She should be working with the mustangs. She should be checking on Billy in the cook’s cabin. She should be with Rose and her father, helping clean up after supper.
Instead, she’d shouldered her guitar and hiked up onto the ridge behind the ranch house, to the ledge where the mountain lion used to bask in the afternoon sun, not far from the secret cave where ancient petroglyphs traced mysterious figures across smoke-darkened walls. This had always been her special place to hide out from the world.
She hadn’t unpacked her guitar from the trunk of the car since she’d arrived back in Wyoming, and the case was covered with road dust. She opened it and her guitar lay there like King Arthur’s sword embedded in stone. Would it still feel the same in her hands? Would she still be able to make her magic, write her songs and give music to the lyrics?
She drew a deep breath and closed the guitar case. She didn’t dare touch it. Didn’t dare try. Didn’t want to know if everything inside of her had died the day she’d walked away from Travis.
Instead, she withdrew the envelope from her jacket pocket. Unfolded it slowly and forced herself to look at the handwriting on the face of it. The sun was sinking below Wolf Butte to the west. The sky was aglow with all the colors of a Rocky Mountain sunset and the scenery surrounding her was heart wrenchingly beautiful, but Shannon could only stare down at the envelope in her hand and wonder if she had the courage to open it.
Travis had played this game many times in the past two years. As soon as he realized he’d crossed the line, he’d beg, make promises that he was going to change, give up the drugs and the alcohol, go into rehab...and he would. He would. He’d be good for a while. Really good. But then, invariably, he’d slide back into the abyss. He’d go out drinking with “the boys” after a gig and their lives would become hellish again.
But that was then. Shannon realized things were different now. She and Travis were finally divorced. Their marriage was really and truly over. Travis had told Billy this envelope held money for her and Rose. A lot of money from the sale of their big, fancy mansion. But she wondered at his true motivation. Had it been so he could start over afresh, without all the memories of their life together surrounding him, same as she was doing? Or was this just another ploy to try to win her back?
The envelope scared her. Somewhere deep down inside of herself, she feared her own weakness. She feared he’d be able to talk her into coming back, because he’d done it before. He knew she was weak and played on her sympathies. He knew he held that awful power over her. But that was then. Things were different now.
She was stronger now.
Shannon blew out her breath, lifted her eyes to the horizon, the rugged wall of mountains to the west. The brilliant colors of the sunset. The sun was gone but the colors remained, bands of bright gold, violet and red. Darkness would come quickly. The days were getting shorter. Where would she be when the snows came? Here, in this valley, with her father and Rose and Billy? Where would she be?
An overhead movement caught her eye. A bald eagle soared above her, banking in big circles, descending gradually. The colors of sunset reflected brightly off its white head and tail as it banked to the east, then vanished until it circled again. Shannon felt her breath catch as the eagle dropped lower and lower over where she sat, mesmerized by a bird with a wingspread wider than a man was tall.
Was this eagle a sign from her mother? A spirit animal sent to give her the strength she needed to decide her own future? She watched until the majestic raptor abruptly broke from the downward spiral and winged purposefully toward Wolf Butte, then disappeared into the sunset.
Shannon watched until the eagle had vanished from her sight. A curious calm flooded through her and she drew a deep, steadying breath. She couldn’t give up singing. She’d thought she could, but today at the Grange Hall, when she climbed up on the bandstand, she’d realized it was still a huge part of her life, a huge part of who she was.
She had to sing. She needed to be up on that stage in front of a big crowd of people. She wanted to feel the way she used to feel after a concert, with the crash of applause still ringing in her ears, the whistles still echoing, the music still lifting her onto a high so incredible nothing compared to it. She couldn’t give that up. Why did she have to?
She could sing without Travis. They’d put on an incredible show together but she could fly solo, and so could he. She could do this. She could raise her daughter and live a grounded, normal life. She could write the songs and sing them. Maybe not on the scale she used to, but she could do it. She was going to make this work. She was never going back to Travis, no matter what he said or did. No matter what kind of power he had held over her in the past, things were different now. She was free of him. And it felt good. It felt great.
Shannon looked down at the envelope. Her hands were no longer trembling. She was no longer afraid. She was stronger now. She slid a fingernail under the flap and pried it open. Drew out the Wells Fargo bank check. Read her name on it, printed mechanically in official Wells Fargo ink. Shannon McTavish. Saw the amount in print, the words jumping out at her, then registered the endless number of zeroes. Stared as if the check was some sort of illusion that would vanish the moment she blinked. She drew a slow breath, in and out, but was still breathless.
She tucked the check back into the envelope, slid the envelope inside her jacket pocket and zipped it carefully shut. She’d told Billy that she didn’t want anything from Travis, but she’d changed her mind. She’d worked hard for that money. This was Rose’s legacy, too. She thought about her father’s shoddy ranch house and how it hadn’t been updated in decades. She thought about the worn-out furniture, the 1950s kitchen appliances, the roof that needed shingling, the fences that needed mending, the ranch road that needed grading, the farm machinery that needed replacing. She remembered her mother sticking wish lists on the refrigerator with magnets. Photos of beautiful kitchens. Renovated rooms. All the things she wanted but knew she’d never have.
With this money, Shannon had the power to change things now. She had the power to give Rose a good future, a good education. From this day on, even if she and Rose didn’t stick around, life was going to be a little different on the McTavish ranch. She only wished her mother was still alive to see her dreams turned into reality.
Shannon opened her guitar case and lifted her guitar out of it for the first time since leaving Nashville. She tuned it, tucked into it, played a few chords. Then a few more. And before too long, the music and the words found each other, and sitting in her special place, she created a new song that seemed to come out of nowhere, as if by magic, the same way the eagle had. She hadn’t lost her touch. Things were different now, but that much hadn’t changed. Her life as a singer and songwriter wasn’t over.
Relief and joy and power flooded through her. She looked out at the mountains, at the beauty that surrounded her, and realized that her life was really just beginning.
* * *
BILLY SAT OUTSIDE the cook’s cabin on a big old stump he used for splitting firewood. Darkness was gathering in the hollows, the sky was a deepening violet color and the mustangs were pacing up in the corral, walking around the perimeter over and over, as if they could walk themselves back to their wild haunts. He heard a nighthawk and wished he had a shot of whiskey to dull the pain of breathing. Tomorrow would be better, but right now he felt just like he’d been kicked and beaten senseless. His own fault, too. He deserved every ounce of the pain.
He wondered where Shannon had gone when she walked up the ranch road, guitar case in hand, head ducked, deep in thought. Was she still planning on leaving?
He couldn’t blame her. Bear Paw had been torn apart by the energy company. Friends and family members no longer spoke to each other over the contentious project. The town she remembered and had come back home to was no more. All that remained for her was an old, run-down ranch on the edge of nowhere, and a man from her past wh
o’d stolen her dream of building a house beside the creek where she could raise her daughter.
Worst of all, he’d ruined her solo singing debut by dragging her away from the Grange Hall today. She was angry with him and had every right to be. She’d take Rose and go west, and maybe, just maybe, if she got lucky, she’d find what she was looking for.
When Shannon came back to Bear Paw, her unexpected arrival had been like a ray of bright sunshine on a cloudy day, a windfall that filled the hollow space inside him, a space so big that not even owning his own piece of land and building his house on it had filled it.
He’d had nothing to offer her in high school, and realistically, he had nothing to offer her now, but it didn’t stop him from hoping she’d stick around. And it didn’t stop him from imagining what it might be like if she one day shared the feelings he had for her. It didn’t stop him from wondering what their kids might look like and thinking about how Rose would love having a brother or a sister to grow up with.
It didn’t stop him from remembering that one sizzling kiss they’d shared in high school.
Footsteps came from behind the tractor shed and Shannon walked into view, still deep in thought, holding her guitar case in one hand and never glancing in his direction. She climbed the porch steps of the house and disappeared inside. The screen door banged shut behind her. He could hear father and daughter conversing in the kitchen. They talked for a few minutes. Was she telling McTavish she was leaving in the morning? That would wreck him. Shannon might never believe it, but McTavish enjoyed having his daughter and granddaughter around.
Billy sat until the voices in the kitchen were silent and the darkness had thickened until the horses in the corral were just moving shadows without form. He was about to push to his feet and go inside the cook’s cabin when the screen door opened again, and Shannon descended the porch steps. She walked straight over to where he sat, carrying a bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other.
“Did you take that pain pill like the doctor ordered?” she asked him.
“Didn’t need it,” he replied.
“Figured you’d say as much. I bought a bottle of hooch in that big grocery store. Thought you might like a snort to take the edge off.”
Shannon looked around, spotted another stump and handed him the bottle and glasses, struggling to drag the stump over next to his.
Billy glanced at the label on the bottle. Ten-year-old Talisker. No ordinary bottle of hooch. But then, Shannon was no ordinary gal. She retrieved the bottle, poured him a generous shot, did the same for herself, then nested the bottle between their two stumps and touched the rim of her glass to his. “Cheers,” she said, and with a lift of her arm and toss of her head, she downed the entire shot in one big swallow.
For a moment she sat paralyzed as the whiskey burned its way into her stomach. Her eyes watered and she blinked back the tears. Then she gasped, coughed, picked up the bottle and poured herself another slug.
“I’m going to call Kitty Sayres tomorrow and see if she knows anyone who’ll help us with these mustangs,” she said in a whiskey-seared voice, setting the bottle between them again.
Billy tasted the Talisker. It stung his bruised and broken mouth but was as smooth as honey going down. “No need. I’ll be on my feet again by then.”
“You’ll do exactly what the doctor told you to do, Billy Mac. Bed rest for one week.” She shook her head with a sigh. “Henry Crow Dog sure picked a mighty poor time to ride off into the sunset.”
“Henry helped out while he was here. Earned his keep.”
“Suddenly he’s your favorite grandfather?”
“He helped with the horses. We wouldn’t be nearly so far along if he hadn’t pitched in. He has his faults and they’re mighty big ones in my world, but nothing’s black-and-white.”
Shannon took a more cautious sip from her glass and leaned back against the cook’s cabin. “I guess you’re right about that,” she said. “And he did give Daddy the photos that proved he didn’t pull down Patriot Energy’s tower.”
Billy gave her a sharp look. “What photos? Who took them?”
“Every spring the tribe holds a ceremony up on Wolfe Butte to commemorate a battle that was fought there.”
Billy nodded slowly. “When I was young I went to a couple of those ceremonies.”
“This past spring, when they had their ceremony, they took photos.”
“That’s not something my people do.”
“Well, somebody did. They’re date-stamped this past May, and all three photos show the tower collapsed and crumpled in the background. The subject of the photos wasn’t the tower, it was a pile of stones on top of the butte.”
“I don’t remember a cairn up there, but I haven’t been up to the butte in over ten years. Maybe the elders built something to honor the fallen warriors. But why would Henry Crow Dog give those photos to McTavish?”
Shannon shook her head. “Daddy didn’t say and I didn’t ask, but I’m sure glad he did. They’ll clear my father of any wrongdoing yesterday. So I guess I owe your favorite grandfather a big thank-you. And you’re right, nothing’s black-and-white, and none of us is perfect. I’ve screwed up so many times I’ve lost count. Made some really bad choices. But things are going to change now, things are going to be different.”
Billy took another small swallow. The liquor stung his mouth again but the slow burn of whiskey in his belly eased the pain.
“I have to sing again,” Shannon said. “Writing songs and singing them is who I am and I can’t walk away from it. I thought I could but I can’t, so I’m going to do things different this time. I called my agent. He says the band’ll back me up on my next solo gig. That’s nice of ’em. I love those guys. My agent wants to get me back to Nashville for my solo debut. Wants me to cut my first single and get back out there in front of God and country before everyone forgets who I am. He’s right, but I’m going to do it my way.”
“How so?”
Shannon sighed. “I haven’t figured it out yet. But Rose doesn’t want to go back to Nashville. She wants to stay here.”
“What do you want?”
The silence stretched out. Shannon finished off her second shot of whiskey. Drew her breath in and held it for a long moment before releasing it with a rush.
“I want it all, Billy. Is that so bad? I want to sing. I want to write and record songs. I want my child to grow up on the ranch. I want a successful career and I want to raise my daughter right.”
She turned her head to look at him. “I opened the envelope from Travis. I’m going to use the money to set up a trust fund for Rose and fix this place up the way my mother always wanted it to be. Daddy won’t care, he’d be happy living in a tent or teepee, but it’ll be my tribute to her. After that? I’ll figure out my career and how I can make it work without moving back to Nashville.
“But right now I’m just going to sit here and drink whiskey.” She snatched the bottle out of his hand and poured herself another shot. “It’s not bad stuff if you can get past the awful taste and the terrible burn.” She took a swallow of her third shot and extended the bottle to him. “So tell me, Billy, what do you want out of life?”
Billy took the offered bottle and rested it on his knee. He didn’t have to consider his reply for long. “I used to think all I wanted to be was a rodeo star. The best bronc rider in the West. Back in high school I had it all figured out. I was on my way to the big time. I had all the pretty girls, too, except for one, but she was way out of my league. Shannon McTavish wasn’t interested in some half-breed Indian off the rez.”
“I told you that wasn’t the reason,” Shannon said. “You said it yourself, you had all the girls, and I didn’t want to be your next conquest. But I enjoyed having you as my lab partner.” She shot him a sidelong glance and a slow grin. “Chemistry class was something I really looked forward to.”
&nb
sp; Billy shook his head. “You broke my heart when you ran off with Travis. All my dreams were dashed, so I gave up on my rodeo career and joined the Marines.”
“You can’t lay that at my feet, Billy Mac,” Shannon protested. “You walked your own path. We both did, and we both paid for it in our own ways.”
“It was a rough one for both of us.” Billy poured himself another shot of Talisker. “I came back a changed man, changed in all the wrong ways. Someone who could barely ride a horse or cope with day-to-day life. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be alive. Then I ran into your father when I was stocking shelves at Willard’s, and we got to talking. He needed some money in a hurry to pay his back taxes, I needed a place to call my own. That was my first big break, buying that piece of land.
“But I tell you what, Shannon, working with these mustangs is what really turned me around. For the first time in forever, I wake up and I’m glad to be alive. And that got me to thinking about all the soldiers who get mustered out with their heads all messed up like mine was. I want to start a mustang camp for combat veterans. I’d teach them how to work with these wild horses and gentle them for the adoption program. With your father’s help, I think we could turn a lot of veterans with PTSD around.”
“That’s a good idea,” Shannon said, nodding thoughtfully. “I like it.”
“And there’s something else I really want.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I want you to stay. I’m hoping you can find a way to have your career and raise your daughter right here and be happy. I’ll sell you that piece of land back, if you want it. You can finish building the house however which way you want, or tear it down and start over. Rose can catch the bus right where you used to wait for it. You can have your dream back again, Shannon. It still belongs to you. You can go to Nashville and cut your records and put on your concerts—just so long as you always come back home. That’s what I want.”
A Family For Rose Page 15