helplessly. “I’ve only seen you a few times. This past hour has been the longest conversation we’ve ever had.”
“I know.” Maureen looked down at her hands, which Lisa could see were scarred and work-worn. “Did you ever read a poem by Robert Frost that has a line in it about home being where they have to take you in when you go there?”
“Well, yes. I studied American literature. It’s called ‘Death of the Hired Man.’” Lisa drew in a sharp breath. “Maureen, are you dying?”
Horror flooded Maureen’s face. “No, no. I’m sorry. I would never burden you with that. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I’m saying this all wrong. I’m not dying, but I’ve been sick with an antibiotic-resistant infection. Even though I had health insurance, the hospital bills and treatments wiped out most of my savings. I lost my job and my apartment. I had to get away from the weather in Illinois, so I thought I’d come here.” Shame filled her face. “I know it’s a lot to ask. You probably think I’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Lisa admitted. Her brain and her emotions were on overload. She desperately wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over her head. She could see that Maureen was as exhausted as she was, her eyes drooping and her face set in grim lines.
“When I drove up tonight, I planned to ask the new owners of this place if they knew where you lived, but then you came home—”
“And...you want to stay?”
“Only a little while, until I can find a job, get back on my feet.” She gave Lisa a desperate look. “I promise it’ll only be for a little while.”
Through the swirl of her emotions, she mostly felt curious. “Why, after all these years?”
“Several reasons, but mostly unresolved history, and I decided I had to return to my hometown and quit being a coward. When I...ran away, I went to Aunt Violet in Chicago.”
“Yes, Grandma told me.”
“Before she died, she told me I had to come here, make things right, or I would never have peace.” She tilted her head and gave another little shrug.
With a start, Lisa remembered that her grandfather had made exactly that gesture. Lisa’s heart ached. She had been dealing with her own problems all day, but she knew this woman had a much bigger one. Lisa might be expecting a baby that would change her life in ways she couldn’t yet imagine, but she had security, friends and her own business. Maureen had nothing except a daughter she barely knew—and consequences for actions she’d taken thirty-three years ago.
Lisa wanted to know more, much more, about Maureen’s motivations, reasons, life, but she couldn’t handle one more thing tonight.
In her mind Lisa could hear Gemma and Carly warning her to be careful, that it might all be a scam, but she met Maureen’s hesitant gaze and said, “Of course you can stay. You can have my old room—your old room, or the smallest bedroom, whichever one you want.”
IN SPITE OF the chilly wind that was swirling dead leaves around his boots, Ben stood jacketless and bareheaded by the pasture fence and stared out at his mustangs. He had enough land to support a herd twice this size, but right now this was as much as he could handle.
He was waiting for Zach, Jason Littletrees’s cousin, who would teach Ben about the horses and manage the herd.
Jason had suggested Ben should learn all he could while Zach was on the Riverbend. Zach never stayed in one place too long, so when Zach moved on, Ben would know what to look for in a new ranch manager. Ben hadn’t planned to hire another one. He’d hoped Zach would be a permanent fixture. However he’d called around and learned that Zach was the best at what he did, and that was what Ben wanted. He would deal with a new hire when the time came.
In the meantime he was brooding about the bombshell Lisa had dropped on him the day before. He’d had twenty-four hours to get used to the idea of being a dad, and he still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He hunched his shoulders against the cutting breeze and thought back over the conversation they’d had the day before.
Everything he’d told Lisa was true. He’d never intended to be a father or thought it would be forced on him. On the other hand, Lisa probably hadn’t intended to be a mother, either, at least not right now. He knew he felt reluctant about his impending fatherhood, but he didn’t know how Lisa felt about motherhood. She was adamant about keeping the baby, but he didn’t know how she actually felt about it. He didn’t really know her.
They’d been friends when they were kids, at least until the infamous jailbreak, after which his parents had refused to let him have anything to do with her. It still made him chuckle to remember that her plan had been for them to make their way to where the Canadian River ran through Oklahoma and follow it to Canada. The Canadian River would have taken them nowhere near Canada, but they’d had no chance to find out because his dad and Sheriff Jepson had tracked them down only a few blocks from the jail.
His punishment had been to apologize to Mrs. Crabtree, weed her garden all summer and burn the slingshot that had landed him in jail in the first place. He’d been so busy, there’d been no chance of getting into any trouble, or even seeing much of his friends until fall. He obeyed his parents’ orders to avoid Lisa and it had become a habit over the years. Until last December in Chicago.
He walked along the fence line, favoring his right knee, an old football injury that stiffened up on him in the cold. What did he actually know about Lisa, the woman who was going to be the mother of his child? They had graduated from high school together and he’d gone straight to play for the Sooners. Oh, and got a business degree while he was at it.
Lisa was smart, near the top of their class, but she’d gone to the community college, taken care of her grandparents on that landfill they’d called a ranch and had become a whiz at real estate, even had her own business. He felt a spark of pride in all she’d done for herself. It was good to know their child wouldn’t lack for ambition.
What would the kid lack, though? What did a baby need beyond the tangible items like food, clothing, a crib, diapers? He had no idea.
At the sound of someone pulling into his lane, he turned around to see an older pickup with shining silver paint pulling an ancient Airstream. It was coming his way.
It must be Zach.
Ben had offered to let him live in the house, but the horseman had said he would bring his own house with him. Ben knew that itinerant ranch and rodeo workers often had their own motor homes or mobile homes, but he’d never before seen one like this. It was old, but its top-of-the-line pedigree showed in the Airstream’s clean lines and shining silver skin. It had either been well cared for or beautifully restored, and so had the pickup, which he could now see was a 1950s-era Ford F-1 painted silver to match the Airstream.
Ben knew the rig must get a lot of attention as it rolled down the road.
Zach deftly pulled his truck to a stop, reversed, and maneuvered his home into place beside the rambling ranch house. The shining truck and trailer only served to make Ben’s place look even worse. Before he could walk over to greet his new employee, he heard another vehicle on the road and glanced back to see three more cars following Zach onto Riverbend Ranch.
Amazed,
