Reuniting with the Rancher

Then she saw movement outside. She leaned toward the window and strained her eyes. Horse and rider? What the— Jumping up, she pulled off her damp nightgown, pulled on a dry and much more modest one, then headed downstairs.

She was sure of one thing: only one person would be riding up to this house in the middle of the night.

She reached the front door just as he came riding around the corner of the house. He wasn’t even looking in her direction, just kind of ambling along. She grabbed a jacket off the coat tree, pulled it on and stepped out.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He drew rein and turned his mount in her direction. “Curing insomnia,” he said. “We shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

“You didn’t. I was awake.”

“Sorry I didn’t bring a horse for you.”

Oh, that was a mistake, she thought as memory slammed her again. They’d gone riding together so many times during that summer, laughing and carefree until passion would rise again. They’d made love on a bed of pine needles, once on a flat rock in the middle of a tumbling mountain stream, another time...

Clenching her hands, she forced memory back into its cage. “Does it help the insomnia? Riding?” It seemed like a safe question.

“I don’t think anything’s going to help tonight,” he said bluntly.

Even though she could barely see him, she could feel his eyes boring into her. The quiet night settled between them, disturbed only by the jingle of the horse’s bridle as it tossed its head a little.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll just move on.”

She knew what she should have done, but before she could act sensibly, words popped out of her mouth. “Want some coffee? I know it won’t help you sleep...”

“It’s almost dawn. No point in sleeping now.” For a few seconds it seemed he was going to continue his ride, but then he swung down from the saddle. “Coffee would be great.”

She turned quickly and headed back inside, partly to avoid getting too close to him, and partly to warm up. Late spring? The nights still got chilly.

She wished she’d grabbed a robe, but the long flannel nightgown she had put on was probably almost as concealing. Which led her to another question as she made the coffee. Why had she been in such a rush to get down here when she had been certain it was Cliff riding by?

She shook her head at her own behavior. Maybe this house just felt too empty with Martha, but it was pretty sad that she was reaching out to Cliff.

So there she was, missing Martha even more because she ought to be here, hundreds of miles from home, troubled by a weird nightmare that had somehow combined Cliff with the attack on her when the two were totally unrelated. She wondered if she was losing it.

Or maybe grief had just scrambled her thinking. It was certainly possible.

She heard Cliff come through the house to the kitchen, and it seemed his steps were slow. Evidently he wasn’t really looking forward to having coffee with her. Well, why should he? But he could have just refused.

“Have a seat,” she said. She remained where she was, staring at a coffeemaker that seemed to be taking forever and a window that stared back at her blackly, showing her more of the kitchen behind her than the world outside.

It was a big country kitchen. Martha had once talked about the days when the family was big, when they had hired help and everyone would gather here for the main meal of the day. At home she had an efficiency, with barely enough room for a narrow stove, small sink and tiny refrigerator. If she wanted to cook, she had to do the prep on her dining table in the next tiny room.

Still, the house was awfully big for one person, but she couldn’t sell it for ten years. She definitely needed to find a good way to put it to use.

Wandering thoughts again, but when the coffeemaker finished, so did the wandering.

“You still like it black?” she asked.

“Yes. Thanks.”

So she carried two mugs to the table, and finally had to sit facing him. No way to avoid it any longer.

He looked tired, she thought. Well, lack of sleep would do that. But damn him, he remained every bit as sexy as he had all those years ago. Maybe even more so. That didn’t seem fair.

“You’ve lost weight,” he remarked. “Have you been sick?”

She shook her head. “Just busy. Sometimes I just feel too tired to eat.”

“That’s not good.” When she didn’t answer, he spoke again. “I take it your job is draining. Want to tell me about it?”

“What’s to tell? I work with people most of society doesn’t care about. People who never had a real chance in life. Most of my job is trying to get children to do the things that will give them a chance. To avoid the things that will take away their chances. We try to give them a safe environment after school, encourage them to finish homework, feed them, expand their horizons a bit. And then they go home to the same despair.”

He gave a low whistle.

“Maybe that’s not entirely fair,” she said after a moment. “There are some bad parents. There are in any group. When I first started I was investigating abuse cases that occurred at very nice addresses. Then I moved over to work with underprivileged kids. A lot of people may not believe it, but some of my strongest supporters with these kids are their parents. They want their children to have a better life. But it’s kind of hard to believe in when you come home to a run-down apartment where no one cares enough even to get rid of the roaches, and there’s little food in the refrigerator.”

“Colliding worlds?”

She nodded, closing her eyes. “You have to take it a step at a time,” she said finally. “Right now I’m organizing a couple of communities to demand exterminators. You’d think management would at least provide that. Little kids shouldn’t be living with roaches, rats and mice. It’s not healthy. Sometimes they get bitten.”

“God!”

“Anyway, sometimes I feel like I’m trying to hold back a flood with a broom. These people are so ground down. But then you see the spark of hope in them when they think you can help their kids. They really care about that.”

“But you’re just one person.”

“But I’m not the only social worker. We do what we can. It’s hard not to get impatient, though. I could use a magic wand.”

“I imagine so.”

She opened her eyes, but looked back toward the window. “What you said earlier about bringing some of them out here?”

She noticed his response was hesitant. “Yeah?”

“I wish I could. I was thinking about it, but the problems are huge. And while Martha might approve, I’d need to get through all kinds of red tape. And then I asked myself what I could do for them in a couple of weeks here. Or even a whole summer here. Would I just make it harder on them when they had to go home?”

“That’s a tough question. I didn’t think about that.”

She shrugged and finally managed to look at him again. “It needs a lot of planning in a lot of ways. But I keep thinking how wonderful it might be for them to have a month or two when they just simply didn’t have to be afraid or hungry.”

“So they’re afraid, too?”

“They’re living in a damn war zone. Gangs. Drugs. Turf wars. They learn to be afraid very early.”

He cursed. “That’s no way for a kid to grow up.”

“I agree. But as one of my friends often reminds me, a lot of kids in the world are growing up exactly that way.”