Long Road Home (31 page)

“It’s partly the pressure to make everything turn out well. Not just for Tom and Heather’s memories but for the kids.”

“Exactly.” She thought back over the day. “Did Sophie seem different to you?”

“Other than looking too grown up for comfort?”

“It was more than that,” Austin mused. “She seemed to be really at peace for the first time since all this happened.”

“That’d be great if it’s true. But it seems awfully fast.”

“I know. But just for today, I’m going to be optimistic.” She told him about the graduation. “Her teacher says she’s going to get some awards.”

“I’m not surprised. She’s smart as a whip and super responsible.”

“That undoubtedly comes from being older.”

“Yeah. She’ll probably grow up to be just like Coop. Playing big sister to Jack even when they’re in their eighties.”

“Probably. She didn’t seem overly upset that Madison didn’t show up.” Austin would be eternally grateful for the mean girl’s absence.

“Maybe she’s wising up. That girl is trouble.”

Yet another thing they agreed on.

*

W
HEN THEY ARRIVED
at Green Springs, Jack was out with Cooper, Buck, and Scott playing horseshoes.

“Good thing for the windows the horseshoe pit is far from the house,” Rachel commented dryly as Jack’s horseshoe went sailing over the post.

“The kid could end up with one helluva sports career,” Sawyer said. A second horseshoe landed even farther than the first, a good three feet left of the target. “Though we’ll have to work on control.”

Sophie, who’d gone directly to her room after arriving home, came downstairs dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt with a silk-screened rainbow and unicorn on the front.
Always be yourself
, it read.
Unless you can be a unicorn
.
Then be a unicorn
.

“Did you mean what you said about me having my own horse?” she asked Austin.

“Of course.”

“Then can we go look at the horses now?”

There was nothing the girl could have asked for today that Austin wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to try to give her. This, fortunately, was easy. “I think that’s a great idea. Let’s go steal some carrots from the refrigerator.”

Carrots in hand, after stopping to get a halter and a lead rope, they went out to the pasture where the horses were grazing beneath the spreading arms of a tree growing next to the natural springs that had given the ranch its name.

“Which one is mine?” Sophie asked.

“Let’s call her and see,” Austin said. Then cupped her hands together and called out, “Misty!”

A copper-red mare immediately lifted her head, whinnied, then came trotting toward them.

“I guessed it’d be the gray horse,” Sophie said. “Is she named after
Misty of Chincoteague
?” The series of books about the wild ponies had been Austin’s favorites, and she’d loved sharing them with Sophie over the years.

“No.” The sorrel came up to the fence and nickered. “She was born on a morning the fog was rolling in from the river, like ghosts floating in the air, so thick you could hardly see your hand in front of your face.” As soon as she’d said the ghost reference, Austin wished she could pull the word back. “Here.” She handed Sophie a carrot in hopes of distracting her. “She loves carrots even more than sugar cubes. Hand her one.”

Sophie held out the carrot. She’d been around horses enough at Green Springs that she had a healthy caution but no fear. “Hi, Misty. I’m Sophie. And we’re going to be very best friends.”

The horse had always been mild-tempered, affectionate in a way not every horse was, and easy to train. When she lowered her head after finishing off the carrot, Austin knew for a fact that Misty and Sophie would be well suited.

“She likes you. And wants you to touch her.”

“Good Misty. You’re so beautiful.” She ran her hand down the flaxen mane that matched the mare’s tail. “I thought this was going to be the worst day of my life,” she told Austin as she rubbed the horse’s forehead. “But it turned out to be really good. I saw my mother and now I have my very own horse.”

“You saw your mother?” The revelation was stated so casually Austin wasn’t certain she’d heard right.

“She visited me right before the funeral,” Sophie said as Misty nudged her. “Can I give her another carrot?”

“Sure . . . Before the funeral?”

“That’s why I didn’t open the door right away. Because she was telling me about my life and Jack’s, how our futures were going to be amazing, and that she’d always be with me.”

“That’s very special.”

Sophie turned away from the mare just long enough to smile. “Isn’t it? She couldn’t remember what heaven’s like, but that’s okay because she told me it’s wonderful.”

The girl had always had an active imagination, but Austin had the feeling that she wasn’t making this up. “If there’s anyone who could pull off a visit like that, it’d be your mom,” she said. “Did she visit Jack, too?”

“No. He’s too young to understand. And maybe she was afraid she’d freak him out.”

“But you weren’t afraid?” Austin wanted to be ready for any possible nightmares.

“Not at all. Oh, she told me why she wore purple all year.”

“Oh?” This was getting curiouser and curiouser.

“Because it was Dad’s favorite color and she wanted him to notice her.”

“I told her at the time that he’d notice her without that,” Austin said, even as goose bumps rose on her arms. How else could Sophie know what Heather had only shared with her? “But she was very determined.”

“Mom’s that way,” Sophie said easily. “I’ll bet that’s why she got to come down to visit. Because she can talk anyone into anything once she puts her mind to it.”

Austin laughed. “That’s definitely true.” And didn’t she have the tacky girl-in-the-country-song outlet mall outfit hanging in her closet to prove it?

*

A
FTER STAYING HOME
for two days, which she’d mostly spent grooming Misty and riding her around the corral, and then with Austin and Sawyer on the river trail, Sophie worried about going back to school. Would everyone stare at her, like she was some kind of freak? Or worse yet, would kids keep coming up to her to tell her how sorry they were and she’d have to keep telling everyone that she was doing okay?

Which she sort of was, which was a major surprise. Maybe because, although it might be her imagination, she could still feel her mom. Not in some weird stalker way, watching every single thing Sophie did or listening to her thoughts, but more like she was somewhere out there—wherever
there
was—in case Sophie needed her.

Ms. Taylor welcomed her back to her honors science class and an extra helping of warmth in her pretty Southern accent, but not a lot of fuss. She’d treated her as if she’d just been out with the flu or something. Which Sophie was grateful for. She hadn’t seen Madison yet, because Madison wasn’t in honors. Not because she wasn’t smart enough, because she probably was, but because, as she’d told Sophie, who’d been excited about being accepted, all that extra studying required would take time away from fun things. Like boys.

Sophie had never minded the extra work her honors English and science classes entailed because except for sort of crushing on Parker Long—who could actually make constellations sound interesting—she wasn’t all that interested in boys. Although Parker wanted to be an astrophysicist when he grew up, and maybe an astronaut, he’d still told her, during their biology section, which was her favorite part, that it was way cool that she was planning to be a large-animal vet, like her dad.

She usually passed Madison in the hall on her way to civics, but today she didn’t see her until lunch. She was sitting at their usual table with their crowd when Sophie came in carrying the lunch Winema had packed for her. Because, seriously, who’d want to eat the carb-heavy junk the cafeteria served?

“Sophie!” Madison screeched, jumped up from the bench, and gave her a huge hug as if it’d been years instead of days since they’d been together. Sophie figured they’d probably heard her over in the high school a block away. “We were just talking about you! How
are
you?”

“Okay, I guess. For someone who just buried her parents.”

“Yeah. Like I told you when we texted, that sucks. Sorry about missing the funeral.”

“No problem.” Sophie shrugged as if it hadn’t bothered her. Which, actually, it had. A lot. If Madison’s mom and dad had died, she would’ve been there for her. “We were kind of busy, anyway.”

“And it
was
a school day,” Madison pointed out.

“Which you ditched to go out to the lake with the gang,” Shelly Denny said with a giggle.

“You went to the lake?” Okay. Now Sophie was getting majorly mad.

“No one goes to class the last couple weeks of school,” Madison said defensively with a toss of her hair. “And it was such a great day.”

“My brother took a bunch of us out on our family’s boat,” Shelly said.

Her smirky smile suggested she was enjoying this. She and Sophie had never been friends. Madison was all they’d had in common. Madison also once confided that Mark Denny, who was three years older, had sexted her a picture of his penis and wanted her to Snapchat one of her bare boobs back to him. She’d denied doing it, but now Sophie wondered.

All the insults Madison had ever thrown her way came flashing back, most recently making fun of her dress size, which was, by the way, not a fat size at all, and that heron neck thing. She’d also said Sophie was too old to like horses, because, like, Madison had given up reading those lame kind of books back in sixth grade after she’d discovered the
Twilight
ones. Which Sophie had never been able to get into, but she loved the Enchanted Forest series and had read every Harry Potter book as soon as it had come out. Another thing her supposed BFF had ragged her about. Because geek girls were so uncool.

And getting back to horses, excuse me, Sophie thought, Austin was super cool and she had a lot of horses. Plus, she even bred them and trained them and had promised to let Sophie help deliver the next baby that was born.

“You know what?”

“What?” Madison asked.

“You.” She jabbed a finger toward Madison, then turned to Shelly. “And
you
. Both of you are irrelevant.” In Sophie’s tween world, there was no worse insult. Okay, maybe
slore,
which was a blend of slut and whore. But she never would’ve said that. Especially in front of the entire class that now seemed to be watching.

She spun around to walk away, belatedly realizing she didn’t have a clue where she was going. She could just march out and head home, but the teacher monitoring the door might catch her and stop her from leaving. Next time she did some big drama thing, she’d have to think it through better ahead of time.

“Sophie!” She heard someone calling her name behind her and saw Becca Thomas, a girl from her science class, coming toward her. “I’m sorry about your mom and dad,” Becca said, her brown eyes looking genuinely sad behind her black-framed glasses.

“Thanks.”

“You want to come sit with us?”

Sophie might be one of the school’s smart kids, but eating lunch at the nerd table? Seriously?
Kill me now.

Then she saw Parker Long. OMG! Smiling at her!

“Yeah. That’d be cool. Thanks.”

Maybe her mom was right, Sophie thought as she almost floated across the black-and-white tile floor. She had her own horse, who had the same name as her most favorite fictional horse ever. And Parker Long, a possible future astronaut from River’s Bend and the cutest boy in school, had just smiled at her.

Not the kind of smile he’d shared when she’d helped him with the chapter assignment comparing and contrasting genetic engineering with selective breeding, which, to be honest, her dad had helped her with the night before. But like she’d seen boys smile at girls when they really, really liked them.

Maybe, she thought as she shyly smiled back at Parker and felt her heart floating up to the rafters like one of those bubbles Jack and his friends had blown into the sky, her life really
was
going to be amazing.

37

T
HEY’D GOTTEN PAST
the funeral, and the kids were back in school, seemingly doing well, especially Sophie, who seemed to have not one but two new best friends: Becca Thomas, whose single mom turned out to be the manager Rachel had hired for the New Chance, and Parker Long, whose parents were both teachers at Eaglecrest High. They’d been coming over after school to do homework together and learn to ride with Sophie.

Becca was darling and sweet and, after some initial nervousness, had taken well to Ginger, one of the older trail horses who’d retired from herding work. Parker was not only impossibly cute, something Sophie had obviously noticed for herself, but he was also a natural-born athlete. Which, she thought, would probably come in handy if he were to stick to the goal of achieving Ryan Murphy’s initial plan of becoming the town’s first astronaut.

When Jack had learned that Scott was going to go to summer day camp, he’d announced that he didn’t want to play T-ball this year but wanted to attend camp, too.

“Look at it this way,” Sawyer had said, when Austin dithered over what Heather and Tom would have wanted, “we just escaped being
those people
.”

“What people?”

“Those poor parents who live in kids’ sports chauffeur hell.”

She’d laughed. “Good point.” Then signed the permission slip.

With life seeming to become more normal again, at least a new normal, Austin and Sawyer began acting like the teenage lovers they’d never dared be. They kissed nearly all night long on the porch swing after everyone was asleep. They enjoyed sometimes hot and fast, sometimes slow and sweet nooners on the bed in his cabin, and once, in a moment of pure lust when he’d been grooming Duke and she’d been brushing Blue, they’d climbed into the hayloft and learned that Winema had been right about the fantasy versus the reality.

“Not that it was bad,” Sawyer said, brushing straw off his bare butt. Being a gentleman, he’d willingly taken the bottom position.