A Baby on the Ranch

She felt sick.

“Why?” she repeated more sharply. “Why are you so sure?”

He didn’t want to say this, but she gave him no choice. He wasn’t good at coming up with excuses—with lies—on the spur of the moment. Not like Hollis.

“Because he came by at two this morning and asked me to look after you and the baby.”

“All right,” she said slowly, picking her way through the words as if she were navigating a potential minefield that could blow her apart at any second. “Nothing he hasn’t said before, right?” Her voice sped up with every word. “He’s just probably got a job waiting for him in another town. But once that’s over, he’ll be back.” A touch of desperation entered her voice. “He’s got a son now, Eli. He can’t walk out on both of us, right?” Her eyes searched his face for a confirmation. A confirmation she was silently begging for.

More than anything in the world, Eli wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear. That she was right. That Hollis had just gone away temporarily.

But he couldn’t lie, not to her. Not anymore.

And he was tired of covering for Hollis. Tired of trying to protect Kasey from Hollis’s lies and his infidelities. Tired most of all because he knew that he would be lumped in with Hollis when her anger finally unleashed.

He looked at her for a long moment, hoped that she would find it in her heart to someday forgive him, and said, “I don’t think that he’s coming back this time, Kasey.”

She didn’t want to cry, she didn’t. But she could feel the moisture building in her eyes. “Not even for the baby?”

The baby’s the reason he finally took off, Eli told her silently.

Rather than say that out loud and wound her even more deeply, Eli placed his hands very lightly on her slender shoulders, as if that would somehow help soften the blow, and said, “He said he was taking off. That he wasn’t any good for you. That he didn’t deserve to have someone like you and Wayne in his life.”

Yes, those were lies, too. He knew that. But these were lies meant to comfort her, to give her a little solace and help her preserve the memory of the man Kasey thought she’d married instead of the man she actually had married.

“‘Taking off,’” she repeated. Because of her resistance, it took a moment for the words to sink in. “Where’s he going?”

Eli shook his head. Here, at least, he didn’t have to get creative. He told her the truth. “He didn’t tell me.”

She didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense to her. “But the ranch—with Hollis gone, who’s going to run the ranch?” She was still trying to recover from the delivery. “I’m not sure if I can manage that yet.” She looked back at the bassinet. “Not if I have to take care of—”

This felt like cruelty above and beyond the norm, Eli couldn’t help thinking, damning Hollis to hell again. “You’re not going to have to run the ranch,” he told her quietly.

Because this was Eli, she misunderstood what he was saying and jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Eli, I can’t ask you to run the ranch for me. You’ve got your own spread to run. And when you’re not there, I know that you and your brothers and Alma help your dad to run his. Taking on mine, as well, until I get stronger, would be too much for you.”

He stopped her before this got out of hand. “You’re not asking,” he pointed out. “And I’d do it in a heartbeat—if there was a ranch to run.”

“If there was…” Her voice trailed off, quaking, as she stared up at him. “I don’t understand.”

He might as well tell her all of it, this way he would pull the Band-Aid off all at once, hopefully minimizing the overall pain involved. As it was, he had a feeling that this would hurt like hell.

Eli measured out the words slowly. “Hollis lost the ranch in a card game.”

“He…lost the ranch?” she repeated in absolute disbelief.

Eli nodded. “In a card game.”

It wasn’t a joke. She could see it in Eli’s face. He was telling her the truth. She was stunned.

“But that was our home,” she protested, looking at Eli with utter confusion in her eyes. “How could he? How could he?” she repeated, a note of mounting anger in her voice.

Good, she was angry, he thought. Anger would keep her from slipping into a depression.

“Gambling is an addiction,” Eli told her gently. “Hollis can’t help himself. If he could, he would have never put the ranch up as collateral.” Hollis had had a problem with all forms of gambling ever since he’d placed his first bet when he was seventeen and lied about his age.

Stricken, her knees unsteady, Kasey sank back down on the bed again.

“Where am I going to go?” she asked, her voice small and hollow.

The baby made a noise, as if he was about to wake up. Her head turned sharply in his direction. For a moment, embalmed in grief, she’d forgotten about him. Now, having aged a great deal in the past ten minutes, she struggled to pull herself together.

“Where are we going to go?” she amended.

It wasn’t just her anymore. She was now part of a duo. Everything that came her way, she had to consider in the light that she was now a mother. Things didn’t just affect her anymore, they affected Wayne as well. Taking care of her son was now the most important thing in her life.

And she couldn’t do it.

She had a little bit put aside, but it wasn’t much. She had next to no money, no job and nowhere to live.

Her very heart hurt.

How could you, Hollis? How could you just walk out on us like this? The question echoed over and over in her head. There was no answer.

She wanted to scream it out loud, scream it so loud that wherever Hollis was, he’d hear her. And tell her what she was supposed to do.

Taking a shaky breath, Kasey tried to center herself so that she could think.

Her efforts all but blocked everything else out. So much so that she didn’t hear Eli the first time he said something to her. The sound of his voice registered, but not his words.

She looked at him quizzically, confusion and despair playing tug-of-war for her soul. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

He had a feeling she hadn’t heard when she didn’t answer or comment on what he’d just said.

This time, he repeated it more slowly. “I said, you and the baby can stay with me until we figure things out.”

Eli wasn’t making an offer or a generous gesture. He said it like it was a given. Already decided, Kasey thought. But despite his very generous soul, she wasn’t his problem. She would have to figure this out and deal with it on her own.

As if reading her mind, Eli said, “Right now, you’re still a little weak from giving birth,” he reminded her. “Give yourself a few days to recover, to rest. You don’t have to make any decisions right away if you don’t want to. And I meant what I said. You’re coming home with me. You and Wayne are going to have a roof over your heads for as long as you need. For as long as this takes for you to come to terms with—and that’s the end of it,” he concluded.

Or thought he did.

“We can’t stay with you indefinitely, Eli,” Kasey argued.

“We’re not talking about indefinitely,” he pointed out. “We’re talking about one day at a time. I’m just asking you to give yourself a little time to think things through,” he stressed. “So you don’t make decisions you’d rather not because the wolf’s at the door.”

“But he is,” she said quietly. That was the state of affairs she faced.

“No, he’s not. I shot the wolf,” he told her whimsically. “Now, are you all packed?” It was a needless question, he knew she was. He’d found her sitting on her bed, the closed suitcase resting on the floor beside her foot. Rather than answer, she nodded. “Good. I’ll go find the nurse. They said hospital policy is to escort you out in a wheelchair.”