Lindsay McKenna - The Wrangler

“Yes, I got breakfast on the flight over to Jackson Hole,” Val said. Gus halted at the opening on the right, which led to a huge kitchen. A kitchen that her father had built for her mother, Cheryl, many years earlier. Bitterness swept through Val. She passed her grandmother and headed up the stairs.

Her father had been violently drunk one night. He’d beat her mother so badly that she’d had to remain in the hospital for three days. After she got home, Buck had been apologetic and promised her that kitchen she’d always dreamed of having. He hadn’t built it because he loved Cheryl. No, it was a kitchen created out of guilt, terror and pain.

The hollow echo of her feet on the stairs sounded like an invisible ball and chain from the past. Her old bedroom was to the right of the stairs. Everything looked the same, as if time hadn’t touched it. Yet, as Val trudged unwillingly toward her room of terrible memories, she wondered how her grandmother managed to keep the house so clean. It was a large two-story home and Gus had broken her hip shortly after Cheryl died. Before that, Gus and Cheryl had lived here at the Bar H together, barely keeping it on life support. Val was ready to pull the plug on it.

Nudging the bedroom door open with the toe of her shoe, Val stepped into her hated past. On the bed, she saw the colorful flying geese quilt that Gus had made for her when she was ten years old. She set the bags on the floor, staring at the red, white and blue quilt. How many times had she wrapped herself up in it pretending that Gus was there, holding her? Holding her safe against her father? Of course, back then, Gus had lived with her husband, Pete, on a five-thousand-acre spread near Cheyenne, Wyoming. And Val knew her mother had worked hard not to let Gus know what was really going on at the Bar H.

Sighing, Val turned and studied the quiet room. There were frilly white curtains bracketing the large window, light pouring in and making it seem far more peaceful than she felt. Her childhood had returned. Only this time, her mother or father weren’t present. It was an odd, uncomfortable feeling and Val didn’t know how to deal with it. Why had she agreed to come home?

She went back downstairs. The only comfort in this life change she was making was being with her feisty eighty-four-year-old grandmother. Entering the warm kitchen, she saw Gus setting two mugs of steaming coffee on the rectangular cedar table.

“Ah, there you are. Come and sit down,” Gus invited with a smile. “I’ve got your sugar and cream here.” She noodled an arthritic finger toward the white porcelain containers sitting in the center of the table.

“Why don’t you sit down, Gus? You’re the one with a broken hip.” Val pulled out a chair for her grandmother.

“Thanks, honey.” Gus slowly lowered herself into it and propped the cane against the edge of the table. Smiling up at her, she murmured, “I can’t tell you how good it is that you’re home.” Gus gestured to the other side of the table. “Come on, sit down, Val. Let’s talk over coffee. That’s always a soothing, positive activity.” Gus chuckled indulgently.

Val couldn’t help but smile. As she walked around the table and sat opposite her silver-haired grandmother with her sparkling, lively blue eyes, a tiny part of her felt happy. The burden of the years living at the Bar H had overwhelmed any optimistic feelings. Picking up the creamer, Val said, “This is nice. Thanks for having coffee ready for me.”

“God’s lifeline.” Gus picked up her mug of black coffee. She raised it in a toast and then took a sip. “Westerners and their coffee are one and the same.” Sliding her work-worn fingers around the white mug, Gus watched Val as she poured the cream and sugar into her coffee. “I’m really sorry that I had to ask you to leave your career in the Air Force and come back home. I know what kind of courage it took to walk away from something you loved in order to help me.”

Val tasted the strong coffee and set the mug down. She reached across the table and brushed her grandmother’s hand. “I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else,” she said in a whisper, a catch in her tone. “You know that.”

Gus puckered her thin lips and nodded gravely. “You know, honey, when your mama died last year and you came home for the funeral, I knew…”

“Knew what?”

Gus shrugged and smiled a little. “I had this feeling you were coming home for good. Oh, I know you swore never to return.” Her silver brows fell and she scowled. “What I didn’t know is three months after your ma’s passin’, I’d fall out there at the corral and bust my femur.” She touched her right hip in memory of the accident.

“I know you’re giving up your career as an intelligence officer for this ranch.”

“I’m not doing it for the ranch. I’m doing it for you.”

Gus was truly a savior in Val’s life. Shortly after Cheryl had been released from the hospital that time Buck had laid into her, Gus had suddenly lost her husband to a massive stroke. After the funeral, Gus had sold her husband’s ranch and moved into the Bar H house. Val soon discovered Buck wouldn’t beat up her and her mother with Gus around. From that time forward, she remembered Gus as a guardian angel.

The tough woman rancher might have been only five foot tall and a weighed a mere hundred pounds, but Buck wasn’t about to push the envelope on her fierce protectiveness. And that’s exactly what Val and her mother had needed: protection from Buck. Gus had been a shield against her father for Val’s last two years spent in this house and for that she was forever grateful to her grandmother.

Reaching out, Val took Gus’s hand and squeezed it. “You saved us from harm and that’s why I came back. I wanted to pay you back for what you did for Mom and me.”

Gus sighed and her blue eyes teared up as she squeezed Val’s fingers. She gave Val a trembling smile and released her hand. “I didn’t know what Buck was doing until he landed your mother in the hospital. Cheryl never let on, not until I visited her in the hospital that time. Lord knows, I wished I’d known sooner.”

“My father was so careful to bruise me where no one would see it,” Val muttered. “He knew what he was doing. But my mother didn’t have the guts to call the sheriff. I still can’t believe she’d let my father beat the hell out of me.” Val shook her head, anger bubbling up within her as it always did when she thought about that time in her life. “Why didn’t my mother ever protect us, Gus?”

“Honey,” Gus said gently, “your ma was so beaten down by that bastard that she didn’t know she could ask for help and get it.”

“Why didn’t you take that information to the sheriff, Gus? I could never understand.”

“Because your ma pleaded with me not to. She wanted to go back to Buck. She said she loved him. And when Pete suddenly died, I knew I had to get over here. I felt Buck would leave you two alone if I was in the house, and I was right. So while I couldn’t go to the authorities, I did the next best thing.”

“You have no idea how grateful I was that you moved here, Gus.” Val gave her a look of admiration. “You gave up your whole way of life in order to protect us. I’ll never forget what you did.”

Giving her a gentle look, Gus said, “Honey, I’d do it all over again. I have no regrets about any of my decisions. My gut told me that Buck would stop if I was around. He was the kind of man who was so wounded, so scarred by life, that all he knew how to do was take his anger out on others. Truth be told, I had a baseball bat hidden in the closet and I swore to myself that if he ever lifted a pinkie against either of you, I was going to beat the hell outta him.” Gus gave her a wicked smile.