Jack's Heart, page 9
“Especially being back in Gloucester near my cousin Eleanor. You and she would get along great. She’s the planner. Had college funds set up for son kids before he was conceived. Heck she had a college fund set up for Addie practically before she was conceived. Well, okay, maybe not that early. But before she was born. She’s even got me saving for retirement.” She chuckled. “Sneaky about it, too. Gave me all this stuff to read about how the best gift you to give your kid is not worrying about supporting you in your old age. When it was just me, I always figured I’d get by, I’d find a way out if I got in a sticky situation. But that’s not good enough for Addie. I have to…”
He turned toward her when her words dried up. She was staring off, and she didn’t look like whatever she was seeing made her happy.
He resettled in the saddle. She kept staring.
This wasn’t right. Not for her.
“What is it, Val?”
She blinked. “Huh? Oh…” She glanced at him, then quickly away. That wasn’t right, either. “I was going to say that I looked ahead, thought things through for Addie. But I didn’t, did I? Not when I headed East and only got this far.”
“Can’t always plan when a baby’s going to come.”
She twisted her head and slanted a look up at him. “You of all people are going to let me off the hook for driving around in a snowstorm when I was that pregnant? If it hadn’t been for you…” He saw the sheen in her eyes before she looked away.
“Turned out fine,” he said gruffly.
“You have no idea how many times I’ve said that in my life. You could say it was my mantra.” Clearly, she’d tried for her usual lightness. She hadn’t made it. “In and out of jobs, towns, relationships, plunging ahead, taking risks. It all turned out fine.”
She faced him again. Her mouth grim, her eyes sad — and that was so not right he almost reached out to her, with some strange thought that his touching her might return her to how she should look.
And that was about as strange a thought as there could be — that his touching her or anyone would lighten them.
“I endangered Addie’s life and even my own with that stunt, and it was only because of your knowledge and kindness and the providence that brought you to us that everything was okay.”
Their gazes met. He wanted to lean toward her. To — No. It wouldn’t help her any and he wasn’t sure how any more.
“And look at this.” She spread her hands and made a face. “I did it again. Coming out here. Springing this on you. Not at the level of having my baby in the back of a car in a blizzard in Wyoming, but still springing the party on you that you didn’t want, hanging around when you wanted us gone, now getting you dragged into teaching me—”
“You’re a great mother.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
“Now you’re being nice because I was having a pity party and—”
“Shut up, Valerie. You’re a great mother and Addie’s a good kid. But you’re right. I was dragged into giving you a riding lesson and your next one will be with Bryan, is that understood?”
“Am I doing that bad?”
“No.” Their eyes met again. Then the movement of the horses unsynced and the look broke, and he could only be grateful. “Now, shut up and ride.”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice so unlike herself that he wondered if that shared look had shaken her half as much as it had shaken him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Donna called out good morning, rising from a rocking chair on the porch of the trim little house in the Slash-C compound and coming down the steps to where Val had extracted Addie from the child’s seat in the back of the rental car.
“Matty said you might come by. She’s not back from town yet. She took Brennan with her while she gets her hair cut.”
“Cut?” Not Matty’s long, thick sweep of hair, whether loose and flowing or partially tamed into a braid.
“Trimmed, I should say for Matty. Don’t know what they’re going to do about Brennan’s.” She made a wry face. “Bubblegum. All over his head.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Seems to be a rite of childhood. They should be back soon, if you’d like to wait.”
“Thank you, we will. I want her okay on some photos of the ranch I want to post on the blog. I told her and Dave I’d run them past them both before I put them up, but Dave said—”
“Whatever Matty says is fine with him,” Donna finished for her.
Since that was exactly what he’d said, Val smiled at how well his mother knew him. “Must be nice to have always been this smart.”
“Oh, I wasn’t always smart about the important things in life. If it hadn’t been for Ed coming after me, I might have had an entirely different life. Possibly a good life. But not this life.”
Her tone indicated this life was far, far better than good.
“How did you and Ed meet?”
“That’s a long story. Why don’t you come back and join me on the porch and we’ll be comfortable while we wait for Matty. I have some coffee for you and—” She patted Addie’s head. “—some juice for you.”
The small house Donna and Ed had was set at a comfortable distance from the main house. Easy walking distance, but not close enough to trample on each other.
Once on the porch, Val saw the house’s angle offered a view across fenced in areas to the mountains beyond. Only because the entry road looped around an old pump and trough was someone sitting on the porch able to see arrivals at the main house. And she’d seen from the main house that there were limited views of Donna and Ed’s place. Some very careful planning had gone into the placement of this building. That said a lot about respect for privacy. She wondered if the Curricks could give lessons on the topic to some of her relatives in Gloucester.
Donna finished giving Addie a small glass of apple juice and supplied her with a well-worn picture book on horses. She poured coffee into a clean mug — “Ed took off in too big a hurry this morning to even have coffee with me.” — and handed it to her. “How did your brownies turn out?”
She blinked at the older woman. “How did you know I made brownies?”
“You bought all the ingredients to make chocolate brownies in town before having lunch at the café with Addie, with a side order of conversation with the stool-sitters. Matty told you the oven in the Flying W foreman’s house was unreliable, which might or might not be a figment of her imagination, and urged you to use the oven in the main house. There was also some discussion of Jack’s birthday.”
She felt her eyebrows rise.
“Welcome to Knighton, Wyoming,” Donna said with a smile. There was also a faint hint of warning. She’d been wishing the Curricks could give a lesson on privacy to her relatives, but perhaps this was Donna’s way of saying how little might be private in this small town?
She said, “Right on all counts. The brownies turned out great, if I do say so myself. Which I have to do, since we gave most of them to Jack for his birthday and haven’t heard if he liked them. Next batch, which will be soon, since now I need to test that oven in the foreman’s house, I’ll bring you some.”
“That would be delightful. Ed will be your greatest fan. So, you haven’t heard anything from Jack about whether he liked his birthday brownies,” she said. “Not surprising, considering how much he keeps himself to himself, especially with some goings on here at the ranch.”
“Keeps himself to himself,” she repeated. Then asked bluntly, “Is that all it is? Hugh Moski said Jack was like a zombie when he first came here.”
Donna’s eyes widened. “Did he? You know that’s the danger of thinking you have people pegged. They go and surprise you. Who’d have thought he’d be that fanciful. Or that accurate.”
Val blinked at the last sentence. “Jack was like a zombie?”
“Mmm.”
True, he’d been extraordinarily matter-of-fact about the death of his parents and the “reliable” couple who had fostered him. And when she’d introduced the topic of doing better now that she was no longer on her own, he hadn’t opened up any about what sounded like a history of his being on his own most of his life. But a zombie? No.
“Why?”
Donna looked at her directly. “You need to find that out from Jack.”
“I’m sorry. Of course. I didn’t mean to ask you to break a confidence, but you said you didn’t know—”
“No. You misunderstood, Valerie. You need to find out from Jack why he was that way for his own good. He needs to tell you. He needs to tell someone.”
Oh, yeah, she got it.
She’d been handed a mission. Possibly an impossible one … if she chose to accept it.
No reason she should. She could happily spend these weeks exploring this part of the country until her house was hers again. Plus, she had absolutely no reason to think she’d get through to him if people like Donna Currick hadn’t.
Though if she could, it would be for his own good.
Probably.
And she did owe him.
Certainly.
True, she had pushed El. Of course, so had Cahill. Look at her now. Married with a son and running her own business and happy, happy, happy.
If pushing did that for El, what might it do for Jack Ralston?
Donna’s voice brought her back to the present. “Maybe he needed to go through days like a zombie to heal at the beginning, but it went too long. We let it go to long. It’s a habit now. A safe, comfortable habit. It’s going to take something sharp and strong to get him out of that habit.”
Implicit was the question: Are you up for that?
Addie’s voice cut across her thoughts. “There’s Jack,” she announced.
Val looked around, a sudden hitch in her breathing. “Where?”
“Way, way over there.”
She followed the direction of Addie’s pointing figure. He was visible in a large enclosure at some distance. Enough distance that there were three other enclosures plus the driveway between them.
“What’s Jack doing?” Addie asked.
He appeared to be sitting on a chair in the center of the fence-enclosed space. It was hard to see details from this distance, but he appeared to be reading a book. “I don’t know. You can ask him later.”
“We go ask him now.”
Donna put her palm on the crown of Addie’s head, forestalling her from starting off immediately. “Not right now, dear. He’s working with that horse.”
Valerie broadened her focus and realized that there was, indeed, a horse in the same enclosure.
Without dislodging Donna’s hand, Addie tilted her head up and sideways then slanted her eyes even more. “He’s just sitting.”
Donna nodded solemnly, though the corners of her mouth lifted. “Sometimes that’s the hardest work of all. Come sit here by me, and I’ll tell you about it.”
When Donna had ushered them onto the porch, she’d gestured Val toward the chair she’d been sitting in and took the other. She’d noticed, because most people return to where they’d been sitting, but hadn’t though much of it. Now she realized this seat gave a clearer view of Jack as he sat, reading calmly.
The horse trotted first one way, then the other, looking at the still man.
“Sometimes horses aren’t cared for as well as they should be,” Donna said to Addie. “Jack’s very good with those horses. And people around here have gotten to know that. So if they know about a horse that needs extra help — the kind of help that Jack’s so good at — they’ll tell him about the horse or sometimes they just bring them here. That’s what happened very early this morning with this mare. That’s why Ed left in such a hurry this morning. He’s helping fill in for Jack.”
“So it’s not just Jack who’s helping this horse,” Vail said.
Donna smiled. “No. Ed doesn’t count, because he’s delighted at these occasional bursts of getting back into running the ranch. But it means more work for Dave and the other hands, too. Nobody minds. Not with the miracles Jack can perform.”
“Miracles? He’s sitting,” Addie said.
“That’s what the horse needs right now. For Jack to sit there and not do anything to her that might make her more frightened or nervous than she is now. The first thing he has to teach this horse is that she can trust him. Trust Jack,” she added, her gaze flicking to Val, then returning to Addie. “That might take a while to learn.”
Addie nodded. But then, as if that understanding had stretched her beyond her not-yet-four-year-old tolerance, she hopped up from the corner of the chair she’d been sharing with Donna, said, “Ant!” in an enthralled voice and scooted to the far corner of the porch.
“How long will he sit with the horse?” It was better to ask the question than to risk Donna expanding on that “Trust Jack” theme.
“As long as it takes.”
“Takes for what? The horse to go to him? Or be touched? Or—?”
“Long way from any of that,” Donna interrupted smoothly. “First step with these rescues is for the horse to calm. Helping the animal figure out that it can soothe itself even with a human in the vicinity. That can take quite a while. That’s why Jack always asks Dave first when someone calls about one of these poor creatures. Even though Dave always says yes. This first day can be particularly long.”
She shaded her eyes with her hand. Val followed the direction of her look. Saw the horse do the same trot one direction, pivot and trot the other way routine. But now the horse was giving the man longer, almost questioning looks, at each turn.
“Ah, the mare’s already starting to wonder. That’s good. This should be easier than with Storm.”
“Storm? He was a rescue? But he’s gorgeous.”
“Not when he came to Jack. This mare’s scared, jittery. But that’s easier in a lot of ways. Storm … well, Jack gave him that name because he said that horse had surely come through the worst of storms. He was nearly starved to death by some worthless idiot. The horse had given up. On humans — with good cause — and on living. Jack sat out in that paddock with him all one day, through the night, and into the next morning. Never left, never let anyone come in, hardly moved. And neither did Storm. Stood there listless, his head hanging. Not moving at all. First light, we were out here, and I was all for insisting Jack give up. Get off that chair, come in, have something to eat, get some sleep before he was in as bad shape as the horse. Then Ed spotted it — Storm had started swishing his tail.”
“Swishing his tail?”
Donna nodded. “When I say he wasn’t moving at all, I meant at all. He wasn’t even using that automatic response to disrupt the flies. He’d let them land and bite. Never twitched, never swished his tail. Not until the next morning. And here sat Ed and me, with tears trickling down our cheeks because the sorriest looking piece of horseflesh you’d ever seen was swishing his tail at flies.”
Val felt her own eyes prick.
“Took Jack more than a week of long, long days before Storm got enough life in him to be curious enough to go near him. There were times when everyone else was as ready to give up on Storm, as he had on life.”
Donna’s words repeated in Val’s head. She knew what the older woman was trying to draw from her, yet she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “But not Jack.”
“No, not Jack.”
CHAPTER NINE
Addie’s attention had progressed from the ant to a spider web under construction to a large forked stick leaning against the wall. Donna had noted all that with the expert divided attention of a long-time mother and grandmother.
She’d seen the brewing discontent in the child and wasn’t surprised when she plopped herself back on the corner of her mother’s chair and demanded, “Wanna go see Jack.”
And because she suspected Valerie wanted to do the same thing, she spoke quickly and firmly. “Not now, Addie. He’s still working with the horse. He wouldn’t want to be interrupted because the horse needs all his attention right now.”
The child’s mouth pursed. “Jack likes me.”
“I’m sure he does,” she said before Val even pulled in a breath to scold. “That doesn’t alter that you should not interrupt him.”
The mulishness creeping into the girl’s expression disappeared. “Alter? Brennan says alter goes on a horse.”
“That’s halter with an h,” Val said. She drew the shape of the letter on the thigh of her jeans with her finger. “What Mrs. C said is alter. That means change.”
Addie lost all interest in vocabulary, letters and Jack at the sound of truck tires approaching. “Brennan!”
“Stay on the porch,” Val commanded, as Addie ran to cut the distance to the approaching truck. “Those two are thicker than — What?”
Donna shook her head, blinking back quick tears and smiling reassuringly. “I had a flashback to Dave and Matty when they were young.”
Val laughed. “Oh, c’mon. You’re saying Addie and Brennan have made a lifelong match? That doesn’t happen.”
“Oh, I don’t know. These Currick men have a powerful draw. Someday I’ll tell you that promised story about when I met Ed. Turned my life upside down … or maybe right-side up.”
They were both smiling as they went to meet Matty, Brennan, and little Finn. But Donna saw the look Valerie sent toward the distant corral, where Jack Ralston still sat, still and silent, waiting for a horse.
*
Matty was unhooking Brennan from one of the two children’s seats in the back of her new truck.
“You were right, Donna. They couldn’t get it out. Bubblegum,” she added over her shoulder to Val. “Worst was at the crown of his head, right in close to his scalp. How I missed it last night…”
“You probably didn’t. Probably got in there overnight and then he slept on it,” Donna said. “That was one of his father’s favorite tricks. Have you checked the pillow yet?”
“No. Oh, Lord. If it’s the S-p-i-d-e-r-m-a-n pillowcase and it can’t be saved, we’re all in deep trouble.”
Addie examined her friend as he scrambled out of the truck to stand beside her, his close-cropped head giving Val the strongest urge to run her palm over it. “I want my hair cut,” she declared.
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