Penny Richards - Wolf Creek Homecoming

She was reaching for a tea towel to take a batch of cookies from the oven when Danny asked, “Do you know that man, Mama?”

Rachel paused, halfway to the stove. Take a deep breath and answer him. After all, he was only exhibiting the natural curiosity of an eight-year-old.

“I knew him a long time ago,” she said, choosing her words with care. “But not very well, it seems.” It was the truth, after all.

“Pops said he’s Mr. Gentry’s younger brother.”

“That’s right.” One by one she lifted the hot cookies onto a stoneware platter with the egg turner. Mercifully, before Danny could ask another question, she heard someone knocking. Her father was dozing in his favorite chair, so there was no need to stop. He’d answer the door.

She heard the rumble of masculine voices, and in a matter of minutes Caleb entered the kitchen. “Caleb!” she said, surprised to see him.

“Edward told me it’s true,” he said, twisting his hat in his big work-roughened hands. His unusual silvery eyes were a dark, stormy gray.

“Yes.” Rachel gestured toward a chair at the table. “Have a seat. I’m sorry I didn’t come out and tell you, but it was a long morning, and I took a little rest.”

“No need,” Caleb said, stepping farther into the room but refusing to sit down. “Between Simon and Roland, the Wolf Creek grapevine is in prime working order. Sarah drove out about noon on the pretext of wanting to be the first to see Eli. Of course, she couldn’t wait to tell me the news.”

“After the way she slandered you and Abby, I can’t believe that woman would have the gall to even look you in the eye,” Rachel said with a bitter twist of her lips.

Caleb’s smile mimicked hers. “I warned her last year not to ever step foot on the place again, but I guess she decided facing my anger was a fair trade for the pleasure of being the first to tell me about Gabe. How bad is he?”

“Bad enough.” Rachel listed his injuries and Caleb winced.

“Can I see him?”

“Of course. I should check on him anyway. I’ve given him some laudanum, so he’s unconscious. It’s best if I keep him that way for a day or two, until he’s past the worst of the pain,” she said, preceding Caleb into the bedroom.

As he approached the bed, Rachel heard him draw in a sharp breath. He swallowed hard and looked up at her with an expression of horror. “His face...”

She nodded. “Whoever did this to him intended for him to remember it.”

Never one to show emotion, Caleb’s response was to turn and walk out of the room. In the hall, he hesitated, almost as if he wanted to say something and didn’t know how...or what.

“Would you like a cup of coffee and some cookies?” Rachel asked in a gentle voice. “They’re straight from the oven.”

“That would be nice,” he said. He followed her into the kitchen, where Edward was plopping out spoons full of dough, and pulled out a chair.

Rachel sent her father a silent message and Edward said, “Come on, Danny. It’s warmed up some, so let’s go outside awhile. I’ll sit on the porch while you make a snowman.”

Since he’d been begging to go out all day, Danny gave a shout of joy and bounded from the room.

“Bundle up!” Edward shouted to his retreating back, turning his chair and following.

When they were gone, Caleb said simply, “Thank you.”

Rachel sat down across from him. “You wanted to tell me something?”

He took a swallow of coffee. “I don’t know what I want. When I first heard Gabe was back, I intended to come here and give him a piece of my mind for walking out all those years ago and never once contacting us. That was before I saw how bad he is.”

He swallowed hard. A smart, self-educated man known for his toughness and an unyielding attitude, Caleb had softened a lot since marrying Abby Carter.

“Now I don’t know how I feel or what to say to him,” he confessed, rubbing a hand down his cheek. “Seeing him like that caught me off guard.” He gave another halfhearted smile. “It’s hard to summon up a lot of anger when someone is lying there battered and bleeding and can’t defend himself.”

She gave a half shrug. “True, I suppose, but there’s absolutely no excuse for him to not contact you all these years,” Rachel said before she could temper her tongue.

Caleb frowned at her animosity.

Realizing she’d let too much of her antagonism show, she took a calming breath. “You never really got along, did you?”

“No.” He ran his hand through his shaggy hair. “Well, that’s not exactly true. Actually, we never had much to do with each other. He was four years younger than me, and I was always expected to toe the line, get the work done. Lucas mostly let Gabe go his own way, so he never did much of anything that resembled work. When he asked for his inheritance, Lucas just up and gave it to him, and I was left to deal with everything here.”

“It must have seemed very unfair.”

Caleb’s short bark of laughter lacked true mirth. “In more ways than you can imagine. I guess it’s pretty obvious that Gabe was always the handsome one, the charming one, the one who could make everyone laugh. I was the drudge, the sensible one, the serious brother. Right or wrong, I always resented him for it.”

Caleb pinned her with a hard look. “Maybe I still do. It will be interesting to hear what kind of story he spins when he wakes up. I can’t imagine anything he could possibly say to make me feel different toward him, so he needn’t expect me to welcome him with open arms. In fact, once he gets better, I won’t mind seeing him leave town.”

It was quite a speech for the taciturn farmer. Knowing the feelings of her own heart, Rachel kept quiet.

Caleb lifted his gaze to hers. “I know the Bible says I should forgive him and let go of the past, but I don’t mind telling you I’m having a real hard time with this.”

Rachel offered him a wan smile. “Believe me,” she said. “I understand better than you think.”

* * *

That night, after checking on the patient, Rachel went into Danny’s room and sat on the side of the bed. Sweet, innocent little man, she thought, brushing the dark, wavy, too-long hair away from his forehead. Until today, she’d never realized just how much he looked like Gabe, probably because she had taken such pains to bury her memories of him.

With him now beneath her roof, that was impossible. She could only hope and pray that he mended soon so that he could be on his way, preferably, as Caleb suggested, out of town. She didn’t want Danny around Gabe any more than necessary.

Brushing her lips against her son’s forehead, she rose and went to join her father in the parlor.

“Everyone okay?” he asked, looking up from his book and peering at her over the tops of the glasses that lent his attractively lined face a professorial look.

“Everyone’s fine.”

Edward laid aside his book, and Rachel sat on the end of the sofa. “What about you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you fine? You don’t seem so,” he said, tapping into his uncanny ability to see things beyond the surface. “You’ve been jumpy all day, and angry and...oh, I don’t know, maybe even sad. Would you like to tell me why?”

She crossed her arms across her chest. “No.”

“Well, then,” he said, “do you mind if I hazard a guess?”

Rachel gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Guess away,” she said with a nonchalance that did a reasonable job of masking her apprehension.

Edward tented his fingertips and regarded her for a few long seconds. She felt as if he could see into her very heart and soul, and that all the secrets she’d held so close were about to be exposed. He was no fool. Perception and spot-on intuition were two of Edward Stone’s greatest assets.