Home at Last

by Shirlee McCoy

  She needed that journal.

  “Come in,” she called, expecting Rosie or one of the children to walk in and give her a hand.

  Boots tapped the floor, and she knew—knew!—that Flynn was there.

  The guy who’d hinted at a truth she never planned to share.

  The man she’d been avoiding for two weeks.

  Was. In. Her. Room.

  She tried to scramble out from under the bed, but she moved too quickly, raising her head before it cleared the frame, slamming it so hard she saw stars.

  She lay stunned, face to the dust-coated floor, palms pressed to the floor.

  “You okay?” Flynn asked, dropping down beside her. She turned her head, realized they were now eye to eye.

  He’d shaved recently, and there was just a hint of stubble on his face.

  “The dog has my journal, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Okay,” he replied, looking into her eyes, studying her face, asking silent questions she had no intention of answering. Not even if he spoke them out loud.

  “Really. I can manage. He just wants to play.”

  “It’s not a game if someone gets hurt.” He touched her shoulder, and she realized she’d scraped it on the box spring or frame. She also realized she was wearing a Moisey-sized tank—small and tight, clinging to her skinny frame and showing off the deep scar between her breasts, the one on her shoulder. The many small white scars that crisscrossed her arms.

  She sat up, grabbing the old quilt and tossing it around her shoulders, pulling it tight around her chest.

  “I’ve seen the scars,” he commented. “On many occasions.”

  “Not since I’ve been out of the hospital,” she replied. As if that mattered. As if that made her actions any less ridiculous. He was Matt’s brother, for goodness’ sake! Not some random guy she’d met in a bar.

  She almost laughed at the thought.

  She’d never been to a bar.

  She’d never been to a club.

  She’d been the good kid doing good things making good decisions.

  But karma wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and sometimes God sat on His throne, watching while okay people had crappy, horrible things happen to them.

  Because that allowed for learning and growth and all kinds of wonderful things to come.

  How many times had she been told that since the accident?

  So many, she didn’t have to open a journal to be reminded. She didn’t have to grab a notebook and thumb through the pages to remember.

  She knew the platitudes.

  What she wanted was the truth. Some mystical, mysterious balance of the scales that proved that bad things happened to good people, but that, in the end, it all worked out. Because goodness mattered, kindness mattered, love mattered, and throwing those things out into the world really did bring them back to you.

  “I’ve seen them after that, Sunday,” he said gently. “You wore a sleeveless dress to church last week, remember?”

  “No.” She spit the word out, and she tasted the bitterness on her tongue, felt it in her soul.

  She hated that as much as she hated her muddled thoughts and missing memories.

  “Heavenly bought it for you when she went out to shop for her choir dress. Rumer helped her pick it. They put it in a gift bag the color of your eyes. Moisey said it was blue. Heavenly said it wasn’t. And I—”

  “Said it was the color of bluebonnets at sunset,” she said, the memory suddenly back. She’d been sitting in the easy chair, holding a dress she felt too old to wear—an ivory sundress with tiny blue flowers on the hem and bodice. The girls had been bickering about the color of the gift bag. She hadn’t been listening, she didn’t think. Not until Flynn spoke.

  He’d been standing in the doorway, dusty cowboy boots and jeans, sweat rolling down his temples. It had been hot that day. Wretchedly so.

  “You remember.” He stood, pulled her to her feet, his palm calloused, his skin warm. When the quilt dropped to the floor, she let it stay there.

  Because he was right. He’d seen her scars. He knew their cause, and there was no sense hiding them.

  “Some of it.” She turned her attention to the bed, because she couldn’t look in his eyes and face. She didn’t want to think about that moment in the living room, the way he’d stood in the doorway, and he’d seemed to fit in a way Matt never had. His clothes. His hair. The sweat sliding down his face. The dust and rough hands and gritty, parched voice.

  God!

  What the heck was wrong with her!

  Of course, Matt had fit! This had been his house. His home. Their home.

  “Rembrandt,” she called a little too sharply. “Come out of there.”

  “Want me to try?” Flynn asked. He’d taken a step away, was staring at the photos displayed on the dresser. So many photos of family. The kids. Matt. Her parents.

  “Sure.”

  “Front!” he commanded, and the puppy appeared.

  He trotted to Flynn, sat in front of him. Maybe six inches from his feet.

  Smiling. Darn the little beast.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “We’ve been working basic obedience. He’s smart, and he likes to work. Down,” he said, and Rembrandt dropped to his belly. “Stay.”

  Flynn stepped to the foot of the bed, lifted the heavy wood frame just enough to pull it away from the wall, then reached in and scooped up the journal and a few torn pages. “Here you are.”

  She took them, placed the pages inside the journal while he moved the bed back into place. He was still wearing work clothes—a faded denim shirt, rolled up at the sleeves. Dark jeans and cowboy boots. No hat, but she could see where it had been sitting, his hair matted down from it.

  “Did you just get back from the fields?” she asked, and he shook his head.

  “I made a trip to Palouse today. There’s a guy there retiring a couple of broodmares. Good stock and gentle. Both are five. He’s also got one of their fillies for sale. She’s a firecracker, and needs a firm hand, but I think, eventually, Heavenly will be able to handle her.”

  “Heavenly went?” she said, suddenly sad for what she’d missed out on while she was hiding from him.

  “No. I didn’t want to get her excited and then disappoint her.”

  “So did you bring them home?”

  He raised a dark eyebrow, shook his head. “It’s your decision to make. I’d have brought you with me, but you’ve been . . . occupied.”

  “That’s a nice way of pointing out that I’ve been spending a lot of time in my room.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is hiding,” he replied, taking the journal from her hands and eyeing the gnawed edges. “It’s not a complete loss. I can have someone rebind it, put on a whole new cover.”

  “It’s not the cover that matters. It’s what’s inside it.” She touched the edge of a torn page, her fingers brushing his. A quick, light touch that she hadn’t intended, but her heart thumped crazily at the contact, and she pulled her hand away.

  “You find your memories inside, right?” He lifted the hope chest lid and set the journal on top of the quilts. She didn’t ask how he knew it belonged there. She assumed he and his brothers had gone through the room, looking for important documents. Life insurance. Bank account information.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it’s time to start looking somewhere else.”

  “I keep notebooks.”

  “And you’re so busy filling those up, you’re letting the moments slip through your fingers.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s just an observation. Emmerson used to say that a smart man knows the trees from the forest. Make sure you don’t miss out on one for the sake of the other. That’s all I’m saying.” He smiled to take any sting out of the words, but they had stung, because he was right.

  She spent a lot of time collecting memories, because she was so darn afraid to lose them.


  But she couldn’t remember if she’d spoken to Heavenly that morning, if she’d asked about the state choir event that was looming.

  An audition, maybe. Or a competition.

  And that was why she didn’t ask, because she was afraid to get it wrong, to make her children think she didn’t care enough, or pay attention enough to remember.

  “I’ve upset you,” he said, nudging her chin up with a finger, forcing her to look into his eyes.

  “Sometimes, the truth hurts. I’d still rather have that than a bunch of pretty lies.”

  “In that case, we should get along just fine.”

  “We do get along. Don’t we?”

  “We haven’t been running in the same circles these past few days, but . . .” He stopped, as if he’d thought better of what he planned to say, and shook his head.

  “What?” she prodded, because, of course, now she really wanted to know.

  “Nothing we need to worry about right now.”

  “But we’re going to have to worry about it later?”

  “Not worry. Just . . . make some adjustments.”

  “What kind of adjustments?”

  “Sunday, now isn’t the time. And it’s not my information to share. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “But you did,” she pointed out, taking a step closer. She had to crane her neck to look into his eyes, but she did it. “What’s going on?”

  “You know Clementine and Porter are getting married in the fall?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re planning an early October wedding. Right as the pumpkins are ripening and the cornfields are golden-yellow. Outdoors. At sunset. When the air is just beginning to chill, and the sky has a blue velvet sheen.”

  “You have a way with words, Flynn,” she murmured, caught up in the story he was weaving, the picture he was painting. Thinking that he was all the qualities of his brothers rolled into one person. Porter’s toughness. Sullivan’s artistry. Matt’s flare for words.

  “I’m Porter’s best man.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “And you’re Clementine’s.”

  “Her what?”

  “Whatever the female version of a best man is,” he replied, and she felt her heart sink, her stomach drop, her entire being shout no!

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “It’s impossible. There’s no way,” she said, panicked, frantic, because she most certainly could not. She could barely remember what day it was. She couldn’t remember to eat breakfast if someone didn’t remind her. God help her! She’d forget her name if she hadn’t been hearing it her entire life.

  There was no way . . .

  No way. Ever.

  That she could help Clementine with her wedding.

  “Landing on the moon was impossible. Until it was done. Wireless technology? Impossible until someone figured it out,” he responded, cupping her shoulders, seemingly trying to will his calm into her. “The nuclear bomb? Impossible. Electric lights? Impossible. But here we are. Standing under a light bulb in a world that has been shaped by the threat of nuclear war.”

  “What’s your point, Flynn?” she asked, her heart thudding painfully, her entire body cold with the thought of failing Clementine.

  “That nothing is impossible once it’s done.” He turned her around, and she was facing the bed and the entire wall of folksy quotes that she’d hung. Painted on old boards. Written in calligraphy or print or fat happy letters.

  “Look,” he said, one hand on her shoulder, the other pointing to a long green board, ivory letters strutting across its surface. Nothing is impossible. The very word says I’m possible.

  “That is the stupidest, corniest thing I’ve ever had the misfortunate of reading,” she said, but she was laughing.

  “You’re the one who hung it on the wall,” he pointed out. She could feel the words rumbling through his chest, and she realized she was leaning into him, her back pressed to soft denim.

  “How do you know Matt didn’t?” she asked, suddenly very conscious of the hand still on her shoulder. The long fingers splayed against her collarbone. The way his breath ruffled her hair and made goose bumps rise on her arms.

  “It looks like a job that took a while. He didn’t stick to tasks for very long.”

  True.

  So true, all her amusement fell away.

  “Sunday?” someone said, and she jumped away from Flynn’s hand, swinging toward the door so quickly, she fell sideways.

  Flynn caught her, his arm hooked around her waist, his gaze on the doorway

  On Heavenly.

  She was standing on the threshold, hair brushed away from her face, skin clean of makeup, a long nightgown trailing the floor.

  She looked young and soft. Sweet in a way she never was during the day.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded, stepping into the room, her gaze shifting from Sunday to Flynn and back again.

  “Rembrandt,” Sunday said quickly. “He stole one of my journals. Flynn came to help.”

  “Where’s the journal?” Heavenly asked suspiciously, her gaze on Flynn again, her eyes blazing.

  “In the hope chest.” Sunday planned to open it, remove the journal, and prove her story, but Flynn still had his arm around her waist, and when she tried to move, he tugged her back.

  “I don’t think you need to prove yourself to your thirteen-year-old daughter,” he said, and Heavenly scowled.

  “She’s not the one I want proof from. You’re the one who isn’t where he belongs.”

  “Heavenly! Watch your tone when you’re speaking to your uncle,” Sunday chided.

  “He’d speak to my boyfriend in the same tone, if he found him in my room in the middle of the night.”

  “You have a boyfriend?” she and Flynn said in unison.

  Heavenly’s scowl deepened. “No. But I would if Sullivan hadn’t been such a butt about it and gone over to Andrew’s house and told his parents that we had a thing going.”

  “When did this happen?” Sunday asked.

  “While you were in the hospital.”

  “You were twelve!”

  “Now I’m thirteen.”

  “And you’re still too young for a boyfriend,” Sunday said, panicking again. This time for good reason.

  Thirteen was young. It was hormones. It was poor decisions made in the heat of the moment.

  Thirteen was not a good age to be dating.

  “I agree,” Flynn chimed in, apparently immune to the death-ray glare Heavenly was shooting in his direction. “But you’re not too young for a horse. As a matter of fact, thirteen is the perfect age to take on the responsibility.”

  Heavenly’s mouth dropped open.

  Sunday’s did too.

  She closed it quickly, because that was what the fenced pasture was for. The one Flynn and the kids had been working on for two weeks. It’s what Flynn’s trip to Palouse had been about. It was the thing she could have stopped if she’d wanted to. She hadn’t. She’d let the plans move forward. She’d let the fence be built while she hid in her room because she hadn’t wanted to be asked the question again.

  The one about Matt and his business trips.

  She’d been missing out for the sake of a man who wasn’t around to appreciate it.

  And now horses were in the plans, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it without looking like an ogre.

  Plus, if a horse could replace a boyfriend in Heavenly’s world, who was Sunday to say it shouldn’t happen?

  * * *

  “You look surprised, Heavenly,” Flynn said, speaking into the sudden silence.

  “Sunday said horses would have to wait until the end of the school year.”

  “I did?” Sunday asked, her muscles tense, her narrow waist taut beneath his hand. He let his arm drop, stepping away, because having his arm around her had felt a little too good and a little too right.

  “Yes. We were talking about
the county junior choir, and how if I got in, I wouldn’t have time for things like horses.”

  Sunday frowned. “If that’s what I said . . .”

  “You didn’t say it. Exactly. You said that you didn’t want my grades to fall because I was traveling forty minutes twice a week to go to choir rehearsal, and then you said that probably that was all I should do this year. No other extra activities like sports or horse riding.”

  “It seems like reasonable advice,” Flynn said, but Sunday shook her head.

  “Not really. Heavenly is a straight A student. She doesn’t need to be reminded to keep her grades up. I’m sorry, honey, if I upset you.” She reached for the teen, offering one of the bear hugs that Flynn had observed so many times before the accident.

  The kind that enveloped the whole person. The kind that involved arms and hearts and souls.

  “I wasn’t upset. I just figured we’d have to wait.” Heavenly allowed herself to be hugged for a few more seconds than Flynn would have predicted, and then stepped away, sliding her hands over Sunday’s flyaway hair like she was the mother and Sunday the child. “You’ve got crazy hair again.”

  “That happens a lot since the accident,” Sunday said with a quiet chuckle. “And it’ll happen more if I manage to get myself up on one of the horses.”

  “You’re serious? About the horses?”

  “Sure. Horses are a big part of growing up on a farm. At least, they were when I was a kid. We couldn’t have them after your grandparents died. They’re expensive and do require a lot of attention and work.” Sunday smiled, but there was a brittle edge to her voice, an unspoken thought that didn’t make her happy.

  “So you’re really, really serious. We’re going to get a horse?” Heavenly repeated, not even a hint of enthusiasm in her tone.

  Flynn could see it in her eyes, though. Flickering in the depth of her gaze. Pulsing there in an insistent beat that would have burst out of a kid like Moisey.

  Heavenly had more control.

  Maybe too much control.

  Her emotions in check, her I-don’t-care persona fully and rigidly in place. Unless she was chasing her siblings around, yelling at them for whatever crime they’d committed against her. Then there seemed to be no control. Just rage and an overwhelming desire for retribution.