Home Free. Claire McEwen
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She inhaled his familiar scent—pure comfort—and stepped back, looking around the barn before she started bawling like the little girl she felt like. “It’s hard to believe it, but I think we really are done here.”
“You did an incredible job.” Tracy fluttered her fingers toward the barn. “Everything looked gorgeous, and that cake was just out of this world. If you open a bakery, you’ll have people lined up for miles.”
Mandy laughed at that. “I don’t think we have enough people in the town of Benson to make a line much farther than the door, but thank you.”
Her dad glanced at his watch and Mandy’s heart dipped. “You have to get going, don’t you?”
“We do. Our flight is so early, we booked a hotel near the airport for tonight. I wish we could stay longer, but Tracy has to get back to the shop.”
“How’s that going?” Mandy had been so busy the past few days, she hadn’t even thought to ask.
“Oh, it’s amazing.” Tracy’s face lit under all her layers of makeup. “Busy. We get so many tourists on Sanibel Island, and they all want a piece of ocean decor to take home with them.”
“Sounds perfect.” It was hard to imagine her father, the tough rancher, selling seagull statues and shell-shaped ashtrays. More evidence that Mandy’s world had changed completely.
“You’re sure you’ll be okay running the ranch solo for a few weeks?”
Her father would stay to help her if she asked. And Mandy really wanted to ask. Not just ask, beg. But she couldn’t. He’d moved to Florida to get away from the ranch and the stress and the pain of losing his first wife. She couldn’t ask him to take all that on again, even for just three weeks.
“I’ll be just fine, Daddy. With Lori gone, it’s my one and only chance to boss the ranch hands around. It will be fun.”
His smile was what she needed. She didn’t want to be a burden to him anymore.
“If you say so, sweetie. But call me if you need anything, okay?”
“Will do, Daddy. Now let’s get you guys on the road before it gets too dark out there.”
Mandy walked them to their car, cherishing her father’s goodbye hugs, enduring Tracy’s lipstick kisses. She watched them bounce away down the drive in their tiny rental car, turn onto the main road and disappear. The high mountain peaks behind the ranch shone in the last light of the sun, the gold cast making them seem even more ethereal, more unreachable. Jim, the ranch manager, had finished up the feeding a while ago, and the ranch seemed especially quiet. It was just her and the whisper of evening wind in the pines.
She’d done it. She’d given Lori a lovely wedding. But without the adrenaline of party guests and tasks, the last remaining energy in her body evaporated. The two hours of sleep she’d had in the past twenty-four hours fizzed out. She stumbled to the truck, almost too tired to miss Lori or her dad. Almost too tired to feel the loneliness of the empty ranch and the mountain night. Almost too tired to feed the stray cats and Lori’s dog. Definitely too tired to think about the way life had moved one step farther today, leaving her here alone on the empty ranch.
* * *
DURING ALMOST A decade in prison, Arch had never once thought he’d come home to Marker Ranch. But here he was, standing in the gravel driveway in front of the saggy farmhouse, apprehension thickening the air and memories creeping across his skin.
There was the old wicker chair, still on the porch, where his dad used to sit in the evenings. He’d nurse the bottle of JD in his hands and deliver slurred lectures to Arch and his brother Blake, schooling them in the finer points of running a con, stealing a car, manufacturing meth.
Most parents taught their kids right from wrong. What kind of father groomed his sons to be criminals? Anger simmered and Arch exhaled, trying to let it go. It was old poison. And he couldn’t pass on all the blame. His dad might have offered him a toxic brew, but he’d chosen to drink it down.
“It’s weird coming back, isn’t it?”
Arch jumped straight out of his thought and turned to see Nora walking toward him. “You startled me. I didn’t see you pull up.”
“Sorry. I parked by the barn. I wanted to take a look at the cattle.” She walked past him and plopped down on the porch steps. She looked a lot more like the sister he remembered, with her party dress replaced by faded jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt.
She pointed to the duffel bag on the ground next to him. The sum total of all his possessions. He’d stashed it in the bushes outside Mandy’s ranch today, to avoid looking like the vagrant he really was. “Have you gone inside yet?”
He shook his head. “I took my time walking over. Then I went to see the horses and cattle. You and Wade have done a lot with this place.”
“The ranch, yes. This house, not so much,” Nora said. “Wade’s bedroom is the nicest. Lori made him fix it up when they were first together. The rest of it is still pretty shabby.”
“I was just standing here remembering it all. Growing up with Dad. How he’d sit on the porch and bully. He was a mean drunk.”
“And he was almost always drunk.” Nora glared at their dad’s old chair with narrowed eyes. “I should’ve burned that thing when Wade and I first moved back.”
“Maybe we can do it together.”
The glance she shot him was skeptical. “Were you telling the truth earlier? That you left him and Blake?”
“You think I made it all up?” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed her his parole officer’s card. “Steve’s a good guy. You can call him if you want. He’d actually really like to talk with a family member.”
She took the card, and he watched her eyes flick quickly over the words. “Can I keep this?”
He nodded. “You can trust me on this one thing, if nothing else—I haven’t heard a word from Dad or Blake since I walked away. I figure they’re in Mexico, if they’re even still alive.”
“And now that you’re out, are you going to contact them?”
“No!” The thought had a foul taste. “I’m not going near them. And I’m not making their kinds of choices.”
“I want to believe you,” Nora said quietly. “But I don’t know you.”
“I get it. You know me as a bully. Someone who made your life miserable. I tried to pull you down with me. To get you to deal drugs at school.”
She nodded. “I’m not gonna lie, Arch. You were mean. You scared me.”
It was hard to speak through the mass of remorse rising in his throat. “It’s not an excuse, but I thought that was how a man was meant to be. Showing how tough I was and how little I cared. But now I know I was just weak.” He studied the fall of her long hair, half covering her face as she looked out over the driveway. “You were the strong one, Nora. You kept your head above it all. How did you do it? How did you stay out of Dad’s grip?”
She didn’t look at him. “I just knew I hated how he was. How you and Blake were. I didn’t want anything to do with any of it.”
“I wish I’d seen it like you did. After Mom ran off, I turned to Dad. I didn’t question that he was teaching me to hate, or guiding me to break the law. I became his puppet.”
“I’m glad you broke away from him.” Her voice was barely audible—like she felt all the emotion, too. She picked at the paint peeling off the step with a fingernail. “Ever since you showed up today, I’ve been trying to remember something good between us. Something that would make me feel okay about you coming home. And I actually remembered something.”
“You did?” He couldn’t think of anything he’d ever done that didn’t fill him with