Rough Stock (14 page)

It had been less than two months since Sofia had lost Manny in the storm. Court and his problems seemed so minuscule by comparison.

“Life doesn’t stop,” she replied. “We all must go on, even though we don’t want to, even though it’s hard. You know, your father always worried about Walker, that he was driving himself too hard all the time, and Court because he never seemed to have any drive at all. But Diana, she worried about you the most. Even when you were young.”

Seth was startled to hear that about his mother. “Me? Why me? I never caused problems.”

Sofia smiled at him. “No. Never. You were too busy trying to solve everyone else’s. She said you gave too much and left nothing for yourself.”

“She never said anything to me.”

“She was afraid to, afraid you’d second-guess your nature. She never wanted to change your spirit, but she worried just the same.”

Seth was troubled by that, by the idea that he’d been a burden to his mother in any way, especially when she had so much to deal with—raising five boys, trying to fight off recurring cancer. The last thing on Earth he ever wanted to be—to anyone—was a burden. It was disheartening to know that all his efforts to make things easier on his mother had seemed to turn him into that very thing.

He finished eating and washed his plate in the sink so that Sofia wouldn’t have to. On the way up to his bedroom, though, he wasn’t sure she could fully understand the extent of the Barlows’ loss. Seth was certain that Sofia missed her husband as much as he missed his father, but he was equally certain that the woman hadn’t relied on Manny the way the Barlows had with Rafe. Dad had been their rock, their foundation. He’d have known how to handle Court. He’d have had it all figured out by the time the sun had set. Dad had never been one to sleep on his problems. He’d solved them, quickly, efficiently, and they usually stayed resolved.

Dad’s office door was closed, but there were muffled voices coming from inside. Seth took a step toward it, debating whether or not to knock, or go inside, or possibly get Sawyer to help him break up the fight that was about to boil over. Before he had time to make a decision, the door flew open and Walker stormed out of it.

He nearly ran into Seth, who had to jump back to get out of the way.

Austin followed, hot on his twin’s heels. They both looked seriously pissed off. “If you’d just listen! I—”

“Forget it, Austin!” Walker growled. “Just forget it! There is no way I’m funding you to dig for buried fucking treasure, all right? It’s not going to happen.”

Austin’s mouth dropped open. “That’s…that’s not even what I’m doing with it! I want—”

Walker raised a hand to cut him off. “We’re not kids anymore, Austin. It’s time to grow up. It’s time to take responsibility. We have a ranch to run. And you’re not going to ride off into the hills, away from our problems, to buy a silver mine and play prospector while we work our asses off down here. There are no choices here,” he spat. “There are only chores, and you’re not getting out of them. Not with Dad’s insurance money.” He turned and headed not to the stairs but to the front door, slamming it so hard that it rattled on its hinges.

Austin sighed and glared at Seth as though the mere act of witnessing the exchange had somehow caused Walker to say no again. He stomped off, too, in the direction of the back door.

Seth stood alone at the foot of the stairs, waiting for a moment for one or both of them to return. It was nothing but silence and darkness, though. He turned and head upstairs, slowly because he was bone tired. As he passed Dad’s shuttered bedroom, he found himself wishing he could go inside, find him there, and Mom, too, while he was fantasizing. He remembered everything about her, her hair, her laugh. Strange to think that she’d worried about him, even all the way back then.

He passed by their empty room on the way to his own, pushed in the door, and closed it behind himself. As much as he wanted to strip down and stand under the hot water in the shower, he forced himself to look at the room, at the blue walls, the football trophies, the Boy Scout sash on the hook by the closet.

It hadn’t changed. Not in three decades. It still looked exactly the way it did when he was growing up; yet somehow it seemed completely foreign to him, like it belonged to someone else. He supposed it was because he was so rarely here anymore.

Seth spent so much time on the range, with the herd, that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at this room, really
looked
at it. He showed up to shower, and to sleep somewhere other than the dirt, whenever he could. He’d never given himself or this room much thought. It had all seemed temporary, just a place to keep his things until his life started.

Somehow temporary had turned into thirty-one years without him noticing. Somehow Seth Barlow’s life had never actually started. Or, obviously it had, it had just never gone anywhere. He kicked off his boots and heaved a sigh as he unbuttoned his shirt. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight, that was a fact, and so he’d do what he always did, the opposite of Dad, it seemed. He’d shower and sleep and try to fix everything in the morning.

Court and Rowan came first though, because their problems were bigger than his own.

‡

R
owan tugged Willow
through the hospital’s front doors and into the lobby. Even the parking lot didn’t feel safe. Ever since her argument with Court yesterday, she was looking over her shoulder, half expecting to find him standing there. He hadn’t called again, or come to the house, and he certainly wasn’t going to be in the hospital right now as they were visiting Dad.

To the right she spotted the nurses’ desk but stifled a groan when she recognized another familiar face. Jill Sykes was talking on the phone. Normally it was a good thing to have an ‘in’ when applying for a job, but as Rowan forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, she didn’t think this was going to give her any kind of advantage.

Jill saw them approach, hung up the phone, and looked at Willow. Jill gave her a smile. It was hard, though, thin lipped with a slightly cruel edge. When she looked to Rowan, she lifted her hand toward her own hair. On her left ring finger, a dazzling rock glittered under the fluorescent lighting. “Come to visit your dad again today?” Jill asked.

Rowan nodded and lifted the sheet of paper in her free hand. “I thought I’d drop this off first, on my way through.”

Jill continued to smile, though it looked slightly painful. Rowan would’ve thought that fake smiling would be as easy as falling down to Jill Sykes at this point. Jill was pretty. Not Cassidy-Conroy-County-Fair-Queen pretty, but good enough to be runner-up.
Every year.
Though Jill would never have been nominated for Miss Congeniality. The tightness around the woman’s mouth and eyes told Rowan that flashing the ring had been intentional.

Rowan smiled back anyway and pushed her resume across the counter. She was silently congratulating herself, though, on having already emailed the hospital’s staffing director, as well. Just in case Jill “misplaced” this one. The woman’s fingers twitched as she plucked it off the flat surface.

Rowan could already picture it sailing into the trash the minute she turned her back.

“I’ll see that it gets to the right place!” Jill chirped.

Both women locked eyes, and it certainly felt like both of them were forcing themselves not to glance at the bin.

Rowan nodded and headed toward Dad’s room, Willow in tow. The fake smile faded as they walked down the hall. She’d worked with worse people, though, and she’d have to suck it up.

As Rowan entered the room, Emma saw the look on her face and knew something was up. “Hey!” she said to Willow, holding out her hand. “I was just thinking about a candy bar!”

“Okay!” Willow replied, abandoning Rowan for her aunt, and the two of them whisked past Rowan as they headed for the lobby and its bevy of vending machines.

Rowan watched them go then turned to Dad.

“Is it that bad?” he asked with a wan smile. “Because I could’ve sworn the doctors said I was going to pull through. ’Course, they said some other things about bacon and beer, but I think I’ll focus on the positive for now.”

Rowan huffed. “Dad! Don’t joke!”

“Who’s joking? You look like someone ran over your dog. No one ran over the dogs, did they?”

“No, everything’s fine.”

“Well now, that’s not true. That’s one of those little white lies you tell, like you always do, and I let you get away with it, I guess because dwelling on a thing doesn’t do anybody any good. But Rowan, those little white lies don’t stay white. You know that, don’t you? They turn black inside you.”

Rowan hated lying to him, but it was second nature now that she’d been doing it for so many years. “It’s nothing.”

He gave her a harsh look.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with the house, would it?” he asked quietly.

“What? No, there’s nothing wrong with the house.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Really? Even the fact that it’s a hop, skip, and a jump from the Barlow spread?”

Rowan stared at him. “I don’t…what are you saying, Dad?” She cleared her throat, nervously. “Because Court and I broke up a long time ago. You know that.”

“You can’t sever a connection like that,” he told her. “It can’t be done. Not really, not entirely.”

“Dad…”

“I’m not digging into your life, Rowan. I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do it back then, not even when Willow took more after her daddy in the looks department than I’d have liked.”

Rowan blinked at him suddenly, unable to speak.

“You didn’t want to have anything to do with him, and I respected that. And I didn’t ask you about him because it seemed your mind was made up and there didn’t seem to be anything to say on the matter,” he continued.

“I… I can’t believe you knew. You knew this whole time.”

“Well, I’m not blind, Rowan. And I’m not stupid, even if I did a poor job of raising you and your sister.” He sighed. “Your situation is mostly my fault.”

Rowan spluttered at the declaration. “I…
what?
…how is it
your
fault?”

“Honey, I didn’t know what to do. With two girls, and your mom gone, I was just…I was unequipped for the job. I thought…I thought if I just raised you, taught you ranching, that would be enough. I guess I taught you too well.”

“Dad,” she argued. There was no way she could let him take the blame for this.

“But I scared you. I taught you about predators and how to protect yourself. But I said wolves and cougars and bears, Rowan, not farm boys. It’s my fault for not teaching you to stand up to him, to make him share responsibility. You ran from him, to protect your little girl, and I taught you that. Or, at least, I didn’t teach you any better.”

“Dad, none of this is your fault. Or mine,” she told him, though she wasn’t quite sure about the last part, not as sure as she had been for the last four and a half years. There was some truth to what he’d said, that she’d chosen to run away rather than stay and fight. Maybe it had been because deep down Rowan had known that she would’ve lost, no matter what the outcome had been. And Willow would’ve lost, too.

“I’m staying,” she told him, wishing, though, that her good news hadn’t been tempered by this conversation. “Court knows the truth now, anyway. He’s seen Willow. I wasn’t going to be able to hide her forever.”

“Oh, Rowan. I don’t want you to have to come back. Not for me. I’m fine. I’m already getting out of here in a few days. You have a life in Cheyenne.”

Rowan shook her head. “No, I don’t. It’s not a life, Dad. Not without you, and Emma, and the farm.”

Just then the door to the room opened and Willow happily scrambled inside, the remains of a candy bar smeared across her lips. “Hi, Pop-Pop! D’you want some chocolate?”

Dad laughed, and Rowan was grateful that the tension in the room had lifted. “No, honey, I can’t. I’m pretty sure chocolate might be on that list of things the doctors were telling me I can’t have anymore. How about you take a bite for both of us?”

“Baby,” said Rowan, “I…I was just telling Pop-Pop that you and I are going to move here, to Star Valley.”

Willow looked up at her, round mouthed, wide eyed.

“Would you like that?” Rowan asked. “Would you like to live at the farm? With Pop-Pop and the dogs? And see Aunt Emma and Uncle Troy every week?”

“Can I sleep in the barn?!”

Rowan laughed. “No, baby, you can’t sleep in the barn. You’ll sleep in the room you’re in now.”

“Can the dogs sleep in my room, too? And can I have a pony? And a bunny? And can I…?”

And just like that, Rowan knew she’d made the right decision. However difficult things were sure to be with Court, she was tired of being exiled to Cheyenne, cut off from her family and the place where she’d always been happiest. She was over Court, but Dad was right, he’d never be entirely out of her life, and she was going to have to figure out a way to live with that.

The rest of the visit went well, and they had to be ushered out of the room when visiting hours were over. Emma headed home, while Rowan and Willow drove back to the farm. Rowan was surprised to see a now-familiar truck in the driveway when she pulled up to the house.