AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And then he asked me what I saw.” She’d said that at the B&B, but not with her guard down as it was now. “I opened my eyes and looked up and there were the tops of the trees way, way up, with the sky beyond them and I felt like I floated right up to them. Swaying.
“We talked some. Not a lot. I know I told him about Mom dying and he said, ‘That’s tough.’ Just like that. Nothing more. But it was like that’s all he needed to say, all he could say. It was tough. Still is. But it’s... bearable, I guess. Lying there, drifting up to where the tops of the trees met the sky, it was bearable. For the first time.”
She seemed prepared to stop there. I wasn’t.
“You must have been in a lot of pain.”
“Oh, hell, yes.” This smile was wry, but grim. “After a while, absolutely. Like an electric shock of throbbing heat. Wave after wave. Couple of times I thought I’d pass out. Maybe I did. I never asked Keefe. I’d come to or the waves would ease back, and he’d be there. Sitting beside me. He’d ask again what I saw. I’d look back up to the trees and the sky and then I’d float up to them and we’d talk. I don’t remember all of it. I know he said how to fell a tree. Another time about a truck engine he’d fixed. And then he’d talk about how he might be the descendant of a famous outlaw from the Wild West. I didn’t follow most of it. It didn’t matter. It was the sound of his voice. Then he’d ask me again, what did I see...”
She shifted against the fence at her back, pulling the lapels of her jacket to overlap.
“Keefe gave Wendy some wildflowers for me when she came to the hospital in Cody, and said he’d come see me his next day off. But by then Dad was there and arranged to take me home, even though I wanted to stay. It wasn’t until we were home that Dad and I talked. Really talked. And I told him about Elk Rock. I wrote to Keefe. Nothing deep, just a thank you, and to tell him I was coming back for all of the next season, if Wendy would have me.
“Dad said there was no if about it. The more we talked, the more he got excited about buying Elk Rock. Said he’d have me run it — with help, of course. Experienced help. I thought — I expected — that would include Keefe. I know he wasn’t a manager or anything, but he knew the place like nobody else. I’ll still love it here, but I’ll feel his absence, like I feel Mom’s absence at home.”
She seemed to re-set herself, choosing to set aside those sorrows.
“You know, he’s not that bad. My dad. I guess he was pretty lost after Mom died, too. After I got hurt, when Keefe and I were out there, just the two of us, waiting for the help, I started crying. I told him it was from the pain, but it wasn’t. I mean, it did hurt, but it was from wanting my mom. It made no sense, because even if she hadn’t died, she wouldn’t have been with me. She’d’ve been home with Dad. But I think even being able to say out loud, I want my mom, and knowing she was somewhere in the world would have helped.
“I don’t know if I said something or Keefe just knew, but he started talking about him and his mother. How he’d never known his father and how lost he’d felt when he was little, even though he loved his mother a lot. Then they moved here and he started learning about the outdoors.
“He said he realized he’d been hard on his mom, had held back from her, like it was her fault his dad wasn’t around. But being here let him see his mom for what she was and not what she wasn’t — which was his dad.
“And I got thinking about how I used to love my dad when I was little and wondering if he’d really changed or if I’d been punishing him for not being my mom.”
She drew a breath.
I could have asked a question — let’s be honest, I could have asked dozens of questions — but sometimes the best thing you can do is wait.
“I’m not saying he’s perfect. He still wants to be in charge and everything, but lying up there, I decided to do my best to love him again. I sort of forgot about that.” She looked at us. I saw surprise. “And he’s been trying, too.”
“Like trying to buy this ranch?”
“That’s even more reason why my father never would have killed Keefe and I told that sergeant that over and over. Keefe had nothing to do with negotiating the sale of the ranch.”
“And everything to do with your emotions,” Diana said quietly.
I wish she’d had the camera running to catch the widening of Robin’s eyes, but there are things the camera’s not meant to catch. Or maybe they don’t happen when the camera’s there.
“You think highly of Keefe.” I didn’t need her agreement to keep going. “However much a role he played when you were hurt last year, he was there, with you at an important moment in your life. If only by being there, he helped you through it. That could make a father frustrated about not connecting with his daughter feel... jealous.”
“Jealous?”
We’d caught her attention.
Not the way I might have expected. Unlike yesterday’s fear and anger, this was tentative, delicate even. “You think he’d do that? For me?”
She seemed to have forgotten the act Randall would have committed as a result was murdering a man. Not only an innocent man, but one who helped her.
Inner mean girl self-centeredness sure didn’t loosen its grip easily.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Wendy had gone deeper into the tack shed, leaving Randall still pacing in front of its open doors, but with no one to shoot words at.
“I understand you looked into the ranch’s finances after Robin got home,” I said without preamble.
“After I got her home and she was on the road to recovery,” he corrected. He looked toward his daughter. “Is that what you were talking about?”
