The Ranch She Left Behind. Kathleen O'Brien

If she stood downhill from the draining water...

      She could be burned. Not likely, but it could happen. And these days he didn’t take the slightest of chances. Ever since Lydia’s death... No, even before that. Ever since Mexico, really.

      No wonder he drove Ellen crazy. He didn’t understand anything that mattered to her. He didn’t watch reality TV, where people voted away those who annoyed them, instead of learning to coexist. He could listen only so long to whether stripes or prints were “in” this year, or which of her friends would have to buy a bra first.

      And that boy singer she idolized... The girlie little princess made Max want to laugh, frankly. As did Ellen’s fixation with getting her ears pierced and wearing eyeliner. At eleven? Hell, no.

      But Lydia would have let her wear it. Buy it. Watch it. Listen to it.

      So not only was he stuffy and dense about why “people like them” didn’t fix their own water heaters, he was a traitor to Lydia’s memory.

      â€œMom said I could.” “Mom promised, as soon as I turned eleven.” Mom said. Mom said. Mom said...

      But Mom was gone. And that, of course, was Max’s real sin. He wasn’t Lydia. He never would be. And he couldn’t bring Lydia back. Just as he hadn’t been able to save her.

      He gave the valve a final twist, watching the hose hiccup as the water surged through it. A few drops glistened around the fitting, where the metal didn’t quite meet, and pooled in the dust.

      The basement hadn’t been used, obviously, in months. It smelled of dead bugs, and grime, and something oily—a leaking lawn mower, an unwashed chain saw, a toppled can of WD-40....

      A tremor shimmered down his arm, and he slammed a mental door on the memory. All basements smelled the same. Mexican basements, Colorado basements, probably even Parisian basements.

      Out of nowhere, the banging started again, the firecracker pops echoing around him like gunshots. It was just the heater, complaining, but it was too late to tell himself that. His body was already reacting, before his mind could catch up.

      Pop. Bang.

      The tremor flared to life, and his arm began to shake. Then his legs softened. His knee joints grew soupy. The sounds reverberated hollowly, as if they’d been caught inside his skull, and bounced off every cranial wall.

      His heart knocked frantically, demanding his ribs to open and let it free. He fell to his knees, his elbows over his ears, his hands locked behind his head. It was dark. He smelled the oil-gas mixture of dirty power tools....

      Oh, God...

      Then, suddenly, a rectangle of silver light tilted across the floor.

      â€œDad?”

      He squeezed his elbows together, somehow silencing the tremors. He took a deep breath.

      â€œYes. I’ll be right up. What is it?”

      His voice sounded almost normal. She would probably assume that the edge of thin tension was merely annoyance.

      â€œI wanted to tell you I’m going out back. There is, like, a little orchard, over by the school. Just beyond the fence.”

      â€œOkay.” He took another deep breath. Her voice, even crabby and unfriendly as it always was these days, pulled him to shore, as surely as if it were a bowline tied to a dock.

      And the light helped, too. There had never been light, before....

      One muscle at a time, the trembling subsided. His heart calmed, accepting that it must stay in his body.

      â€œOkay,” he repeated. “Be careful, though. Stay away from the water I just drained. And don’t go so far that you can’t hear me if I call.”

      â€œI have my cell,” she observed sourly, as though he were being deliberately dense. But when he didn’t respond to that, she surrendered. “Okay, I’ll stay nearby. Remember, though, if you get distracted later by work or something, I did tell you where I was going.”

      â€œYeah.” He stood, though he felt the need to touch the wall for balance. His head finally began to clear. “Thank you for that, Ellie. I’m really glad you did.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      BELL RIVER RANCH was only two miles out of downtown Silverdell proper—which luckily didn’t leave enough driving time for doubt or insecurity to set in. Penny rolled down the windows of the rental car and let the cool early-fall breeze blow through her hair. The air smelled sweet, like Russian sage, rose and cosmos, all of which had been planted along the fringes of the Bell River property years ago. It was, to Penny, the defining scent of Home.

      And, as always, it triggered a dozen contradictory emotions inside her. Excitement. Fear. Loss. Hope.

      Home.

      When she spotted the big, two-story timber-and-brick main house rising up around the bend, she slowed the car to a crawl. She needed to let her emotions move through her, giving the intensity time to subside.

      The place looked wonderful, new roof gleaming in the morning sun, grass as green as finger paint rolling out in all directions. The trees burned gold and orange and red, but were still full and leafy—the best of both summer and fall, as if the seasons had decided to share this one overlapping month of August.

      But...oh, look at all those cars. So many people! Penny had received regular updates from her sisters, so she knew that business was good, but she hadn’t quite absorbed what that meant. There would be guests everywhere. No real privacy, for explaining. And Bree’s new guy—Grayson Harper—he’d be there, too, and Penny would meet him for the first time.

      Worst of all, once Bree and Ro heard that Penny intended to stay in Silverdell, but not with them...that she’d bought her own house...

      Explaining why without hurting anyone’s feelings could take hours.

      Was she ready for all that? She glanced into the rearview mirror, into her own wide, expectant eyes, which looked abnormally bright and alive. Partly it was the reflected color from the vivid turquoise-navy-and-pink-flowered pattern of her dress. This dress had been her only new purchase since Ruth’s death.

      The “Russian doll” dress was so unlike anything she’d worn—at least since she was a child. The people at the ice-cream store didn’t know her, so they didn’t know how out of character it was. But Bree and Ro hadn’t seen her look like this in years.

      Was it too much? Too conspicuous? She remembered Ruth’s voice, pronouncing flatly that “flamboyant” clothes made her look cheap, or foolish.

      Ruth had insisted on neutrals—white shirts, gray slacks, khaki skirts and brown or black shoes. For someone who loved color and pattern as much as Penny did—and had ever since she was a little girl gathering flowers to make garlands for her ponies—such a drab palette was torture.

      She smiled at her reflection, and the flicker of doubt soon disappeared. She loved Ruth—but the old lady had been wrong. This brightly colored dress, with its long, belled sleeves and gathered empire waist, might not look like a nun’s habit, but it suited Penny. It put pink in her cheeks and blue in her eyes.

      Or had that impulsive ice-cream kiss done those things?

      It didn’t matter. She was happy, and she was comfortable in her own skin, her own clothes, for the first time in a long time. She didn’t even care that she had worn no makeup—she rarely did—or that her ponytail had been torn to shreds by the wind through the windows.

      She was ready.

      She pulled into Bell River and drove around back, to the little parking lot.