Kitabı oku: «The One Winter Collection», sayfa 29

“So I got myself one of those kangaroo pouch things and popped you in it. My saddle bags were filled with diapers and formula. You literally were on a horse before you could walk. If I had a real hard day lined up, I’d drop you off with one of the neighbor ladies.

“One day we came home and she was gone. She’d smashed every single dish in the house and every picture frame, she’d cut up all my clothes, but she was gone.

“And I didn’t feel nothing but relief.

“I tried to be a good dad, but when I think about it, I probably wasn’t. I wasn’t much of a talker. And I was strict as all get-out, like that would make it seem like I knew what I was doing when I didn’t. Scared to let you know how much I loved you, like it might turn you into a sissy boy or something.

“I knew you longed for a mama. Anytime we went to a neighbor’s you were scouting out a female to attach yourself to. And I figured that was enough. I mean, our friends and our neighbors circled the wagons around me and especially around you. You were raised by every woman in this whole community, which is probably why you turned out half-decent.

“It was four years before I heard from her. Just phones up one day as if she suddenly remembered she had a little boy. Told me her and her new husband wanted to pick you up and take you to Disneyland.

“Like I said at the beginning. I was just a simple man. I didn’t know what to do with a complicated situation. But I didn’t really trust your mama. Once she had you, what if she just disappeared with you? And I sure as hell wasn’t sending you to Disneyland with a man I’d never met.

“So, I told her no, and then she asked to talk to you. I knew how bad you wanted a mama, so against my better judgment I put you on the phone. When you got off, you were looking daggers at me and screaming that you wanted to go to Disneyland with your mama.

“You wanted a mama so badly, and now one had magically appeared. But all I could see was trouble and broken hearts, so after that when she phoned I’d say you were at a neighbor’s or something. It wasn’t often. Once or twice a year, then not for several years in a row. Same with the writing. A letter here and there once she figured out you were old enough to read, I guess. I opened the first few of her letters, and I knew nothing had changed. It was all about her. Suddenly, you were old enough that she could try and use you to fill up that horrible hole inside of her.

“And right or wrong, I wasn’t having it. I told myself when you were old enough to sort it out for yourself, I’d tell you about it. But somehow the time never seemed right, because you always seemed so hungry for a mama that I knew you would never see her for what she was.

“I tried to protect you. And I doubt I did it right, and yet if I had the same choice to make again, I would make the same one. So how can I even say I’m sorry?”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Dad, all these years. Lost.”

“They weren’t lost, son. You had a chance to step out of my shadow, to become the man I always knew you would be. Every father and son goes through it. I did with my own daddy and had no excuse for it, either.”

It hurt him that his father had held faith in him through all these years of stubborn distance. He felt tears pricking at the back of his eyes.

“And the last few years gave me something, too,” his father said. “All those years, you were my first responsibility. Love had banged me up pretty good. Then when I got hurt, I was alone, and Beth was alone, and—” He shrugged. “Beth tells me now, your mama was probably sick. Bi-Polaroid.”

“Bipolar,” Ty said softly. It made sense. It fit with what he had read in the letters, the manic pages of writing, followed by months, even years of silence.

“The way I see it I had Ruth-Anne. And she was earth. And I had Millie and she was fire. Beth was and is like a cool drink of water on a hot day.”

“Did you ever wonder if I was yours?” Ty asked softly. “I mean, it sounds as if she might have played it hard and fast.”

His father looked genuinely shocked. “Of course not! You’re way too stubborn to be anyone else’s. Besides, you are now, and always have been, my sky, so bright it nearly hurts my eyes to look at you.

“Once I had a narrow view on life and wouldn’t have put stock in such things, but now I see I’ve had a life of perfect balance, earth and fire, water and sky.

“I don’t have any regrets, Ty. Your mother brought me you. This chair brought you back to where you belong.”

“All these years,” Ty said. He knew now it wasn’t his father he’d had to forgive at all. It was his mother.

And in some part of him, he had probably known that all along.

“You go after that girl who was here. You go after her and that little boy. They both need you. If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s time to grow up, Ty. You ain’t a little boy pining after your mama anymore. There’s nothing like someone needing you to make a man grow up.”

“I don’t even know if she’d have me, Dad. She’d resent the implication that she needed me.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense. To their great detriment, women just love us Halliday men. They’ll put up with quite a bit from us. See what we could be, see the diamond underneath all that coal, and get damned determined to mine it. She needs you, all right. And you need her.”

Amy looked out the window of the McFinley house. It was a nice house, custom-built on a small acreage some twenty miles from the Halliday Creek Ranch. The views were not as sweeping as the ones from Ty’s front window—she could see the neighbors’ place—and it lacked the charm of the homestead.

It was a typical January day in southern Alberta—bright blue skies and teeth-numbing cold.

“A good day to bake bread,” she told herself out loud, as if that could ward off the loneliness. Jamey was napping. Terrible to wish he would wake up so that the huge emptiness inside her could be filled with his laughter and gurgles, his energy and motion.

Perhaps she was imagining it, but he, too, seemed subdued.

One of the things he had got for Christmas, when they had made it to Cynthia’s, was a farm set, with buildings and horses and cows.

Jamey had a favorite horse. He called it Ben. And when he played with it, he mournfully and softly called Papa Odam over and over again.

So she knew she would not bake bread. The memories of the last time she had baked bread, Ty laughing beside her, putting his muscle into the kneading, were just too intense.

For a while, she acknowledged, being snowed in with Ty, having Christmas at the homestead place, she had touched what she had always wanted.

It had filled her to overflowing. It had been better than the dream.

Now, despite this beautiful home, despite her internet business taking off and filling most of her waking hours, she could not outrun the feeling. The feeling of loss.

She had spent six days on the Halliday Creek Ranch.

She felt as if she was mourning it more profoundly than the loss of her husband. Of course, that dream had already been shattered.

Her time at the ranch had breathed hope into her when she had convinced herself all hope was gone.

And now, gazing out the window at the icy beauty of the landscape, she felt as though all hope was gone again.

Somehow, she thought he would have called.

As deeply in the thrall of all those good memories as she was.

And somehow, she was not sure how, she had found the courage and pride not to call him. Especially as she read Lonesome Dove, savoring every word, feeling some connection to Ty as she read it.

But no, it was time for her to make it on her own. Time for her to stand on her own two legs. Time for her to forgive herself all her mistakes by drawing power from who she was now, what she could accomplish, her considerable strengths and talents.

“So, cookies it is,” Amy said, forcing herself to move from the window. “Chocolate chip.”

The doorbell rang as she was taking the last of them from the oven.

She went and opened it. The most adorable teenage girl she had ever seen stood there. She was about thirteen, owlish behind glasses. She had an armful of books, and flashed a shy smile that revealed braces.

“Mrs. Mitchell?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Jasmine Nelville. Ty Halliday sent me to baby-sit. He said to tell you I have my babysitting certificate, and that I can give you references. I’ve been babysitting for two years.”

Amy looked at her visitor, stunned. She noticed a car in the driveway, and realized it was Jasmine’s mother, who waved and drove away.

“Right now?” she stammered.

“I think he’s right behind us. Of course, he’s hauling, so that takes longer.”

“Hauling?”

“Is that the baby?” Jasmine said when a wail filled the house.

“Jamey. He’s just waking up from his nap.”

Jasmine brushed by her, set down her books and followed the sound. With Amy trailing dazedly behind her, she went into the bedroom and picked Jamey out of his crib.

“Oh!” she said blissfully. “What a handsome boy.”

Jamey preened.

“Mrs. Mitchell, you need to get ready. Dress warm. And he said to tell you to wear sensible boots.”

“But—” She heard clanking and thumping and a big, diesel engine. She went to her front window and watched as Ty jumped out of the cab of his truck, went and opened the back door of the trailer he was pulling.

One horse, saddled, backed out. And then Ben, also saddled.

The rational part of her knew that she should say no to this. He hadn’t even called. He didn’t even know if she wanted to go with him.

But the rational part of her could hardly be heard above the singing of her heart. It was not time to be rational. She had been rational all her life. Even when she had chosen Edwin, it had been a rational decision based on what she wanted, and on what he seemed to be.

Stable. Safe. From a good family. Able to provide.

That was what she needed to forgive. The great injustice she had done Edwin when she had chosen him for what he was, instead of who he was.

And that man outside, calmly tightening cinches, waiting for her?

She knew exactly who he was. Exactly. She ran for her coat and her boots and raced out the door.

He looked up and saw her coming, smiled at her over the top of the saddle, and then came around the horse and opened his arms.

She flew into them. And he lifted her high and swung her around, and then set her down and gazed at her like a man who had crossed the desert and she was his drink.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, breathless.

“Why, Miss Amy, isn’t it obvious?”

“Not really.”

“I’ve come a-courting.”

“Oh!” she said, suddenly shy.

“You’re an old-fashioned girl in a new-fangled world. So with your permission, I’m going to do this in an old-fashioned way. I’m going to wine you, and dine you and bring you flowers. I’m going to sweep you right off your feet.”

Was there any point telling him he already had? No. Why miss the fun?

He helped her onto the horse. He told her it was an old mare named Patsy and he called her dead-broke.

But it didn’t matter. She would have felt no fear being put on a fire-snorting, head-tossing, feet-dancing stallion right now.

They rode out the McFinleys’ driveway and down a snowy road. He rode right beside her, asking her about Jamey and the house and Baby Bytes.

And she asked him about Beth and his dad, and as they rode, he told her all of it. About reading the letters and reconciling with his father.

“Been working hard at being the man you’ll expect me to be,” he said.

The skies were so bright, and the air so crisp. They rode for nearly an hour and then he found a way down to a frozen river, and set a picnic blanket out in the snow. From his saddle bags, he removed hot chocolate and sandwiches on bread that was flat and might have tasted quite terrible if he had not mentioned he had made it himself.

He took out a book of poetry and read to her. He looked up at her, mischief winking in his sapphire eyes.

“It’s on the first-year university reading list,” he admitted. “Do you know what it means?”

“Not a clue,” she said.

And then the sound she lived for bubbled up between them, louder than the water running under the frozen blanket on the river.

Their laughter. And then somehow, they were rolling around on that blanket, and he was on top of her, pushing her hair back from her face and covering her with kisses. Her ears, her lips, her neck, her eyelids.

Homecoming.

An hour later, they were heading for home, nearly frozen on the outside, a fire so deep burning on the inside that Amy felt as if she would never be cold again.

And so the courtship began.

Ty amazed her with his deeply romantic nature. True to his word, he wined and dined her at some of the finest restaurants in Calgary. He brought her flowers. They went to movies and for long walks and horseback rides.

He began to include her in community activities. He brought her to fund-raisers and dances and pancake breakfasts where she met his neighbors and his friends. He brought her out to Beth and his dad’s. They did things with Jamey—the indoor swimming pool, sleigh riding, quiet evenings at home playing on the floor with his toys and reading him stories.

The seasons were changing, winter giving way to the tender promise of spring, when Ty invited her to his place, asking her to drop off Jamey with his dad and Beth.

When she arrived, the two horses were saddled in the yard.

She mounted hers with confidence, a brand-new bravery in her.

That’s what love had given her. The bravest of hearts. The most tender of hopes.

They followed a winding trail along Halliday Creek and then up and up and up the mountain.

Finally, they broke from the woods and crossed alpine meadows on fire with wildflowers, still going up.

The horses picked their way through rocks, and then Ty stopped and offered her his hand as she dismounted.

Hands intertwined, they climbed up yet some more, scrambling over rocks, his hand helping her, pulling her.

And finally they stood at the very crest.

Amy could barely breathe. She was standing on top of the world. She could see everything for a hundred miles. Ty’s house and the old homestead were like doll-houses far down in the valley. Contented cattle grazed on new grass.

And he stood beside her, strong and sure. The strongest man she had ever met.

Only, when she pulled her eyes from the panorama of the view, that strong man was on one knee before her.

He had a ring box in his hand and was gazing up at her with a look in his eyes that dimmed the panorama of what she had just seen.

“Amy,” he said softly, “you know I am not a religious man. But even so, I thank God as I know Him every single day for that wrong turn you took in the road.

“I thank Him for bringing me your smile and your laughter and your ability to listen and your ability to see things in me that I had never seen in myself.

“I thank Him for bringing your son into my world and for allowing me to know what it is to be a dad to that little boy.”

To her amazement, the strongest man she had ever known suddenly looked shy.

And maybe even a little scared.

His gaze drifted from her to the view. “Do you remember when I read The Iliad?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Achilles had to choose between nostos, homecoming or kleos, glory. If I had that choice to make? I would choose homecoming. I would choose coming home to you.

“I cannot imagine my world without you. Amy Mitchell, I am asking if you would consider being my wife?”

She took his chin in her hand and drew his gaze back to her. In the sapphire of his eyes she saw her whole world and the future beyond.

She saw laughing babies and cattle and horses, she saw books and movies and heated discussions and quiet moments.

She saw what she had yearned for her entire life.

In the quiet strength in his eyes, she saw a place where neither of them ever had to be alone again.

She saw home.

She whispered yes, and he leaped to his feet and gathered her in his arms and then he lifted her and swung her around and shouted “yes” over and over and over again.

And his affirmation of love and of life, his shouted yes, reverberated off the mountains and the valleys, and echoed back to them and surrounded them.

In glory.

“Some of us don’t have to make a choice at all,” Amy told the man she loved. “Some of us are allowed homecoming and glory.”

EPILOGUE

TY came out of the barn, leading the pony. It was saddled—that same saddle that he had given Jamey all those years ago. The pony had a red plaid Christmas ribbon woven into his mane and was tossing his head because of the red bow attached to his thick forelock.

His father disliked ponies, and had argued that for Christmas they should give Jamey a horse, just as he had given Ty a horse when he turned five.

But Ty had liked this pony. It had a soft eye and a willing way, and it was pretty with its lush black mane and the big brown spots all over it.

He sniffed the air as he moved toward the homestead place. Snow. It was going to snow very soon.

He hoped not too much.

A man, he thought wryly, should be careful what he wished for.

Because, really, he did not want to get snowed in right now.

The old homestead place had been his and Amy’s for just over a year. After Amy and Ty’s twin girls, Millie and Becky, had been born, his dad and Beth had suggested the trade. The new house was more practical for the older Hallidays, with its one floor and two bedrooms. It had been easy to make it one hundred per cent wheelchair accessible.

And the old homestead place had the four bedrooms upstairs that had been closed up for years.

Amy had taken that on as if she was on an episode of Save This Old House. The old homestead house was refurbished to shining. Every nook and cranny had her stamp on it, her love sewn into drapes and cushions and pot holders … and little pink baby blankets.

Now, on Christmas Eve, it was filled to the rafters. Her parents were here. And Jamey’s grandparents.

For a long time, Ty hadn’t known quite how to forgive his mother for her abandonment and indifference. But then, at Amy’s suggestion, they had found out every single thing they could about her.

And they had discovered he had a grandmother, and an aunt and uncle, and a passel of cousins.

His grandmother, Elizabeth, had been shocked that she had a grandson. Since her daughter had been in her teens she had disappeared for long lengths of time and would eventually resurface with no explanation about where she’d been.

Elizabeth was desperate to meet Ty. When they had first met, she had kept touching his face and weeping. They had connected almost instantly, and through stories and pictures and shared letters, unraveled the mystery of his mother.

If the mystery of mental illness could ever really be solved.

Millicent Williams had always bounced between two extremes. On one side, his grandmother told him, her beautiful daughter had been high energy, on fire, talkative, charming, brilliant, sensitive, creative, passionate, charismatic. On the other side she had been needy, manipulative, darkly sensual, secretive, jealous, selfish, conniving, and capable of unbelievable cruelty in her ability to use people and discard them.

Ty had learned his mother had suffered a disease of extreme self-centeredness where everything and everybody in the world were perceived only through the filter of how they could benefit her.

And because of that, she alienated everyone she had ever touched, had ended up alone, increasingly desperate, highly dependent on the alcohol and prescription drugs that had led to her demise.

It was a tragic tale of undiagnosed illness.

When Ty looked at pictures of her, he felt a strange and gentle tenderness for the woman he had never known. He knew that he looked at his own life differently because of her.

Jamey, as far as he could tell, came from generations of solid, pragmatic ambitious people. But as he watched his own girls, the twins, just turning one, he sometimes found himself wondering how early you would see signs of it.

His father had told him, even though he had never defined it as mental illness, he had watched him the same way.

Nowadays, at least, there was more chance of it being caught. Treated. Not ignored or mislabeled.

His mother had just been considered wild. And unpredictable. Untamable. A lot of people had given up on her way before his dad entered the picture.

When he thought of her now, he felt his heart soften with sympathy. There was no anger left for the woman who had abandoned him with hardly a look back. He felt he loved her, despite it all.

And maybe that’s what forgiveness finally was.

The ability to see it all in a larger way.

The lights from the windows of his house poured out over the snow, golden and warm. He could smell the wreath on the door. Amy had insisted on Christmas lights, and the whole place was lit up in traditional red and green. It had taken him about three weeks to get all those lights up tracing the lines of the roof, and every time he’d wanted to just forget it, he’d look down at Amy, tumbling around in the snow beneath him with the twins and Jamey, their happiness echoing on the air.

So hanging a few Christmas lights was a small price to pay.

The front door opened, and the noise from inside spilled out. Laughter, conversation. His family.

And wasn’t it what he had always wanted?

Be careful what you wish for, he told himself again wryly. He and Amy would sleep on a mattress on the floor of the back porch tonight, snuggled together to keep warm because they had given up their bed to Amy’s parents, Dolores and Adam, who were recovering from jet lag.

Cynthia and John had the guest room. Before she was done, Cynthia would refold every single towel in the house and arrange the tinned goods in order of their size, labels to the front. She would tut disapprovingly over baby clothes put in drawers without being pressed.

Amy’s parents would bring out flowcharts and trap him into a discussion about a business plan for the ranch, and all their great ideas to make Baby Bytes the most visited website on the planet. They didn’t understand that Ty was working at nights online to get a university degree for the simple love of learning, not so that he could turn the ranch into the most viable business enterprise ever.

Cynthia, John, Dolores, Adam, none of them got the concept of enough. That you could have enough and be enough. That you could quit trying so hard and just enjoy the plentiful gifts life had given you.

He saw Amy standing on the porch, hugging herself, watching his approach.

She was rounder than she had been, her curves full and womanly. Her hair had inexplicably lost its curl after the twins were born, and it hung in a soft, lush wave to her shoulder.

But her eyes remained the same, and the curve of her mouth.

A long time ago, without knowing, he had ridden through the dark to a light she had put on, without knowing it was for him.

At the beginning of all of this, he would have said that he and Amy were about as different as two people could be. She was city. He was country. She was small. He was big. He was rugged. She was refined. She knew all about computers and cell phones, and he used technology only reluctantly, as a means to an end. He liked nothing better than a good book. She liked nothing better than a good movie.

But underneath all those superficial differences, Ty knew he and Amy had the most important things in common.

They had both wished for that place called home.

And at one time, they had both given up on that wish.

It almost seemed the universe was offended by this refusal of its greatest gift, the refusal to love.

It almost seemed as if the universe had conspired to bring them together, had put Amy on the wrong road, that led them both to the right place. The only place.

She flew down off the steps and snugged under his arm, petting the pony.

“Hello, Sampson,” she crooned to their newest family member.

One small, perfect moment, just the two of them, and then the door flew open and Jamey came flying down the steps, screaming the word Ty never ever got tired of hearing.

“Papa!”

Behind him, Cynthia appeared, one of the twins, Becky, in her arms, freshly washed and a new bow in her hair. “A pony? What are you thinking? Jamey is just a baby! Surely, he’ll be killed.”

And Amy’s mother, Dolores, had the other baby, Millie, who was clinging to her early gift of a Baby Einstein calculator.

Dolores nodded her agreement with Cynthia, and added, “I can’t imagine what it costs to feed one of those for ten years or so.”

Ty didn’t even bother telling her a pony, if you were lucky, could live for thirty-five years.

John and Amy’s father spilled out onto the porch, too, arguing about stock prices, not even aware there was a pony in the yard. Or three grandchildren nearby.

His father wheeled out and scowled across the yard at them. “A pony! Sheesh. I told you to get a horse. I’ve never met a pony I liked.”

Be careful what you wish for, Ty told himself, remembering that long-ago wish to be part of a family.

He showed Jamey how to use the stirrup, refused to help him, even when his grandmother Elizabeth called out, “Ty, lift him up, for Pete’s sake. It’s too hard for him to get on by himself.”

Beth called from in the house, “I’ve nearly got dinner ready. Don’t be out there too long. Jamey doesn’t have a coat on!”

Yes, be careful what you wish for.

Jamey, with a hoot of pure satisfaction, managed to heave himself into the saddle. Ty passed him the reins.

“You are not going to let him ride by himself!” Cynthia cried.

But he was going to let him ride by himself. As he watched the boy who was the son of his heart, Amy, who had once been afraid of everything, breathed her fearlessness after Jamey. She snuggled deeper under Ty’s arm and sighed her contentment.

The pony stopped partway across the yard and Jamey flailed away, to no avail, trying to get the pony moving with his heels.

“I told you,” Hunter said grumpily, “you should have got him a real horse.”

The smile pulled harder on Ty’s mouth.

He had wished for this thing called family.

And he would not change a thing.

* * * * *