Sam huffed under his breath. “You’re right. What in blue blazes was I thinking?”
A brief silence fell between them, and then Maddie observed, “Tonight was interesting. One of the largest ranches in the valley, and you didn’t get a single kid at your door.”
“Do we have to go there?” he asked.
“Yes.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What did you do? Come on, don’t be shy. I’m waiting to hear with bated breath.”
Though it was difficult, Sam told her the whole ugly story.
“Oh, Sam,” she said softly.
“I feel bad about it,” he confided. “But when Annie died, I wanted the world to stop turning.”
“And it didn’t.” She settled against him. “I felt that way, too. Everyone else went on with life while mine had come to a stop.”
Sam appreciated her understanding. Maddie had a way of cutting through all the bullshit to put his feelings into words.
“I’d like to fix it,” he told her. “Halloween, I mean. But I can’t think how. Protective parents don’t want their kids hearing the kind of language I used that night.”
“A grand gesture is called for,” she said. “Next year you should set up a haunted house in your barn and throw a Halloween party in here. Heaven knows this house is big enough for that. Kids love to bob for apples and win prizes for half drowning themselves.”
“Nobody would come, Maddie.” Sam shrugged. “Why would they?”
“Because people, by nature, have forgiving hearts. You can hang posters all over town, inviting people to come. And they will come, Sam. You used to be well thought of in this valley.”
“I have no idea how to create a haunted house or throw a party for a bunch of kids,” Sam said. “It sounds like you do. Would you help me?”
She nodded and smiled. “I’d be pleased to be a part of that. By then I’ll be in my own place on our land, but we’ll still be neighbors.”
A heavy, tight feeling entered Sam’s chest. He didn’t want Maddie to move back onto her own land. Without her, he’d slip back into the anger that had darkened his world for so long. He needed her in his life.
• • •
Cam had been observing his son ever since his mother talked to him the day before Halloween. It was true that Caleb brought home no friends, and he didn’t appear to be meeting with other kids away from the ranch. The boy had never been a whiner, but Cam sensed that all wasn’t right in Caleb’s world since they’d moved to Montana.
As the early days of November passed and Cam saw no change, he took Caleb aside to have a talk.
“I’m fine, Dad,” Caleb responded when Cam asked what was wrong. “I still like horses. It’s just that you can’t ride with me right now, so it isn’t as fun.”
Cam recalled that Caleb had asked to take up playing the violin prior to the incident with the bull. “Caleb, man to man, no BS, what’s going on with you at school? You don’t seem to be making friends, and you’ve always done that easily.”
“It’s different in California,” Caleb replied. “I’ve known all those kids most of my life. Here I’m like—I don’t know—the odd one out.” He gestured at his clothes. “I’m all Western. The kids dress this way sometimes. But most of the time, they dress normal, wearing athletic shoes and T-shirts with stuff on them. When you and Gram took me clothes shopping, you went all cowboy, like Montana is a totally different world and everyone’s a full-time wrangler.”
Cam’s heart sank. “Why didn’t you come to me and say something?”
“Do you know how much a stupid T-shirt costs? And ball caps. Lots of the guys wear those, and they’re expensive. We need to watch our budget. I couldn’t ask you to buy me a bunch of regular clothes.”
“And the violin thing?”
“It’s something I can do by myself. I don’t need a friend to do it with.”
Cam felt horrible. He’d worked hard to have a good relationship with his son, and now they’d had a huge communication gap. “How’s woodshop going? Surely you’ve made at least a couple of friends during that class.”
Caleb shrugged. “I wear Western shirts with pearl snaps or buttons. Dress shirts, Dad. And have you ever tried to wear a Stetson backward? The guys in shop have the bills of their caps backward.”
“Okay,” Cam said. “We’re going shopping. Do you need different jeans, too?”
“Dad, what if I buy a bunch of stuff and it isn’t right? What do you think I am, an expert shopper?”
• • •
Cam dumped the problem in Kirstin’s lap. “Caleb needs new clothes, and I can’t ask Mom to help us shop,” he told her. “She’ll take a radical swing toward her idea of normal and have Caleb dressed like a rapper.”
Kirstin hugged him and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be happy to help. Buying ordinary clothes isn’t rocket science, Cam. Most of the parents dress their kids as inexpensively as possible.” A frown pleated her brow. “They grow like weeds. Think sparing and cheap. Remind me that we need to find a few Griz shirts.”
“What?”
“Griz shirts,” she repeated. “The University of Montana’s Griz athletics teams? Football, for one. We’re big on the Griz here, and don’t let Caleb call them the Grizzlies. Here we say the Griz, singular or plural.”
Cam had never shopped for his son in a wheelchair, which made him doubly glad that Kirstin had gotten off early to go with them. Sitting down, Cam couldn’t see what lay on the display tables, and after about the thirtieth time he stood up, his leg started to ache.
At first Caleb acted as if he’d rather be anywhere than in a department store, but Kirstin’s enthusiasm was contagious, and the kid was soon wearing a backward Griz ball cap as they shopped.
“Wrangler jeans are fine for school,” she pronounced. “Half the population of Montana has a W branded on each cheek of his or her butt. And Western belt buckles are fine, too. But you need to mix things up.”
She found some awesome T-shirts for Caleb. Cam didn’t get how Western belts and sloppy T-shirts went together, but when he voiced his opinion, Caleb politely told him to stay out of it. Kirstin, whose words were now apparently the Holy Grail, knew what worked.
When Caleb was fully decked out for school all over again, Cam took his shopping partners out for dinner at the Cowboy Tree. Caleb ordered fifteen chicken wings and devoured them all. Cam ordered ten to Kirstin’s five, and pretty soon all three of them looked like they’d been dining on fresh roadkill, with red sauce ringing their mouths and smeared on their hands. They soiled a mountain of napkins and poked fun at one another while cleaning themselves up.
“No more chicken wings,” Kirstin pronounced. “They do serve lots of other good stuff here.”
“Nah. My favorite when we go out is wings,” Caleb argued. “And we don’t go out that often because Dad always cooks. He makes homemade wings that are the bomb, but Gram says they’re high in fat.”
“Well, fatty or not, I’ll make wings once a week. If you think your dad’s are good, just wait until you lock your lips on mine. Maybe on those nights, we can eat at my place so Gram doesn’t have to indulge.”
Caleb gave Kirstin a long study. “You make wings?”
Kirstin guzzled Coke from the straw in her glass. “What? Do you think your father is the only person in this family who cooks?”
In that moment, Cam knew he’d gotten it right this time. Kirstin not only suited him perfectly, but she suited Caleb.
When they got back to the ranch, Caleb came up missing. It had already grown dark, but when Cam rolled his chair out onto the porch, the yard lights helped him see his son, who was crouched down and doing something in the dirt.
“Caleb, what the Sam Hill are you doing?”
Caleb peered up at him through the gloom. “I’m getting my hat good and dirty.”
That made no sense at all to
Cam. “That’s a brand-new hat. It cost me twenty-five bucks.”
“I know. That’s the problem. Brand-new will stick out like a whore in church.”
Startled, Cam asked, “Who taught you that saying?”
“Sam. He says it all the time.”
Cam watched his son walk toward the porch, rubbing dirt onto the cap as he stepped. “Well, don’t say it at school.”
Caleb rolled his eyes as he scaled the steps. “What do you think the guys at school say, ‘shucky-darn’?”
Cam sighed. “Have we just reached the horrible sixteens?”
• • •
As November sped by, Cam’s leg grew stronger. When he went into Missoula for another MRI, the neurologist studied the film as if he were looking for a flea on a shaggy dog’s back. Cam sat in the wheelchair beside him, waiting for a verdict.
“So?” he asked. “What do you see?”
“Almost nothing.” The doctor, a tall, slender man with dark hair and striking brown eyes, flashed Cam a grin. “And that’s exactly what I hoped to see. Your spine is fine. The numbness and pain in your leg were caused by nerve swelling, and in these layered images, I can see that the nerve impairment from that is almost gone.”
“So why is my leg still weak? I went shopping with my son the other night, and after repeatedly standing up and putting weight on it, it ached like no tomorrow.”
“Lack of use. There’s still a little swelling and slight nerve impairment from the injury, but mainly I think the muscles have atrophied. Turn the wheelchair back in to the rental company and get a cane. Start using the leg.” He wrote a script, tore off the sheet, and thrust it at Cam. “Continue with physical therapy for another month. If you aren’t at one hundred percent after Thanksgiving, come back to see me, but it’s my educated guess that you’ll be dancing a jig by then.”
When Cam got back to the ranch after exchanging the wheelchair for a cane with the medical equipment rental company, he tried to go up the porch steps and cursed the doctor. His leg nearly buckled, and pain radiated from his lower back to his ankle. “Lack of use, my ass.” By the time he made it into the house, he was sweating bullets. He collapsed on the sofa, raised the footrest, and stared at the open-beam ceiling, feeling sorry for himself.
Caleb burst into the entry hall wearing a black Montana Grizzlies jacket topped by his dirty ball cap. Cam glanced down and saw that his Wrangler jeans had been cut at the hems and dangled faded threads. “What happened to your pants?”
“I just remodeled them a little.”
Cam almost said that he’d ruined perfectly good jeans. But then he remembered Caleb’s deliberate soiling of his new hat and kept his mouth shut. Being a dad had always seemed so easy—until now. “Oh,” he said, hoping to sound cool. “Looking radical, man, looking radical.”
“Nobody says ‘radical’ anymore.”
“What do they say, then?”
“All kinds of things. Just listen to people talk, Dad.” Caleb went in to grab an apple from the fruit bowl. His cheek bulged as he reentered the living room. “A guy talked to me in woodshop today.”
Cam’s heart lifted. “That’s awesome, Caleb! What did he say?”
Caleb shrugged. Around a bite of apple, he replied, “‘Would ya pass me that chisel?’”
Cam stared at his son. The youth looked happy and triumphant. “Well, that’s a start.”
“Yeah. I’m fitting in.”
• • •
That evening Maddie had her hands full with Sam. He grew agitated because Kirstin was fixing dinner at her house for Cam and Caleb, and Maddie and Sam weren’t invited.
“Now do you see why I was so afraid for her to fall in love?” Sam, wearing a limp gray shirt with long sleeves, paced back and forth in the living room. “She gets a man in her life, and now I’m about as popular as horseshit on Sunday boots.”
Maddie, sitting on the sofa, smiled at him. “Sam, Sam, Sam. It isn’t like that at all. Gabriella is fixing us a perfectly fabulous meal right here. Kirstin is making chicken wings, which are high in fat and really not good for you and me to eat.”
“Oh! So now I’m a geriatric who has to have menu planning? Next, she’ll mash up my food and spoon-feed me.”
With a sigh, Maddie pushed to her feet. “All right, then. I’ll call and have her issue you an invitation, but I think you’re being absurdly sensitive. If she and Cam get married, are you going to expect them to make you the center of their lives?”
“Married? WTF?”
“That’s progress!” she said cheerfully. “Vile language reduced to an acronym. I’m proud of you. As for marriage, isn’t that the logical next step when young people fall madly in love? You and Annie got married. Graham and I got married. Would you feel better if Kirstin and Cam had babies out of wedlock and gave them the hyphenated surname of Conacher-McLendon?”
“Babies?”
“Yes. I believe they’re commonly referred to as grandchildren. And luckily for them, I’ll live on adjoining land so I can ride herd on you. Otherwise you’ll glower and teach them how to cuss before they go to kindergarten.”
He plowed his fingers through his hair. Maddie had a strong urge to give him a comforting hug. “I just feel like I’m losing her.”
“You’ll never lose her, Sam. Unless, of course, you continue to behave like an insecure and spoiled child.”
He sank onto the hearth and held his head in his hands. “Damn it, Maddie, you’ve got a barbed tongue.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but it’s the truth. So what if the kids have an evening together without us old fogies present? Caleb needs to have a sense of belonging. Kirstin and Cam have developed a relationship, and now it’s time for them to include him as part of their unit.” She arched a brow at him. “We’ll continue to have dinner with them most nights.”
“I hope so. I enjoy ending my day with everyone over a good meal.”
“Personally, I was looking forward to dinner alone with you tonight. I wanted to tell you how my revisions are coming and get your advice on the slight differences in terrain.” She folded her arms. “Dinner for two. A lovely wine. Adult conversation. For one evening, it sounded to me like a nice change of pace.”
“Put like that, it does sound nice.” He drew in a deep breath and looked up at her. “I really am acting like an insecure kid, aren’t I?”
Maddie joined him on the hearth. “For the most part, I think you’ve been awesome. Don’t blow it all now by trying to cage your daughter again.” She toyed with the crease in her slacks, glad she’d finally carved out time to get some dressier outfits out of storage. Sam didn’t seem to notice, but she felt more like her old self. The only problem was that she’d had to use a safety pin to make the waistline fit. “Here’s how I see it. The three of them need to forge bonds as a family, and we need to give them the space to do that. We won’t be abandoned in the end. Instead our lives will be enriched.”
“You’re right. I just—I don’t know—panicked, I guess. And deep down, maybe I do want her to make me the center of her life.” He looked over and smiled grimly. “That’s wrong. I’d better straighten up my act, or I’ll have two women yammering at me, you during the day and Annie when I try to go to sleep at night.”
Maddie crossed her ankles and admired her Dansko clogs. It felt so good to be wearing actual shoes instead of hiking boots. “I envy you. Graham hasn’t let out a peep. I’d love to hear his voice again, even if he was yammering.”
“You don’t think I’m crazy?”
She laughed and elbowed his arm. “Crazier than a loon. But aren’t we all? I definitely don’t think you’re nuts because you sometimes hear Annie’s voice. Maybe it’s only your imagination. Many people would think so. But I’m inclined to think that she’s worried about you, and she’s even more worried about Kirstin. Some people believe heav
en is somewhere far away, but I picture it as being just beyond a curtain we can’t see, another plane of existence.”
He nodded and reached over to clasp her hand. “You’re a good friend, Maddie. You make me sound halfway sane.”
“Don’t beat up on yourself. I’ve been told that it’s much harder for men to lose a spouse than it is for women. We’re the nurturers, and men are geared more toward being providers. Hunters, if you will, who focus less on emotions and more on the hard realities. We gals practice all our lives at dealing with emotion. We worry that one of our kids will be killed in an accident, and in our minds, we can imagine how painful that would be. Men get blindsided when their wives die, and they’re swamped with a sudden rush of emotions that they never imagined and aren’t able to handle.
“I’m not saying losing Graham was easy for me. It was horrible. It’s still horrible. When I try to understand how anyone could survive anything worse, I take my hat off to men. Did you know that a large percentage of widowers remarry within a year? They can’t deal with being alone. You didn’t do the rebound thing, Sam. You’ve toughed it out. Learn to admire yourself for your strength. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. And pat yourself on the back.”
Sam laughed. “For caging my daughter? I realize now that I did do that, and I feel as if I’ve moved beyond it. Then some little thing happens, and I freak out again.”
“Yes, but this time, instead of freaking out in Kirstin’s presence, you vented to me. She’ll never even know you got upset, so no harm has been done. And we’ll enjoy a great dinner. I’m trying to plot my next book as I polish this one up. At the end of the evening, would you like to help me come up with an evil way to murder someone?”
Another laugh rumbled up from Sam’s chest. “I’d love to.”
As it turned out, the kids left Kirstin’s after dinner and came to the main house for some of Gabriella’s apple crisp. Maddie locked gazes with Sam after he received a particularly affectionate hug from his daughter. She wished she could say, If you love her, let her go. If she loves you, she’ll always come back. But instead she reached up to ruffle her grandson’s hair and asked if Kirstin’s chicken wing recipe was as good as his father’s.
The Christmas Room Page 28