Jesse combed his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “No, you took a bad situation, let it define you for a while, and then you decided to overcome it.” He formed his hand over my cheek. “It just took you a little longer than me.”
I wanted to believe that. God, I would have given anything to believe that. But I couldn’t believe a lie. I couldn’t betray myself by accepting a lie.
“That’s the most sugar-coated version of a half-truth I’ve ever heard,” I said, my voice elevating. “Beneath this ‘reformed’ girl you fell in love with is the screwed-up girl I’ve been my whole life. A girl who will always be, no matter how you try to put it, screwed up.” I made myself look away from his eyes. It made what I had to do easier. “A girl with my past doesn’t deserve a guy with your future, Jesse.”
“Oh please,” Jesse said, hanging his head back. “Get over the I deserve this and I don’t deserve this crap and start choosing what’s healthy for you. How about being honest with yourself as to what you want? Because maybe you can have it.” Jesse’s voice had gone up, too. We were both past the point of keeping our cool.
“Healthy? Honest?” I popped up because I couldn’t stay seated any longer. “So easy for you to say. You’re the one living a charmed life with a family who loves you, not the one who will have no one, no one, after this summer! So don’t lecture me on what’s healthy!”
Jesse inhaled slowly and exhaled slowly. “You’re pushing me away again, Rowen. You’re hurting me.” Jesse waited for me to look at him. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t.
I did.
“Who does that sound like in your life? Who’s pushed you away and hurt you? Who’s done everything she can to keep you at arm’s length?” he asked, his voice calm.
I had my answer instantly, but I sealed my lips and shook my head. I swiped a tear. I didn’t like what he was getting at and I didn’t like the comparison he was drawing.
Jesse nodded, accepting I wouldn’t answer his question verbally. “What we’ve been denied is what we deny others. But why? Why do we fall into the same patterns of those people we always swore we’d never be like?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I inserted, wiping my eyes with the back of my arm. “Life sucks.”
Jesse kept going. “We will all, at some point in our lives, fall. Every single one of us.” He hoisted himself up beside me and moved closer. “We shouldn't spend our time trying to avoid falling. We should spend it finding someone who will help us up.”
When he lifted his hands toward my face, I backed away. “I just need to be alone right now.” I crossed my arms and closed myself off.
“No, you don’t,” he said, coming toward me again. “You need to be with someone who loves you.”
“Don’t tell me what I need,” I almost shouted. “You don’t have any clue what I’ve been through.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” His calm and reassuring tone grated on me. I wanted him to get angry. I wanted him to enter into a screaming match with me to make it easier. “But I know I love you and I’m living proof that your past doesn’t have to define you.”
I sighed and headed for the stall door. “And I’m living proof that it generally does.”
Jesse moved in front of me. “Don’t do this, Rowen. Don’t push me away.”
“I’m not, Jesse,” I said, giving him a cool look. “I’m walking away.”
When I made another move toward the door, he let me by. Walking away from Jesse was the hardest thing I’d done. I also knew it would be the hardest thing I ever would do.
It was raining, storming, when I rushed out of the barn. Big, fat raindrops drenched me by the time I’d sprinted into the house. When I shoved through the back door and into the kitchen, I found the dinner and whatever mess Jesse and Pierce’s brawl had created.
Rose was at the sink, in her terry cloth bathrobe, drying the last dish.
I thought everyone would have been asleep. It was late, but I should have known Rose would stall, wait for me to finish with “my moment.” I was cold and wet, but I was thankful for it. The rain coating my face disguised the tears.
I wanted to head to my room so badly. I couldn’t talk anymore. A wound I’d been so sure was close to healing had been ripped open that night. Not only that, I knew I’d just given myself another one. Jesse Walker was the kind of wound a girl could never recover from.
Rose placed the platter she’d been drying on the counter and came toward me with her arms opened. I shot a quick glance at the stairs again, wishing I could escape up them.
Then Rose’s tiny arms folded me up into a big hug, and there was nowhere else I’d rather have been.
“I love you, sweetheart,” she said after a while. “We all love you. You are loved.” She smiled up at me through the tears trailing down her cheeks. “Don’t let anyone else, most of all yourself, tell you you’re not.”
She was crying. I was crying. I’d never cried as much in my entire life as I’d cried that summer.
Giving me a moment to let that set in, she rubbed my arms, then let me go. Rose had a sixth sense about what I needed without having to even ask. She knew when I needed a hug, when I needed to be left alone, and when I just needed to think.
That sixth sense made sense. She’d been through it all before. She’d figured it out with Jesse first.
As much as I wanted to sprint up those stairs, I couldn’t. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. Exhausted in the way that sleep wouldn’t cure.
Once I was inside my room, I peeled my wet dress off and changed into a pair of leggings and that old tee of Jesse’s that had become my favorite sleep shirt. I made sure my window was closed and locked before I tucked myself into bed.
It was the first night I’d kept my window closed since I’d climbed up into Jesse’s room. I never thought I could cry as much as I did over a window, but my sobs ripped through me so long and so hard that, after a while, they rocked me to sleep.
A CLAP OF thunder shaking the farmhouse jolted me awake. It was still dark and my eyes still felt puffy, so I knew it couldn’t have been all that long since I’d fallen asleep. After fumbling around for my phone, I saw it was just past midnight.
Another crack, that one shaking the house even more, and I instinctively reached for the space beside me on the bed.
I found . . . nothing. Just an empty space and a cool to the touch sheet.
Jesse wasn’t lying beside me. He wasn’t here to wrap me up in his arms, whisper in his sleepy voice that everything was all right, followed by a yawn, before we fell back asleep.
Jesse was gone because I’d pushed him away. Like I always knew I would. Like I knew I had to. For reasons I couldn’t quite remember in my sleep stupor, but for reasons that had seemed important earlier.
I tried lying back down. That lasted for all of two seconds before it became clear I couldn’t fall back asleep with the thoughts raging through my mind.
How could I let Jesse go? How could I let the Walkers go? How could I simply cut the best things in my life loose? Would I really walk away because things got hard? Would I really push the people who loved me away because they’d gotten too close? Would I really take the first healthy thing that had come into my life in a long time and throw it away?
The knowledge that I was strongly considering it made me realize I was, as Jesse said, trying to deny others what I’d been denied. I was becoming like my mom.
That was the thought that jolted me out of bed.
I moved silently down the hall and stairs and headed for the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t know where else to go. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay in my room and I couldn’t climb up into the room I wanted to be in until I figured some shit out.
I knew I was facing one of those life-changing decisions. One of those defining moments. I was at a fork in the road. Would I continue down the same self-destructive, familiar path or would I choose to make a change, scary and unknown a
s that change would be?
A flashing sign with the answer in front of me would be really nice.
A light streaming from the living room caught my attention. The house was quiet except for my footsteps padding around the kitchen floor, so someone must have left a light on. I shuffled through the foyer, and when I entered the living room, I didn’t find it empty like I thought I would.
Rose sat on the floor, a few photo albums spread out around her, along with a pot of tea still steaming on a tray.
My instinct was to back away before she noticed me. I went against my instinct.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” I said, crossing the room toward her.
She didn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, when I took a closer look at the tea tray, I saw two cups instead of one. She’d been expecting me, it would seem.
“No.” She shook her head. “I never can when I know one of my babies is hurting. I suppose it’s a mother’s curse.”
I stopped at the edge of albums. “You talked with Jesse?”
She reached for the teapot and poured some into the other cup. “I did. He let me know that he told you about his past. About his adoption.”
I played with the hem of Jesse’s shirt. “Did he tell you about us?”
Rose set the teapot down and sighed. “He didn’t need to, sweetie. I could see it all on his face.”
I shifted and fought the urge to turn around and leave. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, Rose. I just want what’s best for him, you know?”
“Believe me, Rowen, as his mother, I know plenty about wanting what’s best for him.” She looked up at me with a serious expression. “I’m just hoping you’re going to realize sooner rather than later that you are what’s best for him.”
“You don’t mean that,” I whispered.
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. And neither would Jesse. Maybe one day, Rowen, you’ll believe that, too.”
I didn’t reply. I wanted to believe that, but I wasn’t sure if I ever could. “Is everyone else asleep?” I wanted to steer the conversation away from the current topic.
“The girls are, but Neil and Jesse headed out about an hour ago with a few of the other ranch hands to look for a missing calf.”
I narrowed my eyes. “In the middle of the night? In the middle of this?” Another clap of thunder rocked the house to prove my point. “Couldn’t it have waited until morning?”
“Well, it could have,” Rose replied with a lift of her shoulders. “For anyone but Jesse or my husband.” She smiled and shook her head. “I think Neil was eager to get out of the house after the . . . earlier events, and Jesse looked like he needed the distraction even more.” I didn’t need to wonder why or what he needed a distraction from. “It’s probably for the best, anyways. There are plenty of predators out there, cliffs to tumble over, or fences to get tangled up in. A calf won’t last long once it’s separated from the herd.”
It still seemed extreme, but that seemed to be the status quo when it came to ranching and cowboys. “I hope they find the little thing soon then.”
“Me too,” Rose said with a nod. “I was getting these out for you.” Rose swept her hands over the photo albums. “When Jesse let me know he told you about the adoption, I figured you’d have questions and you know what they say . . .” she studied a photo of a young boy with white blond hair and smiled, “a picture says a thousand words.”
I tip-toed around the half dozen albums she had spread around her and took a seat beside her.
“And then I started thumbing through one, and I just kept thumbing.” She waved at the mass of albums.
I picked up the one closest to me and opened it to the first page. A young Neil and Rose stood with a young boy with sad eyes. He clung to Rose where she held him. Neil and Rose were smiling. Five-year-old Jesse was not. A note below the photo read, The day we brought our baby home.
A lump formed in my throat. I was so familiar with the hopeless, lost look on young Jesse’s face I could have been looking in a mirror.
“I’m glad he told you.” Rose leaned over and studied the picture. “It’s something he doesn’t like to relive, but it will always be a part of him.” She was quiet for a few moments as she gazed at the photo. “What those people did to him was unthinkable. His own flesh and blood abused and neglected him in ways worst enemies wouldn’t even conceive of doing to one another.”
I polished my thumb over Jesse’s sad face. I couldn’t comprehend how anyone could show anything but total love and adoration for the child in the photo.
“When the agency described what had happened to him . . . When we had to read through pages and pages of notes detailing the abuse he’d gone through . . .” Rose’s voice trembled, but she cleared her throat and continued, “Neil and I couldn’t not adopt him. We knew the risks. A young boy abused in the ways he had been had a high likelihood of becoming an extremely troubled young man. But you know what we said?” She chuckled and smiled down at the picture. “We told them to stick their ‘likelihoods’ where the sun doesn’t shine and asked to take our son home.”
I smiled with her and flipped the page. “And you all lived happily ever after.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, taking a sip of her tea, “but we didn’t underestimate the power of a stable home and a loving family. We gave him that, and the rest was up to him.”
The next page was his first day of kindergarten. Well, homeschool kindergarten, but he still had a backpack and a new pair of boots, and he posed in front of the Walkers’ front door. His eyes were still sad, but he wore a smile.
The photo on the next page was Jesse up on a horse, maybe a couple years older. He had on a hat three sizes too big for him. He had another smile on his face, but in that one, his eyes matched his smile.
“He got better,” I stated, flipping to the next page. “You and Neil fixed him.”
“It took a lot of time and even more hard work, but yes, Jesse got better,” Rose said, grabbing another album. “But he fixed himself. We gave him a hand up, but the only person who could fix Jesse was Jesse.”
When her eyes shifted back to me, they softened. She might as well have just said The only person who could fix Rowen was Rowen.
A few pages later, I found a picture of the Jesse I knew. He was a few years younger, but he wore the same white tee, painted-on jeans, light hat, and brown boots. It was the first photo I’d seen where he’d been smiling big enough to notice his dimples. My heart hurt when I stared at that picture long enough.
I started to cry again.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Rose grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze.
“My mom hates me, Rose,” I said, wiping away the tears. “My mom brought that man back into her life. Back into my life. How could anyone who loved someone do that to them?”
“Your mother doesn’t hate you. She just has a very poor way of showing her love.” Rose scooted closer so she could wrap her arm around me. “I couldn’t tell you what drew your mom and me together way back when. She was a lot like she is today, and I was a lot like I am today. But there was a chemistry between us. She never opened up to me, but I always sensed she’d lived a hard life. One she was running away from.”
I grabbed my cup of tea and took a sip. I’d never known my grandparents. I’d never known any family other than my mom. I’d also guessed there must have been a lot of bad blood between them because I’d never once received a birthday card from my own grandparents. It was all I’d ever known though, so I’d never given it a lot of thought.
Could it be I didn’t know a single blood relative, including my own father for crying out loud, because mom had pushed away everyone? The same way she’d pushed me away as much as a parent could an underage child in their home?
While I couldn’t be certain, it seemed a very possible explanation.
“So what does that mean?” I said, taking another sip before setting my cup back down. “I forgive and forget?”
Rose sho
ok her head. “No, Rowen. It means you let go.” She brushed my hair behind my ear in a motherly way. “Sometimes we just have to cut off the dead branches in our life. Sometimes that’s the only way we can keep the tree alive. It’s hard and it hurts, but it’s what’s best.” She paused to take a breath. “Don’t let a dying branch take you down with it. Maybe one day she’ll change, but don’t go down with her, Rowen.”
“But she’s kind of taking me down no matter what I do,” I said, unable to look away from Jesse’s picture. “Art school was my ticket out of there. But now . . . the only place I have to go at the end of summer is back home. I tried following her rules this summer. I tried so hard to please her. But none of it mattered. I doubt she was even planning on paying my way through art school in the first place.”
“Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn’t, but don’t let your mom decide your future.”
I exhaled. “Kind of hard not to in this case.” Another clap of thunder rocked the house. The lights flickered. “Art school’s kind of expensive, and money isn’t something I have a lot of.”
“Have you ever thought about starting out at a community college with a good art program? Then transferring to a dedicated art school later?” Rose poured herself another cup of tea and topped mine off.
“Not really,” I said. “But at this point, I’m willing to consider any and all options that have me doing something related to art. Unless it involves paint-by-numbers. Because that’s the opposite of art.”
Rose fought a losing battle to keep her smile contained. “Here’s the way I see it. You’ll have earned enough money this summer to pay for a year’s tuition at a community college. If you want to come back next summer, we’d be happy to have you, and you could save enough for the following year.” I wasn’t sure if what I heard was real. Was the answer to my college dilemma so easily solved? “After that, you can apply for financial aid and scholarships and get into whatever art school you want. Doing it on your own, without being dependent on your mother.”
“I was never coming here to work for pay, Rose. Mom sent me here so I could prove to her I could work hard and walk a line.” The truck ride to Willow Springs, when Jesse played his favorite CD, popped to mind. Mr. Cash and his lyrics took on a very personal meaning.