Christmas At Cade Ranch. Karen Rock

careful. Better to worry too much than not enough, he’d learned in the hardest way possible.

      He would always be vigilant in preventing negative forces from infiltrating their clan as they had with Jesse.

      His brothers and sister quieted and joined him a moment later, fanning out on either side, their solid support palpable. Despite the tweaking, quarreling and outright brawling, especially Jewel and that fierce uppercut of hers, they always had each other’s backs.

      The terrain grew gentler, rolling. Below, on the level floor of the valley, lay the rambling old ranch house with cabins nestling around and the corrals leading out to the soft, snow-dusted hay fields, misty and gray in twilight. A single light gleamed like a beacon.

      Home.

      His spirits lifted.

      An hour later, showered and ravenous, he tromped up the front porch of his family’s main house. Built with rough-hewn cedar, it seemed to spring from the earth, a part of the landscape, its lines as majestic as its surrounding mountains.

      Log pillars held up a steep, snow-covered portico and peaked gables broke up the roofline. Numerous windows gleamed in the dark. They must have cost a fortune when they’d been installed. 1882. The year his gold-mining, prospecting ancestor stumbled on a lucky strike that’d made his fortune and allowed him to purchase the property.

      He pushed through the screen door and stopped short at the scene before him. No set table. No meat loaf. Where was his mother? She must have had another tough day. His chest squeezed.

      Then his eyes alighted on his ma holding hands with a dark-haired young woman.

      “James!” Ma exclaimed and stood, as did the stranger. She was slim and tall, her midnight hair a thick tangle around a beautiful face the color of a candle’s glow, her obsidian eyes wide. They shifted out from under his direct gaze, her nervous reaction instantly jangling his suspicious nature. A child stopped waving a wooden spoon like it was a sword and stared with large, unblinking eyes, as though sizing up a threat.

      “Is it that time already?” His mother’s hand fluttered to her cross necklace and she twisted it. “We must have gotten sidetracked. Sofia, this is my second eldest, James. James, this is Sofia Gallardo, mother of Jesse’s child, Javi, my first grandson and your nephew. Isn’t it a miracle?”

      And just like that, the safe haven he’d labored to create turned itself inside out.

       CHAPTER THREE

      PULL BACK. STEADY. Steady. Don’t come off the vein.

      Blood rushed in the half-full syringe, curling red. Sofia held her arm still and slowly pushed the plunger. She wanted to make this last. Anticipation sizzled over her nerves.

      Pull it out again. The blood swirled back inside.

      Now. Squeeze.

      This was what she wanted. Yes. Here it was. The rush. It flooded up her arm and tingled.

      Then it hit. It was like a mini explosion of unadulterated pleasure.

      Everything turned blissful and beautiful. And she loved everything. It was a pure joy to be alive, to have a body; a heavenly awareness.

      The hand of God, cradling her to sleep.

      Sleep.

      No.

      Don’t go to sleep.

      Don’t. Go. To. Sleep.

      Sofia lurched upright in bed, and her gasp cracked through the small, dark room. Her heart thrummed, deafening in her ears, almost painful. Was she having a heart attack?

      Had she taken a bad hit?

      She groped for the syringe and came up empty. Where? Where? Where?

      “Mama?”

      She shoved her hair from her hot face and peered at the small shape hovering by her bed.

      “Javi?”

      His eyes looked as big as saucers. “Are you okay?”

      “Yes.” She hoisted him up and pulled him close. “I just had a bad dream.”

      Terrifyingly real.

      Remembering the good was worse than the bad.

      “A monster?”

      “A big one,” she said, recalling the horrible creature she’d once been—thinking of nothing, no one, but her next fix.

      She rested her cheek on Javi’s head and strove to calm her breathing. Kids needed their parents to protect them, but in her case, it felt the other way around. She’d gotten sober for Javi, and because of him she stayed on the straight and narrow.

      “I can sleep with you till you feel better,” he whispered around what sounded like his thumb. A flash of worry popped inside. The old habit reappeared whenever he felt stressed.

      “I’d like that, sweetie. Thanks.”

      Ten minutes later, Sofia stared up into dark and listened to Javi’s soft, regular breathing.

      Another addiction dream.

      She squished her pricking eyes shut. Foolish her for hoping the nightmares would end after she’d left her drug-ridden neighborhood. She’d finally escaped, yet her addiction followed, a zombielike thing lurching toward her up US 285 from Albuquerque to drag her and Javi down.

      No.

      She had to stay one step ahead and get farther away than Colorado. Another coast. Maybe even a different country.

      You cannot fall.

      Though you could, whispered another voice. You know how easy it would be. An innocent mistake, even. Never meaning harm, exactly...

      Prescription pills were more addictive than heroin.

      She clamped her hands over her ears, a useless move since the taunting rose from within, the horrible refrain of her lonely life. She blew out a breath, disentangled Javi’s limbs from hers and slid out of bed. She needed air.

      After slipping on a thick robe and slippers, Sofia eased out of the room. She padded down the staircase, pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch.

      The black night folded around Cade Ranch like velvet, as cold and soft as a bat’s wing. The storm had cleared, and overhead, glinting stars clustered. She inhaled the aroma of the rich, slumbering earth. It seemed to hold the mystery of nature and life, a smell that, in a strange way, soothed her some, gave her a tiny bit of hope. As if she, like the rest of the world, could afford to settle down, too, for a bit.

      She leaned on the banister and peered into the night. Her heart lifted at the majestic vista. The Rocky Mountains’ shadowed outlines scaled the distant horizon. They surrounded the ranch’s valley in a semicircle, stone sentinels guarding against the outside world, shielding and protecting this isolated countryside.

      But could they protect her—and Javi—from herself?

      It was a constant gnawing fear.

      One she bore alone.

      But how strong could one person be?

      Why didn’t you ever tell them about us? she silently asked Jesse, her eyes on the sky, her leaden heart at her feet. Why didn’t you come back for us? Were you ashamed? Incapable? Afraid?

      She wished she and Javi could settle here, but Jesse’s tragedy was also her tragedy. His addiction story hers. Shared history. She could never be someone else, someone worthy of being Javi’s mother, around a family who’d already lost a drug-abusing son, people who knew who she really was, who she might turn into if she wasn’t careful.

      At a light cough, she jumped. A dark figure detached itself from the shadows, and she stumbled back, panic scrambling