He’d taken on the role of deputy nearly ten years ago after an argument with his father. He’d been barely twenty, brash and determined to create his own identity apart from the Donovan name. And he had. More importantly, he’d discovered he loved doing it.
And soon it would be Jenkins’s job, if he could bring the kid up to snuff.
He leaned a shoulder against the post next to the steps that led into the street and stared up at the vista, breathing in the evening. It gave him a sense of peace, of belonging. He knew it would only last as long as the sunset, though. Come nightfall, the loneliness would sink in. He’d eventually retire to the room he kept above the jailhouse and the emptiness would mock him. The memories would seep through the cracks in the walls and remind him of everything he’d lost.
Maybe when he moved back to his father’s house and took over the business, the memories would stay put and not follow him there. He doubted it, but it was the only bright spot he could find about giving up his badge and returning to the Diamond D Ranch.
He scowled at the fading sunset. The idea of turning in his badge stuck in his craw in the worst way. He hated to do it, to give up the only thing that gave him a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But as his father constantly reminded him, he had a duty to his family.
What was left of it. It had been just him and his father since Ma had hightailed it out of town when he was fourteen. He tried not to blame her. Get right down to it, his father was a first-rate bastard. He’d spent his whole married life and longer mooning over another man’s wife instead of his own, turning bitter when he couldn’t have her. Hunter hadn’t heard from Ma since she’d left. Sometimes on nights like this he wondered where she’d got to. Was she happy? Was she even still alive? Why hadn’t she thought to take him with her? He didn’t let the thoughts linger for long, though. Turned out Ma was as interested in being a mother to him as Vernon was in being a father. He guessed that there wasn’t enough about him to love. At least that’s what he believed for the longest time until someone else had shown him different.
Someone who had made him dream of a future full of possibilities he’d never considered. Of having a home. Of coming through the door once the sun had sunk into its nest behind the mountains and the stars took over the heavens, and being met by a passel of smiling children and a loving wife with pale blond hair and dazzling blue eyes who’d welcome him with open arms.
He’d come so close to having that once, but...well, he’d come close but not close enough.
Now, here he was pushing thirty and all he had to show for himself at the end of the day was the tin badge pinned on his chest.
“The men should sober up soon enough,” Jenkins said, coming up behind him. Hunter welcomed the interruption. He didn’t like wallowing in maudlin thoughts for too long. They had a way of making a man see all the things he’d done wrong in life. It could be a long list. “I can spring them once the sun goes down, send ’em on home if you want.”
“Let them sweat it out for a bit,” Hunter said. “Maybe it will give them pause if they think they might be bunking down here for the night.”
“Yucton wouldn’t like that. Says he don’t cotton to neighbors much. ’Specially smelly drunks who don’t have the sense to know when to keep their mouths shut.”
Hunter scowled. “You tell Yucton we’re running a jail, not a damn hotel. If he wanted to choose his neighbors he should have chosen not to break the law.”
That’s the way it worked in Hunter’s mind. You broke the law, you paid the price. It was as simple as that. At least it should be. But justice could be a mercurial mistress.
“Hey, ain’t that...?” Jenkins took a step forward and squinted through the early-evening light. Hunter followed his gaze.
His heart stuttered and his breath along with it.
Jenkins made his way to the edge of the planked sidewalk and leaned against the railing, a smile breaking across his young face. “Well, I’ll be hog-tied and roasted on a spit. Will you look at that?”
Hunter couldn’t look at anything else. Every muscle in his body went still as rigor. Had someone hog-tied him and roasted him on a spit, he wasn’t sure he would even notice. He knew what he was seeing. He just couldn’t believe it. Or didn’t want to.
“Meredith.”
He hadn’t spoken her name aloud in seven years, but it slipped off his tongue now as if it had been yesterday, bringing with it all the emotions he’d kept neatly tucked away deep inside. They rushed out now, caring little for neatness or order as each one raged through him and left him standing in front of his office wrecked and broken as if no time had passed at all and she was riding out of town instead of back in.