A Dark Lure (4 page)

It was an iconic study of him shot at a Nanga Parbat base camp. He exuded a rugged virility, a devil-may-care attitude. The photo had been used for an
Outside
magazine cover some years ago, a publication to which Cole had contributed a firsthand account of a tragic Taliban attack on Nanga Parbat climbers, which he later expanded into a book. It had subsequently been made into a movie. One of two to his credit.

Cole was an ex-military psychology and philosophy scholar turned war correspondent turned narrative nonfiction adventure writer. A literary adrenaline-seeking junkie who lived life on the razor’s edge of death, and sought to psychologically deconstruct others who did, too. It was the underlying theme in all of his works—why men and women did extreme things, why some people survived against all odds, yet others perished. She’d read the jackets of his books lining Myron’s shelves.

His was a narcissistic pursuit. Olivia had decided this some time ago. She resented the very idea of him—maybe because she envied his freedom, his ability to live life with such full-throttle lust.

Myron’s gaze followed hers up to the portrait. His hand holding the spoon stilled.

“What is it?” he said.

Olivia cleared her throat. “Where is he now?”

“Cole?”

“Yes. And Jane. Is Jane still in London, with her family?”

Myron slowly set his spoon down and reached for his whisky tumbler. He took a deep, long swig and closed his eyes. “You’ve been speaking to Halliday?”

“Yes.”

He said nothing. The fire popped, cracked. Ace rolled onto his back, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, relaxed as the puppy he once was.

“He told me,” she said.

Myron opened his eyes. “What, exactly?”

“That you’ll need to make decisions about palliative care. He said someone should call Cole and Jane, let them know what’s happening.”

His thatch of gray brows lowered, and his eyes narrowed to flint. Very quietly, he said, “Over my dead body.”

“What over your dead body, Myron?” she said, just as quietly. “Getting nursing care? Going into a hospice, or someone calling your kids?”

“All of it.” He downed the remainder of his whisky, reached for the bottle beside him and sloshed another three fingers into the crystal. She knew he was on a lot of medication. Drinking like that was probably not a good idea. But good for what, if one was dying anyway?

“I don’t give a pig’s ass what the fine doctor says. If I’m going to die, I’m going to do it right here. On
my
terms. On my ranch, in my own goddamn home. Where I’ve lived my entire goddamn life. Where I brought my wife. Where we had babies
. . .
” His voice faltered, leaving unspoken words hanging in the void.

Where my wife died. Where my youngest son died . . . where my family fell apart . . .

The firelight caught a glint in his eyes.

Olivia set her glass down and leaned forward, arms resting on her knees.

“Myron, if you don’t move into a place where they can care for you, you’ll need in-home nursing—”

His palm shot up. “Stop. Don’t even think about it. The day I need a nurse to wipe my ass, brush my teeth, and empty my bedpan is the day I die. Dignity. Goddamn dignity. Is that too much to ask?”

“Your children should know. They have a right to—”

“Enough!” He slammed his glass down, cheeks reddening. “No way in hell. I will
not
have those two squabbling over their inheritance, trying to sell this ranch out from under my feet. And they will try, mark my words.”

“You can’t be so sure they—”

“Of course I can. Cole doesn’t give a rat’s prick what happens to Broken Bar or to his old man. And I don’t need him here, rubbing my face in it. They can have the ranch when I’m dead, when my ashes are scattered and my memorial cairn has been placed up on that glacial ridge alongside Grace’s and Jimmie’s. Then my ghost can haunt them.” He paused, looking suddenly bone tired but no less determined. “You’ll do it for me. Scatter my ashes, sort out that stone cairn.”

She rubbed her brow, stole another look at the photo above the fireplace. “Where is he now?”

Silence.

She turned to look at Myron. An odd expression had overcome his features. His shoulders had rolled inward, compressing him into his chair. In his eyes she detected regret.

Olivia felt a sharp tug of emotion.

If it were my father I’d want to know. I’d want the choice of saying good-bye . . .

Was it possible to set certain wrongs right? Was it foolhardy to even attempt to do so when anger, bitterness, regret, blame were all so deeply rooted in the soil of one’s psyche, each twisting so tightly over the other that if you tried to extract one root, the whole tree died?

“He’s in Havana,” he said finally. “Drowning his sorrows.”

Surprise rippled through her. “Havana, Cuba? How do you know?”

He gave a halfhearted shrug and looked away, staring into the flames, his veined hands resting limp on the arms of his chair. The fact that he even knew where Cole was told Olivia he still cared. At least a little. And she was besieged with a sense that Myron needed to do this—to make peace with his son. His daughter, too.

Or was it Olivia’s subterranean guilt about her own estranged family that was fueling this sentiment? She swallowed, forcing herself to remain present. Bad things happened when she allowed her thoughts to feather back into the past.

“What sorrows?” she said quietly.

Still refusing to give Olivia his eyes, he said, “Cole seems to have come to a standstill after his woman and her kid left him.”

“I
. . .
didn’t know he had a family. Was he married?”

“Common-law partner. Holly. She had a son, Ty, from a previous marriage. She returned to her ex after some horrendous incident with Cole in the Sudan that endangered her kid’s life. Took the boy with her, back to his father. The boy would be eight now.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Read about it in that magazine he writes for. He has a knack for that, you know—living his own life to the extreme, chasing the storm, at the expense of those around him. Cole never even brought Holly or Ty home—I never met them.” Myron gave a harsh snort. “Then again, Cole stopped calling Broken Bar ‘home’ a long, long time ago.”

“What happened in the Sudan?”

Myron waved his hand, brushing the whole thing away like a bad smell. “Don’t want to talk about it.” He cleared his throat, then said, “Jimmie was also eight. When Cole drove him into the river.”

A chill washed over Olivia. She was overcome by an eerie sense of time warping and weaving and replicating like the double-helix strands of DNA.

Myron fell silent, his mind seemingly drifting away on some sea of secret sorrow, buoyed by booze and painkillers.

She stole another look at Cole’s image above the fireplace.

“All things have their season, Liv,” Myron said, his words thick and slurring slightly now. “Each life has a cycle. One makes one’s choices and bears one’s punishment. Even this ranch
. . .
maybe it is time. The end of an era. The end of the McDonough legacy.” He reached for his glass, swirled the dregs with a shaky hand, watching as the liquid refracted firelight. “It’s unrealistic to expect my progeny will carry it on.” He cleared his throat and continued.

“Even if someone did want to start running cows again, the financial outlay would be huge. But the guest and tourism business—that could be year-round. The lodge could be full again. With some work the cabins could be refurbished, go a little higher end, bring greater yield per guest. There’s a market for that sort of thing now. German tourists. Asians. Brits. This wilderness gives them something they simply cannot find back home.”

She stared at the Old Man. It was fatigue, whisky, painkillers talking, yet it afforded her a rare window into his thoughts, one she had not expected.

“I had no idea you’d even thought about it—a winter business.”

“It would never work.”

“But it
could
. If there was a will.” She couldn’t help saying it. This was something she’d dreamed about so often that she’d even created spreadsheets, broken down potential staffing costs, called around for quotes and estimates, because
. . .
well, because she didn’t have a life, that was why. This place had become her life. Because she’d had a stupid fantasy that she might one day present Myron with the paperwork and formally propose something. But then had come his diagnosis.

“I could see a higher-end lodge experience,” she said. “Expansion of the guided trips—even horseback rides to fish the steelhead runs up in the Tahkena River; float-plane companies flying in executive guests; excellent organic and ranch-grown produce, top-end cuisine. Fresh lake trout, venison from the forests. Add to that a winter experience with a focus on Christmas. I believe it would work. I
know
it would.”

He regarded her for a long while, an inscrutable look entering his eyes. He shook his head.

“Forget it.” He set his glass down and wheeled himself across the carpet, the effort twisting his features. “I need to hit the sack early tonight. Can I leave you to lock up?”

She came to her feet, took the handles of his chair.

“No. I can do this myself.”

But this time she overrode him. “Forget about it, Old Man. I need you to live a few more days.” She pushed him toward the library door.

“Why do I let you boss me around like this?”

“
’Cause I’m nice,” she said with a smile. “And I don’t cost much.” She wheeled him out into the hall and up to the small elevator that had been installed last spring. She reached over to press the elevator button.

“You come from a ranching background yourself, don’t you, Liv?”

She tensed. “You’ve never asked about my past.”

“But you do—the hunting, fishing, horsemanship, it has to come from somewhere. Where’s home to you, Olivia? Were you raised in BC? Another province?”

The elevator doors opened.

She hesitated. Trapped. She owed him some kind of truth after all he’d done for her. Myron had made it so easy for her to stay here on Broken Bar, to fit in, to begin to heal, to finally find a measure of peace. And it was easy because he never
did
ask where she was from, beyond the basic résumé stuff when he first hired her. He’d seen the scars on her wrists. But not once had he ever mentioned them. This was a man who knew about secrets, and reasons for keeping them.

“Yes.” She wheeled him into the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. The doors closed, and the elevator hummed upward. “A ranch. Farther north.”

He was silent, thank God, as she steered him out the elevator and along the corridor to his room, a corner suite that afforded him views over the lake and the mountains to the south, and the rolling aspen-dotted hills to the west.

“Thanks,” he said as they reached his bedroom door. “I can handle it from here.”

“You sure?”

“Not goddamn dead yet. Like I told you, the day I need someone to brush my teeth, wipe my ass, put me to bed in diapers, is the day I stop living.”

She snorted. Yet an uneasiness coiled in her gut at the look of determined ferocity in the Old Man’s eyes—she feared suddenly he might take his own life, on his own terms. Using all those pills.

“Well
. . .
” She hesitated, reluctant to leave him alone. “Night, then.” She started down the passage.

He startled her by calling after her. “Why do you do this, Olivia?”

She turned. “Do what?”

“Push a dying old man around. Humor him. What do you want from me?”

A bolt of hurt cracked through her.

“Don’t, Myron,” she said quietly. “Do not think you can push me away too, now. I’m not that
easy.”

He glowered at her, his hands fisting on the armrests of his chair. “You think I pushed my kids away? You think I alienated my own son—is that what you think?”

“Did you?”

He spun his chair around and wheeled himself through the door into his room. “Go to hell, Liv.” He slammed the door behind him.

“Been there,” she yelled back at him. “Done that!”

Silence.

Damn the old bastard.

“I know your game, Myron!” she called through his door. “You’re too damn weak to man up to your own emotions, that’s what! Compromise takes too much work, so you just cut everyone off!”

No response. Just the old grandfather clock ticktocking down the hall.

Olivia muttered a curse as she turned and stomped down the passage. She clattered down the massive three-story staircase, memories suddenly hounding her on the way down. She’d cut off her own family, her ex, her community. All she had left was a dying old man for whom she cared far too much, and Ace and Spirit. That was the extent of her family now. Home was her tiny log cabin on the lake in a grove of trees with no electricity or computer to connect her to the outside world, and it was not even hers. It would go to Cole and Jane, probably sooner than later.

It was all going to shit under her feet.

Buck up, buttercup
,
you’ve come through worse. Nothing you can do about the old man dying . . .

But there was something. She stalled outside the library. There was one little thing she could still do. She could call his children. She could give them the choice to come home. To say good-bye. To bridge the gap of broken years. She could give them a chance she never got.

She could give Myron the chance to say he was sorry.