someone like Millie so young. Little good it’d done him, though, seeing how he’d gone and died way before his time. What’d Jim been thinking, shooting from a moving four-wheeler? Had disaster written all over it.
Yeah? How many shots you taken from a Mark V at fifty knots, yet you’re still ticking?
Jim may have been hot-dogging, but it wasn’t a stunt Cooper hadn’t tried himself. Only difference was that Cooper had gone fast enough for the devil not to catch up.
Even when they’d been kids, Millie had been a feisty little thing. He couldn’t even imagine the fury she’d had with her husband for putting himself in that position. With two kids, he should’ve known better.
But then who was Cooper to talk?
His entire adult life had been based on a split-second nightmare from which he still hadn’t awoken.
* * *
“HOW ARE YOU this morning?” Millie asked her father-in-law, even though she knew he couldn’t respond.
He replied with a snarling growl.
To say Clint was having a tough time adjusting to his new reality was putting it mildly. Poor guy had been a powerhouse all his life. He was making progress in his recovery, but it was far too slow for his liking.
Millie hustled through the personal-hygiene routine Peg taught her to follow. The nurse would handle his primary bathing, but no matter how much her father-in-law clearly resented Millie invading his personal space, for his own well-being, the job needed to be done.
“You should’ve seen your naughty granddaughter trying to get out of school this morning.” While brushing Clint’s teeth, she kept up a line of running chatter. She couldn’t tell if her attempt at levity had any effect on the patient, but it at least helped calm her nerves. “It’s cold enough out there, we might have to break the smoke off the chimney.”
All her good cheer earned was another grunt.
“Your new therapist should be here after a while. I think she’ll be working on speech today. Peg’s got a whole slew of folks coming out to help.” She tidied his bedding. “It’s gonna be a regular Grand Central Station ’round here.”
More grumbling erupted from Clint, but she ignored him in favor of slipping his small whiteboard around his neck, along with the attached dry-erase marker. It was a struggle for him to smoothly move his right arm and hand, but as with the rest of his recovery, with each passing day he grew more adept at the skill.
“Now that you’re all cleaned up, I’m going to make your breakfast then be right back.”
She prepared a light meal of scrambled eggs with cheese and pureed peaches. Clint loved coffee, so she filled a lidded mug with the steaming liquid then added a few ice cubes before sealing the top and adding a straw. Would he notice it wasn’t her usual awful brew?
Peg said Clint’s hearing was fine.
Had he heard Cooper enter the house?
Millie didn’t have long to wait for an answer. She entered Clint’s room only to find he’d already been practicing his writing. On his board were the barely legible letters: C-O-O-P?
His bloodshot eyes begged for an answer that left her wishing they’d found a way to install Clint’s hospital-style bed in the upstairs master bedroom as opposed to Kay’s old sewing room.
How much had Clint heard?
With an extra cantankerous growl, he waved the board hard enough to send the attached marker flying on its string. The writing instrument landed smack dab in the center of Clint’s eggs, which only made him roar louder.
Jerking the marker back as if it were on a yo-yo string, he drew a line through his former word to painstakingly write: O-U-T!
* * *
“WHO ARE YOU?”
After a long day of checking the well-being of not just the cattle, but fencing and the overall state of the land, as well, Cooper had just finished brushing his horse when a pretty, freckle-faced girl, whose braids reminded him an awful lot of Millie’s back when she’d been a kid, raised her chin and scowled.
“Mom doesn’t like strangers messing with our livestock.”
The fire flashing behind her sky-blue eyes also reminded him of her momma. “You must be LeeAnn?”
“Yeah?” Eyes narrowed, she asked, “Who are you, and how do you know my name?”
A boy peeked out from behind the partially closed door. He had the same red hair Jim had had when he’d been about that age. Jim Junior? Or J.J., as Peg more often called him. Through emails, Cooper had seen the kids’ pictures, but they hadn’t done them justice.
His throat grew uncomfortably tight.
How proud his brother must’ve been of these two, which only made his actions all the more undecipherable. If Cooper possessed such treasure, he’d be so careful....
But then he’d treasured his mother and look what’d happened to her.
Cooper pulled himself together, removed his right glove, then cautiously approached his niece, holding out his hand for her to shake. “LeeAnn, J.J., sorry it’s taken me so long to finally meet you. I’m your uncle Cooper.”
“The Navy SEAL?” Seven-year-old J.J. found his courage and bolted out from his hiding spot. “Dad said you blow up ships and scuba dive and other cool stuff.”
Judging by LeeAnn’s prepubescent scowl, she wasn’t impressed. “Mom said you abandoned your family when we needed you most.”
How did he respond? Millie had only spoken the truth.
From behind him, Sassy snorted.
“You didn’t ride her, did you?” His pint-size nemesis followed him on his trek to the feed bin. “Because if you did, don’t ever do it again. Sassy’s mine.”
“Interesting...” He scooped grain into a bucket. The faint earthy-sweet smell brought him back to a time when he’d been LeeAnn and J.J.’s age. Everything had been so simple then. Do his chores, his homework, play with the dog. Speaking of which, he hadn’t seen their mutt, Marvel. Not a good sign. “Because Sassy was a birthday present for me.”
“You’ve gotta be like a hundred,” his nephew noted.
Most days, I feel like it. “Only seventy-five.”
“That’s still pretty old....”
His niece narrowed her eyes. “That’s not true. I heard Mom talking to Aunt Peg about Grandpa, and she said he was in his seventies. That means you can’t be that old—probably just like fifty.”
Cooper laughed. “Yeah, that’s closer.”
LeeAnn wrenched the feed bucket from him. “Since she’s my horse, I’ll take care of her.”
“Be
