19

Sweet Myrtle was exactly how Hannah had left it.

August melted along as stifling Georgia summers did. Humid and heavy, so that the air itself felt weighted.

Hannah felt pretty much the same way herself.

Every day that passed since that night on Cold River Ranch, the more it felt like it had all happened with a certain sense of inevitability. No matter how many times she relived it—walking outside, seeing her mother standing there in the wrong state, seeing Jack, then holding Jack as she turned to face Ty and what she’d done—

It had felt like a memory while it was happening.

Hannah was moving through her usual morning routine a week after that terrible scene. Nothing had changed. Everything was where she’d left it and worked the same way it always had. Her life was small here, but workable. Her mother and aunt helped with Jack. Mama had moved into the main part of the house when Jack was born, leaving the room out back for Hannah and the baby. It was the most natural thing in the world to live here in the place she’d grown up. It was easy. She knew all its rhythms.

Only now, she had no hope that things might change one day.

That Ty might have a change of heart. That he might appear at her door and say all the things she’d always dreamed he would. Apologies, love, all of it.

The thing about hope was that a person didn’t realize how much it lived there in a life, threaded through all the little moments. Hannah had been so sure she’d given up on Ty that day in the hospital.

But she hadn’t.

She’d held out hope, even though she might have lied to herself about that, across all those months.

And now that it was gone, she could see all the empty spaces where it had lived in her.

“You look so sad, sweetheart,” Aunt Bit said when Hannah walked into the kitchen, a freshly changed Jack on her hip.

Hannah smiled automatically. “I wouldn’t call myself sad.”

She had no words for what she would call herself, so she didn’t try. She put Jack down into his saucer so he could scoot around on the floor, slamming himself into walls in the kitchen. It never failed to make him shriek with delight. And as a bonus, it gave Hannah a moment to fix herself another cup of coffee.

Aunt Bit was sitting at the table, the daily paper spread open before her and a steaming mug of tea at her elbow. Mama was already long gone to open the doctor’s office she managed.

It made Hannah feel deeply disloyal, not exactly a new sensation, that she liked the mornings when her mother wasn’t here. Vibrating with all her tension and anxiety and focusing it all on Hannah.

You can be mad at me all you want, Luanne had said stoutly when it was all over, out there in the ranch’s yard. Ty had walked off into the dark. Luanne had clearly been watching from the window because she came out straightaway, looking as if she was fully prepared to march Hannah straight back into that bunkhouse, pack up her things herself, and carry her out of there if necessary. I did what needed doing. If he were going to rise to the occasion, he would have.

What I need from you, Hannah had replied, in a voice she barely recognized with her baby held in the crook of her neck, is for you to drop this subject. And never bring it up again.

So far that had worked. They’d driven in a sad caravan all the way home, stopping a lot more often than Hannah had on the way out because they had Jack to consider. But Hannah had welcomed the miles. All that strange, suspended time between her past and her present.

She decided she was happy. All of her questions were answered. Now she could move forward.

She kept telling herself that, over and over, like a prayer.

“I’ve never seen your mother cry,” Aunt Bit said now, in a lull between Jack’s earsplitting squeals as he rammed himself into the cabinets.

Hannah dumped an extra dollop of the sweet creamer she loved into her coffee, despite the fact it had no nutritional value whatsoever and was almost certainly rotting her from the inside out. Then another big dollop, because who cared what was rotting her these days. It was better than all that emptiness where her hope had been.

“Mama doesn’t cry,” she said. She slid into her usual chair at the round, retro kitchen table that was nothing like the wide, scarred old door in the Everetts’ ranch house. Nothing at all. She rubbed absently at her chest and told herself that sooner or later, even that would stop hurting. “She told me once she has no time for it.”

“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t make the time for a good cry,” Aunt Bit replied. “Except your mother. And I expect that’s because she had to survive things she shouldn’t have had to, at a young age, more or less on her own.”

“Luckily, she had you. We had you.”

Aunt Bit smiled. “I used to say I did her crying for her. But you know what it takes to stay that strong, don’t you?”

“Never putting a wishbone where your backbone goes, like the poem,” Hannah said, right on cue.

“Your mother never had the time to figure out that a wishbone and a backbone aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, and don’t have to be mortal enemies forever,” Aunt Bit said. “What I’m trying to say is that your mother is terrified that one slip, one stray tear, and she’ll start crying so hard, she’ll never stop. She’d have to cry for that fifteen-year-old girl who found herself in all that trouble. The sixteen-year-old girl who was abandoned by everyone who should have taken care of her. She’d have to cry for year after year of hardship, struggle, and the fact that she never had the choice to decide whether or not to be strong. She had to be, so she was.”

“I know what Mama did for me,” Hannah said softly.

Aunt Bit smoothed out the newspaper page before her. “I’m not telling you a story you already know to make you feel bad, Hannah. You’re not your mother. If you want to be sad, you go right ahead and be sad. You don’t have to hide it. And between you and me, you don’t have to pretend that not feeling what you feel is a strength. We both know it’s not.”

Hannah mulled that over across the next few days. The weather didn’t break. Her heart didn’t heal. And she could see the beauty of her mother’s take on these things. Because if only Hannah could stop feeling, she would be better. Happier, certainly.

One August afternoon, under a sky that had been threatening to storm for a day or so now but hadn’t quite gotten around to it, Hannah drove home from her usual afternoon out at the stables. The last lesson had been canceled, so Hannah had spent the time catching up with her favorite horse, Marigold. She and Marigold had caught up on life, the world outside the rodeo, and ridden around the fields outside of town until Hannah’s heart felt, if not healed, quieter.

So maybe she should have expected to find a strange car outside the house when she got home. And worse, when she climbed out of her pickup, the driver of that car got out too. An Everett, she knew in an instant, and her heart leapt—

But it was Brady.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and all through Hannah too.

“Let me guess,” she drawled as Brady started up the drive toward her. “You came all this way to make sure I hurry up and start some divorce proceedings. Out of the goodness of your heart, no doubt. Because you love your brother that much.”

Brady scowled at her as he came to a stop a few feet away from her. And he was the Brady she’d met in the ranch house kitchen that day. Big and powerful. Not the hapless younger brother at all.

“I don’t know, Hannah,” he threw at her. “The question is, do you love my brother?”

Hannah wanted to haul off and punch him. Run him over with her truck a few times. Instead, she smiled.

“Now, sugar, I can’t believe you came all this way to question me about my romantic intentions.”

“It’s not your romantic intentions that interest me,” Brady retorted. “It’s my brother’s fool head that he’s set to crack wide open in yet another rodeo in three days.”

Like Hannah didn’t know that. Like she didn’t have that particular date carved into her heart.

“He wants to reclaim his glory,” she said. Airily. “I can’t say as I blame him. If there were a way to reclaim my own, I expect that I’d be all over it.”

“Would you?” Brady’s scowl only deepened. “Because as far as I can tell, you’re the one who walked away from your glory.”

“If you mean Colorado, you were there. It wasn’t me who walked away. And I’m not so sure I’d call any of that glorious, but I don’t know your life.”

“I’m not talking about Ty’s response to the child you failed to tell him about.”

“That’s a real relief, given it’s none of your business.”

“I’m talking about you, Hannah. Miss Rodeo Forever two years running. I assumed you got kicked off the tour, but you didn’t, did you?”

Hannah’s stomach twisted up on itself. She glanced back over her shoulder, but there was no one in the house. Aunt Bit spent her Wednesday afternoons working in the county library. Mama had her early afternoon off from the doctor’s office and decreed it her grandmother time with Jack. Meaning no one was coming to save Hannah from this conversation.

“I don’t know why you’re scraping up all that ancient history now. None of it matters.”

“There were rumors, but that’s all they were. If you’d really wanted to, you could have weathered them. You were set to turn over your crown to the next winner at the big pageant in May.”

“I had no idea you were such a Miss Rodeo Forever fan.”

“I’m trying to build a picture,” Brady said. “That’s all.”

“I’m not sure what kind of picture that is, especially when it involves turning up on my doorstep,” Hannah replied, her drawl thick and her tone light, even though she still wanted to do something. Preferably something unbecoming, yet unmistakable. “But I’m pretty sure you can carry right on doing whatever you’re doing back in Colorado. Where you belong. I don’t even understand how you found me.”

“It lists your hometown next to your name on every single picture they have of you in the Miss Rodeo Forever archives.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t taken those down.”

“It wasn’t that hard to drive into town, ask at the first store I could find, and get directions right to your door. You’re not exactly hidden away, Hannah.”

“That’s what I used to tell myself while I was waiting for your brother to wake up and remember he was married,” Hannah retorted, then caught herself. She couldn’t talk about Ty’s memory. It wasn’t her secret to tell. And her heart thumped at her, because she could pretend all she wanted that she was halfway to turning all her feelings off like her mother, but that was a lie. She was protecting that man even now. “And you’re still not answering my question. What are you doing here, Brady?”

“That all depends on you,” he replied. “You were more than happy to go toe-to-toe with me back on the ranch. I thought that meant you were a fighter. That you would fight for Ty. Fight me, if necessary. But then you walked away at the first sign of trouble. Maybe that’s what you do.”

“Sugar, your head is a muddle,” Hannah said, playing up her drawl even more. Mostly so she really wouldn’t punch him. “Am I a gold digger? After your brother for all that rodeo glitz and glamour? Or am I weak and easily scared, running away from trouble like a bunny rabbit? Which is it? You can’t have it both ways.”

“You tell me.”

“The thing is, Brady, I don’t have to tell you anything. I’m standing outside my house, minding my own business, right here in this life of mine that doesn’t involve a single member of the Everett family.”

“Except one,” Brady said, his voice hardening. “My nephew. Ty’s son. Who, in case this escaped your notice, has a stake in the land that’s been in my family since the 1800s.”

“Since when do you care about the land?” Hannah asked. “Or your family, for that matter?”

“I care more about my family than you or they will ever know,” Brady gritted out at her, something moving over his face as he spoke. “And if this is a conversation you want to have, great. I welcome it. But you have to actually be in my brother’s life to be in my face.”

“Says the man who flew across the country to come get all up in mine.”

“It’s a simple question, Hannah. You’re either in or you’re out.” His gaze was dark green like his brothers’—like Jack’s—and it pinned her where she stood. “You either love him or you don’t.”

Wishbones and backbones were all tangled up inside her, then, and mostly Hannah’s own bones felt dangerously brittle. And it was impossible to talk about love and Ty without wanting to give in to the real storm that had nothing to do with the Georgia sky above them, and everything to do with that pain inside of her. That grief. She hardly knew what to call it anymore, because it was simply … life. Life without Ty.

Life without any hope he’d change his mind.

“Life isn’t as uncomplicated as a quick question,” she said after a thick, sweltering sort of moment. “No matter how much you wish it could be.”

“He’s going to get on that bull. There’s every chance that this time, when he falls, he’ll do even more damage than he already has.” Brady shook his head, his jaw tight. “I’ve never known Ty to be all that happy-go-lucky unless he was drunk, but this Ty? The one you left? He’s doing an excellent impression of the grim reaper.”

That made her ache. And the ache made her mad.

“What can I possibly do about that?” she demanded. “You can’t make someone love you, Brady. I know. I’ve tried.”

“The only way you can be sure of something not working is if you stop trying.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said after a moment. “Ty was pretty definitive. And I’m not that hard to find, as you proved. If he wanted me, he’d come find me.”

“Maybe you’ve caught on by now that we didn’t have the ideal childhood,” Brady said, low and dark. “Our father spent a lot of time pitting all of us against each other. But Ty was in the middle. Always the people pleaser. Always a smile, a laugh, and the first one to convince you nothing upset him. He was real good at getting along.”

“He’s different on the inside,” Hannah couldn’t help but say.

“Aren’t we all?” Brady shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe he was here. Saying these things. That made two of them. “The thing about Ty is that he stopped fighting. When he was in high school, all he did was fight. With my father. With anyone who crossed his path. But the minute he joined the rodeo, he turned into the supposedly happy-go-lucky cowboy we know today. No more fighting. Winning, sure. But he stopped fighting what people thought about him. What he was supposed to be versus what he was. That’s one of the reasons he drinks so much.”

“He doesn’t drink that much,” Hannah said, because even now, she had to jump in there and try to defend him. “Maybe he doesn’t bother fighting what people think about him because the people closest to him can’t even see what’s in front of their faces. When’s last time you saw your brother drink whiskey?”

“I’m not going to argue about Ty’s drinking.”

“Because there’s nothing to argue about. He likes a beer or two. That’s it. Maybe you should ask yourself why he wants his family to keep seeing him as the family drunkard. I used to watch him do it at the dinner table. At you, as a matter of fact.”

Brady considered her for a moment. “That’s a rousing defense, Hannah. Almost like you care about the guy.”

“He’s the father of my child. My relationship with him, no matter how you’d like to boil it down to a single question, is always going to be complicated. What’s uncomplicated are my feelings about you standing here in front of my house all up in my face. I don’t want to argue with you. I don’t want more Everett drama in my life.”

“I understand that. But there’s that rodeo stunt he’s going to pull on Saturday.”

“And … what? I should go stop him? Cheer him on? Get in his head when he needs to keep from cracking it wide open again? Why would I do any of that?”

Brady muttered something she didn’t quite catch. Then reached into his back pocket and pulled out two envelopes. He separated them, one thin and one thick.

“You either love him or you don’t,” he said, his voice hard. Stark. “And what’s the state of mind of a bull rider who has nothing left to lose? Who’s not only sure he’s doomed, but embraces it?”

He held out the envelopes, and Hannah took them, though she’d as soon pick up a pair of snakes.

“In one there’s a plane ticket. It’ll fly you out on Friday.” Brady nodded his head toward the thicker envelope. “That’s a legal document Ty asked me to have drawn up. It names Jack as his legal heir, lays out a financial settlement for you, and makes sure that Jack will get what he’s entitled to no matter what happens to the ranch. Your divorce papers,” he added, when she only stared back at him without comprehension. “Just like I assume you wanted.”

Hannah stared at him, the envelopes like bricks in her hand. “Wait. He sent you here?”

“He did. And maybe you ought to ask yourself why he’s all fired up to get his affairs in order, Hannah. Because I asked myself that question. And I can’t say I much cared for the answer.” Brady nodded at the envelopes she held. “Pick one.”

Hannah stood there, her pulse too wild and her heart too heavy, watching as the youngest Everett brother walked away, climbed into his rental car, and drove off.

She stood there while thunder rumbled overhead, but it was a pleasant melody next to the storm inside her.

She stood there and she stood there, as the summer afternoon got wetter and thicker all around her. She stood there until the first, fat drops of rain began to fall, and only then did she turn, blinking back the tears her mother wouldn’t have let herself cry, and found her way into the house.

Then she got angry. She threw the plane ticket and the divorce papers into the top drawer of her dresser and told herself to forget about all of it. Forget about the Everett family. Forget about Ty. Forget about whatever he might or might not imagine he had to prove this weekend.

But she lay awake that night, replaying every word Brady had said to her.

She spent all of Thursday pretending she wasn’t fuming. Pretending she was paying close attention to the usual ins and outs of a normal weekday here back home in this life of hers. But she couldn’t get the things that Brady had said out of her head. Not only about Ty, but about her.

It had been a perfectly normal day. The thunderstorm on Wednesday had cleared the air for approximately twelve seconds, and it was good and humid again. Hannah put Jack down after dinner, then joined her mother and aunt out on the screened-in back porch to enjoy the August evening with the aid of the ceiling fan to move the air around.

Aunt Bit hummed as she knitted. Mama tapped away on her tablet. Hannah usually read a book, but her paperback lay unopened in her lap.

Instead, she found herself wondering if the real truth about a backbone was that it was made of wishes. The wishes that came true. The ones that didn’t. Heartache and happiness, all fused together. That was what strength was.

Too far in one direction or the other, and the whole thing fell apart. As the last couple of years of her life proved.

Hannah was tired of falling apart.

“I’m going back to Colorado tomorrow,” she announced, throwing that out there into the middle of a quiet evening when she hadn’t planned to say a word. Or use that ticket.

There was silence. Aunt Bit stopped humming. Luanne stopped tapping.

“Baby girl,” Luanne said after a moment, sounding weary, “I don’t know how many times—”

“Why did you tell me to walk away from the rodeo?” Hannah asked her. “No one actually kicked me out. Buck Stapleton didn’t pull me in front of the Rodeo Forever Association to answer to my great sin of being married and pregnant. He might have, in time. You know how seriously he takes his vision of the rodeo. But none of that had happened yet.”

Luanne frowned. “It was only a matter of time before they came after you. Why stay and let them use you for target practice?”

“None of that had happened. You don’t know that it would have.”

“Of course it would have happened,” Luanne said. “Because it always happens.”

“Because it happened to you?” Hannah asked softly.

Luanne stiffened. “What happened to me has no bearing on this.”

Hannah felt a great weight roll away from her, then. She even laughed, because she almost felt dizzy from the lack of it. So light and airy that if she didn’t watch it, she might float up over the backyard, over the barbecue grill and Aunt Bit’s vegetable garden, scrape the tops of the watchful oaks, and careen off into nothing.

“What happened to you has bearing on all of this, Mama,” she said softly, but not unkindly. “What happened to you is me.”

“Don’t you say that,” Luanne said fiercely. “I wouldn’t trade a second of it.”

“I believe you,” Hannah assured her. “But every single thing you’ve done, and I’ve let you do, since I told you I was pregnant was damage control for that teenage girl who had me all those years ago. I’m not you, Mama. Jack isn’t me. And none of this has to be this way unless I let it.”

“I don’t know what that means. You know the ways of the world, Hannah. You can’t trust a man. They lie, that’s what they do. We’re both living proof of that.”

“Everybody lies,” Hannah corrected her softly. “Most of us lie to ourselves first and foremost. I’m not sure that’s a crime. I’m beginning to think that’s just people.”

Her mother shot to her feet. “I don’t know what this is. If he wanted you, he would have claimed you. Right then and there when he could have in Colorado. Why would you go back for more?”

Hannah rose to face her mother. And she loved her. She could hardly begin to list all the ways she loved her. Luanne had given up everything for her, vowed she would do it again in a heartbeat, and Hannah never took that for granted. She never forgot.

But she couldn’t keep living out her mother’s same old cycle of bitterness. She didn’t like where it ended up.

“Mama,” she said, as gently as she could. With all the love in her heart. “I’m not you.”

Luanne jerked as if Hannah had slapped her. “I’m perfectly aware that we are not the same person, Hannah Leigh.”

“I’m not you, but more to the point, Ty isn’t good old Brad Collingsworth, who wanted nothing to do with us. Ty married me. He loves me.”

“And he sure showed that love, didn’t he?” Luanne retorted. “You forget, Hannah. I watched him walk away from you. It looked pretty final to me.”

“It doesn’t matter what it looked like to you,” Hannah said, as gently as she could, which was possibly not all that gently. “I shouldn’t have left him. I should have walked right out after him. And do you know why I didn’t?”

“Why would you chase after something when you already know how it ends?” Luanne asked, looking and sounding baffled.

“Because I always leave,” Hannah said quietly, answering her own question. “I always leave before anyone can tell me to go. I always make sure that I don’t let anyone really, truly hurt me. Sure, Ty said some terrible things to me in the hospital. But what kind of wife walks out and never returns? Never even checks in to see if maybe that was the pain medication talking? What kind of woman leaves her man like that?”

“He already left you. He already told you he didn’t want you. Why would you set yourself up for more?”

“Because I love him,” Hannah said, her gaze steady and strong on her mother’s. “I’m in love with him, and it’s not going to go away. It’s not going to change. And I know he loves me too, as best he can. I am full up on all the ways he let me down. All the ways he disappointed me. But what about the way I abandoned him?”

“It’s not the same.”

“You’re right. It’s worse. Because I wasn’t suffering from a head injury at the time.”

“Hannah.”

“I know you only want what’s best for me.” It was getting harder to keep her voice steady, but she made herself do it. “But Ty isn’t a high school boy who told me lies at homecoming, got me pregnant, and then pretended none of it ever happened. He’s a grown man. He’s my husband. And a marriage can’t work if there’s all these ghosts of other people in the middle of it.”

“What kind of marriage do you have?” Luanne sounded scornful, but Hannah reminded herself that she was always scared. “You snuck around while you were dating. You snuck around while you were first married. He told you to leave him and you had his baby in secret. Then you went back to him with more lies and without your baby. What kind of marriage is that?”

“My marriage,” Hannah said distinctly. “And you don’t get a vote.”

That sat there, thick and sweaty like the Georgia night outside.

“I’m going back to Colorado tomorrow,” Hannah said in the same tone. “I’m taking Jack with me. You can either support me or not. I’d like your support. I’d always like your support. I love you, Mama. But this is happening whether or not you approve.”

She started toward the house, only then aware that she was shaking. Aunt Bit sat there with her knitting forgotten in her lap, but when Hannah caught her eye, she smiled.

“This is your pride talking,” Luanne said, sounding … shaken. Angry. But Hannah couldn’t help that. Her mother had been angry as long as she’d known her. Hannah didn’t have to be too. “You can’t accept that you, Miss Rodeo Forever times two, who always kept her crown sparkling clean, don’t get to have what you want. But I keep trying to tell you, baby girl. That’s life.”

“That’s your life,” Hannah replied, and she looked back at her mother, wishing that there was some other way to do this. “And you want it that way.”

“Whether I want it that way or don’t, it’s reality.”

“It’s the reality that you choose,” Hannah said, her voice as steady as her gaze. “Over and over and over again. The fact that you stay here when you could have left a lifetime ago. You want to be here, smack in the middle of the town where you know your parents will see you on the street. You want them to look at you. You wanted them to see me, growing up without them, happy. I suspect you even liked it when I came back home, because disaster or victory alike, you got to show them that we were fine. You like to stay right here in Sweet Myrtle where your continued existence is a big raised middle finger to everyone who ever looked down at you. It’s spite, Mama. And I don’t want to live my life out of spite.”

If she’d hauled off and slapped her mother upside her head, Luanne couldn’t possibly have looked more stricken.

But Hannah could only love her. She couldn’t take care of her.

So, she turned around again, headed toward the house, and concentrated on a life built on better things than spite and painful history. Because she might not know what that looked like, exactly, but she knew where to go to start living hers.