Her Cowboy Soldier (16 page)

But right now he couldn’t appreciate those favorite sights, sounds and smells. Sweat beaded his forehead despite a cool breeze, and his missing hand throbbed with a deep, burning ache. The bat felt more awkward than ever in his left hand; heavier and longer than the one he used to hit practice balls for the kids.

The ball that traveled toward him was surprisingly slow and big; of course, he was used to baseballs pitched by athletic high school kids, not softballs lobbed by the gas station manager. Josh pulled back the bat and met the ball with a solid
thwack!
He dropped the bat and tore toward first. He hit the bag hard, just ahead of the ball. He popped up, brushing dirt from his jeans and grinning.

“It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done,” first baseman Roger Perkins said.

“That’s pretty much my life these days,” Josh said. He wasn’t living large as a big leaguer, as he’d once dreamed, or an equal partner with his dad, doing innovative things on the family ranch. But he was surviving, the best way he knew how. That in itself was an accomplishment.

He would have liked someone to share the accomplishment with. An image of Amy popped into his head, smiling and leaning close to him. Would she have shared his happiness? Been proud of him, even?

He shook his head, pushing the idea away. Amy was leaving; she didn’t really care about him, and his feelings for her were just wishful thinking. Getting the nerve to bat one-handed before a bunch of friends was one thing—exposing his weaknesses to a woman he cared about was another thing, something he wasn’t yet ready for.

* * *

“A
MY
, I
NEED
you to get over to the school right away.” Ed spoke in the clipped tones he used for everything from ordering a sandwich to dictating his weekly editorial. In her first weeks of employment, Amy had been alarmed by these barked orders, sure every story was of utmost urgency. Over time she’d realized that nothing very urgent ever happened in Hartland.

“Okay, Ed. As soon as I finish breakfast I’ll head over there. What’s up?”

“Forget breakfast. Last night vandals trashed the community gardens. I want pictures before they clean it up.”

“What?” She stood, already reaching for her notebook and purse. “What do you mean trashed?”

“That’s what you need to find out. I just got a call from the custodian over there. Go. Now!”

“I’m on my way.”

She didn’t exactly burn rubber on the drive to the school, but she pushed the speedometer needle on the Subaru farther over than it had been in a long while. When she pulled into the lot, half a dozen cars and trucks were parked haphazardly near the gardens. With camera in one hand and notebook in the other, Amy sprinted toward the raised beds, but pulled up short as she rounded the last car. “Ahh!” she cried.

Josh straightened, a broken bottle in one hand. “Didn’t take long for word to get out, I see,” he said.

“Ed just called me.” She moved closer, gaping at the destruction. Plants lay scattered, ripped from the beds, leaves already wilting. Broken glass glittered among the dirt, the remnants of a dozen or more shattered beer bottles. The plastic pipes that had fed water to the beds had been pulled aside, and the ground all around the raised beds was soggy from the gallons of water that had poured from a head-size hole in the side of the collection tank.

“Why would someone do something like this?” Amy asked.

“Some people can’t stand the thought of something beautiful.” Erica, face streaked with dirt and tears, approached Amy, a plastic tub filled with injured seedlings cradled in her arms. Her skirt and blouse were streaked with mud, as well, and bright blood beaded at a scratch on her arm.

“You’re hurt,” Amy said, lightly touching her arm.

Erica surveyed the wound. “It’s nothing. Nothing compared to what was done to the garden. The children are going to be devastated.” She sniffed and looked away.

“I’m so sorry.” Amy opened her notebook to a fresh sheet. “Tell me what you know. Maybe someone saw something and we can at least find out who did this.”

“I don’t know anything. Tony Gillespie called me this morning. He said he was passing by here on his way to work and he wondered why things were such a mess.”

“It must have happened late last night or really early this morning.” Josh had joined them, carrying a box full of glass. “All the water was drained out of the collection tank. That would take a couple of hours, I think.”

“The police came as soon as I called them,” Erica said. “But they seemed to think there was nothing they could do. They promised to add extra night patrols in the area.”

“It’s a little late for that now,” Josh said.

“It might help prevent the vandals from coming back,” Erica said.

Amy made a note to get a statement from the police, then aimed her camera at the destruction. Erica and Josh stood silent as she clicked off half a dozen photos. “I suppose you have to document this,” Erica said. “I just hate to see it this way. All that work...”

“When people see this they’re going to be very upset,” Amy said. “Maybe that will help find the person responsible. Or it will at least bring more volunteers to put it all back together.”

“Speaking of volunteers.”

Amy lowered the camera and Josh handed her a pair of gloves. “As long as you’re here, you should stay and help us clean up.”

“Oh. Sure.” She could have made the excuse that she had to get back to the paper and write her story, but the deadline for the next issue was two days away. And even if time had been tight, walking away and leaving others to deal with this was too rude. “Just let me put my camera and notebook back in my car.”

Now that she’d absorbed the initial shock of seeing the destruction, the damage looked even worse. As she piled broken glass and other trash into a box, then helped Erica search for surviving plants amid the wreckage, Amy’s dismay grew. “I can’t believe something like this happened,” she said. “Not in Hartland.”

“Why should Hartland be any different than anyplace else?” Josh asked.

Because Hartland is supposed to be perfect.
But she knew how ridiculous that sounded. “When I was little and something bad happened, wherever we were, I’d imagine how things were different in Hartland. The few weeks I spent here in summer were so idyllic—like something in a storybook. Even when I was a teenager, spending time with my grandparents doing simple things like swimming in the creek or watching movies on a screen someone set up outside were the perfect activities. I never remember being bored or lonely, the way I was at home—wherever home was that year.”

“Every kid’s childhood should be like your summers in Hartland,” Josh said.

She removed one glove and pushed her bangs off her forehead, letting what breeze there was dry the sweat. “I guess I carried some of those ideas about this place into adulthood.” That sense of peace and perfection had drawn her here after the pain and chaos of Brent’s death as much as her desire to help her grandmother. “It’s silly, I guess.”

“I don’t think it’s silly,” he said. “When I was in the hospital, I thought of Hartland like that, too—as this perfect place where I could live a life without trouble. But there’s no such thing. Hartland has problems, like anyplace else. Or we bring our problems with us.”

She thought of her grief over Brent’s death, and her lingering resentment and guilt that they had left so much unresolved between them. She’d brought all those turbulent emotions here to Hartland, hoping a change of scenery and the passing of time would change her feelings. But all that had changed was her belief that a place could solve anything.

“I found this over by the water tank.” Erica approached, holding out an aluminum baseball bat.

“It’s a kid’s bat.” Josh took it and turned it over and over. “See how short it is? No name or anything.” He looked toward the water tank. “Maybe they used this to bash the hole in the tank.”

“Maybe there are fingerprints or something, and we could find out who did this,” Amy said.

“We can give it to the police,” Josh said. “But I doubt it will help. Except to confirm what I thought all along. Kids did this.”

“Not very little kids, I hope,” Erica said. “There were a lot of beer bottles.”

“Those could have come from anywhere, but it was probably teenagers,” Josh said. “Bored and looking to cause trouble.”

“This isn’t going to stop us.” Erica hugged her arms across her chest and surveyed the neater, but now-barren garden. “We’ll rebuild it even better. Maybe add another bed. I’d like to have a special area for the littlest kids, where they could grow easy things like beans and radishes.” She indicated a space at the corner of the building opposite the water tank. “We could put the kinder-garden over there. For the kindergarten and first graders.” She smiled at Amy. “Your little girl will be in kindergarten this year, won’t she? She could be one of the first children to plant something in the new garden.”

“Oh. Well. That would be sweet.” Now was not the time to explain that she wouldn’t be here in the fall.

“Registration is in three weeks,” Josh said.

“Three weeks! But summer has hardly started.” June was only halfway over.

“School starts mid-August,” he said. “And they need to know how many students to plan for.”

“We’ve got plenty of time yet,” she said stubbornly. After all, they couldn’t kick Chloe out of kindergarten if she registered late. It must happen all the time.

“I hate that this happened so far into the season,” Erica said. “We won’t have time to grow much before the first frosts. And the children were so looking forward to harvesting their own vegetables.”

“We have some seedlings in the greenhouse we could donate.” Amy said the words without thinking, but she knew Bobbie would agree. “I know there’s tomatoes and beans, and maybe some broccoli and squash.”

“That would be wonderful!” Erica threw her arms around Amy in a crushing hug.

“That’s very community minded of you,” Josh said, when Erica had released her hold. His Stetson shaded his eyes, so she couldn’t read his expression.

“Anyone would have offered the same,” she said.

“Maybe anyone who lived here. Not someone just passing through.”

“Just because I don’t choose to spend my life here doesn’t mean I can’t think of Hartland as my home. My family has roots here at least as deep as yours.”

“So they do. Nice to hear you acknowledge it.”

His voice was pleasant, but she hated his superior attitude. “Do you lie awake at night thinking of ways to give me a hard time?” she asked.

“I don’t have to. You’re such an easy target.”

His amusement at her expense annoyed her more than his sarcasm. “You’re the one who picks a fight every time you see me.”

“Maybe I like seeing you get passionate about something.”

“I’m passionate about plenty of things.” Just not about him. She definitely would not go there. “I have to get these pictures over to Ed,” she said.

“I almost forgot. You’re passionate about your work.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“Not at all. But you know what they say about all work and no play.”

“‘They’ say a lot of things. And life is not a nursery rhyme. Or a proverb. Or whatever that is.”

“I’m a science teacher, so don’t ask me. But it wouldn’t hurt you to do something you didn’t feel compelled to write about.”

“I’m a writer. That’s what writers do.”

“But if you’re always standing back and observing things, you can’t be a part of them.”

“Josh, I’m almost thirty years old. I’m a mom. I was living my life just fine before you came along to tell me what to do. Why do you care, anyway?”

“That’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately.” He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat and walked away.

She wanted to run after him and...what? Brain him over the head with her reporter’s notebook? Demand that he listen to her announce how much she did not care what he thought of her? Hear him call her a liar because she so obviously did care?

She slumped against the side of her car. Josh had been right about a lot of things—including his observation that she was no longer acting like someone who was a temporary visitor to town, someone just passing through. She’d pitched right in to clean up the mess the vandals had left, and volunteered to help with the rebuilding before anyone had even asked.

She’d told her mother she couldn’t see herself fitting in in Hartland. Was it possible she was wrong about that?

CHAPTER TWELVE

M
EALTIMES
AT
THE
Bar S Ranch had a timeless consistency. Josh occupied the same seat across from his mom that he’d filled since graduating from a high chair. The blue-trimmed CorningWare plates were the same, as were the Mason jars that held tea and the tall, narrow saccharin bottle beside his father’s plate that Mitch used to sweeten his tea.

The sameness had been at times comforting and confining. Seated in that familiar spot, Josh might have been eight, or eighteen, or twenty-eight. His parents treated him the same. His mother kept his plate filled and his dad listened absently to whatever Josh had to say, but didn’t give any more weight to the opinions of the twenty-eight-year-old than he had those of his son at eight or eighteen.

Josh told himself he should stop trying to weigh in with any ideas about the ranch, but he could never keep silent when it came time to do so. “I was riding up on the west ridge today and the wind coming across there must have been a steady fifteen miles an hour,” he said when he joined his parents for dinner a few days after the vandalism on the school garden.

Even after he’d moved into his own cabin, his mother had insisted he eat with her and Mitch at least twice a week. “I won’t have you living off microwave meals,” she’d huffed.

Tonight was pot roast, fresh corn, green beans and new potatoes. Mitch helped himself to a slice of roast. “Wind always blows across that ridge,” he said. “I think it has something to do with the way the weather moves over the mountains to the west.”

“So maybe we could use that wind to our advantage.” Josh spooned corn onto his plate.

“How’s that?” Mitch squeezed saccharin into his iced tea and stirred, spoon chiming against the inside of the glass.

“We could put up a wind generator. The state will do a free assessment to determine the best location, and you can get rebates from the electric company and the wind turbine manufacturer, and tax breaks from the feds and the state. And you get a good price selling the power back to the local utility company.”

Mitch shook his head. “Using wind to draw water is one thing, but those big turbines are expensive and complicated. It’s a lot of money up front for a little back over a long period of time.” He turned his attention once more to his dinner. End of discussion.

Except Josh couldn’t drop it. He couldn’t let his dad dismiss him and his ideas that way. “How do you know how much it is if you don’t even look into it?” he asked.

“Because I know.”

The answer was the same one he’d given when Josh was ten and Mitch told him a new saddle was too expensive. But this time Josh wasn’t ten, and while his father had bought many saddles in his day, and used windmills to pump water, he’d never bought a wind turbine to generate electricity, so how could he know what one cost? “I don’t think it’s as expensive as you believe.”

“I don’t care if it’s dirt cheap. I think those wind turbines are ugly. I don’t want one on my ranch.”

“You use solar panels to pump water and to charge automatic gates, and I remember when you thought they were ugly,” Josh said.

“Solar’s practical for those kinds of jobs. The panels are small and cheap. Wind generators aren’t small or cheap, and I don’t think they’re practical.”

Josh ground his teeth in frustration. His eighteen-year-old self would have pushed aside his plate and stormed off—most likely resulting in his father taking his truck keys away and making him apologize to his tearful mother.

As a man, Josh could restrain himself and save his mother the tears, but frustration smoldered, a pall over the meal.

“Josh?” Gail Scofield’s voice was gentle, a cooling balm for her husband and son’s simmering silence. Though threads of silver showed in her golden hair, she was still the trim, blonde beauty who’d once been crowned rodeo queen before she’d given up barrel racing in favor of being a ranch wife. “I talked to Ashley Frawley today. She’s organizing the Hartland Fourth of July parade.”

“Oh?” Josh pretended polite interest. Every year the Chamber of Commerce sponsored an Independence Day parade, with the high school marching band, a few floats organized by local businesses, a clown or two, various local dignitaries riding in vintage automobiles, the Elks and Lions clubs marching in formation and plenty of candy for the kids. The event was local and patriotic, steeped in tradition, and Josh could admit that when a couple of old veterans marched past, presenting the colors, he still got a knot in his throat from the sincerity of it all.

“She asked if I thought you’d be interested in being Grand Marshal of the parade this year,” Gail continued. “Of course I said yes. It’s such an honor.”

Josh almost choked on a mouthful of beans. He managed to swallow. “The Hartland Independence Day Parade has a Grand Marshal?” The title seemed entirely too, well,
grand
for the small-town celebration.

“Well, of course. Ashley said they want to honor you because you’re the town’s most-decorated veteran.”

“Mom, I’d really rather not.” The last thing he needed was everyone looking at him, lauding him as some kind of hero. He’d gotten his hand blown off in a raid where other men had
died.
That didn’t make him a hero—only a survivor. “They should honor someone like Amy Marshall. She lost her husband in the war. She’s a real hero.”

“That’s very generous of you to say so, but she isn’t really from here, is she? You’re one of Hartland’s own.”

“I’m just not comfortable with that kind of attention.” He imagined hundreds of people staring, wondering about his hook, commenting on how he handled himself really well—for a man who wasn’t whole.

Getting the hook in the first place had been a way of daring people to look. He’d thought if he forced the attention, he’d force himself into coping with it, into staring down their stares. But lately, standing out as different was harder to take, maybe because of the unwanted attention Rick Southerland had brought on him. Or maybe because Josh felt more a part of the community again; he was tired of standing out. He wanted to be normal—with a home and a family and all the things he’d planned on before an IED blasted away those dreams along with his hand.

“Let ’em honor you with their little parade,” Mitch said. “Seems to me they owe you at least that much.”

“They don’t really owe me anything.” Josh contemplated his half-empty plate, his appetite gone.

“I already told Ashley you’d do it,” his mother said.

“Then he’ll do it,” Mitch said.

Maybe a better man would have argued the point, but Josh couldn’t. Let his parents think it was an honor to be singled out—to be noticed for the ways he was different, when all he really wanted was to be accepted for the ways he was the same.

* * *

“A
MY
,
CAN
I
speak to you for a minute?”

The words, and the serious tone in her mother’s voice, made Amy feel like a teenager again, in trouble for using the satellite phone without permission, or for cutting up one of her mother’s favorite shirts in an attempt to replicate a style she’d seen in a magazine. “Is something wrong, Mom?” She pushed away from the desk, where she’d been bent over her laptop, struggling to make Hartland, Colorado, sound like an exciting tourist destination.

“Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to give you this.” Katherine handed her an oversize pink book.

Yes, Amy decided. She was definitely time traveling today. She ran her hand over the soft leatherlike cover. Embossed in gold on the front were the words My Scrapbook. “Where did you get this?”

Katherine pulled a second chair alongside Amy’s desk. “I was looking in our storage unit for my old address book, with the contact information for all the people we’d known in Congo, and I found it. I thought you might like to have it.”

The scrapbook had been Katherine’s idea; she’d made it part of Amy’s homeschooling assignments the summer Amy turned fifteen. “I’d forgotten all about this,” Amy said, opening the cover.

There, on page one, was a fading Polaroid of Amy at fifteen, thin and boyish, hair in twin pigtails. She wore a too-short sundress and high-top tennis shoes and stood awkwardly before the camera, arms folded across her still-flat chest, squinting at the camera.

“You were definitely a late bloomer,” Katherine commented.

Amy turned the page. Here she was with a whole group of young people, standing before a grass hut, African natives in the background, against a pewter sky. Amy was in the center, in a red skirt like the native women wore, with a black T-shirt. “Those were the kids from the missionary compound in Tanzania,” Katherine said. “I’d forgotten about them. They spent the whole summer in Moshi while we were there leading climbs of Kilimanjaro.”

Amy had forgotten about the missionary children, too. She squinted at the faces in the photo, hoping for a spark of recognition. They were all about her age, but she couldn’t remember a single name.

More photos followed: Jeep rides, hauling water, Amy bent under an oversize pack, mugging for the camera. Some of the missionary kids were in a few of the photos. In one, Amy stood with her arm slung around a blonde girl about her age.

“What was her name?” Katherine asked. “Janie? Joanie? Yes, I’m sure it was Joanie.”

“I don’t remember.” When she looked at the photo she felt nothing; if not for her own face in the pictures, she would have thought she was examining the artifacts of a stranger.

“You had such fun putting this together.” Katherine touched a page onto which Amy had glued examples of all the flowers she’d found in the area. The petals were faded to soft shades of brown, navy and yellow. “I wish I’d thought to have you do one for every country we lived in. What a treasure that would be now.”

Fifteen struck Amy as such an important age: too old to be a child, too young for adulthood. She must have welcomed the opportunity to spend a whole summer with boys and girls her own age. She and Joanie were together in many of the pictures—so why didn’t Amy remember anything about her?

“I wish I’d kept in touch with some of these kids,” she said, examining a page that showed some kind of barbecue or picnic they’d all attended.

“Oh, you never bothered with that,” Katherine said. “Moving so often it was easier to simply make new friends at the next destination.”

Except that, knowing the ties couldn’t be permanent, Amy had apparently made no lasting attachments at all. She closed the scrapbook, a dragging sadness pulling at her.

“Anyway, I thought you’d enjoy showing it to Chloe,” Katherine continued, apparently oblivious to Amy’s pain. She covered Amy’s hand with her own. “While I was looking through that book, remembering all the good times you had, I had an idea.”

“What was that, Mom?” Amy knew her mother wanted her to ask.

“I think you and Chloe should come with us when we go back to Chile. Mother is doing so well I’m sure she can manage on her own now, and Chloe would love it.”

“Oh, Mom.” Amy struggled to find words that wouldn’t hurt her mother. “That’s so generous of you to offer, but I think we need to stay here a little while longer.”

“You always were so conscientious, but really, Mother is doing great. And Chloe is at the perfect age to really enjoy a trip like this. If Brent had lived, I’m sure the two of you would have exposed her to these kinds of experiences by now.”

Amy flinched at the mention of Brent’s name. She had no doubt Chloe’s father would have wanted his daughter to see the world the way he’d seen it—as a wonderful adventure to be explored. He’d have viewed the scrapbook as Amy’s mother did, as evidence of the rich experiences Amy had had growing up.

But turning the pages, seeing photo after photo of people she didn’t remember, had reminded Amy of the side of their nomadic life no one ever talked about; she’d grown up without roots. Without friends and ties to ground her and remind her of who she was. Maybe that’s one reason she’d struggled so to cope with Brent’s death. She’d had no one else to lean on or confide in—no lifelong friends who could be there for her, no home to shelter in while she pulled herself together.

“I think Chloe is still too young to travel so far,” she said.

“Nonsense. She’s the perfect age. You loved the traveling.” Katherine smiled, lines crinkling the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Whenever I’d announce a new destination, you’d start packing right away. You couldn’t wait to see someplace new.”

Amy remembered the packing; as she got older, her eagerness to move on had nothing to do with a desire to see new places. Instead, she was always anxious to escape from wherever they were, lured by the hope that at the next place she would find the friends she longed for, the sense of belonging she craved.

She had loved some things about her life with her wandering parents, but she hadn’t loved the loneliness—an isolation she’d carried with her when she returned to the States. She wanted something different for Chloe, a childhood with connections and roots as well as opportunity.

She patted her mother’s hand and forced a smile. “I appreciate the offer, but I want to stay here awhile longer, then maybe move to Denver—someplace that will still feel familiar to Chloe, while offering her more opportunities. I think she needs that stability right now, and so do I.”

Katherine didn’t hide her disappointment. “I still think new surroundings would do you both a lot of good. If you change your mind, you know you’re always welcome.”

“I know. And I appreciate it. Thanks for the book, too.” Viewing the scrapbook had opened her eyes to some things about herself—not necessarily good things, but things she needed to know. No matter where she and Chloe ended up living, Amy would have to make an effort to reach out to other people and become involved in their lives. She had to risk hurt in order to give her daughter the kind of community she deserved.

* * *

“H
OW
’
S
THE
ARTICLE
coming?” Charla set the tall mocha in front of Amy and leaned her elbows on the coffee shop’s front counter. Today she wore a tailored lipstick-red shirtdress and heels, a red bow in her hair. The specials of the day were cinnamon buns and a cinnamon latte.