Mostly.
For her, anyway, if not for him.
And that was when they'd met Felicity.
Taggart was happier since they had Felicity. Becky knew that, and she was glad. After all, hadn't having Felicity for a mom been her idea in the first place?
Well, actually she supposed it had been Susannah's.
But Becky had done the dirty work. She was the one her dad had yelled at when things went wrong. She deserved some credit.
Last year she'd got some credit. Last year had been the best year of her life. Mostly.
Both Taggart and Felicity had climbed the peak with her. They'd stood there, the three of them, as a family, and they'd faced the world together.
And now they had the twins.
Becky didn't know how her father planned to get them up there, but she was sure he'd manage. She was even willing to help carry one of them, preferably Abby, who didn't pee on you, if he wanted her to.
She got out of bed early because she knew it would take longer this year and he'd want to get back before the twins needed a nap.
Taggart was sitting at his desk going over some breeding charts. When she came down the stairs, he didn't even look up.
"So," she said, "what time are we going?"
He looked around. "Going where?"
"Up the peak."
He blinked.
Becky felt a lead ball start to form in her stomach. "It's Friday," she reminded him. "School starts Monday. We have to climb Tiptop."
Taggart rubbed a hand down his face. "Aw, hell, Pard. I can't do that today."
"Why not?"
"I've got to go over these charts before Robertson calls. We're buying new stock."
"But after—"
Taggart rubbed his face with his palms. "After, I've got chores, Pard. And then I want to take a nap."
Becky looked at him, horrified. "A nap?"
"I'm bushed. I got—" he considered for a moment "—three and a half hours' sleep last night. Four hours the night before. Less the night before that."
"I didn't keep you awake," she said frostily.
"Not this week. You did your fair share of it when you were their age," he said.
She dug the toe of her boot into the rug. That wasn't fair.
Did she remind him of his failures as a dad? Did she mention the time he let her get sick at the rodeo from eating too much junk food? Did she bring up how he'd missed winning her that big, stuffed rabbit in Cheyenne because he was so busy ogling some slinky cowgirl he couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn with a handful of rice, let alone a target?
No, she did not. She scowled at him.
He didn't notice. "Besides," he said, "Uncle Tom is leaving today. We're having dinner first, at Grandma and Grandpa's in Bozeman."
"We could be back by then."
"No. Not today. There isn't time," he said in his annoying, patient-father tone. He rattled the breeding charts. "I've got work to do."
"You could've done it yesterday!"
"I didn't have time yesterday."
"You never have time anymore!" She felt tears welling and sniffed them back hard. She wasn't going to cry! She hadn't cried when he'd left to go down the road—and she'd been little then—she wasn't about to cry now.
"We'll go another time. Tomorrow. No," he said wearily, "not tomorrow. I'm helping Jed cut hay tomorrow. Sunday? Maybe we can make it Sunday."
"Sunday?" she said doubtfully.
Upstairs she heard one of the twins start crying and Felicity's footsteps going down the hall. In another minute, Becky knew, the other one would yell. Yep, there it was. Right on cue.
"Taggart?" Felicity called. "I'm feeding Willy. Could you change Abby?"
Taggart looked at his daughter as he got to his feet. "See?"
Becky stepped back and watched him pass, standing still under his absent ruffle of her hair. Then she turned to stare at his back as he slowly climbed the stairs.
"Yeah, I see," she said.
Jenny was packed.
Her clothes. Some books. The afghan that her mother had knitted her. Pictures. She hesitated over those.
A woman starting over with a new life probably shouldn't take pictures of the old. But as she turned the pages of the albums she had put together over the years, she knew she couldn't leave them behind.
There were so many good memories in them. Of the ranch. Of the mountains. The cattle. Taggart and Felicity and Becky. Jed and Brenna, Tuck and Neile. Noah and Tess and their children.
Mace.
She sucked in a deep breath and shut the album, then packed it away at the bottom of her case.
She walked around the house, going slowly from room to room, saying goodbye.
To the bed where she and Mace had made love so many nights—and a few days—for so many years.
To the stove where she had burned the roast the first night they'd moved in and where she'd baked the Christmas cookies that Mace was always trying to nibble before she got them decorated.
To the fireplace which they had built together, stone by stone, and in front of which one night last year they had loved one another all night long.
To the children's bedroom—she refused today to call it the spare room; it would be a lie—where they had hoped and dreamed and lost it all.
She wasn't sure when the tears started. Maybe they'd been rolling down her cheeks for days. Sometimes it felt like it. Sometimes it felt like inside she'd been crying so long she would never stop.
But then she heard the car coming up the road, and she swiped determinedly at her face.
"You'll be fine," she told herself. "Fine."
She hoped someday it would be true.
Watching her dad walk up the steps to change Abby after he'd just told her there was no way he could climb Tiptop was bad enough. Banging her fist against the barn door and getting a jagged splinter in it just added insult to injury. Having to dig it out with a needle by herself because Taggart and Felicity were double-twinned only added fuel to the fire.
But when Becky finally got the splinter out and put the antiseptic on it and then discovered that they were out of Band-Aids, well, that was the last straw.
It was a small thing.
It was her life in a nutshell.
"Damn it," Becky said, and didn't even care if they heard her.
It wouldn't matter, she thought grimly. They wouldn't notice if they did.
There were no Band-Aids.
Felicity always bought Band-Aids. Felicity's belief in Band-Aids was one of the things that had made Becky sure the quality of life in the Jones household would improve when Taggart married her. And, it had.
For two years they'd had Band-Aids.
And now?
Becky sighed as she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees and stared out across the valley from the top of the mountain. Now they had twins.
Mace didn't realize how much he'd come to count on having Ian there until Ian was gone.
He'd gone back down the mountain with Noah, and silence seemed to fill his place. The rocking chair sat empty. The pipe smoke faded. The cabin seemed to echo.
There was no one to joke with. No one to talk to. No one to listen to. No one to share a meal with.
All there was, was time to think.
Mace thought. He thought about Ian and Fiona. About their marriage. Fiona's illness. Ian's anger. Not at her. At life.
He thought about Fiona's insistence that they stay. About Ian's reluctance. About Fiona's persuasion. What had Ian said she'd told him?
"It's not just my life. It's our life. We're married. We're in this together."
And Ian had agreed with her. They'd stayed. She'd died. He'd been angry again. Hurt still.
And yet … he went back.
When Noah came and told him about the earthquake, he didn't even hesitate. "We have work to do," he'd said. "Fiona and I."
And he went to pack.
Fiona was with him. Inside him, where he'd never lose
her. For better or worse.
As Ian had told him to, Mace thought about that.
He thought about the other marriages he witnessed every day. He thought about Taggart and Felicity. About Jed and Brenna. About Noah and Tess. He thought about Maggie and Tanner and about Noah's other brother, Luke, and his wife, Jill.
Things hadn't been easy for any of them. And yet you couldn't think of one without the other. They were—like Ian and Fiona—two parts of a whole.
One of the guys—he couldn't even remember which one—had once said to him, "She makes me whole."
Once he'd have thought that about Jenny and himself.
Once, in fact, he'd have put Jenny and himself at the top of the list—the strongest, the happiest, the most resilient of couples. They'd done everything together. Loved and laughed. Fought and made up. Struggled and coped.
Together.
Until this.
This.
His infertility. His. Not hers.
"It's my problem," he'd yelled at her when she'd told him they would deal with it.
"It's our problem," she'd countered quietly.
But he hadn't believed her then. He'd been too caught up in his own pain, his own feelings of inadequacy, his own rage at the injustice of this affront to the very essence of his masculinity.
He hadn't had space in his heart to allow her to share his anguish. He'd shut her out, denied her pain, rejected the notion that she had as much at stake as he had.
And now?
Now he wanted her more than he'd ever wanted her in his life.
In the void Ian had left, he had nothing. No hope. No future. No one.
Ian didn't have Fiona anymore, either. Not physically. But he would always have her in his heart.
"I'll always have her," he'd said to Mace one night when he was staring into the fire. "We're together one way or another until the end."
"I thought we were in this together," Jenny had once said to him. Mace hadn't believed her then. He wanted desperately to believe her now.
Becky heard the footsteps coming.
She didn't turn around. It would be more hikers. There were a lot more hikers this year than five years ago, when she and her dad had first started climbing the peak. It wasn't special anymore.
And wasn't that the truth? she thought glumly. Though she had to admit she was glad she'd come.
It was hard to feel the world was really pressing down on you when you got up above it this way.
It was hard to feel that Willy and Abby were the worst things to ever happen in the universe when the universe was so big and Willy and Abby were really pretty small. It was hard to blame Felicity for forgetting Band-Aids when Becky thought about all the things her stepmother did do. Felicity had a whole house to run and babies to look after and book work to help Taggart with. And she had bought Becky a new shirt with a really cool bull rider on it just last week and it wasn't even her birthday.
It was even hard to hold a grudge against her dad when she remembered the good times. And when she thought how really, really tired he looked.
"Hey, Pard."
The soft words behind her made her almost jump out of her skin.
She jerked around to see her father coming up the last few steps to the top of the mountain. He looked beat. Worried. Worse by far than he had that morning.
She hadn't told him where she was going. Why should she? she'd rationalized. He wouldn't care. He probably wouldn't even notice she was gone!
"I thought you didn't have time to climb today," she said, squelching her initial guilty start and marshaling what little defense she could manage.
"I was wrong."
Just that. Nothing else.
She looked up at him. He sat down beside her, but he didn't look at her, just sat with his knees drawn up, his elbows resting on them as he stared off into the valley. At the road that had taken him away from her years ago.
Did he remember what he'd told her then? About the roads all connecting? About him just being on down them somewhere, but always close enough to come if she needed him?
He must, Becky thought, her throat tightening, because he'd come.
"I'm sorry if I scared you," she whispered, edging closer to him.
He turned to look at her. But he didn't just look.
He reached for her and put his arms around her. He pulled her up onto his lap and hugged her hard, pressing his face into her hair and rocking her the way he hadn't rocked her since she was a really little girl.
"I'm sorry, too, Pard." His voice was muffled against her neck. She felt something wet touch her ear.
She reached up and touched it wonderingly. Was it a tear?
She pulled back to look at him. "I wasn't running away," she told him urgently, needing to make him understand now that he was here. "I was coming back. I just needed … needed to do this."
"We both needed to do it." He smiled a little crookedly, a little sadly. "Your going on your own just pointed it out to me."
"I was mad."
"You had a right to be. Things have been … a little rough lately. I realize that. I didn't mean to turn you down. I never want to turn you down, Pard. I just—just—I'm stretched pretty thin these days."
Becky laced her fingers through his. She was surprised to see that there was less difference in the size of their hands than she remembered. "I know. I understand. It's okay."
He shook his head. "It's not. Lookin' around for you today when we were about to set off for Grandma and Grandpa's and not findin' you just about scared me spitless."
"I didn't mean to scare you."
"Best thing you could've done," he admitted with a heavy sigh. "It woke me up." He brushed a hand over her hair, let it linger, as if he needed to reassure himself that she was really there.
Becky snuggled a little closer, liking the feel of his arms around her. She'd forgotten just how much.
"Thank you for coming," she said in a small voice.
He pressed a kiss against the side of her head. "My pleasure, Pard. It will always be my pleasure. For a long time it was just you and me, and I guess I sort of took it for granted. I thought having Felicity just made it better."
"It did make it better," Becky said, worried suddenly that he might think she was sorry he'd got married. "I love Felicity."
A corner of his mouth tipped up. "I do, too."
Becky breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't want to ever have to think about him getting another divorce. She knew, even if he'd never said, just how much the first one had hurt. "Good," she said. "That's all right, then."
"It will be," he promised. "It won't always be this hectic. Willy and Abby will grow up. They won't demand as much time." He shook his head. "I never counted on twins."
"They're okay," Becky allowed after a moment.
"They're an adjustment," Taggart said. "Sometimes they drive me nuts."
Becky's eyes widened. "They do?"
"I love 'em. I wouldn't be without 'em," her father assured her. "But it takes a hell of a lot out of you just keepin' up with them."
"At least there's two of you," Becky said. It didn't seem quite so bad once she knew her father didn't feel all jolly all the time he was having to deal with screaming kids. It made her own feelings seem a little less awful.
"There's two of us," Taggart agreed. "And, like I told you the first time we came up here, things change. In this case I think they'll get better. We'll have more time. But if we don't, remind me about today. Will you?"
Becky nodded. "It's a promise."
"And we'll try to adjust," Taggart said. "That's a promise, too."
Taggart's arms tightened around her, and he gave her a long, hard hug. Becky hugged him back. "Love you, Pard," he said.
"Love you, too. Always." Then she swiped at her eyes and grinned at him.
He grinned back. Then, lifting her and setting her on the ground, he got to his feet and held out his hand.
"We'll come again," he said as he started down. "Next
year."
"All of us?" Becky asked as she followed.
"If we can," Taggart said. "I'd like that. Would you?"
"Yeah, I think I would. I think Willy and Abby are gonna need to see that the world is bigger than them."
Taggart stopped and turned his head to look back at her. He smiled.
Suddenly she heard a thin, wailing sound. "What's that? Is that a baby? Who would bring a baby up here?"
"Felicity."
Becky stumbled. "What? She brought them? Here?"
"She's waiting down where you left your horse. She wanted to come all the way, but I said no. I thought this one was between you and me."
He met her gaze and held it. This was her dad—the dad she'd always known, the dad that was there inside the one who had so much more to cope with these days.
"It was," Becky said after she thought about it. "But," she added, "it's not just you and me anymore, is it?"
Taggart shook his head.
Becky slipped an arm around his waist and felt his go around her shoulders as the trail widened and the two of them could walk together. "Then I guess we better go back down and help Felicity out."
Her stepmother was waiting in the truck, nursing Abby. She had her thumb in Willy's mouth, letting him suck. But she didn't seem to be paying much attention to either one of them.
Her gaze was on Becky and Taggart.
As they came down she opened the truck's door and handed the babies to Taggart, then wrapped her arms around Becky and hugged her tight.
Wordlessly Becky hugged back. Then she stepped away and said, "I'm sorry," because she knew Felicity had probably worried even more than her dad.
"So am I," Felicity said. "I'm glad you're all right."
"I'm fine," Becky said. "Better than fine." She looked at her dad, holding both crying babies, and smiled. Then she looked at her stepmother and said, "You better get back and feed her."
"Yes." Felicity took Abby from Taggart. He was left with a squalling Willy. He looked from the baby to Becky's horse which he needed to put in the trailer before they could start back down.
"I'll hold him," Becky said.
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