“Although Tom’s parents were older than most of our parents, they were still in good health, so, again, I never thought this”—Austin choked up, struggling to say the words—“this would ever actually happen.”
“So your guardianship is written into the wills?” Cooper asked.
“I suppose.”
“We need to make plans,” Rachel said. “Let’s continue this in the kitchen while I make us all breakfast.”
They gathered together around the old farm table that had seen many family discussions over two generations. Rachel had already brewed coffee and gotten out a box of tea bags and, apparently subscribing to the idea that there wasn’t anything a good meal couldn’t make better, began scrambling eggs and frying bacon. She’d delegated Cooper to making the toast, and watching his brother getting out the butter and marionberry jam, Sawyer realized that the two of them had developed a comfortable routine. Glancing over, he saw Austin watching them and wondered if she was comparing their relationship with her own failed marriage.
“You need to be straight with them,” Rachel advised Austin as she dished up the plates and set them on the table. “When David died, one of our friends told Scott that God loved his daddy so much that he wanted him to be in heaven with Him. Which was well meaning, but that got Scott thinking that God must not love him enough to let his father stay here with him. I was lucky that he brought it up with me, rather than worrying that he hadn’t been good enough to keep his father from dying.”
“That must have been a terrible time,” Austin said.
“It wasn’t easy,” Rachel admitted. “One of his friends at school, whose mother was more New Agey than most, told him to watch out for David coming back as a ghost. Having not grown up with séances in our house, he started sleeping with his bedroom light on. He told me it was so he wouldn’t miss seeing his father.
“Which was just one more thing to deal with during a time when his life was in upheaval. Not only had he lost his father, I had to take him out of private school, which cost him some friends, and since we were left with a lot of debt, I had to return to catering full time. And then, after paying off our creditors, I uprooted him and dragged him across the country from Connecticut to here.”
“For which, despite the circumstances, I’ll be eternally grateful,” Cooper said. He bit into a piece of crispy bacon.
Rachel’s smile warmed the chill the tragedy had brought into the house. “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger, Sheriff.”
Austin cradled her mug of tea in her hands, and although she listened intently to Cooper and Rachel’s advice, when they heard the children stirring upstairs, Sawyer could see the concern edging toward fear in her eyes.
“You’ll handle this,” he assured her after Rachel and Coop had gone upstairs. Rachel to break the news first to Scott, and Cooper to supervise the morning teeth brushing.
“So you say. Just between us, I’d rather be dragged by a horse over a rocky road.”
“I know.” He took her ice-cold hand between both of his, rubbing the blood back into it as he’d used to do when they’d stay out too long ice skating on Glass Lake.
She sighed. Closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said as they heard the footfalls coming down the stairs.
Although once again the timing was off, Sawyer lifted her hand and pressed the back of it against his lips. Not to seduce but to comfort.
“Me, too,” he said. And meant it.
16
J
ACK, DRESSED IN
Jungle Book
pajamas, came racing into the room so fast Austin was amazed he hadn’t taken a header down the stairs. As usual, Sophie, in hot pink polka dot cropped pajama pants and a pink tank with
Be Your Selfie
written in purple glittery script, followed him at a more reasonable pace. Bringing up the rear, Scott was holding Cooper’s hand. Rachel had told Austin how, when her husband had first died, he’d insisted that he was now the “man of the family.”
Although the nine-year-old’s eyes were more serious than she’d ever seen them, more than any young boy’s should be, it was readily apparent that he’d willingly surrendered that role to his new dad. Which gave Austin hope that Jack and Sophie would be able to get past this terrible time without too many emotional scars.
“Austin!” Jack hurled himself into her arms. “Are you here for breakfast? Rachel’s going to make blueberry pancakes!”
“That sounds wonderful.” She touched her lips to the top of his head, breathing in the bracing scent of spearmint. She looked up at Sophie. “Good morning, Sophie.”
“Morning.” Sophie tilted her head, studied the group around the table. Clouds of suspicion, like smoke from a wild fire, rose in her hazel eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Hoping that it would be the hardest thing she’d ever have to do, Austin met her gaze.
Please help me, Heather
. “There was an accident,” she said with far more calm than she was feeling. “I’m so horribly sorry, honey. And you, Jack. But I’m afraid your mom and dad are dead.”
Silence descended like a steel curtain. Heather’s daughter’s head jerked back, as if she’d been struck in the face. Sawyer was there in a flash, his arm around her in case she passed out.
“Dead?” Jack scratched his head, ruffling his bedhead red hair. “Like Riley?”
Riley had been their old beagle, who’d finally crossed that rainbow bridge last summer when he was eighteen. He’d been into middle age when Tom and Heather had adopted him from a beagle rescue group when she’d been pregnant with Jack. They’d already had Daisy, an orange marmalade cat who’d, unfortunately, since died of cancer, but Tom had insisted that all boys needed a dog.
Austin decided not to quibble the difference. “Like Riley.”
“What happened?” Sophie asked as she allowed Sawyer to lower her into the chair Cooper had pulled out.
“They were driving to Ashland when they had a car accident.”
“Like Grandma and Grandpa.” Since Sophie had been five at the time, Austin wasn’t sure how much she remembered about Heather’s parents. Unlike Heather and Tom, it had taken time for each of them to succumb to injuries. During those difficult days when Heather practically lived at the hospital, only going home when the nurses and doctors insisted, Sophie had stayed at Green Springs.
“Yes. A bit like that. But Cooper assured me that it was very quick and they didn’t suffer.”
“Where were they?”
“Along the upper lake.” Concerned that Sophie might know about the Duck Pond Road connection, Austin decided not to share that detail. “Your father had just helped birth a foal.”
“That’s what Daddy does,” Jack said. “He delivers baby horses when their owners get in trouble.”
“Yes,” Austin said. “He was special that way.”
Watching the sheen gloss Sophie’s eyes at her deliberate use of past tense, Austin wished there was something, anything, she could do to turn back time to earlier yesterday. Before Tom had received that call.
Which had her thinking that if she and Sawyer hadn’t had dinner with them, they would have been on the road earlier and not been on Duck Pond Road when the tremor hit.
“Are they going to be buried?” Jack wanted to know. “Like Riley?”
Austin exchanged a quick, questioning glance with Rachel, whose answering nod advised being straight from the beginning. “Yes. That’s what your parents wanted.”
“How do you know what they wanted?” Sophie was rallying, her pain giving way to anger. Austin couldn’t blame her. Not one bit. “Did they talk about dying? Did they tell you?”
“Actually, your mother did,” Austin said gently. “When I agreed that if anything happened to them, you’d come live with me.”
“On the ranch?” Jack asked.
“Yes.”
Sophie folded her arms. “Why can’t we stay in our own house?”
“Because,” Sawyer suggested, “it’s kind of torn up from remodeling right now.”
“It’s an effing wreck,” Jack said. Then, when his sister shot him a killer look, he said in defense, “That’s what Dad said.”
“It’s not that bad,” Sophie said. Not if you considered no kitchen, the parents sleeping on a couch in the living room, one functional bath, and both kids sharing a bedroom with excess furniture moved from other rooms. “We were doing fine, and when the remodeling is done, the house is going to be perfect.” Which was exactly what Heather had kept saying during the past three months of what, to Austin, had looked like chaos. “If Mom and Dad were alive, we’d be there.”
Austin was so over her head here.
“I had to move when my dad died,” Scott broke in to try to help out. “We moved all the way out here, and I had to leave my friends back in Connecticut. But it turned out okay.”
“But you still had your mom,” Sophie said.
“Yeah. I did.” Scott’s apologetic look told Austin that he’d tried, but the ball was now back in her court.
“Why don’t we talk about this later?” Rachel suggested. “After you’ve had breakfast.”
“Like I’m supposed to be hungry?”
“We’re still having pancakes, right?” Jack asked.
“You can have anything you want,” Rachel agreed.
“Right. Let’s everyone be nice to the poor orphans,” Sophie muttered.
Knowing the tween was using anger as a defense didn’t make Austin feel as if she was making any headway. “This sucks,” she said, opting for total honesty.
“Mom says you’re not supposed to say
suck
,” Jack said.
“I think she’d allow it this one time,” Austin responded. Then turned back to Sophie. “I lost my mother when I was Jack’s age, but she didn’t die. She went away.”
“So she could have come back,” Sophie countered.
“She could have, yes. Though she didn’t.” And hadn’t Austin spent years wishing and waiting?
“At least she wasn’t in the ground.” The girl swallowed as she blinked away tears. “Like Mom and Dad will be.”
“Are we going to bury them at the ranch? With Riley?” Jack asked. Since the couple’s small yard hadn’t allowed room for animal burial, Riley’s final resting place had been in a pasture where generations of cattle dogs, barn cats, and even ranch horses had been buried. Although she’d refused to call it a pet cemetery, Austin had always found visiting the pasture comforting.
“Don’t be a moron,” Sophie, who’d always shown remarkable patience with her younger brother, snapped. “You don’t put people in the same ground as you do dogs.”
“Why not?”
“Because River’s Bend has a special place for people,” Sawyer took that question. “My mom’s there.”
“She is?” Sophie appeared to soften a bit at that. “How old were you when she died?”
“Thirteen.”
“I’ll be thirteen next month.”
“I know. It’s a big milestone.”
Her hazel eyes welled up. “And my parents won’t be there.”
“I know.” He crouched down beside the chair and took both the tween’s hands in his, just as he’d done with Austin earlier. “But Austin and I will be. And Rachel, and Cooper—”
“And me,” Scott said. “Austin’s right. It does suck, but you’ve got lots of friends so you won’t be all alone. And,” he added, “I didn’t believe it would ever be okay when my dad died. But it doesn’t keep hurting like it does now.”
When Rachel’s eyes misted, Austin knew that the tears she was holding back were due as much to pride in her son as sadness.
“Are we going to have a funeral?” Jack asked. He’d begun kicking his legs back and forth, hitting the chair leg. “Like we did for Riley? We kids got to plan it and it was really cool. Mom and Dad said Riley would’ve really ’preciated it.”
“He was a stupid dog,” Sophie snapped, the understandable anger making a comeback. “Adults plan people’s funerals. Kids just show up and try to sit still for more than two minutes. Which, like anyone would expect you to be able to do.”
“You don’t have to yell at me!” Great. Now the waterworks began to flow.
“Mom and Dad are dead,” Sophie shouted back. “And you just don’t get it!”
He jumped to his feet, small hands fisted on the hips of his pajamas. “I do, too! I just want to know what’s going to happen!”
And couldn’t Austin identify with that?
She bent and hugged the little boy whose world had been so tragically turned upside down. “I know you do. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure, either. But I promise you, we’ll figure it out the best we can and let you know everything that’s going to happen.”
“But we’re having a funeral?” he asked in an uncharacteristically subdued voice.
“Yes, because funerals are a way to celebrate people’s lives.”
“Like my parents dying is something to celebrate,” Sophie muttered.
“No,” Austin said, struggling for patience. “It’s not. But your mom and dad can’t be defined by that single terrible moment. They have so many friends whose lives they touched who’ll want to be there with you.”
“What if I don’t want to be there with them?” Sophie countered.
Rachel had told them, over the eggs and bacon, that this would be a possibility. She’d also suggested that they try, without pushing, to encourage the children to attend the funeral. Because someday they might look back and regret, or worse, feel guilty for not having been there to say goodbye to their parents.
“That’s your choice,” Austin said mildly. “But there’s still time to make a decision. Meanwhile, we’d appreciate your help with the planning.”
“As if.”
“I’ll help!” Jack waved his hand as if he were trying to get called on in class.
“Thank you.” A wild, possibly crazy thought occurred to Austin. “Perhaps we could have a special service just for you and your friends before the grown-up one.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Sophie said. But Austin could tell that she’d caught the girl’s interest.
“I haven’t, either,” she admitted. “But I could ask Father Cassidy. And if we can’t do it at the church, we could hold it at the ranch.”
“We made a great funeral for Riley,” Jack told Sawyer, swiping away at his wet cheeks with the backs of his hands as the idea began to take hold. “We all said nice stuff about him and put his favorite toys with him in the box Dad made. Then we played ‘I Feel Love,’ from the
Benji
movie. Mom really liked that, didn’t she, Austin?”