This was by far the happiest he had seen his mother since he had gotten home, and from the way excitement seemed to radiate from her, he could tell it had been a long, long time since she had felt this carefree. It was as if a blanket of worry had been lifted from her, a shroud that had been in place for years.
He hadn’t spent any real time in the barns since he had gotten home, and he couldn’t wait. Like the rest of his family, he’d grown up riding, roping and enjoying the lifestyle to which he had been introduced as a child. He had missed the feel of a horse’s gait and the scents of hay and sweat. Not only could he finally get back in touch with a part of him that had been missing for the last few years, but now he also had someone to share it with.
They each grabbed a coat and slipped it on before they made their way out to the barn. A black mare stood in her stall, looking out at them as they entered. The animal took in a long breath, taking in their scents and, not recognizing them, gave a high-pitched whinny.
“Looks like I’m going to have to introduce myself to my mother’s other children,” he said with a laugh. “You spend a lot of time around horses?”
Laura shook her head. “I wanted riding lessons and I begged my mother and father to get me some when I was younger, but my father always thought they were too dangerous. One of his attorney friends had a case where a young girl died after a horse rolled on her on the way back to the barn. It ended up costing the man’s client hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle with the family.”
From the way she spoke, Rainier wondered if her father had cared more about the girl or the legal case that had come from the tragedy.
“From what I can get, you and your dad aren’t very close, are you?”
“We talk a lot. He’s always been really involved in my life and my choices. He always wanted the best for me.”
“Do you mean involved or in control?”
She grabbed a handful of pellets from a galvanized bucket and made her way over to the mare. The horse smacked her lips as she chomped on the treat.
“You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want,” he said, knowing he had pushed her too far in asking her about something that clearly made her uncomfortable.
“No, you’re not wrong,” she said, but her voice was filled with indecision, as if she wasn’t sure whether or not she should speak about this. “My father is not like your dad. He’s always been the kind of guy who finds comfort in routine. Even when I was a child everything we did was on a schedule. To this day my family sits down for dinner at six thirty on the nose. Once, I was playing high school volleyball and practice ran late. My parents waited for me until I got home. My sisters were so angry.”
“Why were they upset?” he asked.
“We were expected to be home on time at all costs. According to my parents and my sisters, I should have left my practice in order to be home for dinner. They felt it wasn’t my coach’s fault, but mine because I didn’t put the family first.”
Her story reminded him of being behind bars and what had been expected of him. He had been forced to live by just as restrictive and regimented a routine as she was describing from her childhood. Which made him wonder if he wasn’t the only one who had been living in a prison, even if his prison was of a different kind.
“Are you close with your sisters?”
She shrugged. “My eldest sister went to law school and is practicing family law in LA. My other one went to med school and is now an ob-gyn at Kaiser Permanente in Baltimore. To say the least, I’m the black sheep. To my father I’ve been nothing but a source of disappointment. He thinks I should have gone to law school or med school or some Ivy League college, and he has made it a point to tell me more than once that he thinks I’ve wasted my life.”
“By being a parole officer?”
She ran her hand down the mare’s cheek. The horse nudged her hand, urging her to feed her another pellet. “I never wanted to become a parole officer. My father got me this job.” She said it like it was a touchy subject.
“Do you like it?”
She looked over at him and smiled. “There are parts of it that I love.”
He stared at her. Had she meant that she loved him?
“But there are definitely days I wish I hadn’t let my father push me into this line of work. Most parolees and ex-cons aren’t anything like you. So many are truly evil. I read their files and I see the things that they’ve done, and I know that out in the civilian world they’re probably going to become repeat offenders. It’s so disheartening.”
“You don’t think that some of them can be rehabilitated?” The question was more self-centered than he had intended.
“Like I said, I’m not talking about you, Rainier. I don’t know what happened between you and your biological father, but I can tell just by being around you that you are not like many of the convicts I work with. Some of these men are capable of killing and thinking nothing of it. They don’t feel things like most people do—don’t have remorse for the mistakes they made.”
He didn’t know if he agreed with her. “I heard so many stories when I was inside. You know the one thing they all had in common?”
She shook her head.
“All the men I knew felt like they had been unjustly persecuted. I never heard one man say, ‘I got what I deserved.’ Most of them felt like victims.”
“Is that how you felt about what you did?”
“You may hate me for this, but I might have more in common with those ex-cons than you think.” He walked over and took her shoulders, then turned her to face him. “I don’t regret what I did. I don’t regret hitting that man. To this day, I know that if I was put in a similar situation I would act the same way. My father was evil.”
“So you don’t think you’re guilty? You think you’re the victim?” All the softness in her face disappeared and there were tears welling in her eyes.
“As an adult, I’m not a victim. I knew what I was doing when I chose to act the way I did. I deserved to be sentenced like I was. But as a child...as that man’s child...I was victimized.”
She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his middle, pressing her body against his. Her hair smelled of lavender and sage.
“I...I don’t know what to say, Rainier. ‘I’m sorry’ just doesn’t feel right, like it’s somehow not enough to make up for all the things I assume you must have gone through.” She looked up at him. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
He didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, he never really wanted to talk about his biological parents with anyone. They were like the demons that lived inside his head and, though it was illogical, he was afraid if he opened up and told her about them, they would haunt her, as well. But if she was really going to be a part of his life, she needed to know about his past—everything about his past, and not just the part from police reports.
“The night my father and I got into a fight...it was just the climax of all that came before. He and I had no business ever being in the same room, but yet...there he was, standing like a cock in a henhouse, smack-dab in the middle of the old bar downtown.”
“Yeah, I heard about what happened.” She nodded. “Was your father from Mystery?”
“After my mother died, my father wasn’t really from anywhere. From what I heard, after her murder, he just hit the road and started traveling around the country like a nomad. His friends told me it was because he was lonely, but I know the truth—he was afraid that if he stayed in any one place too long, the community would figure out what kind of person he really was and work to prove that he had a role in my biological mother’s death. It was his way of running from the law.”
She frowned. “You told me he was an evil man, but what did your father do?”
The mare nickered from her stall and, stretching her neck out, gave Laura a nudge for anot
her pellet.
“You better feed her or she’s likely to bite.” Rainier gave her a weak smile as he let her go so she could return to the horse.
He didn’t want to release her, but he was starting to sweat as he thought about all the things his dad had done to him in the years that he had lived with his biological parents. He glanced down at his arm, even though the burns his father had given him were covered by his coat sleeve.
Laura looked at him as if she knew he was trying to emotionally distance himself, but thankfully, she didn’t point it out. Getting close to someone meant that he had to trust them, and trust was one thing he had always fallen short on—especially when his cellmate was just as likely to shank him in the night as he was to give him a piece of gum.
She held out her hand for the mare to take another pellet. “You said your mother was murdered?”
A flicker of anger moved through him. “Yeah, she died about a year after I came to live with the Fitzgeralds.”
“How did you come to live with them?”
“My mother and father, they had always had their share of problems, but it all came to a head when I was about three. From what I know, we were coming back from Washington and my parents were pulled over by the highway patrol. My mother was driving.”
Laura didn’t look at him, and he was a bit relieved. It made telling her his truth that much easier.
“They searched the car. I was sitting in the back seat, asleep in the sun.” As he spoke, he could remember the feel of the heat on his skin, but most everything else from that time was a blur. “They found several bags of meth and a collection of drug paraphernalia. From what I could make out from the police report, my mother and father had been using all day.”
Laura shook her head as she ran her hand over the mare’s forehead. “What happened?”
“I was picked up by Children’s Protection Services and they were arrested. From there, I was introduced to the Fitzgeralds. At that time, they were fostering kids and had already adopted Wyatt. They were in the process of adopting Waylon and Colter, too.”
“Do you remember coming to the ranch?”
“I remember thinking that it was the most magical place on earth. You know...my version of Disneyland.”
She smiled, but there was a deep sadness to it.
“No, really,” he said, feeling like he needed to clarify. “It was amazing. Everything before in my life was just darkness, hunger and pain.” He took off his coat. “The only real memory I have of my father from when I was very young was when he gave me these.” He rolled up the sleeve of his plaid shirt so she could see the little puckered circles that were littered on the inside of his forearm. “He used to love to put his smokes out on me. Thought it was real funny.”
She gasped as she took her arm in her hands. Her skin was oily from the horse, but even so her touch felt good.
“Who would do this to a child?” she asked, her fingers running over the scars.
“Like I said, my father was a cruel man. And what he did to me...it was nothing in comparison to what he ended up doing to my mother when he murdered her.”
Laura leaned down and kissed the circles near the crook of his elbow. They were hard to see and she wouldn’t have noticed them if he hadn’t pointed them out and told her what they were. She laid her cheek to his skin and closed her eyes, as if she wanted to take away the pain he had experienced when he was a child. “Why didn’t you show me these the other night?”
He shrugged, pulling his arm out of her grasp, then rolled his sleeve back down to cover his scars. Showing them to her made him feel more vulnerable than if he had been standing there naked for the whole world to see. Though she wasn’t the kind of woman who would ever turn the truth against him, he couldn’t get over the shame and embarrassment that filled him.
“This isn’t something I have ever really talked about. I think you’re the only person, other than my parents and brothers, who knows the truth about those scars.”
Her fingers trembled as she reached toward him. “Thank you. I...I hope you know you can always tell me anything.”
Her phone buzzed from her back pocket, reminding him that they weren’t alone in the world and, no matter how badly he wanted to forget what stood between them, she had the power to put him behind bars if this all went wrong. If she was like the people in his past, she would use what he told her to explain to a judge why she believed he should be sent back to prison. She could tell them that he was too broken, too risky to be set free.
“Do you need to answer the phone?” he asked, but as he spoke even he could hear the harsh edge in his voice.
“Whoever and whatever it is, it can wait.” She reached over and clasped his fingers.
He hesitated for a moment, not wanting to open himself up any more, even if that meant just holding her hand.
“Tell me...what happened to your mom?” There was a kindness in her voice that calmed the fears bubbling inside him.
She wouldn’t hurt him—not like his biological parents had.
“When my mother was released from the county jail, she came to find me. At that time, they were living in the next town over and word had made its way through the gossip mill that CPS had placed me at Dunrovin. It was only a matter of days before she showed up here. I was playing with Waylon out in the pasture when she took me.”
“Your mother kidnapped you from foster care?”
“Yeah, but the police found me, returned me to the Fitzgeralds, and I’ve been here ever since—except when I was locked away.” He squeezed her hand. “I later learned that when my biological father found out that my mother had kidnapped me, he waited for her to post bond, and when she got out, he was waiting and he put a bullet in her head.”
“He...he shot your mother? Why would he want to kill your mother for trying to get you back?”
“From what I know, he thought she was stealing me to get me away from him. He thought there was still a chance that I would come back to them.”
“So he killed her because he thought she was stealing you from him?”
He shrugged. “Drugs do strange things to the human brain—paranoia among the top of them. And who knows, maybe it was just an excuse to kill the one person who knew the real him.”
“How did he not get sent to prison?”
“When the police arrested him, there was no gun on scene. Though he hadn’t admitted to killing her, they knew that he was behind it, and in an effort to speed everything up, they planted a gun on him. During the trial it all came out, and he got off.”
Laura opened her mouth to speak, but closed it before any words came out; instead she just stood there, shaking her head.
He didn’t know what else to say, either.
Finally, she looked up at him. “I get it. I get why you would want to strike that man.”
“Like I said, I have no regrets. I made no mistake in hitting him...but if I’d have known he was at that bar and would have been emotionally prepared to see him, I think I would have killed him. That way no one else in the world would ever have to suffer because of that man.”
* * *
AS HIS PAROLE OFFICER, Laura was required to report Rainier for what he had just said. He clearly wanted to kill his father. Yet as his friend and lover, she couldn’t deny that there was legitimate reasoning behind his feelings. If she had been in his shoes, she doubted she would have felt any different. In fact, just seeing and feeling the scars on his arms made her want to find his father and put a bullet in his head herself.
Children deserved to be protected above all else. Sure, wounds inflicted on the skin would heal, but injuries inflicted on the heart would never completely mend. The darkness she had noticed in Rainier’s eyes made sense now. He was a child who had spent his days in blackness, and something like that left a mark.
; No matter what either one of them did, there would be no going back in time and getting justice for all those his father had hurt, or saving the little boy Rainier had once been. There was only saving the man he was now. And though she wasn’t the only one who had a role in Rainier’s welfare, she was one of the only people who could help him avoid going down a path that mimicked his father’s.
“Rainier, you’re right in hating him. I hate him, too, but murdering him isn’t the answer. Murder is never the answer. Taking a life changes a person forever, even if it’s self-defense. Each time you close your eyes all you’ll be able to think about is the choice you made. And when all you see is death, you can’t come back to a world in which life and happiness take center stage.”
“So basically you’re saying that I shouldn’t kill because it will give me PTSD?” he asked.
“Don’t look at me like that. PTSD is serious. Taking a life is serious.”
“I know they are serious. That’s not what I meant,” he said, raising his hands in supplication. “It’s just that it doesn’t seem like enough of a reason not to take down a murderer. Don’t you think he should have to pay for his crimes?”
“Just because he didn’t go to jail doesn’t mean that he isn’t paying for his crimes. Unless he’s some kind of sociopath, I’m sure he is haunted by your mother’s death. He has to live with what he has done. And I’m sure at one time, even with all their problems, he probably loved your mom. Which has to make what he did all that much harder.”
“You are assuming my father isn’t a sociopath.” He gave a derisive chuckle. “But you don’t know him like I do.”
“I may not know him, but I do know you. And I know that you don’t want to be anything like him. And if you killed him, you would be doing exactly what he did to your mother. You’d become like him.” The words tasted like salt water in her mouth and they burned as she said them.
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