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MADDY ROSE REDFOX ARRIVED in the world at four-thirty that same afternoon. Just after seven o’clock, while on the return trip from Livingston to Hollister, the dam inside Mari’s heart broke, and she began to cry.
“Pull over,” Travis said.
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Take this next exit, Mari.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Mari.”
His voice held steel tempered with compassion. Mari took the exit.
“Turn left,” he said when she reached the bottom of the offramp.
She drove beneath the overpass towards a frontage road running parallel to rusted train tracks.
“Keep heading straight.”
She drove the SUV across a cattle guard and then the train tracks. Her body quivered with emotions she fought to suppress. In front of her lay a graveled turnout that provided access to a wide, rushing river, the water muddy and swollen with rain and snowmelt. On the opposite bank, rocky hills dotted with sagebrush rolled upwards to a fading blue sky.
“Turn off the engine.”
Once she’d complied—her hands trembling so bad she dropped the keys on the floor mat—Travis pushed the release on her seatbelt, scooped her up with his strong arms and lifted her over the center console and onto his lap, her back to the passenger door, her feet propped on the console.
Her heart caught in her throat; immediate concern for his leg held her motionless. “Your leg!”
“It’s fine.” He gathered her close to his chest, one hand cradling her head against his shoulder, fingers splayed in her hair; the other wrapped around her waist in a gentle but unyielding hold. His beard-roughened jaw rubbed the top of her head as he spoke. “What’s wrong, honey? Why the tears?”
“I don’t want to t-talk about it.”
His chest rose and fell on a long sigh. “You keep holding all those feelings inside, Mari Jones, you’re either gonna work your way up to a dangerous explosion, or the stress will eat away at you and drag you down to a place you can never get out of.”
A shuddering sob escaped her lungs. With a fisted hand, she swiped futilely at the tears streaming down her face. “I d-don’t like to cry. It’s a waste of time. It changes nothing.”
“Was it a waste of time when I cried for Tash?”
“That’s different.”
“I remember how much better I felt afterwards, like all the hard knots in my stomach unraveled. The pain’s still there when I think of him, but it’s bearable now. I focus on the happy times I had with my horse, not the way he died.” His thumb gently brushed away a tear teetering on the rim of her upper lip. “If you don’t want to talk about it, don’t. But cry all you want. As long as you need. You’re safe with me.”
One word. Just one word. Safe. And the taut rein she’d kept on her emotions loosened. Her body quaked with gut-wrenching sobs as tears overflowed and poured down her cheeks. She clutched at the soft cotton of his plaid shirt, burrowed her face into the solid warmth of his chest, and wailed.
It seemed like hours passed before her sobs faded to sporadic hiccups and then ceased. Drained, she couldn’t summon the energy to move, other than to relax her grip on Travis’s shirt. She spread her fingers across the damp fabric sticking to his chest. “I got you all wet,” she said in a scratchy voice.
“It’s just a shirt.” His palm smoothed down the length of her hair and then rubbed between her shoulder blades. “Better?”
She nodded.
“Let’s walk around before we go. I need to stretch my legs. Careful now.”
He opened the passenger door with one hand while holding her steady. Mari didn’t look at him as she swiveled around on his lap and lowered her feet to the ground. His grip on her arm tightened when her knees wobbled. She inhaled the fresh evening air and squared her shoulders. Then she stepped away from his touch and stood on her own. “I’ll get your crutches.”
The rumbling sound of water rushing over rocks sounded louder as they approached the river’s edge. Dusk dimmed the sky, the few clouds in sight touched with muted orange and lavender. The air was cooler near the water.
A slight breeze dried the remnants of tears on Mari’s face and eyelashes. She crossed her arms over her chest, pulled in another fortifying breath. A dizzying sensation of lightness—as if she were floating on a cloud—swept through her. She focused her eyes on the other side of the river to regain her equilibrium.
“What river is this?” she asked. In the rush to get to Livingston, she hadn’t paid attention to the passing scenery.
“Yellowstone,” Travis replied in a mild tone. “One of the best rivers in the world for trout fishing.”
“Do you like to fish?”
“Sure do. I take a few days off every August to fish in the backcountry with one or two of my friends.”
“Grady?”
“No. Summer’s the busiest time at the guest ranch. I go with Tack Branson, an old friend from my rodeo days. Elias came along last year.”
“Elias Jacobsen?”
“Yep. Why? You sound surprised.”
She dug the toe of her shoe into the gravel while she debated her words. “I saw him at the Hideaway on Saturday night.”
Travis sighed. “Yeah. I’ve heard the rumors. I’ve been meaning to check up on him, but...” He lifted one crutch and set it on the ground again.
She braved a peek at his profile; he wore a preoccupied expression. “The rumors aren’t true.”
He turned to face her with eyebrows raised.
“I kept an eye on him most of the night. When he arrived, he sat at the end of the bar and ordered one drink. He nursed that drink for three hours, and he never finished it. The whole time, he had his eyes on Elaine Stevenson.”
Travis reared his head back. “Elaine? The school principal?”
“Yep.” Mari’s mouth twitched. “She knew he watched her too. I sensed she liked it.”
“She’s at least ten years older than him.”
“So?”
He blew out a soft whistle. “Elias always had a thing for redheads.” Travis lifted his hat to comb his fingers through his hair. “Viv won’t like it.”
“Well, she should be glad to hear he’s not an alcoholic.”
He returned the hat to his head, tugged the brim lower. “Are you planning to tell her?”
“I think I should. I’ll talk with Shawna about it. Viv’s been so worried about her son.” She gave Travis a considering look. “Ten years isn’t that big an age difference.”
“It is if Elias wants to be a father.”
She shrugged. “Women give birth in their forties all the time.”
He fell quiet for a while. Then he said, “That sure was something seeing Pam and Jonathan’s baby girl. I haven’t held a newborn baby since Whitney.”
Mari released a quivering sigh as she met Travis’s shining eyes; pleasure rippled through her as she recalled the tenderness and wonder in his expression when Jonathan placed Maddy in his arms. It shouldn’t have surprised her a man so loving to his animals would cherish such a moment. “That’s the first time I held a baby,” she said. “I was so scared I’d drop her.”
“You did great. Jonathan took pictures.”
“He did? I didn’t notice.”
“You couldn’t take your eyes off the baby... Do you want kids of your own someday?”
“Oh, yes. Lots of them.”
His smile widened. “Lots? Like what, four? Six?”
She nodded. “More than anything. I want the family I never had. I want my children to know they’ll always belong. They’ll never get cast aside.”
A shadow crossed his face. “Today, when I showed you the foals... Is that...?”
She nodded again. “I pictured the foals crying for their mothers, and the mares worrying about their babies and trying to reach them.” She twisted away from his searching gaze and focused on the river. “Sometimes, during my first year in foster care, I dreamed my mom cried like that for me, that she’d do everything in her power to get me back. But she didn’t.”
Mari marveled at the calmness within her as she shared her darkest memories with Travis; her tears had cleansed away her bitterest emotions. Now it seemed she told someone else’s story, not her own. Her voice remained even, unsentimental; she didn’t seek or want his pity.
“See, my mom was an addict. Drugs. Booze. Whatever numbed her pain. The first time I got placed in foster care, I was three. At the judge’s orders, she went into rehab, got herself clean, and the state gave me back to her. But that didn’t last long. Happened twice. Strike three, and I ended up in foster care for good. She died when I was fifteen. A few months after that, my uncle took me in. I didn’t know I had an uncle.”
“He’s the man you took care of when he was dying?” His voice sounded as unemotional as her own.
“Yes. My father’s older brother. My father was in the army. He got killed in Iraq. The same day I was born. A Wednesday. My mom called me her child of woe.” Mari made a cynical face. “You remember that old nursery rhyme? Wednesday’s child is full of woe? I guess I only reminded her of her loss. She loved my father almost obsessively, I think. I didn’t understand how much until my uncle gave me a box of letters she and my father exchanged when he was overseas. She met him in New Orleans. They married three months before his deployment. His letters showed his fascination with her ancestry, her connection to the Blackfeet. He wanted her to track down her Blackfeet relations—if there were any. She didn’t have any living relatives that she knew of. Later, I found out her mother and sister—my grandmother and aunt—died in a car accident when my mom was sixteen. Her father died the following year. I see why she turned to drugs.”
Mari folded her arms tighter, a shiver tearing through her slender frame.
“You’re cold. Let’s head back. I’m driving.”
“What about your leg?”
“Your car’s an automatic. I won’t need to use my left leg. I’ll be okay.”
Her confession didn’t appear to have affected him, at least not on the outside. There was no derision or judgment on his composed features. He opened the passenger door for her and waited until she settled into the seat before shutting the door, his manner calm.
Once he’d made himself comfortable in the driver’s seat, he started the car and turned the heater on. He placed his right hand on the corner of her seatback as he twisted to glance over his right shoulder while backing up the car. Briefly, his fingers grazed her arm before he returned his hand to the steering wheel.
They rode in silence for a few minutes until he said, “It’s not your fault. Her addiction issues. I hope you understand that.”
She sighed. “I do now. As a child, I imagined everything was my fault. I tried making things better. But I learned the best way to avoid upsetting her was to hide in a corner and keep my mouth shut.”
“Did she...hit you?”
“Yes... Sometimes.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel for a moment. “Did anything bad happen to you at the foster homes?”
“The foster parents were all right. Some were stricter than others, but I realize now they tried their best. No, the people who caused me nightmares were the other foster kids, and the kids at school. I guess I didn’t look like anyone they’d seen. I was too brown to hang out with the white kids, not brown enough to hang out with the Hispanic or Black kids. Some made fun of my straight hair or my strange green eyes. One time, a gang of school bullies beat me up, so I taught myself how to fight back.” She laughed without humor. “When I heard you assumed I was a kid, that first time you saw me, it made me laugh. How old did you think I was?”
He cleared his throat. “Thirteen or fourteen.”
“Even when I was thirteen, I felt twice that age. I learned to grow up fast... My kids will get to be kids.”
“Did things improve when you moved to your uncle’s place?”
“Yes and no. About a year before I came to live with him, my uncle married a woman with two children from her first marriage. They’re a couple years younger than me. My uncle was a lawyer and pretty well off. She only married him for his money. So fake. But he never saw her bad side. When he was nearby, she acted all sweet with me, but she ignored me the rest of the time.”
Mari sighed again. “Soon as I turned eighteen, she pressured him to get me out of the house. He bought me a car and leased an apartment for me. Nothing fancy, but that didn’t matter to her. She didn’t like it. Two days after his funeral, she and her son and daughter showed up at my apartment. They kicked me out and took the car back.”
“What? Hold on a second. They treated you like that even though you took care of your uncle?”
“Yep. They played along with his wish I come back to the house and stay until he passed. I was his only blood relative, a link to his brother. There was a big age gap between them. I got a sense he thought of my father as his son. I sensed my uncle loved me, but he never said the words. He was a workaholic. He wasn’t around that much. But he tried. He taught me old family recipes his mother taught him, and he took me golfing at his country club. I’m sure he hoped I’d study law, but that didn’t interest me. Anyway, I guess the guilt of not giving more time to me ate at him, so I spent hours with him every day. He had hospice care, so I wasn’t doing any heavy-duty nursing, but I fed him and comforted him as best I could. About a week before he passed, he asked me to get a box from his closet. He apologized for not giving it to me sooner, told me he worried I’d run away to look for my Blackfeet family. That was the box of letters between my parents. My father had put together a family tree based on things my mom recalled. It traced my Blackfeet lineage to my great-great-grandmother. I researched online and found the Redfox name and Jonathan’s location. And... Well, here I am.”
Travis pulled his eyes from the road long enough to give her a sweet smile. “And here you are.”
Her heart did funny things inside her chest. “I never imagined I’d end up in Montana,” she said a little breathlessly. “Sometimes it seems strange being here, like it’s a dream.”
“A good one, right?”
“Very good.”
He exited at Big Timber. In another half hour, they’d be home. “I hope Squeak and Mutt were okay making their own dinner tonight,” she said.
“Those crusty bachelors can manage fine.”
“Are those their real names?”
Travis chuckled. “Nope. But you won’t drag their real names out of me. Maybe they’ll tell you one day. Sooner than later, I bet. You’re already on a high pedestal in Mutt’s estimation.”
“He’s a sweetheart.”
They rode along in silence for a few minutes before Travis said, “You’ve shared a lot, and I appreciate it wasn’t easy. But it’s been pestering me, the way you came to Montana with that drug dealer. Can you tell me how that happened?”