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There was no warmth in his voice, only impatience.
Rather than answer immediately, the small boy looked at his father with wide eyes, his fine, light brown hair falling into his piercing blue eyes. He turned a slight shade of red before answering.
“I...I thought I’d stay home and help you with the horses today.”
“You thought wrong,” Clint replied flatly. “I don’t need your help with the horses. That’s what I’ve got Jake and your uncle Roy for,” he reminded the boy crisply, referring to the ranch hand and his brother. “What you need to do is go to school.” Shading his eyes, Clint scanned the area directly behind his son. “Lucia is probably looking for you right now. Don’t give her any extra work,” he instructed his son briskly, then ordered, “Go.”
The answer, although not unexpected, was not the one his son was hoping for.
Summoning his courage, Ryan tried to change his father’s mind. “But—”
“Now.”
A stricken look came over Ryan’s thin face. His shoulders were slumped as he turned on his heel and made his way back into the house.
“Kind of hard on the boy, aren’t you, boss?” Jake Weatherbee asked. He’d waited until Ryan had left the corral and was out of earshot before he raised the question. “He just wanted to help.”
“He just wanted to skip school, like any kid his age,” Clint replied gruffly.
“So let him once in a while,” Roy Washburn, Clint’s younger brother, told him, adding his voice to the argument. “Nothing wrong with that. If you let your son work with you, he’ll get to see just what it means to be a rancher. It’s what Dad did.”
Clint’s expression hardened. This was not advice he welcomed. “Dad didn’t do anything. He was too drunk half the time to work the ranch. That’s why we did. The boy has to learn discipline before he learns anything else, not to mention what they can teach him at school.” Clint’s eyes swept over the two men standing before him. “I want that kid to be able to pick his future, not be stuck with it the way you and I were,” he told Roy.
Clint brushed his hands off on the back of his jeans. “Now, if you two bachelors are through debating whether or not I’m raising my son properly, maybe you can get back to doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Didn’t mean no disrespect, boss,” Jake told him. “I was just remembering what it felt like being the boy’s age.”
Clint’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe you should try remembering what it’s like being your age and working for a living.” He turned to look at his brother. “Same goes for you.”
“Yes, sir,” Roy answered with just a slight hint of mocking in his voice. He turned his attention back to the recently purchased stallion he was preparing to break.
Clint’s frown appeared to have been chiseled into his features. He was more dissatisfied with his own behavior than with the behavior of either his brother or his ranch hand. He knew that ultimately, the men meant well even if he hadn’t asked for or welcomed their opinions.
Clint blew out a breath. Maybe he’d gone a little too far. “Look, I didn’t mean to go off like that,” he told Jake and Roy. “I’ve got a lot on my mind right now and this thing with the boy isn’t helping any.”
Given a reprieve, Roy decided to take the opportunity to reach his brother. “Don’t you think you’re making more of this than you should, Clint? At least Ryan was offering to help. He wasn’t just running off—”
“Yet,” Clint interjected seriously. “But if I don’t force him to do what he’s supposed to, it’s only going to get worse. I’ve got to nip this sort of behavior in the bud,” he insisted. A distant look came into his eyes. It still haunted him. Seven years and the wound still hadn’t healed. “I missed what was right in front of me once. I’m not going to let that happen again,” he stated firmly.
Roy paused to look at his brother. Though Clint had shut down again, Roy could see the glimmer of pain in his eyes. He knew that he wasn’t referring to his son when he talked about missing what was right in front of him. Clint was talking about Susan, Ryan’s mother. He was talking about the bomb she had detonated in the center of his life.
He had come home late one evening to find a crying baby and a note pinned to the sheet in his crib. Susan was nowhere to be seen and he had no idea how long she had been gone. When it finally dawned on him that she wasn’t home, he was absolutely devastated. The woman he adored and had been married to for almost two years had left without warning.
The short, terse note she’d left in her wake stated that she realized that she wasn’t cut out to be a rancher’s wife and even less to be a mother. She went on to tell him that he needed to cut his losses and forget about her.
According to her note, they had never been a proper “fit.”
That had probably hurt most of all, the antiseptic words Susan had used to describe what to him had been the most wonderful part of his life.
What he had thought of as his salvation had turned into his personal hell.
From that moment on Clint had sealed himself off from everyone and everything.
He hired someone to care for his house and his son—in that order. He didn’t feel that he was up to doing either for a long, long time. To keep from falling into an apathetic abyss, Clint forced himself to run the ranch and to look after the horses that he bought and sold as well as the cattle on the ranch. It gave him a purpose. Otherwise, he felt he had no reason to go on.
Time went on and he made peace with his lot, but he still didn’t come around, still didn’t reach out to the son who seemed to need so desperately to be acknowledged by him.
While no one could have accused Lucia of being an outspoken woman, his housekeeper did do her best to try to make Clint open up to the boy, but none of her efforts were successful.
Clint made sure that the boy was clothed and that he always had enough to eat, but that was where it ended. There was no actual bonding between them. If Clint did manage to make it home for a meal—which he missed with a fair amount of regularity—there was no animated conversation to be had at the table. If it weren’t for Roy, who lived in the ranch house with them, there would have been very little conversation at all.
On a few occasions Ryan would try to have a conversation with his father, asking him questions or talking about something that had happened in school. Clint’s responses usually came in the form of a grunt, or a monosyllabic answer that really said nothing at all.
It was clear that Clint didn’t know how to talk to his son, or to people in general, for that matter. The wounds that Susan had left in his heart had cut unimaginably deep and refused to heal. Communication with Roy was generally about the ranch, while his communication with Lucia in regards to Ryan was usually kept to a basic minimum.
In essence, to the adults who dealt with him it was evident that Clint Washburn was in a prison of his own making. The fact that the prison had no visible walls made no difference.
No matter where he went, the prison he was in went with him.
This particular morning, when Ryan walked back into the kitchen after his father had rejected his offer to help with the horses, Lucia all but pounced on him.
“Where did you run off to?” she asked. The housekeeper, Lucia Ortiz, had made a clean sweep through the house already, looking for the boy who had been placed in her care from the time he was one year old. “If we don’t leave for school right now, we’re going to be late. Let’s go.”
Small, thin shoulders rose and fell as the boy followed Lucia out of the house to where her twelve-year-old car was waiting.
“I thought I’d help Dad with the horses,” Ryan said in a small voice.
Lucia gave the boy a long look. “Did he ask for your help?” she asked, getting in behind the steering wheel.
Ryan scrambled into the passenger seat, then settled in. He buckled up before answering because he knew that was the proper thing to do.
“No,” he murmured.
“Then why did you offer?” Lucia asked, talking to him the way she would to an adult rather than a child. The boy was going through so much; she didn’t want to add to that by making him feel that he was being looked down upon. “You know your father has his own way of doing things. Besides, he has Jake and Roy helping him.”
Ryan seemed to sink farther into his seat. His voice grew smaller. “That’s what he said.”
Lucia started up the car. It was getting late and if they didn’t leave now, they really were going to be late. Glancing at the boy’s expression, she could feel her heart going out to him. There were times that observing the awkwardness between father and son when they interacted was almost too painful.
“See,” Lucia said, doing her best to sound cheerful. “You need to wait until he asks.”
Ryan pressed his lips together, staring straight ahead. And then he raised his eyes to his ally. “What did I do, Lucia?”
“Do?” she questioned, not really sure what the boy was asking her.
Ryan nodded. “What did I do to make my father hate me?”
She was tempted to pull over and take the boy into her arms, but she knew that he wouldn’t welcome that. He wanted to be treated like an adult, so she did her best to oblige. “Oh, hijo, he doesn’t hate you.”
“Well, he doesn’t like me,” Ryan insisted, hopelessness echoing in his voice.
“It’s not that,” Lucia insisted. “Your father just doesn’t know how to talk to a little boy.” Or to anyone else, she added silently.
“You do,” Ryan said with feeling. “Can’t you teach him?”
Lucia let her true feelings out for a moment. “Oh, hijo, if I only could. But your father is not the kind of man who would allow himself to be taught by anyone. He doesn’t like to admit that he’s wrong. He is a very, very sad man.”
The expression on Ryan’s face was equally sad. “Because my mother left. I know.”
Lucia looked at the eight-year-old sharply, caught off guard by his response. “Who told you that?” she asked.
“Nobody,” he answered truthfully. “I heard Jake and Uncle Roy talking about my mother, about how everything would have been different if she had stayed with my dad.” The look on Ryan’s face was all earnestness as he asked, “Did she go because of me? Is that why Dad doesn’t like me?”
Not for the first time, Lucia had a strong desire to box her employer’s ears. “Oh no, Ryan, no. She didn’t leave because of you. Your mother left because she didn’t want to live on the ranch. She wanted something more exciting in her life.”
“More exciting than horses?” Ryan questioned, mystified that anyone could feel that way. He loved the horses as well as the cattle. Uncle Roy had taught him how to ride when he was barely old enough to walk. The horse had actually been a pony at the time, but it still counted as far as Ryan was concerned. He had loved being on a horse ever since that day.
Lucia looked at him sympathetically. “I’m afraid so.”
Ryan just couldn’t understand. “But what could be more exciting?” he asked, puzzled.
“That was what your mother wanted to find out.” Lucia flashed a smile in the boy’s direction. “She didn’t realize that she was leaving behind the most exciting part of her life.”
Ryan’s eyebrows disappeared beneath the hair hanging over his forehead. “Dad?” he questioned.
Lucia bit back a laugh. The boy was absolutely and sweetly unassuming. “No, you.”
Ryan frowned at the answer. He stared at the tips of his boots, waving his feet back and forth slightly. “I’m not exciting.”
“Oh, but you are,” Lucia assured him. “And you’re only going to get more exciting the more you learn. For that,” she pointed out, “I’m afraid that you’re going to have to go to school. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Ryan sighed and then nodded. “I guess so.”
The housekeeper caught the hitch in his voice. “Ryan, you’re not having any trouble at school, are you?” she asked, peering at his face.
Ryan shook his head. “No.”
“None of the kids are picking on you, are they?” Lucia asked. “You can tell me if they are.”
“No,” he answered, then added quietly, “None of the kids even know I’m there.”
Lucia tried something else. “How about your teacher? Do you like her?”
“Yes, I guess so.” He shrugged again, then modified his answer. “She’s okay.”
Because she was trying to get the boy to open up to her, Lucia tried to encourage him to keep talking. “Why don’t you tell me about her?”
Looking slightly bewildered, Ryan asked, “What do you want to know?”
Lucia thought for a moment. “Well, to begin with, what’s your teacher’s name?”
For the first time that morning, possibly that week, Lucia heard the small boy giggle. It was a charming sound, like a boy who adores his teacher.
He grinned as he answered, “Her name is Ms. Chee. She is Native American and used to live right here in Forever when she was a little girl.”
“On the reservation?” Lucia asked the boy.
Ryan thought for a moment, as if checking the facts he had stored in his head. And then he shook his head. “No, she said she used to live in a house on the skirts of town.”
“Outskirts?” Lucia tactfully suggested.
Ryan’s small, angular face lit up. “Yeah, that’s it. Outskirts. That’s kind of a funny word.”
“Yes, it is,” Lucia readily agreed. She’d heard that the new second/third grade teacher had moved into a house in town. “Did Ms. Chee say why she didn’t live there anymore?”
Ryan thought for a moment, then remembered. “Oh, yeah. She said when she came back to Forever, she found out that the house burned down a few years ago. She was sad when she talked about it.”
Lucia tried to remember if she recalled hearing anything about a fire taking place near the town. And then a vague memory nudged her brain.
“Was Ms. Chee talking about the old Stewart house?” She remembered that the house had been empty for a number of years before a squatter had accidentally set fire to it while trying to keep warm. The wooden structure had gone up in no time flat. By the time the fire brigade had arrived, there was nothing really left to save.
Ryan nodded. “Uh-huh.” He could see his school coming into view up ahead. Growing antsy, he shifted in his seat and began to move his feet back and forth again. “I think so.”
Now that she had him talking, Lucia was loath to stop him. “What else did your teacher tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me. She told the class,” Ryan corrected her.
Lucia had noticed that the boy was very careful about making sure that all his facts were precisely stated. She nodded, accepting the revised narrative.
“Did Ms. Chee say anything else to the class?”
“She said lots of stuff,” Ryan replied honestly. “She’s the teacher.”
Lucia tried not to laugh. “I meant anything more personal. Something about herself.”
Ryan thought for a moment. “Just that she liked teaching.”
“Well, that’s a good thing.” Lucia stopped the car right before the school’s doors. “Now, go in and learn something.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ryan replied dutifully as he slid out of the passenger seat and then closed the car door behind him.
Lucia watched him square his small shoulders before heading to the school’s front door. She shook her head and then restarted the vehicle.
The boy had a lot of weight on his shoulders for one so young, she thought. He needed his father. She only wished she could make his father understand that.
Lucia blew out a breath as she began to drive back to the ranch. Maybe someday, she thought. Hopefully, before it was too late.
Chapter Two (#u1b762678-0f27-56bf-9b8a-32f7b339e262)
