Teaching the Cowboy (26 page)

“John, please. Calm down.” Ronnie rocked Joey in the antique chair in the nursery while he paced in an angry diagonal, occasionally grunting and balling up his fists.

“Calm down? Calm
down
? How the fuck am I supposed to calm down? Every goddamned one of you is keeping secrets from me, and not little secrets, but big bad bitch secrets, and you’re telling me to calm down? What’s next? Is Liss gonna tell me she’s running off to the circus?”

Ronnie rocked some more and chose her words carefully before speaking. “Did you stop to think the reason people keep secrets from you is because they anticipate this exact reaction and do their damnedest to avoid it?”

“I’m not unreasonable, Ronnie.”

“Maybe not all the time, but you sure are stubborn.”

“You’re one to talk.”

She shrugged one shoulder and dragged her fingers along the soft downiness of Joey’s head. She’d been born with a shock of black hair, and as that starter hair fell out, dark blonde replaced it. Now it was turning brown. She looked sort of like she had leopard spots on her head at the moment.

“I appreciate you not making a scene at the picnic, though. And thank you for not saying anything to Landon.”

“How long have you known?”

“Only since this week.”

“Shouldn’t you cosmopolitan types have better gaydar?”

“Your son isn’t a stereotype, John. I mean, look at him. He’s tall and strong and bookish and he’s a cowboy. And, yeah, he’s gay.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to cope with that?”

She shook her head. “It’s not up to you to cope with it.”

“But it’s not right.”

She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. She was waiting on him to say that. Expected it. “Why not?”

He stopped his pacing and shot daggers at her with his eyes. “It’s not natural.”

“You know what else isn’t natural?”

“What?”

She pointed to him, then to herself, then down to Johanna’s head. “You know, there were laws against making babies like her once upon a time. Some people still think it’s an abomination.”

“Joey’s not an abomination. She’s beautiful.”

“I agree. I so agree.” Ronnie looked down to find the too-quiet baby had fallen asleep. She stood and carefully set her down in the crib.

John followed her out of the nursery and closed the door behind him. Once they were safely in the living room, she crossed her arms and continued her lecture. “The problem with mankind is that often certain parts of it like to prescribe what’s right or wrong based on some flawed logic passed down from generation to generation. It doesn’t always make good sense, but it’s amazing how people will justify suppressing the happiness of other people. Trust me on that, John. I’m first and foremost a history teacher.”

“He’s twenty. What would he know about happiness? How do you know this won’t make him more miserable after the phase fizzles out?”

She blew out a breath. “John, if you think this is a phase, I’m not going to be able to talk any sense into you. I’ve known Phil my whole life. He’s unambiguously gay. Always has been. He’s never so much as kissed a woman, just like I’ve never kissed a woman. Neither of us has had any desire to. That’s how we’re wired.”

“One of you is obviously wired wrong.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed them. When she opened them again, she let out a long sigh. “Landon’s your son, not mine. But I love him, and I want him to be happy and grow into his own skin, even if it means he has to make choices you don’t agree with. Even if it means he has to make some mistakes.”

“So you agree what he’s doing is a mistake then?”

“What I think isn’t relevant, John.”

“Well, what I think
is
, and I’m putting a stop to it.” He stormed toward the door. Ronnie ran after him and grabbed him by the back of his shirt and gave it the strongest yank she could manage, which wasn’t much given how John outweighed her by at least sixty pounds.

“John, the only advice I’m going to give you is that if you interfere, you’re going to lose your son.”

“Just like I lost you, right?”

Her jaw dropped. She had no words.

He left.

Chapter Twenty-Two

J
ohn sat in his truck, sipping from his flask and staring at ranch hands corralling some of the steer in the back pasture. His world was even more upside down than it had been before he’d flown to North Carolina and dragged Ronnie back metaphorically kicking and screaming. He and Landon had had a falling out that culminated in Landon telling his father what he could do with himself before he and Phil packed up and left for the airport. Sid wasn’t speaking to him since he’d taken his frustration out on Eddie, who’d damn near threatened to quit, and John didn’t really want that, even if he hated the situation they’d all put him in. He was dancing on eggshells around Ronnie since their agitated discussion, and when he went over to the guesthouse every day to see Joey, Ronnie would pass her off mumbling about something else she had to go do. He was starting to feel like a pariah on his own damned ranch.

A knock on the passenger window jostled him to attention and he looked over to find Eddie looking into the truck. John sighed, turned the switch, and motored down the window. “Yeah?”

“You need something out here, John, or are you just following behind me to make sure I don’t raze the place and salt the earth?”

The nerve.
“Well, I’ve been looking after this ranch on my own for a good number of years now. You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not quite ready to roll over and die for you.”

Eddie didn’t take the bait. “Why exactly did you hire me if you weren’t ready to hand over the reins on some things? You could have just let Rufus go and not filled his position.”

“Yeah, I reckon I could have.”

His dad had always had a ranch manager, and back then it’d just been John and Sid. It wasn’t that he had so many kids he needed an extra hand, but because there was simply that much to do. When John had aged into some of the management chores, the position became slightly more expendable. The manager was more like a helper than a linchpin. Maybe that was what had gone wrong with him and Charlene. Maybe if he’d had that linchpin, he would have saw the signs. Maybe he could have made it work.

He blew a raspberry. Good riddance to her.

“So, what do you want me to do, John? Want me to go home? I’m not gonna work with you staring down my back all day.”

John grunted and turned on the ignition. “You may be screwing my sister, which is a subject I don’t even want to discuss right now, but keep in mind who signs your paychecks.”

“Oh, I have it right in the front of my mind, John.” Eddie tapped his temple with his index finger. “And you need to get over me and Sid. Nothing you can do is gonna change that. You need to get over it and step back from this all a bit, and maybe if you do you’ll see this is the best thing for everyone. Us all working together.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” John rolled up the window and backed away from the path, leaving Eddie to the steer.

He drove to the main house first and idled in the truck a while, squeezing the steering wheel and generally stalling from getting out. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what he was afraid of. No one was in the house. Anna had gone out to get groceries and supplies, Peter and Liss were doing their lessons, Dad had gone back to Florida. Maybe that was it. No one was there. He backed onto the path once more and continued toward the guesthouse. The
guest
house where there was more warmth and buzz than in his own home. It shouldn’t have been that way.

He let himself in to find the kitchen, where the kids usually worked, empty but hearing the cacophony of laughter from the adjoining living room. Needn’t worry about waking the baby, he supposed. He entered the room to find them all huddled around the television, where Ronnie sat nearby with her laptop computer and fiddling with controls trying to get the aspect ratio right.

It took a moment for him to make sense of what, or who, was on the screen. He eased into the group and took the remote from her, fixing the output himself. He could feel Liss, Peter, Kitty, and Ronnie’s gazes on his back as he clomped across the hardwood to the sofa. Before sinking into the overstuffed thing, he paused to pick Joey up from her seat and set her on his lap as he sat.

They all stared at him.

“Well, go on. Just pretend I’m not here. Just like you always do.”

“Why
are
you here?” Peter asked with a brow raised.

That’d better be the ADHD talking.
John ground his teeth before speaking. “Am I not allowed in my own house? One of them, anyway.”

“I don’t think that’s what he’s asking, John.” Ronnie rubbed her arms with her hands as if she’d suddenly caught a chill.

“Fill me in, then.”
Oh, look. Joey has little tooth. Shit, if I close my eyes she’ll be in kindergarten. Slow down, time. Just keep her a baby a little longer.

“I think he’s wondering why you’re not working.”

John didn’t answer. He was too busy looking down into big, slate gray eyes and babbling gibberish to Joey. When he wasn’t forthcoming, Ronnie started the video.

“Hey, Liss. Hey, Pete. I know this isn’t anything close to seeing the ocean yourself in person with your own two eyes, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

John turned Joey around so her back was to his belly and focused his attention on the screen. Landon, with loose hair whipping across his glasses and grinning that same trouble-making grin he’d had since he was two, stood mere yards from the crashing waves of the Atlantic, jubilant. He looked like he belonged there, and John’s stomach sank. Would Landon be another person he’d have to fight to make come home?

“We had a bit of a warm snap this week so Phil brought me out to the beach he and Ronnie used to go to all the time as kids. Showed me all their secret spots.”

Ronnie stopped rubbing her arms, and a warm grin spread across her face. It wasn’t the kind of smile that was meant for other people to see. It was a smile that held the hint of memories John knew nothing of and would probably never understand. She’d never smiled that way for him. His stomach sank a little bit more.

Phil turned the camera around, waved into it, said, “Hi, Ronnie. Love you,” and pointed it back to Landon.

“Peter, they have these little crabs here called hermit crabs. People buy them at the souvenir shops and keep them in little cages. You’ve got to keep buying them bigger shells because they grow out of them. Every time I see them I think about how you would probably buy a bunch and hide them to scare the hell out of Anna when she lifted a bowl or something.”

Peter nodded from the floor. “Yeah, that sounds like me.”

“Liss, honey, look.” Landon held a sand dollar up to the lens.

Phil backed up to get the thing in focus.

“I’m putting that in the mail for you. There’s a legend that comes with these things. Says the five holes represent the journey of Christ.” He turned it over and over in his hand and shrugged. “I just think it’s cool. It’s actually a fossil from a certain kind of animal, kind of like sea urchins. Get Ronnie to tell you about ’em.”

“Okay,” Liss said to the screen.

“Kitty, I have a T-shirt for you.”

“Rock on, Lando,” Kitty said. She held out her fist for an unanswered bump.

“Lemme go before this thing becomes a bitch to upload. Ronnie, send us some pictures of Joey. Why aren’t you ever on Facebook anymore? Oh, well. Love you all. Bye.” He waved at the lens.

And that was the end.

Intellectually, John understood very well the video had been mostly for the enjoyment of the kids. They missed their brother. Landon was a huge part of their lives. They couldn’t get a more hands-on big brother, even if they’d looked for one. But on a more base level, John felt snubbed. He’d been lumped into that “you all” along with, hell, who? Sid? Eddie? Then again, what would Landon had said? “Hey, Dad? You’re still an asshole. Fuck off.”

John had yet another situation where he was writing a rent check every month for someone he wasn’t even on speaking terms with. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

Ronnie’s head popped up and she looked around, heart racing so hard she could hear its thrumming in her ears. Her eyes slowly came into focus as she made out shapes in the dark room. Window. Bathroom door. Dresser. Nightstand. John Lundstrom in the bedside chair.

She sat up and pulled the covers over her chest. She tried to talk, but found her voice hoarse and had to swallow down the lump in her throat first. She tried again and managed a whisper, mindful of Joey snoozing in the neighboring room.

“John, what are you doing in here?”

He was dressed, or un-dressed, rather, in a white T-shirt and gray sweatpants that had a couple of rips at the knees. He came closer and knelt beside her. “Do you think Joey will wake up soon?”

She picked up the little wind-up alarm clock on the bedside table and squinted at its face. “Probably. Why?”

“You know, Liss doesn’t really come to me anymore when she has nightmares.”

Oh.

She pulled back the covers on the other side and patted the bed. “Might as well be comfortable.”

“Thanks.” He climbed in and pulled the blanket up to his neck.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the dim ceiling. Eventually she closed her eyes and counted her breaths. Sleep wouldn’t come. It was just hard to ignore his proximity. They’d been intimate before, right there on that bed, and the product of their coupling was asleep in the adjacent bedroom. Some part of her wanted to reach across the gap and touch him, and her heart was fine with embracing him, but her conscience said, “No, don’t.” She was still angry about Landon and John’s heavy-handed dismissal of him. How could he accept her daughter, but not his son?

“You awake?”

She opened her eyes to find him lying on his side facing her, blue eyes gone silvery in the dark. “Yes, I’m awake.”

“You never told me why you decided to do the whole breastfeeding and cloth diapering thing.”

“It’s not because it’s trendy. It was partly due to economy, but also because of how I grew up. All the women I knew when I was little nursed. A lot of them were Army wives and didn’t work outside the home, so it was easy for them to nurse on demand. My mother is a middle school health teacher. She went back to work when I was three, and my parents had figured they weren’t going to move anymore. Daddy’s been stationed in other places since then, but usually short-term so we got to stay put.”

“Your parents spend a lot of time apart?”

“Mm-hmm.” She yawned and patted her mouth. “But when they get back together it’s just like they never parted. I guess absence really does makes the heart grow fonder.”

“I couldn’t live like that. I feel like one of the fringe benefits of marriage is having pretty much unlimited access to the person you love.”

“It works for them, though. That’s all that matters. It’s not up to us to judge what’s right and wrong. Love is different for everyone, and if it’s not your love, it’s really none of your business.”

“Point taken.”

“Good.” She closed her eyes.

“When I was a kid, oh, I guess around eight or nine, I once asked my mother why it was just the two of us, me and Sid, and she told me she loved us and Dad so much she was afraid her heart would burst if she had to love one more. I didn’t really understand that until Peter came around.”

“But then you had Liss.”

“Yeah. And that’s when I figured out love can be a sort of flexible thing. It’s like a rubber band that you can keep on stretching to encompass all the people you need to. You just have to want to stretch it.”

It seemed poor taste to ask right at that moment, but Ronnie had to know. “Charlene. Did she? I guess I don’t understand.”

“It’s that damned rubber band analogy again. She didn’t want to stretch it much farther than herself.”

She forced her eyes open and turned onto her side. “Are you saying she didn’t love you?”

A small shake of his head. “I don’t think so.”

Everything sort of made sense then.

“Did you love her?”

“Yeah, I loved her. I guess I wasn’t really
in
love with her. That was a situation where absence wouldn’t have done a damned thing for her heart that being five feet from me would have. I guess we just weren’t meant for each other. Like fire and ice.”

“I’m sorry to pry.”
No you’re not
. “Why did you marry her?”

He ran the palm of his hand over his eyes and then raked his hair back. “She was available. Married her not too long before Sid married her punk brother. Then Landon came nine months later. That’s the way it goes around here. You get one shot and if you hate ’em, oh, well.”

Ronnie laughed. “This isn’t the Old West. It’s not like there’s a dearth of women to be found.”

He blew out a breath. “I’m a family man, I guess. I wanted a family sooner than later, and didn’t want to wait. She was supposed to be the perfect little ranch wif
e. Grew up in the culture, knew everyone I knew, no real learning curve. Didn’t know she was just looking for the first opportunity to get out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. Not anymore, I mean. I was mad. Hell, I was mad for a long damn time, but I’m learning some things you have to let go of.”

He still has more things to learn about that lesson
.

She fell asleep pondering that. When she opened her eyes again, the room was bright. She sat up abruptly, reaching for the clock but before her eyes could focus on the arms, she saw a wriggle in her periphery. She turned her head to find Joey spread-eagled beside her and John laying on his belly on the other side, sleeping with one arm under Joey’s legs.

She hadn’t heard Joey crying out or felt the mattress shift as he went to fetch the baby.
God, I must be exhausted. Weren’t we in the middle of a conversation?
She wormed her way left and freed one engorged breast from her shirt. Joey latched on in her sleep, causing Ronnie to hiss as she endured the painful letdown. She’d never gone that long without nursing. It didn’t feel so great, and it was wonder Joey hadn’t demanded to be fed when John repositioned her.