Holiday Homecoming

Even though he hadn’t seen those particular mountains in more than a decade, he recognized the rugged snow-blanketed peaks thrusting into the silky wisps of clouds and sun.

The Bridger Range. Mountains he’d climbed in, biked in, hiked in and skied on. Where he would take off just to get away. Where he retreated just to play. Every morning he’d sat at the breakfast table shoveling in bowl after bowl of cereal while he stared through the old warped glass windows and there they were, those mountains jagged and snowcapped and close enough to touch.

Mountains he hadn’t seen since he was a restless eighteen-year-old who couldn’t wait to leave the prison of his small town. Who’d never looked over his shoulder as he drove away.

Looking at those proud summits and those breathtaking slopes made it real. He was home. For better or worse. “I only meant to catch a few z’s. Not sleep through three mountain passes and two states. You should have kicked me in the shin to wake me up.”

“It was tempting, but I didn’t mind driving. It was the least I could do, considering you were so valiant saving Samantha’s life.”

“Valiant? Me? No way. I just tried to get her stable. That reminds me, I meant to check on her before this.” He dug around in his pockets for his cell, but he only got Tim’s voice mail. He left a message, there was nothing else he could do for now. “What about you? You drove through a blizzard for hours.”

“They had just plowed, so it wasn’t too bad.”

“You had to stop for gas. Why didn’t you wake me up so I could take the next shift?”

“Oh, I tried. I shook you and you didn’t even move. You were so out of it you slept right through the ding when I left the keys in the ignition and the banging when I filled the tank. A truck at the next fuel pump accidentally hit his horn and nothing. Not even the slightest hitch in your snoring.”

“I don’t snore.”

“That you know.”

He didn’t snore, but Kristin couldn’t resist teasing him. He looked adorable, all rumpled and sleep-soft. He’d sprawled all over his side of the vehicle, and he drew his legs up and yawned widely.

As much as she was so not interested romantically, the woman in her couldn’t help appreciating a fine, good-hearted man. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be crazy enough to start developing a crush on him. He was a doctor, he made a difference with his life, he was handsome and kind and funny and smart.

He’s probably commitment shy and has a list of typical male faults a mile long, she thought to intentionally counterbalance the admiration glowing in her chest like the rising sun.

He rubbed his eyes and his nose. Scrunching up his mouth like a little kid, he looked ten times more handsome as he did. He blinked, as if his eyes were still trying to focus on the rolling mountain valley and the dazzling peaks rimming it. “Look, the snow’s stopped.”

“Yeah. About an hour ago. There’s nothing like a Montana morning.” Her eyes hurt with the beauty of it. She was home. Rose-hued sunlight shimmered on miles of quiet, pristine snow, like thousands of tiny faceted jewels flung across the land. A land so big and untamed, it still felt wild over a century after it was settled.

Wooden fence posts draped in snow marched along meadows and over undulating hills, not unlike the fences the pioneers had sunk into this land. Up ahead an elk, a light milk-chocolate tan against the dazzling snow, ambled onto the two-lane highway. He swiveled his elegant head to look at her, his polished antlers gleaming like ivory in the light.

She slowed on the recently plowed roadway. Ice had her fishtailing but she steered into it, shifted into neutral and eased to a stop. With no traffic so early in this desolate place, she waited instead of going around.

“I haven’t seen that in a while.” Ryan breathed, sitting up straight. “We used to have a whole herd of them that would graze in the fields next to our house.”

“We did, too. They’d come and eat the grain set out for the horses.”

“Is he awesome or what?”

Pure, elegant power, the male elk lifted his head to scent the wind. Muscles rippled beneath his tan coat as he stretched. As if sensing danger, the great animal gathered up into a breathtaking leap. Agile and lithe, the bull galloped across the ruby-hued landscape, a streak of brown against the wonder of the dawn. A ray of sunlight haloed him and he vanished.

“Awesome,” Kristin agreed into the silence.

As the SUV crept forward on the ribbon of road, Ryan fought the memories crowding up from the deep well in his heart he’d boarded shut decades ago. Memories of the crisp winter air searing his face. His boots sinking deep in the snow as he tried to walk in his dad’s tracks, though the footprints were too far apart. The crackle of the dried marsh reeds as they rustled when Dad knelt down. The black stock of his hunting rifle resting on his thigh.

“What made these tracks, son?” Dad had asked in that hushed voice he used, not as harsh as a whisper but so quiet Ryan had to scoot up closer to hear. “Look carefully.”

His eight-year-old body had been thrumming with excitement. He hitched up the woolen hat that had slung too low and into his eyes, and frowned at the tracks. They looked just like the deer tracks they saw on the north side of the marsh. But he didn’t want to blurt out the wrong answer without thinking long and hard on it first. He didn’t want to disappoint his dad.

“Here’s a hint. First figure about how long they are.”

“I shoulda known that right off, Dad!” Ryan remembered to keep his voice down even if he wanted to shout with excitement. “It’s an elk. Elks’ tracks are bigger than deer. And, uh, it’s a bull elk. He’d been polishin’ up his antlers on that cottonwood. The bark’s all gone in spots.”

“That’s my smart boy. My guess is if we move along nice and quiet, we just might be lucky enough to get a good look at him.”

The rasping hum of a diesel engine tore Ryan from the past and from his father’s side. He sat with the morning sun stinging his eyes in the passenger seat as Kristin merged onto the wide-open lanes of I-90. The three-trailer semi barreling along in the lane beside them pulled ahead, the driver in an obvious hurry to get home.

Home. How was he going to make it through the next twenty-four hours when he hadn’t even reached his mom’s house and he was already dragging up the past? And feeling torn apart by it. He didn’t know. He didn’t have any answers. He flipped down the visor and winced at his reflection in the mirror. He took one look at his red-rimmed eyes, dark spikes of hair that looked like a twister tore through them and a day’s growth shadowing his jaw.

Yeah, Mom’s gonna take one look at me and start right in. Ryan could hear it already. She’d want to know if he was sleeping enough, eating right, et cetera, et cetera, and there was no way he could tell her the truth. No way he could drag up the past that would only devastate them both. For her sake, he had to be tough.

Troubled, he stared out his side of the windshield and blinked. It was the marsh. Buried in snow, the surface rough and choppy due to a few of the hardier, taller reeds and cattails poking through the snow. The marsh where Dad would take him to learn what a man needed to know.

It wasn’t the hunting. It wasn’t the tracking. It was the self-reliance. The world’s a harsh place, son. He could hear Dad’s mellow baritone as clear and true as the day he’d said it. A smart man adapts and perseveres and learns to take care of himself. Look, there’s the elk.

Ryan saw it perfectly in memory—the proud bull poised at the frozen shore, antlered head lifted to scent the wind on a morning lit by gold and rose, in a world layered with white.

Yeah, Dad, you sure taught me that lesson well. Ryan swallowed past the knot in his throat, turning his head to watch as the marsh whizzed by and fell behind them. Lost from sight like the past. Yeah, his dad’s death taught him way too much. He’d learned to take care of himself at an early age.

“This is our exit.” Kristin’s voice sounded thick.

With excitement? Probably. She had her family waiting, her sisters coming home, her grandparents to draw near. Self-reliance wasn’t something a McKaslin girl needed to know to survive. He realized what felt like envy was really longing. Longing for what could never be.

You can’t change the past, man, he told himself, although he knew that lesson well, too. The past is gone, done, no sense in letting it in. He was changed. A man he hoped his dad would be proud of. Someone who was about as self-reliant as possible in this world of Internet and cell phones, of urban sprawl and shopping malls.

“Look.” Kristin gestured ahead as she circled off the icy ramp and onto the two-lane road that nosed them toward town. “A lot has changed. Oh, that restaurant is new. There’s Gramma’s coffee shop. She has a new awning out front. I’ll have to tell her how cute it looks.”

Ryan scanned the green-and-white-striped awning giving a decidedly Country Living look to the shop that advertised “Espresso” in loopy purple neon. That was the coffee place Mom was always talking about. She’d picked up extra work whenever Kristin’s grandmother needed help.

That’s when he realized the town, with its old-fashioned main street and neat, sturdy buildings that hadn’t changed since the fifties, had grown up, too. A few quaint restaurants, more cafés than the old red Formica-countered diners, brightened up the faded brick buildings marching down the length of several blocks. Corey’s Hardware had a new neon sign, fresh paint and a bench out front.

There was a new antique store prettied up with lace curtains in the wide windows. And the Sunshine Café, where, after he’d saved up change from collecting aluminum, he’d splurge on chocolate milkshakes for him and his little sister before handing over the bulk of the hard-earned dollars to his mom.

“Do your cousins still run that place?”

“Yeah. They make the best chocolate shakes anywhere.”

“I was just thinking about that. Thick and sweet and so chocolaty.” Ryan’s stomach growled. “Wow, I remember you and your sisters would ride your horses into town and tie them up in the parking spots in front of the café.”

“And you would ride your bike.”

His bike. As Kristin navigated along the snowy street, where previous tracks of chained-up vehicles had broken a clear path, he saw snatches of the boy he’d been. Pedaling on his secondhand mountain bike down the wrong side of the road, a rebel without a cause and a chip on his shoulder. Holding down two jobs, bagging at the grocery on weekends and cleaning barns for Kristin’s uncle. Wanting his mother’s life to be easier. Hating that it wasn’t. Missing his dad so much, it hurt to breathe.

I never should have come back, he thought, his eyes stinging. It was too much. Earlier, he’d vowed to keep his thoughts in the present. But what did a guy do when the past was tangled up with the present?

“The closer we get to home, the sadder you look.” Kristin sounded concerned. Caring, the way a friend was.