Our Chance (Los Rancheros #4)

OUR CHANCE

Brandace Morrow

OUR CHANCE © Copyright 2014 by Brandace Morrow

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, printed, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express permission of the author. Please do not participate or encourage piracy in any capacity of copyrighted material in violation of the author’s rights.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events, occurrences, places, or business establishments is purely coincidental. The characters and story line are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Editing by Edee M. Fallon, Mad Sparks Editing

http://www.facebook.com/madsparksediting

Cover Design by Najla Qamber Designs

http://najlaqamberdesigns.com

For all of the Gold Stars.

"So we’re in the car. It's day one. The kids are sad to leave their friends but we're excited!" I tell the camera as I drive down the road. The camera is hooked up to a mini tripod with bendable arms. I have it on my rearview mirror right now.

"We're not excited," I hear my ten year old son grumble in the backseat. I make a half smirk at the camera and call back, “Grumpy is only attractive on old men, Trigg. It's not your time yet." I picture him rolling his eyes and smile, changing lanes. "And don't roll your eyes."

We're almost to the U.S./Canadian border in Alaska, so I turn off the camera and toss it in the passenger seat next to me. This trip is stressing me out, and we're like, four hours into it. A few months back, my grandma died and left me her old farmhouse in California. I had considered selling it, as my husband would have immediately wanted to do. But Sebastian isn't here anymore.

I grab our passports and roll down my window as I see the guard tower up ahead. "You guys take a breath of this fresh mountain air," I yell to them and hear back three, “It's cold,” from behind me. April in Alaska is fly by the seat of your pants as far as the weather goes. It can be snowing one second, melting the next. Right now my car says it's thirty-three degrees and the clouds are a dark gray, hanging low and promising snow.

"You're going to miss this later, I'm telling you!" I stop behind the line crossing over the boarder. Reading the sign on the side of the road, I glance back in the rear view mirror. "Harper, you left your booze for the neighbor, right? It says we can't take that stuff."

My seven-year-old giggles. "Yes, Momma. I gave everything to Patty."

"Good girl, honey. It was her turn to throw the kegger anyway. Jet, you didn't smuggle any guns onto this transport did you?" I turn to see my five-year-old in his booster seat watching the movie on the DVD player.

"Nah, Ma. I sold it for a whack."

Facing front again to hide my smile, I reply, "Did you say crack?"

He yells, "No, Mom, a whack! Geez you're getting old."

I flip back around fast. "Where's my cut?" I mock glare.

He looks me up and down shrewdly, a sparkle in his blue eyes that we all share. "You just sold the house. Where's my cut of that?"

I turn back around and move up in the line, attempting to change the subject. "Whelp, who wants to play I spy?"

"No way!" I hear, so I reach my fist out towards my youngest son.

"Fine, you keep yours and I'll keep mine."

I get a fist bump as I get to the guard station and hear, "Deal."

That crisis over, I reflect on the six years I've been here as I hand our passports through the window. Sebastian was in the Army, and we had just come from Germany to a foreign land that was a little more familiar. Alaska. We left home right out of high school. I don't think he had a good home life, based on the fact he never wanted to talk about his parents. He was a bad boy and I soaked that in like the rebel I was. We moved away and never went back to our hometown. In the beginning, it was because he refused to. Later, it was because I didn't want to run back to my parents when things got hard. And things did get hard. After three deployments in six years, I got the dreaded knock at the door.

Any military wife knows that fear. You ask friends to call before they stop by, so you know to expect it. You keep your blinds open at all times to see your driveway. If you’re doing the dishes or giving your kids a bath and hear a car door slam, you know a fear unlike anything in this world. And it happens every day, multiple times a day. To say the life of a deployed spouse is stressful is an understatement of the highest degree. But then you have to be happy, play with your kids, and keep things normal for them. One thing you never think about is how you would explain to your babies that Daddy got hurt at work and wasn’t coming home ever again.

You have a plan if something were to happen, of course. I just hoped it never happened to me. Our plan was for me to go home and have the support of my family around me. But with a chaplain sitting in my husband's favorite chair, two kids watching TV in the next room, and a baby stirring in my stomach, I felt I couldn't go back. That was his house. He built the shed out back. He mowed the lawn. He hated that tree that blew all of the branches against our windows in a storm. He last parked his car in the driveway. I wasn't going to move away from where my kids had memories of him; where I had memories of him.

I had support from the military community that rallies in death. People cooked me food, and took the kids for a few hours when I felt like I couldn’t keep my pieces together anymore and needed to break down. They posted things, tagging me on social media, constantly letting me know they were thinking about my family. I was thankful, grateful, and a little bit suffocated. Years ago, I heard stories of a woman who went to the homecoming of her husband’s unit and lost it when he wasn’t there.

That wasn't me. I buried my husband in Arlington, VA, per the plan. I questioned that later, because it was so difficult to visit him. So, I made rag dolls out of his old shirts and the kids slept with those, giving them the comfort of their dad when they were too young to really understand what never coming home meant.

Poor Jet never knew his dad. Before his birth, I grew obsessed with details like the first person to hold our first two babies was their dad. So when my mom flew up for the birth, I wouldn't let her have that memory. A nurse was the first one to hold him, and cut the cord. Silly things that now don't mean so much, but in the moment meant I was doing what I could to not have him be different.

Being alone wasn't so different for me, except I lost my countdown. Spending six months with him gone in basic, then almost three years deployed plus training time, Sebastian was gone for over half of our marriage. It didn't make a difference, though. When he died, I lost my partner, my best friend, and the father of my children. I grieved, and the only thing that kept me getting out of bed every day was my kids. The only reason I ate was to feed Jet.

I kept going for a long time on autopilot, not changing anything from how he would want our kids to be raised.

In January, my Grandma Pierce died suddenly at the age of eighty-seven, leaving me her orchard. Her land butts up against my parents’ ranch, so us kids were always coming and going from her house. I'm still in shock she gave the whole estate to me. Even though I hadn't been back for eleven years now, I talked to her once a week like clockwork. I know she wanted me back. Not a phone call went by that she didn't bring it up.

It wasn't until February, when Harper was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, that I decided to make the move.

She started screaming one day at the indoor jumpy house. Finding nothing wrong with her, I took her to the hospital. They did x-rays and MRIs, blood work, and everything else. It was torture for both of us, as well as her brothers. It took a week for the doctors to come back to me with an answer. By this time, Harper couldn't bend her knee all the way back and didn't want to put her weight on it. I had been giving her Motrin every few hours with food, so it didn't eat a hole in her stomach.

Calling my mom with the diagnosis, she asks incredulously, "Have you been giving her bone broth?"

That made me sit back in shock. Growing up on the farm, we didn't go to the doctor very often. We didn't go to the doctor unless we had a broken bone most of the time. We had natural remedies that didn't rely on prescriptions. And so started my research on what exactly I was giving my kids.

Sebastian was all about modern medicine, chicken nuggets and mac and cheese, the latest high tech gadget, and dressing to impress. He wanted to be as far away from his upbringing as possible, and that pushed me further away from how I was raised as well. Since his passing, I had tried to raise the kids the way he would have wanted, but found myself starting to revert back to what I thought was healthier; at least fixing real food at meals and not caring if their clothes were muddy after playing.

In doing my research, I was horrified to learn of the pesticides that we eat with our produce and hormones in our meat. I knew that they were there, but not the effects it could have on the body. I mean, everyone eats the same thing, right? Paying attention to parents at the park and school, I heard story after story of asthma, ADHD, allergies, and skin rashes. Then, going back home, I researched how to prevent or treat those problems with herbs, gluten-free diets and teas.

When I took the kids to the dentist and was told Jet had a cavity, I knew things needed to change. I never had a cavity until I was twenty-four. I remembered drinking cod liver oil and butter oil every single morning my whole childhood, but had never once given it to my children. And here I had a farm in my name sitting right next to my parents.

So I called my dad and asked him what exactly was on the farm these days. He tells me there are two cows, bees, chickens, ducks, and rabbits. Not too bad. Seemed manageable. Then he said there are twelve acres of fruit, same as before, and an acre of garden space. How the hell am I supposed to deal with acres of all that? Dad tells me the money left in the accounts were for a hired hand to help. Good old Grandma Pierce had thought of everything.

That's when I turned to my trusted friend YouTube. Since I was Trigg's age and my mom had bought her first video camera, I had been using it as my personal journal. Later, when the Internet got big, I started a blog along with it.

As a military wife and young mother, I found that people were having a lot of the same problems I was. I would find suggestions and give advice on what worked for us. The more people that responded, the more sponsors I got. I actually started making money. It was a crazy concept, but with YouTube, people can relate to you, take your opinion and learn from it, or you learn from the people watching your videos.

Companies would send me their products to review, cameras, kids' products, kitchen utensils, makeup, and I would give my honest opinion. If I found something I couldn't live without, I would ask the company if they wanted space on my website for their ads, they would pay me, and because of the high traffic it got, would send me more samples.

This was crucial in staying sane with all of the time I spent alone, first in Germany and then during nine months of snow when we moved to Alaska. My husband loved it because it kept me entertained, and he could watch the kids and me on deployments. After he died, it opened up a whole new demographic. Because it’s what I’ve always done, I video blogged about my husband dying. I talked out my problems, and came up with a plan. I didn't post those until I was in the right headspace, but they went viral. Gold Star wives all over were sharing their stories and advice on how to get through such a tough time. I covered a marathon in Anchorage for the spouses of the fallen that year and every one since then, putting faces to the ones left behind.

This new venture into whole foods and my move was just another evolution in my life. I found that people would stick with me, and if they didn’t agree, they at least keep coming back to share their opinion. I would post my videos even if I didn't make any money off of it, but at least it's given me a way to stay home with the kids and still pay the bills.

Yes, you do get a lot of money from the government when a spouse dies, but that money was divided up and put into a high interest account so that the kids can use it for weddings, college, or to buy a house when they get older. I have continued to live off of the monthly stipend, and my own income.

Once upon a time, all I ever wanted to do was live on a farm, with a husband of course, and our kids, living off of the land and swapping fruits and veggies with my parents for meat. I even had my husband all picked out, but that was a lifetime ago.

Glancing behind me, I look past the mini U-Haul I'm pulling to the black GTO behind me. My dad flew up to drive the car back and accompany me on this trip. Love that man. The car belonged to Sebastian and will be Trigg's someday. Trigg loves that car with a passion and would be in it for this whole trip if I hadn't requested all of the kids ride with me the first day.

I grab my camera, with the tripod still attached, and press the buttons overhead to open up the back doors of the van. The kids pile out along with our dog, Angus. He's a huge mutt. He looks to be a cross between a Great Dane and a cattle dog of some kind. He's tall with a long tail and snout, one ear up, one floppy; gray, black, and blue short hair that creates a dark salt and pepper coat, with black spots placed sporadically on his body. He's gentle and expressive, the kids love him, and he couldn't be a better guard dog.

I set up my camera on the hood of my car with the bendable feet of the tripod and wait for my dad to park behind us. The kids are used to the drill of waiting to be directed. For us, it's not unusual to stop for a photo op. My dad pops out of the muscle car with a spring in his step that makes me smile. He may be the most excited about us moving back home.

"Canada!" he yells, spreading his arms out wide with a smile.

I laugh. "Dad, come take a picture with us in front of the Welcome to the Yukon sign." He walks over and stands below the sign as asked. His hair is more white these days, and he's got a belly growing on him. But he's still tall, posture straight in his plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots. Still the same mustache I've always known him to have, just with more wrinkles accenting his light brown eyes.

I did not get my looks from my father. I am the spitting image of my mom, down to our pinky toes. We both have dark brown hair, bright blue eyes, and thin builds. I lucked out with the genes. All of my kids got my darker genes, instead of their father's lighter sandy colored hair and brown eyes. I thank God for that every day. I loved my husband, but there's nothing more striking than a dark complexion with blue eyes. My kids are beautiful, if I do say so myself.