Chapter 4
Four
She’d spent a decade teaching Huck that honesty mattered most, but the biggest lie of his life was walking around Renegade with his same eyes.
Sierra sat in Bailey Sinclair’s fourth-grade classroom, the kids having exited for the day, staring at the bulletin board covered with student artwork while her hands shook in her lap.
Twenty-eight crayon drawings of “My Family” decorated the wall, and she could pick out Huck’s immediately—a woman and a boy standing beside a red barn, two horses grazing in a green pasture.
No father figure. Just the two of them against the world, exactly the way she’d raised him to see their life.
Except now his father was buying coffee at the Renegade Café and offering to help with cattle rustlers and asking about a husband who didn’t exist. Because instead of telling her he was alive…he’d been spying on her.
Beautiful.
“Sierra?” Bailey looked up from the stack of math tests she was grading, her pen pausing mid-correction.
Strawberry blonde hair cut in a practical bob framed her face, and concern wrinkled her forehead as she studied Sierra’s expression.
At twenty-eight, Bailey had the kind of wholesome prettiness that made parents trust her instantly with their children. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I have.”
Bailey set down her pen and really looked at her—the way best friends did when they sensed disaster lurking beneath the surface.
She pushed her chair back and moved to the supply cabinet, pulling out construction paper while keeping her attention on Sierra.
“What happened? You were fine this morning when you dropped Huck off.”
Fine. Right. Sierra stood and began helping Bailey sort the colored paper into neat stacks—red, orange, yellow, brown. October art projects, probably. Her hands needed something to do while her mind tried to process the impossible.
This morning she’d been a single mother running a struggling ranch and worrying about stolen cattle. Now she was a single mother who’d been lying to her son about his father being dead when he was apparently very much alive and sitting in the police station offering his services.
“Rowan’s back.”
The words hung in the classroom air between construction-paper pumpkins and a poster about proper comma usage. Bailey’s hands stilled on the paper stack, several orange sheets fluttering to the floor.
“Rowan Wallace? Your Rowan?” Bailey’s voice dropped to a whisper as she bent to collect the scattered papers.
Her Rowan. Yeah, she needed to stop thinking that way.
“He’s not my anything.” Sierra bent to help her.
“But yes. Rowan Wallace, who’s supposed to be buried in the Renegade cemetery—and now I know why he wasn’t buried at Arlington, thank you so much military who lied to me.
” She shook her head as she stood up, papers in hand.
“I walked into Mike Martinelli’s office this morning to report a connection between my missing cattle and maybe, I don’t know…
Tom Hendrick’s death, and there he was…just—sitting there. ”
“Wait.” Bailey stood up too. “You have more missing cattle?”
“Six head of pregnant cows stolen last night. Cut fence, tire tracks, professional job. But that’s not—Bailey, Rowan said he knew about the rustling, said he could talk to my husband about providing security services.” Sierra’s voice cracked on the word husband. “He thought I was married.”
“Oh, Sierra.” Bailey took her hand, led her to a chair next to her deck. “Are you okay?”
Sierra sat. “No, I’m not okay. I screamed when I saw him. Literally screamed in Mike’s office and then had a public argument with Mr. I’m Not Dead on Main Street.”
Bailey reached for the water bottle on her desk and handed it to Sierra. “Drink something. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
Sierra took a sip, but it didn’t help the spinning sensation in her chest. “He looks exactly the same. Older, bigger, but still…” She gestured helplessly. “Still him. Only better-looking, if that’s possible.”
“Yikes. What did you tell him?” Bailey raised an eyebrow. “Or what did he tell you?”
“He told me nothing. Nothing. And I said he was ten years too late. That I’d learned to handle things without him.” Sierra’s laugh came out bitter, hollow. “Then I told him he’d obliterated his promises to Grandpa Elway and walked away.”
“Harsh.” Bailey winced. “But accurate.”
“He let me think he was dead, Bailey.” Sierra’s voice cracked on the words. “I got the flag. I mourned him.”
Bailey was quiet for a moment, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “What are you going to tell Huck?”
The classroom fell silent. She had nothing.
Poor Huck.
“Does Rowan know?” Bailey’s voice was barely audible.
“No.” Sierra shook her head. “I don’t think so. Although one good look at the kid…”
“Right?” Bailey shook her head. “Girl, that man’s been a heartthrob since first grade. And your son Huck has his father’s aura. Can’t pry the girls away from him.”
“Oh, I’m in trouble.” She leaned back, her hands pressed to her face.
“Huck thinks his father’s dead—because, well, his father was dead.
And he’s turned the man into someone larger than life.
We don’t talk about him often, but sometimes he asks and…
” She looked at Bailey. “Now what do I say? ‘Your dad’s alive, but he didn’t care enough to tell us’? ”
Bailey covered Sierra’s hand with hers.
Sierra stood up and walked to the window overlooking the playground, where a few kids were still waiting for rides.
“You don’t understand. When I found out I was pregnant, Rowan had already broken his first promise.
He told me not to write to him at boot camp, that he’d call when it was over.
But he never called. And then I wrote to him, but the letter came back.
I didn’t know his rank, his address…” She lifted a shoulder.
“And then…then Mack called and said Rowan had been deployed early, no leave.”
“So you decided not to tell him about the baby.”
“I decided not to tell him about the baby because his stepfather was a monster, and I didn’t want Rowan coming home to that situation because of me. Because of a child he never planned to have.” Sierra pressed her forehead against the cool glass. “I thought I was protecting him.”
“And later? When you dated Mike?”
“I thought maybe Huck needed a father figure.”
“Mike’s a good man. What happened?”
She turned to Bailey. “What happened was that Mike wasn’t Rowan, and I wasn’t in love with Mike, and building a relationship on that foundation was a disaster waiting to happen.” Sierra turned back to Bailey. “It’s possible that Huck isn’t the only one who built up his father to superhero status.”
“And then?”
“And then I was going to tell Rowan. Had actually convinced myself that he deserved to know, that Huck deserved to know his father. I even wrote the letter, explaining everything, asking him to come meet his son.”
Bailey waited.
“Two days before I mailed it, Mack showed up on my doorstep with the notification that Rowan Wallace had been killed in action. Classified mission, body not recoverable, survived by his stepfather and half brother.” Sierra’s voice went flat.
“So I went to the memorial and let Huck think his father was a hero who died serving his country. He was only seven, so it wasn’t hard to make him believe that he’d left for war before he was born. ”
“That’s not entirely a lie.”
“It’s not entirely the truth either. I even hung his flag on the wall, even though it wasn’t officially mine.”
“How’d you end up with the flag?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Mack showed up one day with it. He’d clearly been in a fight. He just handed it to me and walked away. And I…I kept it.”
Bailey stood up and walked around her desk, leaning against it so she could face Sierra directly. “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to tell them both.”
“Do I? Huck’s got a good life. He’s happy, well-adjusted, smart, talented. Why blow that up because his supposedly dead father decided to come back to town?”
“Because that father is very much alive and has the right to know his child exists. And because that child has the right to know his father.”
“What if Rowan doesn’t want the responsibility?”
“What if he does?”
Sierra moved away from the window, pacing the small classroom space between desks sized for fourth graders. “You didn’t see him this morning, Bailey. He’s different. Harder. Ten years of whatever he’s been doing have changed him.”
“Of course they have. He was—maybe still is—a soldier. That has to have changed him. And you’ve changed too.”
“Not that much.”
“Really? The eighteen-year-old girl I knew couldn’t run a ranch or lead search and rescue missions or raise a child alone.”
Before Sierra could respond, the classroom door burst open and Huck bounded in with the energy of a boy who’d been sitting still too long.
“Mom! Miss Sinclair!” He dropped his backpack on a desk and grinned at both women. “Malcolm and Gunnar want to go practice roping at the arena. Can I go? Please? We want to work on our loops before the rodeo.”
Sierra looked at her son—really looked at him—and saw Rowan in the tilt of his head, the way his left eyebrow quirked when he was excited, the unconscious confidence in his posture.
And that was just his aura. He looked almost identical to his father at this age, from the slight build to the crazy notch in his ear that Bailey called his Spock ear. Yes, big, big trouble.
“Mom?” Huck’s face scrunched with concern. “You okay? You look weird.”
“I’m fine, baby. Just tired.” Sierra forced a smile. “How long do you want to practice?”
“Couple hours? Mal’s dad said he’d bring us all home by dinner time.”
“Go ahead. Be careful.”
“Yes!” Huck pumped his fist and grabbed his backpack. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.” He disappeared into the hallway, his boots echoing on polished floors as he ran toward the exit.