If Carma sat very, very still, maybe Gil would forget she was there until she had a chance to slip out the back door.
And run.
Gil leaned an elbow on top of a filing cabinet and speared his fingers through his hair. “I have no clue what’s happening here.”
“Thank Tori,” Delon said. “She pointed out that Dad was perfectly happy with his three original rigs until Mom came along. Next thing you know, they were running around fifteen trucks. Then she left and nothing changed until you decided you were gonna build a damn dynasty.”
Gil stared at his mother. “You built it up?”
Rochelle Yazzie stared straight back at him, an older, feminine version of Gil, right down to the just-try-to-fuck-with-me attitude.
“You don’t think you got all that from your father?” She waved a hand that took him in from head to foot, and Carma almost smiled. Everything about both Gil and Delon that was missing from Merle was wrapped up in their mother, tight as braided rawhide. “When I had to leave, I hired Mrs. Nordquist to ride herd on him, and the bookkeepers downtown to keep track of the financials. I reviewed all the contracts clear up until you took over. And for a while after.”
“Shit.” Hank bumped himself on the forehead. “That’s why you never divorced him.”
“I worked my tail off to make this place a going concern. I wasn’t gonna sell it or let him fritter it away.” She made a fist and pressed it to her breastbone. “And we are divorced where it counts.”
Meaning back home, among her people.
“Why are you here?” Gil asked abruptly.
She lifted her chin, defiant. “I have ten years’ experience with the road department, managing twice as much equipment and three times as many employees as you have here. Plus you need drivers and I have a list of prospects who’ve graduated from the CDL program at the college in Shiprock.”
“How many of these people are related to you?” Delon asked.
Her mouth quirked. “That depends on how you define ‘related.’ But I wouldn’t consider hiring them if they weren’t reliable.”
“We only have three tractors that aren’t already running full time,” Gil argued, his edges sharpening with every word. “We need owner-operators.”
Rochelle didn’t give an inch. “A few of my people would be interested in buying their own rigs if they had guaranteed work. I’ve already looked into financing with the Navajo Nation loan program and the VA, and Hank’s sister has some other good options for minorities through her small-business programs.”
Wow. They had covered a lot of bases in the time since Carma had talked to Hank. Or, more likely, Rochelle had been planning this for a while, on the assumption that Merle would bow out sooner rather than later.
“Dad and I have been looking at used tractors, in case we got the contract.” Unlike his brother, Delon was getting more enthusiastic. “We can afford three, maybe four, if we find older models that need some work and have Max and the crew whip them into shape.”
Analise tossed in her two cents. “All the Heartland loads will be drop and hooks, so you’ll have extra trailers.”
Drop and hook? Oh, right. When the client preloaded trailers and all the driver had to do was drop off their empty one and hook onto the next.
None of which was making Gil any happier. Carma could practically see a red line creeping up from his chest, into the corded muscles of his neck, toward his eyebrows. She did not want to be in the vicinity when his pressure gauge topped out.
Damn this puny little office, and damn her curiosity for overriding her survival instincts. A good Blackfeet knew better than to let herself get cornered.
Everyone jumped when Gil slammed the flat of his hand against the filing cabinet. “Fine! Y’all apparently have all the answers, so I’m gonna run over to Dumas and pick up those seals for the Jacobs truck. Tell Quint to order supper from the café. I might not be back right away.”
Code for I have had more than I can take, and I’m going to a meeting. Or to talk to his sponsor. Anywhere but here.
And anyone but Carma.
He’d confided in her, and in return she’d brought all this down on his head—although Carma had predicted Delon’s reaction almost to the word.
She doubted that was gonna get her off the hook.
* * *
When Gil walked into his house that night, Quint was holed up in his bedroom, the patio door was open, and his mother was sitting in one of the chairs, staring out at the prairie beyond the chain-link fence.
Well, shit. Tamela had told him not to put off clearing the air. Oh yeah, and Be nice. Your mother is trying to help. She’d said pretty much the same thing about Carma, which was where Gil had planned to start. Typical of this damn day that he didn’t get to choose.
He puffed out a sigh at the wary look in his mother’s dark eyes. “What, did you draw the short straw and get stuck being the one trying to make me see reason?”
“I volunteered. It’s about time I showed up for the hard stuff.”
No comment. “As sons go, I’ve kinda been an asshole.”
“As mothers go, I haven’t been a real prize, either.” She closed her hands around the armrests, finger by finger. “I could tell you what a pitiful soul I was, so sure nobody understood how hard it was for me.”
He slid into the chair set at an angle to hers. “And I could whine about having to be my brother’s keeper…but we all know how much I liked bossing him around.”
“From the day he was born.” Her shoulders moved restlessly. “Merle wasn’t a terrible father.”
“There are a lot worse. And Steve and Miz Iris were always there for us. We were lucky that way.”
“That wasn’t just luck. When I had to leave, I asked them to look after the two of you until I came back.” She sighed heavily. “I didn’t think it would take me quite this long.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Well, Miz Iris took you at your word. She’s still fussing over us.”
“They are good people.”
“Yes, they are.”
They fell quiet, listening to the usual chorus of cicadas and various other night things. In the cluster of trees beyond the fence an owl hooted, and Gil saw his mother’s lips move in a silent prayer. What was it she’d told him about owls? He couldn’t remember if they were considered a curse or a blessing. There was so much he’d willfully refused to learn, as if that would teach her a lesson. What exactly, he didn’t know.
“Why didn’t you come to see me when you were going through the program?” she asked.
Hell. It had been so long, he’d thought he’d dodged this bullet. “The rules say to be willing to make amends…except when it might be hurtful to you or the other person. You think you’re to blame for my addiction, and I couldn’t say that you were completely wrong, so why put us both through all that? We’ll never know either way. Maybe it would have been different if you were here. Maybe I was just programmed that way.” He hitched a shoulder. “Look at Bing’s grandson. She’s an addiction counselor and he died of an overdose, even though she’d done everything she could to help him.”
A thought that scared the living hell out of Gil. What if Quint was genetically doomed to repeat his father’s mistakes?
“I should have done better,” she said.
“You didn’t have a lot of choices.”
“And I made the worst of them.” She shook her head. “You were barely more than babies, but I was so angry that you chose this place and these people instead of your own mother. As if you’d done it on purpose, to hurt me.”
Guilt slid like a knife between Gil’s ribs. Another reason he’d avoided this conversation. The wounds went both ways.
“I did, you know,” he admitted. “From as far back as I can remember, I knew that old man didn’t approve of me, so I was bound and determined to piss him off any way I could.” He smiled grimly. “From what I can remember, I’m a slightly paler version of him, so he only had himself to blame.”
She laughed, then sighed. “But you and Delon blamed me.”
“We were kids.” He took a breath, then said, “And it’s not easy to come back to a man who didn’t miss you.”
Her shoulders snapped back. “You knew?”
“I figured it out while I was talking to the counselor in rehab.” He fingered a frayed spot on the knee of his jeans, worrying it into a hole. “I was telling her about you and Dad, and it just hit me. I didn’t remember him ever being sad. Not the way you were. He was perfectly fine without you, except for the laundry. He hated doing laundry.”
“And he was terrible at it.”
“That’s why none of us wear anything white. Single dad hack.”
“Smart.” She bowed her head. “It wasn’t only him. I fell pretty hard at the start. My first grown-up romance! But if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, I would’ve been gone in under six months. I was so homesick, I seriously considered going home and raising you by myself.”
Gil tried to imagine the person he would be if she had. A life without Delon. Without rodeo and the friends it had brought him. Without Quint. His breath stuck in his chest, then wobbled out. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Me too.” She turned her head and the light from Quint’s window glistened in her damp eyes. “I am so grateful to Tori for insisting that Delon include me in their wedding, and invite me to visit whenever I wanted. And to you for following their lead. All my beautiful boys. I missed so much, but I wouldn’t fix a single mistake if it meant not having any one of you.”
“Same here.” But they were being honest, so he had to ask. “How long are you staying?”
“This time?” she asked, completing his thought. “As long as you need me. I can’t turn back time, but I would like to do whatever I can to help you from now on.”
He cleared a rapidly swelling lump from his throat. “You know, I’d have to be a total hypocrite to keep holding a grudge now.”
“How’s that?”
“I get to have my son with me because his mother made pretty much the exact same choice you did—one part of her family for another. Krista can’t have both. Neither could you.”
She nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“Well, there you go.” And they were both ready to dial back the intensity, so he said, “I guess we’d better figure out where you’re going to live.”
She manufactured a frown. “Don’t even try to stick me in that dismal little apartment.”
“What is so wrong with that place?” he demanded, baffled.
“Only a man would have to ask.”
He sighed mightily and reached out a hand. She tentatively laid hers in it.
“You know, I worry about Krista being so far away,” he said, gazing up at the sky. “I think a boy always needs his mother…even when he tries his damnedest not to.”
The tears that had been shimmering in her eyes spilled over. He squeezed her hand, and together they watched the narrow sliver of a new moon climb into the sky.