Palomino

by Danielle Steel

  “Hi, Josh. Happy New Year.”

  He stood there, saying nothing, and she wondered what was wrong. He looked as though he had been crying. “You okay?” He shook his head and walked slowly into the room. “Come and sit down.” She had thought that he had come to offer her solace and now she knew that he was in trouble. “What is it?” She eyed him, her own brow furrowed with worry, and he gazed at her as he fell heavily into a chair and then dropped his head into his hands.

  “The kids. Jeff and Mary Jo. They went out to some party last night”—he stopped and swallowed hard—“and they got drunk as skunks, and then drove home.” Sam felt her heart begin to race. She was afraid to ask the next question but he answered it for her. He looked up with an air of great pain and she saw two great big tears creep down his face. “They ran into a tree and bounced off into a ravine … Mary Jo broke both her arms and legs, and tore up her face pretty bad … Jeff's dead.” Sam closed her eyes and reached for his hand, thinking of the boy who had held her only the night before and wondering if she had asked him to stay with her after all, that none of it would ever have happened. But it would have been wrong for her to seduce a boy of twenty-four, she told herself as she thought back over the night before. Wrong? She questioned herself. Wrong? Was it better for him to be dead?

  “Oh, God … “She opened her eyes and looked at Josh, and then she reached out and held him. “Will Mary Jo be okay, Josh?” He nodded and then sobbed into Sam's arms.

  “But I loved that boy too.” He had only been with them for a year but it felt like half a lifetime, and now she understood the references he'd had from other ranchers, still wanting him to come back.

  “Does he have folks we should call?”

  “I don't know.” He blew his nose on a red handkerchief from his pocket and then replaced it with a sigh. “I guess we should go through his things. I know his mom was dead, because he said something about it once or twice, but I don't know if he has sisters or brothers or a dad. He never talked about his life much, just about the kids here, and you, and how happy he was around the kids and the horses.”

  Sam closed her eyes again and took a deep breath. “We'd better go through his stuff. Where is he now?”

  Josh sighed and stood up. “I told them to keep him at the hospital, and we'd call and tell them what to do. If his folks are somewhere else, they may want him sent back.”

  “I just hope we find something in his things that tells us who they are. What do we do if he doesn't have anything like that, Josh?” This was a new problem for her.

  “Bury him with Bill and Miss Caro, I guess, or in town.”

  “We can bury him here.” He was one of her people now, and he had loved the ranch. It was mad to be talking of burying that boy though, only a few hours before he had been standing in her bedroom doorway, and sitting on a corner of her bed, and holding her in his arms. She forced the memories from her mind, reached for her own jacket on a low peg near the front door, and turned her wheelchair slowly out the door.

  Josh looked at the broken window in surprise then and turned to Sam. “What happened?”

  “Jeff. He wanted to be sure I was okay last night. He came to see me before they went out.”

  “I had a feeling he'd do that, Sam. He looked at this house for two days and I knew all he could think about was you.” Sam nodded and said nothing more until they reached his cabin. For her it was bumpy going, because the paths to the men's cabins didn't need the smoothly paved walks that were everywhere else to allow for the wheelchairs. But Josh pushed her over the bumps and ruts and eased her wheelchair into the comfortable little cabin. She looked around at the unmade bed and moderate chaos that the boy had left, and felt that if they looked hard enough, they would find him. Maybe he would come staggering out of the bathroom with a grin, or poke his head out of the covers, or come wandering in singing a song.… He couldn't be dead … not Jeff… not that young boy. Josh looked at her with his own look of pain and sat down at the small maple desk and began to pull out papers. There were photographs and letters from friends, souvenirs from old jobs, pictures of girls, programs from rodeos, and everything except what they needed to find now.

  Finally Josh came up with something that looked like a little leather billfold and in it he found a card with Jeff's social security number on it, some insurance papers, a couple of lottery tickets, and a slip of paper. On the paper it said, “In case I get hurt, please contact my father: Tate Jordan, Grady Ranch,” and there was a post-office-box number in Montana.

  As Josh looked at it his mouth dropped open and he stared, and then suddenly he remembered… the Bar Three … why hadn't he thought to ask? Sure, Tate had had a boy over there. He looked up at Sam in disbelief and she frowned at him.

  “What is it?”

  There was nothing he could say to her now. He only handed her the slip of paper and walked slowly outside for a breath of air.

  Sam stared at the piece of paper for almost half an hour, trying to decide what to do and feeling her heart pound in her chest while she thought of it. She had almost made love to Tate's son the night before—what an insane quirk of fate. And now because she hadn't, he was dead, and she had to call his father. But she knew that even if they had made love, he might have gone out drinking and could have died then too. Whatever had happened, there was no changing fate. And now she had to face the problem of what to tell Tate Jordan and how. It was ironic that after all the searching she had done, and all the looking and asking and calling, there it was finally, his address, lying in the palm of her hand. She slipped the piece of paper into her jacket pocket and wheeled outside.

  Josh was waiting for her there, leaning against a tree, as the sun rose slowly in the morning sky. “What are you going to do, Sam? You going to call him?” He knew the truth now, and he hoped to hell she would.

  She nodded somberly, “We have to. It's only right.”

  “You gonna do it?”

  “No, you are. You're the foreman.”

  “You scared?”

  “No, if it were anyone else, I'd do it, Josh. But I don't want to talk to him. Not now.” It had been almost exactly three years since he'd run off.

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Maybe so.” She looked at him sadly. “But I'm not going to.”

  “Okay.” But when Josh called, they told him that Tate was in Wyoming for the week, at a cattle auction with some of the other hands. No one seemed to know where they were staying or how to reach them, and it meant that Jeff was going to have to be buried, either at the ranch or in town. They couldn't wait a week.

  The funeral was simple and painful for all. But it was part of nature, part of life, Sam told the children, and Jeff had been their friend, so it was right that they should bury him together. The local minister said a little piece over the casket, and that day the men buried him next to Caro and Bill, and the children rode out over the hills, each of them carrying a bunch of flowers, which they left on the fresh grave. And afterward they all stood around and sang their favorite songs. It seemed a fitting way to bury someone who had been one of them and had been a friend to many. And as they turned their horses back toward the ranch and cantered over the hills, Samantha watched them, with the sun setting to their right, and their horses' hooves beating softly on the ground, and the air cool around them, and she thought that she had never seen anything as lovely in her life. For a moment she felt as though Jeff were riding alongside them, and in silent tribute to their lost friend, the ranch hands had led out Jeff's horse riderless, with his colorful Western saddle. For some reason it brought back her own memories of Timmie, and once more she felt tears sting her eyes.

  And as she wrote to Tate that night from her desk at the big house, it helped her to hold out a hand to him, whatever had passed between them and whatever was no more. She, too, had lost a child now, though he had been hers differently than Jeff had been Tate's, but still she knew the agony of that loss and she felt it again now even more deeply as she w
rote to the man she had sought in vain for so long. She found herself wishing, too, that she knew what Jeff had told him. The one thing she didn't want him to know was what had happened to her. But she decided to twist the truth a little and pray that Jeff had not told at all.

  “Three years doesn't seem like a very long time,” she wrote from her kitchen table after the initial paragraph in which she told him the news as simply as she could. “But what a great deal has changed here. Caroline and Bill are both gone now, resting next to where we laid Jeff today, in the hills, near their cabin. And the children who share the ranch with me rode out with flowers to leave on Jeff's grave as the men led his horse in the sunset. It was a difficult moment, a beautiful day, a sad loss for us all. The children sang the songs he loved best, and somehow, as we rode back, I had the feeling that he was near us. I hope, Tate, that you always feel him near you. He was a wonderful young man and a dear friend to us all, and the waste of such a young life is a source of disbelief and sorrow and immeasurable pain. I can't help but feel though that he accomplished more in his short lifetime than most of us with so many more years, which we spend so much less well.

  “I don't know if you were aware, but Caroline had left the ranch, after her death, for a special purpose. She wished it to be made into a special facility for handicapped children, and Josh and I worked for months afterward to get it ready. It was just before we opened our doors to these special children that Jeff joined us, and he had a gift for this kind of work that truly touched the heart. He did things that would take hours to relate but that should make you proud of him, and I will see now if in the slew of photographs we took in the beginning there are any of Jeff, which I will send you. It will undoubtedly give you a clearer idea of what he did here. The ranch is very different from what you once knew.

  “Certainly none of us had realized that this was Caroline's intention for the ranch, but it has served a worthy purpose, as has your son. I grieve for you in your loss, I wish you well, and we will be sending you all of his things to avoid the need of your making this painful journey. If there is anything that we can do here in this regard, please don't hesitate to contact us. Josh is always here and I'm sure would be happy to help you.” She signed it “Cordially, Samantha Taylor.”

  There was no trace in her letter of what had passed between them, and the day after the funeral, Sam had Josh and some of his boys pack up Jeff's things and ship them air express to Tate. And that night she herself went through the ranch albums as promised and carefully took out each of the photographs of Jeff, searched for the corresponding negatives, and the next day went into town with the whole stack. When the pictures came back a week later, she carefully went over them again to make sure that there were none of her, and there weren't, and then she put them in an envelope, without anything else, and mailed them to Tate. For Sam, that ended the chapter of Tate Jordan. She had found him at last. She had had the choice of reaching out to him, of telling him she still loved him, of even asking him to come. But just as she had sent Jeff away that fateful night, because she knew it would be selfish of her to reach out and wrong for the boy, now she turned away again, for her own reasons, and she congratulated herself afterward for what she had done. She didn't belong in Tate's life anymore, not the way she was. And she wondered as she lay in bed that night if she hadn't been crippled if she would have reached out to Tate now. There was no way to know, of course, because if she hadn't been crippled, she wouldn't have had the ranch, wouldn't have known Jeff, wouldn't have … She drifted off to sleep and was only awakened the next morning by the phone.

  “Sam?” It was Norman Warren and he sounded excited at the other end.

  “Hi.” She was still half asleep. “What's up?” And then she realized that he probably still wanted to discuss the appeal. With Jeff's funeral and the difficult letter to write to Tate, she hadn't gotten back to him after their last conversation, but she had definitely decided that she didn't want to put Timmie through the ordeal. She had spoken to the social worker twice, he had told her that Timmie was having a rough time readjusting and he wanted to come back to her, but that there was nothing anyone could do, and he had told Timmie as much the last time he'd stopped by at their home. She had asked him if his mother was being decent to him this time, but the social worker was vague and said that he assumed she was.

  “Sam, I want you to come to L.A.”

  “I don't want to discuss it, Norman.” She sat up in bed with an unhappy frown. “There's no point. I won't do it.”

  “I understand that. But there are some other matters we have to work out.”

  “Like what?” She sounded suspicious.

  “There are some papers you didn't sign.”

  “Send them to me.”

  “I can't.”

  “Then bring them to me.” She sounded annoyed. She was tired and it was early. And then she realized, as she blinked again, that it was Sunday. “What are you doing, calling me on a Sunday, Norm?”

  “I just didn't have time to get to it last week. Look, I know this is an imposition, Sam, and you're busy too, but couldn't you please do me a favor? Could you come in today?”

  “On Sunday? Why?”

  “Please. Just do it for me. I'd be very grateful.”

  And then suddenly she panicked. “Is something wrong with Timmie? Is he hurt? Did she beat him again?” Sam felt her heart race but he was quick to reassure her.

  “No, no, nothing like that. I'm sure he's fine. I'd just appreciate winding it all up today once and for all.”

  “Norman,” she sighed and looked at the clock. It was seven in the morning. “Personally I think you're demented. But you were a big help, and you tried, so I'll do you a favor, just this once. Do you realize what a long drive that is for us?”

  “Will you bring Josh?”

  “Probably. Where shall we meet you? At your office? And what exactly am I going to sign?”

  “Just some papers that say you don't want to appeal.”

  What could he be up to? “Why the hell can't you mail them?”

  “I'm too cheap to buy a stamp.”

  She laughed at him. “You're crazy.”

  “I know. What time will you be here?”

  “I don't know.” She yawned. “How about after lunch?”

  “Why not get it over with early?”

  “You want me to come in my nightgown, Norman?”

  “That would be nice. Shall we say eleven o'clock?”

  “Oh, shit,” she sighed. “All right. But it better not take too long. I have a lot of things to do here.”

  “Fine.”

  She called up Josh then and told him and he sounded as annoyed as she had. “Why the hell can't he mail you the stuff?”

  “I don't know. But if we have to do it, we might as well go in on a Sunday. I don't have time all week. I'm going to be too busy with the kids.” She was expecting eleven of them from different states.

  “All right. Want to leave in half an hour?”

  “Make it an hour.”

  He did, and she swung herself into the car, wearing jeans and a red sweater, there was a red ribbon in her hair, and she was wearing her favorite red cowboy boots.

  “You look like a valentine, Sam.”

  “I feel more like Halloween. I don't know why the hell we have to go to L.A. on a Sunday morning.” And when they reached Norman's house, he seemed terribly hyper and revved up and insisted they had to go to the courthouse, because he didn't have all the papers he needed there after all.

  “On Sunday? Norman, have you been drinking?” She really was not amused.

  “Just trust me, for God's sake.”

  “If I didn't, I wouldn't be here.” Josh looked at him suspiciously and drove the car to the courthouse on the other side of town from where Norman lived. But when they got there, Norman suddenly looked as though he knew what he was doing. He flashed a pass at the guard downstairs, the guard nodded and let them in. “Seventh floor,” he told the lone elevator man
on duty, and when they got out of the elevator on the seventh floor, they turned left and then right and then left again and then suddenly they were in a brightly lit room with a uniformed matron at a desk and a policeman chatting to her, and suddenly Sam gave a gasp and a shriek and she raced toward him. It was Timmie, sitting in his wheelchair, with his teddy, looking filthy dirty again, but wearing his good suit and a grin.

  He held her tight for a long time and she felt him tremble in her arms, and he said nothing and all she said was “I love you, Timmie … I love you, darling … it's all right…” She didn't know how long she would be able to see him, if it would be a minute or an hour or a day, but she didn't care, she would give him everything she had for as long as she could, for as long as they would let her. “It's all right…”

  “My mom's dead.” He stared at Sam and said the words as though he didn't understand what they meant. And then Sam saw that there were deep circles under his eyes and another bruise on his neck.

  “What happened?” She looked horrified, as much by what she saw as by what he had just said. “What do you mean?” But Norman came toward them then and took Sam's arm gently.

  “She OD'ed, Sam, two days ago. The police found Timmie alone at the house last night.”

  “Was she there?” Her eyes were wide as she held Timmie's hand.

  “No, she was somewhere else. Timmie was alone at the apartment.” And then he took a deep breath and smiled at the woman who had become his friend. “They called the judge last night about Timmie, because they weren't sure if they should put him in juvie—juvenile hall,” he translated for her,”—and he called me. He said he'd meet us here this morning with Timmie's file. Sam, it's going to be all over.” There were tears in Norman's eyes.