What She'd Do for Love (18 page)

“What am I supposed to say to him?” She added soap to the water and began sliding in the dirty plates.

“He thinks you’re still upset with him about the decision to sell the ranch.”

“I’m not upset with him. I understand why he did it.”

“He needs to hear that from you.”

“All right.” She dried her hands on a towel. She couldn’t do anything about most of the suffering those around her were experiencing, but at least she could make things easier between her father and her.

Dusk bathed the yard between the house and the barn in a heavy gray light. Christa walked the path she’d walked a thousand times, sometimes reluctantly—when she had to muck stalls or feed and water, or any other chores that interfered with her more important childhood or teenage plans—or eagerly—heading out for a ride, or to spend time with a new or favorite horse. Ryder had been right when he said those memories would never leave her, but without this place to invoke them, they would eventually fade and be less real.

The warmth of the barn closed around her as she stepped inside, the sweet aromas of hay and horse mingling in a scent she wished she could bottle. On evenings when city crowds and city traffic frayed her nerves, she’d open the bottle and inhale this reminder of a slower, simpler pace of life. “Dad?” she called.

“Back here.”

She found him leaning over the stall of his favorite horse, Peanut. He held on to one end of a withered carrot while the gelding nibbled delicately at the other. “I guess I’ll hang on to him a while longer,” Dad said when Christa came to stand beside him. “Bob Lytle had agreed to buy him from me. I didn’t want to sell him, but we couldn’t keep him in town, and Bob’s son wanted him to ride, so I knew he’d have a good home.”

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out,” she said. “I was upset about the sale at first, but I was getting used to the idea, and I could see the good in it.”

“I used to say nothing the government did would surprise me, but I’ve got to say I never saw this coming.”

“I guess no one did.” She reached over the railing and rubbed the horse’s nose.

Dad fed the last of the carrot to Peanut, then brushed off his hands. “I spent my whole life being my own boss, making my own decisions,” he said. “It was one of the best things about ranching, for me. I succeeded or failed based on my willingness to work hard and follow through. But it’s not like that anymore. Drought, falling prices—those are all things I’ve dealt with before, but not for this long and on this kind of scale. Everything’s changing too fast and I’m tired of fighting it.”

Christa wanted to cry out in protest. She didn’t want to see him this way, looking old and spent. But she pressed her lips together and let him talk. He trusted her enough to reveal himself to her this way and she wouldn’t cheapen the gift by making it about her and her feelings.

“The decision to sell wasn’t easy.” He glanced up and met her eyes briefly. “Part of me knew I was letting you down.”

“Daddy, no!” She touched his arm. “I was wrong to object—you and Mom and your future are more important than any material possessions.”

“Still, this is your heritage. Your home. I didn’t want to give it up. But then your mom got sick and I saw that we’d already wasted so much time trying to hold on to a way of life that doesn’t really exist anymore. If selling out meant an easier life for her, and more time for us to enjoy being together, then I knew I had to do it.”

“I saw how happy she was with the prospect of a new place to live and new adventures,” Christa said. “I wish I knew how to give that back to her—to give it back to both of you.”

He turned to gaze at the horse, which was pulling hay from the rack in its stall. “I’ve spent my whole life believing I was in charge,” he said. “That the choices I made shaped my life, and that it was that way for everyone else, too. I’m sorry if that made me too hard on you.”

“You weren’t hard on me, Dad.”

“I wasn’t very sympathetic when you lost your job. I figured if you put in the effort to look, you’d find the work. I know now it isn’t that simple.”

“It’s all right, Dad. I was pretty paralyzed by the loss right after it happened. I needed that kick in the pants to get going.”

“I should have talked to you more about the ranch,” he said. “Even though the decision was mine to make, you had a right to know. Blame it on stubborn pride; selling out felt like surrender. I didn’t like the idea of you seeing me defeated.”

“Oh, Daddy.” She hugged him close. His arms tightened around her, as solid and strong as ever. But for the first time, she felt he took as much comfort from her embrace as she took from his.

After a while, she pulled away. “We’ll get through this together,” she said. “No matter what happens, that’s what counts most.”

He nodded and cleared his throat. “The doctors say your mom is getting better; that’s more important than any piece of land or job or anything else.”

“It is.” Remembering that would help her keep her perspective.

“She doesn’t know it, but I’m going to take her to Paris, if I have to sell everything on the place to do it.”

She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. “Maybe it won’t come to that,” she said.

“You go on back to the house.” He patted her shoulder. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

The moon had risen by the time she emerged from the barn, an almost full ivory disc shining overhead, bathing the yard in a silver light. Christa stopped and gazed up at it, and the stars beginning to pop out all around it. She never saw stars like this in the city. When she moved back there, she’d have to make it a point to get away from town regularly, to look at the stars and count her blessings.

Back in her room, she tried to read, but had trouble focusing on her book. She needed to do something—anything—to chip away at all the problems facing those she loved. But what could she do? Mounting a marketing campaign to convince the legislature to restore funding to the highway project seemed foolish, considering how proud the politicians were of meeting their budget-cutting pledge.

She’d headed up fund-raisers before, but the idea of Cedar Grove bringing in the kind of money needed to build a highway was ludicrous.

At this point, the highway seemed a lost cause. Maybe the solution lay in finding other ways to build up the town. She’d go back to her original plan of promoting Cedar Grove as the perfect place to live and vacation.

She pulled out her laptop and scrolled through her list of job contacts. Maybe someone she’d worked with in the past had connections that would help her. One of the first names on her list was Chad Bremer. She regretted now that she hadn’t made more of an effort to secure the job with his company. She’d gone into the interview with the wrong attitude and she was sure it had showed. Her dad had been right when he’d diagnosed a lack of effort as one reason she’d been unable to find a job. She’d let grief over all she’d lost hang on too long.

She turned a page to the notes she’d made during her interview with Chad and his co-workers. All those corporate clients she’d been reluctant to work with didn’t seem so terrible now. She scanned the list of names familiar to almost every household—oil companies, major manufacturers and national chains. The list contained a few unfamiliar names too; she had to read the descriptions she’d jotted down to figure out what some of them did.

Her gaze fixed on one name in particular: Parsons and Miller. Her note read “private infrastructure—office parks, shopping centers, toll roads and bridges.”

For a few seconds she was sure she stopped breathing. She stared at the words, zeroing in on toll roads and bridges. Then she switched to the internet and searched for the company name. The more she read, the more she was sure there was something here. Something really good.

* * *

“
A
H
,
THIS
IS
the
life, isn’t it?” Colonel Larry Oakes leaned back against a tree and looked out across the water at the red-and-white bobber floating on the surface. Heat-lakes shimmered on the dry pasture on the other side of the creek, but here in the deep shade of ancient cottonwoods the air was still and cool. “We should do this more often, son.”

“Yeah, we should, Dad,” Ryder said. So far, his visit with his father was going better than he’d expected. He’d debated not telling Dad about the project cancellation and Ryder’s subsequent job loss, but with everyone he encountered wanting to know more about it, he’d known he wouldn’t be able to keep the news a secret for long. To his surprise, his dad had been sympathetic and encouraging.

“You’re smart and talented. You’ll find something. Use this time to figure out what you really want to do.”

What he really wanted to do right now was to sit here on this creek bank with his eyes closed, listening to the hum of cicadas in the trees and emptying his mind of the worries that had interfered with his sleep the past few nights.

“I think I could live in a place like this,” Dad said. “Maybe I’ll look around for a place and buy it.”

“Are you thinking of leaving the military?” Ryder sat up straighter. This was definitely something new.

“Not right away. But I’m eligible for retirement now, and in a few more years it might be nice to step away from the rat race and think about what I want to do with the rest of my life. Owning a little place in the country might be the perfect thing.”

Ryder had always thought of his father as a man of action, always moving, going, charging ahead. “You don’t think you’d be bored?” he asked.

“I’d find things to do. Volunteer work. Hobbies. Maybe I’d ever start my own business.”

“Doing what?”

“I have no idea. Anything I wanted. You can do a lot with the internet, and it’s not as if Dallas is that far away.”

Something about the casual manner with which he’d added this bit of information caught Ryder’s attention. Was Dallas so interesting because it was the nearest big city—or because Ryder’s mom—his dad’s former wife—lived there? “Did you have dinner with Mom the other night?” he asked.

Dad remained focused on the bobber in the water. “We did. She looked very nice. I like her new hairstyle. She said she enjoys her teaching job.”

“So you got along okay?”

Dad shifted the fishing pole from one hand to the other, then back. Finally, he looked at Ryder. “It was never about not getting along,” he said. “She was tired of moving, everything always changing. I don’t know why now, after all these years, she felt like that, but she did. And I didn’t want to see her miserable.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Except that the two people he loved most hadn’t been able to find a path to stay together after thirty-five years. Wasn’t that worth mourning, just a little?

“Forget my sorry love life for a little bit and tell me about yours,” Dad said. “Anybody special?”

His mind immediately conjured an image of Christa, making his chest feel heavy. “There’s a woman I’ve been out with, but the timing is all wrong, for both of us.”

“Then make it right.”

“Ha. Sure, I’ll get out my magic wand, watch out.” He paused, hoping his dad would move on to another subject, but when he said nothing, Ryder had no choice but to go on. “We’re both looking for work, not sure where we’ll live. And our personalities are so different. It probably wouldn’t work out.”

“Excuses.” Dad stabbed the end of the fishing pole into the ground beside him and twisted around to face Ryder. “Didn’t I teach you to go after what you really wanted? I would have moved heaven and earth to be with your mother when we met.”

Ryder thought again of Christa, or rather, of her grandparents, risking everything to be together. That kind of courage and daring was something right out of the movies, and just as foreign to him. “I can’t make the state pay for the highway so I can keep my job,” he said. “And I can’t promise Christa that I’ll stay here forever in her hometown.”

“Is that what she wants? A man who’ll never move or change?”

“She thinks that’s what she wants, so it’s almost the same.”

Dad shook his head and took up the fishing pole again. “Women!”

“Do you think you’ll see Mom again?”

“I told her I’d stop by before I left town. We’re going to try something new—being friends. We’ll see how that works.”

Ryder could be Christa’s friend, but now that she was out of reach, he realized how much he wanted more. He just didn’t know how to get what he wanted, or even where to start. Building highways was easy—he started with a survey and a plan, every step marked out. Building connections with people was a lot more difficult.

* * *

“W
HAT
HAS
GOTTEN
into you, Christa? You can hardly sit still.” Kelly pressed down on Christa’s shoulders, as if to seat her more firmly in the salon chair. “If you don’t stop fidgeting, I’m going to cut your hair crooked.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.” Christa folded her hands primly in her lap and looked straight ahead into the mirror. “I’m just really excited.”

“About what?” Kelly snipped away.

“I can’t say yet. I might jinx it.”

Kelly poked her. “Come on, tell me. I could use some good news. Ever since the state cancelled the highway project, this town has been the most depressing place on earth.”

“It has to do with the highway,” Christa said. “I may have found a solution to our problem.”

“What?”
Kelly almost dropped her scissors. She recovered and stared at Christa, open-mouthed.

“I can’t say anything more, but I’ve made some calls and I could be on to something good.”

Frowning, Kelly resumed trimming Christa’s hair. “Your definition of good and mine might be different. You never wanted the highway in the first place.”

“I didn’t. But I changed my mind.”

“What changed it? Was it a certain handsome highway engineer?”

“Maybe Ryder had a little to do with it. But really, it was everyone here. My parents. You and your mom. I saw how the new highway was going to be good for all of you. Even though change is hard for me, I could see it was going to benefit everyone I loved. But I can’t talk anymore about it. I said too much already.”