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“Dad, I’ll be a good driver. I promise.” Tyler’s earnest voice rang in Jeremiah’s memory. “All my friends already have one. Their dads don’t care. Why are you being so protective? I’m not a baby anymore.”
“I don’t know.... Your mom might skin my hide if I go against her in this.” Truthfully, Jeremiah had been uncertain about the safety. But Tyler had seemed so sure of himself that he’d been swayed by his son’s confidence. “Let’s think about it for a while,” he’d suggested, hoping for a little more time to do some research.
But Tyler wasn’t going to be put off. He knew what he wanted and he knew exactly what to say to get it. “Dad, having an ATV isn’t just for fun. I could use it to check the property. When you’re gone I can use it to check the fence line. You know that last storm blew out the south side fence and we didn’t even know about it until a few weeks later.”
Tyler made a persuasive point. They’d actually lost two calves who’d somehow wandered out and broken their necks after falling in a small ravine. Not that Jeremiah was a cattleman, per se, but he enjoyed having a few livestock. Made him feel closer to the land. “You’d have to promise me there’d be no hotdogging.” A slow smile crept across Tyler’s face as he sensed victory. Jeremiah chuckled. “All right, who gets to break it to your mom?”
“You married her. That falls under your jurisdiction.”
Jeremiah laughed. “Caught on a technicality. We’ll break the news to her tonight. You better not make me regret this, boy.”
Famous last words. He’d live to do more than regret it.
But he still remembered Tyler’s smile, the joy shining in his eyes. Given the choice he’d take it all back, but all Jeremiah had now were the memories of his son’s laughter, his son’s smile, and everything else that’d made Tyler an amazing kid. Aww hell, why’d he have to go down this road? He’d left Wyoming for a purpose and yet it seemed the ghost of his past rode shotgun beside him.
Would this ever end? Would he ever find peace? Tears pricked his eyes and he fought to hold them back. Bawling at his desk was not the way he wanted his coworkers to see him and he definitely didn’t want Miranda to see him so weak and pathetic. Put it away, Jeremiah. The past is the past. Leave it there.
Maybe if he kept working on burying the pain, it would finally work.
A sigh rattled out of his tight chest and he forced himself to focus on anything but the memory of his son.
Thank God for a demanding job.
* * *
JENNELLE SINCLAIR WOUND her way through the hall around various piles of magazines, books, newspapers and other assorted paper items and let herself into the spare room that had once belonged to her daughter Simone.
A sense of relief followed as it always did for inexplicable reasons when she closed the door and took a seat on the neat and tidy twin bed. Jennelle was the only one who came into this room, which gave her the opportunity to treat the room as her own personal haven.
The pictures on the walls were entirely of Simone and her various accomplishments—of which there’d been so many!—and each time Jennelle let her gaze rest on a photo, she remembered happy memories.
It was like stepping back in time. Simone, her bright and bubbly little ball of sunshine, had been such a happy child. Always wearing a smile, Simone had never met a person she hadn’t wanted to befriend. And people had flocked to her like flowers to sunshine. Who could blame them? Simone had been pretty as a picture with more charisma than a movie star.
And being in this room, surrounded by her daughter’s things, gave Jennelle a sense of peace even if it was something no one else could understand. No one was allowed in this room. Not even her husband. Not that he was interested in coming inside. No, Zed avoided even the mention of their daughter’s name. It was as if she’d never been born. And that was unconscionable in Jennelle’s opinion. To pretend as if the girl had never brightened their lives, never blessed them with her presence, was almost downright evil.
But what did he know about a mother’s grief? Men weren’t capable of understanding the complexity of a woman’s emotion. She’d carried that child in her womb for nine months, nourished and sustained her, only to lose her to some sick bastard.... It was more than a mother’s heart could bear on most days. This room...well, it soothed that wild grief, if however briefly—and she wasn’t giving it up.
Jennelle smoothed her hand over the thick quilt that she’d made for Simone on her eighth birthday and smiled as she remembered Simone asking in her sweet little voice, “Am I your special girl, Mama?”
