Charlotte Carter - Montana Hearts

He pulled past the two-story ranch house and parked near the barn. By noon today, the temperature had topped ninety degrees. Now clouds were forming on the western horizon, but that didn’t mean they’d get rain. Not the way weather patterns had been lately.

He climbed out of the truck. Rudy, their aging border collie, ambled out of his favorite shady spot by the tractor to greet Kurt. Automatically, Kurt scratched behind the dog’s ears and gave the old guy a friendly pat on his rib cage before going into the house.

He found his daughter in the kitchen grabbing a soda out of the refrigerator, the twelve-year-old’s face as red as a flag hanging off the rear end of a truck with a long load.

Sitting at the oak table, Nana Grace’s face was almost as red, not from embarrassment but from one of her “spells.” A line of perspiration had formed above her lip.

Kurt’s heart sank. More trouble at the Rocking R.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nana grounded me! For a week!” Beth’s shrill cry pierced the air. “Tell her she can’t do that, Daddy. Tell her she can’t.”

He held up his hand to quiet Beth, like a referee separating two boxers. “What happened, Grace?”

“This morning I told little Miss Smarty Pants that I couldn’t drive her into town. I had the laundry to do and I wasn’t feeling well.” Using a napkin, she wiped off the perspiration from above her lip. “Next thing I know, I see her get into a car with a boy and they drive off. She hadn’t even told me where she was going.”

“It was Caroline’s brother. I was going to go see her, like I told you.” Using her hips, Beth smacked the refrigerator door closed. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

Caroline was Beth’s best friend, but it didn’t sound like the girl had been in the car. That troubled Kurt. Beth not telling Grace where she was going troubled him even more.

“An hour later,” Grace continued, “a deputy sheriff brought your daughter back home. That boy had been speeding, going close to a hundred miles an hour, the deputy said. An seventeen-year-old boy. The deputy gave him a ticket. He thought leaving a girl as young as Beth—”

“I’m almost thirteen!”

“—with someone so irresponsible wouldn’t be safe.”

Kurt didn’t think so either. He knew Caroline’s big brother. The kid was too old for Beth and played too fast and loose with the rules. “Is what your grandmother said true?”

“I didn’t know he was going to speed.”

“But you knew he was going too fast, didn’t you?” Kurt asked.

She made a great study of opening the soda can. “I guess.”

“Did you ask him to slow down?”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t’ve listened to me.”

“Then you shouldn’t be hanging out with a boy who doesn’t care about your feelings or your safety.”

“He was just showing off.” Her lower lip extended into a full-fledged pout.

Anger and love, fear and frustration tangled in his chest. “I think your grandmother is right to ground you for a week. Maybe that will teach you to respect yourself enough not to allow some kid to put your life at risk. And next time, you tell Nana where you’re going and with who.”

“You’re taking Nana’s side?” Beth shrieked, shock and dismay twisting her pretty face into an ugly mask.

“You’re grounded, Beth. For a week.”

“You can’t do this to me!” She let loose a fountain of tears that ran down her cheeks. “I hate you! I hate you both!” She whirled, racing out of the kitchen and thundering up the stairs to her room. A door slammed, shaking the house.

Taking off his hat, Kurt slapped it against his thigh, creating a puff of dust. “I’m sorry, Grace. I don’t know what’s got into her lately.”

“I don’t either, son.” She used the napkin to dab the sweat from the back of her neck. Her hair looked unkempt. She hadn’t had a color job in months, and her hair had turned mostly gray. She’d lost weight in the past year and gained a web of wrinkles that crisscrossed her face. “But I can’t take it anymore. It’s too hard being around here every day, around memories of Zoe, and that child bickering with me constantly. Every time she goes out, I have to check to make sure she isn’t wearing some outlandish outfit. I just can’t—” She broke into sobs and put her head down on the table.

Feeling helpless, Kurt’s hands hung at his sides. His mouth worked but no sound came out, no magic words of consolation or support. Like a dry summer wind-storm, a sense of failure swept over him, sucking the life from him and his family.

“Go on home, Grace.” His words were thick with regret, his chest hollowed out with his own grief and guilt. “Get some rest. Take some time off. I’ll try to—” He didn’t know what he’d do. He only knew that he needed help.

In a hurry.

In the hour since Kurt had driven away, Sarah had walked the length of Main Street, as far as the glistening white church steeple that rose at the east end of town, then back to her car. She had explored the town where Zoe Ryder had lived, the town that perhaps Sarah’s new heart already knew.

Since her surgery she’d worked hard to gain strength and build endurance. In recent months she’d walked three or four miles several days a week and felt stronger because of the effort. She had needed that energy today to work off the adrenaline and distress that flooded her veins and her heart.

She’d walked past buildings constructed in the early 1900s with the brick facades and actual hitching posts left over from an earlier era, making the town look like a set from an old Western movie. Kurt Ryder, with his long legs and masculine swagger, fit like a well-cast actor in this setting.

He still fit into the scene now that horses had been replaced by battered pickups with large dogs standing guard in the beds of the trucks or tied up to the fenders.

He wasn’t going to hire her as a housekeeper. She’d seen rejection in his golden-brown eyes and the surprised arch of his brows.

Probably for the best, she thought as she had stood staring off into space, trying to quell her sense of failure. Admittedly, she wasn’t the greatest housekeeper in the world. Or cook, for that matter.

She never should have told him she had planned to stay around for a couple of days. He wasn’t going to call. She’d been foolish to even consider coming here.

There was no reason for her to stay.

No way for her to help the family who had lost so much.

On a weekday afternoon, no one seemed in a rush in Sweet Grass Valley. Traffic through town was light. The lush scent of sage and grass on surrounding open rangeland drifted on the air along with the smell of hay stacked in the backs of passing trucks.

Zoe Ryder had walked down this sidewalk, past the bakery, dress shop, grocery store and the one-screen movie theater across the way, probably greeting the proprietors by their first names. She’d been a part of this community in a way that Sarah had never been a part of Seattle.

Did the people miss her? Had Zoe left a hole in their lives as she had in those who had loved her?

It felt strange to envy someone who was dead. But Sarah did, at some cavernous level she hadn’t realized existed in her soul.

Please, Lord, help those who loved Zoe and miss her to find peace within Your loving embrace.

Sarah had seen a decent-looking motel about twenty miles back in Shelby, on the highway the way she’d come. She’d stay there tonight and then head home to Seattle tomorrow.

As she got into her car, her cell phone rang.

She froze, momentarily paralyzed. It could be her friend who was waiting on the results of her CPA exam and handling Sarah’s accounting business while she was out of town. A simple business question she could answer.