Rough Stock(19)

“Who said anything about using her? This is my family. You do whatever it takes for your family, right?”

Seth kept his mouth shut, not knowing how to answer. How could Court get something so right and still so wrong at the same damn time? They finally reached their own spread, and Seth turned into the Snake River driveway, angling the Ford up to the Big House. Court jumped out the second the engine was off, leaving Seth to watch him walk away. He doesn’t get it, Seth thought to himself. Not at all. Seth sighed, hoping his little brother figured it out fast, for all their sakes. He eased out of the cab, muscles aching a bit from carrying the feed into the Archers’ barn. He headed up the wooden steps of the front porch of the Big House and would’ve gone directly upstairs to his room for a hot shower, but the smell of the dinner he’d missed out on had him finding his way into the kitchen instead.

There, Dakota’s mother, Sofia, was sitting at the table with a mug of steaming coffee and her ledger. One look from her told Seth that she’d already heard about Court’s latest drama through the Star Valley grapevine. She rose up from her chair, giving him a sympathetic look. “I’ll fix you a plate.”

Seth waved her away. “I can do it.”

“No, no. Sit down,” the woman insisted.

Normally Seth wouldn’t hear of it, but he was tired. He slid into an empty chair across from her. “Thanks, Sofia.” He peeled the hat off his head and hung it off one of the chairs, running his fingers through his hair, which was getting a little long. He barely had enough time to wash it every day, it seemed. Going into town and having it taken care of would just have to be put off for another month.

“What am I going to do with him?” Seth asked her as she slid a plate of chicken and dumplings onto the table in front of him. “He can’t see past his own nose, Sofia. How’s he going to raise a little girl? It’s ridiculous! He thinks they’ll get married, live happily ever after. It’s like he just doesn’t see all the pain he’s caused. He just wants the happy ending, right now, right this second, at the snap of his fingers.”

Sofia sat back down into her own chair and looked at him. “Your father cast a long shadow,” she replied. “Walker, too. Court’s just trying to see where he fits in.”

“But Court doesn’t have to live in Walker’s shadow,” Seth argued.

“No, you don’t have to live in Walker’s shadow. And you don’t, because you’re your own man, Seth. But Court doesn’t know yet what kind of man he is.”

Seth snorted. “He knows what kind of man he wants to be. He’s going to use Rowan and Willow to out–Walker Walker.”

For better or worse, Walker had thrown down the gauntlet, and Court had picked it up. Seth didn’t like Court’s chances of living up to the example of the eldest Barlow.

“All I know is, there’s a woman and kid here and they’re probably going to get hurt.” Seth felt guilty and offered the kind woman a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Sofia. None of this is your problem. I shouldn’t be burdening you with this. Not right now. You have other things to think about.”

It had been less than two months since Sofia had lost Manny in the storm. Court and his problems seemed so minuscule by comparison.

“Life doesn’t stop,” she replied. “We all must go on, even though we don’t want to, even though it’s hard. You know, your father always worried about Walker, that he was driving himself too hard all the time, and Court because he never seemed to have any drive at all. But Diana, she worried about you the most. Even when you were young.”

Seth was startled to hear that about his mother. “Me? Why me? I never caused problems.”

Sofia smiled at him. “No. Never. You were too busy trying to solve everyone else’s. She said you gave too much and left nothing for yourself.”

“She never said anything to me.”

“She was afraid to, afraid you’d second-guess your nature. She never wanted to change your spirit, but she worried just the same.”

Seth was troubled by that, by the idea that he’d been a burden to his mother in any way, especially when she had so much to deal with—raising five boys, trying to fight off recurring cancer. The last thing on Earth he ever wanted to be—to anyone—was a burden. It was disheartening to know that all his efforts to make things easier on his mother had seemed to turn him into that very thing.

He finished eating and washed his plate in the sink so that Sofia wouldn’t have to. On the way up to his bedroom, though, he wasn’t sure she could fully understand the extent of the Barlows’ loss. Seth was certain that Sofia missed her husband as much as he missed his father, but he was equally certain that the woman hadn’t relied on Manny the way the Barlows had with Rafe. Dad had been their rock, their foundation. He’d have known how to handle Court. He’d have had it all figured out by the time the sun had set. Dad had never been one to sleep on his problems. He’d solved them, quickly, efficiently, and they usually stayed resolved.

Dad’s office door was closed, but there were muffled voices coming from inside. Seth took a step toward it, debating whether or not to knock, or go inside, or possibly get Sawyer to help him break up the fight that was about to boil over. Before he had time to make a decision, the door flew open and Walker stormed out of it.

He nearly ran into Seth, who had to jump back to get out of the way.

Austin followed, hot on his twin’s heels. They both looked seriously pissed off. “If you’d just listen! I—”

“Forget it, Austin!” Walker growled. “Just forget it! There is no way I’m funding you to dig for buried fucking treasure, all right? It’s not going to happen.”

Austin’s mouth dropped open. “That’s…that’s not even what I’m doing with it! I want—”

Walker raised a hand to cut him off. “We’re not kids anymore, Austin. It’s time to grow up. It’s time to take responsibility. We have a ranch to run. And you’re not going to ride off into the hills, away from our problems, to buy a silver mine and play prospector while we work our asses off down here. There are no choices here,” he spat. “There are only chores, and you’re not getting out of them. Not with Dad’s insurance money.” He turned and headed not to the stairs but to the front door, slamming it so hard that it rattled on its hinges.

Austin sighed and glared at Seth as though the mere act of witnessing the exchange had somehow caused Walker to say no again. He stomped off, too, in the direction of the back door.

Seth stood alone at the foot of the stairs, waiting for a moment for one or both of them to return. It was nothing but silence and darkness, though. He turned and head upstairs, slowly because he was bone tired. As he passed Dad’s shuttered bedroom, he found himself wishing he could go inside, find him there, and Mom, too, while he was fantasizing. He remembered everything about her, her hair, her laugh. Strange to think that she’d worried about him, even all the way back then.

He passed by their empty room on the way to his own, pushed in the door, and closed it behind himself. As much as he wanted to strip down and stand under the hot water in the shower, he forced himself to look at the room, at the blue walls, the football trophies, the Boy Scout sash on the hook by the closet.

It hadn’t changed. Not in three decades. It still looked exactly the way it did when he was growing up; yet somehow it seemed completely foreign to him, like it belonged to someone else. He supposed it was because he was so rarely here anymore.

Seth spent so much time on the range, with the herd, that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at this room, really looked at it. He showed up to shower, and to sleep somewhere other than the dirt, whenever he could. He’d never given himself or this room much thought. It had all seemed temporary, just a place to keep his things until his life started.

Somehow temporary had turned into thirty-one years without him noticing. Somehow Seth Barlow’s life had never actually started. Or, obviously it had, it had just never gone anywhere. He kicked off his boots and heaved a sigh as he unbuttoned his shirt. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight, that was a fact, and so he’d do what he always did, the opposite of Dad, it seemed. He’d shower and sleep and try to fix everything in the morning.

Court and Rowan came first though, because their problems were bigger than his own.





Chapter Twelve




‡


Rowan tugged Willow through the hospital’s front doors and into the lobby. Even the parking lot didn’t feel safe. Ever since her argument with Court yesterday, she was looking over her shoulder, half expecting to find him standing there. He hadn’t called again, or come to the house, and he certainly wasn’t going to be in the hospital right now as they were visiting Dad.

To the right she spotted the nurses’ desk but stifled a groan when she recognized another familiar face. Jill Sykes was talking on the phone. Normally it was a good thing to have an ‘in’ when applying for a job, but as Rowan forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, she didn’t think this was going to give her any kind of advantage.