Lucas Ryan’s mama, Pearl, had a plaque on the wall that read, Home is where the heart is. He wasn’t sure if that was true where he was concerned. He’d been roaming around the world for the better part of twenty years now, and if he had a motto, it would probably be: Home is where you hang your hat.
Lucas had always been more comfortable with horses than with people—even with his two brothers, Jesse and Cody—so he had mixed feelings about moving back to Honey Grove, Texas. Visiting the family was great, but after a few days, the wanderlust started calling his name again. Sometimes he stopped by the ranch in between his gigs as a trainer for cutting horses, and even though he hung his hat on the rack beside the back door, it still didn’t seem like home.
He had planned to move back to help his brothers on the family property, the huge Sunflower Ranch, back in the summer, but then a six-month job that paid so well he couldn’t turn it down had come up. Now he had an offer to go to Ireland—one of the places on his bucket list—to work for a year. As he hooked up the horse trailer to the back of his truck, he wondered if he really wanted to put a few more dollars in his already fat bank account or if it was an excuse not to move back to Honey Grove. For a long time, he had told himself that he wanted to learn more about training horses before he went home. There was always some new technique to pick up. Lately, though, he had felt a yearning for more than bachelorhood when he spent time around his two older brothers and their wives.
The time had finally come when he had to either sign on the dotted line for the Ireland job or else make good his promise to go home. As luck would have it, his brother Jesse had called him a couple of days ago and told him how much the family was looking forward to having him on the ranch during the holiday season.
“We can sure use some help around here,” Jesse had said. “With the holidays coming on, a lot of the hired hands are wanting to be with their families, and it’s stretching us out pretty thin. I don’t want Dad to think he needs to go out in the cold in his condition.”
“I’ll be there soon as I can,” Lucas had promised, and a Ryan didn’t go back on his word even if his hand itched to sign a contract.
Lucas hunched his broad shoulders against the howling wind and held on to his hat. A strand of light brown hair fell across his forehead. He removed his hat, combed his hair back with his fingertips, and resettled the old worn black hat that had been with him for more than a decade more comfortably on his head.
“Am I doing the right thing?” he asked himself as he headed back to the barn to get his horses. On one hand, he couldn’t wait to get to Sunflower Ranch, to have some of his mama Pearl’s cooking, visit with his father, Sonny, and see the rest of the family. Then there was the other side that had been fussing at him about a trip to Ireland, a place he’d always wanted to see.
In his mind, he knew that commitment to family would put him on the ranch forever, and to a drifting cowboy that was more than a little scary. Lucas wasn’t sure that he was—or ever would be—ready to put down roots. According to the rancher in Ireland, the job was his anytime he wanted it, so even though he was going home, he could keep that on the back burner.
His father had MS, but he was managing it, and Jesse and Cody were there to take care of the ranch, so when it came right down to the brass tacks of the issue, Lucas wouldn’t really be needed at the ranch when the holidays were over. Addy, Jesse’s wife, was a nurse, and she took good care of his father. Cody’s wife was a veterinarian, and both she and Addy were good ranch hands. They were all getting along fine without him living on the place.
Maybe it was the crow’s feet around his eyes that reminded him he wasn’t getting any younger and made him think—even for a minute—that he was ready to settle down. Or it could be the fact that he had begun to get pretty danged homesick for the first time in all the years he’d been gone.
I want to be there for Dad, but I feel like a fifth wheel when I’m around Jesse and his family, and Cody and his new wife, Stevie, he thought. I’m not sure I’m ready to settle down to a family or even if I want one, but the yearning is there.
If you are arguing with yourself, you better be careful. His father’s voice popped into his head when he entered the barn and headed back to the stalls where Winnie and Buttercup were waiting.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for this or not, but I can’t disappoint the folks another time. Besides, Jesse and Cody shouldn’t have to bear the entire burden of taking care of the ranch. It wouldn’t be fair for me to inherit the same portion as they do if I don’t help,” he told Winnie, his Appaloosa horse as he tossed a bright blue blanket over the animal and fastened the straps under her belly. “It’s a little warmer than this in north Texas, and when we get to the Sunflower Ranch you will have a really nice barn to stay in when the weather is bad, and a big pasture to run when the sun is shining.”
When he led Winnie out of the barn, he saw the foreman of the Pine Valley Ranch leaning against his truck’s back fender. Lucas hated goodbyes. He thought he had taken care of all that the night before when he and his bunkhouse buddies had shared a few drinks and promised to stay in touch.
“Any way I could talk you into sticking around?” Eddie asked. “I’ll double your salary if you’ll sign on for another six months.”
“I appreciate the offer, but my folks are expecting me to be in Texas by suppertime.” Lucas busied himself getting Winnie into her side of the double trailer and making sure she was comfortable before he closed the door.
“Well, son,”—Eddie straightened up and stuck out his hand,—“you’ve got a job here any time you want or need one. We’ll miss you.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.” Lucas shook with him and appreciated the fact that the man just turned and disappeared into the darkness without trying to talk him into staying for breakfast.
He went back into the barn, flipped a red blanket over Buttercup’s back. He had chosen the two Appaloosa horses to train as therapy horses a few years back because they were so good with children. After he bought them, he’d accepted only jobs that he could drive to and bring his horses with him. But the Irishman had offered to pay for his horses to be transported across the Atlantic and give them free room and board on his ranch—that made turning the job down even tougher.
“If all goes well, we’ll be in Honey Grove by suppertime,” he said as he fastened the blanket and led Buttercup out of the barn. “This could be the last time you have to get into this trailer. Hopefully, by springtime there will be some little kids that will come around to get acquainted with you.”
He took time to close the barn door, and then he and Buttercup walked out across the crunchy, frozen grass together. When she was tucked into her side of the trailer, he took out his phone and checked off the list that he kept for the days when he left a job. Saddles were in the storage room at the front of the silver trailer. His personal belongings were in duffel bags in the back seat of the club cab truck—not much accumulation for a thirty-eight-year-old cowboy.
The wind whistled through the cab of the truck when he opened the door. He quickly slid under the steering wheel, slammed the door shut, fastened his seat belt, and started the engine.
“Just another place to leave behind,” he whispered around the lump in his throat. Lord have mercy, he hated making friends and having to say goodbye. He removed his cowboy hat, laid it over on the passenger seat, and smiled.
“Right fittin’,” he whispered, “a pickup truck has been my home for almost two decades, and other than dozens of bunkhouses, my cowboy hat has ridden beside me every mile. It’s where I’ve hung my hat, so I probably should call it home.”
He adjusted the rearview mirror and stared at his reflection for a moment. The eyes were the same light brown as they had been almost twenty years ago when he had left Honey Grove to go to Wyoming to work on a horse ranch. His hair—blond or brown, depending on who was judging—was a little longer than it had been back then, but he hadn’t been in the military like his oldest brother, Jesse. Ranchers didn’t care if their hired hands had a crop of hair that hung down their backs, if they were bald, or even if they had a mixture of both. Lucas smiled at his reflection when he thought about Buster, one of the guys in the last bunkhouse, who had only a rim of gray hair that was so long that his braid reached halfway down his back. He glanced down at the dashboard—six-thirty a.m., December 10—not quite two weeks until Christmas.
“Enough procrastinating,” he told his reflection. “You are going home whether it’s where your heart is. Your traveling days are over, and you’ll be hanging your hat in the old bunkhouse where you will be living alone.”
By the time he reached Erin, Tennessee, a beautiful sunrise filled his side window. Of all the things he missed about Honey Grove, Texas, the sunsets were what he missed the most. He and his dad had spent many evenings out behind the barn—sometimes not saying a word—and enjoyed the beauty of the land as the sun made its nightly descent out there beyond the scrub oak and mesquite trees.
“I’m hoping that we can have more days like that while he’s still able to enjoy them,” he said as hooked up his phone to Bluetooth and listened to his playlist—a combination of old country songs that he’d grown up hearing and the newer ones that he liked.
When he reached Interstate 40 and made a turn toward Memphis, “Sand in My Boots” was playing, and Lucas nodded in agreement with lyrics when they mentioned that all the vocalist was taking home was sand in his boots.
“I may not have been to the beach, but all I’m taking home is worn-down-at-the-heel boots and a nervous stomach at the idea of settling down,” he muttered.
His hat didn’t have anything to say about that, so he settled in for the long nine-hour trip. Before he had gone very far, a few snowflakes began to swirl around and shoot up past his windshield—nothing to be worried about. They brought back memories of the times when they gotten snow in Honey Grove. Hard winters meant freezing weather and ice, but seldom snow.
He visualized his dad standing at the kitchen window and saying, “Boys, we’ve got snow. It’s just a flake to the acre, but it’s sure enough snow.”
Lucas had seen real snow in his travels since those days. He’d seen snow that was belly deep on horses in Wyoming. On the flip side, he had ridden through sandstorms in Arizona, and he had spent time on every continent in the world. Still nothing compared to a Texas sunrise or sunset—winter or summer—in any of those places.
Maybe the reason for that is because you shared so many with your dad. His mother’s voice whispered so softly in his ear that he whipped around to see if she was sitting behind him.
“Maybe so, Mama,” he said.
* * *
On some days, Vada Winters swore she would never forgive her ex-husband, Travis, for leaving her and their then three-year-old son, Theron. Other days, she was glad he was gone. If Travis couldn’t deal with Theron’s special needs and super intelligence, they were better off without him. But, boy, it was exhausting some days to handle everything on her own.
Since their divorce seven years ago, her ex had moved to West Virginia, remarried, and started a new family. He still paid child support, but he hadn’t come around to see Theron or even called to talk to him in all those years.
Of course when Theron was having a bad day, Vada wished that she, too, could run away from all the stress and anguish of not knowing how to help her son better fit into the world.
She took Theron’s bowl of dry cereal to him—no milk, no sugar, no fruit; just Cheerios in a bowl with a bottle of orange juice on the side. She went into his bedroom, and the blinds were closed. Only the light from his computer screen made it possible to see anything at all. His back was ramrod straight, and his eyes never left the screen. He wore sweatpants and a hoodie with the hood pulled up. Vada glanced down at his screen and it looked like his normal classwork, but today was Saturday.
“Good morning, son,” she said cheerfully.
“Mornin’,” he answered. “I’m researching ways to help kids like me who are really smart.”
“That’s good. Let me know if I can help.” She set his food down on the edge of his desk and left, easing the door shut behind her. The coffeepot had just gurgled out its last drops when she made it to the kitchen. She poured a mug full and sipped on it while she made herself a scrambled egg sandwich. She had just sat down at the table when someone knocked on the door, and a familiar voice yelled.
“Hey, Vada, it’s cold out here,” Stevie called out. “Can a wayfaring stranger find a warm fire?”
Vada hurried to open the back door. “Come in, girl. I’m so glad to have company this morning. Coffee is ready. Can I make you an egg sandwich?”
“I brought pastries from the doughnut place.” Stevie held up a paper bag and crossed the room to the table. She removed her heavy coat, hung it on the back of a chair, and poured herself a cup of coffee. Taller than Vada by several inches, Stevie had red hair and bright green eyes, and was married to Cody, the middle son in the Ryan family.
Vada opened the bag and put the pastries on a plate. “Thank you for these. You must’ve read my mind. I wanted a doughnut for breakfast, but I was too lazy to get dressed and drive up to Main Street to get one. What are you doing out this early on a Saturday morning?”
Stevie carried her coffee to the table and took a seat across from Vada. She blew on the hot liquid and then pushed a strand of curly red hair behind her ear. “Vet duty. Joe Don Clement’s old mare needed help to birth her colt. Little filly was healthy, and the mama took to her once it was on the ground.”
Vada sat down, ignored her sandwich, and picked up a doughnut with maple icing. “Sounds like you had a good start to the day.”
She and Stevie had gone to school together right there in Honey Grove and graduated almost twenty years ago. Vada had married Travis Winters, her high school sweetheart, right after they had finished college. Stevie had gone to a different university, and their paths hadn’t crossed again until this last year.
Aren’t you glad that she came back to Honey Grove, and y’all became good friends when you really needed someone? Vada’s grandmother’s voice popped into her head.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Stevie had dunked a maple glazed doughnut into her hot coffee and taken a bite. “I’m sorry. Did you say something to me?”
“No, I was talking to my grandmother,” Vada answered. “She was such a big part of my life until she passed away last year that I can still hear her voice sometimes.”
“I understand,” Stevie said with a nod. “My mother pops into my head all the time. I’m grateful for those times.”
“Me, too.” Vada bit into her doughnut and sighed. “This is still warm.”
“Yep, I brought it straight from the bakery to here,” Stevie said between bites. “There’s also a couple of bear claws and doughnuts with sprinkles for Theron.”
“I’ll offer them to him and hope that he will eat one. He’s on a Cheerios kick right now. Breakfast and supper. Dinner is a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate. No vegetables and no fruit.”
“Is he still diving into his online courses like a hungry coyote?” Stevie asked.
“Yes, and as soon as he finishes one, he’s ready for me to pay for another one. Right now, he is conquering online chess in addition to his studies, but it’s been weeks since he’s gone outside. Sometimes he will come out of his room for dinner, but he hasn’t now for several days,” Vada said. “I’m at my wit’s end, Stevie. Thank God I’ve got a job I can do from home.”
“That’s one of the reasons I came by today,” Stevie said between bites. “You remember Lucas? He’s Jesse and Cody’s younger brother, and he graduated from high school a year behind us. He’s been training cutting horses since he left Honey Grove, but a few years ago he got into horse therapy for kids. He was working on a ranch, and the foreman’s son was super intelligent like Theron, but his social skills weren’t the best. The foreman was paying for the boy to get therapy with horses, and Lucas got into it. He’s taken a few online psychology classes since then and is ready to put in his own business when he gets back to Texas.”
“Sure, I remember him. A quiet kid who always seemed to be in the shadows of his older brothers,” Vada answered. “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“He’s on his way back here to stay,” Stevie told her. “He left Tennessee this morning and is coming back to Honey Grove with two horses that he’s trained as therapy animals. He’ll be working on the ranch with his brothers, but he wants to build up a practice to help kids like Theron.”
“With horses?” Vada could hear the disbelief in her own ears and caught just a brief glimpse of a motion in her peripheral vision. When she glanced that way, there was nothing there, so she chalked it up to the sunshine coming through the windows and making patterns on the wall.
“It’s not a new thing,” Stevie said. “I understand that folks have been using animals to bring children with all kinds of disabilities out of their shells for a while. I thought maybe you might bring Theron out to the ranch on Monday morning and see what Lucas can do.”
“Honey, I would try anything at this point, up to and including standing on my head in hot ashes, but what makes you think a horse can help when every therapist I could take him to, or pay to come to the house, from here to Dallas, hasn’t done much good?” Vada asked.
Stevie shrugged. “Never know until you give it a try. If it works, you might have a Christmas miracle. If it doesn’t, at least you’ve gotten Theron to go for a ride in the country. Lucas will be here around suppertime today. Can I tell him that you’ll bring Theron out to the ranch on Monday morning? Say around ten o’clock?”
“Like I said, I’ll try anything,” Vada answered. “I can’t see where a horse could do what trained therapist can’t, but anything is worth a shot.”
Stevie pushed back her chair, crossed the room, and brought the coffeepot to the table. She topped off Vada’s mug and refilled hers. “Lucas has a lot of patience, and kids are drawn to him. He was awesome with Addy and Jesse’s twins the last time he came home.”
“But they’re just over a year old. Theron is ten,” Vada said.
“And Mia is almost twenty, and she still adores her uncle Lucas,” Stevie argued.
Vada chuckled and touched her mug with Stevie’s. “Here’s to Lucas being right. I bet Pearl is excited that all her boys will be home for good and just in time for Christmas. And how is Sonny?”
Stevie picked up a bear claw and tore it in half. She handed off the part in her right hand to Vada and answered, “Sonny’s meds are working very well. His MS isn’t any better, but it hasn’t gotten worse in the past few months. Pearl is ecstatic about Lucas coming back to the ranch permanently and has been cooking for days. You’ve been to the ranch, haven’t you?”
Vada shook her head. “Nope. I was too busy with Travis in high school, and by the time I came back home to Honey Grove, my old friends hardly even remembered my name. You can’t know how glad I am that our paths crossed that day in the grocery store.”
“Me, too. I love my Ryan family, but I sure appreciate our friendship,” Stevie said and then frowned. “I never asked, but what caused the problem between you and Travis? If that’s too personal or painful then just say so.”
Vada wasn’t sure she wanted to get into those details, but after a moment’s hesitation, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It makes more sense to me to talk to you than to talk to a horse, I guess,” she said with a smile.
Stevie chuckled. “Thanks for that, but you might find talking to an animal is a help. Sometimes, I go out to the barn and tell Dixie, my alpaca, all about my frustrations. She’s a danged fine listener.”
“I bet she is,” Vada said. “Okay, here goes. Travis and I wrote down our plans for our whole life when we graduated from high school. I mean we really wrote them on paper, and we followed them to the letter. We would get married when we finished college and had good jobs. We would start our family when we had been married four years, and then we’d have another child two years later.”
She paused and took time to eat a couple of bites of the bear claw. “Everything went just like we planned. We had Theron, a beautiful baby boy, but looking back, I could see that something wasn’t quite right from the beginning. I started working from home because he was so difficult, and we couldn’t keep a nanny. I thought maybe he was on the autism spectrum, but when I had him tested, we found out that his IQ was off the charts. He was three when Travis said he couldn’t take the stress of having a kid who was more interested in books than playing with toys. He had already packed up his personal things, and everything he wanted from our apartment was in his truck. I was thirty years old and had a three-year-old child who required most of my attention…” she paused, “and didn’t know what I was going to do. I called my grandmother, and she said that I should move back to Honey Grove and told me I could live in her rental house. My company didn’t care where I lived just so long as I got my work done. Been here ever since.”
Stevie finished off her coffee, went to the cabinet, and brought back the pot to refill Vada’s cup and her own. “What happened next?”
“I moved here and took him to the four-year-old program at the school. He was already reading on fifth-grade level by then, so he was bored out of his mind, and I guess the word is that he retreated into himself. The teachers didn’t know what to do with him. He didn’t want to play with the other kids, which I understood. Why would a kid with fifth-grade intelligence want to even talk to kids who couldn’t read or do math problems? I took him home after the first two months and let him learn at his own speed. That fed his antisocial behavior, and now he’s even looking into ways to help ‘kids like him.’” She air quoted the last three words. “He doesn’t like to come out of his room because everything in there is put in its place. His OCD is almost as bad as his intelligence is good, if that makes sense.”
“Well, at least he realizes he’s got a problem, and that’s the first step toward getting any kind of help,” Stevie said, “Thank you for trusting me enough to share that story. I’ve always wondered if Theron might be autistic; now I just realize that he’s probably the person who will grow up and design the rocket that puts a man on Mars.”
“Just telling it to someone other than my grandmother is kind of cathartic, so I appreciate you for listening,” Vada said. “Maybe horse therapy will work for Theron if talking to an animal makes him feel better.”
“I bet you miss your grandmother as much as I miss my mother, and the therapy might work since he’s evidently looking for ways to help himself and others,” Stevie said.
“Yes, I do,”—Vada nodded—“but I’m sure glad that you and I are friends.”
Stevie stood up, then bent and gave Vada a hug. “Me, too, and like I’ve told you a million times, you are welcome to come out to the ranch anytime—with or without Theron.”
“And like I’ve told you a million times,” Vada said, smiling, “it’s tough enough to get Theron to go outside. Being around that many people would send him swirling into a dark hole.”
“I’ll be sure to tell everyone on Monday to let Lucas be the only new person Theron meets,” Stevie said.
“Thank you—again.” Vada pushed back her chair and walked Stevie to the door. “I’ll see you on Monday if Theron will agree to go see the horses, but don’t expect a miracle.”
Stevie stopped at the back door and said, “Mia and I have vet appointments all day, but I’ll call you that evening to see how things go.”
“Fingers crossed that I’ll be able to tell you good things.” Vada watched her drove away and then closed the door and went back to the table.
Even though the idea of horse therapy was new to her, she crossed her fingers in hopes that it would help Theron to overcome being in a crowd. She finished off her breakfast, loaded and started the dishwasher, and headed down the hallway to her home office. She opened the door into Theron’s bedroom and was surprised to see the lights on, the window blinds open, and his hood thrown back to show his pretty blond hair.
“I’ll be in my office if you need me,” she said.
“I’m doing research,” he said without looking up.
She sat at her desk, opened her computer, brought up the day’s work for the insurance company out of Dallas that she’d worked for since she graduated from college. A picture of Theron as a baby sat beside her computer, and next to it, the latest one of him taken last Easter with one of his rare smiles. He had been born just a few days after her twenty-sixth birthday. Who would have thought that by the time he was crawling, he didn’t want anyone other than Vada to hold him—and that included his father? Or that by the time he was three, he wouldn’t function well with anyone else around him other than Vada?
She glanced over at the last picture taken of her grandmother. She had done her best to make their holiday together last year special for Vada—and for Theron. She had always been patient with him, understood that he had difficulties with his peers, and had told Vada that God must trust her a lot to give her such a special child.
“It’s going to be tough without you this year, Granny.” Vada wiped a tear from her cheek. “I probably won’t even put up a tree. Theron hates anything that changes in his world, so what’s the use.”
Don’t give up hope. Miracles happen during this season; her grandmother was back in her head.