The Rancher She Loved

“There isn’t one,” she said. “Just the freshman and sophomore years. She went to a school called Four City High School.”

“Saddlers Prairie is too small for its own high school,” Clay told her. “We have a one-room school that goes through eighth grade. The older kids are bussed to the high school. If it were me, I’d check out Four City. Maybe one of her high-school teachers is still teaching there or lives somewhere close.”

“I will.” Sarah opened the yearbook from Tammy’s sophomore year and propped the book on her lap. “Lots of kids signed Tammy’s yearbook, but I don’t see anything special. Just the usual, ‘Have a great summer’ and ‘See you at church camp.’ No mention of anyone with the initial B, and nothing signed by a boy whose name begins with that letter. But then, maybe Tammy didn’t have a boyfriend yet. I wish she’d written something in her journal about him.”

She flipped to the class pictures. After staring at the page with Tammy’s photo, she held it up for Clay to see. “That’s her, on the left. Neither of my adoptive parents had a wide mouth like mine, and I always wondered where I got it.” Clearly emotional, she swallowed. “Now I know.”

“Let me see that.”

Clay stood. Sitting too long had caused his knee to stiffen up, and he winced as he joined Sarah on the rug.

“Are you in pain?”

“Still healing from an injury.” Not wanting to invite questions, which would lead to the pity he detested, he studied the yearbook.

The girl staring from the photo was pretty, with big eyes and a begging-to-be-kissed bottom lip, a teenage version of Sarah. “You have her face shape and eyes, too,” he said.

“I noticed that.” She fiddled with an earring. “I wonder what color her eyes were. With black-and-white photos, you can’t tell.”

Clay had no idea and didn’t care. He was lost in the expressive depths of Sarah’s eyes. Something sweet and warm passed between them, a bond of sorts, born out of sharing the contents of the old footlocker.

Cheeks flushed, she dropped her gaze to the yearbook on her lap. “I wish there were more pictures of her. And at least one of her parents. My grandparents.”

Though her gaze remained on the yearbook, Clay had the feeling she wasn’t seeing it.

“I hardly remember my adoptive grandparents,” she said. “A car accident took my maternal grandparents before I was born, and I was three when my father’s parents died in a plane crash. Two horrible tragedies.”

Clay had always taken his parents and four grandparents for granted. They all lived a few miles from each other in Billings, along with his aunt, his sister, her husband and their two kids. He’d never even imagined what his life would’ve been like without them.

Sarah had no living relatives except, possibly, for her biological parents and grandparents—people she’d never even met. That had to feel lonely, worse than any emptiness Clay had experienced.

“You never know, you might find photos buried somewhere in this stuff,” he said.

“Which is why I’m going to look carefully through everything.”

That could take hours—days, for that matter. He didn’t think he’d be able to handle having Sarah around that long.

Looking thoughtful, she tapped her finger to her mouth. “I wonder what her friends thought about the pregnancy, and how the school reacted.”

“Thirty years ago, in a small town? Probably not well.”

Once more, her beautiful eyes met his. “I feel so bad for Tammy. I would really like to meet her and talk about it.”

Clay hoped she got that chance. He wanted her to find and reunite with her relatives, so that the shadows and worry faded from her face.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Clay,” she said as if she’d read his mind. “I’ve been alone for a while now, and I’m okay.”

He had no doubt of that. He’d never met a woman like her. She was strong and didn’t flirt or fall all over him.

Most of the women he’d known said what they thought he wanted to hear, instead of speaking their minds. Sarah didn’t seem to have that problem. At times, she seemed cool and distant, but right now, she was open and warm, just as when she’d followed him around for that piece she was writing about him.

Back then, he’d been so sure she cared for him—not as a rodeo star, as a man.