FIVE
The little town of Pine River sat at the very center of the valley, on the edge of the river for which it was named. One could see it on the descent down from the mountains, sitting in the middle of the valley like an oasis in a mountain wilderness. The town had begun as a hub for miners and ranchers, but as the mining operations had shut down, and larger ranches had consumed small ranches, Pine River had morphed into a tourist town. It was a little too far from the slopes to be a ski resort. Summers were the draw here. Hiking, white-water rafting, horseback riding, cycling, camping. Any outdoor sport a person wanted could be found here.
Luke had grown up in and around Pine River. It was where he’d gone to school, played football, fallen in love.
He pulled onto the shoulder at the intersection of a rural road that led to the family ranch. He debated driving the eight miles up, but thought it was probably more important to talk to his father first. As Luke pulled out onto the main road, a little Honda turned onto the ranch road, and behind it, a truck hauling Port-A-Johns. Odd. There was rarely any traffic on this road—just the ranchers who lived out this way. Maybe old man Kaiser was finally going to build that new house his wife had talked about for years.
He drove on down to the valley floor, coasting into Main Street. Two rows of western-style wooden buildings faced each other along one long strip. The business names were all designed to appeal to tourists: Grizzly Lodge and Café and Rocky Creek Tavern.
Luke stopped at the Blue Jay Grocery and Tackle Shop.
The grocery portion of the shop was small and close, and carried only essentials like toilet paper and milk. If a person needed more than basics, they could drive out to the Walmart on the old Aspen Highway.
Luke walked back to the junk-food aisle and squatted down to have a look. Cookies, that would do. He grabbed two boxes. What he didn’t eat, he knew Leo would. He picked up some tortilla chips and salsa, then swung by the cooler to pick up a twelve pack of Coors, because he had a feeling he was going to need it.
With his booty paid for, Luke walked outside, his keys jangling in his hand. He hadn’t quite reached the Bronco when he heard someone call his name.
He turned around, felt the shock and glance of pain at once.
“Luke Kendrick,” the woman said. She smiled, and it went through Luke like it always had, sloughing off the years that had passed as it sank deeper into him.
“Julie Daugherty,” he said. How long had it been since they had split? Three years? Maybe not quite. Julie was the woman Luke had intended to marry. She was the woman he’d bought the ring for, had gotten down on one knee for, the whole nine yards.
She was the one who had broken his heart.
“What a surprise,” she said, walking cautiously forward.
She looked as gorgeous as ever, her blond hair cut stylishly short, her figure trim and athletic, only a few months past bearing her first child. “How are you?” he asked.
“Good,” she said, and stopped at his bumper, her gaze flicking over the Bronco. “Still running, huh?”
“Better than ever.” Luke turned to look at his Bronco, but a movement caught his attention. It was a tiny car with a donut spare driving slowly past. Blue Eyes was leaning forward, squinting up at the signs above his head.
“You look good,” Julie said, not noticing the car. “But then, you always did.” She laughed, and touched her earring. It was a simple but familiar gesture that took Luke back a few years. They would sit on the porch swing out at the ranch, talking about everything and nothing, and she would idly play with her earring.
“Thanks,” he said. He didn’t know what more he should say. All he could think was that if everything had gone according to plan, he and Julie would be married, and her child would be his. If it hadn’t been for Mom and Leo—
“Are you still in Denver?” she asked.
“Yep. I just came home to check in with Dad and Leo.”
Julie nodded. She smiled coyly. “Girlfriend?”
He hated that she felt she had the right to ask. He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
She laughed. “I bet you have them falling at your feet, Luke. So how is Leo? I haven’t seen him around.”
Luke’s breathing hitched a tiny bit. “He’s good,” he lied. “Doing great. And Brandon?” he asked, referring to her husband, although he could care less how that ass was doing. Did he hope it, or did a slight shadow glance over Julie’s face when he asked about her husband?
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “He’s a proud papa.” She didn’t say more than that. They stood there, looking at each other, maybe looking past the weeks and months and years since it had ended between them.
Fortunately, Luke was saved from saying something stupid or inappropriate by the little car, which caught his attention once more. It drove by again, but in the opposite direction.
“Well,” Julie said. “Tell your Dad and Leo I said hello, will you?”
“Sure.”
She smiled warmly. “It was really good to see you, Luke. Really good.”
There was something in her voice, something he didn’t quite understand, but that he felt in his gut. He stood there a moment too long; he could feel himself softening. Luke made himself move first. “You, too, Julie.” He turned around, walked to the driver side of his Bronco.
Julie Daugherty had let him down in the worst way, and somehow, Luke had picked himself up and gone on with his life. He wasn’t going to go backward now.
He looked back over the hood of his truck. She was still standing there, her hands tucked into her back pockets, biting her bottom lip, almost as if she was trying to keep from speaking. Her gaze was full of yearning and it sent a shiver of disturbing familiarity down Luke’s spine. He got into his truck and turned the ignition before he made the mistake of asking her why she was looking at him the way she was.
If Pine River had a backwater part to it, Elm Street was it. On this street, the houses were smaller and a little more run-down than elsewhere in town.
Luke found the house where his dad and Leo were staying easily enough—it looked just as Dad had described it when he explained he and Leo were temporarily renting a place. It was a little green clapboard that sat in the middle of a square patch of manicured lawn, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The detached garage was only big enough for one car. A doghouse that looked new sat under a towering elm tree in the yard, but there was no sign of any dogs.
The house was tiny. Luke guessed two bedrooms, one bath. And there was no wheelchair ramp.
He parked outside the fence, grabbed his things, and walked up the gravel drive, hopping up onto the porch and knocking twice before walking inside.
“Hey, hey!” Leo called out as Luke stepped into the front room. “You took your own sweet time getting here, didn’t you? Look at this, Luke, I am about to blow the top off this game!”
It always amazed Luke that Leo could operate a game controller with hands that curved in like lobster claws, the fingers useless. But Leo was a master at making do as his body slowly deteriorated. His head was bent slightly to one side, and his legs collapsed in on each other. He was only a shadow of the man he used to be.
Like Luke, Leo had played football, a big strapping nose tackle with a scholarship to the Colorado School of Mines, and dreams of making the pros. But the spring of his freshman year, his left arm started to shake in a weird way. He couldn’t seem to grip a ball. Their parents took Leo to a slew of doctors and finally, to the specialists. That summer, Leo had earned the dubious distinction of being one of the younger people to be diagnosed with a motor neuron disease.
None of the Kendricks had known what that was, but Luke knew it was bad because of the look on his mother’s face when the doctor said it was closely akin to Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Her face went ashen and she gripped the arms of her chair as if she were fighting to keep from sliding off and melting onto the floor.
The doctor had tried to make it better by telling them that the disease didn’t progress in exactly the same way as Lou Gehrig’s disease, that everyone with motor neuron disease progressed differently. To Luke, that meant there were no rules; it could go fast, it could go slow. But there was nothing that doctor could say that would change the fact Leo’s disease was devastating and deadly.
As far as Luke was aware, Leo had only let the grim change to his life put him on the floor once. After a night out with the guys, Luke had awakened to the sound of his brother sobbing. Leo was on the floor, sobbing for what was lost, for what the future held. He was only twenty years old. But then, in true Leo Kendrick fashion, he’d picked himself and his useless arm off the floor, wiped his face and had said, “Okay. Change of plans.”
There was no greater hero than Leo Kendrick to Luke’s way of thinking.
About a year later, Mom was diagnosed with cancer, and Leo never showed his feelings about his debilitation again. Now, having just turned twenty-six, he liked to joke that his was a different sort of disease that only happened to geniuses—counting himself and the physicist Steven Hawking.
Luke walked over and had a look at the TV. There were dragons breathing fire and a guy that looked like the quarterback Peyton Manning darting around them. Luke put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Is that supposed to be you?”
“Dude, it is me!”
Luke leaned down, kissed the top of his brother’s bent head. “Here,” he said, and put the bag of cookies on a table next to Leo. He dropped his things, opened the bag, and shook a few of the cookies out. “Oreos.”
“Thanks, man. I’m not supposed to eat anything like that, so don’t let the warden see it.”
“Are you having trouble swallowing?” Luke asked, a balloon of fear swelling in him.
“No, you moron—they make me fat.” Leo laughed as he reached for one, managing to pick it up in his almost useless hand. He tucked it into his mouth and chewed crookedly.
“Where is Marisol? Hiding from you again?” Luke asked, referring to Leo’s daily in-home care.
“Marisol adores me, what are you talking about? She’s off today. Dad’s here. He’s out back, building a workbench. He’s got grand designs for this place. A gym, a guest suite, a media room, you name it.”
Luke chuckled. “You’ve been watching the house and garden channel again, I see. I hope Dad is planning on building a ramp.”
“The fastest ramp in Pine River! Hey, Luke,” Leo said, and turned his head slightly, as much as he could. “Go easy on Dad, okay? He does the best he can.”
Luke smiled sadly. Personally, he didn’t know how their father managed to do what he did; it all seemed so overwhelming to Luke. “I know, man. I know.”
He walked on through the little house, his nose wrinkling at the musty smell. There were water stains on the ceiling, and the rust-colored carpet was threadbare in places. The wall paint was peeling around the window frames, and where there wasn’t paint, there was a garish, seventies-era gold paper on the walls.
Luke paused in the kitchen to deposit the chips and beer on the tile counter. The kitchen was a small galley type, but it had the requisite appliances for an all-male household: a microwave and a dishwasher. The dirty dishes stacked in the sink looked as if they had the remnants of pasta clinging to them, and the handle of a ladle stuck out of a pot on the stove. Since Mom had died, this was how the Kendrick kitchen looked—like a giant Petri dish of experiments gone wrong.
Luke opened the back door onto a small, bi-level deck. There was room for only one folding chair and a table on the upper deck. On the lower deck, Dad had draped a two-by-four across the railing and was busy running a belt sander across it. When he paused, Luke called out to him.
Startled, Luke’s father jerked upright. “Luke!” he said, his face one big grin. He turned off the sander, rubbed his palms on his jeans and walked up the steps, his arms outstretched. He was an affectionate guy, and gave Luke a tight bear hug, slapping him on the back a few times before letting go. “You look good, son. Real good,” he said.
“Thanks. Are you all right, Dad?”
“Right as rain,” he said.
“And how’s the world’s best armchair quarterback?” Luke asked, referring to Leo.
“Oh you know him,” Dad said. “He’s always good. Got him a new video game and that’s all he’s talking about this week.”
“Marisol is still coming every day, right?” Luke asked, fearing that for some insane reason, his dad wouldn’t tell him if Leo’s in-home care stopped coming. Luke worried about it—he paid Marisol what he thought was a pittance, but it was all he could afford.
“Oh yeah, yeah, she comes around every day, like clockwork. She had some personal stuff today, that’s all. Leo loves her.”
Luke snorted. “I can imagine—Marisol is a good-looking woman.”
His dad smiled a little. “She is that.” He looked down at his hand, stretched the fingers wide, and said apologetically, “Sorry you had to come all this way, son.”
He looked tired, Luke thought, and as usual, a wave of sympathy coupled with a stronger wave of guilt swept through him. “I wanted to come. I haven’t been home to see you guys in a while.” It was only a small lie; Luke hadn’t wanted to come. He liked being in Denver, where he didn’t have to think about the perpetual sea of trouble on which his family seemed to bob around like little buoys. “How about a beer?” he suggested.
“Love one,” his dad said.
In the tiny kitchen, Luke tossed his dad a beer and helped himself to one.
“A party and no one invited me?” Leo called from the living room. A moment later, he and his chair crashed in through the narrow doorway. Luke tried hard not to grimace, but the marks on the door indicated Leo was having a difficult time getting around this tiny house.
“Have you been keeping up with baseball?” Leo asked as he maneuvered himself into a spot at the table. “Dude, you won’t believe the pitching depth the Rangers have this year.…”
The three men talked about sports—well, Leo did most of the talking there—and about life in general. Dad and Leo asked Luke about his work in Denver. Leo expounded about Marisol’s finer qualities without mentioning her mind, and Dad and Luke laughed along like pigs. It felt like old times, when they’d all lived on the ranch where Luke and Leo had grown up. Back before Leo got sick. Before Mom died. Back when they’d been three guys hanging out, talking about guy things. Before Luke got calls at night saying Dad and Leo weren’t at the ranch anymore.
But then Dad reminded Leo that he was not supposed to eat cookies, only soft foods, and reality roared back into that little kitchen on a freaking freight train.
Leo, God bless him, just grinned. “That means you’re going to have to put my pizza in a blender, bro,” he said to Luke. “Be sure and get a big straw because I like lots of cheese.”
“Noted,” Luke said. “So,” he said, popping the top off another beer, “what happened with the ranch, Dad?”
“On that note,” Leo said, backing away from the table, “I’ve got a date with the Hounds of Hell.” He scooted back with his remote control, banging into the little bar, then scraping against the door as he pushed his way through.
Luke’s father sighed. He rubbed his face with his hands, rearranging his features and, for a moment, looking younger than his fifty-eight years. But then his flesh slid back into familiar sags and folds. “I got myself into a deal.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Cooked it up with Grant Tyler. You remember him?”
“Vaguely,” Luke said. What he remembered was a rotund guy with a booming laugh, nothing more.
“Grant knew that I needed cash to pay for Leo’s expenses that aren’t covered by Medicaid. Like that fancy bed in there. My credit is maxed out, Luke. I couldn’t borrow enough to buy a shovel. The only thing I had was the ranch. So Grant, he’d done pretty well for himself in some deal, and he said, ‘Look, let’s just do a sale. I’ll give you the cash you need and hold on to the title until you’re able to sell some cattle or whatnot and get on your feet. Then I’ll sell it back to you for the same price.’ It was sort of like a second mortgage, a way to get me some cash. So we did the deal, and everything was good. I sold part of the livestock and paid off some debt. I was building up again, getting ready to get the ranch back when Grant up and died.”
“Okay,” Luke said. So far, nothing earth-shattering. “So there was a deal, and he died, but you have all the paperwork on it, right?”
“I’ve got paperwork for the sale. But we didn’t have a written agreement that I would buy it back for the same price he’d paid.” Luke must have looked as shocked as he felt, because his dad said, “We were friends, son. We had each other’s word, and that’s all we needed.”
And there, in the distance, was the sound of the earth shattering. Luke’s heart sank. “Dad, you always need a written agreement.”
“Well I know that now,” his father said a little irritably. “But I didn’t think so at the time. He was a good friend and he was doing me a tremendous favor.”
Luke looked at the dingy window above the kitchen sink. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble?” he asked calmly. “I could have gotten a loan. I could have helped you.”
His father sighed. “Come on, Luke. You’re in the middle of starting your own business. You’re in school. You have your own problems, your own credit to worry about. You’ve got people backing you up that you have to think about. And you already pay for Marisol—you don’t need my problems on top of that.”
“But I’ve got some money put aside,” Luke argued. “I’m doing pretty good. Dad, we’re family—”
“Luke,” his father interrupted sharply. “I know you mean well, son. But I already have one child who can’t fulfill his dreams. I’ll be damned if I’m going to have two.”
Luke clenched his jaw. He stared down at the table, away from his father’s gray eyes. “I still don’t get why you left the ranch to come to this cracker box.”
“Because a fellow named Jackson Crane came to see me. Said the estate had passed on to Grant’s kids, and they were coming in for a powwow, and he suspected they’d want to sell. He said given the circumstances it was probably best we get out of the way while everyone decides what needs to be done. He knew about this house and I rented it for dirt cheap.”
Luke could believe that. “What about Ernest?” he asked, referring to their long-time cowboy. For all of Luke’s life that he could recall, Ernest had lived in the bunkhouse and taken care of things when Dad couldn’t.
“Oh, Ernest just went down to Albuquerque to see his mom. He’ll be back. Jackson Crane is keeping him on.”
At least there was some good news. Ernest had been with them so long that Luke suspected he had no place to go. But the rest was more than Luke could absorb in one sitting. He stood up and walked to the sink, staring out at the patch of back yard. “So who the hell is this Jackson Crane guy, anyway?”
“He was Grant’s guy. A business manager.”
“He had a business manager, and none of this was written down? Grant essentially loans you money and you put up the title, and nothing about the loan agreement is recorded?” Luke turned to his dad, but Dad’s head was down as he pushed thick fingers through his thinning hair.
Luke’s shoulders sagged. His father was a good man, a great dad, a steady provider. But what he knew was ranching. Not real estate. And Mom had always been the one who kept their finances in check. “Okay, look, Dad, I am going to talk to this Crane guy,” Luke said. “I’ll talk to the heirs, too. I think we can all be reasonable about this. We’ll work something out.”
“Maybe,” his father said with a shrug.
“Have faith—”
“Luke, look,” his father said sharply, and suddenly came to his feet. He was an inch shorter than Luke, but just as broad. “I don’t like that I had to borrow money against the ranch. I don’t like that Grant died and left me in a bind. But the fact is, I got the money I needed for Leo,” he said, pointing to the front room, where they could both hear Leo shouting at his game characters. “That’s what matters. Leo’s problem ain’t going away, either. He’s not getting better, he’s getting worse, and the ranch… the ranch takes a lot of work.”
Luke glanced at the doorway and hoped to hell Leo wasn’t hearing this. “I get it,” he said low. “Hell if I know how you do it all, Dad. But Leo isn’t always going to be here. Homecoming Ranch is his home—not this place. More than that, it’s your home—you’ve lived there all your life! So did your parents, and their parents. Ranching is what you do. What are you going to do when you don’t have Leo anymore?”
Luke’s father clenched his jaw. He put his hand on Luke’s shoulder and squeezed it. “It’s time you faced the fact that things have changed for us. And what’s done is done. Now, I’ve got to give Leo his medicine.” He turned away, stepped to the counter next to the fridge where three rows of dark brown pill bottles were lined up. A chart was taped to the front of the fridge, which his father consulted.
What about me? Luke thought. What about his life at the ranch, his memories, his hopes for it? He felt the hard kernel of resentment sprouting in him—resentment at how life had turned out for his family, all of it. “It’s not done,” he said tightly, but his father ignored him.