“She doesn’t know, man. I’m really sorry, but she doesn’t know about the rift with your mom because you haven’t talked about it with us. You hold yourself apart.” Cam sat down beside him. “It makes me wonder if you’re going to leave. And I don’t think for a second that you’re planning on shoving me to the side. You would never do that.”
At least Cam believed him. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Well, I’ll tell you I feel some guilt about it. I suppose that’s one reason you wouldn’t tell us.”
“Yes. I knew how it would make you feel.”
“But, god, Rafe, I’ll take the guilt to get you to talk to me. If you don’t want to talk to me, then at least tell Laura. You were a momma’s boy. I don’t mean that as an insult. I just know how close you were to her. I loved my mom, too. And I know how hard it was on her to raise a kid in a place that didn’t accept her.” Cam continued as he crossed to the kitchen, opening the fridge. “My town didn’t accept her because she was unmarried when she had me. Do you even know what it would be like for us? I’ve lived this life. I don’t want it for our daughter. At the same time, I know how you feel. You just had the rug ripped out from under you.”
Because his mother was always supposed to be there. Because she was supposed to stand beside him even when she thought he was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to tell him he was dead to her. She wasn’t supposed to cut him out of her life.
She wasn’t supposed to abandon him.
“I knew she would take it hard.” Rafe began speaking slowly, forcing the words out. “It was why I put off telling her the truth for so long. I only told her that we’d found Laura and we were working things out. I knew how she would take those words.”
“She took the ‘we’ to mean you and Laura.”
“Yes.”
Cam sat down, passing him a beer. “Well, I suppose that’s only to be expected.” He popped the top on his. “Her brain isn’t on the Bliss wave station. It must have been a surprise to her.”
Rafe looked down at the beer. “I don’t know about this.”
Cam laughed a little. “Hi doesn’t need it anymore, and while he was stingy with money, he was always quick to offer a beer. So tell me what happened, and not the craptastic, two-second version.”
“Fine.” He took a long draw off the beer. There was something soothing about sitting with his best friend, having a cheap beer. “I tried to explain it to her gently. I thought showing her some pictures of Sierra would soften her up. She wanted to know why I couldn’t get a kid who looked like me. She said we should have gotten a surrogate because Sierra didn’t have her blood.”
Cam sat back, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “She was always very concerned with her blood line.”
“We have a long family history.” He’d heard about it endlessly growing up. He and Javier were the latest in a long line of Spanish royalty who came to the new world centuries before. They had a duty to be the best, to continue the line.
He thought he had. He had a daughter and she was beautiful and sweet and he intended to raise her to know all of her heritages. His daughter would be the quintessential American—a child of the world, raised with American idealism.
His mother had only cared about the blood that ran in Sierra’s veins.
Sierra’s blood meant nothing. The love he and Laura and Cam would pour into her, that was what would bind them together as a family.
Cam sent him a sympathetic look. “She could change her mind. Living in Miami so close to her might bring her around.”
He shook his head. “That’s not why I was considering the job in Miami. It was a coincidence. I simply have contacts there. I was considering the job because it’s the only one that’s been offered to me.”
“That’s not true.” Cam stood up and gestured around. “It seems to me you’ve been offered another job.”
“I’ve been offered up as a sacrificial lamb to keep Nell Flanders out of political office.”
“That seems like a mighty important job to me. You know she thinks the sheriff’s department should switch to nonviolent methods of…well, everything. She wants to ban all firearms in the county and teach the citizenry to talk to bears so we don’t kill them.”
Rafe had come into close contact with a bear just two months before. It had been deeply attracted to the hummingbird feeders Laura had placed around the house. He’d been scared shitless. “They’ll just eat us.”
“And Nell would say we deserved it. Do you understand the chaos that would happen? I just think being mayor of Bliss is a bigger job than you’re giving it credit. And I think you would do a hell of a job. It’s up to you. Laura will come around. I can work on her. If you really want to give Miami a shot, I’ll make sure it happens. Nate has connections with the DEA, and I’m sure he can give me some serious recommendation. I can try Miami PD maybe.”
He didn’t like the thought of Cam on the streets. He didn’t like it at all. “But you love it here.”
Cam sat forward, a sad smile on his face. “And you’re my partner. You gave it a shot. I won’t have you miserable. We’ll find a way. We’ll compromise because we’re a family. I’m going to go talk to our wife. You think about it for a while. We’re supposed to be at Trio for some weird ceremonial thing that proves Wolf’s girl isn’t an alien queen. I have to go fire up the Detector 6000. Stef made it special for the wedding. You won’t want to miss it.”
He walked out the door, leaving Rafe alone in Hiram’s tiny cabin.
There would be no Detector 6000s for Cam in the Miami PD. There wouldn’t be Big Game Dinners or Winter Festivals where Sierra could ride ponies. There would be no crazy town hall meetings.
He looked around. Hiram had lived alone for the last fifty or so years, but Rafe couldn’t tell from the pictures on the wall. He stood up and stared at that wall. Forty or so pictures hung in cheap frames, but somehow they made a rich canvas of the man’s life. There were old black and whites, one of a very large family. The man who was obviously the father had a grim look on his face, and the others were crowding in, looking similarly stoic. Only one boy was grinning like a loon.
Hiram. Maybe he’d never fit into that large, serious family, but he’d kept the photo. There was a picture of Hiram and a woman who looked a whole lot like Max and Rye Harper. They were dressed in late seventies clothes. She was smiling at the camera and holding up a trout she’d caught, but Hiram’s face was toward her and he practically glowed.
There were pictures of Hiram with Stella and a young Stef, with Jamie and Noah’s dads and mom out on the Circle G. He recognized some of the locals who had been here long before him because Stella had taken him through her albums one night. There was a picture of Hiram handing out diplomas to Max and Rye and Stef and Callie.
The last one caused Rafe’s throat to tighten. It was a picture of Hiram holding up Sierra Rose.
Hiram had come to the small party that welcomed his daughter. Hiram had picked her up, pronounced her perfect, and welcomed her as the newest citizen of Bliss.
Tears filled Rafe’s eyes because he finally realized something.
Sierra had already lost a grandfather. And if Rafe took his family out of Bliss, she would lose a whole family.
Blood. All his life it had been pounded into his brain. Blood made a family, a long line of DNA that connected him to ancestors who the history books talked about.
But here was a whole life laid out in faded pictures and knickknacks, and suddenly it was so lovely to Rafe. Hiram’s history didn’t span Europe. It was all about a lifetime spent in Bliss. It was about a world of friends who became family. They didn’t need blood. Hell, half the time they didn’t really have anything in common with the singular exception of where they lived, but somehow it had worked for Hiram.
Because he’d been open. Because he’d made his decision and he hadn’t looked back. He’d moved forward. He’d forged his own life, his own path.
Wasn’t that all a father could ask for his child?
Rafe sat back and allowed a wealth of history to play in his brain.
Chapter Fourteen:
Leo, Shelley, and Wolf
Leo needed a drink. Or five. But he was pretty sure he should stay away from the tonic, because in about three minutes he was going to be brutally dehydrated. This afternoon seemed to never end. He would glance at his watch, but he’d left it behind with his clothes.
He pulled the flap on the sweat lodge and steam threatened to overtake him. He crawled through anyway, his eyes blinded momentarily by the intense heat.
Leo made it through the steam and found the sitting area. He sat back on the small bench Mel had thoughtfully provided. In the center of the lodge was a small fire and a bunch of rocks over the fire. Mel had a bucket next to him. He took the ladle from the bucket and doused the rocks with water, sending heat into the already humid air.
“Welcome, my spiritual sons.”
God, he wished his “spirit dad” had some clothes on.
Wolf leaned over and whispered. “You know for a skinny dude, he’s got an awfully big—”