A Rancher To Remember (Montana Twins Book 3)

by Patricia Johns

  “Yeah, but for now, I need it. Their father should at least know them apart, right?”

  Lloyd looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “It’ll come back, you know. The doctors both said you’ll remember again.”

  “I know,” he replied.

  “So, this won’t be forever, this...this...purgatory you’re living in.” Lloyd squinted at him.

  “Sure hope not,” Sawyer said. “I don’t like not knowing who I am.”

  “You’re still you,” Lloyd countered. “You’re still my nephew, whether you remember all the years we worked together or not. You’re family—that’s just a fact.”

  Like his girls—they were still his. His memories didn’t cement them to him...not fully, at least. There was something deeper that connected them. Blood. Or a wedding vow. Olivia had said that counted for more than feelings, and maybe she was right.

  “I appreciate it,” Sawyer said, and when he looked up at the older man, he saw tears glistening in his eyes.

  Lloyd cleared his throat and blinked back the emotion. “I’ll get you out working with me again, even if I have to teach you from scratch.”

  “I could start now,” Sawyer said. “If I’m beginning to remember a couple of things, it might help.”

  “After calving,” Lloyd said. “When it slows down a bit. Then I’ll show you the ropes. Once the doctor gives you the all clear. If you toppled over out there—”

  “I’m not going to topple over,” Sawyer retorted.

  “Didn’t think you’d get kicked in the head the first time,” Lloyd said. “That happens again, and you might be dead. So no, not yet. After calving.”

  Sawyer nodded. The thought of getting out there and learning to be useful again was appealing. Maybe by then, he wouldn’t have to be taught from scratch anymore, and he’d remember his job.

  “Say, if I drink coffee too late in the day, does it keep me awake?” Sawyer asked.

  “Yup.” Lloyd glanced toward the pot. “You never drink it after noon.”

  “Good to know,” he said, then smiled wryly. “I guess I’ll be up for a while.”

  Lloyd peeled off his boots, then headed for the kitchen sink. He turned on the tap and squirted some dish soap into his hands.

  “Olivia said I used to drink my coffee with cream and sugar,” he added.

  “You used to. That was a while ago. Then your doctor warned you about all that sugar, and you went cold turkey and learned to like it black. Why...you going back to the old way?”

  “No, I still like it black,” he said.

  Lloyd finished washing his hands and turned toward him. “See? It’s all in there. Just a matter of getting it back again.”

  “Yup.” That’s what Olivia kept saying, too. They seemed to recognize him still, even if he couldn’t recognize himself.

  “You used to sit up in the kitchen reading your Bible,” Lloyd went on. “It was your way to unwind and get your mind settled to sleep. You’d drink some warm milk and read a passage or two.”

  Sawyer raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “You know, if you wanted to go through some motions and see if it helped kick-start anything.”

  “Thanks. I might try that.”

  “You’re a Christian, Sawyer.”

  “Huh.” He sucked in a breath. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Hold on.” Lloyd headed out of the kitchen, leaving Sawyer alone. He returned a moment later with a worn, black Bible in one hand. He deposited it on the kitchen table.

  Sawyer opened the Bible randomly and saw some blue pen underlines. He flipped another few pages and found more.

  “This is mine?”

  “Yup.”

  Sawyer flipped to the front, and he saw his name printed on the dedication page. Underneath was written, From your dad.

  “My dad gave it to me,” he murmured, and he had a flash of something in his memory...an aroma—a mixture of Old Spice cologne and hay. It was a little musky. But he couldn’t recall a face.

  “You remembering something?” Lloyd asked.

  “I don’t know. Almost. It’s close.”

  “Your old man gave you that Bible when you were a teenager. He died before your senior year and you came to live here with me.”

  “Oh...” Sawyer nodded a couple of times, sadness oozing up inside of him. Funny to grieve for a man he couldn’t remember, but that scent was in his head now, and it was probably the smell he associated with his dad. It was a start.

  “He’d be glad to know you’ve still got that Bible,” Lloyd said. “He was a man of faith.”

  Sawyer leafed through the pages again, and he touched a place where there was some underlining in blue pen.

  “You underlined the passages that meant something to you,” Lloyd said.

  “I guess they wouldn’t mean much to me now,” he said quietly.

  “Says who?” Lloyd retorted. “That’s the thing with the Good Book. You read something once and it speaks to your heart. Then you read it again a few years later, and you don’t remember what it meant to you back then, but it suddenly means something a bit different. I almost envy you tonight.”

  “Why’s that?” Sawyer asked.

  “Because you get to read those passages again for the first time.”

  Sawyer looked down at the worn pages. Some had torn and had been taped back together again. He thumbed through some pages, and the Bible naturally opened toward the middle, in the book of Psalms. He smoothed a hand over the words, his calloused fingers making a whispering noise against the rice-paper-thin pages. He didn’t remember how to pray, either, but he knew the concept of it.

  I’m scared. I don’t know who I am.

  And this time, he knew Who he was directing those words toward in his heart.

  “Where should I start—” he began to ask, lifting his head. But Lloyd had left the room. Sawyer was alone again, but he didn’t feel quite so isolated this time. The Bible was open on the table in front of him. His gaze fell to Psalm 121.

  The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

  The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

  The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

  The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for

  evermore.

  “From this time forth, and even for evermore,” Sawyer murmured.

  Whatever was in the past was gone so completely that he couldn’t even remember it. But if God would guide his steps from now on...if Sawyer could face this strange, confusing, memory-less world with God at his side, maybe he could find his footing, after all.

  Lord, I don’t remember what You’ve done for me. I don’t remember what I’ve done wrong, or right. I don’t even know if I’m a good man. I have this nagging feeling that I wasn’t as good as I should have been, and I can’t let that rest. I just know that I’m adrift and alone, and I’m scared. Lloyd said I was a Christian. And I want to continue being one. If You’ll take me.

  Sawyer felt a warmth around him, and his fears seemed to drift away. In the here and now, he was not alone, and he had a feeling that he never had been. He used to know God, and even if his memories were gone, there was a part of him that had kept on praying out into the void. He flipped the pages of his Bible again, and his gaze stopped at another passage that had been underlined, re-underlined, and even highlighted.

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  And with those words, his first memory came flooding back. He was in a drafty room with other children, and a lady was sitting in front of them in a modest dress, her knees pressed together. She had thick glasses and a sweet smile.

  “Let’s say it all together,” she’d intoned. “‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want...’”
>
  And they’d all recited the words together, monotone and flat in the way kids did when they’d memorized something.

  “‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures...’ Mrs. Willoughby,” Sawyer said aloud, and tears pricked at his eyes.

  He remembered her! She was kind and smelled like peppermints. She’d always had tissues on hand because she suffered from hay fever, and she sneezed a lot. He cast about, feeling for more memories that were connected to this one, but he couldn’t land on anything. Just the image of that Sunday school teacher sitting in front of the class, a tissue clasped in one hand, as she helped them recite the Twenty-Third Psalm.

  But it was something more than a frustrating fragment about a black coat he couldn’t quite place—he had one solid memory!

  Chapter Four

  The next morning was Sunday, and Olivia blinked her eyes open to a ray of sunlight that had landed on her pillow. She rubbed her eyes and reached for her cell phone to check the time. It was seven—sleeping in by a ranch’s standards. She lay under the warm quilt for a moment longer, yesterday’s events coming back to mind. She’d come to Beaut to help the Whites reconnect with Sawyer, but it wouldn’t be as easy as she’d hoped.

  It shouldn’t be about money. Olivia wasn’t a materialistic person, but a chance to reduce this pile of debt couldn’t be ignored. It would be nothing for the White family to call in a few favors.

  The White family had moved out to Beaut in order to start Wyatt’s political run—giving him connections to some powerful local ranchers. Sending their daughter to the local public school had been a public relations choice, meant to make their family look down-to-earth. Mia had told Olivia that much in confidence. Wyatt White had gone about “pressing flesh” and listening to the concerns of the average Joe. But the Whites had never worried like the average Joe had to worry when it came to money.

  They didn’t worry about bills, but they had worried about Mia. Wyatt and Irene had some glorious plans for their much-loved only child that hadn’t included marrying a common ranch hand. But Mia had loved Sawyer, and if there was one thing Mia’d learned from “roughing it” out here in rural Montana, it was that she wasn’t any better than anyone else. And that common ranch hand had been quite good enough for Mia White.

  Olivia tossed back her quilt and reached for her clothes. The room was chilly this time of the morning, and she could hear the soothing murmur of voices from the kitchen.

  It wasn’t easy watching Sawyer fall for Mia, but Olivia hadn’t been the right one for him. It didn’t matter that they’d harbored feelings for each other ever since that night in the diner, or that they’d clicked in a way that Olivia hadn’t experienced before or since. Sawyer needed a woman who wanted to make her life in Beaut, and Mia was willing to give up everything her family connections offered her for this man.

  So when Olivia said that Mia deserved him, she meant it. Because with the rumors swirling around town about Olivia sleeping with all those guys, with the sidelong looks, the crude jokes, the name-calling, the bullying...she couldn’t stay.

  Olivia pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, then went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. As she was coming out of the bathroom, she heard some babbling coming from the toddlers’ room down the hall. She paused, listening. No one else seemed to have noticed, so she headed in the direction of the children’s laughter.

  Pushing the door open, she found the girls, each standing up in her own crib. The room was still dark, the curtains pulled. So Olivia opened the curtains and the girls blinked up at her with smiles on their chubby faces.

  “Good morning,” she said, reaching down to pick up the first little girl. She had a B on her hand—so this one was Bella. “You ready for a new diaper?”

  Olivia had learned the day before that keeping one toddler in a crib while she changed the other was the smartest move. So she grabbed a diaper and headed for the changing table on the opposite side of the room. The job was completed quickly enough, and just as Olivia was picking Bella up again from the changing table, the bedroom door opened, and Sawyer came inside.

  “Hi,” Olivia said with a smile. She passed Bella over to her father’s arms. “She needs to get dressed. I’ll do Lizzie’s diaper.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks.” Sawyer hoisted his daughter higher and headed for the dresser. “It’s church today. Do you normally go?”

  Olivia shrugged. “In the city, I go every week. Do you?”

  “Why do you ask it like that?” He glanced over at her.

  “Because when I knew you, you hated church. I mean, you believed in God, but—”

  “But?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “You were the kind of guy who loved to point out ugly church history and TV preachers who stole money and that kind of thing. You weren’t much of a churchgoer.”

  “Oh...” He frowned slightly. “I thought I’d go this week, all the same.”

  Olivia held out her arms for Lizzie, who let out a squeal of happiness as Olivia lifted her out of the crib. “Okay...”

  “You want to come with me?”

  Olivia brought Lizzie to the changing table and reached for a diaper. “Sure. It might be nice to see some people I haven’t talked with in a few years.”

  It wasn’t the church people who had spread the nasty rumors about her in her senior year. Back then there weren’t too many young people who attended regularly, anyway.

  “My uncle said I was a Christian, and that sounded right to me, somehow. He didn’t mention me being all bitter about church or anything.”

  Olivia shrugged. “Keep in mind, I didn’t know you as well after you got married, so things might have changed. Mia loved being involved with church, and you loved Mia, so...”

  He frowned, as if considering that for a moment. “I remembered someone last night.”

  Someone, not something.

  “Did you?” Olivia looked over at him hopefully. Was it coming back now? Sawyer held Bella in one arm and was attempting to get a dress over her head with the other. “Who?”

  “Mrs. Willoughby. My Sunday school teacher from when I was little.” He stopped the slow-motion wrestle with his daughter.

  “Anything about her specifically?” Olivia asked.

  “Just her teaching us a Bible passage. Nothing more. Nothing else connected, just...that.”

  Sawyer managed to get the dress over Bella’s head this time around, and he let out a chuckle of victory.

  “Mom kept trying to get my brother to go to church, too,” she said.

  “He isn’t a Christian?”

  She shook her head. “He hasn’t stepped foot in a church since Mom stopped forcing him as a kid.”

  “How long since you’ve seen him?” Sawyer asked.

  “I came back to take care of my mom for a few weeks before she died five years ago. That was the spring before your wedding. By the time she found out she was sick, the cancer was really advanced, and there wasn’t much time left. After my brother and I scattered her ashes, I went back to Billings. I wanted my brother to come with me, but he wouldn’t. He said there was no point. A job in the city or a job in Beaut—it was all the same to him. He’d wanted to start his own mechanic shop, but there wasn’t any money for that, and the hospital debt really did a number on both of our credit scores when we missed some payments. And there I was with my nursing job and my education...he was just mad, I guess. At everything. He’d just lost his mother too. I figured some time would heal the wounds. It hasn’t so far.”

  “So you haven’t seen him since then?” Sawyer clarified.

  “No. Not since then. I tried making plans to have Christmas together, stuff like that, but he didn’t want to. He always used the excuse that he was working, but I knew it wasn’t that. Every time we talked, he was a little bit angrier. And I got defensive... I mean, it wasn’t my fault! When I went o
ff to college, we weren’t planning on Mom getting sick. It wasn’t fair to blame everything on me, as if I could control it. But maybe that was part of his grieving. I don’t know.”

  Sawyer finished with Bella’s dress and then reached for Lizzie. He grabbed a matching pink dress and began a balancing act with the second toddler.

  “Was I around?” Sawyer asked.

  “When Mom died?” Olivia asked.

  “Yeah. We were friends, you said. Was I there to lend a hand at all?”

  “It was the spring before your wedding,” Olivia explained. “You and Mia were busy with your own stuff, but you guys helped out as much as I’d let you.”

  “That’s good...” He looked up at her, and his eyes widened in sudden recognition. “The black coat...”

  “What about it?” Olivia came over and helped to navigate Lizzie’s grabbing hands into the armholes of the little dress.

  “It’s been bothering me,” he said. “At first I could just remember the coat, and then I remembered it was on a mucky, snowy day. It was cold and wet. I was standing on a sidewalk, I think. And there was this woman standing ahead of me in a black coat. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she turned back, and...”

  Olivia’s heart skipped a beat. She remembered it, too, now—standing on that sidewalk with the slushy snow coming down.

  “...it was you,” Sawyer said. “But you’d been crying. And...”

  “And?” she whispered.

  “I remember it now. I wanted to hug you. To try and make you feel better. I don’t remember the context, though.”

  Olivia nodded sadly. “I do remember that. You saw me in town, and I hadn’t told you yet that Mom had passed, although you knew it would happen soon. I hadn’t told anyone. Brian might have... I don’t know. I was in a bit of a fog.”

  It was a few years ago now, but remembering those aching, heartbroken days was still difficult.

  “Did I hug you?” he asked uncertainly.

  “No.” She licked her lips. She knew exactly why she hadn’t let him hug her. He’d moved toward her, and she’d pulled back. They’d agreed not to touch each other anymore—no more hugs, or nudges. It hadn’t been appropriate, and while a death in the family might be an understandable excuse to lift the ban, she hadn’t wanted to.