The Ranch She Left Behind

He transferred his troubled gaze to her. Then he cleared his throat and turned to the sink.

Ben knew about the tragedy that had exiled Penny from Bell River, of course. Everyone knew, but Ruth hadn’t allowed anyone to speak of it to Penny. She thought it would be too traumatic. Having a mother die tragically was bad enough for any child. But having your mother killed by your father...and your father hauled away to prison...

And then being ripped from the only home you’d ever known, split from your sisters and asked to live in another state, with a woman you barely knew...

Traumatic was an understatement. But, though Ruth had meant well, never being allowed to talk about what had happened—that might have been the hardest of all. Never to be given the chance to sort her emotions into words, to put the events into some larger perspective. Never to let them lose power through familiarity.

Sometimes Penny thought it was a miracle she hadn’t suffered a psychotic break.

“Sweet pea, I’m sorry. But I need to say this.” Ben still held the cup and dishrag, and was still rubbing the surface in circles, as if it were a worry stone.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s okay, Ben. Whatever it is.”

“Good.” He put down the cup and rag, then cleared his throat. “Ruth did mean well. I know that. You needed to heal, and at first it was probably better to heal quietly, in private. But you’ve been ready to move on for a long time.”

“How could I? Ruth was so sick, and—”

“I know. It was loyal of you to stay, to take care of her when she needed you. But she doesn’t need you anymore, honey. It’s time to move on.”

At first Penny didn’t answer. She recognized a disturbing truth in his words. That truth made her so uncomfortable she wanted to run away. But she respected him too much to brush him off. They’d been friends a long time. He was as close to a father as she’d ever had.

“I know,” she admitted finally. “But moving on...it’s not that easy, Ben.”

“Of course it is!” With a grin, he stomped to the refrigerator and yanked down the piece of paper that always hung there, attached by a magnet shaped like Betty Boop. “Just do it! Walk out the door! Grab your bucket list and start checking things off!”

She laughed. “I don’t have a bucket list.”

“You don’t?” Ben looked shocked. He stared at his own. “Not even in your head? In your heart of hearts? You don’t have a list of things you want to do before you die?”

She shook her head.

“Why? You think bucket lists are just for geezers like me?”

“Of course not. I’ve never had any reason to—”

“Well, you do now. You can’t hide forever, Pea. For better or worse, you aren’t like the nun in Ruth’s parlor. You were never meant for that.”

Ruth’s parlor overflowed with lace doilies and antimacassars, Edwardian furniture and Meissen shepherdesses. Ruth had covered every inch of wall space with framed, elaborate cross-stitch samplers offering snippets of poetry, advice and warnings—so many it was hard to tell where one maxim ended and the next one began.

Penny had loved them all, but her favorite had been a picture of a woman putting on a white veil. When Penny moved in, at eleven, she’d assumed the woman was getting married, but Ruth had explained that the poem was really about a woman preparing to become a nun.

The line of poetry beneath the veil read, “And I have asked to be where no storms come.” Penny had adored the quote—especially the way it began with and, as if it picked up the story in the middle. As if the woman had already explained the troubles that had driven her to seek safety in a convent.

“My father murdered my mother,” Penny always imagined the poem might have begun. “And so I have asked to be where no storms come.”

She’d mentioned it to Ben only one time. He gave her a camera for her twelfth birthday, and she took a picture of the sampler, among her other favorite things. When she showed it to him, he had frowned, as if it displeased him to see how much she liked it.

He was frowning now, too. “I hope you’re not still toying with the idea of taking the veil.”

Penny chuckled. “Of course not.” She remembered what Ruth had said when Penny had asked if she was too young to become a nun.

“Far too young,” Ruth had responded with a grim smile, “and far too Methodist.”

“Good.” Ben waved his hand, chasing the idea away like a gnat. “You’d make a horrible nun. You were made for marriage, and children, and love.”

“No.” She shook her head instinctively. No, she definitely wasn’t.

“Of course you are. How could you not know it? The men know it. Every male who sees you falls in love with you on the spot. You make them want to be heroes. Think of poor Officer McGregor out there.”

It was her turn to blush. Penny knew she wasn’t glamorous. She had two beautiful sisters, one as dark and dramatic as a stormy midnight, the other as pale and cool as a snow queen. Penny was the boring one. And if she hadn’t been boring to begin with, these years with Ruth, who didn’t believe in wearing bright clothing or making loud noises, had certainly washed her out to a faded, sepia watercolor of a woman.

The only beauty she had any claim to showed up in her art.

Ben’s affection made him partial. As if to offset Ruth’s crisp, undemonstrative manner, he had always handed out extravagant compliments like candy.

“Don’t be silly, Ben.”

“I’m not. You are. You’ve got that quiet, innocent kind of beauty, which, believe me, is the most dangerous. Plus, you’re talented, and you’re smart, and you’re far too gutsy to spend the rest of your life hiding in that town house.”

She had to smile. She was the typical youngest child—meek, a pleaser, bossed around by everyone, always trying to broker peace. “Come on. Gutsy?”

“Absolutely. You’ve conquered more demons at your young age than most people face in a lifetime. Starting with your devil of a father, and going up through tonight.”

“I haven’t been brave. I’ve simply endured. I’ve done whatever I had to do.”

“Well, what do you think courage is?” He smiled. “It’s surviving, kiddo. It’s doing what you must. It’s grabbing a can of wasp spray and aiming it at the monster’s ugly face.”

She laughed, and shook her head. “And then shaking like a leaf for four hours straight?”

“Sure. For a while you’ll shake. But trust me, by tomorrow, you’ll realize tonight taught you two very important things. One, you can’t hide from trouble—not in a nunnery, and certainly not in a San Francisco town house.”

The truth of that sizzled in the pit of her stomach. She might want to be where no storms come—but was there any such place?

She nodded slowly. “And two?”

“And two...” He took her hand in his and squeezed. “Two...so trouble finds you. So what? You’re a warrior, Penelope Wright. There’s no trouble out there that you can’t handle.”

* * *

MAX THORPE HADN’T been on a date in ten months, not since his wife died. Apparently, ten months wasn’t long enough. Everything about the woman he’d taken to dinner annoyed him, from her perfume to her conversation.

Even the way she ate salad irritated him. So odd, this intensely negative reaction. She’d seemed pretty good on paper—just-turned-thirty to his thirty-four, a widow herself. A professional, some kind of charity arts work on the weekends. His friends, who had been aware that divorce had been in the air long before Lydia’s aneurysm, had started trying to set him up with their single friends about six months after her death, but this was the first time he’d said yes.

Obviously he’d surrendered too soon—which actually surprised him. Given the state of his marriage, he wouldn’t have thought he’d have this much trouble getting over Lydia.

But the attempt to reenter the dating world had gone so staggeringly wrong from the get-go that he’d almost been glad to see his daughter’s cell phone number pop up on his caller ID.

Until he realized she was calling from the security guard’s station at the outlet mall.