Page 17 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

R ox sat nervously at home, busying herself with chores as she waited for somebody to come home. Her father had torn out of the place as if a fire was happening somewhere. Her mother stood here, watching nervously, wondering what the hell was going on and how things had gotten so ugly so quickly.

“What the hell did I ever do?” her mother murmured.

“I could list a few things,” Rox quipped, with half a laugh, “but it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“Oh, it’s very fair,” she muttered. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes.”

“You’re not the only one. I should never have chased away Austin.”

“No, maybe not, but, if you have anything between you two that’s still worth fighting for,… you might want to fight for him now.”

Rox looked sideways at her mother. “You still really like him, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she stated. “He reminds me a lot of Jake. Austin is cut from the same cloth. They’re hard men, but they’re good, and they’re there for you when you need it, whether you deserve it or not.”

“So why in the hell did I get so upset?”

“Because you were probably jealous and emotional, just wanting him to stay home and to choose you over the military,” she suggested. “I think that would always be a dead end for you.”

“And for him.”

“But you knew it when you married him. Austin was always the same, and you changed your expectations, not him. He is still the same man he always was.”

“I know. I know,” she muttered. “I knew it, even back then, but I didn’t really think about it.”

“I think that’s marriage in many ways, especially when you’re young. You marry, thinking it’ll all be peachy, and then you find out it’s not perfect. Everything you thought would come to pass doesn’t,… and you don’t know how to handle it.”

“Yet should he have to handle it?”

“I don’t know.… It shouldn’t have to be something that he feels he has to handle either. I’m not sure what he did to set you off. I just know that, for a man like him, once you give him an ultimatum, it’s pretty hard to go backward.”

“I never thought he would really leave,” Rox wailed, sadness evident in her tone. “It never occurred to me that, from one day to the next, it could be over. I still can’t believe it, to be honest.”

“Maybe he was expecting you to contact him with an apology,” she noted. “Did you ever think about that?”

“I did, and believe me, if I thought I could do that and he would come back, I would have done it, but I didn’t even know how to get a hold of him.”

“Did you try?”

“No, I didn’t because… I… No, I didn’t try. I was hurt. I was angry, and it just seemed like, if he wanted to leave then, what the hell? He should just leave.”

“And he did exactly what you thought he would do. He left. You gave him an ultimatum, and he called your bluff.”

“He also told me that he wasn’t up for games, that he’d always been honest with me, and that he expected honesty from me back,” she shared, “but apparently I didn’t even give him that.”

“In what way?” her mom asked curiously.

“Because he told me before we married that he was staying in the military, and I knew that about him. I told him that it was fine with me, as long as he came back at some point in time and stayed. I told him it was fine, that I knew he was doing what he felt he had to do, but I didn’t really mean it.

I just thought that, once we were together, he would be so happy with our lives that he would quit the military and would want to stay. ”

Amie nodded. “I think a lot of women have probably made that same mistake over the years. You can’t really understand why the men feel that calling,” she explained, “but it’s hard for them to walk away from what they consider their duty, and, when it’s duty to the family, we don’t want them to ever walk away. Not when it’s something like this.”

“I was lonely and twenty,” Rox admitted, “and more immature than I would really care to admit. And since he’s been back, I’ve come to realize that I was also quite jealous of his relationship with Dad.

At first, I thought that maybe with Austin gone, Dad and I would get closer, but instead because I’d chased Austin away,… Dad got really angry.”

Amie smiled sadly. “It was really hard for him because we had invested all our love and affection into that relationship too.… When you threw it all away,… we had no say in it. And Austin never contacted us again, probably assuming that we would be on your side of the deal,” Amie looked distraught just speaking about it.

“There shouldn’t be sides, but a divorce, a breakup like that, it’s debilitating for everybody, so we also took the brunt of the breakup. ”

Rox nodded. “I know, and I just didn’t know what to do about it.”

“What do you want to do about it now? Do you like the man he’s become?”

She smiled. “The thing is, he’s become what I always thought he would be. It’s just… It breaks my heart to know that I’m not a part of his life anymore.”

“And yet he’s here,” Amie pointed out. “Austin didn’t have to come after that dog. He could have chosen to go somewhere else, to deal with another lost War Dog in another place, but he’s here.”

“I think he’s here to find closure,” Rox suggested.

Amie went silent for a moment and nodded.

“That’s possible. He needs to move on too.

Neither of you have moved to file for divorce in all these years, so maybe it’s time.

One way or another, either you call it quits or you find a way to make it work and go forward somehow,” Amie said, with a searching gaze.

“We’ve learned a lot through it ourselves,” Amie noted, “and it helped us get through a time that was difficult in our own lives.”

She looked at her mom in surprise. “I didn’t know about that.”

“No, but it came back to your father wanting a son and having a daughter,” she replied, with a smile. “I always felt guilty because I never gave him what he so desperately wanted, and he always felt guilty for wanting something he knew I couldn’t give him.”

Rox snorted. “If there’s anything more convoluted than the human psyche, I don’t know what it is,” she muttered.

Her mother nodded. “Anyway, it made us stronger, once we got through it, but we also had to sit beside you and watch you go to pieces, and that was incredibly hard too.”

“I can imagine.”

“It’s one of the reasons Jake gradually became more considerate toward you.

He did reach out more, and that’s why you’ve been closer these last few years.

Plus, he respected that you really do love this ranch and intend to stay and work it,” she added, with a smile.

“So, if there was a reason for Austin’s leaving, you at least made good use of the time that he was gone.

However, now if you have anything still within you that wants to make something of his return, this would be a really good time to do it. ”

Amie patted her daughter on the shoulder and added, “Remember that nothing is easy about love, even in the best of circumstances. It doesn’t matter who it is, relationships are just plain hard.” And, with that, she turned and walked upstairs.

Feeling as if once again she had major life lessons ahead of her, Rox headed out to the barn. There she found Charlie, stomping his feet anxiously, which wasn’t a normal behavior for him. “You want to go for a run, buddy?” she asked him.

He snorted heavily.

“Fine, let’s go. I’m not sure what’s bothering you, but we’ll get to it.” She’d seen animals react in some of the weirdest ways, and over time she had learned not to ever ignore it. “Let’s go. I’m not sure what’s bothering you, but let’s find out.”

Rox quickly threw a saddle on him and headed out, after texting her mom to let her know what she was up to.

As soon as she was out a little farther away from the house, she gave Charlie his head and let him take her where he wanted to go.

Something was still bothering him, but she just didn’t know what.

As far as she was concerned, he would know better than her.

Willing to trust him, she patted the rifle across the front of her saddle and let him go.

After the confrontation that never seemed to end, Austin decided that after dropping off the files to Jake’s new lawyer, he would head out to one of the spots on the highway where he could walk into the wooded area where the War Dog had been before he disappeared.

He couldn’t quite make up his mind as to whether Cowboy had anything to do with this mess with Chris or not.

Again Austin would hate to think that Chris had become such an ass that an animal’s life was something he would exploit to hurt somebody else, but Austin had met an awful lot of jerks in his life.

So just no telling who would turn out to be a jerk until things started happening.

Then you were left to just stare at them, wondering how they could possibly have ended up that way.

He parked on the side of the highway and headed into the wooded area, adjacent to one of the big pastures on the other side.

As he walked, he stopped several times to look around.

There were no huts, no sheds, no man-made hideouts anywhere.

As he kept walking, he thought he heard something in the distance, but it was faint and hard to hear anything clearly.

He headed in that direction, unsure what exactly he would encounter, but he knew something—or someone—was out there.

As he walked closer, he heard a woman’s voice.

He picked up the pace, and, as he came around a group of trees, he saw Rox and Charlie standing there, staring off into the distance.

He called out so he didn’t scare her. Startled, she turned, saw him, and waved him over.

He walked closer, stepping up to Charlie, who was obviously nervous and prancing around side to side.

“Hey, buddy. What’s going on?” He looked over at Rox. “What’s the matter? Is anything wrong?”

“I don’t know. Charlie was really upset back at the ranch, so I decided to ride him out to wherever he wanted to go and to see what was going on, and this is where he came. I just know that Charlie has been very intuitive at times.”

“You’re right. He’s always been very intuitive.” Austin nodded. “What is it that you’re seeing though?”

“Nothing, at least nothing that makes any sense.”

Just then Charlie lifted his head, nickered loudly, and bolted, jerking the lead rope from her hands, and quickly disappeared down the path.

“Shit,” she muttered in astonishment. “Wow, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen him do anything like that before.”

“No, neither have I. Come on. Let’s go after him.”

“You know how fast he is. We’ll never catch up with him.”

“I do, but I don’t think he’s going far. Something up there is bothering him, and we need to sort that out, first and foremost. Maybe after that we’ll even get a few more answers,” he said, with a laugh.

“You think so?”

“Not really, but it’s possible, so let’s go see.”