“Oh, Molly,” Danica said. “I wish you’d told me about your feelings for Zeke all along. I could have been a support for you.”
The two of them sat at the round table in Molly’s kitchen, sipping the fancy hot coffee drinks Danica had brought over after Molly had called her a half hour ago, sobbing, at 7:15 in the morning. Her friend had also brought bagels with cream cheese and apricot Danish, Molly’s favorite pastry.
Molly had left one big part out of what she’d shared with Danica: Zeke’s longtime crush on her friend. Given that it was over now and that Danica would only feel bad for Molly’s sake and quite possibly upset about the whole thing, Molly thought it was best to just keep it to herself. This was about her feelings for Zeke. And her broken heart.
“I know he has feelings for me,” Molly said, biting into her Danish. “But he’s so controlled by his past that he won’t let himself have a future. It sucks.”
Danica nodded and took a sip of her mocha latte. “It does. But I have a good feeling that Zeke will come around.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because until now, I don’t think Zeke Dawson has ever been in love before,” Danica said. “It’s all new to him. He’s probably never had his feelings for a woman pitted against that past before. Now it is.”
Did Zeke love her? “So you think he just needs time? What if he chooses to be alone instead? What if he doesn’t pick love?”
“He won’t really have a choice. A man in love can’t stay away. Being without you will be a hell of a lot worse than actually facing down his fears over marriage and parenthood.”
Molly almost smiled. But she wasn’t too sure about that.
“I told him I was taking a sick day,” she said. “But maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should be right there, front and center in his office.”
“I’m not a hundred percent on this, but I say take the day off. You both need a little space right now and some time to let this sit. Go in fresh tomorrow.”
Molly sipped her coffee, the caffeine helping. “You’re right. Thanks for coming over, Danica—especially at the crack of dawn in the freezing cold.”
“Of course. Want me to bring lunch over later?”
“Nah, I’ll be okay. Call me on a break, though.”
“Will do.” Danica bent down and wrapped her arms around Molly. “That man will be your husband someday. Mark my words.”
Molly imagined herself in a wedding gown and veil, walking down the aisle to Zeke. Her heart stirred. She liked those words but she wouldn’t hold her breath on that one. Still, she felt a lot better now. Thank heavens for girlfriends.
Once Danica left, Molly nibbled her pastry and finished her coffee, then took a long, hot shower. Maybe she’d drive over to Prairie City with Lucy and do a little shopping, have lunch at her parents’ taco truck and distract herself from the ache in her chest.
By eleven, Molly was in Prairie City with Lucy. At noon, they headed into the independent bookstore for their daily Story Time, which Molly only usually got to attend on weekends. She found a spot on the colorful round rug at the back of the shop, many other parents and little ones there, including a couple with their arms entwined, their toddler on Dad’s lap, Mom’s hand on her six-ish-months pregnant belly. Another couple sat with their baby in Dad’s arms. And yet another couple had twin toddlers, one on each lap. The Story Time leader took photos, tradition for the daily activity, and Molly loved seeing her and Lucy’s pictures sometimes posted on the store’s blog.
Lucy on her lap, Molly smiled as the camera stopped on her. What’s different about this picture? she muttered to herself. Sometimes, when she was in this type of environment, happy intact families all around her, she wanted to cry. Single odd mom out. Alone. Partnerless. And warranted or not, she’d hear in her head: Oh, poor Lucy from a broken home...
Lucy had a father who loved and cared about her and was there for her, plus a kind stepmother, who Molly had grudgingly stopped hating because she was wonderful with Lucy. Her baby girl had lots of family who loved her on both sides. But Molly wanted a life partner, a husband, a rock, someone who’d be equally as wonderful to her baby girl.
She’d fought so hard to get over Tim’s affair and the divorce. Now she was fighting to make another man see that he loved her? That he would be a great dad?
What the hell? She deserved better than that. She’d done her work on herself like Oprah had been talking about for years. Now it was Zeke’s turn.
For Zeke, the next few days were the pits. Molly had come back to work the following day, professional as always, neutral-pleasant expression, no lingering looks. She did her work, kept her head down, left for lunch at twelve thirty and returned at one fifteen. Then she’d make herself a cup of her favorite chocolate-hazelnut coffee and scroll through her phone, reading her social media accounts. Then at one thirty she’d get back to work.
She wasn’t ignoring him, per se. She acknowledged him when he came in each morning. She gave him a brief smile as he passed her in and out of the office. But she was ignoring him. He felt the deep freeze in the office and he hated it. He missed his Molly so much that he hadn’t slept more than a couple hours at a time since their night together.
And just when he couldn’t take it another minute, it was Saturday and he wouldn’t see her at all for two days. At least during the week she’d be sitting at her desk.
Zeke flopped over in his bed, pulling the pillow over his head like he used to as a kid when he didn’t like what was going on. At least he had a busy day. At ten, he’d give his talk at the Teen Rancher’s Summit and he had Dawson Solutions work to do today, as well.
He finally got out of bed and took a shower, going over his speech in his head so he wouldn’t think about Molly. Then he had two mugs of strong coffee out on the back deck, the cold, crisp February air a good jolt. At 9:45 he left the cabin and headed toward the lodge, a gorgeous white clapboard building with a steep roof just a quarter mile away. The summit was being held in the second-floor event room, which overlooked Clover Mountain and land and trees as far as the eye could see. His grandparents had originally built this lodge fifty-two years ago, and his gramps used to take the six of them up here when it was too cold to play outside and let them race around on Rollerblades and skateboard to their hearts’ content. A few times his gramps had found him standing by the big window, taking in the view, and Gramps would give him the history and stories about Clover Mountain. Whenever he’d visited the ranch over the past year, this view would fill him up, restore something in him. He never understood what exactly. He just knew the view was about peace for him. Maybe because it was connected to his grandfather, not his father.
Now, as he entered the lodge and headed past the Kid Zone, he could just make out boisterous voices of happy kids playing. He was suddenly struck by a memory, of his grandfather telling him a story about Axel’s favorite goat, Flash, getting loose and running into the mountain and how their dad had taken Axel to find Flash, staying up there past midnight till the goat was brought down safely. His dad was a heavy drinker even then, and even at nine, ten years old, Zeke would understand that his grandfather’s stories about Bo Dawson were to make them both wary of his father’s faults and appreciative of his good points.
You’ll understand your dad better when you have children of your own, he recalled his grandfather saying more than once, particularly when he was a young teenager. Life is complicated but wonderful.
I’m never having kids. No way, Zeke had said. His grandparents had passed when he was fifteen, and he could recall the anguish and the doubling down on the vow never to have a family of his own. Bo Dawson had been drunk at his parents’ funeral, barely able to stand. His six kids had been equally furious and understanding. But that day had seeped inside Zeke’s cells. He was his father’s son and why create a new family only to disappoint them and hurt them because they’d love you no matter what the hell you did. That was family, wasn’t it?
Zeke sucked in a breath and tried to clear his head and fill it with his talk today. Money. Business. Entrepreneurial spirit. How the future started now—if you planned for it.
When Zeke walked in, his sister-in-law Sara, the forewoman, was wrapping up her talk about general ranch management. Sara knew her stuff, and the applause she’d gotten, including wolf whistles from a group of teenage girls, made him smile. The kids were sitting at round tables with water bottles and snacks, banquet-style, and there was a table at the front of the room, meant for sitting on so the talk wouldn’t feel like school or a lecture.
Noah introduced Zeke to the crowd—twenty-seven kids between thirteen and eighteen. He looked out the window perpendicular to the tables, Clover Mountain in the near distance doing its magic, restorative work on him. And then he sat down on the table, placing his Stetson beside him, and welcomed the teens, talking to them openly and honestly as Noah had suggested, mining his own memories as a teenager to relate his talk to their lives.
“As my brother said, I’m Zeke Dawson, and I moved back to Bear Ridge recently to open my own business, helping other businesses and their owners become success stories. I believe that everyone can become a success story—no matter where you start out. As you know from hearing Noah’s talk, my family had it rough for a number of years. Our father was an alcoholic who drank away grocery money. I can’t count the times my siblings and I, as teenagers, had to use all our strength to pull our father—dead drunk and dead weight—into the house so he wouldn’t freeze to death.”
He took a breath and glanced out at the mountain. “When things in your life seem too hard to surmount, when you think there’s nothing more for you out there so you might as well make trouble for yourself, I’m here to tell you that there’s always going to be something that flips a switch in you. Maybe it’s there now. Something you love doing. Playing soccer. Drawing. Chemistry class. Animals. You can take that thing you love and let it take you far and away. For me, that passion was business. Why does one pizza place do well and another fails? That’s the question I like to answer. So when I was a junior in high school, I got a job at a pizzeria in town and studied what the owner did and why. My job was cleaning tables and mopping the floor, but I watched and learned and earned a heck of a lot more from that job than my lousy paycheck.”
He looked out at the faces staring at him. No one looked bored. All the kids seemed to be listening—really listening. And it inspired him. He talked some about what he did with that paycheck, spending half and saving half, and he saw a few kids taking notes.
“When I graduated from high school,” he continued, “I left town and put myself through college in Cheyenne with two jobs, one working in the mail room of a big company. Within five years, I had my own office in that company. Within ten, I was a vice president. You can be anything you want to be. Let’s say you want to be an NBA player. Work for it. Who says it can happen for one kid but not you? Let’s say you want to be a brain surgeon. Make it happen. Mechanic—make it happen. FBI agent—make it happen. Anything is possible.”
He then launched into how to trick yourself into saving your money when you wanted to buy a new bike or video game, how to put blinders on when it came to following your heart, following your passion. You just had to keep your eye on the prize and not let anything or anyone tell you it was unattainable.
And then his talk was over, and Noah was actually hugging him. Sara had tears in her eyes and said she might have to ask him back every month. A bunch of kids came up to him to shake his hand and tell him they got a lot out of his talk. That they liked knowing it really was possible to make it on your own, that you didn’t have to be a golden boy.
“Well, all that sounds good but forget it for me,” a kid with dark hair and hazel eyes said as he kicked at the floor, his hood up and his shoulders bunched. He wore a My Name Is sticker on his shirt, Jeremy scrawled in blue pen. “I can like what I want and I’m never gonna be anything. My dad’s in jail and my grandfather was in prison and I probably will be, too, by the time I’m nineteen.”
“Your dad’s in jail?” Zeke asked. “That has to be rough on you.”
The kid nodded and looked at the ground.
“That stuff I was talking about—about what you like to do, makes you feel better, gets you excited. What is that for you?”
“Forget it,” Jeremy said. “It’s not like it’s gonna happen.”
“But it could. If you make it happen.”
The kid rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna be a social studies teacher like Mr. Reinhart? Right.”
“What’s he like?” Zeke asked.
“He really knows his stuff. You can tell he really cares about what happened in history. And the way he teaches it is really interesting. He talks to us with respect, too.”
“That can be you in five years. You graduate, you go to college, could be community college right here in Converse County, and you get a degree in education for teaching social studies in grades seven through twelve. You get hired by a school district, and suddenly you’re Mr. Reinhart, inspiring a new group of kids.”
“That’s how it’s done? I go to college for teaching social studies?”
Zeke nodded and pulled out his card. “When you’re a senior next year, you can call me and I’ll help you with the process of applying to college if you want. You can utilize your school guidance counselor or any inspiring adult who’ll help you. But if you need my help, you just call.”
Jeremy’s eyes widened. “Really? Why are you helping me?”
“Because it would have been cool if someone had done that for me when I was your age. My older brother tried, but there were five others to worry about.”
The boy stared at Zeke, his expression having slowly morphed from wary to possible.
“You decide your path, Jeremy. No one else. You.”
Jeremy looked back at the card. “Thank you.” He nodded a few times, then put the card in his back pocket and walked away toward his table.
“I heard most of that,” Noah said. “I could use you regularly with the program if you’re interested. I had no idea you could be so inspiring.”
Zeke laughed. “Me, either.”
“I think it’s the truest thing you can say to a kid—that you decide your own path. No one else. You. For a long time I let the crap I went through make my decisions.”
“Yeah, I’m still doing that at age thirty-one,” Zeke said, shaking his head. Who did he think he was, giving advice when he couldn’t take it himself?
“So stop,” Noah said. “Just decide to stop—make that your goal. When you come down to it, you’re just being stubborn at your own expense. And hell, I don’t even know what we’re talking about—specifically, I mean.”
Zeke smiled. “I’m afraid I’m gonna be like Dad. That’s his blood is running in my veins and I’ll screw up a kid’s life. Make him feel like Jeremy.”
“I’d think about what you said to Jeremy and then follow your own excellent advice.”
If he wanted Molly in his life, he’d have to try.