4. Colton
FOUR
COLTON
“Why can’t you just… I don’t know,” Nash pauses, stroking the scruff on his chin while mindlessly surveying the table covered in evidence. “Knock on the door?” he suggests, finding my eyes.
We may not know exactly what’s gone or going on with the Conways and their ties to my father, but if it smells like manure, well, you know the saying.
His brows knit together with worry as he waits for my reply, and when I look at Carsyn, she shares the same humbled and concerned demeanor.
We worked through these files all day and long into the evening. Although we retired to our rooms only a bit after nine, Nash in my childhood room and my ass in a spare bedroom on a twin bed from Hell, I don’t think any of us slept more than two hours.
The deed signed over to CONWAY FARMS from Levi D. Beckett was a dead ringer that something big was ripe for discovery. We agreed that I’d go see Forrest Conway and figure out just why Beckett Farms is no longer ours.
My father didn’t hate many folks. He may not have helped old ladies cross the street nor did he make silly faces at toddlers, or drop change in the Salvation Army cup at Christmastime, but he wasn’t hateful, either. Still. Levi Beckett never did like Forrest Conway. Ever. Gambling debt or not, I can’t see a world where he signed his land over to a man who made his blood boil and his eyes twitch.
“Forrest Conway is a grade A asshole,” my sister answers, her long fingers working the length of her hair as she braids it. “He’s the type of man that, if he thought you wanted to know something, he’d really put in the effort not to tell ya out of spite. Even if it were something trivial. So, trust us, Colton’s gotta do some looking around on his own first.”
Nash pushes a spatula around a cast-iron skillet, the smell of eggs and savory biscuits making my stomach rumble. Shouldn’t surprise me that he woke before us and came down to start breakfast. In the apartment we share back in Texas, he did that a lot too.
“I coulda fixed something,” Carsyn calls to him from the table, her feet keeping the seat of his chair warm. Facing me, her brows lift. “You cook like him?”
It’s strange telling my own flesh and blood things about me. Feels like she ought to know, the same way I should probably know if she’s a good cook, and what her favorite dish to make is, how good she is at riding now, if she barrel races, how school went, what her plans are, who her friends are—I’m an abandoning piece of shit for not knowing any of it.
With my hair a bit damp still, I sift my fingers through, a nervous habit of mine when I’m choosing how to say something. My words don’t always come real clear and easy to me, and they never have, so I take a second and watch Nash’s elbow buck as he scrambles breakfast.
Finally, I say, “I do.”
Her smile doesn’t quite lift the edges of her eyes, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing as me. She shouldn’t have to ask her only sibling what he’s like, as if I’m some stranger. If I had to do it over again, I’d still go to Texas, because staying would’ve killed me. I know it.
There’s a void inside me where the memories of my sister growing up should be.
“I never stopped calling,” I blurt out, my mind veering from one emotional thought to the next. Being back in this time capsule of a house is making it hard to concentrate, and I hate that. I want to focus on helping Carsyn get the farm figured out, putting Dad to rest, then getting back to Texas with Nash. “I want you to know, I meant what I said when I left here. And I never stopped calling. It’s just… you stopped answering.”
For a brief moment, surprise flashes through her eyes, but it melts away like an ice pop in the summer. “I wanted you to say that. For you to tell me you never stopped calling.” Her smile is wobbly as her bottom lip trembles with the admission. “I hoped you’d come back after a few times where you called and couldn’t get through.”
Something inside my chest free falls at her words. All this time I’d thought my father was punishing me for leaving by keeping Carsyn and I apart, even if just by phone. To discover now it was her choice to ignore me… My absence has hurt her in ways I can only pray are repairable. And I deserve the sting that comes with this news.
Nash slides two steaming plates of eggs with biscuits and gravy in front of us, and saliva pools in my lower lip. We’d had some bourbon by the fire last night, but were all too tuckered out to eat. My stomach howls, reminding me that the burgers we had on our way into town are no longer enough. Tired or not, I need to eat.
I take a bite to ease my piercing hunger, then I offer her a meager apology that will never feel like enough. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home, Car. And more than that, I’m sorry I let you down. I am your brother, and I shoulda been here to…” I wave my arm over the table, still coated in evidence that my family needed me. “Do something. Christ, I don’t know. Do everything. Anything.” My eyes are suddenly watery when they meet hers, knowing that my apology is too little to bridge the gap between us. “I gave up every chance to help you ride, race, take you to school, be there on holidays, pull pranks with you, get annoyed that you’re too clingy, all of it. I should have been here.”
Carsyn stares at me so long that the rest of the room goes fuzzy. I’m so focused on how she’s going to respond to my long-overdue apology I can hardly breathe.
“You were always a good brother.” She traces the edge of her plate with one fingertip as she speaks, her voice calm and steady, exactly what I need. “So I knew when you left it had to be something terrible you were running from.”
I nod, feeling Nash’s knowing gaze on me. Carsyn knows why I left, but I suppose as she’s grown, she figured there had to be more. Some other missing piece to the puzzle, something to make it all click into place—anything to make my self-imposed exile something she could better understand.
I loved Forrest Conway’s daughter with every fiber of my being and then some. When someone’s soul is destroyed the way she destroyed mine, lingering in the graveyard of lost love just isn’t feasible, lest I wanted to die, too.
“You know why I left, Cars,” I tell her, refusing to let my broken heart burden me.
She nods, and the three of us dig into breakfast. From her pocket, Carsyn places a USB drive on the table. Using the folded linen napkin from the table, she blots the corners of her mouth. “If Forrest’s computer isn’t password protected, get what you can.”
She slides the little black rectangle toward me, and I take it, stashing it in my pocket. I’ve never done reconnaissance, but I can’t get nervous now.
Nash and I finish our coffee and Carsyn finishes her juice. I haven’t been to the Conways’ in way too long, and I don’t want to go back. Not now, not like this.
Not ever.
Carsyn nods toward the old clock on the wall. “They’re usually leaving for the feed run about now. You got less than an hour, though.”
I lift my hat from the counter and rest it on my head, working my hands into leather gloves. “I can still cut through the back pasture, behind the barn?”
She nods. “Everything is the same as when you left.”
I slip my vest on, and make sure my knife is secured to my belt. “Do you, uh, know if anyone else will be on the property at this hour?”
Carsyn rises, collecting our breakfast plates with a clatter. “I haven’t seen her in years,” she says on her way to the sink. “I think she left not long after you.”
A knot appears in my throat, thick and hot, and like I do every time a strong memory of us rolls through, I force my mind to move to something else. “I’m assuming Roxy’s dead by now,” I say, taking the pistol Nash has in his hand, outstretched to me. “Who’s stabled right now?”
Wiping her hands on a tea towel, my sister smirks. “Roxy’s retired, but Murphy’s alive and well.”
“Can she even get me across the property?” I smirk as she watches me adjust the pistol in my holster.
She doesn’t question me taking it, but I think the three of us are silently hoping I don’t have to use it.
“She’ll get you there, don’t you worry.”
For a second, I pause, wanting to hug her but unsure if I can. It’s been too many years–do I still have the right to a goodbye hug? Carsyn sees my hesitation and rolls her eyes, pulling me down into her, my frame dwarfing hers.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, and I notice she doesn't say back .
Maybe I’m just a runner now. Maybe she can sense that after we handle this, I’ll be gone again.
Even if she’s not here anymore, the memories of the greatest time of my life are. And I can’t be here. They take up too much space. There’s no air for me to breathe. Our love will forever haunt Buffalo Trails.
Nash and Carsyn walk with me to the stable and wave me off as I head through the tall grass on Murphy, who looks damn good for going on thirty. The wind stings my nose as we charge north, the quiet morning suddenly an eerie calm. In the distance, a bird crows something loud and wicked, and it reverberates in the sky, sending shivers up my spine.
The Conway property comes into view after a few miles of riding, and when her house is on the horizon, I jerk the rein, and bring Murphy to a halt.
“Whoa, girl,” I holler, stroking my gloved hand through her wispy mane.
I blink a few times, trying to chase the sting from my eyes left by the whipping wind.
It’s not just my place that’s a time capsule. Maybe it’s all of Buffalo Trails, because her house looks the same as I remember.
I wanted it to be different.
I wanted it to be different so goddamn badly. I’d hoped to ride up on a new house, taller, prettier, fancier, with more eaves, more awnings, a bigger porch, brighter paint…
… a happier family inside.
But it’s the same. The same broken attic window remains to be fixed. The dead patch of lawn where the garden hose sat too long is still lifeless. The wraparound porch is still desolate, two sad chairs sitting alone.
After tying Murphy off to the old camphor tree out front, I trek around to the back of the house, and draw my hat to my chest as I place my hand on the doorknob. One deep breath, and the hinges are giving me away as I step cautiously inside. It was always unlocked when we were kids – I guess nothing really changed at all.
I close the door behind me and wait, standing stick still to see if anyone is here and heard the door. But the house is nearly silent, except for some groaning old floorboards and the faint sound of wind whistling beneath the front door.
Then I’m forced to reconcile my surroundings, process the scene that was the backdrop to many private moments of heaven. Nothing here has changed either and as much as I wasn’t prepared to revisit my own home, being in hers is far worse.