The Ranch She Left Behind

“Dad, call the plumber. It’s not like we’re poor,” Ellen had whined, disgusted. She took after Lydia that way. She didn’t mind how long he sat at the drafting table sketching blueprints for his newest office complex or luxury resort. In fact, at those times, she’d brag to her friends about her father, the Important Architect.

But work that left him dirty, or smelly, or disheveled? That was embarrassing. Just one of the things they were in Silverdell to unlearn.

“We would get poor in a hurry if we never did anything for ourselves,” he had responded calmly, though he’d known it would make her roll her eyes.

It had. But he couldn’t continue catering to her quirks simply to avoid an eye roll. Nor could he keep indulging her whims, as he wanted to, just because she was angry, lonely and motherless.

He’d finally accepted that his job was harder than that. Nothing let him off the hook when it came to responsible parenting.

Responsible parenting. Even his grandfather wouldn’t ever have used such a stupid expression. It sounded like the stuffiest, most judgmental jackassery....

He groaned. No wonder Ellen thought he was boring. In her estimation, thirty-four was already ancient, and his endless talk of work ethic and responsibility and self-control clearly made her want to puke.

For a moment, his thoughts returned to the woman at the ice-cream store. Wonder what Ellen would have thought, if she’d seen the woman come right up and kiss boring old dad, right out of nowhere?

She probably would have puked.

But Max’s reaction had been very different—and a little unnerving. This eccentric young woman wasn’t really his type. She was the “little girl lost” type—and he’d been around long enough to be fairly cynical about that particular female style. In his experience, it was usually either a sign of dysfunction, or pure sham.

She was clearly in her early twenties, and she had a shy but stunning beauty, as if she were something magical that was accustomed to living in the forest. A swinging, colorful dress over playful cowgirl boots. Long, brown hair pulled back by a simple tortoiseshell headband, falling down her slim back, as glossy and healthy as a child’s.

No, Flower Child doll wasn’t his type. He was thirty-four, not fourteen.

And yet, when she kissed him, every atom in his body had leaped to attention, as turned on as if he actually were that breathless fourteen-year-old. For about three incredible seconds, time had stood still in a glittering pool of sexual awareness.

And then she was gone. Just as well. Ellen hadn’t seen the kiss, but she was an eagle-eyed little thing, and she was always spoiling for a fight, always looking for proof that she wasn’t important to Max. If the kiss had gone on much longer...

He couldn’t help wondering whether he’d see the woman again. Silverdell was a small town, so unless she’d been passing through, another meeting seemed inevitable. And awkward.

It might be better if she was merely a tourist stopping for a respite from driving. It would be oddly disappointing to meet her and discover she was a fake, or a fool, or a mother of four.

He’d far rather remember their encounter as a rare, mystical moment when his cynicism had evaporated, his “responsibility” had dropped away, and he’d kissed a fairy forest creature.

“Are you done yet?”

Ellen’s voice, impatient, wafted into the basement. He snapped back to reality.

“Not yet. A couple more minutes.”

He refocused, though he hated to mentally return to this shadowy, dirty basement where the water heater stood, its silver cylinder winking oddly, picking up whatever light broke through. He hated basements. He always had, even before Mexico. But responsible parenting meant he couldn’t succumb to his aversion.

And, in the end, the basement was just a big, dusty rectangle of concrete. He could leave anytime he wanted. Funny how often he reminded himself of that when he entered tight spaces or underground rooms. The doors were open. His hands and legs were free.

He could leave anytime he wanted.

He double-checked the garden hose connection on the drain valve one more time before letting the hot water through. He hoped to heaven Ellen continued to obey him, staying inside the house while he worked. The water probably wasn’t hot enough to hurt anyone—the timer had been set to off when they arrived an hour ago—but he refused to take any chances. If she stood downhill from the draining water...

She could be burned. Not likely, but it could happen. And these days he didn’t take the slightest of chances. Ever since Lydia’s death... No, even before that. Ever since Mexico, really.

No wonder he drove Ellen crazy. He didn’t understand anything that mattered to her. He didn’t watch reality TV, where people voted away those who annoyed them, instead of learning to coexist. He could listen only so long to whether stripes or prints were “in” this year, or which of her friends would have to buy a bra first.

And that boy singer she idolized... The girlie little princess made Max want to laugh, frankly. As did Ellen’s fixation with getting her ears pierced and wearing eyeliner. At eleven? Hell, no.

But Lydia would have let her wear it. Buy it. Watch it. Listen to it.

So not only was he stuffy and dense about why “people like them” didn’t fix their own water heaters, he was a traitor to Lydia’s memory.

“Mom said I could.” “Mom promised, as soon as I turned eleven.” Mom said. Mom said. Mom said...

But Mom was gone. And that, of course, was Max’s real sin. He wasn’t Lydia. He never would be. And he couldn’t bring Lydia back. Just as he hadn’t been able to save her.

He gave the valve a final twist, watching the hose hiccup as the water surged through it. A few drops glistened around the fitting, where the metal didn’t quite meet, and pooled in the dust.

The basement hadn’t been used, obviously, in months. It smelled of dead bugs, and grime, and something oily—a leaking lawn mower, an unwashed chain saw, a toppled can of WD-40....

A tremor shimmered down his arm, and he slammed a mental door on the memory. All basements smelled the same. Mexican basements, Colorado basements, probably even Parisian basements.

Out of nowhere, the banging started again, the firecracker pops echoing around him like gunshots. It was just the heater, complaining, but it was too late to tell himself that. His body was already reacting, before his mind could catch up.

Pop. Bang.

The tremor flared to life, and his arm began to shake. Then his legs softened. His knee joints grew soupy. The sounds reverberated hollowly, as if they’d been caught inside his skull, and bounced off every cranial wall.

His heart knocked frantically, demanding his ribs to open and let it free. He fell to his knees, his elbows over his ears, his hands locked behind his head. It was dark. He smelled the oil-gas mixture of dirty power tools....

Oh, God...

Then, suddenly, a rectangle of silver light tilted across the floor.

“Dad?”

He squeezed his elbows together, somehow silencing the tremors. He took a deep breath.

“Yes. I’ll be right up. What is it?”

His voice sounded almost normal. She would probably assume that the edge of thin tension was merely annoyance.

“I wanted to tell you I’m going out back. There is, like, a little orchard, over by the school. Just beyond the fence.”

“Okay.” He took another deep breath. Her voice, even crabby and unfriendly as it always was these days, pulled him to shore, as surely as if it were a bowline tied to a dock.

And the light helped, too. There had never been light, before....

One muscle at a time, the trembling subsided. His heart calmed, accepting that it must stay in his body.

“Okay,” he repeated. “Be careful, though. Stay away from the water I just drained. And don’t go so far that you can’t hear me if I call.”

“I have my cell,” she observed sourly, as though he were being deliberately dense. But when he didn’t respond to that, she surrendered. “Okay, I’ll stay nearby. Remember, though, if you get distracted later by work or something, I did tell you where I was going.”