Time For Love

“DO YOU KNOW how hard it is to see the screen and type with you in my lap?” Kathy’s arms bent as she tried to navigate the online university’s website around Abby’s sleek body.

They sat at a desk in her bedroom. Growing up, it had been Flynn’s room—geek command central and off-limits to Kathy. The posters of Batman, “World of Warcraft” and Bill Gates may have come down, but it still felt like her brother’s room. Navy plaid wallpaper and tired green shag contrasted against her teal leopard-print comforter and pink slippers.

When she’d gone into rehab, Grandpa Ed was still alive. Flynn had been staying in this room, and so Truman had been put across the hall in Kathy’s childhood space. After Grandpa’s death, Flynn and Becca had married and then moved into the master bedroom. And so Kathy took this room—not wanting to upset Truman by asking him to switch spaces.

The dog turned and licked Kathy’s cheek, as if to say get on with it. While outside her window, birds sang a happy good-morning. She was convinced there was one bird that had designated itself as her alarm clock. Regular as a rooster, that little guy. Tweet-tweet-tweet as the sun approached the horizon.

“I’m just not excited about a business degree,” she whispered to Abby. Accounting, economics, business law. Ugh. But Flynn insisted that she needed a college diploma to rebuild her life, and he said she could do anything with a business degree. Lacking a clear idea of what she wanted to do with her life, Kathy had bent to her brother’s will. She’d get a business degree to prove to him she was serious about creating a solid future for Truman. If only she could make herself complete the college application form.

The dog faced the screen again, her black fur soft against Kathy’s arms. She smelled of freshly dug dirt and green grass...and freedom.

More than happy to postpone signing up for college courses, Kathy gave the dog a kibble from a teacup on her desk, then scratched Abby behind her pointy ears. “You’re just here for the food.” She didn’t much care why Abby kept her company. She enjoyed the affection, even if the conversation was one-sided.

Her bedroom door swung open. Truman’s gaze swept the carpet and corners of the room. “Abby?”

Truman never came in here. He barely acknowledged Kathy’s existence. She couldn’t have moved if someone had shouted, “Fire!”

He finally noticed where his dog was. “Abby.” Disappointment. Betrayal. Truman’s cheeks flushed. He patted his jeans-clad thigh urgently. “Abby, come.”

Neither Kathy nor Abby moved. In fact, the dog gazed back at Kathy, as if encouraging her to speak. And what would she say? Abby sighed and stared at the computer screen again. Or, more accurately, at the teacup below the computer screen.

“Tru.” His name came out as deep and hoarse as the bullfrogs’ songs down by the Harmony River. Kathy stared in the vicinity of her son, cleared her throat and tried again. “I like your T-shirt.”

It was a green-and-purple tie-dyed shirt with a black running-horse weather vane screen-printed on his chest.

He gazed up and down the hall, either looking for support or making sure no one caught him talking to her. “The mayor gave this to me. It’s Uncle Flynn’s winery logo.”

Of course it was. Everyone in Harmony Valley was embracing the winery and its attempts to revitalize the town. But hello, people, should her son be wearing a shirt advertising alcohol?

It doesn’t say Harmony Valley Vineyards, said the voice of reason.

It promotes underage drinking, said the fearful side of her, the one that had been riding shotgun on her shoulder since rehab.

“It’s just a shirt,” Kathy said defensively, bringing her internal argument into the open.

Truman gave her the my-mom-has-lost-it look. He lost his patience and raised his voice. “Abby. Come here. Now.”

Abby jumped from Kathy’s lap and trotted to Truman, circling him and nudging him inside the bedroom. Her herding instincts were to unite, not divide.

“I don’t have time for games,” Truman grumbled, making his escape. “It’s time for lessons.”

Kathy listened to their footsteps move into the kitchen, made immobile by the fact that that was the most successful interaction she’d had with Truman since she’d come home a few weeks ago.

Grandpa Ed used to say, “First the battle, then the war.”

She stood and did a battle victory dance.

“Smooth moves.” Flynn stood in the doorway with that older-brother grin that little sisters hated. “A bit ‘Put a Ring on It’ and a bit ‘Harlem Shake.’ What are we celebrating?”

“Shh.” Kathy yanked him inside and closed the door. “Truman talked to me.”

They high-fived.

“How’re you feeling today, Kathy?” His grin faded. His gaze took inventory.

“Stop. You aren’t my sponsor.” She widened her eyes and breathed on him. “I’m sober.” No bloodshot eyes. No fire-starting breath.

“You’d tell me if you were tempted, right?” He asked her that every morning, but there was an urgency to his question that hadn’t been there in the weeks since she’d come home.

Had she sleepwalked to a liquor store? She thought not. “Of course I’d tell you if I was tempted.” Nope. If she was tempted, she wouldn’t tell him. Not in a thousand years. He’d try to lock her up in rehab quicker than you could say, “Reboot my computer,” and she’d lose what little ground she’d gained with Truman.

“I was thinking of hiring someone to find Mom,” Flynn said out of the blue.

There must have been a bomb blast, because Kathy couldn’t feel her limbs and it was quiet. Deathly quiet. Not even the bird alarm clock made a sound.

“I made peace with my dad.” Flynn’s voice cut through the aftershock. “Maybe it’s time we made peace with Mom. I could get her into rehab. Truman needs you to have a strong support system and...”

“Don’t you dare bring her around me or Truman.” Kathy’s lips felt numb. The words she had to say formed too slowly until she felt robbed of what little power she had left. “I mean it.”

Flynn spoke in his brother-knows-best voice. “It’s been nearly two years since I’ve heard from her. I just thought...”

“She doesn’t deserve your compassion.” She deserves to rot in hell.

* * *

THE TROUBLE WITH selling your soul to the devil was that there was a debt to be repaid. Or, in Dylan’s case, several.

He had thirty days. Thirty days to deliver the semen orders he’d sold for Phantom. Thirty days until his next mortgage and child-support payments were due. Thirty days to make progress with Kathy and the injured colt.

Dylan leaned on the porch railing at Redemption Ranch. Wisps of mist clung to the brown grass in his pastures as the first rays of daylight crested the Sonoma Mountains. Steam rose from the cup of coffee cradled in his hands. In the distance, tall, sturdy eucalyptus trees created a natural border to his property. Whoever had planted those trees had wanted a visual marker, a boundary, that said, This is mine. If Dylan couldn’t keep up with the payments, he’d have to sell off a parcel of the land to a developer. The trees would go. Cookie-cutter houses would fill the pasture. Noise would invade his borders.

As a kid, he’d longed for peace. He’d longed for silence. He’d longed for a place where his father’s belligerence and words and fists couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t hurt him. At his mother’s church, they’d talked about forgiveness and redemption. Those concepts were as unreachable back then as the stars. But today?

Does Phantom deserve redemption? He’d thought so once. But one shot was all he’d have.

Put him down. His father’s command, chilling and frozen in his memory.

“What’s wrong, Dylan? Knee bothering you?” Barry came down the outdoor steps from his garage apartment. With his shoulder-length, snowy hair and diminutive height, the former jockey could pass himself off as one of Santa’s elves.

Dylan let his gaze drift back to the tree-lined horizon. “My knee’s fine.” Aching in the brisk morning, but that was his new normal.

“Then let’s work Phantom.”

Dylan’s grip on the coffee mug tightened. He gazed out over the pasture, but he saw a different scene now, one from long ago. A boy wearing pajamas shut in a stall with a crippled horse and a gun.

“We need to make a withdrawal.” Barry gestured toward Phantom’s stall, the only one that had an outdoor paddock attached. “We can’t keep taking orders if there’s no product to sell. Lots of breeders are anxious for Phantom’s genes.”

Because they expected Dylan to destroy the champion. “Maybe tomorrow. Or next week.” Dylan forced himself to set the coffee cup down. “Maggie Mae should be in heat soon. We can’t collect the goods from Phantom without a mare in her cycle.”