by Patti Berg
“Sounds tempting,” he said, wishing right now they were back in bed, learning a few more ways to please each other. “But…I was thinking about taking Beau.”
Crosby closed the corral gate and limped toward Jack. “Beau ain’t here.”
“What do you mean?”
“He left a good hour ago. Long before sunup. I was in the kitchen fixin’ coffee and he told me you’d said he could take the truck.”
Jack shoved a hand through his hair. “I didn’t do any such thing.”
“Well, take it out on him, not me.”
What was the kid thinking? Jack had told him no—but he hadn’t listened. He shot a scowl at Crosby. “Did he tell you where the hell he was going?”
“No, and I didn’t ask.”
Anger mixed with fear washed through Jack as the events of sixteen years ago rushed out of his memory. He’d taken a truck, too. It was the middle of the night, and he’d been told to stay at home—but he hadn’t listened.
He felt Sam’s hand on his arm. “Are you going to look for him?”
“Yeah, for what it’s worth.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think hunting him down and dragging him back to the house, then putting him on restriction for a month will make an irresponsible kid stay put?”
She looked toward the corral, far from his angry eyes. “I suppose not.”
“That’s right, it won’t. As soon as I get my hands on him, he’s packing his things.”
Sam grabbed his arm. “You can’t send him away.”
“I can, and I’m going to.” Jack looked at the disgust in Sam’s eyes. “I don’t want a kid around who can’t obey the rules.”
“All he did was take the truck. Is that any reason to send him away?”
“It’s reason enough.”
“Did your dad send you away every time you got in trouble?”
“No, but this is different.”
“Why, because Beau hasn’t lived here all his life?”
“Drop it, Sam.”
“If you think I’m going to let you off the hook where Beau’s concerned, you’re dead wrong. Someone’s got to talk some sense into you, Jack Remington, and it might as well be me.”
Jack tossed a brown bag full of sandwiches Crosby had concocted into the backseat of the fancy Dodge pickup he’d bought last year but rarely drove. He preferred his old Ford—but there was no telling what part of the country it was in now.
He had every intention of finding it—and his foolhardy son.
He’d called all the ranch hands he could reach, sent two of them out looking for coyotes, and asked every one to keep an eye out for Beau. If they saw him, they were to make him stay put until they got hold of Jack. He’d give the kid a talking to that he wouldn’t soon forget. If his own dad had done that to him a few times, Beth might not have died, and he might have spent the past sixteen years raising his own son.
Now all he could do was worry.
The morning was cold, the ground covered with frost. He thought about black ice on the highway, and a kid driving on roads that weren’t familiar. He pounded his fist against the side of the truck and tried to push away the worry of all that could go wrong.
Behind him he heard light footsteps in the gravel and felt Sam pressing her hand against his back. “Want some coffee?”
He turned, took the cup she offered him, and watched her through the steam. Her hair was braided, and a few curls hung over her brow. Her cheeks were red, making the freckles across her nose and cheekbones almost disappear. The dark circles she’d always had beneath her eyes were gone. Wyoming was good for her.
She was good for him. She couldn’t take away his fears for Beau’s safety, but she could ease them a little, just by being close.
He took a sip of coffee and set the white mug on top of a fence post. “You ready to go?”
She nodded as she slid into the truck. Driving into Sheridan was probably foolish. The boy could have gone toward Cheyenne, or joy-riding on old cattle trails. But he’d exhausted every other possibility he could think of, calling the people he knew in town and on the surrounding ranches. He’d even called the sheriff, but no one had seen Beau or the old familiar Ford. Driving two hours into town seemed his final option.
Jack was just climbing into the truck when Mike turned into the drive and pulled his pickup to a stop next to Jack.
“Mornin’,” Jack said.
Mike tipped his best Sunday hat to Sam, and smiled, then aimed his eyes at Jack. “Heard anything from Beau yet?”
“No. Sam and I are driving into Sheridan. Don’t know if we’ll find him, but I’ll go crazy sitting around here waiting for him to show up.”
“I got a call from Tom Donovan a little while ago. I don’t know if this means anything or not, but he asked me to tell you to keep Beau away from his daughter.”
“What’s Beau done to Tynna?”
“Probably nothing—but Tom’s protective. He told me Tynna and Beau have been on the phone most every night—all night—and Tynna wasn’t around this morning. He’s afraid Beau’s going to get her in trouble.”
Jack closed his eyes, and all he could see was Beth’s father delivering similar words to Jack’s dad. “If you see Tom at church, tell him not to worry. Beau’s leaving—probably tomorrow.”
Mike frowned. “That’s a message I won’t deliver, Jack. You’ve been wanting that kid for sixteen years; don’t let one incident blow the chance you’ve got to finally be together.”
“Save your preaching for church. I’ve already made up my mind.”
Jack jumped into the truck and slammed the door. He rolled down the window. “If you see Beau…” Jack shook his head. “Make him come home with you, okay? He doesn’t have a license, and I don’t feel comfortable with him driving all alone.”
Mike smiled, fingering the cross around his neck. “He’ll be okay, Jack. Put this in God’s hands. Please. And don’t worry.”
Worrying about Beau came easy. He’d been doing it for sixteen years. Even if he did put it in God’s hands, he’d still go crazy until he found his son.
Gunning the pickup’s engine, Jack drove away from the ranch and headed toward the highway. Sam moved to the middle of the seat, fastened her lap belt, and put a comforting hand on his thigh.
They drove in silence for the longest time. It was nearly 8:00 A.M. and sunrise had long ago come and gone. The sky was cloudless, beautiful, the same perfect kind of morning when Beth had died. He couldn’t bear to go through another day like that.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Sam said.
They were too grim to repeat. “You don’t want to know.”
She squeezed his leg. “Mike’s right, Jack. Beau will be okay. I know it.”
“Life doesn’t come with any guarantees.”
“I didn’t think it did.” She stared silently at the road ahead, watching the sights, watching for the truck. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her look toward him again.
“Do you really want to send Beau away?”
He shrugged. “I don’t want him getting Tynna pregnant and screwing up both their lives. I’ve been there before, and I know what trouble it causes.”
“He could get a girl pregnant just as easily in LA.”
“He could, I suppose, but at least in LA he’ll have other distractions besides girls. He could play sports again. Go to a good school.”
“That’s not what he wants, and you know it. He came here because of you. All he wants is your attention—and love.”
Jack laughed. “I’ve been trying like hell to figure out why he’d want to be with me, especially after I abandoned him.”
“Because there’s a special connection between the two of you. Probably the same kind of connection there was between me and my mother.”
“You lived with your mother. There’s a big difference.”
“Is there? My mother was a drug addict with a very expensive habit. She may have had a heart
of gold, but she sold herself for whatever she could get on the street.” She sighed and looked away. “I never knew my dad because Mama didn’t know which one of her clients had gotten her pregnant.”
He could see her biting her lip, and when she turned toward him her eyes were red. “I’ll tell you what real abandonment is, Jack. It’s when your mother is too high on drugs to remember which hooker friend she left you with. It’s when your mother goes out with a rich john and forgets for two or three days that she even has a daughter. Don’t tell me you abandoned Beau, because you didn’t. You gave him up to people you felt could give him the best home.”
“Because I didn’t have the guts to care for him myself.”
“You were sixteen, Jack. Give yourself a break.”
“Did anyone give your mother a break?”
“No, but she didn’t have a good family to give me to, either. She did what she thought was right. Just as you did. She wasn’t always around for me, Jack. When she was, it was wonderful. When she wasn’t, well, I still knew she loved me. Beau knows you love him, too. I imagine he’s always known.”
“So why did he take off with the truck?”
“Because he’s a teenage boy who wants to see just how far he can push you.”
“I think he’s reached my limit.”
Sam smiled. “He’ll push further, Jack. Just wait.”
Put it in God’s hands, he told himself, and prayed God would hear his pleas.
Sam spent the next half hour counting hawks on the fence posts and the myriad herds of pronghorn scattered across the prairie. Hardly a car had passed them, but Jack continued to hope.
“What’s that over there?” Sam asked, pointing east of the highway.
Jack saw the downed fence posts, the old lean-to that had been knocked over, and then he saw the sun hit the chrome bumper of his old Ford.
He slammed on the brakes as he pulled off the road, set the emergency brake, and shoved out of the truck. He jumped the ditch, the downed barbed wire, and ran toward the overturned truck. The cab was flat, and all Jack could see were torn jeans and a bloody leg.
Twisting around, he shouted at Sam, “Call nine-one-one. Oh, God. Tell them to hurry.”
twenty
The waiting room smelled like alcohol and pine-scented disinfectant, and the occasional people walking through spoke in hushed tones. Rooms like this were a horrible place to wait, Sam thought, as she stood silently against a wall. They made you worry instead of cheering you up and giving you hope.
That’s what she was existing on now—pure hope.
Jack paced, just as he’d been doing for the past hour, while waiting for a doctor, a nurse, for anyone to come out of the operating room and tell him that Beau would be okay. He hadn’t sat down. He’d refused the coffee and sandwich she’d brought him. He didn’t want to be comforted or given any kind of false cheer.
He didn’t want or need anyone now—except his son.
Lauren sat next to Mike on a sofa, staring at the swinging doors and the empty hallway beyond. Mike’s head was bent, and he was holding his cross. Praying.
The sheriff had come by the hospital an hour after Beau went into surgery and told Jack that it looked like the truck had gone off the highway at somewhere close to eighty miles an hour. There were two dead pronghorn on the road, and until he could talk with Beau, all he could assume was that Beau had swerved to keep from hitting a herd running across the highway. The pickup had torn through barbed wire and struck an old log line shack that should have been ripped down years ago. The truck rolled three times—at least—before it came to a stop upside down.
Beau wasn’t wearing his seat belt. If he had been…no one wanted to venture a guess.
Tynna Donovan hadn’t been with Beau, Mike had learned from her dad. She’d sneaked out of the house and gone to a girlfriend’s during the night, sometime after she and Beau had had a fight on the phone. Tynna told her dad that Beau wanted to talk, and all anyone could figure out was Beau had taken the truck so he could see his girlfriend face-to-face.
The story was all too familiar. All too tragic.
Now Beau was in the hospital—paying for being young.
It seemed an eternity before a doctor came through the doors. He smiled as he walked toward Jack, and put his hand on his arm. Sam could hear some of his words. “He got banged up pretty bad, Jack. He came through surgery okay. Now all we can do is wait—and watch.”
Sam listened, trying to absorb all the information. Beau’s legs were broken, and they’d had to set one with a pin. Four broken ribs, some internal bleeding, a head injury—but no brain damage. A lot of scrapes and cuts would leave him black-and-blue.
Sam watched Jack stare at the doctor, looking for words of encouragement, but he heard nothing more than “wait.”
Jack came toward her, his red and swollen eyes attempting a smile. He ran his hand through his hair, and for the first time Sam noticed it bore traces of Beau’s blood. “Are you okay?” he asked, as if she was the one who needed consoling.
She wanted to be there for him, not the other way around, but her tears fell. “I’m scared, Jack. So darn scared.”
He pulled her into his arms, and she rested her head against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath her cheek. She didn’t know how long they stood that way. Five minutes, maybe ten, but slowly she raised her head, and he gently kissed her brow.
“Is there anything we can do?” Mike asked.
“Call Crosby,” Jack answered. “He’ll pretend disinterest, but he’s probably worried sick.”
“I’ll call him,” Lauren said, rising from the sofa. Sam stepped away and Lauren hugged her brother. Wiping a few silent tears from her eyes, she smiled at Sam, then walked down the hall.
“Is she all right?” Jack asked Mike, showing more concern for his sister, for everyone else, than he was for himself at the moment.
“She’s worried about you. We all are.”
“I’m fine,” Jack said. “Tired. Frightened.”
“Do you want to talk?” Mike asked.
“No. Not now.”
Jack slumped down on a sofa, leaned his head against the back, and closed his eyes.
Sam sat on the chair across from him and watched the movement beneath his eyelids. He wasn’t asleep. He was thinking, praying, the same thing he’d done since morning. The hours passed by slowly, and finally he slept.
It was nearly eight when he woke.
“I didn’t miss the doctors, did I?” he asked almost frantically. “They haven’t given you an update, have they?”
“No,” Sam said. “Not yet.”
He paced again, and picked at the cold sandwich Mike and Lauren had brought back from their own dinner two hours before. He took a drink of lukewarm coffee, looking at his sister and friend. “Why don’t you go back to the ranch,” he told them. “We’ll call you if there’s any change.”
“I’d rather stay,” Lauren said, but Jack shook his head.
“You’re tired, and you’ll sleep better in bed. Go on home and get some rest. If you want to come back tomorrow, bring some things to spruce up Beau’s room. I imagine it’ll look like a dungeon.”
“Are you sure you want us to leave?” Mike asked.
Jack nodded. “Sam’s here. She’s all I need right now.”
Lauren frowned, staring from Sam to Jack and back again. Jack seemed to know that he’d made a mistake, but he didn’t bother correcting himself, and Lauren didn’t question what must have seemed like an obvious error.
Five minutes later, Sam and Jack were alone.
“How are you doing?” he asked, putting an arm around her shoulder as they sat together on the couch.
“I’ve been better. I’ve been worse, too. I don’t remember ever praying so much.”
“The last time I remember praying, really praying, was the day Beau’s mom died.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his widespread knees, and stared at the floor. “I hadn’t se
en Beth for nearly two weeks, since she’d taken Beau home from the hospital.”
“Why?” she asked, encouraging him to talk about that day, about the memories that had haunted him so long.
He laughed lightly. “Her father didn’t want his little girl messing around with a cowboy. Didn’t matter that I was the father of his grandchild.”
“What about Beth? Didn’t she have anything to say about it?”
“We were sixteen, Sam. How do you tell your parents when you’re that age to stay out of your life?”
“Kids do it all the time.”
“Not Beth. Not at first.” He smiled, as if remembering a good memory amidst the bad. “I showed up at her bedroom window one morning and talked her into running away. She looked so darn pretty when she handed Beau and a bag full of his things to me through the window. Then she jumped down to the ground and gave me a kiss. We weren’t thinking much about what we were doing, we were just thinking about being together, the three of us.”
“Beau was with you during the accident?”
Jack nodded. “I’d bought a car seat a week before he was born. I’d bought a crib and a high chair and a pair of fancy cowboy boots that were big enough for a five-year-old. I had so many plans for the three of us. I was going to build a cabin, put up the white picket fence Beth had wanted, and even plant flowers. That’s what we were talking about that morning. We were laughing and having a good time, and I wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to the road.”
He got up from the sofa and walked across the room, going to the window to stare out at the starry sky. Sam stood behind him, resting her cheek against his back, feeling so much of his pain.
“I heard the big rig’s air horn just before I saw the grille bearing down on us. I jerked the steering wheel—probably the same thing Beau did when he saw the pronghorn this morning. My pickup rolled. I don’t know how many times. I don’t remember much of anything except lying on the ground and seeing the truck a good thirty feet away from me.