Carolyn McSparren - Taking the Reins

“What did Jake say to her in there?”

“No idea. Maybe he just witched her through the closed door.” She chuckled. “You should have seen him feeding Mama Cat chicken. It’s like he gave up part of what he was when he gave up making decisions, but maybe he got something else in return.”

“No matter how hard he tries not to, my dear Charlie, he’s forced to make decisions. If he starts with small ones and nothing bad happens, maybe he’ll learn to make larger ones.”

“You’ve worked with all of them....”

He shrugged. “Some more than others.”

“But all you’ll give me is name, age and rank. What’s Jake’s story?”

He shook his finger at her. “I can only give you the bare outline without contravening the Privacy Act. I can’t, for instance, show you Jake’s file—or any of their files.”

“So Jake made a decision that caused havoc. Are we talking a full-blown case of PTSD here? I am not competent to deal with that.”

“He has a bad case of survivor guilt, Charlie. He feels that his decisions resulted in suffering for other people and left him unscathed.”

“Did they?”

“Not in the sense he means. It’s a form of magical thinking. Not much different from ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back.’ Except in degree, of course.”

Can you at least tell me what he did in the army before he was wounded?”

“He was G-2.”

“Intelligence. A spook.”

The colonel nodded.

“What about his family?”

“Never been married.”

“Can you at least tell me whether or not he’s gay?”

“From what I can gather, he had an extremely healthy heterosexual sex life.”

She blew out her breath. “Not that it matters.”

“Of course not.” The colonel smiled the infuriating “I see all” smile that drove her crazy. “I’ll be down at the hospital at least four days a week, but I suggest we talk every night after dinner. Completely up to you.”

“Uh-huh.” As if. She was surprised he hadn’t asked her to write him case notes.

“If you have time, you might prepare case notes to jog your memory.”

She threw back her head and roared with laughter.

“What?”

“No case notes. I am not one of your worshipful acolytes.”

“This class is a huge responsibility for someone with your limited experience.”

“Then why the heck did you stick me with it?” She didn’t wait for his answer, but grabbed her paddock boots and started out of the library in her stocking feet.

“Charlie girl, I’m selfish enough to want to keep you and Sarah around. The way to do that is to keep you interested, involved and employed. Is it wrong to want to get to know my adult daughter and my grandchild? Besides, you must see that I can’t simply turn this place over to you without any supervision. You have no prior experience running an operation this size.”

“Granddad taught me more in my vacations here than he ever taught you, and I’ve been working my tail off to learn everything I can since we came back. I’m thinking of all those classes and clinics I should be taking instead of teaching these people to drive.”

“Dad was aware I would never be a farmer or a horseman,” the colonel said. “As a matter of fact, until I came home to look after him when he got so sick, he didn’t believe I’d ever live here after I left for college. He expected me to hire a manager to handle the place after he died until Steve retired and you two came back here to take over.” He shrugged. “I thought then he was living a fantasy. You would never have been able to convince Steve to retire from the army and move to a horse farm. He was an adrenaline junkie, Charlie. They don’t change.”

“We don’t have to worry about that any longer, do we?” She padded out of the library, shut the door and fought back tears. He was doing the same thing he’d always done when she was growing up. The absentee father shows up, issues orders for her own good and then leaves again. The gospel according to Colonel Vining. Most of the time she disobeyed just to prove she could. She must have driven her mother nuts.

If he hadn’t made her leave her horse when she was thirteen, her whole life might have been different. If her mother hadn’t died and left her without a buffer, if her father hadn’t forbidden her to see Steve, she’d never have run away and married him. The colonel always tried to control her and she always fought him, even when he was right.

Especially when he was right.

Carrying her boots, she took the stairs to the bedrooms two at a time. As she reached the top she heard Sarah clicking away on their shared computer.

Time to close down so they could go help Vittorio with dinner. She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. Wasn’t she trying to control Sarah the way the colonel tried to control her? She wanted Sarah to be happy, but her idea of what constituted happiness might not mesh with Sarah’s any more than the colonel’s had meshed with hers.

Should she let Sarah have her head a little bit? She was a good kid who was lonely and grieving. She’d never betrayed Charlie’s trust. She ought to be able to make her own mistakes.

And wind up pregnant and married? No way. If that meant controlling her, then so be it. Wasn’t that what the colonel said? Kids at this age hate their parents when they act like parents. Tough.

For all practical purposes Charlie had been a single parent most of Sarah’s fourteen years, but while he was home between deployments, Steve was always better with their daughter than she was. He was the good guy, Charlie was the ogre. No wonder Sarah missed him so much. No wonder when she had to blame someone for his death, Charlie was elected.

Why am I so uptight? Why don’t I just go in there and hug her? Because if she went stiff and backed away, I’d cry.

One of the four bedrooms on the second floor of the main house had been fitted out with Sarah’s shabby furniture brought from their base housing, and another had been given over to a home office that she was supposed to share with Charlie. In reality, however, Sarah spread out like kudzu vine, overrunning every flat surface in her own room and threatening to engulf the office.

The computer keys kept popping like soggy popcorn. Sarah couldn’t touch-type yet. She planned to take typing in the fall at her new private school. She could, however, race the wind with her two-finger technique. And texting? Did anyone over twenty have thumbs that small or nimble?

Charlie walked by the computer room and went into her own bedroom instead. She longed to lie down for a few minutes before she plunged back into her job, but she didn’t dare. She’d fall asleep and not get up until tomorrow.

Every piece of furniture in the room was new. Most of the things in their army quarters, except for Sarah’s bed and dresser, belonged to the quartermaster and had to be returned to stores every time they moved. Each new post meant another requisition of boring quartermaster offerings. The cheap furniture she and Steve had accumulated during their fifteen years of marriage had grown shabbier with every move. After he died, she’d sold everything except the photo albums, keepsakes, personal papers and Sarah’s furniture in a garage sale. Sarah had wanted her own bedroom furniture and other familiar objects around her, so she could have the illusion of home wherever the family landed. Charlie, on the other hand, wanted to slam the door on her life with Steve. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have felt that way, but that was before Steve came home from his second tour in Afghanistan and asked for a divorce.

Even combat widows were not welcome in post housing for very long. She’d had to beg to keep her quarters until school let out in mid-May. So here she was with the colonel. His house, his rules.