by Claire Adams
Meredith walked over and I was about to extend my hand to say goodbye to her, but then I reached for her and gave her one last hug. She had been the first person to hug me when I arrived and she would be the last hug I got before I left.
“You tell Sarah the truth for me. Tell her what we had was real. Please,” I said in her ear.
Meredith just looked at me and smiled as I pulled away. I wanted to hear her say that she would tell Sarah. I needed to know that Sarah wasn’t going to be told what a horrible person I was. It might not matter at all, but I wanted some sort of affirmation that Meredith would tell Sarah the truth.
“It was a pleasure meeting you,” Meredith said sweetly as she stood there with Sid.
They both waved at me as I walked to the car and got in with agent Walker. My time at the Miller ranch had saved my life. They had provided me the protection I needed while I waited for the trail and all I had given them was a horrific crime scene to clean up after.
I felt empty as we drove away. Like nothing I had contributed over the last year had mattered at all. All I could hope for was that they would forgive me for my mistakes and that Sarah would be able to look back fondly on the time we had together. I had to truth that she would be able to see I was genuine with her, even if I had lied to her about my past.
Chapter 14
Sarah
“Do you want to come help me with breakfast?” my mother asked me as she stood over my bed.
“No, I want to sleep.”
“Honey, it’s been two weeks. We need to move forward.”
“I’m tired mom. Maybe I’ll get up tomorrow and help.”
My mother meant well, I knew it. She just didn’t like seeing me sad. Hell, I didn’t like being sad. I had expected Garrett would leave eventually, but I had always expected to have plenty of time to say my goodbyes. I just wasn’t ready to have him totally gone from my life without any notice at all.
For months we had spent every single day together and then suddenly he was gone. I tried to understand why he had left; my brain knew it wasn’t his choice and he had probably no option to stay. But my heart hurt. It hurt thinking of Garrett living his life without me.
Even though we had settled on our relationship being just fun, deep down I thought it might be more someday. I thought he would grow to care about me and decide he wasn’t going to run off to Washington for that job.
But as the details of everything unraveled, I learned that Garrett wasn’t going to a job in Washington. He wasn’t going anywhere. My father had been hired by the FBI to hide Garrett at our home and keep him safe until he testified against some drug dealer or something. It all sounded really good and legitimate, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that Garrett had lied right to my face. He hadn’t just done it once; everything I knew about the man was in question.
“You know your father and I weren’t allowed to tell you about the program. We are sorry we had to lie to you. But Garrett, I mean Malcolm, wasn’t allowed to tell you either. You can’t stay mad at us all forever.”
“I’m not mad, mother. I’m tired. Can you just let me sleep?” I lied.
Of course I was mad at Garrett, or Malcolm, or whatever his name was. And I was also mad at my parents for keeping me in the dark during the whole thing. If my parents were allowed to know all the details, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t have been told about everything.
Instead, the three of them conspired to keep me in the dark and pretend that Garrett was a totally different person. This Malcolm guy wasn’t even someone I would have liked. I hated the corporate guys who were so self-absorbed that they couldn’t see a decent woman standing right in front of them. I liked Garrett, the drifter who wanted to make something of himself. That was the man I had fallen in love with.
“All right, but I’m coming back to check on you after breakfast.”
“Maybe make it after lunch so I can actually get some sleep,” I said as I pulled the blankets up over my head.
I wasn’t mad at my mother or my father; frustrated would have been a better word for it. As an educated woman, I understood there were rules in place around them agreeing to work with the FBI. In fact, I found it pretty cool that they had been hosting FBI witness protection people for the last twenty years. It made a lot of sense to me when they started explaining everything. I remembered so many of the men who had been at our ranch. It made a lot more sense that those men were from the program and not people my father had chosen to hire.
Like the guy who never worked past noon. I could never figure out why my father kept him around. It had been one of those things that baffled me and my father never could give me a good explanation for keeping the guy. It was a relief to have some of those puzzle pieces from my past finally falling into place. But I stubbornly still wished that they had been able to tell me the details of what was going on. If I had been informed, I would have been much more emotionally prepared when Garrett left the ranch.
I wasn’t mad at Garrett, or Malcolm, either; if I really thought about it, I wasn’t angry—I was sad. My mother had explained to me that he wanted to say goodbye before he left and she told me how sad he had been that they made him leave without seeing me. From what she told me, I could tell that he was a decent guy, but it still didn’t change the fact that I had started to have feelings for a man who wasn’t at all who he said he was. And even if I did get over that information, he was gone and would never be back again.
My heart still hurt though and I couldn’t make the hurting stop. Garrett and I were friends, at the very least, and I thought he would have given me some sort of clue to what was going on. He couldn’t have thought I would tell anyone. I wished I could talk to him, or write to him, but my father didn’t have contact information for him at all. Well, I hadn’t specifically asked for it, but I assumed he didn’t know how to get in touch with Malcolm. Once the FBI came to take him away, my father’s job was complete, and Malcolm was back in the hands of the government.
I knew that Garrett’s real name was Malcolm Edwards, but I didn’t know much more about him at all. It was weird to have known a man intimately and then found out he wasn’t that person at all. I Googled him and found out he own an airline or something like that. There were photos of him out at clubs with beautiful women and partying with celebrities; that man, Malcolm Edwards, looked like the man I fell in love with but he wasn’t the same person.
Tons of questions constantly ran through my head when I remembered conversations that we had had together. Were his parents really dead? Did he really come from Wyoming? Was he really writing in a journal so he could write a book someday? There was no way of knowing what had been real and what had been just part of his story.
I questioned everything that he said, every conversation and confidence we had had together. How much of the Garrett that I knew was the same as the real man named Malcolm? I might never have the answers. There was a genuine possibility that I would never see Garrett again and that I would have to learn to live with the questions that were filling my mind constantly.
My mother was right; I needed to get up out of bed and start participating in my own life again, but I was just so tired. My whole body physically hurt at the thought of climbing out of bed and each day I put it off. I kept telling myself it would get better. I would stop missing Garrett. I would get over him. But the truth was that it had been two weeks and I still missed his touch terribly.
Garrett had been a great love to me. His personality, his smile, even his damn body were embedded in my brain and I couldn’t forget about them. I didn’t know if I wanted to forget about them. I had fond memories of our time together and I just needed to figure out how to combine those fond memories with the reality that he was gone and would never be coming back.
As much as I wanted to sleep my morning away, I just couldn’t sleep. My mind raced with thoughts and questions about Garrett and I finally sat up in bed and turned the news on. The morning national news was bound to lull me back to sleep.
&
nbsp; “International drug smuggling king, Frank Gordano, was found murdered in his cell this morning,” the newswoman said. “He was set to stand trial after murdering a pilot with Edwards Aviation last year. The CEO of Edwards Aviation, Malcolm Edwards, had been in hiding preparing to testify against the drug king. It’s unknown if he will retake control of his company now that Gordano has been murdered.”
I sat up in bed at looked at the screen in awe as a picture of Garrett, or Malcolm, flashed across the screen. He looked so different in the picture they had of him. He was in a tailored suit with his hair shorter and it took me a minute to realize the person on the screen and the person I knew were the same. He didn’t look like the douchebag I had seen in the clubs when I had searched Google for him.
When my father had explained what the protection program was and how it worked with our ranch, I knew that Garrett had been mixed up in something dangerous. I knew it the moment I had walked out of the barn and saw poor Ralph and Devin murdered. Garrett looked so distraught in that moment and I only wanted to comfort him, but he wouldn’t even allow it. I could only make assumptions as to why he pushed me away, but it didn’t matter any longer.
I was happy for Garrett though. The news that the man who wanted him dead was actually dead himself had to be good for him. I hoped he would be able to get back to his own life and maybe even forget about the horrors he had gone through at our ranch. Even if I never saw him again, I wished only happy things for Malcolm. Under the lies that I still had to sort out in my head, I knew he was a good man. Maybe not the right man for me, but he was a good man.
The news had given me a small feeling of closure though. Garrett was going to go back to his old life and I figured I would have to go back to mine. There was no use in sleeping my life away, I needed to get up and get moving. My mother was right: I had a life of my own to live and lying around in bed wasn’t going to help me at all.
Reluctantly, I climbed out of bed and into the shower. I was going to make an effort at my day and see if I couldn’t shake the feeling of loss that had been hovering over me since Garrett had left. It felt like he was dead to me and I supposed the man I knew was dead. Instead of Garrett, there was a man named Malcolm walking around the world and getting back to the life he had taken a break from. Garrett didn’t even exist; he was a made-up person who had hidden at my family’s ranch to stay safe. Garrett was no more real than a dream and it was about time I tried to forget about him.
Most of my memories of Garrett seemed skewed by the picture of the man I saw on the television. That man looked like he hadn’t struggled a day in his life, he was rich and good looking. Malcolm Edwards wasn’t the man I fell in love with and the reality of that hit me hard as I walked toward the gathering room to help my mother with breakfast. The man that I had shared so many conversations and nights with had talked about losing his parents at a young age and struggling hard to get where he was. It didn’t seem to match up at all with that rich man I had seen on the news.
Work on the ranch had returned to a somewhat normal pace again. My mother and father had decided to stop working with the FBI and take a much needed break from that world. Life went on for us and that meant we were up early and taking care of the ranch, just like normal. The animals that we cared for didn’t care about the drama that was going on around us; they still had needs and we still had to take care of them.
“You got up,” my mother said excitedly as I walked into the kitchen area.
“Oh, mom, you are just so convincing, I couldn’t stay sleeping another moment longer.”
“Well get to cutting up those vegetables for me,” she said as she pointed to a pile of onions, peppers, and mushrooms. “I’ve gotten a little behind this morning. I’m glad you came down to help.”
“Omelets?” I asked.
“Yep, it’s their favorite. Everyone is going to be here soon; just bring those vegetables up to me when you get them done.”
My mother grabbed a few things and made her way to the front of the line so she could start making omelets for everyone. I curled my fingers under and held onto an onion as I started to chop it up.
The memory of standing in that exact same sport with Garrett was fresh in my mind and I couldn’t help but smile. He had pretended like he didn’t know a thing about chopping vegetables, yet as soon as I showed him what to do Garrett was slicing and dicing them up like a professional. It made me laugh to think about how he had tricked me into standing with him and holding his hand to slice up the vegetables.
I couldn’t forget about his bandaged hands and those sores that he had from shoveling horse shit the first few weeks before I had arrived home. I had never seen anything like that and at least now it made a little more sense why he had such sensitive hands. Malcolm didn’t look like he had worked much with his hands at all.
That moment with Garrett still seemed very much real in my mind. He hadn’t seemed like he was lying to me. The way he looked at me, the way his hands touched me, they had all seemed so genuine. I missed that feeling. I wasn’t sure what had been real between us and what had just been part of his game to occupy his time while he was on the ranch. Of course, I wanted to think that every moment we had spent together was totally real, but I wasn’t that naive.
Honestly, I tried not to blame Garrett, or Malcolm, too much. He was stuck with us and why not enjoy the time? He was a hot, young guy and he had been a perfect gentleman with me. He had even warned me on several occasions that he wasn’t going to be around forever. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that what we had might have been the real deal.
When we were alone together, his looks, his touch, they all felt like reality to me. I knew that it was real for me, the time I had spent with him was totally real. I cared about Garrett, even loved him, and now he was gone and I was left on the ranch to pick up the pieces.
I hadn’t loved many men in my life, so it was just going to be difficult for me to work through losing him. But I was a strong woman, I knew that about myself and I knew eventually his memory would fade away and someone new would show up in my life. At least my mind knew all of that, the rest of me just had to catch up.
My self-pity party had gotten away from me, and before I knew it, I had cut up all the vegetables. I was dazed and totally distracted and it was a good thing I hadn’t cut off one of my fingers in the process. I gathered the bowls up and brought them to my mother as she made omelets for the men.
“Here you go,” I said as I started to head back to the kitchen.
“Stay. I could use an extra hand this morning. It takes me forever to make each of the omelets and the men can get to work quicker if you help me.”
Reluctantly, I found another pan and started to make omelets with her as the men came through the line. The ranch hands didn’t look all that excited to be up that early and I couldn’t help but smile when I noticed the newest man running in at the last moment before we stopped serving breakfast. He was out of breath and looked totally disheveled as he stood in front of us.
“I just don’t know how these guys all get up so early without an alarm,” he said as he chose his toppings. “Is there some sort of trick?”
“I don’t know,” I lied to the young man. “Maybe talk with George and see what he has to say.”
George was the new manager of the ranch hands. He had worked with us for about three months and had known Garrett, as well as the two men who had died. George was a quiet guy and not much to look at, but he was good enough at the job and the men trusted him. Trust was a hard thing to earn with the men who worked for us and it was the best indicator of if a new manager would do a good job. If the men trusted him, he was likely to be very successful in working with them. If they didn’t trust him, he was likely to decide to move on to a different job rather quickly.
There was a sadness that surrounded the ranch though, and nothing seemed to be lifting it. When Garrett had been in charge, he was always upbeat and happy in the mornings. His smile brightened the othe
r guys up and his joking ways had them in a great mood every day. But with Garrett gone, as well as Ralph and Devin, the ranch was a solemn place. There hadn’t been laughter at our ranch in two weeks and I wasn’t sure if it would ever return.
As breakfast finished up, I decided to spend my morning with the horses. I hadn’t been taking care of them much lately and thought it might brighten up my own mood to clean up Bambi and maybe even see if my father wanted to take a ride out to the river with me. I enjoyed riding and at the very least I knew that was something I could do to make myself happy.
The photos I had taken were beautiful and the real estate agent we hired thought she would be able to sell the land for a much higher price than my father had originally intended to sell it to his friend. Of course my father offered the land to his friend at the new price, but he declined. It turned out he had only been interested in it because my father was selling it so cheaply. Old man Joe had intended to resell the land at its rightful price and keep the proceeds for himself. Both my mother and I were furious over the details of what had gone on with old man Joe, but my father didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Buckjoy could use a little attention,” my father said as I walked into the barn. “He’s been pretty anxious this morning and a little down.”
“I’m sure he’d love it if you gave that to him,” I answered, although I knew he meant that he wanted me to spend time with the horse.
“No, I meant from you. I think he misses you.”
“Buckjoy misses Garrett and he’s just going to have to get over it because Garrett isn’t coming back. Plus, he’s a horse, Dad. How do you know he misses anyone?”
“He misses you,” my father said as he pulled Buckjoy out of his stall and walked him toward me. “Why don’t you take him out for a run? He needs to feel the air through his mane.”
“Dad, why don’t you take him out? I’m going to take care of Bambi today.”
I knew what my father was trying to do. He thought that spending time with Buckjoy would make me feel better. Well, he was wrong. The last thing in the world that I wanted to do was spend time with Garrett’s horse. I would just let my father take care of that horse from that point forward.