Mary Sullivan - A Cowboy's Plan

“You two have a good day.” With one hand on the front doorknob, he called, “Liam, you have fun with Gramps today.”

No answer. The ring of a spoon against cheap china followed C.J. out the door.

JANEY WILSON CROUCHED in the shade of the weeping willow on the lawn of the Sheltering Arms Ranch. Its branches soughed in the hot breeze scuttling across the Montana landscape.

She stared at the delicate child in front of her whose gaze was as wide-open as the prairie surrounding them.

“Katie,” she said, “I can’t play with you right now.” Liar. “I need to go do something.” Coward. “It’s something important I have to do right away. Okay?”

Katie stared with solemn brown doe eyes, silent and wise before her time and so much like Cheryl Janey couldn’t breathe.

Sunlight, filtered by the leaves of the tree, dappled Katie’s face, underlining the dark circles beneath her eyes and highlighting her sallow skin.

Cancer did terrible things to children.

Unforgivable things.

Janey touched Katie’s small shoulders, the thin cotton of her old T-shirt worn soft. She nudged Katie toward the field across the driveway where the ranch’s latest batch of inner-city kids played a game of touch football.

“Hey, you little hoodlums,” the ranch foreman, Willie, yelled, “this ain’t tackle football.”

Willie lay on the ground under a wriggling pile of giggling children—all of them cancer survivors.

Janey closed her eyes. She couldn’t take much more of handling these children daily while her heart bled.

“How long are you going to keep this up?” Startled by the rasp of a bark-dry voice behind her, Janey spun around. Hank Shelter stood on the veranda of his house watching her, his big body relaxed and leaning against a post, but his eyes too perceptive. She tried to hide her pain, but wasn’t fast enough.

“How much longer can you do this?” he asked.

Before she answered, he raised a hand. “Don’t insult my intelligence by claiming you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

She exhaled a breath of frustration. “Hank, I’m okay, really. I’m dealing.”

“No, you aren’t dealing, Janey.” The regret on Hank’s face broke her heart. “You haven’t been able to in the year you’ve lived here.”

“I can try harder,” she insisted.

Even in the shade, a drop of sweat meandered down Hank’s cheek. “Being this close to the kids is killing you.”

He left the veranda, his cowboy boots hitting each step with a solid clunk, and approached. Janey tilted her head back to look at him.

“You haven’t gotten rid of any of your demons.” He gestured toward her clothes. “You’re still wearing your armor, but it doesn’t seem to be doing you much good.”

Janey flushed. True. Here on the ranch her attire wasn’t helping her to deal with the children. But on the few times she’d joined Amy to run errands in town, it had sure come in handy.

“I’ve watched you turn yourself inside out with sorrow,” Hank said. “It isn’t getting better. It’s getting worse.

“You’re getting worse.” He touched her shoulder. She flinched. He dropped his hand. “Sorry.”

Hank was a good man, an affectionate one. He liked hugging and touching people. Janey didn’t.

Hank gestured to the children in the field. “Working with the kids is wearing you down, and it’s killing Amy and me to watch it. Something’s got to give.”

Janey’s heart sank. Her pain was affecting Hank and Amy. She’d thought she’d hidden her grief so well. She couldn’t justify harming them. She had to do something, go somewhere. Now.

“As much as we love you,” Hank said, “Amy and I can’t watch you like this, darlin’. We brought you here to heal, not to cause you more pain.”

Janey pressed her hand against her stomach. How could she stand to lose the ranch? If not for the pain the children caused her, it would have been perfect.

Janey caught a glimpse of Amy in the front window, with baby Michael in her arms. Just looking at mother and son started an ache in Janey’s chest.

She wanted her own little girl back.

She stilled, willing the ache to pass quickly.

Hank must have detected something in her face, because he glanced over his shoulder and saw his wife and son.

He turned back to her and raised one eyebrow, as if to say, Get my point?

“There’s too much hardship for you here,” he said.

The decision she’d been avoiding for too many months loomed. “Yeah,” she whispered. “You’re right.”

“I’ll help you in any way I can. Do you want to go to school? Take some college courses?”

“Hank, I dropped out of high school to have Cheryl.” She’d been fifteen and terrified.

Hank cursed. “Sorry, Janey, I should have figured that out already.”

“I was working on my diploma when she died, taking correspondence courses.”

“You can stay here while you finish getting it.”

A shout from the children in the field served as an exclamation mark. You’ll still have to deal with us!

“Maybe not such a good idea.” Hank cracked the knuckles of his right hand. “I’ll pay for you to rent a room in town while you return to high school.”

“That’s okay, Hank, I still have all the checks you gave me.”

“What?” Hank’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. His dusty white Stetson followed the motion. “You haven’t cashed any of them?”

Janey shrugged and shook her head.

Hank sighed. “Amy’s gonna have your guts for garters.”

Janey glanced over his shoulder, but Amy had disappeared.

“Didn’t I hear her tell you months ago to cash those?” Hank took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, then slammed it back onto his head. “They’ll be stale-dated and the bank won’t cash them. Tear them up and throw them out.”

Janey toed a small branch that had fallen from the willow. She hated disappointing Hank.

“Why didn’t you cash them?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I haven’t had to. You and Amy give me everything I need here.”

Out in the real world, she would need that money.

Hank pointed a finger at her. “I’m going to write you a check and you’re going to cash it today, young lady.”

The check she’d received in the mail last week from Maria Fantucci’s lawyer burned a hole in her right pocket. She knew she still had to deal with it. Now Hank, too, was going to give her money.

“Hank, I don’t want to take anything from you. You and Amy have done so much for me.”

“You’ve earned your paychecks. Do you think anyone else here works for free?” He frowned. “We’ll miss you. You do great work with the children, ’specially considering how hard it is for you.”

Hank turned when he heard the screen door close. Amy had brought out a checkbook and a pen. Hank joined her.

“I heard,” Amy said.

Janey stood still, clamping her throat around a scream trying to erupt, I don’t want to leave.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Janey heard Amy say. “Between having the baby and planning the rodeo, I haven’t been keeping up with the books.”

“You know I’d do them if I could.”

The love between Hank and Amy was so palpable, Janey felt like an eavesdropper.

“You okay?” Hank approached with a check in his hand, but Janey didn’t reach for it.

Holding Michael, Amy watched, her face unlined except for the worried frown that Janey knew she’d put there.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Janey finally answered, but the rough croak of her voice gave her away.

“Aw, hell, no, you aren’t,” Hank said. “It’ll get easier in time.”

“Did it get easier for you?” Janey asked. “After your little boy died?”