Cowboy Christmas Redemption Page 4

  He was dyslexic.

  She was the first person to put a name to what he’d struggled with all of his life. And she offered to help him. They’d sat together in her apartment, on the couch she still owned, and had gone over information about a host of different learning disabilities, piecing together his struggles, and ways they could combat them.

  And she’d devised a lesson plan. She was a teacher, and it was what she did. And it had been such a great thing for her, to be able to use her passion to help someone she cared about so much.

  The relief in his eyes as he’d learned about those things. As they’d found names, diagnoses and reasons for his struggles. Reasons that weren’t: “I guess you’re just stupid.”

  He’d confided in her that he’d been afraid he might be. That there was no other explanation for why he couldn’t learn what everyone else seemed to be able to.

  Caleb was intensely private and intensely proud. And he’d never wanted her to tell anyone, because he’d told her he hadn’t wanted it to be seen as an excuse.

  She’d honored that. She couldn’t do anything but honor that.

  He was the only person she would have kept a secret for like that. So perfectly she hadn’t even told her husband.

  She’d always cared very deeply for Caleb, but that experience had brought them closer. Until it hadn’t.

  The lessons had ended abruptly one day. Caleb had just cut them off, with no real explanation. And she’d gone from seeing him like clockwork three days a week to not seeing him at all.

  And then Clint had died and it hadn’t mattered anymore.

  Even during that time he hadn’t been speaking to her, she’d known who he was. And somehow in the past few years she’d lost that sense of knowing him, wrapped in her own grief.

  But she knew him. Of course he needed this. Of course.

  She walked forward and looked into the door, and was not at all surprised to see him, turning shavings with a shovel, his tight black T-shirt stretching each time he flexed his broad shoulders, the muscles in his arms shifting, corded from the hard labor.

  There was something about seeing him like this that made her heart swell, made it trip over itself.

  She was selfish. So selfish to not want him to have his own ranch. Selfish to consider what it meant for her at all.

  It didn’t matter. All that mattered was what it meant for him.

  “Hi,” she said, leaning in the doorway.

  He looked up, the brim of his black cowboy hat still shading part of his face. “Hi, yourself,” he said.

  “I haven’t seen you today.”

  “I know,” he said. “I haven’t seen you, either.”

  “Are you busy today?”

  “A bit.”

  She leaned forward, still clinging to the doorway with one hand. “I want to see your ranch.”

  He didn’t pause in his shoveling. “Really?”

  “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry that I was ridiculous yesterday.”

  “Were you ridiculous?” He asked the question without looking at her.

  “Yes, I was. I’m happy for you... Change hasn’t exactly been my best friend. So you coming to me and telling me things are changing... It freaked me out a little bit. I’ve gotten into this place in life now where it all feels a little more in my control, and you reminded me today it isn’t. I can’t control everything around me, which is fair and fine. But it hits me in a sore spot.”

  “Right. I guess that’s understandable.”

  “So anything changing makes me a little bit nervous. But I know we’re friends. Even if we don’t work together. Even if we haven’t worked together all that long.”

  “It will be different,” he said, propping himself up on his shovel. “You’re working here now. I’ll be on the ranch. Before you weren’t working and I was just doing the wildfires. So I was either there all the time or gone.”

  “Yes. I used you shamelessly as a babysitter, and a shoulder to cry on and any number of other things. And I appreciate that. But... It’s different now.

  “You’re my best friend,” she said. “And I’m really happy for you. And I want to see the place.”

  “Sure,” he said. “When?”

  “Right now,” she said.

  “Right now,” he repeated, his brows lifting slightly. “As in right this second?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Your mom was planning on staying with Amelia for another hour and a half anyway. And that way I can look at things without answering questions. And then, when we finally do go with Amelia, I can look at things and answer questions for her.”

  “You know, you don’t have to go today so that you can convince me that you’re excited for me.”

  “That’s not even why,” she said.

  “Then why?”

  “Because I am excited,” she said, perhaps a little bit too brightly.

  “All right, Ellie, let’s go.” He sounded a little too long-suffering for her liking. But she supposed she might deserve that.

  “Are you going to have horses?” she asked, following him as he ditched his shovel and walked out of the barn.

  “Yeah,” he said. He opened the passenger-side door to his faded red truck and she climbed in, realizing as she did that she took those kinds of actions for granted.

  “Thank you,” she said once he was settled inside and had the truck engine turned on. “For everything. I mean, for things like opening the car door.”

  “That’s nothing,” he said.

  “It’s you,” she said. “You’re the most... The most helpful person. The most loyal. Caleb, I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had you for all these years.”

  “Why are you being mushy?” he asked.

  It was a good question. But she definitely felt a little mushy. “Christmas? Change. There’s a lot of change happening right now. The new school, you leaving, West coming.”

  “I doubt West being here will be a very big difference to you. In fact, it may all be the same. One cowboy is basically the same as the next.”

  “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “Nothing is the same as you.”

  She grinned at him, and he shifted, visibly uncomfortable as he pulled the truck out of its spot by the barn, and headed down the paved road that led out to the highway.

  “How far away is the new ranch?” she asked when they were on the road.

  “About ten minutes off this way,” he said, turning left, away from town.

  “What’s the house like?”

  “It has seen better days,” he said. “In other words, it’s a bit rustic. But I’ll be building something new once I get around to it.”

  “I don’t mind rustic,” she said. “The farmhouse is a bit that way.”

  “This is more of a log cabin,” he said.

  “Well, I like log cabins.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

  But he didn’t really sound like he thought it was good, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. Also, though, she didn’t really want to ask, and she wasn’t sure why that was, either.

  “Tell me more about West,” she said, digging for a subject change.

  “I don’t know anything about him,” he said.

  “Nothing?”

  He sighed heavily. “He rode in the rodeo for a while, but Gabe doesn’t know him. Bull rider, I guess. And stayed more regional. Mostly in Texas.”

  “So you do know some things.”

  “Yes. Some things.”

  “I would think that if he were any good Gabe would know who he was,” she said.

  “That’s what I said,” Caleb responded. “But Gabe said that wasn’t necessarily the case. I wonder if he was just being kind, though.”

  “Oh, that’s not like Gabe,�
� she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard that Jamie was going to start riding pro next year.”

  “That’s the word on the street,” he said. “By which I mean, at the ranch.”

  Gabe’s fiancée, Jamie, had been wanting to ride professionally in the rodeo for years, and everything was finally coming together for her.

  “Do you think that Gabe is going to leave the school?” Ellie asked.

  “I can’t imagine he wouldn’t. But he’ll be back and forth.”

  “It will be interesting to manage things without them,” she said.

  “Well, you’re doing a great job.”

  “I’m going to need help with the manual labor and stuff.”

  “Yeah, I expect you will.”

  “I guess I’ll have to ask West,” she said.

  “You can still ask me,” he said, something in his voice getting hard.

  “Okay,” she said. “Good to know.”

  She fiddled with the radio for a while after that, turning up Dierks Bentley and giving thanks it was one of his party songs, and not one of his sexy songs, because that would just make it a little bit awkward.

  She wasn’t sure why. Only that she knew it would.

  Mostly because when you were looking for silence filler, you didn’t want that silence to be filled with sincere lyrics about erotic acts.

  As if she could even remember what erotic acts were like.

  It had been so long...

  She swallowed hard and turned the music up louder as she watched the pine trees melt together, a whiskey blur of green out the car window. And up ahead of them were the mountains, rising above wooden telephone poles that created a strange man-made grid with their wires as they zigged and zagged on the uneven roadway.

  Caleb hung a sharp right, onto an even narrower paved road with a faded yellow line down the middle. Eventually, the asphalt faded away into gravel, which carried them up a mountain, winding around until they reached another turnoff.

  This went back, the land flat suddenly, and a wooden cabin came into view.

  It wasn’t as worse for wear as Caleb had led her to believe, two stories and with a charming porch that spread out wide, wicker chairs and a love seat right there.

  “I think it’s lovely,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “I think it’s a little better than okay.”

  The place he lived in now was much smaller, but he’d said many times that he didn’t have use for a big house. It was just him, and he wasn’t one for throwing parties.

  “Let me show you where the trees are,” he said.

  “I don’t think I have ever been to a place that grew Christmas trees,” she said. She looked out the window again. “Of course, all the mountains around us kind of grow Christmas trees.”

  “Yeah, that’s Charlie Brown–looking shit,” he said.

  “It’s God’s own handiwork, Caleb,” she said dryly.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me that Hank Dalton got his Christmas tree from a tree lot,” she said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t tell you that.” He chuckled. “We never had a real tree when I was growing up.”

  “You didn’t have a real tree?”

  “Hell no. The tree was Tammy’s domain,” he said. “She prefers pink and tinsel.”

  “I have yet to see a pink or tinsel tree in your mother’s living room.”

  “She’s calmed down over the past few years. But when we were growing up, and we first had money, she went flashing it all around. And let me tell you, she didn’t spare any expense. She would do themed trees. Buy new ornaments every year, a whole new color scheme. It was tacky as hell. I will never forget her Las Vegas Cowgirl Christmas tree. You know, with a bunch of mini versions of that neon cowgirl in Vegas? But this was all light-up cowboy boots and all of that. It was insane.”

  “Okay, that sounds a little bit much.”

  “What about you?”

  She realized that they never exactly talked about her childhood Christmases.

  “Oh, we didn’t really do anything always. It depended. On where we were living. Who my mother was dating. When I was thirteen I found a small fake tree in the dumpster in our apartment building once. Like a tabletop tree. I put it up in the kitchen and decorated it with some old ornaments I found, with a paper chain I made. My mom threw it out.”

  “Your mom threw your tree away?” he asked.

  She shifted, the incredulity in his tone making her uncomfortable. Yes, it had been a mean thing for her mom to do. And yes, Ellie didn’t have a relationship with her mom. But she’d also spent a lot of time sitting with the things her mother had done. They hurt her, but she’d also seen them as...normal. Because she didn’t know any different.

  Caleb being shocked threw into sharp relief the fact that it wasn’t normal. Not at all.

  “She said that we couldn’t have Christmas because it wouldn’t be right without Dave. He wasn’t even... He hadn’t even been around that long. He was just the boyfriend of the season. But every man was so important to her. So much more important than anything else. And I...” She swallowed. “I told her I wanted to have Christmas with her.”

  She could remember it so keenly. That deep, desperate need to be loved. And that the tree—homely and broken and bedecked with homemade ornaments—felt like a piece of her heart.

  “She said I wasn’t enough. To make it Christmas.” She cleared her throat. “So we didn’t have it that year. I got up early and wrapped myself in a blanket and ate cereal. I watched A Christmas Story on TV with the sound down.”

  And she’d decided then she’d have to be enough for herself. That anything she did would have to be for her. And if she was happy, then that would have to be enough.

  Thank God, too. Because if she hadn’t determined to find that inner strength, who knew where she’d be now. Who knew how life would have crumpled her up.

  She’d figured out how to love without opening herself up the way her mother had. Without laying herself bare. Anyway, in Ellie’s mind that was obsession.

  Ellie had found a brighter side to it. Companionship.

  Sadness swept over her and she took a breath.

  “Sometimes, I don’t think I’m a whole lot better than her,” she said, feeling miserable as they pulled up to the field with its rows and rows of trees.

  “Why don’t you think you’re better?” he asked. “As far as I know, you’ve never done something like that to Amelia. You’re a great mother, El. You’ve certainly never told your child she wasn’t enough for you. And damn, you’ve lost. And still...”

  She took a breath. “I know. But we always go to your parents’ house for Christmas. And I love it. Your mom has definitely refined her whole Christmas thing.” She swallowed. “But we don’t have Christmas things that we get out. I just... I haven’t wanted to do it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I don’t know. I always felt like my mom was the Grinch. For not letting me enjoy Christmas. For making it all about her. Well, I don’t really do anything different. It’s all about me and what I don’t want to do. And what I don’t want to deal with.”

  “It’s different,” he said. “You lost Clint.”

  “Yeah. And my mom was often in a state of grief over men. And yes, it was different. But was it to her? It’s weird. Sometimes I think about my mom and I get so angry. I think of all the things that she put me through, and how I would never, ever in a million years put Amelia through any of that. And then sometimes I just... I get tired. I get sad. I don’t want to do a damn thing and I wonder... Is this what she felt, too? Did I just not know how hard it was sometimes? Because sometimes it’s hard. Really, really hard. To put a smile on your face when you just feel crispy inside.”

 
“Crispy?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “Don’t you ever feel like that?”

  “Define it.”

  “I don’t know, like your insides are dry. And if you’re not careful, they might just break. That’s how I feel sometimes.”

  Silence settled between them like an itchy blanket. Heavy and uncomfortable.

  “He was great,” Caleb said, finally. “The best. I can’t imagine growing up without him. He was my brother.”

  Her heart twisted. It was so easy to forget Caleb’s grief in hers. In her worry about Amelia growing up without a father. But Caleb felt it right along with her. More than anyone else.

  “I miss him,” Ellie said. “I miss him every time Amelia has a birthday. Every time she asks me questions about daddies. Sometimes I get really tired of missing him.” Her eyes felt scratchy, but there weren’t any tears. She cleared her throat. “Okay. Let’s look at your Christmas trees.”

  She nearly stumbled out of the truck, not waiting for him to open the door for her, and into the crisp late-afternoon air.

  There was something about it that helped cut through the cloying sadness that had threatened to overwhelm her just a moment ago.

  Wasn’t that an awful thing to admit? That she was tired of grief. It didn’t seem fair.

  Some days she felt like she owed him her lifelong grief. Because he’d died so young. Because she loved him, and his parents didn’t love him enough. And in many ways it seemed like the best thing to do was for her to carry an eternal flame for him.

  But the very idea of that made her feel like she was trudging through a swamp, and in reality she wasn’t sure she could bear it.

  She walked across four rows of trees, looking down at the endless paths that were forged through the middle. “How many trees are here?”

  “Thirty thousand.”

  “No way,” she said. “Thirty thousand trees?”

  “Yes,” he said. “All in various stages of growth. But there’s about five thousand that are ready to go this year. The next year there will be twice that amount.”

  “Do you have enough room to have cattle and the Christmas trees on the ranch?”

  “I should,” he said. “If the trees are lucrative enough, I may never quit doing it. It’s all lined out to keep going for the next four more years, even if I didn’t replant.”