Rough Stock(20)

Jill saw them approach, hung up the phone, and looked at Willow. Jill gave her a smile. It was hard, though, thin lipped with a slightly cruel edge. When she looked to Rowan, she lifted her hand toward her own hair. On her left ring finger, a dazzling rock glittered under the fluorescent lighting. “Come to visit your dad again today?” Jill asked.

Rowan nodded and lifted the sheet of paper in her free hand. “I thought I’d drop this off first, on my way through.”

Jill continued to smile, though it looked slightly painful. Rowan would’ve thought that fake smiling would be as easy as falling down to Jill Sykes at this point. Jill was pretty. Not Cassidy-Conroy-County-Fair-Queen pretty, but good enough to be runner-up. Every year. Though Jill would never have been nominated for Miss Congeniality. The tightness around the woman’s mouth and eyes told Rowan that flashing the ring had been intentional.

Rowan smiled back anyway and pushed her resume across the counter. She was silently congratulating herself, though, on having already emailed the hospital’s staffing director, as well. Just in case Jill “misplaced” this one. The woman’s fingers twitched as she plucked it off the flat surface.

Rowan could already picture it sailing into the trash the minute she turned her back.

“I’ll see that it gets to the right place!” Jill chirped.

Both women locked eyes, and it certainly felt like both of them were forcing themselves not to glance at the bin.

Rowan nodded and headed toward Dad’s room, Willow in tow. The fake smile faded as they walked down the hall. She’d worked with worse people, though, and she’d have to suck it up.

As Rowan entered the room, Emma saw the look on her face and knew something was up. “Hey!” she said to Willow, holding out her hand. “I was just thinking about a candy bar!”

“Okay!” Willow replied, abandoning Rowan for her aunt, and the two of them whisked past Rowan as they headed for the lobby and its bevy of vending machines.

Rowan watched them go then turned to Dad.

“Is it that bad?” he asked with a wan smile. “Because I could’ve sworn the doctors said I was going to pull through. ’Course, they said some other things about bacon and beer, but I think I’ll focus on the positive for now.”

Rowan huffed. “Dad! Don’t joke!”

“Who’s joking? You look like someone ran over your dog. No one ran over the dogs, did they?”

“No, everything’s fine.”

“Well now, that’s not true. That’s one of those little white lies you tell, like you always do, and I let you get away with it, I guess because dwelling on a thing doesn’t do anybody any good. But Rowan, those little white lies don’t stay white. You know that, don’t you? They turn black inside you.”

Rowan hated lying to him, but it was second nature now that she’d been doing it for so many years. “It’s nothing.”

He gave her a harsh look.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with the house, would it?” he asked quietly.

“What? No, there’s nothing wrong with the house.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Really? Even the fact that it’s a hop, skip, and a jump from the Barlow spread?”

Rowan stared at him. “I don’t…what are you saying, Dad?” She cleared her throat, nervously. “Because Court and I broke up a long time ago. You know that.”

“You can’t sever a connection like that,” he told her. “It can’t be done. Not really, not entirely.”

“Dad…”

“I’m not digging into your life, Rowan. I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t do it back then, not even when Willow took more after her daddy in the looks department than I’d have liked.”

Rowan blinked at him suddenly, unable to speak.

“You didn’t want to have anything to do with him, and I respected that. And I didn’t ask you about him because it seemed your mind was made up and there didn’t seem to be anything to say on the matter,” he continued.

“I… I can’t believe you knew. You knew this whole time.”

“Well, I’m not blind, Rowan. And I’m not stupid, even if I did a poor job of raising you and your sister.” He sighed. “Your situation is mostly my fault.”

Rowan spluttered at the declaration. “I…what?…how is it your fault?”

“Honey, I didn’t know what to do. With two girls, and your mom gone, I was just…I was unequipped for the job. I thought…I thought if I just raised you, taught you ranching, that would be enough. I guess I taught you too well.”

“Dad,” she argued. There was no way she could let him take the blame for this.

“But I scared you. I taught you about predators and how to protect yourself. But I said wolves and cougars and bears, Rowan, not farm boys. It’s my fault for not teaching you to stand up to him, to make him share responsibility. You ran from him, to protect your little girl, and I taught you that. Or, at least, I didn’t teach you any better.”

“Dad, none of this is your fault. Or mine,” she told him, though she wasn’t quite sure about the last part, not as sure as she had been for the last four and a half years. There was some truth to what he’d said, that she’d chosen to run away rather than stay and fight. Maybe it had been because deep down Rowan had known that she would’ve lost, no matter what the outcome had been. And Willow would’ve lost, too.

“I’m staying,” she told him, wishing, though, that her good news hadn’t been tempered by this conversation. “Court knows the truth now, anyway. He’s seen Willow. I wasn’t going to be able to hide her forever.”

“Oh, Rowan. I don’t want you to have to come back. Not for me. I’m fine. I’m already getting out of here in a few days. You have a life in Cheyenne.”

Rowan shook her head. “No, I don’t. It’s not a life, Dad. Not without you, and Emma, and the farm.”

Just then the door to the room opened and Willow happily scrambled inside, the remains of a candy bar smeared across her lips. “Hi, Pop-Pop! D’you want some chocolate?”

Dad laughed, and Rowan was grateful that the tension in the room had lifted. “No, honey, I can’t. I’m pretty sure chocolate might be on that list of things the doctors were telling me I can’t have anymore. How about you take a bite for both of us?”

“Baby,” said Rowan, “I…I was just telling Pop-Pop that you and I are going to move here, to Star Valley.”

Willow looked up at her, round mouthed, wide eyed.

“Would you like that?” Rowan asked. “Would you like to live at the farm? With Pop-Pop and the dogs? And see Aunt Emma and Uncle Troy every week?”

“Can I sleep in the barn?!”

Rowan laughed. “No, baby, you can’t sleep in the barn. You’ll sleep in the room you’re in now.”

“Can the dogs sleep in my room, too? And can I have a pony? And a bunny? And can I…?”

And just like that, Rowan knew she’d made the right decision. However difficult things were sure to be with Court, she was tired of being exiled to Cheyenne, cut off from her family and the place where she’d always been happiest. She was over Court, but Dad was right, he’d never be entirely out of her life, and she was going to have to figure out a way to live with that.

The rest of the visit went well, and they had to be ushered out of the room when visiting hours were over. Emma headed home, while Rowan and Willow drove back to the farm. Rowan was surprised to see a now-familiar truck in the driveway when she pulled up to the house.

She let Willow out of the backseat of the car and trudged through the mud up to the driver’s-side window and peered in. “What are you doing?” she asked Seth.

He smiled sheepishly at her. “Right now or in general?”

She glanced around at the dogs who were yipping wildly at her feet.

“I was worried I might lose a limb,” he told her as she shooed them away. “They seem to remember me from yesterday. And they’re holding it against me.” His gaze darkened a bit as he looked past Rowan. “I see they aren’t the only ones.”

She turned to see Willow stomping through the mud, toward the truck. The scowl on the little girl’s face was unmistakable. She stopped at Rowan’s hip and leaned against her. “You fought with Mama.”

Seth must have deemed it safe to get out, because he swung open the door and put his two large booted feet on the ground.

“No, baby,” said Rowan as he emerged. “No, we were just talking loudly.”

Willow didn’t look like she believed that. She eyed Seth warily as he stood before her.

Seth squatted down in front of her, prompting the dogs to move a bit closer but Rowan shooed them away again. “Honey,” he said to Willow, “I’d never, ever fight with your Mama. Not ever.”

Willow chewed her lower lip.

Seth smiled, which seemed to ease her fears a little, which wasn’t surprising since, Rowan noted, it had the same effect on herself. “Willow,” he said while tipping his hat. “I give you my word as a Vaquero. I would never raise my voice to your Mama.”