Good thing she hadn’t seen my gun. “Whether a fluke or divine karma, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Hope settled her neck against the headrest.
“Is everything okay?”
“Not really.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been thinking about what Levi said, about the baby, before he… Maybe Theo is expecting me to take care of the baby on my own. I already did that once. Not something I want to go through again.”
I knew little about her husband. During the few years she’d been married, before Mario died, I’d come home less than usual. “Mario wasn’t around much?”
“Hardly ever. Sounds mean, but I was so damn mad at him when he got killed in that accident. He didn’t leave us money. Don’t know what I would’ve done if Daddy hadn’t given me the trailer. I had no other place to go. I couldn’t tell Jake about Levi and take his charity.”
I shivered, unnerved by the feeling I didn’t know my sister at all.
“Know what’s kind of funny, though?”
“What?”
“I always wanted to be like you. Leave here, leave Daddy. Start my life over away from the damn ranch and the folks in town who always look at me with pity. ‘Oh, that’s Hope Gunderson. A horse killed the girl’s mother when she was only three. And then, the poor little thing blew her best friend’s head clean off when she was barely five. Such a tragedy.’”
Why had I thought Hope had it easier? A strange thought niggled. Maybe she wasn’t the selfish one in our family.
“Now maybe I finally have the chance to leave.”
“Do you want to?”
“I want to run as far as I can whenever I hear the people talking about me being a bad mother.”
“Who? I’ll give those self-righteous biddies a piece of my mind.”
“It’s okay, Mercy. Some of what they’re saying is true. I know I didn’t always do right by Levi.”
“Hope-”
“I’m not making excuses. I loved him. He knew I loved him.” Her voice was a raw whisper. “Lord, I loved that kid so much. My life isn’t ever gonna be the same without my boy. My guts are tied up in knots every morning when I wake up and realize I’ll never see his sweet face again.”
My deep sigh resounded in the anguished quiet.
She reached for my hand and squeezed, but she didn’t look at me. “You were starting to love him, too. That means a lot to me.”
“I’ll find out who did this to him. I swear.”
“I know you will.”
We held hands, but I couldn’t tell if it was for her benefit or for mine.
Finally, Hope gathered herself and started the car. “I’ll take you back to your truck and follow you home in case one of them boys gets a fool idea about doing the same thing. We crazy Gunderson women gotta stick together, don’t we?”
“Yeah.”
When had the tables turned and she’d become my ally? My protector?
It didn’t matter. I was just glad I wasn’t alone.
My morning yoga practice didn’t offer me the usual sense of calm, which disturbed me on several levels. The last fifteen years I’d come to rely on yoga, not only to keep my muscles pliable, but also as a mental refuge where I existed only as deep breath and flowing poses.
Firing a gun gave me the same sense of otherworldliness. The repetition of loading clips. Reconfiguring. Firing. Replacing targets. Loading more clips. More firing. Then the smell of clean cotton and gun oil as I performed my cleaning ritual.
I could drag out my guns and complete my mental health regiment. Ooh. I could call it Yoga Zen and the Art of Assassination. Maybe that’s what I should do-make a DVD.
On the other hand, I hadn’t done any shooting since before Levi’s murder. Seemed a waste of time, trying to keep myself on top of my game, when the truth was I’d pretty much fallen to the bottom of the heap.
I’d put in my twenty. My choices were re-up for another four or get the hell out. Contrary to popular myth, the U.S. government did not bar soldiers from retiring during wartime. Still, I dreaded making the phone call. I left a message for my CO with a personal update on my health condition, and requested she start the paperwork.
Paperwork. Ugh. I hated paperwork, and it was a reminder of another chore I’d put off: cleaning Dad’s office.
I’d mostly avoided his sacred space since his death. First, because it was an ungodly mess. Second, it’d feel too much like snooping. I’d heard horror stories about the bizarre things adult children uncovered about their aged parents. I doubted Dad horded a stash of porn. Or hid letters from a secret admirer.
Once, when I still believed in happily-ever-after, I asked Dad if he ever considered remarrying. His reply? Any woman would be a step down from my mother. He’d been a man of few words, so the potent ones always stuck with me.
The coffee was fairly fresh, so I reheated a mug and ventured into the mouth of the beast.
When I opened the door, grief hit me like a Bradley assault vehicle. The room smelled like Dad: the spicy scent of Red Man chewing tobacco, Old English aftershave, and newspapers. A trace of cow shit. He’d never quite mastered wiping off his boots. After they’d taken his leg Sophie quit pestering him about it.
I braced my shoulders against the door and fought a prickle of tears.
Dammit, Mercy, get ahold of yourself.
I forced myself across the room. Another wave of sadness tightened my gut when I saw the month on his desk blotter hadn’t changed since March-the last time he’d been in here. I moved his monstrous office chair out of the corner and over to the desk. It’d nearly killed him to give it up after he’d become wheelchair bound.
My fingers traced the cracks in the seat. White stuffing stuck out like milkweed puffs. Grease stains darkened the tan leather headrest where Dad leaned back to “think” but most likely to sneak in a nap. Damn chair hadn’t seen a can of WD-40 in years. The lever to adjust the height was busted, leaving it in the lowest position. When I squeaked up to the mahogany desk, I really felt I was playing grown-up.
I sighed. Where to start? Piles teetered on every horizontal surface. I grabbed a random file folder and opened it. Invoices from Nelson’s for hay. Holy shit. That’s how much hay cost? I squinted and double-checked the date. That was the price of hay last fall.
Jake handled the day-to-day expenses and writing checks from the ranch account. Our accountant, Carol, managed the rest: payroll, filing taxes, and all the legal junk I knew nothing about. Saint Carol also paid my bills while I was overseas, not that I incurred many. Because of the war, I hadn’t traveled much in recent years even if I was granted a rare leave, so I had one indulgence: my Viper.
Maintaining the ranch books was a tradition passed down to the females who’d married into the Gunderson family. My mother, Sunny; my grandmother, Faith, before her; and my great-grandmother, Patience, before she took over the reins from my crazy great-great-grandmother, Grace. Bet she’d produced some creative numbers.
I made three piles. Keep. Throw away. And no clue. Most of the paperwork hit the trash bin. Receipts for cowboy boots from 1993? Newspaper clippings about rodeo results? A bull sale catalog from Montana?
One box of files dealt with cattle bought and sold. The lineage, both bull and heifer. Milk weight-gain ratios for the calves up to weaning. Grain weight-gain ratios for the calves after weaning. Feedlot weight gain and the sale prices.
It made my head spin. All this information needed to be logged in a computer program and the Gunderson Ranch brought into the twenty-first century.
You’d think I’d know this stuff, growing up on a big working cattle ranch. Not so. Kit McIntyre had been right about one thing: Dad had kept Hope and me sheltered from everything but the surface stuff. Now I wondered if my lack of interest in something so dear to his heart had hurt him.