Nadia Nichols - A Family For Rose

“I can’t pay you, Billy. We talked about that before.”

“I don’t need much to get by.”

McTavish looked at him. “You’re building a house. That takes cash.”

“I got what I need to close it in for the winter,” Billy said softly. “There’s lots that needs doing around here if we’re bound to get this ranch back on its feet. Part-time won’t cut it. I’ll stock shelves at the store if I need spending money. Working full-time for you, I’ll pay off my mortgage all the quicker.”

He paused. Hearing the words aloud, he realized they made sense, and the humiliation and anger Shannon’s words had triggered started to bleed away. She hadn’t been attacking him personally, merely telling him she could afford to hire full-time help, and if he couldn’t do it, she’d hire someone who could. It was his job to prove to her he was up to the task, in spite of his injuries. “Must feel good, having your daughter back.”

“She shouldn’t have left.” McTavish climbed down from the tractor, his movements stiff. “But she’s come to her senses. She finally divorced Travis Roy.”

Billy tossed the grass stem away to hide his surprise. “She plan on staying?”

McTavish shook his head. “Doubt it. Willard showed me a picture of her house in one of those entertainment magazines. Looks like the White House, pillars and all, ten times as big as all the buildings on this ranch put together. After living that fancy life for ten years she’ll never be able to live here again.”

“I can’t think of any better place to raise that daughter of hers.”

McTavish gave him a jaded look. “I dunno about that. Shannon couldn’t wait to get out of here.”

“She came back, didn’t she?” Billy plucked another blade of grass. “With all her money she could have gone anywhere, but she came home. That says a lot. She still cares about you and she cares about this place, that’s as plain as a summer day is long. Speaking of which, it’s getting late. I’ll see you in the morning, bright and early. We got some hay to cut.”

* * *

SHANNON TOOK ROSE to the horse barn after cleaning up the kitchen. They walked down in the golden light of early evening. She tried to focus on the beauty of the setting, the rugged mountains and the fertile McTavish Valley, but all she could see were the broken fences, the missing shingles, the sagging roofline of the barn. A land empty of horses and cattle and young dogs. A land devoid of hope.

She pulled open one half of the big barn door and stepped into the dimness, holding Rose’s hand in hers. “This barn used to be full of horses and sweet-smelling hay, barn cats and cow dogs. I always loved coming in here.”

“Where are the horses, Momma?”

She gazed down the row of stalls. “Looks like nobody’s home at the moment.” She raised her eyes to the empty hay mow. Dropped them to the wide aisle, littered with dried manure and straw, not neatly swept and raked, the way she’d kept it. She sighed. “Sparky and Old Joe must be outside somewhere, maybe down by the creek.”

“Can we go find them?”

“Sure. It’s a nice evening for a walk.”

They were walking past the tractor shed when Shannon saw her father sitting on an upended bucket, working on the guts of an old red tractor. She changed direction and headed toward him, leading Rose along.

“We missed you at supper. I set aside a plate,” she said when he finally paused to acknowledge their approach. Shannon let her eyes flicker over the old machine and shook her head. “Can’t believe this old relic still runs.”

“It don’t. That’s why we haven’t hayed yet.”

Rose spotted Tess lying beside the old shed. “Can I pet her?”

Shannon nodded. “Just be gentle and remember she’s old and frail.” When Rose was out of earshot, Shannon shoved her hands in her pockets and rounded her shoulders. “Daddy, can we talk?”

He fitted a socket wrench onto a nut and torqued on it hard. It didn’t budge. He glanced up at her for a few moments, then said, “I’m listening.”

“Rose has been through an awful lot. The past two years, things got pretty bad between me and Travis, and toward the end she was old enough to understand what was going on.”

Her father’s expression hardened. “She see Travis hit you?”

The carefully applied makeup clearly hadn’t hidden the evidence of Travis’s last fit of drunken rage. “Yes,” Shannon said. “Travis got mean when he was drunk, and these past few years he was mean and drunk most of the time.”

Her father laid the socket wrench down at his feet and pulled a rag out of his hip pocket. Wiped his brow and his neck, shoved it back in his pocket, picked up the socket wrench, and tackled the job again, all without ever looking at her. “You don’t have to worry about me. I haven’t touched a drop since you left, and I sure as heck ain’t going to hit either of you.”

Shannon flinched inwardly. Her father clearly remembered the last heated words they’d hurled at each other, ten years ago when she was about to leave home. “You walk out of here right now and I no longer have a daughter!” he’d hollered.

She’d whirled around and shot back, just as mad, “You haven’t been a father to me since Momma died. You’re nothing but a useless drunk!” Then she’d walked out to Travis’s truck, climbed in and driven away, bound for Nashville, fame and fortune. That was the last time they’d seen each other, and those were the words that had festered between them for the past ten years.

Her father had stopped working to look directly at her. “You left one useless drunk behind and ran off with another,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m sorry I said what I did, Daddy,” she said. “We both said things we shouldn’t have. I’m hoping you’ll forgive me and I’m hoping we can make a fresh start. Rose needs to get to know her grandfather.”

He dropped his eyes and didn’t say anything for a long time, long enough for Shannon to draw a deep breath and square her shoulders. “It’s okay if you don’t want us. I have friends in California, and I’ve always wanted to see the big redwoods.”

Her father stared at the wrench in his hand and shook his head, still not meeting her gaze. He looked old and beaten. “I couldn’t make anything work after your mother died. Losing her wrecked me.”

Shannon was surprised by his admission. She felt her eyes sting at the defeat in his voice. She wanted to reach out to him but didn’t know how. “I guess maybe when she died, the heart just went out of both of us. I’m going to walk down to the creek with Rose and look for Sparky and Old Joe.”

“They’ll be by the swimming hole,” he said, still staring at the wrench as if it was the sorriest thing he’d ever seen. “They come up to the barn near dark, looking for their grain.”

“I’m glad you didn’t sell them, Daddy.”

He sat back down on the bucket and started working on the tractor. “Nobody’d want ’em,” he said gruffly. “They’re so old they’re no good for anything, not even dog food.”

Shannon knew that’s not why he’d kept them, but he’d never admit he loved a horse, not in a million years. Crusty old bastard. “C’mon, Rose,” she said, reaching for her daughter’s hand. “Let’s go find us a couple of useless old hay burners.”

CHAPTER THREE

DAWN CAME AND Billy was halfway to town before the first slanting rays spangled through the big cottonwoods along the far side of the creek. The parts store wasn’t open yet, so he had to roust Schuyler out of bed. The older man cussed and coughed up thirty years of a bad habit as he came to the door, pulling on a pair of greasy old jeans.

“What the hell you doin’ here this time of night, Billy?” he said, blinking red-rimmed eyes and scratching his whiskers.