Page 19 of Christmas at the Ranch

Thirteen

It doesn’t matter to me that I have nowhere to go. It doesn’t matter that I’m going to be letting Charlie down again. I need to leave. I call Frank the taxi driver to ask for a pickup as I walk to Tate’s cabin to get my bag. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Frank assures me.

Inside the cabin, I force myself to be quick.

But I can’t help it: My bag now in hand, I pause in the living room and take it all in, one last time.

It’s perfect, this place. It’s just what he wanted.

And I don’t belong here. And yet, I still find it hard to leave.

I walk to the living room and pick up the bell hooks book I gave him back then.

All About Love. I almost scoff at the title now.

What did I ever learn about love, after my days here?

But it looks like he learned something. At least one of us is happy.

A sound at the door. Tate has opened it and stepped inside. He holds up two hands in surrender.

“Don’t throw anything. It’s just me.” He’s trying to make a joke about my first night here, but I can’t work up a smile.

“I was just getting my things,” I say, and realize I’m still holding the book. He looks at the cover, then at me. He bites his full lower lip.

“You can have that back, if you want,” he says. “It’s yours, after all.”

“Right. Why would you want it?” I shove it into the outer pocket of my gym bag. “I called a taxi,” I say. “I need to go.”

His brow furrows. “Where are you going?”

“To town, to talk to the mechanic about my car. I need to find out how long it’s going to be.”

“You know you can stay here until it’s fixed.

That’s what I came to tell you. I heard you saying goodbye to Star, and it sounded so final.

” His voice is husky, but I must be imagining that it’s filled with emotion.

I move toward the door, but this just brings me closer to Tate.

To his still-familiar smell, the saddle soap and leather, the woodsy tang of pine needles.

I find I need to steady myself by putting my hand on the smooth wood beam of the wall.

“Emory,” he says. My name on his lips, the sound of his voice, sends a jolt through me that feels a lot like electricity. “You don’t need to leave.”

I shake my head. A lump in my throat is making it hard for me to speak, but I know I need to. That I need to explain to him why this has to be so final.

“I don’t know why I came here,” I begin.

“It was a mistake. I only stayed because Charlie said you weren’t here.

” A flicker of hurt passes over his expression, but I keep going because that flicker is nothing compared to what I’m feeling.

“Then, somehow, I ended up stuck here. I don’t want to be stuck anymore.

Our past is just that: the past. Today you showed me that nothing has changed.

You still think I’m somehow out to get you, to ruin things here at the ranch.

” I allow myself to remember and feel what it did to me back then when I realized how little he thought of me, what he’d presumed about my intentions.

I can feel the tears gathering and fight them hard.

“I didn’t—” he starts. I haven’t said anything to interrupt him, but he stops speaking as if I have. He tries again. “I know you didn’t have bad intentions. I knew it the second you left town.”

His voice seems full of anguish—but I find myself backing away.

If he knew all this time, why did he never reach out?

He had my phone number, my address. We exchanged all that during our first days together.

But when I think about his final words to me ten years ago, I know exactly why.

I can hear them as if they were yesterday: I thought I knew you, but I have no idea who you are, or what you’re capable of.

A car horn sounds out in the driveway. “Frank is here,” I say. “I have to go.” I don’t wait for Tate to respond, just step past him and leave.

Meredith isn’t around when I reach the mechanic’s; it’s her brother, Mario, who comes out of the repair bay to greet me today, on my fourth day here in Evergreen—and hopefully, my last. His coveralls are forest green and his smile, to my relief, doesn’t come coated with a layer of frost. In fact, he seems downright excited to see me.

“Only a truly qualified mechanic can repair a broken axle,” he tells me.

“I’ve been training for this my whole career.

” He goes on to explain what exactly this repair job will entail while I try to focus on his words instead of remembering Tate’s anguished expression.

When I finally bring myself to ask how much this is going to cost, he gives me an approximate number that’s not as staggering as I imagined, but still high enough to make me nervous.

My bank balance is currently as low as my emotions.

“It’s definitely worth fixing,” he says. His eyes are hopeful, like he’s afraid I’ll take this dream job away from him.

“Oh, I’m fixing it,” I assure him. “How long will it take? A few hours?”

“A few days, more like. Hard to say exactly how many,” he replies, and I bite my lip, dismayed. Days? “But I can promise you the car will be ready by Christmas Eve at the latest. A week from yesterday.”

This causes my heart to plummet even lower. “A week,” I say. “I can’t stay here a week. Do you know of a car rental place? I’ll have to go back to the city and come get the car another time.”

He hands me a card for a car rental place, and I thank him and leave.

I spot a bench up ahead and take out my phone, thinking I’ll call Lani—but find myself pulling up the contact info for my mom. I stare down at it, take a deep breath, then hit the Call button.

She answers on the first ring. “Emory, hello.”

It’s only been a few days, but it feels like a lifetime to me. I’ve been holding everything at bay, but when I hear her voice, it all rushes in.

“How’s Dad?” I find myself blurting out. “Is he okay? Where is he being held?”

“At the Toronto South Detention Centre,” she says, her voice breaking, too. “The bail hearing was yesterday. He’s considered a flight risk, can you believe that?”

Actually, I can absolutely see my parents hopping on a flight to some remote island with a lax extradition policy to avoid all this. But I don’t say that. I let her go on.

“Anyway, the bail is too much. We don’t—” Her voice breaks again. “With everything we need to keep aside for legal fees, we don’t have it. Your father has a few ideas, but for now, it looks like he’ll be spending Christmas…there.”

I know she can’t say it. In jail. That would make it real.

“And you’ve seen him?” I manage.

“I’ve visited every day since he’s been in,” she says. “Four days. But it feels like forever. He looks so tired, and I worry…” She trails off, and I can tell she’s trying to put on a brave face for me. “But his legal team is on it, and he is assuring me this will all be behind us soon.”

“When will the trial happen?”

“I don’t know. Sometime in the new year.”

“And he’s going to plead…”

“Not guilty,” she says firmly.

I don’t know what to say to this, but I know what my gut is telling me.

That he really doesn’t think he did anything wrong, and neither does my mother.

I look around me, at the snowy town of Evergreen.

A place that contains a man named Gill who has lost everything because of my family.

That’s real. My parents shouldn’t be denying it.

“I should go,” I find myself saying.

“So soon? Where are you? When are you coming home? You haven’t told me anything.”

“I’m…” I look around me, at the shops hung with holiday lights, their windows festooned with garlands.

I’m in a place that feels so far from the city that none of what’s happening there seems real.

But it is. “I’m sorry I’m not there for you.

I just…I can’t be there right now.” When I say it, I realize it’s true—I can’t return to the city yet.

The idea of renting a car to drive back fills me with dread.

I feel completely directionless, stuck in a place I don’t belong—but unable to go back to the city and face what waits for me there.

Not yet. “I wish I could help you, Mom.”

“You’ve helped me,” my mother says, her voice suddenly soft.

But she doesn’t go further than this, doesn’t mention the trust fund.

I wonder if she ever will. She has always been so good at maintaining a facade.

Maybe we’ll just never talk about it. Maybe one day, when my father’s legal team has somehow managed to get him out of this, she’ll just refer to it as that nasty business with the law and move on.

“But I’ll see you on Christmas?” my mother is asking me, and I feel a deep pang of guilt. I know where I want to be on Christmas, where I should be—and it’s with my best friend and her warm, welcoming family. But my mother’s going to be alone. My father is in jail.

And yet, I still can’t tell her I’ll come home for Christmas. Right now, it feels like I have no idea where home even is.

“I’ll see, Mom” is all I can say. “I have to go. I’ll check in again soon.”

I walk slowly through Evergreen’s downtown, past all the quaint, familiar shops.

As I walk by a gray Victorian, slightly set back from the road, I nearly bump into a white-haired, bespectacled, and mustachioed man carrying a stack of newspapers so high they almost obscure his face.

I step aside too late. We collide, and the newspapers begin to slide from his grip.

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!” I’ve managed to catch the newspapers just before they fall to the sidewalk, but a few escape, fluttering off in the snowy breeze.

Once I’ve secured his stack back in his arms, I race to catch the other newspapers before they blow onto the street.

It’s the local newspaper, The Evergreen Enquirer. “May I buy one?” I ask the man.