The Lonesome Young

by Lucy Connors

  “There she is!”

  The horse was standing so close to the edge that any misstep would cause her to fall over, and her reins were tangled tightly in a bush. I started forward, but Victoria grabbed my arm.

  “No. She’s scared, and she doesn’t know you. I’ll do it. You look for Buddy.” She walked forward, calling out to the horse, which recognized her and started to whinny in earnest.

  While I tried to keep one eye on Victoria in case the horse fell and took her over with it, I scanned the area for Buddy. A dark lump next to the creek below looked oddly bent but suspiciously boy-shaped and, while I stared at it, it moved.

  I shouted down to him. “Buddy?”

  “Help!”

  I took off, scrambling down the side of the ravine, and when I got to Buddy I saw why his shape had seemed odd. His leg was clearly broken, and it was tangled up in a coil of weeds, as if he’d fallen into the creek and then climbed back out.

  “Hi, Buddy, I’m Mickey,” I said, using the same tone of voice Victoria had used to calm the horse. “I’m going to help you. Your sister Victoria is here, too, okay?”

  “Okay, but it really hurts,” he said, whimpering. “I tried to be brave, but it’s so dark and wet, and it hurts really, really bad. It really hurts.”

  He was repeating himself, and I tried to figure out whether that was from shock or just normal for a scared little boy in pain, but then I realized it didn’t matter. We needed to get him out of there. I yanked my jacket off—the inside was still dry and held some warmth from my body—and wrapped it around him.

  “Call my pa to get the search and rescue helicopter,” I shouted up at Victoria, who’d evidently secured the horse, and was starting down the ravine. “Cell reception won’t work down here.”

  She must have heard me, because she stopped and made the call. Seconds later, she began scrambling toward us again, slipping and sliding on the muddy slope. She pushed me out of her way and ran to Buddy.

  “Where were you? I was so scared,” he said accusingly, and she wrapped her arms around him and held tight.

  “I’m here now, shh, it’s okay, Buddy,” she said over and over, and I started wondering if she was going into shock, too.

  We’d been walking around in the rain for hours, after all, and the rain jacket over her dress and boots wasn’t nearly enough.

  “Did you reach my pa?”

  She nodded. “I called Gus at the barn, too. He called everyone in from the search, and your father already had a helicopter in the air. It’s on the way to take Buddy out of here and to the hospital. Some of the staff who were in on the search are on their way out here on the other three-wheelers. When they get here you should go, so you can see a doctor, too. We’re fine now.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “I should go? I’m not leaving you alone.”

  She raised her head, and I could see the pain and exhaustion stamped in her face. “You did it before. Remember, when you pushed my father? I’m glad you’re alive, Mickey, and not seriously injured from our fall, but my brother is hurt, because of us.”

  My head, which had been throbbing like a thousand bass drums going off at once since I’d hit that rock, felt like it was going to explode, and I suddenly didn’t know how to be calm anymore.

  “Your father looked like he was going to hit my mother,” I shouted, clenching my hands into fists so I didn’t rip my hair out in frustration. “I didn’t abandon you. I went to stop a situation, and I came right back.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she shouted back. “You pushed my dad, even knowing that doing it would mean the end to any chance between us. He might send you to jail, you idiot! And then what about your future?”

  A noise alerted me just before Pete, the Whitfield ranch foreman, punched me in the same side of the head that had hit the rock. I fell hard, hitting the ground right next to Victoria, who put one hand on my cheek and then stared up at Pete.

  “What are you doing? He might already have a concussion, and now you hit him? Has everybody in the world gone insane?”

  “He was yelling, and I was worried he would attack you,” Pete said, shaking out his hand like it hurt.

  Good. I hoped he’d broken some bones. My damn head certainly felt broken.

  “So what? I was yelling at him, too. Mickey would never hurt me. You all can’t go around hitting people,” she shouted, and I was glad not to be on the receiving end of it this time.

  The roar of the helicopter finally sounded, and I pulled myself up off the ground to a sitting position and put my arm around Victoria’s shoulders, hoping she’d allow it.

  “Sorry,” Pete muttered.

  I started to nod, but stopped when the motion split my head and made me feel like I was going to puke. “No problem. But the kid’s leg is stuck in those weeds. Do you have a knife?”

  Pete pulled a knife from the sheath at his belt, and as he turned it, the moonlight glinted off the silver blade. He leaned down across me, toward Buddy, and then his entire body jerked almost simultaneously with the sound of a loud crack.

  Victoria flinched. Buddy started to cry. I looked around for the source of the sound, hoping against hope that it hadn’t been what I’d thought, but I knew better.

  That had been a pistol.

  Then Pete stumbled back, clutching his shoulder, and even in the rainy night we could see clearly enough the dark, spreading stain pouring out from between and around his fingers.

  “Shot me,” he said almost wonderingly, and then he fell.

  I looked up. There was Ethan, kneeling at the top of the other side of the ravine, pointing his gun at us.

  Victoria screamed, and I realized she’d seen him, too.

  • • •

  The confusion of lights and sounds; the urgent pace of medical personnel as they realized they had two patients, one of them critical; the arrival of what seemed like dozens of people all at once—I watched every bit of it through a hazy filter, as if from a distance. I realized that, ironically enough, I was finally the one in shock. The chopper lifted Pete and Buddy out of the ravine, and I stood back up, swaying as the world tilted around me. Victoria may have been right about that concussion; maybe not at first, but it certainly felt like I had one now after Pete hit me with that right hook to my head.

  Pete. Ethan.

  People were helping me and Victoria back up the side of the ravine, everyone chattering on about the shooting, and still I hadn’t said a single word, and neither had she. At least not to me. Once we were back on solid ground, she pushed past everyone trying to help her and headed for her horse.

  “I’m riding Heather’s Angel back to the barn. Somebody take Mickey. He probably has a concussion, and he needs to see a doctor,” she said, swinging up on the horse’s bare back.

  “Victoria,” I called out, not sure exactly what I wanted—needed—to say to her, but it didn’t matter anyway, because she was in no mood to listen. She started to turn the horse back toward the ranch, and I ran over to her.

  “Victoria,” I said again, touching her leg as if to stop her, but she looked down at me with flat eyes in a hard face.

  “No,” she said in a low voice. No one else could hear us. “I don’t want to listen to anything you have to say. I saw him. Ethan shot Pete. And Buddy never would have been hurt, or Melinda taken, if you and I had stayed away from each other. I never want to see you again.”

  Chapter 39

  Victoria

  Emotional torment played games with me all night. Cruel, evil games in which I was the pawn, and pain, guilt, anger, and emptiness were my adversaries and tormentors. It didn’t let me sleep, didn’t let me eat, almost didn’t let me breathe while we paced the floors and stared at our phones, willing them to ring.

  Gran finally fell asleep on the couch at around three in the morning, which was when Melinda managed to rouse herself from her
drunken or drug-addled state. I couldn’t talk to her—I couldn’t even look at her—so I didn’t even try. This might be on me, but she owned her share of the blame, too. Anger at my sister warred in my mind with guilt over blaming her for something her addiction drove her to do.

  Anger kept winning out.

  Anna Mae, Ethan, even Mickey’s dad, who seemed pretty useless as a sheriff—I hated them all. But most of all, I hated myself for allowing my heart to get tangled up with someone who would shove my dad—someone who was related to a . . . a . . . murderer.

  But Dad scared his mom into falling and hurting herself, and you didn’t really see that shooter’s face, a little voice in my head tried to insist. I ignored it. After all, Dad didn’t lay a finger on Mickey’s mom, so the retaliation was way overdone, and Ethan—I couldn’t even think about him right now.

  Mickey hurts people. He told you about those guys he put in the hospital, and you saw the way he went after Sam Oliver in the cafeteria. What makes you think you’ll be safe?

  “Shut. Up,” I muttered to the stupid voice, but it gleefully went on and on, pointing out all the reasons I was a fool for having even thought about getting more involved with Mickey.

  I spent the next two hours alternately trying to sleep and trying not to cry, and when the phone finally rang at five-thirty, I pounced on it. “Mom?”

  “They’re going to be fine, Victoria,” my mother said. “Honey, they’re both going to be fine.”

  My knees buckled with relief, and I fell onto the couch. A gasp alerted me to Melinda’s entrance, and as I watched, the glass of water she’d been holding tumbled down out of her hand and she cried out.

  I instantly realized she’d interpreted my reaction totally wrong. “No, Melinda! They’re okay. Mom says they’re both going to be fine.”

  Melinda fell to the floor and started to cry, but for once I wouldn’t be the one comforting her.

  “Tell me everything, Mom.”

  My mother took a long, deep breath. “They’re very efficient here, of course. You know your father plays golf with the administrator, and—”

  “I don’t care about the good old boys network right now,” I said impatiently. “Tell me about Buddy and Pete.”

  Her voice softened. “It’s just been so crazy here—well. Buddy’s leg is broken, but it’s a clean fracture, and they expect him to heal quickly and completely and be playing ball just fine by spring.”

  “That’s so great. Oh, wow, that’s so great,” I said, clutching the phone tight like a lifeline. “And Pete?”

  “His injury was serious. They had to rush him into surgery, and apparently it was rough going, but the EMTs on the helicopter did exactly the right thing, and the surgeons here were spectacular. It all came together in the perfect confluence of medical excellence.”

  “He’s going to be fine?”

  “He’s going to be fine,” Mom confirmed, and the relief and joy in her voice reminded me of the mother I’d had when I’d been Buddy’s age or a little younger. The one who’d bandaged up my hurts and made owies better with kisses. It had been a very long time since I’d heard from that side of my mother.

  “I love you, Mom,” I said impulsively. After all, Whitfields didn’t do emotion, she always told me.

  “I love you, too, honey,” she said in almost a whisper.

  Apparently it was a night for miracles.

  Chapter 40

  Mickey

  Five a.m. at my house. Nobody could sleep, but at least we were all clean and dry for the first time all night. I was slumped on the couch, and Pa sprawled in his recliner. Mom handed me a mug of coffee and then did something she hadn’t done in a few years—she leaned over and kissed the top of my head.

  “Thanks for the coffee. Been a while since you kissed my head,” I said, trying to smile at her.

  “I usually can’t reach it, since you grew taller than me when you were twelve and got that big growth spurt,” she said. “It’s hard to be five-four in a house full of six-foot-tall men.”

  “Where’s Ethan?” I finally asked the question that had been squatting in the middle of the room like an unwanted guest.

  “Nobody can find him,” Pa said, staring at his phone. “He was never there.”

  I put the coffee cup down so I didn’t throw it at him. “You can’t cover this one up, Pa. Victoria saw him, too.”

  He glared at me through reddened eyes. “Victoria was tired and distraught over her brother and her employee. She did not see Ethan from clear across the ravine, on a dark, rainy night.”

  “Maybe she didn’t. But I did. He’s not getting away with this one.”

  “You don’t understand. If he goes away for this, he’ll be gone for years. A lot of hard time,” Pa said. “There won’t be anything left of your brother if and when he gets back from that.”

  “What’s left of him now?”

  I stomped up the stairs, figuring I’d at least get a little sleep, because sitting around waiting for news was driving me insane. After the EMTs at the barn checked me out—no concussion—I’d managed to retrieve the gun, unnoticed in the chaos of people milling about. Dad had driven me home and told me that they’d Life-Flighted Pete and Buddy to Louisville, and we had put calls in to find out any news, but nobody was saying anything except that Pete was in surgery.

  When I reached my room, I tried to call Victoria, and the call went straight to voice mail again. Same with the next five times in five minutes.

  On the sixth, she picked up.

  “How are they?” I got the question out before she could start shouting or, worse, tell me to go to hell.

  Silence.

  “Victoria, please, I’m going crazy here. At least tell me they’re going to be okay—that you’re going to be okay.”

  More silence as my consciousness telescoped down into a pinpoint of focus that centered on the sound of her breathing. Finally, she sighed.

  “Buddy’s going to be fine. Simple fracture. He has a cast but didn’t have to have any pins or anything. They’re keeping him there for the weekend in an excess of caution and probably because my dad is being an ass,” she finally said.

  “That’s terrific! I’m so glad—”

  “Pete just got out of surgery.”

  Shit.

  “Do you know anything—progress, or?”

  “They expect him to pull through,” she said, and I wanted to start cheering.

  “Thank God,” I said fervently.

  “If he’d died, your brother would be a murderer.” Her voice was precise, and so very icy. “I will testify against him, Mickey, no matter what you say, so if this is about—”

  “So will I.”

  Silence.

  Finally, I heard her breathe in a deep, shuddery breath. “I thought—”

  “You thought I was calling you to get you to protect Ethan? Fuck him,” I said viciously. “I’m calling because I’m so worried about you I think my scalp is going to fly off my skull. I’m calling you because I want to be with you, and hold you, and comfort you.”

  “Oh, Mickey,” she whispered, and her voice held so much sadness that I knew she’d made up her mind against me. Against us.

  “Victoria, if you still want me to stay away from you, I will. But I need you to know something first. I need to tell you that I’m falling in love with you.”

  She inhaled sharply, and then the phone went dead.

  I guess that gave me my answer.

  I went to bed and stared at the ceiling for the next three hours, and then I went outside and cleaned the hell out of the garage. Luckily for Jeb, he was gone, because if I’d found him there, I might very well have let loose of the anger and loss churning around in my gut and tried to beat some sense into his sorry ass.

  Chapter 41

  Victoria

  Funny the differenc
e a weekend made. I was actually glad to go back to school after two solid days of Melinda’s hysteria, Gran’s migraines, my own aching anxiety and guilt, and my parents’ long-distance interference and vague reports.

  Only Heather’s Angel and Buddy hadn’t been angry with me. I’d spoken to my little brother on the phone, and he’d been chattering happily about the comic books one of the nurses had brought for him. Angel was recuperating from her adventure, immensely enjoying the extra attention she was getting from everyone.

  And Mickey—Mickey.

  I’d picked up my phone to call him a hundred times after he’d told me that he was falling in love with me.

  Falling in love with me.

  I hadn’t been able to admit I felt the same way—that I’d maybe passed “falling” and gone straight to “already fallen”—because it was wrong. I’d told him I never wanted to see him again, and I meant it.

  We were cursed. Every time we were together, terrible things happened. How could that ever be worth it? And the violence simmering inside him, just under the surface—I didn’t know how to deal with it, and he certainly didn’t know how to control it. What if he could never learn how to control it? What if something set him off around Buddy? Was I willing to risk everything for what might only be a crush?

  I dismissed that thought immediately. No. Whatever my feelings for Mickey, they went way, way beyond a crush. I’d never felt like this before—might never feel this way again. So I could refuse to see him, but I couldn’t lie to myself about what it would cost me to do it.

  Mom had talked Dad out of pressing charges against anybody for the fiasco at Anna Mae’s—not that we could really figure out who to blame for what—but she’d told me he’d been on the phone to an old college frat buddy who’d joined the FBI. So I couldn’t stop worrying.

  I wandered school in a daze all Monday morning, ignoring the speculative stares and whispers, until Denise finally caught up to me in the hallway just before lunch.