Chapter 29
“You’re kidding!” Kayla exclaimed when he told her the abridged story of the meeting with his parents. Her face lit up, and she hugged him. “That’s great!”
After a beat, she added, “Right?”
“Yeah. I mean…I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still kinda angry with them.”
“But they came all the way here to try to make it right. That’s huge.”
He nodded, but he didn’t quite share her enthusiasm.
“They want to meet you.”
Her face seemed to slowly freeze over. The reaction set him back, and he had a terrible doubt that he’d risked literally everything for this girl and what if she wasn’t really in it with him? What if she was just using him like Amber had? A cold, bitter feeling hollowed him out. It was just one kick too many, and he didn’t have the energy to deal with it.
She hadn’t answered, or maybe she’d muttered something carefully neutral and noncommittal. As if on cue, Abbey appeared, looking from one of them to the next. She went to Evan and nudged him with her nose, pressing her head into his hand. He looked down at her and decided she was the perfect excuse.
“I better get her home before she decides she really lives here,” he said, scanning the house for anything he needed to bring back to his place.
“Evan—” she said, but he clipped a leash on the unruly dog and headed for the door.
“Evan!” she said again, but this time, her voice was more desperate and choked with emotion.
He stopped on her porch with the dog straining at the leash to go run amok. He looked back at her.
“I love you,” she said. Amber had said that too. After all this, how could he doubt her now? He didn’t know, but there it was, just like a scent on the wind making the dog want to run.
“I love you too,” he answered.
“I’ve never met anyone’s parents before,” she blurted. “I’m not…”
I’m not that kind of girlwas what he thought she meant to say, but stopped herself.
“I practically didn’t have parents. Nothing was normal for me. I don’t know how to do normal things.”
He went back to her, and she met him with a desperate hug, her fingers grabbing his shirt in unmistakable honesty. She drew back, looking him in the eye. “I’m really not trying to screw this up. Please don’t leave mad. I wish I was the kind of girl you deserve.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say stuff like that. What makes you think I’m so different from you? I never met a girl’s parents before either. Except your mom, and under the circumstances, I don’t think that counts. I was fighting for my life in prison most of the years I should have been doing stuff like that. I’m pretty new to adulting too. We’re a pair.”
A rough, impromptu giggle erupted from her. “Well, when you put it like that.”
“They’re only here for the weekend. I know it isn’t much notice.”
“Crash-course in adulting.”
“I have faith in you.”
“That makes one of us,” she said with a wry smile.
Kayla wasquiet on the drive to Fort Myers. She’d changed clothes four or five times before they could leave. She still didn’t feel comfortable in the jeans and simple buttoned western shirt she had chosen.
“They’ll love you, you know,” Evan commented.
She shot him a quick, tense smile. “I’m just…not the kind of girl you bring home.”
“Good thing we’re going to a restaurant, then.”
She laughed a little despite herself. “You know what I mean.”
He pulled into a parking spot and turned to her. He reached out to touch her chin and raised it deliberately.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” he said softly. “You made your choice, and you fought for it. That’s who you are, not the sum of the choices other people made that you suffered the consequences of. For what it’s worth, I don’t even feel that comfortable just hanging out with my parents yet, either. But as long as they’re in town, I can’t let them leave without meeting you.”
Seeming fortified, she got out of his truck, smoothing her outfit.
This time, Bev and Hank Flint were waiting on the bench outside the restaurant. They stood up when they saw Kayla and Evan approaching. She sensed Evan watching her out of the corner of his eye. Kayla flashed her “tourist” smile—the one she used to introduce herself to her trail ride guests.
“Mom, Dad. This is Kayla.”
Bev was once again the icebreaker as she stepped forward immediately to hug Kayla. It was a genuine embrace, and Kayla felt an unexpected sense of belonging and affection.
Kayla shook Hank’s hand. They seemed like ordinary, salt-of-the-earth people. Kayla could tell in the first five minutes that Bev Flint was a steady woman who hadn’t gone into fits of drunken rage as her sons grew up. She had one sensible glass of wine at dinner and held her husband’s hand. Kayla both longed to be a part of it and knew that she didn’t fit in at the same time.
Dinner was easier than she could have hoped. Emboldened by the success, Evan suggested they take a ride over to see a house he and Dan had just finished. The houses around it still suffered significant damage, and it was a stark contrast with its clean yard and tidy exterior. Evan explained the process by which he and Dan salvaged the hurricane-damaged houses. The network had even put a small billboard on the front lawn showing a “before” picture with Evan and Dan.
Hank Flint stood in the driveway, surveying the property, and gave a low whistle. When he looked at Evan, there was no mistaking the pride in his eyes. Kayla squeezed his hand hard.
“Want some unsolicited advice?” Kayla said on the way home.
“Hit me.”
“I’d give anything in the world to be able to see my grandma Kay one more time You have an opportunity to make things right with your parents. They seem like good people who made some bad decisions when you were in trouble. Don’t waste your chance.” She thought of Bill saying, “Long as we’re both on the right side of the grass…” And she missed him so bad, she even craned her neck passing the AA Clubhouse, hoping she might see his bike. But it wasn’t there. When she got back to the farm, there was no sign of him there either. She couldn’t even take her own advice and try to reach out to Bill because he was a nomad without technology, and she didn’t have the faintest clue where he would be now.
The ranch was quiet.Evan stayed on with her, and even Abbey seemed a little subdued. Kayla went through the motions of each day, working horses, guiding trail rides, and caring for boarders’ horses. It was a simple, predictable life. One that she could love. With a man she loved. She’d broken free of the worst thing that had ever happened to her: Trent. After an agonizing wait, he’d taken a plea deal. The evidence on him was too damning to go to trial, so he ratted on a bigger peddler of drugs and women and got 10 years. It was finally over, and she hadn’t lost Evan.
And yet, part of her still felt heartbroken. She finally understood that unless her mother made some major changes, she would be lost to her. Grandma Kay was dead and buried. Bill had vanished and not returned; she doubted she would ever see him again. And it took that to realize how much she’d loved him and his steady sober presence on her farm.
Evan, Jake, and their parents had filled the gaping hole left by Canyon Bill’s absence, distracting her from feeling the loss.
But this afternoon, she was alone. Evan was in town working with Dan. She finished with the horses and eventually found herself standing in front of the old trailer porch again, staring at it. A memory surrounded her, as clear as ghosts in front of her face. She and her grandmother sitting on the stoop of the trailer, talking horses.
She climbed the steps, walking through the wraiths and into the silent mustiness of the empty trailer. She wandered to the bedroom and began to rifle through the box. There was a stack of pictures, and tellingly, there were more shots of random people partying than there were of little Kayla growing up. One photo reached out and grabbed her attention. She stopped, staring at her four- or five-year-old self sitting on Canyon Bill’s knee behind an acoustic guitar. He was strumming it and helping her to hold a string down on the fretboard with her tiny hand. She knew her grandmother had taken this picture. Her mother could never have stood by and allowed peace and joy to just happen. Bill looked so young. His hair was still blond and hanging loosely on his shoulders. The smile on his face, in his eyes, when he looked at little Kayla made her heart squeeze.
Under this photo was a battered notebook. It was decorated with the swirling handwriting and doodles of a teenaged girl, and Kayla immediately recognized her mother’s handwriting. She flipped through it idly. She began to pay more attention as she realized it was a journal, or a diary of sorts. As she scanned the entries, she began to pick out names. She became engrossed, vaguely aware as the sun was starting to set. She flipped on the remaining lamp. This was as much an insight as she’d ever had into her mother’s broken mind. The entries started before Kayla was born, when her mother was still a kid herself. They continued after Kayla’s birth. And even though she felt like she was spying, she couldn’t stop reading.
Until she reached a page about Canyon Bill. She threw the notebook down. Then snatched it up and read it again to be sure she hadn’t read it wrong. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t end like this. She jumped up and ran out of the trailer.