to Logan that morning, she’d nearly shoved him out of the house.
In all honesty, he’d probably been having a much better day, riding Maggie out in the warm sunshine with his brother and father, than he would have had dancing around the minefield of his wife’s mood.
So he lifted his face into the sun and took a deep breath of air rich with the promise of spring.
“Whole lot of money under our feet,” Logan said.
Heath blinked and focused on his brother. There was gold on the ranch, probably a lot. But a gold mine would lay waste to the earth. They had enough money—and they were richer than money could ever make them. He couldn’t believe Logan would be considering tearing up their true wealth.
Their father adjusted his hat with a sigh. “Now’s as good a time as any for this talk, I’d say. You boys know I don’t have much longer at the head of this ranch—or this family.”
“Dad—” Logan tried to interrupt.
Their father held out a hand to shut him up. “I’m not saying I’m gonna fall down dead right here. I know I’m strong. I can still ride Hollywood here”—he patted his big, white-faced Palomino gelding on the withers—“all day and still make my way out of bed the next morning. But I’m past eighty, and I’m not immortal. You know I’m gonna leave the ranch to you. I’ll take care of Emma and Wes, ‘course I will. But now I got the Moondancer to do that. You two, this is yours. I need you to make me a promise. Solemn as ever you made a promise. Leave the gold where it is. Don’t mine it, and don’t sell the land so anybody else can mine it. Unless the family itself is at stake, leave it be. What we see around us when we stand here, no pile of cash will ever be worth this.”
Logan nodded. “You didn’t have to say it, Dad. We both feel the same way. Right, Heath?”
“Right. I promise, Dad.”
Their father turned to Logan. “You’re the one said the word ‘money,’ Loge. I need to hear your promise.”
“I promise.”
*****
Later, back in the stables, they rubbed down their horses. In one of his few concessions to his age, their dad handed off Hollywood’s grooming to their hand Steve, but Logan and Heath took care of their own horses.
Heath finished first and fed Maggie a few cookies before he released her into the pasture for a few hours of grazing with her buddies.
Logan, smoothing conditioner into his buckskin gelding’s mane, asked “Hey—you want to come into the big house, shoot some pool, get another hour or so of mellow before you head back?” Everybody knew how Gabe’s mood had been. She’d shared it with them all. Liberally.
“Nah. I need to get back and check on her. I’m thinking I’ll draw her a hot bath, see if that helps.”
His brother laughed and shook his head. “I’m glad as hell you’re such a damn nester, little brother. Keeps the pressure right off of me. Go on, take care of your little baby-maker. Tell her I love her grumpy ass.”
*****
The house was quiet when he came in, but that wasn’t so unusual. Gabe had been sleeping for shit at night the past few weeks, so she napped throughout the day. In case she was sleeping, he didn’t call out, but he went right to the bedroom to check.
He found her on the floor in the corner of the room. She looked absolutely terrible—bathed in sweat, her hair a matted mop, her skin flushed. She wore only one of his t-shirts, stretched over her belly. The sweatpants she’d been wearing when he’d left that morning were wadded on the floor in a discarded heap.
; The room smelled—wrong. Just wrong, somehow.
“Help me,” she gasped.
“Christ!” He ran to her and dropped to his knees. “What’s wrong?” The wood floor was wet all around her.
“My water just broke. He’s coming. I think he’s coming.”
“What? No! How can he be coming? You were okay this morning! We need to get to the hospital!”
The hospital was more than an hour away. She shook her head—and then screamed a scream that he never wanted to hear again in his life. No human should ever feel the kind of pain that would impel a sound like that.
Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed her and held her until the pain passed, and she sagged in his arms, panting and whimpering.
“That one was so bad…so much worse…I can’t…oh God.”
She’d been alone with this, while he was out enjoying the day. “Why didn’t you call me, little one? Jesus. I need to call 911.”
“My phone’s in the kitchen. It came on so fast, when I knew what was happening, I couldn’t get off the floor. Heath, I think I need to push.”
“You can’t push! Don’t push! I need to call 911.”
“No, don’t leave me!” Another unholy scream, and her short nails dug into the meat of his arm until he thought he might scream right along with her. From between her legs, fluid poured in soft, pulsing gushes. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket and dialed 911.
“I need to push, I need to push, I need to push,” she gasped when she could relax again.
“911. What is your emergency?”
“My wife needs to push!”
“Okay, sir, is she pregnant?”
What a stupid fucking question. “YES! Thirty-something—thirty-seven weeks. And some days. I don’t know what to do!”
“Are you at home, sir?”
The woman was far too calm and asking questions that were far too stupid. “Yes! We’re fifty miles from the hospital and she needs to push! What do I do?!”
“Okay, sir, I’ve dispatched an ambulance to your location. It will be there as soon as possible. Where is your wife now?”
Gabe screamed again, and he threw the phone and held her. This time, she pushed. He didn’t know if she was supposed to, or if he was supposed to do something, but she was fucking pushing, making an entirely new, still entirely horrible sound, and it ended with yet another horrible noise.
She had some kind of baby app on her phone. She was obsessed with the thing. Maybe there was information on that—but her phone was in the kitchen, and Gabe had implanted her fingers into his arms.
And now his phone was God knew where—somewhere in the room.
When she relaxed again, he said, “Let me get you on the bed.”
“No!”
“Gabe, the floor is hard. Let me make you comfortable.”
“I can’t be comfortable, and I don’t want to get on the bed! I like our bedding and I don’t want to make it gross!”
“Jesus fucking Christ. Hold on.” He wedged her hands free and stood, then ripped the bedding off the bed, pillows and all, straight down to the bare mattress, in one yank with both hands. Then he bent down and swooped his wife up and laid her as gently as he could in the middle of their bed.
“Heath! Gabe! What the hell is going on?” Logan’s voice preceded him by about three seconds, and then he was at the door. “Oh shit! Holy shit!”
His wife’s bare business was spread out for his brother to see, but that was the least of his worries just then. “Find my phone. I called 911 but…” Too much to explain. “Just call 911 again. They’re sending an ambulance, but I don’t know what the fuck to do right now!”
He’d seen dozens of animal births, but damn, that was nothing at all like this. And Ruthie’s birth had been a planned C-section. The doctor had played fucking Mozart.
Gabe screamed and pushed, and holy Jesus God, there was his son’s head, coming right out of her body. Right the hell now.
“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” Logan yelled.
“CALL!” Heath yelled back.
“Get him out! Get him out!” Gabe cried. “OW OW OW! GET HIM OUT OF ME!”
“I can’t! I don’t know how!”
Another push, and the problem was solved, because there was his whole head and part of his shoulder. Without thinking more about it, Heath reached between his wife’s legs, into her, and helped his child into the world. When his little shoulder was clear, he just slid right on out and was in Heath’s hands.
Gabe fell back in sudden, exhausted relief.
Heath was holding his son in his arms. Using the edge of his shirt—fuck, that was probably dirty—he wiped the goop from the little face, and Matthew Edgar Cahill took his first breath in the world. And then he screamed angrily.
“Holy shit,” Logan said, this time in little more than a reverent whisper.
*****
The ambulance made good time, but when the EMTs came into the house, Gabe and baby were quiet and comfortable. Heath had helped her deliver the placenta, and he’d placed it in a plastic container they would never, ever use again. Apparently, the doctor wanted to examine it. The placenta was still attached to the baby by the umbilical cord; Gabe’s app, and the 911 dispatcher, had instructed them not to cut the cord themselves.
Gabe and Matthew were cleaned up and snuggling happily, and Matthew had even had his first meal. The EMTs helped Heath cut the cord and clamp it, and then they loaded mother and baby onto a gurney for a trip to the hospital to make sure everybody was as okay as they seemed.
And they were. Gabe and their son were both perfect. They kept them overnight, mainly because it was already evening by the time they’d arrived. Up to and beyond visiting hours, the maternity ward hopped with friends and family, and Gabe’s room teemed with flowers and toys. Emma and Wes and the kids came back early and straight to the hospital. Matthew never saw the inside of that little plastic bassinet.
Gabe had a private room, so the nurses let the end of visiting hours go by without much fuss. But his wife and child needed to rest, so Heath pushed people out until it was only immediate family. Wes said good night, then took Kendall and Anya down to the vending machines for an evening snack. Then Emma and Logan said their good nights. And then it was just Heath’s father, standing at the foot of the hospital bed, smiling down at Gabe and Matthew.
“I’m proud of you. You made us a strong boy, little mother. And you brought him into the world like a pioneer woman. Annabelle would be proud.”
Gabe seemed especially emotional at that, and Heath wondered if he’d missed something.
“I love you, Dad,” she said mistily.
“And I love you.” He turned and put his hand on Heath’s shoulder. “You did a fine job. This is where it starts, son. Clear path. Bright sun.”
His own emotions made speech nigh impossible, so Heath simply nodded.
*****
Two mornings later, Heath woke to a room filled with bright sun. The morning was already aging, but it was hard to be an early riser when you’d last closed your eyes in the new dawn light.
He lay facing the center of the bed, on their brand-new mattress. Gabe faced him, sound asleep, her nursing bra still open and a little wet. Matthew lay in the crook of her arm, swaddled snuggly in a light blanket, staring up at the ceiling. His little body struggled against the bind of the swaddle. Pretty soon, he’d be complaining. At two days old, their son already had a lot of opinions about the world.
Heath reached out and brushed his son’s nose with the tip of a finger. “Hey, little man,” he murmured, low enough not to wake Gabe. “Let’s let your mama sleep.”
Easing his hands under Matthew’s body, he cradled him to his bare chest and slipped carefully from the bed. Gabe didn’t move at all; she was exhausted.
He closed the bedroom door behind them and carried Matthew into the living room. Their house was already taken over by baby gear. The one room in the house that didn’t look like a baby superstore was the nursery.
So far, except to run in for supplies or fresh clothes, the room, decorated so lovingly, with Matthew’s name spelled out in patchwork letters over the new crib, had been unused. Their son stayed with them—in their bed, in the funky sling Gabe had figured out immediately and Heath had no idea yet how to use, in his little car seat, in their arms.
Heath stood in the middle of the chaotic living room and, in the vivid light of Matthew’s first morning at home, saw more than all the baby stuff. He saw Gabe—her laptop sitting on a table at the side of the sofa, a couple of school books on top of it. Some big floor pillows that she’d made over at Emma’s place, because she preferred to sit on the floor when she watched television. A photo from their wedding, framed and sitting on the bookcase. The new storage unit she’d bought and installed near the front door, for boots and bags and coats and hats. Her boots and coats on that unit. The hat he’d given her as his first gift. Her mug, left out from the tea he’d made her the night before.
To make room for the big storage unit, his show saddle and tool chest had been moved from the living room to the small third bedroom, which was now his office. He’d offered to make it hers, for studying, but she hated to sit at a desk.
She’d moved in, really moved in, a long time ago. Though he’d felt secure in their life since their talk in Utah, until this moment, amidst the casual chaos of their new family, he hadn’t realized how very deep her roots had gone. She was a Cahill, through and through.
In his arms, Matthew made the first grunt that would, in time, become a wail. “Shh, shh, shh.” Gabe hadn’t figured out how to nurse and pump both yet, and her milk hadn’t come fully in yet, anyway, so he couldn’t do anything to let her sleep except try to keep their boy distracted as long as possible.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 32