Chapter Four #2
“My mother is already determined to redo Christmas,” he said, his gaze on the fire. Ramona could have told him she’d overheard that, but it seemed… too intimate, somehow. “She never misses a chance for a holiday. And I can’t blame her. Not when my dad…” He shook his head.
Cowboy Point was a small town. Ramona knew that Zeke Carey had supposedly been given a year to live, and had hit that year mark last Easter. She also knew that he looked remarkably healthy for someone who was on that particular journey.
But he wasn’t her patient. And no one had directly asked for her opinion, so she kept it to herself.
“Families are important,” she said instead.
He looked at her then, over Hailey’s little tuft of coppery hair. “You don’t talk that much about yours.” His mouth curved into something self-deprecating. “Or you don’t talk to me about your family, anyway.”
“I thought everybody knew,” Ramona said.
When Knox just continued looking at her in that way, as if he was drinking her in—a look that had gotten her in trouble more times than she could count—she blew out a breath.
“My mom grew up here. The way she tells it, she couldn’t wait to get out of this no-stoplight, no-stop-sign little town.
She left when she was eighteen, moved to Boston for college, and never looked back.
She met my dad there. They had me, and we stayed in Boston until I was six.
Then we moved up to New Hampshire, where my father is a professor and my mother works in development at a private school in the area.
Neither one of them has ever come back to Cowboy Point.
I’m not sure my father has ever set foot in Montana, to be honest.”
“How did you end up liking it so much if your mom hated it?” Knox asked.
“I’m sure I told you before that I spent my summers out here with my grandfather,” Ramona said, frowning at him. Because it wasn’t like they hadn’t talked over the past year and a half. Not that she knew if he’d retained any of that.
But he nodded. “You did.”
He shifted the baby, who made a few soft, gurgling sounds but didn’t wake up as he transferred her back into that little crib of pillows between them.
Then that intense hazel gaze of his consumed her from his side of the barrier.
“I guess I’m just surprised that she would let you come back here when she went to so much trouble to stay away herself. ”
“She’s often said that she never would have let me come back here in the summers if she thought I’d end up moving here,” Ramona replied with a laugh. “And I don’t know that I blame her for how she feels about this place.”
She thought of Cat, who Ramona had first met when the other girl was at something of a crossroads in her life.
Cat had laid out how hard it was to be a local, known by everybody, and yet truly known by few.
Held securely in place by her family name, and all that history, and yet held back from any dreams she might have had by those same names and histories.
“Some people like living in a place where everyone knows their story,” Ramona said. “But not everybody does. I get that.”
He was studying her and she could feel it like a touch. She had to remind herself that it wasn’t. “Do you normally go back home for Christmas?” he asked.
“I haven’t in a long time.” She was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the same long johns and T-shirt she’d been wearing since she arrived and had shrugged out of the merino wool sweater she usually wore as a base layer.
There was no particular reason she should feel so overheated, suddenly, but Knox was giving her all of his attention.
She’d always been susceptible to that. “For a long time I was on call at Christmas. It was easier not to set any expectations, so I’d usually go and see my parents at other times.
When it’s easier to get in and out of airports, and drive into the New Hampshire wilderness, such as it is. ”
He didn’t look overheated as he leaned back against the couch and stuck his legs out toward the fire. He looked lazy and intrigued. “How does it stack up?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, and laughed. “I wouldn’t want to get stranded in some of New Hampshire’s less settled places. A mountain is a mountain, even in the east. But nothing is as formidable as Montana.” She studied him. “You want to travel more, don’t you?”
The windows rattled, indicating the wind was gusting, and he seemed to take his time looking at her again. “It’s a big world. Folks around here think that a big sky is all they need, but I’ve always thought it was impossible to make that determination unless you did both.”
“Can the ranch make it without you?” She didn’t know if she was kidding when she said that or not, but she was surprised when Knox laughed.
He stretched back out on his side of the blankets, forgoing the couch as a back support entirely, and stacked his hands beneath his head.
“If you asked my brothers, they’d tell you that I don’t work here on the ranch now,” he said. “So no, I don’t think they’d miss my contributions.”
Ramona had heard him say things like that before. She’d heard his brothers say things like that too, for that matter. And it occurred to her that this was the first time they’d really had an extended conversation like this without there being nudity involved.
Her sobriety initiative where he was concerned was going well, Ramona thought a bit smugly. This was the equivalent of being able to sit at a dinner where wine was served without having to turn her glass upside down to keep from taking a sip.
Because when there was nudity involved, they never talked very long.
Because there were always better things to do.
And there had always, always been nudity involved until now.
But then, for the first time, it occurred to her that maybe that had been part of the problem.
They had spent a lot of time together, but when she looked back, it seemed to her that there was a whole lot of shallow water when they were together and then deep feelings in between.
On her part anyway.
“Do you think that your brothers are misrepresenting your contributions, then?” she asked, hoping that he couldn’t see what she was thinking about all over her face.
He laughed again. “Of course I do.”
But he didn’t elaborate.
And normally, Ramona would have let that go. Talked of something else or, more likely, kissed him instead.
It didn’t escape her that she might actually have found her own culpability here. Hurting her own feelings for over a year and not realizing the extent of it until now.
But everything was different today, thanks to little Hailey.
So that meant she could be different too.
“I think sometimes that families can get into a rut,” she said after a moment.
“I can hear the way I talk about my mom. I make it sound like she’s filled with hate and is constantly railing against all things Montana.
” She wrinkled up her nose. “That’s not really true.
She’s the first person I want to call when something happens.
I like to make her laugh and she always makes me laugh.
That was a lifeline during my residency.
And she can make anything grow. She brings plants back to life when I swear they’ve turned to ash and dirt.
She sings to them, which she claims is the secret.
I, on the other hand, have a black thumb and kill plants with impunity.
” She considered that, too aware of the heat of his gaze on her.
“My mother and I are both uncomfortably alike and completely different. I imagine all families are like that.”
“I love my brothers,” Knox said, very matter-of-factly.
He shifted so he could look at Ramona directly.
“I know they love me too, despite what you might be led to believe if you listen to them talk shit. But you, to them, I’m the one who had to do things differently.
Who had to go off to college. Who needed to create a source of income that has nothing to do with the ranch. ”
“Your brother Ryder was a huge rodeo star,” Ramona reminded him. “I feel certain he had another source of income as a bull rider at that level. Your brother Boone opened his own dairy. You’re not the only one that’s gone out on his own.”
“But the things I do don’t benefit the ranch, to their way of thinking,” Knox said, and it was the fact that he didn’t even sound resigned that got to her.
He sounded… matter-of-fact. Understanding, even.
“It raises High Mountain Ranch’s profile to have a rodeo star around the place.
Same thing with Boone’s dairy and all the rest of the things he and Sierra are trying to do.
Me, on the other hand?” He gave a sort of philosophical shrug that made her heart ache.
“The reality is that any work that you don’t have to do with your own two hands is a little suspect in the Carey family. ”
Ramona couldn’t contain her frown. “That’s just stupid.”
And this time when Knox laughed, it was a different sort of laugh altogether. This one was pure delight, as if she had surprised him.
“I said I loved my brothers,” he replied. “I didn’t say they weren’t idiots.”
And Ramona thought that it was a good thing that they’d both only had the faintest, slightest taste of that rum, because otherwise, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have backslid entirely.
She was grateful when Hailey woke up mad, demanding a diaper change and a cuddle.
There was more snow the next day, piling up higher and higher outside. The power came back on in fits and starts, only to get knocked out again when the wind picked up or the freezing rain swept in, turning the trees into sculptures that gleamed.
Time became meaningless.
They revolved around Hailey’s schedule and slept when they could. Ramona had often wondered how new parents did it—now she was getting a crash course.