A Family For Rose

“Momma says we’re gonna live here, and I’m going to ride horses every day,” Rose said.

Willard nodded. “Glad to hear it. Your momma sure could ride, before she got herself famous in Nashville.” He topped off the tank and replaced the gas cap. “You planning on moving back here for real?” he asked, that same cautious look in his eyes.

Shannon reached inside the car for her purse. “Willard, to tell the truth, right now I can’t say whether I’m coming or going. It’s been a long journey and I’m really tired.”

He nodded his understanding. “The ranch road’s gotten pretty rough since you been gone. There’re some washouts that fancy car of yours might not like. Things at your daddy’s ranch might look a little different now from what you remember.”

Shannon wondered what he was trying to tell her, then shrugged off her fears. “Everything changes, Willard. I’m just glad to be home.”

“We’re glad to have you. If you need any supplies out there, anything at all, just give me a holler. I’ll drive ’em out myself after closing time.”

“That’s kind of you, but I’m sure we’ll be okay.” Shannon counted off the bills for the gas and gave them to Willard. “Give Wilma my love.”

The ranch turnoff was less than a mile from the store, and the entrance to the ranch road looked pretty much the same. Same massive cedar poles set on either side, two feet in diameter and twelve feet tall, with the ranch sign up high, spanning the distance between them.

The sign was painted steel, rusting gracefully, with a cutout of a running horse. McTavish Ranch was lettered in gold against the dark red painted steel. Her mother had made the sign, using an arc welder to cut out the big silhouette of the running horse. When it first went up, folks had come from miles around to admire it, and after all these years it was still a handsome sign, welcoming her home and making her feel as though everything was going to be all right.

That feeling lasted until she saw the new house that was being built not a stone’s throw from the ranch turnoff, on the banks of the Bear Paw, smack-dab on the spot where she used to wait for the school bus.

She braked abruptly, her fingers tightening around the wheel, and for a moment she couldn’t believe her eyes. It was as if someone had found her childhood diary with the drawing of her little dream house in it, the house she’d planned to build in this very same spot one day. Only nobody knew what her dream house looked like. She hadn’t told a soul she was coming back. Nobody would’ve built that house for her on the little knoll overlooking the creek.

“I don’t believe it,” she said aloud.

The building was a small, story-and-a-half ranch with a wide porch across the side facing the creek. Simple and pleasing to the eye. The structure was framed up and closed in, sheathed in house wrap, but the roof was only half shingled and the siding wasn’t on yet. No windows had been installed in the framed-out openings. No doors. She could see a generator under a lean-to near the house. Stacks of roof shingles and lumber were neatly arranged in the yard.

“Are we there, Momma?” Rose asked from the back seat, perking up.

“No, honey, not yet.”

“Why’re we stopped?”

“I’m looking at a house.”

Rose hitched up in her seat to see out the side window. “Who lives here?”

“Nobody...yet. It isn’t finished.” Shannon was still trying to process it all. Was it possible that her father was building this place for her and Rose? Was it possible that, all along, he’d been waiting for her to come home? Hoping that she would? Awaiting the day? Had she been wrong about him, thinking that all these years he was still angry with her, that he never wanted to see her again? Could this little house be proof that he really loved her and hoped she’d come back?

“No,” Shannon concluded with a shake of her head. “Never in a million years would Daddy be building that house for me.”

The final stretch of road to the ranch was worse than rough. One of the first things she’d have to do would be to trade her Mercedes for a pickup truck. If her father let her stay, that was.

But she might have destroyed all chances of that ten years ago. Daddy’d warned her about quitting school and running off with Travis Roy. The day she’d left home they’d had a terrible fight, said terrible things to each other, things they could never take back. Shannon figured he’d get over his big mad, but he hadn’t, not even after ten years. Hadn’t answered any of her letters, hadn’t asked her to come visit or expressed any interest at all in his granddaughter. Worst of all, every single thing he’d warned her about had come to pass. He might not have spoken to her in forever, but for sure he’d say these four words to her when she came crawling home. He’d say, “I told you so,” and he’d be right.

“Momma, I have to pee,” Rose said from the back seat.

“Hold on, sweetheart, we’re almost there.”

Shannon crested the height of the land where she could see the ranch spread out in the valley below, surrounded by mountains that looked close enough to touch and were crowned with sailing-ship clouds scudding across the wide-open July sky. She stopped the Mercedes. “See, Rose? Down below us in that valley? That’s the McTavish Ranch. That ranch has been in our family for a long, long time.”

Rose’s face scrunched up in pain. “Momma, I really have to pee.”

Shannon got out, freed Rose from her seatbelt and helped her from the back seat.

“Go behind those bushes. I’ll wait right here.”

Rose obediently walked to the side of the road and looked behind the bushes. “Momma, there’s no bathroom here.”

“If you want fancy indoor plumbing, you’ll have to hold it till we reach the ranch.”

“I’ll wait,” Rose said with a pained look and turned toward the car.

Shannon leaned against the car door. It seemed as if the wind was clearing away the weary fog that muddled her thoughts and sapped her energy. Wyoming wind was a yondering wind. She’d always loved its wild, far-flung power, and right at this moment, standing in the shadow of those rugged mountains, she felt young again, as if her dreams were still within reach and life was just beginning.

“Momma?”

Rose’s plaintive voice interrupted her reverie, reminding her that ten years had passed and she was now the mother of a six-year-old girl who really had to pee.

The rutted dirt road serpentined a slow descent into the valley and their car kicked up a plume of dust that would announce their arrival minutes before they pulled in to the yard, assuming anyone was looking.

Shannon noted the sad condition of the fences and gates on the ranch road. Willard had warned her, but it looked like Daddy hadn’t done any maintenance since she’d left. It was ominous that the gates were ajar, all three of them, including the main gate just off the black road. The cattle and horses could wander clear to the Missouri River if they had a mind—unless there weren’t any left to wander. Maybe Daddy had sold all the livestock. Maybe he planned to sell the land off in ten-acre parcels. Mini ranchettes. Maybe that little house being built on the Bear Paw River was the first of many.

She closed the gates, one after the other, two sagging on broken hinges, the last hanging from a rotting fence post. Her parents had taught her always to close the gates and keep them closed, so she did. It would’ve felt wrong to leave them open.

She parked in front of the house beside the faded blue pickup that was her father’s, the same pickup he’d had when she left. Ford half ton. It had been starting to rust then and it was a whole lot rustier now.

The house looked weather-beaten. Shabby. The roof needed shingling, the windows needed a good cleaning. There were a couple of soda cans under the wall bench on the porch, an oily rag on the bench itself next to a greasy jug of winter-weight chain saw oil.

She did a quick assessment of the rest. Porch could use a good sweeping. House needed a fresh coat of paint. Gardens were gone. Her mother’s beautiful roses and peonies had long since succumbed to years of neglect in a harsh land. Barns and outbuildings were desolate. Corrals were empty. It looked as if nobody had ever cared about the place and nothing good had ever happened here.

But Shannon knew better. The ghosts of the past weren’t all dead. She and her parents had had good times here. Until her mother died.

She cut the ignition. “You wait right here, Rose.”

The wind lifted a dust devil as she climbed the porch steps. “Daddy?” She rapped her knuckles on the doorjamb and peered through the screen door into the kitchen. “Daddy, you home?”

She heard the slow click of approaching paws and she peered through the screening. An ancient border collie crossed the kitchen linoleum toward her in a stiff arthritic gait. For the second time that day, Shannon felt a jolt of shock down to the soles of her feet.

“Tess?” She stared in disbelief, then opened the screen door as the dog approached, blue eyes milky with cataracts. The border collie sniffed her outstretched hand and after a moment her tail wagged and her blind eyes lifted, searching. Shannon dropped to her knees and enclosed the frail dog in her arms, overcome with emotion.

“Tess,” she choked out as her throat cramped up.

“She waited a long time for you to come back,” a man’s voice said.

Shannon knew that gruff voice as well as she knew the old dog she held in her arms. She looked up, blinking through her tears. Her father stood in the doorway, folded-up newspaper in one hand. She rose to her feet and swiped her palms across her cheeks to blot her tears.

“Hello, Daddy.”

His expression was chiseled in stone. For the longest moment Shannon thought he wasn’t going to respond, but then he gave a curt nod. “Fool dog still looks for you every afternoon, about the time the school bus used to drop you at the end of the road. She never stopped waiting for you to come home.”