“That sounds great, but I better take a rain check. I’m still at the office.”
He glanced at the wall clock. “It’s getting near seven. You sure nothing can’t wait until tomorrow?”
“I’m sure.” He heard the shuffle of papers in the background. “Even if I wanted to take you up on a back rub, I don’t have a choice. I’ve got enough paperwork to fill out and emails to return to keep me at this desk for hours.”
“What about dinner?”
“Duke’s bringing me something from the diner.”
“Okay. Well, I’ve got my AA meeting tonight, but you can call me later.” He couldn’t believe it—he was finally starting to talk about his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings like they were part of his life, not a dirty secret.
She paused. “Have I told you how proud I am of you?”
That embarrassed him. “A better man wouldn’t have had to go in the first place.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. A good man deals with his faults and doesn’t hide them.” Her voice cracked slightly, making him wonder if she was just really tired—or there was more to her words.
“Call me later?”
“I’ll try. Bye, Austin.”
After they hung up, he worked for a while, then drove to the church for the meeting. When he walked in, he talked briefly with Alan and found himself chatting easily with a few of the other men there. He wouldn’t call them friends, but they’d become important to him.
Then, just as he sat down and Alan stood up and began the meeting, he noticed a new face. It was a man old enough to be his father, and he was sitting there looking half resentful and half ashamed. Austin knew that feeling, of course.
And it also made him realize that it was time to move forward. If he was willing to deal with his drinking, and even have an open, honest relationship with Dinah, then it was time to deal with one other relationship in his life: his dad.
He was going to have to go pay him a visit. And this time, instead of only looking at the man’s faults and dwelling on his painful disappointments, Austin realized he needed to look beyond them. It was time to try out this father-son thing once again.
Because everyone needed a second chance. He was living proof of that.
Chapter Twenty-One
Usually when Austin drove home he found himself taking every back road, just to make the trip out there last a little longer. Now, however, he was looking forward to chasing away the old ghosts and setting things right.
Sure, he wasn’t perfect, and his family wasn’t, either. Not by a long shot. But maybe they could learn to love each other in spite of their imperfections. He was slowly learning that love didn’t have to mean you liked every little thing about the other person. Loving someone meant that you loved them no matter what.
When he pulled up and parked, a few windows were cracked and he could hear a television show on in the small living room.
Though he usually walked right in, this time he knocked softly. He needed to do what he came to do and didn’t want to get sidetracked by Sammie and Sadie.
“Cheyenne, is Dad around?” Austin asked when his sister opened the door.
“He’s out in the barn.” Her grip on the door seemed to tighten before she schooled her features. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.” For a moment, he was tempted to confide in her. To talk to her about everything that had gone wrong with him and their dad. But he didn’t trust himself to deal with the pain twice in one night.
Plus, she had enough troubles. He didn’t need to be a counselor to know that she, too, was hiding from memories of her marriage in the wake of Ryan’s return from Iraq, his violent outbursts and even his death. The last thing in the world she needed was to be burdened with his problems.
“How are the girls?” he asked to buy himself a few more precious seconds before he faced his fears.
“They’re good.” She shrugged. “Sleeping, I hope.” Still looking him over, she said, “I didn’t know you were coming out tonight.”
“I heard something at my meeting tonight that hit me hard. It made me realize that a visit here was long overdue.”
She looked at him curiously. “Your meeting?”
“Yeah.” Though his mouth felt like sandpaper, he forced himself to tell the truth to his sister. “I, uh, I’ve been going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Chey. For a while now, I’ve known that I have a problem. I decided to get some help.” He ached to say more, but he kind of hoped he didn’t have to.
“So that’s why you’ve been asking for Cokes.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. Until now, I wasn’t ready to admit that I had to find some help.” Especially not to his sister, who already seemed stronger than he was in so many ways.
“Are the meetings helping?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Actually, they are. They’re helping a lot.” Forcing himself to continue, he said, “I still want a beer about as badly as I want to breathe. But it’s getting easier. That’s something, I suppose.”
He stepped back. He needed to have the conversation before he pushed it aside. That would be the absolutely wrong thing to do, even though it was tempting. “I’m going to go out to the barn.”
“Okay. And…Austin?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you want to talk to Dad about? I think it’s going to be okay. Heck, it might even go better than you think.”
“Hope so.”
Turning on his heel, he took the short walk out to the barn, memories stirring as he did so.
* * *
HIS DAD WAS DRESSED IN faded jeans, a black thermal long-sleeved shirt and an old brown barn jacket. He was sitting on an old metal chair in the middle of the barn when Austin entered. On his lap was a hardcover book, and over to his right was a reading lamp. An orange extension cord ran from the lamp to one of the wall plugs.
The sight took Austin by surprise. He paused, trying to come to terms with the sight in front of him—compared to the memories of his father.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Austin! What are you doing here?” He put down the book and got to his feet. “Is anything wrong?”
Well, there was surprise number two. Growing up, he’d often come upon his father often just sitting by himself. But he’d been keeping company with a six-pack or a bottle of hooch.
Never sitting in silence reading a book.
“Nothing’s wrong. Sit down, Dad. I, uh, thought it was time I came out to visit with you.”
It was then that he noticed his father had reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. That was something new, too. “What are you reading? Anything good?”
He shrugged. “Just an old W.E.B. Griffin book. War stories.” He glanced Austin’s way. Almost shyly. “Ever read them?”
Austin had always liked to read, but hadn’t taken the time to open in a book in years. “No.”
“Oh.” With care, he set his reading glasses in the middle of the book. “You better pull up a chair if you don’t want me to stand up. I refuse to stare up at you like a child.”
“Oh. Sure.” He walked to the tack room and pulled out a step stool and set it across from his father, then sat down. And wondered how in the world he was going to be able to say what needed to be said.
Beside him, his dad kicked his legs straight out, well, his right one. His left never did bend correctly.
“Dad, whatever happened to your leg? Did you hurt it riding?�
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“My leg?” His brows inched together, as if it pained him to think about it. “Oh, it’s nothing. I hurt it in prison.”
His father never talked about his time at the state prison. Matter of fact, Austin could only remember a handful of times in his life when his father had even mentioned the place. “I guess it was pretty bad there.”
Buddy Wright looked at him with something akin to surprise. “Yeah. It was.”
Austin winced. He hated to imagine what his father had gone through. He also hated that he’d never stopped to wonder what it had been like for his father.
As if he sought to calm him, his dad said, “Don’t fret. My time in prison was bad, but it wasn’t horrible all the time.”
“Really?”
He smiled faintly. “Just most of it. Getting out of there was a happy day for me.”
But of course, when he got out, Austin’s mother had long gone. “So how did you hurt your leg?” Already Austin was imagining the worst.
“I’m not going to talk to you about that, Austin.”
He was a grown man. He’d seen his fair share of ugliness. Given that, it had also been quite a while since anyone had attempted to shield him from the God’s honest truth about anything. “The story is that bad?”
His father looked down at his heavily lined hands clenched on his lap. When he lifted his chin, he murmured, “There’s some things a boy never needs to know about his father. This is one of them.”
Austin tried that on for size…and realized his father was right. There were some things he hoped his own children would never find out about.
But there was one thing that needed to be shared. “Dad…a couple of weeks ago, I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.”
His father looked completely stunned. “What brought that on?”
“The usual things,” he said drily. “Drinking. Too much drinking.”
“No. What really brought it on?”
“I woke up scared. I couldn’t remember the night before. I started wondering what I’d done. And then realized that there were quite a few evenings that were a mystery to me.”
“How are you doing?”
Austin shrugged. There, in the dim light of the barn, with the scent of hay and horse surrounding them, he knew that he could finally speak honestly. Not sugarcoat anything. Not pretend he was better than he was. “It’s hard.”
“Slipped yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe you won’t. But if you do…”
“Yes?”
“If you do, you can always begin again.”
That sounded like the voice of experience talking. “You’re not drinking anymore?”
“No.” His chin lifted. “I’ve been sober for almost a year now.”
In spite of himself, Austin was impressed. “Who helped you?”
He chuckled softly. “You know who. You. And Cheyenne. And those girls. And the horses.”
That made no sense. They’d always been there. Not that he was an expert or anything…but still…
His dad seemed to read his mind. “I know. It’s about time, huh? I don’t have a good excuse or a good reason. Just one day I decided that I was tired of spending all my time looking for the next buzz.” He picked up his glasses. “So I took up reading.”
“That’s what got you through it?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it was thinking about moments like this.” He coughed. “I hoped one day we’d talk again.”
Talk again. It didn’t escape Austin’s notice that his father wasn’t asking for more than that.
A horse nickering in the back stall, his tone sounding deep and powerful, caught Austin’s attention. “What you got back there, Dad?”
He swallowed. “A horse.”
“Which one?”
His father got to his feet. “Well, there’s a story about the horse back there.”
“What is it?”
“That there is the Harts’ horse.”
Foreboding ripped through him as he attempted to prepare himself for the worst. “Which horse, Dad?”
“The Midnight Express.”
Austin felt like whacking the palm of his hand against his head. Of course they would have the Harts’ expensive stolen bucking horse. Because, well, who else in the area would besides those no-good Wrights?
Jeez.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “Tell me you did not go out and steal that horse.”
“Austin, I definitely did not steal him.” He walked slowly down the aisle, passed Cheyenne’s pretty roan, passed Win Dixie, the stately quarter horse that Austin first learned to ride on.
Following, Austin stopped in front of the gelding and scratched the spot where Win had always liked to be rubbed. He did not want to get into a war of words with his father. But dammit, what possible explanation could there be for what the Harts’ missing prize stallion was doing there? “Dad, tell me about Midnight.”
“Not a whole lot to say,” he said as he passed Prinny, the little mare Austin had picked up at a horse auction a couple of years ago, soon after he’d heard Cheyenne had had her twins. Prinny was skinny and skittish. Not really an abused horse, but definitely on the shy side. Austin had seen something in the silver horse that had melted his heart. And made him offer for her. He figured she’d be perfect for the girls’ first riding lessons once she’d gotten used to being coddled a bit.
Right on the other side of Prinny’s stall stood Midnight in all his glory.
Austin half expected the horse to be pushing against the fence or pacing in the stall. But instead of acting up, he was standing there relatively calmly as they approached.
No, he was standing there calm as could be. Austin had been on the backs of enough horses to know which ones had minds of their own—and this one surely did. For whatever reason, the beautiful coal-black stallion had found himself a temporary home in his father’s barn. He seemed pretty pleased with it, too.
Now they just had to figure out what to do with him.
Midnight tossed his head at his father but didn’t seem skittish around him. No, actually, he looked kind of as if he trusted him. His eyes were tracking Buddy’s every move, and his ears were pricked a little forward.
As though he was expecting something.
Austin couldn’t take the suspense any longer. “Dad, what happened?”
“One evening, I was sitting in here, trying to read and not drink. Talking to the horses, when I heard a commotion along the back fence. I went out there and, sure enough, there stood Midnight, looking worn-out and hurt.”
“Hurt?” Austin slowly approached the stallion, but took care not to stand too close. It was very clear that the champion horse had little regard for him.
Buddy nodded, curving his hands over the top of the gate to the stall. “As best I can tell, old Midnight here had a bit of a run-in with a barbed-wire fence. His flank and side was cut up something awful.” He frowned, staring at the horse. “And what’s more, it looked like it had been that way for a day or two. So I took him home.”
“Just like that?” He knew his voice was laced with sarcasm, but honestly, how could his dad be making it sound so easy?
“No, not just like that. This horse has an attitude like no other. But after I sat with him for a while, he calmed. Then I brought him a couple of carrots. He liked them fine. A little while later, he decided he didn’t mind sharing a few of my apple slices, too.”
&nbs
p; “Sharing?”
His dad chose to ignore his snarky question. Chuckling softly, he said, “I talked to Midnight, too. Told him as ranches go, ours wasn’t much. Not like the Harts’ spread. But, if he was of a mind, I’d be happy to put him up for a while.”
“You talked to the horse.”
“Uh-huh. After a while, I guess what I had to say agreed with him, because he followed me to the barn and right into this stall.” He glanced Prinny’s way. “And I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that Prinny had a whole lot to do with his following me, too. Midnight is something of a ladies’ man.”
“Dad, why didn’t you just call Ace Hart? Or Dinah?”
“To be honest, I didn’t think about it at first. He was hurting and I was cold. Then he was hungry, so I let him munch on some hay.” His eyes warmed from the memory. “Then I noticed him bleeding, so I decided to doctor up his legs and side.”
“He didn’t nip at you?”
“He wasn’t real pleased, but he seemed to understand his choices. Then, when he seemed so content to be in the stall, I put it off until the next day.”
“And then?”
“And then he settled in.” He shrugged. “I don’t have a good excuse, Austin. Every day I meant to give the Harts a call, but every day I also seemed to find a dozen excuses to wait. I was in no hurry to get arrested.”
“You didn’t think they’d believe you found him here?”
“Son, you haven’t believed in me, not even when I told you I hadn’t had a drink in almost a year. How was I going to expect a fine family like the Harts to believe I was better than they imagined?”
“I see your point.” That had been his own fears working against him, Austin knew. He’d had too many memories of hoping his father would follow through on his promises—only to be let down all over again.
But as he gazed at his father and saw the hope and determination stirred up together in his faded blue eyes, Austin knew he was finally ready to lend his father his trust again. “But I’m willing to try again.”
Austin: Second Chance Cowboy Page 17