The Christmas You Found Me, page 5
“I usually stuff a towel there.” Guy must have followed my line of sight, and the expression on his face is tight. “Housekeeping came in this morning while we were gone. They always take it.”
“I hate to break it to you, but housekeeping doesn’t show up often at the ranch.”
Actually, I’m fairly tidy, even if I’m not the kind of person who loves a good deep cleaning, but I get the feeling my vacuuming habits aren’t a deal-breaker.
“All we need is a roof and four walls,” Guy promises. “Technically a roof and some lumber, because I can slap a few walls up if necessary. Perk of the trade.”
“I might even go full luxury and provide some insulation,” I joke, cringing at the sound of my own voice. At least he gives me a quick smile in acknowledgment of my attempt at defusing the tension.
His movements are quick and a little jerky as he starts to pack away things in worn reusable grocery bags, pulling color-coded plastic food containers out of the fridge and stuffing them together with a lunchbox-size ice pack from the miniature freezer. I wonder how this would feel in reverse, if I was in Guy’s shoes, making these decisions for my child, packing all my belongings up to go to the unknown house of a stranger.
I’d probably be scared sick with stress.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask, shifting on my feet and unsure where to stand. Moving deeper into the motel room feels like an invasion of their privacy. He’s grabbing toothbrushes, toothpaste, and deodorant from the bathroom, personal objects with labels that aren’t the same as the ones in my bathroom. My brain quietly screeches in horror, not at the objects themselves but at the fact that this is even happening. I’m married again. A stranger and his daughter are moving in…right now. This very minute. I tell myself to hush. Be braver than this, Sienna. The world isn’t ending because the man uses Sensodyne instead of Crest.
Guy glances at me as he packs his daughter’s clothes into a small, beat-up carry-on suitcase with gold and pink lettering on it, spelling out her name. “Are you as completely freaked out as I am?” he asks.
“Yep. How am I doing at covering it?” We share another quick smile, albeit tighter this time.
“You’re a shade paler than you were at the courthouse and about three shades paler than at coffee yesterday.” He starts to zip Emma’s suitcase, pauses as he flexes his fingers, and then Guy exhales a breath. “I can’t keep my hands from shaking.”
I cross the room and meet him at Emma’s bed. His hands didn’t falter when he signed the marriage license, but they’re trembling now. Guy’s strong enough he’s liable to accidentally break the worn zipper on her suitcase. I don’t know why I do it, but I take his hand in mine.
We need to just pause and take a beat, to breathe and let our brains catch up.
Guy’s hand is much larger than mine, and I squeeze his fingers reassuringly.
“I know this is all moving fast, but we chose to do this,” I remind Guy before tilting my head toward Emma. “For very good reasons. We already did the hard part this morning, and the rest of it is just logistics. If that very good reason doesn’t feel settled at the ranch or you don’t like it there, then we can reevaluate. I promise the ranch is a decent enough place, but it doesn’t have to be forever. It doesn’t even have to be tonight if you change your mind.”
Guy takes a deep breath, then he nods, exhaling slowly. “One day at a time?”
“One day, one hour… I’m kind of winging it here.”
“You and me both,” Guy murmurs. “Okay, it would probably look weird if we weren’t living together, since we’re married now.”
“Probably.” I start to let go of his hand, but my pinkie catches on his index finger. Guy looks down, then turns his hand so our fingers line up, my slender one against his larger, rougher one. My ring finger still holds the pale, smoother circle of skin where my wedding ring used to be.
For a moment, it’s all I can do not to cry. I’ve never felt as divorced as I am right now, fingertip to fingertip with someone else. I’ve had nowhere near enough time to move on before suddenly finding myself in this situation.
“When I prayed for a miracle, I didn’t realize it would come in such a small package,” Guy says quietly.
I’m no one’s miracle, least of all these two people’s. I’m a full bottle of cheap red wine every Friday night in a bubbleless bathtub. I’m a great credit score with no one to buy anything for, a drained bank account even if I had wanted to buy it, and a brutal awareness of the impermanency of the people in our lives. I’m a stuffed daily planner with nothing but the plastic spiral binding surviving after I finished burning my life to the ground.
I look over at Emma and think it doesn’t really matter who I am right now. I’ll deal with the fallout of my life later, after she gets her kidney. After these two get their own lives back.
“Miracles always come in small packages,” I say, tilting my head toward Guy’s daughter. For a moment, we stand there, and I realize we’re both smiling at Emma. Then I blush and let go of Guy’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Chapter 5
I help Guy carry his and Emma’s things to his truck and wait while he checks out early.
They must move around a lot, because it barely took him twenty minutes to get all their possessions packed up and us back on the road, headed toward the ranch. The pair seem like old pros at this.
I keep checking in my rearview mirror to make sure they’re behind me as I follow the winding river out of town. Yep, it’s them, including the little Christmas tree Guy had put on the front passenger seat, properly seat-belted in per Emma’s insistence. A string of tinsel catches the morning sunlight and reflects back at me, sparkling with the holiday spirit. Mentally, I add it to the list of unexpected things in my life as of the last twenty-four hours. Scraggly new Christmas tree? Check.
I keep my hands tightly at ten and two, making sure to stay perfectly within the lines and never more than a single mile over the speed limit. As if my brain—stuffed full of undeniable logic—has decided of all the things happening right now, not driving perfectly is the one that will bring judgment my way.
“Text Jess,” I tell my phone as I drive. “Hey, I did something today. You know the man from the coffee shop? The one you wanted me to hire? I sort of married him, and he and his daughter are moving in right now. Call me back when you can.”
A moment later, my phone chirps with a text message. I tell the car to read the message as I slow down for a particularly tight switchback. “WHAT? In a meeting, can’t leave. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”
The voice dryly dictates Jess’s message to me, failing to express their reaction to a sufficient degree. I definitely need a distraction right now, and since Jess is busy, I turn my satellite radio to the news. There’s a promising new medication to treat Alzheimer’s, but I change the station to some holiday music instead. Four years ago, I would have been hanging on to every word, desperate for something that could have made a difference in my father’s health. These medications have come too late for the man sitting in a recliner at the long-term care facility back in town. Dad is too far progressed in his disease for new treatments to do more than slow his mental decline. Nothing will bring him back to who he once was.
Today I turn the music up a little louder to drown out my thoughts.
We’re almost to the turnoff for the ranch when Jess’s number pops up on my dashboard. “Talk to me, Goose,” I say in lieu of a greeting.
Jess doesn’t even say hello before launching in. “Okay, on the off chance you are not pulling a retribution prank on me, I called my contact at the police department, and they ran a background check on him. Guy Maple, no priors, no speeding tickets in the last five years. Only listed family is a sister and his daughter. If he’s murdering people and hiding them in the woods, he’s really good at it.”
“That’s wonderful,” I say, aware my sarcasm is barely covering my panic. “Because we’re pulling up to my wooded ranch as we speak.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. The cutie-pie in the llamacorn hoodie is in the back seat of the truck behind me.”
There’s a long pause, followed by a low whistle. “That must have been one seriously good coffee date. I can’t believe I actually tried to cancel your meeting with him. Wait, why were you at the extended stay? Sanai just texted me that you were spotted over there. Oh, well of course you were at the extended stay.”
I can practically hear their eyebrows waggling.
“It’s not what you think.” I roll my eyes. “I didn’t hop out of his bed and run straight to the courthouse.”
“Such a shame.” Jess sighs with playful dramatics. “Here I was living vicariously through you, and you refuse to be tawdry for Christmas.”
“Sadly, I’m still myself. And I was helping them move out of the extended stay.”
There’s another silence as Jess processes the new information. “Maybe not tawdry, but you’re definitely not acting like yourself. You’ve absolutely lost your marbles, Naples.”
There’s a pause, then I mumble, “It’s technically Maple now.”
“You changed your name? Oh man, Micah is going to flip. This is getting better and better.” Jess eagerly continues on, their mind going a mile a minute. “Aren’t you at least going to have a reception? A honeymoon?”
“No? I mean, it’s weird, right?” I wonder if between the two of us, we’re only capable of bad ideas. I can’t imagine anything more awkward than admitting to the people we know, the people who have been gossiping about me for the last year, that I just hired a husband.
This time, Jess’s sigh is genuine, and they sound disappointed. “Was there at least a cake?”
“There were flowers,” I say. “And a prenup saying upon the event of a divorce, Guy gets what he brought into the marriage.”
“Which is a big fat question mark. What if he has massive debts? Or a horrible credit score? Or what if he’s secretly a CIA agent and he’s using you as cover for a covert operation?”
“Then he’d probably have access to better healthcare,” I quip.
“Sienna, let’s be real here. Why did you actually marry this man?”
I don’t tell them why, because…well…the real reason isn’t right. That a good man would have to go to these kinds of lengths to take care of his daughter is all kinds of wrong, and if I tell them, Jess will look at him with pity.
I don’t know Guy from Adam, but I know one thing: the man I married deserves better than pity.
“It’s complicated,” I hedge.
“We’re rain checking this conversation because my editor is walking in, and I have to go. Don’t get murdered.”
“Trust me, I’m trying my best.” I end the call as I turn off the main road and cross over the river on a rickety steel bridge, reaching the property line of my family’s ranch.
Two heavy cedar logs rest upright on either side of the drive, with a header spanning the width of the gravel. A raw-edge cedar placard dangles from two pieces of chain link below the header, the words NAPLES RANCH burned into the sign in large, clear letters. Even in my distraction this morning, I still remembered to close the gate behind me, so I pause and get out to open it, grabbing the mail from the mailbox and pulling my truck forward. I wave Guy and Emma through, then I close the gate behind me.
There are too many animals on the property to leave it open, even if the nagging voice in the back of my mind reminds me I’m closing myself in with strangers.
It’s a good thing Guy drives a truck, because I’m not sure a car could reach the ranch in the winter. Unlike some of the properties deeper in the Frank Church Wilderness, my place is accessible all year long, assuming I spend plenty of time with a snowplow extension on my tractor and keep my truck in four-wheel drive. The layer of heavy gravel gets washed away easily, so it’s not a great trek on the best of days. Not a lot of people need chains for their tires to get out of their driveways to a main road, but it’s a small, if inconvenient, price to pay for living somewhere this beautiful, this remote, and this free. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always felt like the ranch was a safe place from the eyes of the world, where I could just be me.
I’m hoping, for a little while, it gets to be a safe place for Emma too.
Two miles is a long driveway for most people. Out here, it’s not so abnormal. I go slow, keeping an eye on the truck behind me to make sure they don’t slide off the ice pack. Then the drive turns a curve, and the ranch comes into view.
I slow down even more, giving them a chance to take it in. With the snow-covered rocky-faced mountains rising in the background, the dark firs against a blanket of white, and the wisp of smoke coming from the chimney of the two-story log cabin resting in front of the wilderness backdrop, it’s a beautiful sight. I pull up to the cabin, parking my truck nose into the split-rail fencing that separates the cabin’s front yard and the drive. Lulu and Legs are nibbling at the remains of their breakfast hay by the pen’s fence, and behind them, my cattle mill around in the larger cattle pen. Guy parks next to me, so I get out and walk around the front of my truck to meet him. Cattle lowing fills the air, and the earthy scent of livestock mingles with the fresh, crisp mountain air coming down through the river valley.
Guy’s gazing around the property, his daughter in his arms. I can’t tell what he thinks; his expression is oddly blank. Emma’s eyes are wide, and she tugs on his shirtsleeve.
“Daddy, see the horses?”
“Yeah, baby, I see them.” He gives her a smile, then turns the look my way, albeit a shyer version. “When you said you had a ranch, I guess I was thinking more work and less—”
Guy gestures to the property, and I have to admit, I can understand.
“Trust me, there’s plenty of work,” I promise ruefully, but I pause and look around, soaking in the view.
It’s even better in summer, because I love being able to see the grass on the ground, but there’s something special about the Frank Church Wilderness in winter. Locals spend a lot of time thinking about the logistics of living here, the mud and the snow and the washouts and mudslides. The fires in the summer and the rough river rapids that make transportation upriver so tricky. When was the last time I stood in my driveway and simply inhaled the brisk scent of snow mixing with evergreens?
For a moment, I wish I’d put more effort into decorating for the holidays like I used to before my dad got sick. I haven’t bothered to pull the five-foot-wide wreath out of storage and hang it over the entrance of the horse barn. I haven’t strung Christmas lights on the porch or hung my mother’s favorite reindeer-and-sleigh wind chimes.
From the front porch, Barley manages to rouse himself from his normal ennui and gives a halfhearted woof.
“Daddy, a doggie!”
“He’s really good with kids,” I promise when Guy glances at me before setting her down. “It’s me he’s ambivalent toward.”
When I whistle for Barley, he comes over, wagging his bushy gray-red tail as he heads straight for Emma, putting his nose in her stomach. She dissolves into giggles, wrapping her arms around his neck. He politely lets Guy pet him, then turns his attention back to Emma, ignoring me completely.
“I see what you mean,” he murmurs.
“You’d think I hadn’t fed him the last ten years. And I should have asked if either of you have allergies,” I say, adding one more thing to the list of what never occurred to me until too late.
“Emma has an allergy to peaches. Not bad, but it leaves her lips red.”
“What about you?” I ask.
This time, the smile he passes my way is stronger. “I’m allergic to the bad vending machine food back at the motel.”
“Are you hungry?”
Of course he is. One look at this man and I’m hungry. Well…not like that. Mostly not like that. A little like that, but I’m not supposed to be thinking thoughts like this.
“Emma had her lunch on the drive over.” Which isn’t quite the same thing as “yes, we both ate.”
We grab the first of their bags out of his truck, then Guy follows me up the steps of the cabin.
A low whistle escapes him as we enter, and I pause, trying to see what he sees. I’ve lived here my whole life, so I’m used to the place. What started as a one-room homestead has been added on to over the years with hard work and attention to detail, with my parents’ and grandparents’ personal touches. The end result is a two-story log cabin with age-marred but gleaming hardwood floors, hand-hewn log walls, and a river rock fireplace that was my mother’s pride and joy.
“This is beautiful craftsmanship,” Guy says, looking at the fireplace with appreciation.
“Yeah, it almost ended my parent’s marriage. Mom insisted on hand picking every stone and each being placed just right. Dad disappeared into the high country for a month after it was done.” I smile fondly at the memory, patting a hand on the six-foot-wide live-edge cedar mantle.
Emma starts to take off, but Guy is fast, catching her in a muscled arm. “Gotta take your shoes off first, baby,” he says to his daughter.
“It’s fine,” I tell Emma. “I don’t always take my shoes off, so I might be a bad example.”
“Your house, your rules,” Guy says, standing there looking a little lost.
“Sen-na, why is your Christmas tree empty?” Emma suddenly asks, pointing a finger at the tree I stuck in the corner of the living room last week with nothing but a string of lights and a lopsided star. She’s right. It’s empty, even though I never thought of it that way.
“I just haven’t finished decorating it yet,” I say, because it’s easier than explaining the full truth. Opening a box of decorations by myself was too much, wine didn’t help, and it was easier to have the lights and the star than it was to have a long, one-sided conversation with myself about loneliness during the holidays.
