These Ties That Bind. Mary Sullivan

acrid scent of charred earth drifted through the open window.

      The fire trucks must have reached his ranch shortly after he passed through Ordinary on his way to the hospital.

      After last summer’s drought, the town had installed solar-powered pumps in Still Creek where it ran along the highway.

      Thankfully, access to water for the fire pumps wasn’t an issue.

      The results could have been so much worse. Those golden fields could have burned right up to the house and taken it down, too.

      He had lost grain, though, and would have to replace it.

      He climbed out and pressed his hand against the scar on the tree where the car had hit. Fire had blackened this entire side of the trunk. Still fresh, the odor of burning wood had replaced that of singed flesh.

      His bandage came away sooty and black.

      Above his head, bare limbs formed a stark spider’s web against the blue sky.

      Lucky he hadn’t lost the whole tree. The other half remained green. Thank God. He loved his land. Rem had an affinity with nature and this hurt. It really sucked.

      The stag was gone. Maybe one of the firefighters had taken it home to butcher and freeze for the winter.

      Out here in rural Montana, food didn’t go to waste.

      Rem shook himself out of his pensive musings.

      Given Sara’s reluctance to let him get to know his son, he had a lot to prove, a lot to do to persuade her that he was a responsible man.

      Fired up, he drove to the house, ready to jump into final preparations for Ma’s homecoming tomorrow morning.

      One way or another, he would find a way to be Finn’s dad, Sara be damned.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      SARA TOOK THE ELEVATOR down to the emergency waiting room. Finn waited for her there, listening to music in his headphones and sketching. Thank goodness he’d broken his left wrist instead of his right.

      She should go home and make him lunch, but acid churned in her belly. How could she possibly eat after the bomb Rem had dropped?

      Since his birth, she’d had Finn all to herself, had taken him to and from school with her, year after year until she finally became a nurse, her dream of medical school eliminated by her pregnancy. No regrets, though.

      She’d kept him with her despite Mama’s and Timm’s arguments to leave him in Ordinary with them.

      She made every decision about his life. If she could keep her son close enough to her, Sara could keep him safe. How could she possibly share him, especially with a man who had spent too many years wasting his life on the worst habits, and who’d made a mistake of the biggest proportions? He’d burned Timm and ruined her brother’s teenage years. He’d ruined Sara’s, too.

      With her parents’ attention firmly on Timm’s operations and physiotherapy, and the illnesses brought on by a compromised immune system, Sara had faded into the background. Had disappeared. Had become another caregiver for her older brother.

      But their care had never been enough. Timm had been sick too often. He’d been scarred. Sara had felt so helpless, so useless no matter how hard she’d worked. She’d been only ten years old when the accident changed the landscape of her family’s life. It had never been good again.

      Then her oldest brother, Davey, had been killed by a bull, in the rodeo, and things had become even worse. Dad had turned more and more to the sedative of the bottle. He’d finally killed himself by driving into a tree on his way home from a bar in Monroe.

      Sara had never been able to do enough to fix her brother or to save her family.

      So…now she was a nurse. She’d learned how to take care of people and to help save them. Or was she just kidding herself? She hoped the work she did had value.

      She stepped forward and called Finn’s name. Time to take care of her son. Rem was not going to ruin what was already working fine.

      Finn closed his book, took the buds out of his ears and showed her his cast. “You know the guy who pulled that girl out of the car?”

      “Rem? Yes.”

      “Look what he put on my cast.”

      He’d signed only his first name, a big flamboyant Rem, but he’d drawn a smiley face beside it—with a lopsided grin and devil’s horns. Sara couldn’t help laughing. She had never doubted his charm.

      On the drive home to Ordinary, Finn didn’t put his earbuds back in, nor did he open his sketchbook. His MP3 player sat idle in his hand as he stared out the window.

      Sara glanced at him, worried. He looked pensive, the way he’d been lately just before asking her questions she’d rather not answer.

      “Mom,” he said, turning to her.

      “Yes?”

      “Father’s Day is coming up.”

      “I know.” Nuts. Every year, Finn became more and more curious about his father, more troubled by his lack of one. The issue seemed to be pulling him further and further away from her. She felt that separation like a physical ache.

      “On Father’s Day, all the kids are allowed to bring their dads to school. Everyone’s talking about it. There’s gonna be a big party in the gym. I’ll be the only one there without a father.”

      “The only one for sure?”

      “Yeah,” he mumbled.

      “How can you possibly know that?”

      “Everyone’s talking about their dads.”

      “But I know there are single mothers living in town. How about Stacey Kim’s daughter, Joy?”

      “She’s in high school.”

      “Oh. I guess she is by now.” Sara came up with more names, but the kids were either too young for school or were in high school. Of all the rotten luck for Finn. A fluke of demographics left him isolated.

      As the new kid in school, life was hard enough on Finn. He already stood out too much. Adding the weight of his being the only kid without a father at the party was so unfair; but he had no idea of the kind of damage Rem Caldwell had done to the Franck family. Sara had no idea what additional harm Rem could still do while trying to father Finn.

      Her parents had spent her adolescence warning her away from Rem, from the boy who’d been her best friend before Timm’s birthday party. One small mistake. Such big consequences.

      “Why don’t you have a photograph of my dad?” Finn’s question caught Sara by surprise.

      Why hadn’t she prepared herself for this? But what preparation could there have been?

      “I didn’t know him for that long.”

      “How long did you know him?”

      She swallowed around a lump that was the lie she’d told her family and the entire town—that she’d met a man at a party and they’d had unprotected sex. Finn was still so young for that explanation.

      “Well?” Finn asked. “How long?”

      He wasn’t going to let it go.

      “One night,” she answered.

      Finn’s chin dropped. “You had a one-night stand?”

      “Yes,” she whispered.

      “That’s so uncool, Mom. So uncool.”

      He stared out the window silently for a moment and Sara hoped that was the end of it.

      “So, why didn’t you find him and tell him about me?”

      “The name he gave me was false.”