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“Really?” Apparently it was the day for apologies. Was it on the calendar—a national holiday?
“We should go in and have that tea.” Etta gathered them the way a hen gathered chicks.
“Ryder, you should go.” Andie squeezed his hand. “Thank you for being here.”
“You’re okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ll see you at church tomorrow.” She said it to watch the look on his face. She knew he wouldn’t be there. He’d gone to church when he was a kid, until his dad’s little indiscretion.
“That’s one thing I can’t do for you, Andie.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll see you around.”
Why did it have to sound like goodbye, as if they were sixteen and breaking up?
She watched him get in his truck and drive away. And it wasn’t what she wanted, not at all. She wanted her best friend there with her, the way he would have been there for her if Phoenix hadn’t happened, if they hadn’t spent weeks not knowing what to say to each other.
Watching his truck turn out of the driveway and head down the road, she felt shaken, and her stupid heart felt like it was about to have a seizure of some kind.
And her mother was standing in front of her, waiting for her to pull it together. Caroline, her mother. But Etta had been that person to Andie. Etta had been the one who taught her to be a woman. Etta had taught her to put on makeup, and helped her dress for the prom. Etta had held her when she cried.
Caroline had been in some city far away, being a mother to Andie’s twin, and to her half siblings. She’d left the less-than-perfect child with the less-than-perfect husband.
Issues. Andie had a lot of issues to deal with. But she wasn’t the mess some people thought she should be. She’d had Etta. She’d had a dad who’d done his best. She’d been taught to be strong, to not be a victim. Now those seemed like easy words that didn’t undo all of the pain.
“Come on.” Etta took her by the hand and led her to the house.
“Of course, tea will make this all better.” Andie whispered. As if tea could make getting steamrollered feel any better.
They walked through the back door into the kitchen decorated with needlepoint wall hangings that Andie and Etta had worked on together. They’d never had satellite, and only a few local stations until recently. Winters had been spent reading or doing needlepoint. It hadn’t been a bad way to grow up.
“What’s going on between you and Ryder?” Etta spooned sugar into the cup of tea she’d just poured. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that was a lover’s quarrel.”
“We’d have to be in love for that to be the case.” Andie leaned in close to her grandmother, loving the way she smelled like rose talcum powder, and the house smelled like vegetables from the garden and pine cleaner.
It was her grandmother’s house and it always felt like the safest place in the world.
Even with her mother standing across the counter from her, fidgeting with the cup that Etta had set in front of her it was still that safe place. Caroline looked up and Andie met her gaze.
“Well, it was just a matter of time,” Etta whispered as she walked away.
“What did you say?”
“I said, I hope you don’t mind sugar in this tea, and do you mind if it has thyme. It’s good for you, you know.”
“Right.”
She sat down at the kitchen island and her granny slid the cup of tea across the counter to her. Etta sat down next to her, moving a plate of cookies between them. Peanut butter, nothing better.
Andie sipped her tea and set the cup down, not feeling at all better, not the way she usually did when she came home.
“I’m surprised to see you.” Andie reached for a second cookie. “I’m the reject kid, right? The one you didn’t want.”
Caroline shuddered and Andie didn’t feel better, not the way she’d thought she would feel the sense of satisfaction she’d expected. And now, not so much.
“You’re not defective. You’re beautiful, smart and talented,” Etta spoke up, her voice having a loud edge.
Andie shot her grandmother a look, because they both knew better. She and her father hadn’t been good enough for Caroline. He’d been Caroline’s one-night stand in college, and he’d married her. A cute country boy from Oklahoma. And reality hadn’t been as much fun.
One-night stands didn’t work. She sipped her tea and pushed the thought from her mind. Better to focus on Caroline and her father rather than on her own mistakes.
“I’m not the prodigy. I’m the kid who struggled to read.” Andie no longer felt like the kid in school who didn’t understand what everyone else got with ease. She had been fortunate to have great teachers, people who were willing to help and encourage her. She’d had Etta.
“You have a challenge, not a disability.” Etta covered Andie’s hand with a hand that was a little crooked with arthritis, but still strong, still soft, still manicured. “She took Alyson. I got to keep you. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Being here with me and your dad?”
Caroline spoke up. “It wasn’t bad, was it? I mean, I know Etta loves you. Your dad loved you.”
“You can’t comment. You weren’t here.” Andie closed her eyes and tried to let go of the sparks of anger that shot from her heart, hot and cold.
“I can comment.” Caroline’s hand shook as she set her cup on the counter. “I can comment, because I know what I did and why I did it. I couldn’t take this life. I couldn’t be a cowboy’s wife and the mom to two girls. I couldn’t be from Dawson.”
Andie shook her head, feeling a little sick with guilt, with hurt feelings. “Really, would it have been that hard?”
“I don’t know.”
Andie finished off the last of her cookie and drained her cup of tea, and she still didn’t know what to say to Caroline Anderson—the woman who had never been her mother.
She thought about this two months ago when she’d slipped into a church service held at the rodeo arena after one of the events. She had sat there wondering how to put her life back together. The pieces were in her hands; Alyson, her mother and Ryder.
It was up to her to put it all back together. It was up to her to forgive.
Andie hopped off the stool. “I have to take care of my horse.”
And she planned on spending the night in the camper of her horse trailer. It wasn’t really running away. She was giving herself space and a little time to think.
Ryder woke up the next morning to the rumble of a truck in his driveway. He peeked out the window as Wyatt jumped out of a rented moving truck and then reached in for the two little girls who resembled their mom.
As he watched them cut across the lawn—Wyatt holding both girls, looking as sad as they looked—Ryder ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. Man, this was a lot of reality to wake up to.
He glanced at the clock on the coffeemaker as he walked through the kitchen. Nearly ten on a Sunday morning. And Etta’s old Caddy was going down the road, because it was time for church. And for the first time in years, Andie was in the passenger seat.
Too much reality.
Too many changes. He was nearly thirty and suddenly everything was changing. Andie was going to church and she didn’t want to talk to him. Not that he really blamed her.
But he wanted her back, the way it was before. He wanted it to be like it had been before their night in Phoenix, before her trip to the altar and God. Not that he had anything against God. He knew there was one. He’d been to church. He’d heard the sermons. He’d even prayed.
But his parents had gone, too. They’d picked a church in a neighboring town, not Dawson Community Church. And that had just about done him in on religion. His parents, their lifestyle and then the day in church when someone brought his dad forward. Man, he could still remember that day, the looks people had given him, the way it had felt to hear what his dad had done.
And he remembered the clapping of a few hands when his dad was ousted from the congregation, taking his family with him.
That had been a long time ago, almost twenty years. He shrugged it off, the way he’d been trying to shrug it off since the day it happened. He walked down the hall and met his brother at the back door, coming in through the utility room. It had rained during the night and Wyatt’s boots were muddy. He leaned against the dryer to kick them off.
Ryder reached for three-year-old Molly but she held tight to Wyatt. It was Kat, a year younger, who held her arms out, smiling the way little girls should smile. With one less child, Wyatt could hold the door and kick off his boots.
They would never know their mom. They wouldn’t even remember her. But then, even in her life, Wendy hadn’t been there for the girls. She had changed after having them. She had lost something and before any of them had figured it out, it had been too late to get her back.
“Long trip?” Ryder settled Kat on his hip and walked into the kitchen. The two-year-old smiled because his cheek brushed hers and he imagined it was rough.
“The longest.” A year. That’s what Ryder figured. His brother had been on a journey that had taken the last year of his life, and brought him back to Dawson.
“You girls hungry?”
“We ate an hour ago, just outside of Tulsa,” Wyatt said. “I think they’re probably ready to get down and play for a while. Maybe take a nap.”
Ryder glanced at the little girl holding tight to his neck as he filled the coffeepot with water. “You want down, Chick?”
She shook her head and giggled.
“Want cookies?” he asked. When she nodded, he glanced at Molly. “You want cookies?”
She shook her head. She had big eyes that looked like the faucet was about to get turned on. She’d be okay, though. Kids had a way of bouncing back. Or at least that’s what he thought. He didn’t have a lot of experience.
“They don’t need cookies this early,” Wyatt interjected.
Older, wiser, Wyatt. Ryder shook his head, because he’d never wanted to grow up like Wyatt. He’d never wanted to be that mature.
“Well, I don’t have much else around here.” Ryder looked in the fridge. “Spoiled milk and pudding. I think the lunch meat went bad two days ago. It didn’t taste real good on that last sandwich.”
“Did it make you sick?” Molly whispered, arms still around Wyatt’s neck in what looked like a death grip. He hadn’t been around a lot of kids, but she was the timid kind. That was fine, he was a little afraid of her, too.
He’d had enough experience to know that kids could be loud and destroy much if left to their own devices.
“Nah, I don’t get sick.” He bounced Kat a little and she laughed.
“I guess I’ll have to go to the store.” Wyatt sat down at the dining room table.
“No, I’ll get ready and go.” Anything to get out of the house, away from this. He flipped on the dining room light. “Make a list and I’ll drive into Grove. When I get home, we can run down to the Mad Cow before the church crowd gets there.”
“I need to have the girls back in church. They like going.”
“Yeah, kids do.” They liked the crafts, the stories. He got that. He had liked it, too. “I need to feed the horses and then I’ll get cleaned up and run to the store.”
He brushed a hand through his hair and for the first time, Wyatt smiled. “Yeah, you might want to get a haircut.”
“Probably.” He slid his feet into boots and finished buttoning his shirt. “I guess just help yourself to anything you can find. The coffee’s ready.”
A brother and two kids, living in his house. Now that just about beat all. It was really going to put a kink in his life.
But then, hadn’t Andie already done that? No, not Andie, not really.
When he walked out the back door, his dog, Bear, was waiting for him.
“Bear, this is not our life.” But it was. He could look around, at the ranch his dad had built. He could smell rain in the air and hear geese on a nearby pond.
It was his life. But something had shaken it all up, leaving it nearly unrecognizable. Like a snow globe, shaken by some unseen hand. He looked up, because it was Sunday and a good day for thinking about God, about faith. He didn’t go to church, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten faith.
So now he had questions. How did he do this? His brother was home—with two kids, no less. His best friend was now his one-night stand. He had more guilt rolling around in his stomach than a bottle of antacid could ever cure.
Did this have something to do with his crazy prayers before he got on the back of a bull a month or so earlier. Did the words God help me count as a prayer? Or maybe it was payback for the bad things he’d done in his life?
Whatever had happened, he had to fix it—because he didn’t like having his life turned upside down. But first he had to go to town and get groceries, something to feed two little girls.
Church had ended ten minutes ago and Andie had seen Ryder’s truck driving past on his way to the farm. But they’d been stalled by people wanting to talk with she and her grandmother. Caroline had managed to smile and hang at the periphery of the crowds.
“We need to check on Ryder and Wyatt.” Etta started her old Caddy, smiling with a certain pride that Andie recognized. Her granny loved that car. She’d loved it for more than twenty years, refusing to part with it for something new.
What could be more dependable, Etta always said, than a car that she’d taken care of since the day she drove it off the lot?
Dependable wasn’t a word Andie really wanted to dwell on, not at that moment. Not when her grandmother was talking about Ryder.
“I think Ryder and Wyatt are able to take care of themselves.” After her mother climbed into the front seat beside Etta, Andie slid into the back and buckled her seat belt. Etta eased through the church parking lot.
It hadn’t been such a bad first Sunday back in church. The members of Dawson Community Church were friends, neighbors and sometimes a distant relative. They all knew her. Most of them knew that she’d gone on strike from church when Ryder stopped going. Because they’d been best friends, and a girl had to do something when her best friend cried angry tears over what his father had done, and over a moment in church that changed their lives. A girl had to take a stand when her best friend threw rocks into the creek with a fury she couldn’t understand because life had never been that cruel to her.
Her strike had been more imaginary than real. Most of the time Etta managed to drag her along. But Andie had let her feelings be known. At ten she’d been pretty outspoken.
“How long have you known Ryder and Wyatt?” Caroline asked, and Andie wanted to tell her that she should know that. A mother should know the answer to that question.
“Forever.” Andie leaned back in the seat and looked out the window, remembering being a kid in this very car, this very backseat. Her dad had driven and Etta had sat in the passenger side. The car had been new then. She’d been more innocent.
She’d heard them whispering about what Ryder’s dad had done. She’d been too young to really get it. When she got home from church that day she’d run down the road and Ryder had met her in the field.
“Forever?” Caroline asked, glancing back over her shoulder.
“We’ve known each other since Ryder was five, and I was three. That’s when they moved to Dawson. I guess about the time you left.”
Silence hung over the car, crackling with tension and recrimination. Okay, maybe she’d gone too far. Andie sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Etta cleared her throat and turned the old radio on low. “We’ll stop by the Mad Cow and get takeout chicken. Knowing Ryder, he doesn’t have a thing in that house for Wyatt and the girls to eat.”
“What happened to Wyatt’s wife?” Caroline asked.
Stop asking questions. Andie closed her eyes and leaned back into the leather seat. She wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t say something that would hurt. She was working on forgiving. God had to know that wasn’t easy. Shouldn’t God cut her a little slack?
Etta answered Caroline’s question. “She committed suicide last year. Postpartum depression.”
It still hurt. Andie hadn’t really known Wendy, but it hurt, because it was about Ryder, Wyatt and two little girls.
“I’m so sorry.” Caroline glanced out the window. “It isn’t easy to deal with depression.”
