Chapter Two
B eth Evans felt like she’d just come off a fourteen-hour high, as she stripped off her surgical gown and cap in the hospital locker room and tossed them in the waiting laundry bin. She’d crash soon. Slide right down off that adrenaline rush that came with long hours of intense surgery and a positive outcome, but hopefully, she’d be home before that happened.
Tiredness rode her hard these days. No matter how much she tried to catch up on sleep, on chores, on parenting, she just couldn’t seem to get ahead. Being a nurse, running a ranch, being a mom—all doable, but not all at the same time. That was her main problem, never mind all the money problems bearing down on her like an avalanche.
She didn’t have enough feed to last a long winter, and winter had set in early this year. It was time to sell some of her breeding cows—the ones in calf to one of Cal Casey’s prize bulls—because there was no other stock left to sell besides the three horses, and Sam would never forgive her if she sold those.
He probably wouldn’t forgive her anyway when she put the ranch on the market.
Lose her boy to neglect because she was never there to parent him, or default on the dream of keeping his father’s legacy intact and lose him then. Those were her choices.
Her beautiful, biddable baby boy had been replaced by a stringy, brown-eyed kid with worry lines creasing his forehead and a smile that rarely surfaced. She could see his respect for her dimming beneath the weight of living on a ranch that was slowly falling apart.
Beth made it through the crunch of fresh snow in the hospital car park, groaning at the thought of having to fill up on the way home at the more expensive fuel station on the other side of town—the one she didn’t already have an overdue account with. She couldn’t cope with yet another run-in with old man Thompson who rightly wanted to know when she was going to pay him.
Soon.
Soon as she’d sold some more cows.
It was a testament to the weight of her problems that she didn’t see the man leaning against her truck until he straightened and stepped directly into her path.
Mason Casey. Eldest of the five Casey brothers and altogether too full of himself for everyday consumption. Beth didn’t have a lot of time for him, truth be told, but she could be neighborly when pressed and he was doubtless waiting around for a reason.
“Hey, Mason, what’s up? I know that fence needs work, and I’m going to get to it, I promise. I’ll see to it as soon as I get home.”
“It’s not the fence.” He jammed his hands in his coat pockets and looked uncommonly awkward as he met her gaze. “Your phone must be on do not disturb or something, so Cal asked if I could come and fetch you. Give you some news in person. He didn’t want to leave Sam.”
“Sam?” Why was Cal with Sam? “Sam’s at school. Rebecca put him on the bus this morning.”
“No, he and Cal headed up the pass after some heifers, instead.”
Her heifers, obviously. Casey heifers wouldn’t dream of breaking free of the Casey ranch in search of food. They had food.
Beth scowled. “Right. You can be sure I’ll have words with Sam about missing school and pulling Cal away from his work. I told Rebecca to put Sam on the bus before she left.” This wasn’t her first rodeo when it came to Sam missing school.
“That’s not why I’m here.” Mason didn’t seem to want to meet her gaze, and she got it, truly.
She looked a fright. Stringy, honey-blonde hair, lifeless from being tucked beneath a surgical cap for hours. Eyes bruised with fatigue. Makeup nonexistent. A scowl from ear to ear because she couldn’t control her kid.
“Look, I get what you’re not saying. I’ll fix the fences. I’ll make different morning arrangements for Sam whenever I pull a night shift. I’ll do better.”
Mason raised his hand to scritch the back of his neck. “How about you jump in the passenger side of your truck and I’ll bring you up to date while I drive you out there.”
This was getting stranger by the minute. “Out where?” A new thought occurred to her; one she should have thought of earlier. Are they hurt?”
“Sam’s fine.”
“Is Cal hurt?” Cal was her favorite Casey by far.
Always had been, always would be—even if she took great measures to keep him at arm’s length. Fact was, she kept her distance because he was such a good man. A better man than Red had ever been.
Avoiding Cal had become a necessity.
“They’re both fine. But there’s a bit of a gathering up at Hooper’s Pass and you need to be there.”
“A gathering of what? Snowclouds?” Why would a bunch of people get together up at Hooper’s on a day like today?
Mason scowled.
Guess he didn’t appreciate her sarcasm, but she was fast running out of patience. “It’s been a long shift. I’ve just spent ten hours on my feet in surgery and you’re talking in riddles. I’m too tired for riddles.”
“Look…”
Looking. Probably the handsomest man she’d ever seen outside of La La Land. Irritating jerk. Couldn’t hold a candle to the sheer visual impact of his bigger brother.
“I don’t know how to break this…”
“I’m a bad neighbor and you want me to sell. I get it. You’ll get first refusal, I promise.”
“Beth, they found a body while they were looking for the cows. The way Cal tells it, the body must’ve been snugged into a fork in a tree and wrapped up in canvas. How it even got there is a mystery, but the tree came down recently, and, well. That’s what I came to tell you.”
What remained of her breath left her body in a rush.
She knew where this was going now.
She’d spent three years not knowing. Wondering. Grieving. Hoping and praying.
Cursing.
“They found a body,” Mason’s voice seemed to come from far, far away. “It’s Red.”
*
Beth only remembered pieces of the drive.
She remembered watching Mason put fuel in her truck and then thrusting hot coffee in her hand and telling her it was piss weak and barely hot, but it was caffeine and to drink up because she needed to stay awake.
She remembered watching fat snowflakes splatter against the windshield and being thankful she wasn’t the one wrestling the pickup up the mountain track.
A trio of emergency vehicles had gathered in the clearing, alongside a couple of pickups and a horse truck.
“Sam wouldn’t have ridden up this far on his own,” she muttered. “He couldn’t have done it so quickly.” A new thought occurred, a new focus for her pain. “Did Cal bring him up here? Sam’s ten . He’s supposed to be in school.”
Mason slowed to a stop beside the horse truck and cut the engine. “You’re the one who should be making sure that happens. Not your neighbors. Not my brother.”
Fear was beginning to push aside reason. Her guilty relief at finally knowing what had happened to Red was giving way to the stark reality that Sam had been the one to find him.
Sam, and the big man cradling the boy in his arms as if Sam belonged there.
She flew out of the pickup and slammed the door behind her, awash with guilt and regret, high on adrenaline and stupid with lack of sleep, her emotions a swirl of terrible dark-hearted turmoil.
“Why are you here?” She stormed up to them and pointed to Sam. “You should be in school. I told you to stop skipping school.” She turned her wrath on Cal next and let it build hotter, fiercer because he was older and bigger and any number of other things she’d never been brave enough to admit. “And you . Why on earth would you bring my son up here without permission? He’s my son. Mine. Not yours!”
“Mom—”
“Stay out of this, Sam.” Wild anger had to go somewhere and Cal was practically inviting it with his stoic, salt-of-the-earth silence. She wanted a fight. She wanted to yell. Somewhere deep down inside, she wanted to be held. “You’re never in the right place at the right time, are you? Missed Red’s wedding and you were supposed to be his best man. Took him out drinking six months later and made him miss Sam’s birth.”
“Not exactly how I remember it,” Mason muttered from somewhere beside them.
“Who asked you?”
But Mason was not built for stoic silence and stood his ground, his eyes narrowed and his jaw firm. “I was there for most of it, and I know you’re talking b—” His gaze slid to Sam. “You’re taking your temper out on the wrong man. I know it. He knows it. You ought to know it, too.”
“Mason, stop,” Cal rumbled.
The big man. The better man. She’d never hated her entire world more than she did at that moment. “Where were you, Cal, the day Red hightailed it up here hunting cougar? He called you. You were supposed to be up here with him, but no.”
“He was watching TJ ride bucking bulls two states away, Elizabeth.” Mason again, curter than ever. “Red knew that. He lied to you when he said Cal was going with him. It was a bad choice to hunt alone, no one’s disagreeing with that, but it was Red’s decision. Plenty of other people he could have called for backup, but he didn’t. He lied to you. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you stand there and say his death was my brother’s fault.”
She loathed the eldest Casey in that moment, almost as much as she loathed having to face the truth. That her husband was dead because he’d been a fool. That he was never coming back—slim as that hope had been. That this wouldn’t be the first time he’d lied to her over the course of their marriage—starting on the very day it began. But that would mean admitting to herself that Red hadn’t been a particularly honest man or a smart one, and she had Sam to protect, and wasn’t it better all round to keep on pretending she’d married a good man? “You dare discuss this in front of my son?”
“Your son will be a man one day. Men deal in truth.” Mason glared right back.
“Why is Sam even up here?” She turned again to Cal, the big, silent man responsible for all of her pain—and none of it. “ Why is Sam seeing all this, feeling it, living it? What have you done? Why? Why is he here and not at school? You had no right! ”
Everything was so very wrong.
“ Mom. ”
Sam reached her as her knees gave way, his thin arms wrapping around her as she buried her fists in the snow and hung her head low. She didn’t recognise the wail that came from her chest as her own.
“ Mom, stop. It’s okay. It’ll be all right. You’ll see. ”
But she didn’t see.
The world was turning white around her, and she couldn’t see a thing.