Patricia Johns - A Rancher To Remember

“So, one of them is Lizzie, and the other is Bella. I haven’t figured out which is which yet,” he said. “Do you know, by any chance?”

“I last saw your girls when they were newborns,” Olivia replied. “So I’m not much help. Wait—” She reached out toward the toddler in his arms and took her hand. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Lizzie...” the girl whispered. Olivia shot him a grin, and then bent down to the other toddler. “Is your name Bella?”

The other girl grinned impishly. “Lizzie!”

Olivia straightened and laughed softly. “Never mind. I thought I was onto something.”

“I tried that,” he admitted. “And Lloyd says he can’t tell them apart, either. When we figure it out, I’m going to have to mark them somehow.”

“What...like with a permanent marker?” she asked, shooting him a teasing look.

“You’re joking, but it’s not a bad idea,” he countered. “Apparently, I could tell them apart before, but now...” Sadness welled up inside of him, and he tried to push it back. “They say it’ll come back to me. Until it does, a nice B or L on their hands would be helpful.”

Sawyer disentangled the little girl from his leg, and then put his other daughter on the ground next to her. They scampered on ahead.

“Do you remember the accident?” Olivia asked.

“No,” he said. “The first thing I remember is waking up with blood on my face, and riding to the hospital in town. I don’t remember anything before it.”

“Nothing?” she asked, squinting over at him.

He shook his head. “Well, I mean, I remember some funny little things, like which cupboard holds the salt shaker. If I’m not thinking about it, I can go through the motions for some basic chores like washing dishes or making coffee.”

“So, the muscle memories are in there,” she said.

“Seems like,” he agreed.

“I’m a nurse, you know,” she said. “I work in an emergency room, and I’ve dealt with people with partial memory loss after a head injury, but never anything this complete. In the cases I’ve worked with, the patients usually get their memories back within a couple of hours.”

“Yeah?” He eyed her curiously. Maybe she could be helpful after all.

“What did the doctors tell you—exactly?”

“It’s a brain injury. Kind of like a bruise. But it isn’t getting worse, and it should heal in a week or two. My memory should return. They said they’ve seen it before.”

“Okay, that’s a good sign,” she said with a nod. “I’m sure relaxing a bit will help with that.”

He shot her a rueful look. “Try relaxing when the most important parts of your life have been erased from your head. Besides—I want to get out there. Do something. Feel useful.”

“That’s your way,” she said with a low laugh.

“What do you mean?”

“You like to work. You always did. You worked harder than any cowboy here.”

That wasn’t a bad thing. He smiled at the description. “It could be worse.”

“You need to relax,” she said, and her tone wasn’t amused.

The toddlers stopped at the steps of the house and turned around, heading back toward them. Their curls bounced as they ran, and one of them came straight for Olivia. She bent down and swept the girl up in her arms, planting her on her hip. The move was so natural that he found himself smiling at her.

Sawyer caught the second girl, and picked her up, too. It was easier with two adults. They weren’t outnumbered, and Olivia seemed more natural with the girls than Sawyer was.

“What’s your name?” Olivia asked brightly.

“Bella.”

“Yeah, you’re Bella?”

“Bella.”

Sawyer looked at the toddler in his arms. “Hey, Lizzie,” he said softly.

“Daddy...”

Sawyer looked over at Olivia, his heart speeding up. “Did we just do it?”

“I think we know who’s who,” she agreed.

“Okay, don’t put her down,” Sawyer said, waggling a finger at Olivia. “We’re finding a marker.”

“That was a joke,” she laughed.

“It was a good idea. I need to tell them apart.”

Sawyer led the way up the steps and into the side door of the ranch house. He might not remember much, but he did have a mental picture in his mind of a junk drawer of some sorts that had a big felt-tipped marker inside. He looked around the kitchen, unsure of where to start, so he began at the first drawer he saw, pulling it open, then closing it when it wasn’t the right one. On the fifth drawer, he found it.

“There we go.” He pulled out the marker with a grin. “If there were a mother I’d have to explain myself to, I might be a little more worried. But I’m their dad, right?”

“So I’ve been told,” she replied with a small smile.

“Yeah, well, as their dad, I figure telling them apart is pretty important. I need something that won’t just wash off.”

“Okay.”

“So I’m making a responsible parenting decision here.” He held up the marker, watching her for a reaction.

“You’re their dad,” she said with a nod. “It’s your call.”

While he didn’t remember anything about them, being their father still mattered. In fact, as confused as he was, focusing on being their father had been what had held him together so far.

Sawyer pulled off the cap and took Lizzie’s hand. He wrote a small L on the back of her hand, and then blew on it to dry the ink. Lizzie looked down at her hand in curiosity, and he put her down on the kitchen floor, then reached for Bella’s hand. She held hers out happily, and he wrote a small B.

Bella pursed her lips to try and blow, and he laughed, then blew on her hand to make sure the ink was dry.

“There,” he said. “That’s one problem solved.”

It felt good—a victory. Olivia put Bella down, and the girls scampered off to a bucket of toys in the corner and dumped it out. He watched them for a moment... It still felt unreal that he was a father and that these little girls were actually his.

“What was I like?” he asked, glancing toward Olivia.

“You were serious,” Olivia said. “And stubborn. Really stubborn. You knew what you wanted and you didn’t let anything get in your way. You wanted to help your uncle grow this ranch—you thought you could double the herd size with the right support.”

“Hmm.” A goal. He liked the sound of that. “How did you and I know each other?”

“We met at the diner where I was working. We just kind of...clicked. It went from there.”

“And you live in town still?” he asked.

“No, I moved for college,” she said. “Right after you got married. I live in Billings now. I work at the hospital there.”

He frowned slightly, taking her in—the tangled curls, the soft brown eyes, the pink in her cheeks. “What was my wife like?”

Olivia’s expression froze, and then she glanced away.

“Perfect for you,” she replied. “Mia loved horses and cattle. She wanted a ranch life. And she was quiet enough to balance you out.”

“I take it you didn’t want the ranch life like we did,” he said. “Since you moved.”

“I wanted...” She looked around the kitchen, her gaze turning inward. “I didn’t want to stick around Beaut. I guess I just wanted more.” She winced. “That sounds insulting. I don’t mean it to be. I just didn’t want a rural life. I wanted a new start. I wanted...streetlights and a nightlife, and more people. I was tired of living in a place where everyone knew my personal business, or thought they did.”

She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her looks that kept his eyes riveted to her. There was something there, just beneath the surface, that he could almost remember. He hadn’t felt that about any of the other people from his forgotten life that he’d met so far. But he had a foggy memory—a black coat and a woman facing away from him. He put out his hand and touched her. She turned—