“He didn’t like the judge’s ruling.”
Her jaw went lax. Her forehead furrowed, and then her chin quivered, but still she stared at that wall, just over BeeBee’s head. “He killed the children and himself that day, and when the authorities finally found them, they realized he’d been planning this for days, maybe weeks. If he didn’t like the judge’s ruling, he intended to take matters into his own hands.”
Sympathy flooded Nick.
This wasn’t what he’d expected. He didn’t know what he had expected, but murder/suicide involving two small kids hadn’t been in contention.
“The mother blamed me. She said she heard Christiana tell me she was scared and that as a trained professional, I should have done something.”
Now anger vied with sympathy. “That’s not fair. It’s not like we can be responsible for other people’s actions, their choices, their decisions.”
“Well.” She huffed out a breath and stood. “No one ever said life was fair, Nick.” She turned and started out of the stall.
“Where are you going?” He stood too.
“To the woods.”
“Elsa, I —”
“Don’t.” She shook her head, and now, finally, she looked up at him. “I didn’t come here to erase the fact that I should have told you from the beginning. I was working with your kids. You had a right to know.”
She was right. She should have told him. What if she’d gone into some kind of crisis like today with the girls around?
“I couldn’t deal with the lawsuit on top of the loss. I couldn’t practice with so much hanging over me. How do you help others when you can’t get yourself up and dressed in the morning? I pretended I was all right to my family and friends, right up until I considered taking my own life.”
Her words tore at him.
Her face, the pain, the sadness, so stark, so worn. “But you’re better now.” The minute he said it, he realized the truth of his statement. She wasn’t just better; she was amazing. Marvelous. Caring. And yet she’d lied by omission.
She looked at him, then the dog, and then made a little face of regret, a face that said how nice this all had been. “I am. And part of that is because I met you and your wonderful girls at just the right time. But you told me once that love without trust isn’t love, and you were right. I should have trusted you. I should have been honest from the start, but I wasn’t and there’s no going back. I want you to know that I am better. I’m good now, and you and the girls were a big part of making that happen. So, thank you.”
She started walking away, away from the dog, from the barn, from him, from the girls. “Elsa.”
She didn’t turn. She didn’t say any more. She lifted one hand in a quick flit of a wave and went out the door, crossed to her car, and got in.
Kita crooned to her puppies behind him, puppies Elsa helped whelp. It had all seemed so right and so good last night. And now it wasn’t anything of the kind. He moved to the graveled drive and wanted to stop her. Beg her to stay.
He didn’t.
She backed the car around and eased down the driveway. Brake lights marked the first curve. Then the old car with the faded paint job disappeared from view, leaving nothing but thinning summer light in its wake.
“How can I help, son?” Sam had come up alongside quietly, but when he put his hand on Nick’s arm, it didn’t feed old fuels of resentment, and that was surprising enough. Nick thrust his chin toward the town beyond the raised hedge and the route Elsa had just taken. “Tell me how to fix the unfixable.”
Sam stayed quiet.
Nick turned his way because if the old man wasn’t going to try to help, what was he doing here? One look at Sam’s hurting face made him bite back words of frustration. “I’ve got this, Dad.”
“I see that.” Sam paused and leaned against the broad barn door. “Didn’t doubt it. But I’d still like to help if I can.”
What could an aging, ailing cowboy do? Nick tapped his tongue to the roof of his mouth, then faced his father. “I wanted to show you up in the worst way.”
Sam didn’t look all that surprised.
“I wanted you to see that I was the best son for the ranch, for the business, for production. And then I wanted to show you how a good marriage was handled, that if you paid attention to your wife and worked with her instead of against her, everything would work out all right and we’d all live happily ever after. I wanted my success to show how you messed up so completely with my mother.”
Sam grimaced. “I passed a lot of good qualities down to you, Nick. But that one, the one that’s always got to have a hand in everything, besting everyone, that’s one I wish you’d missed. Because in the end, what does it matter?” He shrugged. “Folks talk all the time about how if they could go back, they wouldn’t change a thing. Well, they’re stupid.”
Nick watched him. “What would you change?”
“I’d have taken Colt to school that day like I was supposed to with his mother. We had it all planned out, to drop the little guy at preschool and grab lunch, then pick him up later. But something came up, I didn’t go, and I lost the most precious thing I’d ever known. I didn’t know what to do, how to handle any of it, and when Rita showed up and offered to help, it seemed like the smart thing to do. We’d dated in high school, and then there she was, quietly helping out, taking care of Colt. Marrying her seemed brilliant at the time.”
“Did you love her?” Nick wasn’t sure why that mattered, but it did.
Sam didn’t lie. “I was grateful to her. She’d stepped in and was willing to take what I could give then, but in the end it wasn’t enough.”
“I wasn’t enough.”
Sam stared at him and straightened. “It wasn’t about you, Nick. It was about her, and what she wanted. And that wasn’t us, or the ranch, or Gray’s Glen. She wanted a husband who loved her first, and that could never happen because Christine’s shadow was everywhere around us. In Colt’s smile. In his eyes. In the pictures on the wall, even after I had them taken down.”
He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. He faced Sam and held his gaze. “Did you pay her off ? Pay her to leave?”
Sam studied him. “You think that? That I would pay your mother to abandon you?”
“People have said as much.”
“The dumb ones. I asked her to stay. I begged her to stay, and I’m not the begging sort. But she said I’d left no room in my heart for another woman and she wasn’t playing second best, ever again.”
“She didn’t take me.”
“Well, now, that wouldn’t have been allowed.” Sam faced him. His gaze went tight. “I’d have shared, Nick, because she was your mother, but she was bent on going to Texas, to family that had moved there, and there was no way I was letting her take my son so far away. If she’d stayed local, it would have been different, I expect. But she wouldn’t hear of it. I sent her pictures of you every year. You remember that picture you made of you and her when you were in first grade? With her curly brown hair and big brown eyes?”
He remembered. In retrospect it was probably more of a caricature, but he’d looked at that picture and saw Rita Stafford, his mother, looking back. “I remember.”
“I sent that to her and asked her to come visit. I even said we’d come visit there.”
Sam had offered to go to her? To bring him to visit her? “We never went to Texas, Dad.”
“She said no. She’d moved on with her life, she was remarried and expecting a baby, and she didn’t want to face old regrets.”
He was a regret.
Emotion swelled his throat so tight it ached.
“And right about then Sandy and EJ overdosed, and I had to make a run to California to find Trey, and then it was the four of us, with Murt and Hobbs. I wish it had been different.” Sam sighed. “I wish I’d been different. But your mother didn’t leave because of you, Nick. She left because of me and her, and she couldn’t see her way beyond that. Maybe I was wrong, saying you couldn’
t go, but how does a father let something so special just slip out of his hands? I couldn’t do it, and I hope you don’t hate me for it.”
Sam, professing his feelings for Nick. The big, rugged, faded-jeans cowboy saying how important Nick was to him.
He hadn’t bought Nick’s mother off. He’d asked her to stay.
It made a difference, somehow. The thought that Sam had been willing to sacrifice to keep things together way back then made a difference now. “And there we have the difference between the adult point of view and childlike perception.”
The common sense of Elsa’s observation rang true. Those early wounds had festered into gaping holes he’d tried so hard to fill, but in the wrong way.
He couldn’t solve Whitney’s problems by making her path smoother. If anything, that would probably enable her. But he could forgive her and move on, because he was sick to death of grudge holding.
He would go see her tomorrow, after church. If Rye’s information was correct, she’d broken their agreement, and she’d skipped the girls’ recital to do it.
He’d help Cheyenne work through it. And he’d respect his younger daughter’s trepidation, unless Whitney did a full three-sixty, because if he couldn’t understand his former wife’s choices, how could he expect a six-year-old to rationalize them? He couldn’t and shouldn’t.
Putting the girls first was bound to make Whitney unhappy, but that was her problem now because one of them had to be the responsible parent, and in this case it was him.
Nick walked the girls into church the next morning. It had rained gently overnight, a five-hour soaker, just enough to give thirsty plants and ponds a needed drink. Damp morning air met glorious sunlight, while evaporating moisture scudded thin clouds along the ground, rising into the trees as the sun moved higher.
Sam had stayed home, tired from yesterday’s outing. Hobbs had remained at the ranch with him, but everyone else flocked to church. Everyone but Elsa, of course.
Nick reminded himself not to look around the church for her, so when they walked through the double oak doors, that was the first thing he did.
She wasn’t there.
His gut tightened.
Was she skipping the service because he was there? Most likely.
He rubbed his jaw, troubled. Messing up a person’s faith quest hadn’t been on his list of things to do that day, and yet…
Elsa wasn’t there. Was she all right?
She seemed pretty calm and cool when she walked away from you last night.
She had, at that. As if despite her troubles, she was in charge, the same thing he’d sensed about her at their first meeting.
“Dad!” Dakota grabbed his pant leg, leaned back, and peered up. “Elsa said she was coming to church with us! I don’t see her! Can we go get her?”
“She promised.” Cheyenne didn’t look up as she muttered the words. “And Mom promised to come to our dance recital. Big deal.”
Her disillusioned tone seemed to expect grownups to break promises. Elsa wasn’t like that, but he didn’t know how to excuse her absence.
“Dad.” Dakota wasn’t about to let up, a true Stafford quality. “She might be sick. Or maybe Hoyl flew away and didn’t come back and she needs our help.” She tugged his arm. “Come on, Dad, we have to hurry! What if she’s in trouble?”
Angelina leaned their way as she waited behind them. “I’ll text her. If she needs help, we’ll run right over there, okay?”
“Yes! Thanks, Angelina!” Dakota whispered her gratitude as they moved to a pew.
Nick shook himself mentally.
He could have put Dakota off that way too, but his brain wouldn’t function once he realized Elsa hadn’t come to church. She wasn’t there because of him. She’d suffered a panic attack in public and was probably embarrassed, and he’d done nothing to assuage that embarrassment.
He’d been so angry about the lie of omission that he’d forgotten to be caring and tender. He’d thought about her horrible experience half the night, and when he couldn’t sleep, he’d opened his laptop and searched her name.
And there it was, linked to the Belvedere tragedy.
He’d lost that cow and calf earlier that month, and he felt the loss grievously. His negligence had been a factor. If he’d told someone that he’d brought her into the barn, she and her calf might be alive today.
He didn’t.
For Elsa, a moment’s indecision had cost three lives.
As he settled into the pew, single notes sounded from the keyboard. Familiar notes, warm and true. And when their small choir began singing “Amazing Grace,” the words didn’t just speak to him. They flowed over him, reminding him of lost times and finding his way back to faith, to God. And here he was, ready to walk away from the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him because she was flawed.
Who wasn’t?
She kept a mighty big truth from you. That’s something to think over, isn’t it?
It was.
Staffords might be tough negotiators. They might be savvy, always looking for a good deal, but they were honest, and Nick was proud of that. Maybe more because of how his mother left and his wife bailed out of their marriage. As Dakota kept leaning up, peering toward the entrance, another thought rang true.
The girls trusted Elsa. She kept them focused, the way a ranch kid should be focused. Work first, play later. Follow directions. Don’t shirk.
Reverend Stillman crossed the simple sanctuary. He raised his hands and smiled, letting his gaze roam the filled church. “May the peace and joy of the risen Christ be with each and every one of you this day.”
Peace and joy.
Nick centered himself on those two words. Perhaps if he focused on them more, they’d be granted to him. That was something worth praying about, right there.
Elsa saw Rachel’s name and accepted the call. “Hey, Rach. Good morning.”
“Good morning!” Rachel sounded happy to have her back on track. Would she rethink recommending Elsa for the job once she heard about yesterday?
“Am I seeing you in church this morning?” Rachel asked.
“You aren’t.”
Her sister cued into her voice instantly. “How come?”
Elsa didn’t mince words. She’d had enough of that. “I had a panic attack at the dance recital. The good thing is that Angelina was there with smelling salts and snapped me out of it. But the whole thing gave Nick a wake-up call he wasn’t expecting. Let’s just say he was less than thrilled with my reticence.”
“Elsa.”
She appreciated the note of sympathy in Rachel’s voice. “On the plus side, a fighting couple kept the crowd quite engaged, so no one even noticed me.”
“Oh, honey. I’m sorry.”
“I am too. But in a way, it’s good,” Elsa admitted. “I got deluged with reminders, but once it was over, it was over. I didn’t revert to hiding, I didn’t want to revert to hiding. I mostly wanted to smack both of the fighting parents, then shove it behind me and get on with my life, and that’s huge. Huge to me, anyway.”
“It is. Do you want me to come over?”
“Nope. You go to church with your family. I heard that the reverend is doing a fresh air service in the hills this afternoon. I might pull out for that. I like praying outdoors.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
For the first time in a long time, she was sure. Sure of herself, because falling apart yesterday wasn’t a crushing blow. It was more like a rough ride on a bad trail, and for a ranch girl, those things happened. “Yes. Talk to you later, okay?”
“Okay.”
She set down the phone, then picked it back up as a text buzzed in. Angelina’s number came up in the display. “Are you okay? Coming to church? Dakota’s asking.”
Dakota. Not Nick.
She texted back quickly. “Yes and no…In that order. Give girls kisses and hugs for me.”
“On it.”
So the girls were wondering where she was.
Did Nick wonder? Or was he relieved that she stayed home to avoid an awkward situation?
She pulled out her scrapers and began working on the front of the house. As she completed her doll-up of each side, the house seemed happier. More inviting.
She turned on a modern country station, and when Trey Walker’s “Find Your Way Home” came on, she sang along softly.
Hoyl flapped, as if approving the song. Or maybe he was just happy that she stayed home. He flew off as Achilles plodded to her side. The shaggy dog sat, eyed the car and then her, and whined.
“We’ve got work,” she told him.
He pawed her leg gently, then looked toward the car again.
His meaning was clear. She’d given him a taste of life outside their hermitage and he liked it. Now that she’d opened the floodgates, he wasn’t content being stuck in the woods.
Neither was she, but for the moment it would have to do. “We’re staying put right now. Stop begging.”
The dog thumped to the ground, drew his front paws over his snout, and sighed as if she’d let him down.
He liked going to the ranch.
So did she.
But that wasn’t an option any longer. If she had to get used to it, so did he. Once the front was painted, she’d take her canine friend for a ride. It wouldn’t be the same as hanging out at the Double S, but it would be all right. Elsa was sure of it.
Trey climbed into the passenger’s seat of Nick’s SUV once the service had concluded and sat back. “Let’s do this.”
Nick lifted a brow in question. “Do what?”
“Go see Whitney. You. Me.” Trey waved a hand between them. “You can’t bring Colt because nothing will get accomplished once they start sparring, and I’m the next best thing.”
“I figured I’d see her alone. But thanks.”
“Guess again,” Trey told him. “Just in case you need a witness or a pal when this is all said and done, I’m coming.”
“Listen.” Nick faced him. “I appreciate all this brotherly love stuff, but I’ve got this.”
“Never doubted it. I’m still coming.” Trey settled back against the seat and tapped his wrist. “Colt’s got the girls; I’ve got all day. Take your time.”
Home on the Range Page 26