by Amelia Rose
“I thought you were done popping the pills,” Carey said with an angry sneer. Joseph groaned and fell back on the bed, flipping him off before covering his eyes with an arm thrown across his face. “It’s time to get up. Dad wants to see you downstairs.”
“Tell him I’ll come down in a little while. I just need some more sleep,” he replied, his voice trailing off into a snore at the end.
“Sleep? You mean like what I didn’t get last night when I was hauling your drunken butt home? You think I like having my future wife pass you off in the middle of the night like some pathetic bum? No, you’re gonna tell him yourself,” Carey shot back furiously. “and you’re gonna do it now. Get up!” He stormed over to the bed and pulled the covers off into the floor. He grabbed Carey under the arms and yanked him out of the bed but loosened his grip when Joseph screamed, his legs buckling underneath him. Carey released him and jumped back, wide eyed at having hurt his brother. “Joseph?”
“What?” Joseph moaned from where he still lay crumpled on the floor. His hands went to his neck, trying to forcibly rub the pain away with his fingers.
“Did that seriously hurt you?” Carey asked, coming over to him and squatting down.
“Well, it sure as hell didn’t tickle,” Joseph replied, angry now that he was awake. There were tears in the corners of his eyes from the sensations that still shot through his neck and down his back. He took a deep breath then dry heaved from the spasm wracking his body. Carey dropped down beside him in horror, afraid to even touch him.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? It’s not supposed to hurt this much, the doctor said so.”
“That doctor’s full of it. It hasn’t let up hurting since the day I left the hospital. I can’t even sleep through the night ‘cause every time I so much as move my arm to scratch an itch, it wakes me up.”
“Here, come on,” Carey said, straightening up and reaching his hands down to his brother. “Get back in the bed, and I’ll tell Dad you’re not up yet.” He didn’t touch Joseph for fear of hurting him again but instead, he let his brother pull himself up using Carey’s hands to brace himself. The pain shot through him once more, making Joseph clutch at his stomach with nausea.
Joseph let himself fall on the bed, seeing stars as his neck hit the pillow. He worked to slow his breathing down as the initial pain began to subside a little. Carey watched him warily, unsure of how to even feel about this. Joseph was so obviously in pain, but pills? Booze? Drinking binges to the point that he had to go retrieve him in the middle of the night? Let alone the fact that Joseph had dragged Amy out in the middle of the night to take him home. Things just couldn’t continue like this.
“I’ll have Emily bring you something to eat. It’s not good to take those on an empty stomach,” Carey said half-heartedly as he turned to go.
“Carey, wait a second,” Joseph called quietly. “I’m sorry you guys had to bring me home last night. Really. I mean it. Please tell Amy I’m sorry. Please. I don’t want her to think the worst about me.” Whether it was a genuine apology or his pills were kicking in, Carey couldn’t tell, but he nodded and closed the door behind him.
Downstairs, he stuck his head in the kitchen and asked one of the staff members to take Joseph some soup or something light. The three kitchen workers exchanged nervous glances before Emily, the head cook, said they would be glad to. Carey nodded his thanks and left, only to run into Bernard.
“Son,” Bernard began. “where’s your brother? I thought you went to get him.”
“He…he can’t come down yet, Dad,” Carey answered, grinding the toe of his boot in small circles in the floor, looking away from his father’s irritated expression. “He’s really doing bad, so I told him to stay in bed.”
“You did what?” Bernard demanded. “I told that boy to get down here, and I expect him to appear!”
Carey finally looked at his father, concerned for the first time. “Dad, I’m telling you, something’s wrong with him. I don’t know if it’s something the doctor didn’t catch, or if there’s some other kind of injury happening that’s not related at all to him getting thrown from that horse, or what. But he’s in real pain. I’ve seen pain, Dad, and I know you have, too. Guys get hurt on the ranch all the time, and this thing’s real.”
Bernard pursed his lips into a straight line, squaring his shoulders and throwing his hands on his hips. “I don’t know what to believe, Carey. If you say he’s hurting, I want to believe you. I really do. But how bad can it be when he has the energy and the ability to haul himself into Hale and drink himself under the table?” Carey looked at his father in shock. “Yeah, the new owners called me. They’re worried about him, son. Joseph’s in there a little too often having a little too much to drink. You know you have a drinking problem when the town bartender calls your daddy about it.”
Carey looked away, ashamed. “I don’t know, Dad. That seems to make sense but then I know I tried to haul him downstairs so he could face the music for having us woken up last night, and you’d have thought I ran him through with a pitch fork. It was bad. He screamed, and I’ve heard grown men scream in pain before. That was real.”
The fight seemed to go out of Bernard at Carey’s words. “I want to believe him, son, and I want to get him help. But I just don’t know how much of this is from a six-month-old injury, and how much of it’s just him being scared to get too far away from a bottle, whether it’s a pill bottle or a bottle of booze.
“I will say this much, he’s not to leave this ranch again. We have some serious figuring out to do, but I’m not having one of my sons turn into the town drunk. And if any of the workers on the ranch are giving him rides into town so he can bury his face in a beer glass, that man’ll be out of work before the end of the day. I mean it!” Bernard bellowed for the benefit of the few employees who were moving through the house.
Carey put his arm around his dad’s shoulders and led him back to his office as the kitchen door swung open and several of the ranch hands came through, followed by Amanda with a tray for Joseph. She shot Carey a look, then look pointedly at Bernard, almost as though she was asking permission to take it upstairs. Carey nodded, then pressed his father forward.
Chapter Four
Later that afternoon, Amanda returned to the kitchen from retrieving Joseph’s tray. Without a word, she walked past Emily and stood in front of her, gesturing to the head cook to take the lid off the plate. Beneath the fitted cover, Joseph’s food had gone untouched. They exchanged a worried look.
“Emily, you have to say something to Mr. Carson,” Amanda began. “As far as I can count, Joseph hasn’t eaten anything in at least four days. You have to speak up.”
“I’ll do no such thing! I have a kitchen to run and a staff to supervise…”
“So that’s it? You’re not going to say something just because you’re afraid of pissing off the boss? And we just let Joseph kill himself while you say nothing?” Amanda said accusingly. Emily faltered for a moment, then steeled her expression again.
“If you’re so worried, Miss High and Mighty, why don’t you go say something to the old man? Huh? Afraid of ‘pissing off the boss,’ are we?” Emily sneered, turning Amanda’s own words against her.
“You know he’d listen to you better than any of the rest of us. You’ve been here for ages. You stayed by his wife’s side when…well, that’s not important,” she muttered, looking down and shaking her head sadly. “The rest of us barely know him, but you speak to him almost daily about the household and the budget and stuff like that. He can’t do without you, and he knows it! Sure, he might be mad at you for a little while for telling him what to do with his own son, but he can’t get mad enough at you to fire you. Please, Emily!”
Emily looked at Amanda’s worried expression, and looked around at the faces of the other members of the kitchen and household staffs. She shrugged, and silently shook her head.
“Emily, it’s not just about you being the one to tell him. You’re worried, too. I know
you are. You raised all six of those boys, filling in for their mama when she left them. What do you think she would want you to do right now? Her son is hurting and he needs help! Now help him! Make his dad see reason!” Amanda urged tearfully.
The older woman wiped at her eyes with the edge of her work apron, then choked back a sob before putting her hand on Amanda’s arm. After giving her a tight hug, Emily nodded and went back to her work. Before turning away, she said, “I’ll find a way to speak to him tomorrow. I just have to figure out what to say to him.”
Chapter Five
Casey and Miranda rode side by side, watching the herd carefully as they moved the cattle along toward a field about two miles away. Several other hands rode in a spaced apart formation, keeping an eye out for coyotes and wild dogs that might give chase.
“I know you have something to say,” Casey teased with his famous comfortable grin, looking straight ahead but stealing glances at Miranda’s expression. “so you might as well say it.”
Miranda shot him a playful look. “Oh, really? Married less than a year and you already think you can read me like a book?”
“Well, am I wrong?” he replied, flicking a large biting fly off his horse’s neck with the end of his reins.
“No, but that’s not the point. Now I’m not going to ask you just because I don’t want to give you the satisfaction of thinking you have me figured out. I have to keep some of my ‘mystery’ about me.”
Casey leaned over his saddle dangerously close to sideways, grabbed Miranda’s elbow, and pulled her closer for a quick kiss on her neck. “I do have you figured out. I know that’s your favorite place to be kissed, for starters.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong,” she laughed. “It’s not even in the top three of my favorite places to be kissed.” She raised her eyebrows, hinting that there were far better places he could kiss her. Casey flushed for a second and laughed.
“Okay, then, favorite places to be kissed when there are other people around,” he whispered, before kissing her once more.
“If you two are done acting like teenagers, there’s a cow lagging behind,” Drew called out as he rode past them on his way to the front of the herd.
“I have this one,” Miranda called, steering her ride back the way they came.
“Are you sure?” Casey asked, concern in his voice. Miranda had only been riding for a short time, and he worried that her city girl roots might not have prepared her for making split-second decisions out here on the ranch.
“Sure. You just keep watching those cows and thinking about kissing me some more,” she said quietly, winking at him as she trotted back toward the spot where a cow stood lazily eating some grass. Casey watched her with pride swelling in his chest at the way she effortlessly nudged the cow with her boot, riding in circles around it until it went in the direction she wanted it to go.
Only a short time ago, she had stepped off the bus from New Jersey and had been a giant pain in his ass. It wasn’t her fault, he knew that, but she hadn’t been invited here, at least not by him. Now, even Casey had to swallow his pride and show some gratitude that his father had interfered. Miranda was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time.
When she caught up to him some time later, she looked over smugly and announced, “Piece of cake. It’s amazing that more people aren’t lined up to do this.”
“Oh, really? You call this easy? Good. I’ll be sure to wake you up next time there’s a calf to be birthed. Better yet, you can spend the night in the barn helping the mama through it,” he scoffed, waiting for the look of horror to cross her face. It never happened.
“I’ll have you know, I was in the delivery room when my sister was born. My dad had already shipped out, and my mom needed someone there. I was her coach.”
“Really? That’s kind of sweet,” Casey answered, a new layer of respect for his wife piling on top of the things he already admired about her. “Then reaching in there up to your shoulder and pulling a calf should be no problem for you,” he continued, trying once again to bait her.
“Bring it, cowboy,” she answered with a knowing smirk, aware of the game her husband was playing. He and his brothers had enjoyed trying every trick they could think of to test the limits of her love for ranch life. Everything from eating ants to bathing in the creek during an overnight trip, Miranda had done it all with a smile.
Partly, it was because of her love for Casey, but it was also out of sheer joy that she took so readily to life out here in the middle of nowhere. If a sprawling two-story home on 800,000 acres surrounded by forty people on any given day could be considered nowhere. For the first time since she could remember, Miranda felt carefree. Sure, the work was demanding and the circumstances were unlike anything she’d ever experienced growing up in the city, but it was all worthwhile.
And, of course, Casey was by her side for all of it.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Miranda began as she rode alongside Casey again, remembering her question from earlier. “I’m worried about Gracie.”
“What about her?” Casey asked immediately, turning his head sharply to look at Miranda. She smiled reassuringly, laughing to herself at Casey’s instant big brother mode kicking in.
Gracie had been Miranda’s only fear when she answered the emailed request on the online dating site. Since their mother had passed away, there wasn’t a single decision that didn’t also impact Gracie. Dragging her out here when Miranda finally decided to come to Texas had been her only apprehension, and it was worrying her still.
“Oh, no, it’s nothing serious!” Miranda promised him. “Well, I mean, it’s not serious to you or me. It’s deadly serious to a young teenage girl. Gracie’s worried about doing normal teenaged things, like hanging out at the mall or talking to girlfriends from school. I told her I would talk to you…”
“Well, I never talked to girlfriends from school…Dad was really strict about that,” Casey said in his casual, joking way, glossing over the fact that he was homeschooled on the ranch like the handful of other kids who’d been raised out there.
“Come on, honey, I’m being serious. She’s really worried about things like parties and dating and prom,” Miranda chided softly. He looked over at her and his expression melted from playful to concerned, just like hers.
“Wow, I guess us guys were spared from all that kind of stuff. Between having five other brothers and an endless clown car of guys to hang out with before, during, and after the work day, I never had to think of it like she does. What do you think we should do it?”
Miranda sighed. “I don’t know, I guess I was hoping you had the answers since you grew up out here. We’ll figure something out.”
“Of course we will!” Casey exclaimed. “We’ll all think about it. I guess we never had to worry about a girl growing up on the ranch…” His breath caught and his face clouded over. Miranda cast him a sideways glance, wary of the way he might react to his own words. She knew all too well that he was remembering his mother, and how she’d died giving birth to the only sister in the Carson family, a baby girl who died shortly before their mother. Miranda reached over and touched Casey’s elbow, smiling supportively when he looked her way. “Sorry about that, it just came out wrong.”
Miranda nodded, and spurred her horse forward lightly as though she could leave that painful conversation behind them. They rode farther out over the next couple of hours, letting the cattle graze at different points along the way, stopping to let both the horses and the cows get a drink at the wide creek that snaked through the property. Miranda and Casey took advantage of the rest times to simply appreciate being together in this place, at this time. All of their other struggles and concerns would be waiting for them when they came back but for now, this was where they were and they were spending it together.
Chapter Six
“How ya holding up, sweetie?” Jennie asked Emma as they worked in the kitchen between the lunch crowd and the busy dinner time rush. She had been watchi
ng Emma closely for the past week, afraid for the girl now that she’d lost her best friend and her fellow survivor. Even more worrisome than the way Emma put on a sad attempt at a cheerful front was the way her hands were shaking now as she scrubbed at a saucepan.
“I’m great, why?” Emma called back, her cheerful voice almost overflowing with saccharine sweetness.
“Because you’ve just about scrubbed a hole through that pot, that’s why! You’re a hard worker, but you’re going to town on the same pan. You’re supposed to switch it up, you know, maybe try a different pan once in a while? We have plenty of ‘em.” Jennie’s scolding words were so playful, Emma had to laugh.
“I’m sorry, I’m just thinking. I haven’t heard from Dee in three days, that’s all,” she answered, rinsing the first pot and reaching for another, taking out her frustrations on that one’s unsuspecting interior.
“I’m sure she’s fine, Emma. Didn’t she go back home? I’m sure they’re so glad to have her back, they haven’t let her stop for a second to call you up.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right,” Emma answered weakly, only this was another act, too, meant to keep others from seeing the problem too closely. Dee had confided in Emma once before that her family situation was far from ideal. After all, it’s what had led Dee to run away in the first place, straight into the grabby hands of Crazy Mack, drugs, and worse. She had promised Emma that she was going to her grandparents’ home, though, instead of her mom’s, and hopefully, that would make all the difference.
If only she would call me, Emma thought sadly, reaching for another pot before Jennie could notice there was a problem.