“I am on my feet,” I’d stubbornly replied, still crying and making the statement all the more absurdly ridiculous.
You can’t trust strangers. You can’t trust anyone – not even nice older women who appear to be taking you out of harm’s way. You can’t.
“I don’t think you are, honey,” she’d returned – equally stubborn and painfully accurate. “I live about a half hour from here. A tiny little town called Corydon – it's not even on most maps. No one will bother you there, I promise. And you can leave whenever you want.”
I’d hesitated, while Murphy looked back and forth between the two of us. “How do I know I can trust you?” I’d finally demanded, my voice cracking.
Kate shook her head then. “You don’t. But you do know you’ve gotta trust someone. You’re not safe here, honey.”
I had nodded my consent, wanting to sob from the sting of those truthful words. Kate had breathed a sigh of relief and urged me to hurry.
There wasn’t much to grab. Murphy’s jacket, my small duffel bag that held the only belongings I’d brought with us. There hadn’t been time to pack – to think – to choose. We had fled Tennessee like fugitives. Luggage hadn’t really been an option.
In less than five minutes, Murphy and I were flying down the highway, belted tightly together in the passenger’s side of Kate’s truck. I’d been scared, but maybe incrementally less scared than I was when I had woken up that morning. Maybe we’d found a friend – an ally. Maybe the world wasn’t ending quite yet.
And that was how I had met Kate four months ago on a cold, hopeless February day in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. That was how I’d stumbled upon a chance to live a somewhat normal life, and how I’d ended up behind the counter of a hardware store in a town so small that it wasn’t on most maps.
You’ve gotta trust someone.
Lucky for me, I’d trusted the right person.
“You know I can’t just take chances,” I argued now, mentally pushing aside the fact that I was the one who had agreed to the date to begin with. That didn’t count. I’d been in some weird, dreamy daze at the time, stunned out of reality by the gorgeous, grinning charm that had poured off of the handsome stranger who’d wandered into this store.
“You took a chance on me,” Kate rebutted.
“I was lucky,” I shot back, shrugging. Why did it even matter to Kate whether or not I went on this date? She knew why it was a bad idea. I had told Kate everything. She was the last person in the world who should have been encouraging me to do this.
“You weren’t lucky. You trusted your gut. Your instincts. I think you must have had a pretty strong instinct about this boy, to say yes so easily. You’ve been through complete and total hell, Anne. You know a threat when you see one. And you didn’t see one. You saw a nice rancher – a friendly, handsome man. They do exist – even out here.” She paused, giving me time to digest her words and lazily swinging her legs on the stool.
“He was cute. I was being dumb. I was being a dumb girl,” I persisted, Penn’s bright blue eyes and broad, strong shoulders flashing through my mind.
“No,” Kate stated, displeased by my comment. “You are not a dumb girl, Valerie Anne. You’re a survivor – and that means you’re smart. You’re smart and strong. I will get that hammered into your head if it’s the last thing I do on this godforsaken planet.” She hugged me then – Kate was a bigtime hugger, and I’d found that out rather quickly. It had been so alien to me at first – even my grandparents hadn’t hugged me as a child.
But I’d grown to very much appreciate Kate’s affection. She was the only person in the entire world who knew everything about me and still thought I was worth a damn. Not even I thought that. I hugged her back, wondering for the millionth time, if this was what it was like to have a mother.
“He’s not going to like me, Kate,” I said softly.
“Honey, he’s already over the moon about you,” she replied, smoothing my ponytail with a loving hand.
“How do you know?” I wouldn’t believe her, regardless of what she said, but I was interested.
“The same way I knew you needed me. Sometimes, you just know.”
3
Penn
Hardick Ranch was bustling with its normal June activity when I pulled back into the office. June wasn’t so much of a skier month, but we had loads of rock climbers, trail junkies, and obviously, horse enthusiasts. Summertime also was prime season for families who wanted their kids to experience something close to “camping”, even if they were actually staying in little cabins and not tents. I held a Sunday night campfire every week, complete with s’mores and hot cocoa. Seeing little city slicker kids plopped down on tree trunks, fascinated by the shimmering fireflies and sounds of the forested mountains at night – there wasn’t much in the world that made me happier than that.
Occasionally a mom or a dad would try to hush their offspring’s excitement, or admonish them for excessively sticky, marshmallow covered fingers – and it always made me shake my head a little. I’d give anything to have what they had. Finding a wife – making our own troop of little “snot-nosed tyrants” – and creating a life that was just ours... Man oh man. Those people were so lucky they’d forgotten what luck was.
Mom had always loved the campfires – whether they were for the visitors or just our own family hanging out. I was just fourteen when she had passed, but that was plenty old enough to have memory upon memory of her laughter – her hugs – the way she made you feel loved just by looking at you. Maybe Mom was one of the main reasons I enjoyed hosting the campfires so much. They made me feel close to her – as close as I could be, considering she was gone. If I focused on the flames long enough, tracing the bright red tips all the way down to the searing hot white-blue base, I could almost convince myself that maybe she was there somehow.
It felt like she was.
Payden avoided the campfires like the plague. He’d admitted to me once, and only once, that they made him too horribly depressed. They reminded him of mom too, but in such a way that Payden’s quiet soul couldn’t seem to bear.
Preston had rarely been able to sit still long enough to enjoy the campfires when we were kids, let alone now that he was an adult with adult things to do. (Namely, run the ranch, make the money, and party away every responsibility and memory that he possibly could as soon as the sun set.)
No one ever even said the word “campfire” to Pierce. Of course, he had the same bittersweet recall of mom that we all did, but Sarah’s death had added to his pain in such an extreme way that he simply pretended certain things didn’t exist at all. Avy and Braden weren’t allowed to attend – I assumed it was because even one happy word about their experience would have crushed Pierce with sadness. Sarah had hosted the campfires before her accident. Pierce had attended every single one just to be near her.
My father wasn’t ever to be found at these nightly gatherings either. He said it was because he was an old man, and darkness was an old man’s signal to sleep. But he’d confessed to me on more than one occasion (usually after a glass or two of Cabernet Sauvignon), that he missed “his River” so much just thinking about former campfires – actually going to one was unthinkable.