Home Free

She shook her head. “Oh, no, we are not sheltering you. I don’t know why you left Mexico, but you need to get on back there. And with no help from us.”

“I’m not coming from Mexico.” Words started and stopped in Arch’s head. He hadn’t planned this out well. He should have had some kind of speech prepared.

“I don’t care where you’ve been. You shouldn’t be here.” Her words cracked like gunfire across the yards between them.

Finally Wade stirred. “Let’s listen to him, Nora. It can’t hurt to listen.”

It was disconcerting, hearing Wade’s voice so deep and sure. Arch cleared his throat. Fortunately, ten years in prison had schooled him in keeping feelings at bay. This was his chance, and he needed to get it right. “I never went to Mexico. I got as far as San Diego with Dad and Blake. I left them there.”

His sister and brother stared at him in stunned silence. Tinker Bell seemed to come out of whatever trance she’d been in and stepped back a few feet. “I should go. I’m intruding.”

He didn’t want her to go. She was like a beam of light he could focus on in this dark moment. “Stay? Please?”

Three sets of eyes widened at his odd request.

“Only if you want to...” Arch added. “If you’re willing to.”

She studied him, and then nodded slightly. Her gaze jumped to Nora.

“It’s okay, Mandy,” Nora said. “We’re family—though you may be regretting that fact right now.”

“No regrets.” Her simple answer was a tiny oasis in this complicated moment.

Mandy. Arch held on to the name, tucked it away into his mind to think about later. “Thanks,” he told her. And used all that gold—of her hair, of her radiant skin—as the courage he needed to keep talking. “When I left here with Dad and Blake, I was already sick of them. It was terrible, the things we did. I knew by then that my whole life had become one big mistake. Down in San Diego, they robbed a guy at gunpoint. A decent guy—just your average working man. He had a wife and his little kid with him.”

Arch cleared his throat, balled his shaking hands into fists. Saw the encouraging look on Mandy’s face and inhaled it like the oxygen that seemed to have disappeared from the air around him. “I saw myself clearly, in the fear in their eyes. That man, brought down in front of his family. The terror on his wife’s face. She pulled her little boy into her stomach and just held him so close...” He had to stop again. Being in their presence, seeing the disgust in his brother’s and sister’s eyes, and the horror and sorrow on Mandy’s face, cracked all the walls he’d built to hold back the guilt.

He pushed himself on. “In that moment, everything changed. I couldn’t stand what I saw. What I’d become. I left Dad and Blake that night. Never said goodbye. Just went to a bar, had one last beer, then walked to the ocean to touch the water. To breathe in that fresh air one last time. Then I found a police station and turned myself in.”

The icy edge had thawed from Nora’s gaze. Her jaw, so set, relaxed a fraction. “We didn’t know. Why didn’t you write?”

His laugh was a bitter syllable. “And say what? You hated me. For good reason. I’d spent every day making your life miserable. You were better off rid of me.”

He saw the memories cloud Nora’s eyes. He wished he could do something, work hard enough, beg hard enough, to erase them for her. Their dad’s hand crashing down across her face. Him, the numb bastard he’d been, doing nothing. Daddy’s little henchman. Shame shoved the bile to the back of his throat.

“And now?” Wade stepped in front of Nora, sheltering her with his body, as if he could keep those memories from overwhelming her. “What’s happening with you now?”

Arch heard the real question. Did you escape? “I’m out. Legally. I did my time, almost ten years of it, and got released a couple months ago. I tried to get work down in Southern California, but no one wants to hire someone who answers ‘yes’ to the felony question on their job application.”

“So you’re here for money?” Wade slid a hand into his suit jacket. “I’ve got cash. You can take it and go.”

Arch closed his eyes against the shame. It filled his veins, pushing on his skin, making it feel too tight. “It’s not money. My parole officer helped me get assistance from the government. I receive a check each month.”

He watched them all look down and away. He got it. It was hard to look himself in the mirror when he thought about it.

“Look, being out in the world, after so long in prison, it’s overwhelming. Ten years when you’re not allowed to make choices and suddenly everything is a choice. What to eat, what to wear, what to do. Everything moves fast out in the world, and it’s all random. No schedule. Not like in jail.”

He paused, looking at Mandy and Wade, willing them to understand. If they did, maybe they’d sway Nora. “I’m desperate. That’s why I came home. I want to lie low on the Marker Ranch for a week or two. Get my bearings. Try to figure out what to do next. I had no idea you two had moved back to Benson. I thought the ranch was still abandoned. But I asked someone when I got to town today, and they told me Wade was running it now. And they sent me here to Lone Mountain, to find you.”

“Marker Ranch is Wade’s livelihood.” A shrill note careened across Nora’s voice. “I don’t think you staying here is a good idea.”

“Nora.” Wade put a hand on her arm. “He’s our brother. And he’s served his time. Paid his dues.”

“To the law, maybe. Not to us!”

Her fury was justified, but her words still bruised. “I swear to you that I’m clean. No drugs, no deals. All I want is to live a regular life. I don’t know how to do that, but I want, more than anything, to learn. And if there’s a way to apologize enough, to make amends to you and Wade, I want to do that, too.”

Doubt was thick in the air all around them. Arch waited. He’d learned to pray a little in prison, so he prayed now. He needed to be in the mountains, to breathe this clean air, to get grounded. “I have a parole officer. I check in by phone each week. He’ll have the local sheriff check on me, too.”

Nora and Wade exchanged a long, what-the-hell-should-we-do kind of look. Arch studied the mountains beyond them, the granite peaks rising to meet the afternoon sky and the fall-burnished aspen gilding the lower slopes. Trying to give them a moment of privacy. Trying to find the peace he’d felt earlier when he’d listened to the pines and caught Shrimp.

They must have reached some kind of understanding, because Wade cleared his throat and turned to face him squarely. “The house on Marker Ranch is empty. Nora lives with her husband, Todd, on his property now. And I live here with my fiancée...” He paused and a smile lifted all the tension off his face. “I mean, my wife, Lori. Mandy’s sister. So there’s plenty of room for you to stay there.”

“But if there are any problems, you’ll have to go,” Nora added.

Relief, so sweet it choked him up again, shook his voice. “I understand. There won’t be any problems.”

“The thing is,” Wade continued, “I’m leaving on my honeymoon. Tonight. And Nora’s leaving tomorrow to do some work up near the Oregon border for a few weeks. So you’ll be on your own.”

Nora turned to Wade. “Todd will be around. He was going to take care of Marker Ranch anyway. He can keep an eye on Arch.”

It was humiliating to be spoken about in the third person. As someone who needed to be watched. But how could he blame them? They didn’t know him beyond their memories, and those memories sucked.

Mandy broke the awkward pause. “I’ll be here, next door, if he needs anything.”

She was so sweet. Somehow, when he’d caught that cake, he’d caught an ally along with it.

Wade shook his head. “We can’t ask that of you.” Distrust weighted every staccato syllable. It made sense. For all his little brother knew, he was a rapist, too.

“It’s not asking anything. We’re neighbors. I’m happy to help out.” The sharp note in Mandy’s voice surprised him. She might be sweet, but she was tough.

Nora looked surprised, too. She studied Mandy for a moment. “Are you sure?”

Mandy nodded. “He saved the wedding cake, you know. I almost dropped it. And I think he caught a stray donkey for me, as well.”

Nora’s stern expression softened at Mandy’s words. “You and your strays. Looks like you found another one today.”

Arch saw Mandy flush a little. “I’m just grateful she did,” he threw in, to cover her discomfort. “And I did find the donkey. It’s safe with the goat.”

“Thanks,” Mandy said, and the warmth in her eyes was a tonic.

It seemed to soothe Wade, too, because that worry was gone from his eyes. “I still have a few horses and my cattle grazing on the ranch. I’ll expect you to look after them. That way Todd won’t have to. And there are a lot of repairs to do. We’ll leave you a list.”

“I can fix stuff,” Arch told him. “I took machine shop, woodworking, metalwork—pretty much every class they offered while I was locked up. Otherwise I would have gone crazy. I even worked with livestock the last few years. The prison had a program. But not a full-scale cattle operation.”

Wade gave a wan smile. “Well, we’re not that yet. We’ve got a small herd and big plans.”

“Then I know I can do it.” He turned to Nora. “I’ll listen to your husband. I’ll get his advice if I have any questions. And I can ask...” He paused, strangely aware that it was the first time he was going to say her name. “Mandy. It will help to know I can turn to both of them with any concerns.”