“Yes, baby, she was.”
“And we can go to Court’s farm and see his other horses.”
Rowan frowned, and Willow noticed.
“You promised!”
“We will, baby,” Rowan assured her. “We will.”
Rowan paused for a moment before reaching for the lamp on the nightstand. She looked down at her daughter, her whole world for almost five years, and took a deep breath. “Honey, I…have to explain something to you. Court…well…baby, Court is your daddy.”
Willow’s brow furrowed. “Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
It felt strange to speak the words out loud, afraid as she’d been of them for so long.
“How come I never saw him before?!”
There would be a time for that later, Rowan supposed, when Willow got older and the accusations came—which they would, Rowan had no doubt. Someday she’d have to find a way to talk about why she’d done what she’d done. There might never be a good way to explain herself and her choices to Willow. Rowan just hoped that Willow would forgive her someday, when she finally understood things.
It was tempting to trash Court, but no good would come of it. Willow couldn’t possibly understand it, certainly not now. And if Court, by some miracle, ever did get his shit together, Rowan didn’t want to be responsible for driving a wedge between father and daughter simply out of spite and past hurts.
She had to give some kind of answer, though, now that the question had been asked. For now, Rowan did the easiest thing, the comfortable thing—she lied.
“Court was in the rodeo, baby, remember like we saw in Cheyenne? He travelled a lot. All over the country. He was gone. But he lives here now,” Rowan added quickly to head off any questions. “He lives in Star Valley, just like we will, and…” She swallowed hard. “You’ll be able to see him whenever you want.”
“Can we go to his farm tomorrow? Please? Please, please, please?!”
“No, baby. We can’t.”
“But you said—!”
“We have to work tomorrow, Willow. We’ve got to walk the fence line. Remember, sweetie, the farm comes first. Before everything else. Always. But…after we’re done, I’ll…”
Actually, calling Court was quite possibly the very last thing on this Earth that Rowan wanted to do. But she’d always put Willow first and wasn’t about to change that now. “I’ll call Court tomorrow,” she vowed. “We’ll work out a visit. Now, go to sleep, baby. Tomorrow, after we work, I’ll call.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Willow turned to pull her stuffed lamb closer. “I have a daddy, Wooliam!” she whispered. “A real one!”
Rowan turned out the light, leaving the nightlight burning, and closed the bedroom door quietly. Instead of retiring to her own room, she headed downstairs, slipped into her boots and Seth’s jacket and stood outside on the porch. The night was crisp and clear, though cold. With the porch light off, the stars shimmered above her like diamonds on velvet.
She wondered if Seth liked to look at the stars, too.
Rowan didn’t feel better for having finally told the truth to Willow. To be honest, part of her, deep down, had kind of expected relief, if only minimal, that the whole house of cards had tumbled down. It had been difficult to hold them up for so long. But in truth she felt nothing. Nothing at all.
Maybe it was because she was tired. Between work here at the farm and visits to Dad, she was worn out, worn thin, left numb to everything. But part of it maybe was how she’d been living, vending machine meals, not enough free time, never enough sleep. She’d been putting one foot in front of the other for so long that she’d lost sight of the road. She was home, now, though, so the lonely trek was over. She closed her eyes and smelled the night air.
Somewhere in the dark, a howl broke the silence. In their chain-link run, the dogs broke into a chorus of snaps, snarls, and barks. Rowan moved back away from the edge of the steps and ducked into the house again, closing the door firmly behind herself.
Home wasn’t without its share of challenges.
*
In the morning, Rowan bundled Willow into the car and headed into town to check on Dad. Thankfully, she was able to duck past all the nurses at this point and head straight to his room. She was unhappy, though, when she found him nearly doubled over in bed, wracked with a cough.
It must have come on quickly, because he wasn’t clutching his pillow, the way he was supposed to. She grabbed it and pressed it to his chest. “Don’t panic,” she told him, knowing he was having trouble getting air. “Just stay calm.”
Within a few minutes, it subsided, and he fumbled for the water glass on the small beside table.
“Th…th…” he stuttered.
“It’s all right, Dad.”
She didn’t need to be thanked. She just needed him to get better.
Another coughing fit erupted, and this time, instead of going for the water, Rowan snatched a stethoscope hanging off the wall behind the bed. She affixed the buds in her ears and pressed the drum to her father’s back. “Try and take a deep breath in,” she commanded.
He tried and failed, but Rowan had heard enough. She pressed the nurses’ call button and handed her dad the cup of water. Within a few moments, Jill Sykes came in, looking fit to be tied, her face pinched and cheeks red. “We’re on a schedule, Rowan, and—”
“I want x-rays for my dad,” Rowan interrupted. “Now.”
Jill looked from Rowan to Mac and back again. “I…I’m not…”
“Get Dr. Hillman and tell him I want a full chest x-ray.”
Jill turned and sped off, presumably to do Rowan’s bidding, while Rowan took the cup from Dad’s shaking hand and dabbed at his face with a square of paper towel. “When did your cough get worse?”
“Oh,” he sighed. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“Did you tell anyone?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
Rowan sighed. While Dad was trying not to be a bother, he’d developed a lung infection.
Dr. Hillman wrote down the new orders, and the orderlies took Dad away. Rowan followed and stood next to the technician as the stills were taken. She groaned, not needing the man beside her to give her the bad news.
He gave her a sympathetic look. “They’ll start him on antibiotics and fluids right away.”
She nodded gravely. More drugs, more fluids, more days in the hospital…more money.
With Dad settled back into his room, she was reluctant to leave, but it was getting close to lunch and Willow had to be hungry.
“Go, go,” Dad ordered with as big a smile as he could probably muster. “I’ll be fine.”
Rowan sighed inwardly. The trademark Archer fine. She nodded, tucked him in, and made sure the water and the coughing pillow were well within reach. “Drink as much as you can,” she told him and led Willow out the door. “We’ll be back later.”
At the house, Willow devoured a pack of snack crackers while Rowan sat at her father’s ancient desk, sorting through the stack of bills teetering precariously on it. If he was going to be away longer, some of these needed to be paid. She rifled through the overstuffed drawers until she found the power of attorney papers they’d all—Rowan, Dad, and Emma—had had drawn up a few years ago. There was a coffee cup stain on one of them, but she didn’t suppose it would do much harm. She slipped them into her purse and bundled Willow up again.
“We’re just heading to the bank,” she told the little girl. And they headed back to Star Valley, the trek seeming longer each time.
First Wyoming Federal was a squat, unwelcoming building constructed sometime in the late seventies and all but forgotten about after that. Inside, of the three tellers behind the counter, Rowan gravitated to Honor Jones. They’d been in the same graduating class in high school. Mrs. Winslow, next to Honor, was already giving Rowan the stink eye while counting out bills for Mr. Hemmings. Her dour expression perfectly matched the equally dour decor. Festive shamrocks adorned the counters, though. It seemed like the employees were doing the best with what they had.
Seeing Mrs. Winslow’s glare, Rowan shuffled away, not in the mood for outright hostility these days. She might snap and beat the woman with the plastic shamrock taped to the counter’s edge, which would be lucky for no one.
She waited patiently, instead, in Honor’s line. When the young woman finally noticed them, Rowan instinctively reached for Willow, wanting to protect her even though the girl couldn’t possibly understand people’s reaction to her. But Honor smiled, warm and genuine, and plucked a lollipop from the container on the counter. She started to reach over the counter but stopped.
“Oh! We’re supposed to ask!” she said, giving Rowan a sheepish look.
Rowan nodded. “It’s okay.”
Willow took the treat and returned the grin.
It seemed to be contagious, because Rowan couldn’t stop smiling, either. So few people in Star Valley had been welcoming, and it was such a relief. She laid the withdrawal slip on the counter and pulled out the Power of Attorney papers. “My name’s on the business account,” she told Honor. “Emma’s, too. But not on his personal accounts. I have the paperwork, though. We filled it out a few years ago, just in case.”