A Winchester Homecoming

“No, that’s okay.” He’d had enough of Kim’s company for one day. “I’m sure I’ll run into her again soon.”

Too soon.

“Thanks again for going to the airport for me,” Adam told him.

“No problem.” Excusing himself, David followed his mother toward the back of the house where he’d parked his truck.

“Call me if you need anything,” he told her when they got to the kitchen.

“Let me give you some of the casserole,” she replied. “I made extra.”

“You always do.” He leaned against the granite counter while she dished up a generous portion into a plastic container. When she added four homemade dinner rolls and a big piece of apple pie, he didn’t protest. Eating his own cooking was one of the many prices of “baching it” that he willingly paid in exchange for having his own place, but he wasn’t about to turn down a meal he didn’t have to cook.

“Was Kim very talkative when you picked her up today?” she asked innocently as she loaded the food into a small box.

David straightened away from the counter and helped himself to one of the sourdough rolls. “Not really. I already told you she nearly keeled over while we were going to the car, though.” Devouring the roll in two bites, he took the box out of his mother’s hands. “What exactly did you think she might say?”

She held open the screen door for him. “Oh, nothing. I was just curious.”

He didn’t push it, partly because he wasn’t all that interested and partly because he didn’t want to risk her taking back the pie. Instead he leaned down to kiss her cheek.

“I’ll be working on the bathroom, but I’ll hear the phone if you need to call.” Since he had decided to remodel the master bath in the old rambler, he was eager to get the room finished and put back together.

She waited on the deck while he backed the truck around, and then she gave him a final wave. He glanced up at Kim’s room, but all he could see was the lacy curtains blowing in the open window. He wondered how she felt about being home again after so long.

A few moments later David drove his one big splurge out the front gate. The house he shared with a dog and a one-eyed cat was only five minutes down the main road. As much as David loved every member of his extended family-by-marriage, living by himself gave him the breathing space he’d realized he needed when he’d come back after graduation from Colorado State.

The old rambler where he had lived for the past few years had been well built by the original owner. Updating it was a work in progress that often seemed to David like more work than progress, since he was doing most of it himself.

His mother had bought the property without realizing that it nearly bisected the neighboring cattle ranch, which just happened to belong to Adam and his two younger brothers. After she had married him, the little rambler sat empty until David reclaimed it.

As he drove slowly down his driveway, Lulu came running out to meet him. Because of his Aunt Robin’s weakness for strays, he owned what had to be one of the ugliest dogs in all of Colorado. Lulu was part Airedale, part Lab, and the rest was anyone’s guess.

Good thing she had big brown eyes and a great personality.

“Hey, Lulu.” He got out of the truck, holding the box of food and the mail he had stopped to collect out of her reach with one hand as he patted her head with the other.

Her short coat was an unfortunate mixture of wiry black and brown waves, like a perm and dye job gone wrong, but her eyes brimmed with intelligence, and her loyalty was as solid as the hand-hewed beams of his house.

Thrilled to have him home, Lulu followed him up the steps to the wide front porch. The boards he’d used to replace those weakened by time and weather felt solid beneath his booted feet. Calvin, his cat, sat on the new railing and washed one orange paw, ignoring the arrival of his master as only a cat could.

“Hello to you, too,” David said in passing.

Just to annoy Calvin, the dog poked her muzzle against his fur and blew out a noisy breath, then barely managed to dodge the retaliatory swipe of claws as Calvin laid his ears flat to his head and spat.

“Behave, you two,” David scolded absently as the cat jumped down, still growling low in his throat, and followed them inside. What a ragtag parade they must make.

David took the food his mother had sent home with him straight through to the kitchen and set the box on the counter he’d redone in ceramic tile two winters before, after he and Karen Sanchez quit hanging out together. With a considering look at both animals, he picked the box back up, set it inside the cold oven and closed the door. No point in taking unnecessary chances.

Not with his mother’s cooking.

Flipping through his mail, he took a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top and poured a good part of it down his throat. He figured limo duty to the airport and back had earned him a brew or two.

There was nothing in his mail except a couple of bills, a home repair magazine and a check for a saddle he’d sold. Sipping the rest of the beer more slowly, he grabbed a baseball cap and went back outside. He crossed the yard and driveway that separated the house from his mother’s old studio. Beyond the small structure where she had restored rare books were the stable and corrals.

A breeze had come up to stir the hot, dry air, so he leaned on the fence that separated him from his horses and watched them graze while Lulu plunked her butt down beside him, panting softly.

David didn’t usually dwell on the past, but Kim’s arrival had stirred up a slew of memories. For a long time he had blamed the move to Waterloo on his parents’ divorce, and he had blamed that on his mother. Eventually he’d figured out that a combination of things had brought them here and that David himself had been at least partially responsible.

Mothers tended to freak out when you got expelled for taking a gun to school, even when it belonged to your father and you’d only borrowed it for self-protection after being shot at by someone you refused to identify when you were out jogging.

It hadn’t been his fault that some dude from a different high school thought David had been hassling his girl, which he hadn’t. Before he knew what was happening, his mother had decided L.A. was no longer safe, so she had bought the Johnson place, a baby-blue pickup truck and a Stetson with a flowered band.

Well, maybe he was wrong about the hat.

What followed was too-cool teen rebel meets rural hicks and hayseeds. The local kids had taken one look at David’s dyed orange hair with the sides shaved, his pierced ear and retro wardrobe, and avoided him like a bad case of hoof rot.

While he put aside the memories and drained the last of his beer, one of his mares moseyed close enough to see if he’d brought her any carrots. Polly was marked like one of Adam’s Appaloosas, but she was actually a breed called Colorado Rangers.

“Sorry, girl.” He rubbed her outstretched nose. “Maybe next time.”

Her colt, a miniature copy of its spotted dam, approached David warily, its scruff of a tail flipping comically while its ears swiveled back and forth.

Lulu started to rise, so David signaled her with his free hand. She obeyed instantly, haunches lowering back down to the ground, but the slight movement had already spooked the colt. With a squeal of apprehension, Bandit spun away on spindly legs, followed at a more matronly pace by his mama. She looked back at David reproachfully.

“See what you did?” he teased Lulu. “Come on. Time for dinner.”

After he had fed his furry roommates, putting Calvin’s dish up where Lulu couldn’t reach it, he set about microwaving the casserole for his own dinner. Usually eating alone didn’t bother him, but tonight when he sat down at the table, the silence seemed hollow instead of peaceful. Refusing to analyze his feelings, he got up and turned on the TV news so that voices filled the room while he finished his meal.

Kim glanced around self-consciously as she followed her father out of the school auditorium where Sunday services were being held until the new church on Dammer Road was completed. She’d forgotten how most of the congregation always stayed around outside afterward, weather permitting, in order to show off their nice clothes and visit with their friends while their kids ran loose.

The Winchesters were no different. All of them, right down to Uncle Charlie’s new baby in a pink lace dress and booties, were slicked out in their Sunday best.

While Kim stood hugging herself and wishing she was back in her room, unchanged since she’d been a teenager, an elderly rancher in a Stetson and a bolo tie approached her father. He had reminded Emily twice on the drive over that he had a doctor appointment first thing tomorrow, and Kim knew he was counting on being able to ditch his crutches.

“Not without a written note,” Emily had retorted as she parked the car.

A pregnant woman with two toddlers in tow greeted Emily as Jake and Cheyenne joined a group of children in a noisy game of tag. After an hour of sitting still, they had energy to burn. Kim’s cousin Steve and another boy his age were ignoring two girls who strolled by in minis and cropped tops. One of them tossed back her streaked blond hair and they both giggled.

How was it possible that little Stevie was old enough to be interested in girls?

Kim raised tentative fingers to her own short hair. The last time she’d been here, it had been long and straight. She’d worn it that same way all through school.

Despite her father’s strictness, she’d always had a lot of friends, taking her popularity for granted. When David came along, so different from the kids she’d known all her life, she’d felt sorry for him. Soon the two of them were friends and allies.

Now that was all changed, their friendship, her ability to fit in and certainly her confidence. Seeing Steve and his buddies made her feel old and worn-out at twenty-five.

She resisted the urge to touch the scar she had covered with concealer, fiddling instead with the belt of her rose-pink dress. At least the fitted style turned the weight she’d dropped into an asset, but she still felt a wave of unexpected shyness as she darted glances at the knots of people scattered across the expanse of dry brown lawn. Most of them she remembered, of course, but she wondered if anyone recognized her behind her trendy sunglasses.