Home Free. Claire McEwen
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animal’s neck. After a few moments, he felt the donkey’s muscles relax. It swallowed the apple and eyed a distant grass tuft longingly. Arch rose, leading it to the grass for a nibble. He could see its ribs when it moved. Rage rose up, pumping his blood faster, worrying in its power. Keep it in perspective. Yes, someone had been cruel to this helpless animal. That didn’t mean it was Arch’s job to find him and beat the shit out of him. No matter how much he’d like to.
Not his job. He had one focus, and he needed to keep it. To find work. Something he could believe in. Something he could lose himself in so he didn’t get lost again.
“C’mon, now.” Arch tugged on the rope, but the donkey planted its sturdy legs and stood its ground, devouring the grass like it was the last food he’d ever see. “I’m sure Tinker Bell has better stuff than that.” The donkey flicked a suspicious glance his way and kept on grazing.
Arch hated to pull any harder on the rope around its neck. The donkey wasn’t much bigger than a dog, so he knelt and scooped it up instead. It struggled, catching him on the thigh with a sharp hoof, but Arch managed to stagger with it over to the apple tree. He set it down, grabbed a couple more apples off the branch and waved one in front of the donkey’s nose.
“C’mon, Shrimp. I’ve got to get back to the barn.” Shrimp seemed like a good name for the little guy. Didn’t shrimps just float around and eat? Biting a piece off the apple, Arch held it out as a lure to get the donkey walking. It worked like magic. Shrimp trotted willingly at his side, as long as Arch provided a bite of apple every so often.
Arch tried to keep his distance from the reception, sticking close to the pines that bordered the ranch. He spotted a more modern-looking barn down the lane. Shrimp’s new digs should be behind it.
Music and laughter from the party floated through the warm afternoon air. A couple walked out of the reception, cake plates and champagne glasses in hand. They toasted each other with a clink of their glasses. Arch pulled Shrimp behind a pine to stay out of view, surprised by the envy hollowing his chest. What would it be like to be those people? Invited to nice parties like this, dressed in good clothes, confident that you were a decent person who knew how to behave?
He breathed in, relaxing the jealous ache until it was dull and heavy. Easier to live with. Regret wouldn’t get him anywhere. Envy didn’t help, either. He was who he was, and he’d done what he’d done. He had to accept that and go forward, grateful for a second chance. But the sense that he wouldn’t make it, that the world was written in a language he’d never learn to speak, hung in the air around him. It was a relief to spot the goat pen, to lead Shrimp inside, to remove the rope and leave the tiny donkey munching on a big pile of oat hay.
It was good to accomplish a solid, everyday task. A nice breather before he set out to do the impossible—convince his brother to let him stay awhile on their family ranch.
The goat and donkey seemed to be getting along fine. Arch took a breath that came out shaky on the exhalation. It was time to face his past. He started back toward the wedding and saw Wade almost immediately. He was standing next to a woman Arch recognized after a moment’s study. His sister, Nora. Of course she’d be here, too, and she hated him even more than Wade did.
His siblings waited alongside the wooden barn, out of view of the guests. Tinker Bell stood with them, her hands hidden in her skirts, fingers nervously rustling the fabric. No one spoke as he approached.
Silence was awkward, but it gave him a moment to take them both in. Wade had been a boy when Arch had last seen him. Now he was tall and strong in a black suit and cowboy boots, his dark hair cut close to his head. His face was a tangle of grim lines that didn’t belong at his wedding celebration.
Nora’s arms were folded across her chest like body armor. Her eyes were gray shadows, watchful. She moved closer to Wade. She’d been fiercely protective of their little brother, standing up to Arch time and again to keep him from dragging Wade along on whatever deal he had going. She was clearly still ready to protect him, even with Wade grown and married. “What the hell are you doing here, Arch?”
The venom in her voice stopped him in his tracks. “Asking for help.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no, we are not sheltering you. I don’t know why you left Mexico, but you need to get on back there. And with no help from us.”
“I’m not coming from Mexico.” Words started and stopped in Arch’s head. He hadn’t planned this out well. He should have had some kind of speech prepared.
“I don’t care where you’ve been. You shouldn’t be here.” Her words cracked like gunfire across the yards between them.
Finally Wade stirred. “Let’s listen to him, Nora. It can’t hurt to listen.”
It was disconcerting, hearing Wade’s voice so deep and sure. Arch cleared his throat. Fortunately, ten years in prison had schooled him in keeping feelings at bay. This was his chance, and he needed to get it right. “I never went to Mexico. I got as far as San Diego with Dad and Blake. I left them there.”
His sister and brother stared at him in stunned silence. Tinker Bell seemed to come out of whatever trance she’d been in and stepped back a few feet. “I should go. I’m intruding.”
He didn’t want her to go. She was like a beam of light he could focus on in this dark moment. “Stay? Please?”
Three sets of eyes widened at his odd request.
“Only if you want to...” Arch added. “If you’re willing to.”
She studied him, and then nodded slightly. Her gaze jumped to Nora.
“It’s okay, Mandy,” Nora said. “We’re family—though you may be regretting that fact right now.”
“No regrets.” Her simple answer was a tiny oasis in this complicated moment.
Mandy. Arch held on to the name, tucked it away into his mind to think about later. “Thanks,” he told her. And used all that gold—of her hair, of her radiant skin—as the courage he needed to keep talking. “When I left here with Dad and Blake, I was already sick of them. It was terrible, the things we did. I knew by then that my whole life had become one big mistake. Down in San Diego, they robbed a guy at gunpoint. A decent guy—just your average working man. He had a wife and his little kid with him.”
Arch cleared his throat, balled his shaking hands into fists. Saw the encouraging look on Mandy’s face and inhaled it like the oxygen that seemed to have disappeared from the air around him. “I saw myself clearly, in the fear in their eyes. That man, brought down in front of his family. The terror on his wife’s face. She pulled her little boy into her stomach and just held him so close...” He had to stop again. Being in their presence, seeing the disgust in his brother’s and sister’s eyes, and the horror and sorrow on Mandy’s face, cracked all the walls he’d built to hold back the guilt.
He pushed himself on. “In that moment, everything changed. I couldn’t stand what I saw. What I’d become. I left Dad and Blake that night. Never said goodbye. Just went to a bar, had one last beer, then walked to the ocean to touch the water. To breathe in that fresh air one last time. Then I found a police station and turned myself in.”
The icy edge had thawed from Nora’s gaze. Her jaw, so set, relaxed a fraction. “We didn’t know. Why didn’t you write?”
His laugh was a bitter syllable. “And say what? You hated me. For good reason. I’d spent every day making your life miserable. You were better off rid of me.”
He saw the memories cloud Nora’s eyes. He wished he could do something, work hard enough, beg hard enough, to erase them for her. Their dad’s hand crashing down across her face. Him, the numb bastard he’d been, doing nothing. Daddy’s little henchman. Shame shoved the bile to the back of his throat.
“And now?” Wade stepped in front of Nora, sheltering her with his body, as if he could keep those memories from overwhelming her. “What’s happening with you now?”
Arch