Rebel Cowboy (25 page)

Mel fiddled with the end of her braid. She couldn’t stop doing that, but having Summer in the Shaw kitchen filled her with a fidgety, itchy kind of dread.

They were going to tell Dad.

Summer pulled something out of the oven that smelled like heaven. For all the ways Mel didn’t want her to exist, no matter how harsh that wish was, Summer had breathed a weird kind of fresh air into Shaw.

If it wasn’t her youth and the way her jewelry jangled or the way she oohed and aahed over every horse, every chore, every inch of Shaw land and every scrap of attention Mel or Caleb threw her way, it was the fact that she could cook and clean in ways Caleb and Mel had never dreamed of.

They didn’t have her in the big house very often yet, wanting to keep her out of Dad’s sight. But tonight was the night. She’d been here four days. Mel couldn’t admit to feeling sisterly toward her—that seemed fraught with a kind of emotion that was still too raw from everything with Dan—but she did cautiously, carefully, almost like Summer.

If only
feelings
didn’t make her think of Dan and then have to deal with the sharp, stabbing pain of being without him. Shouldn’t that be going away by now? At least turning dull instead of the sharpness that lingered, seemed to deepen every day. Wasn’t heartbreak supposed to get better with time?

“Are you sure you didn’t want to invite your boyfriend? I don’t mind. I know it’s uncomfortable family stuff, but if he’s part of your life, I’m okay with it.”

It was the third time Summer had asked, but the first time with Caleb in the room. Before, Mel had waved it away, not bothering to explain, but with Caleb there, she…well, she couldn’t. Not without a
look
. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Summer blinked up from the casserole she was cooking. “Oh, but…” She glanced at Caleb then smiled in the brilliant, ridiculously happy way she had that made no sense to Mel. “No worries!”

Mel didn’t know what Caleb had done behind her to get Summer not to argue, but she appreciated it. She hadn’t told Caleb exactly what happened, and he hadn’t asked, but her being here every day was a pretty clear indication.

What was there to talk about?

“Should I go get Dad?” Caleb asked with more gentleness than Mel had heard from him in a long time.

Summer clasped her hands together and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She had no poker face, no guile, this girl Mel was somehow related to. It hurt to look at her sometimes, all that emotion just
there
, needing to be dealt with.

Reminding her of all the emotion inside of her she flat-out wasn’t dealing with. Because there wasn’t time for that.

That was your excuse last time. And the last.

Didn’t that make it the right excuse?

“If you guys think this is the right time,” Summer said. Even with her nerves written all over her face, she seemed…sure.

Maybe there was some Shaw in there after all.

“All right. I’ll bring him in the dining room,” Caleb said, disappearing into the hall. Whatever he felt about the whole situation was buried down deep beneath a veneer Mel couldn’t breach, and she wondered if they’d made any progress at all.

But they were here, moving forward on the Summer issue, so maybe it was something. Enough of something anyway.

Summer continued to clasp and unclasp her hands, blinking steadily and breathing in short puffs.

“It’ll be fine.” Which was such a lie. How did Mel know it was going to be fine? “Even if he reacts badly or doesn’t react at all, Caleb and I…are…here.” Which was a lame promise, but Summer’s whole face lit up like it was some kind of offer of riches. “You don’t have to be there when we tell him if you don’t want,” Mel continued.

“I want to be there,” Summer said. “I’ll never be able to believe if he knew or not if I don’t see it.”

Mel nodded, all the sick nerves falling over themselves in her stomach.

Summer spoke again. “Can I ask you a quick question though?”

“Sure.”

“That guy from the other day…
was
he your boyfriend and something happened, or was he really just your colleague or whatever?”

Mel turned away, hating both answers. They were both wrong and terrible and she hated this feeling. Hate, hate, hate.

“It was nothing,” Mel said, wanting this moment to be over. “Just a…thing.”

Summer’s warm, soft hand slid over hers, and Mel had to fight the urge to pull away. It was another part of the whole weird Summer package. She
touched
people. All the damn time. “I know we don’t know each other very well just yet…” Summer began.

Just yet.
Like she had every belief they would.

“But if you want to talk about it,” she continued, “I’m a good listener.” She smiled brightly. “I know you probably have friends and stuff, but—”

“Thanks, I…appreciate the offer, but I’m fine.”

“I don’t know how you’re so strong, Mel. I feel like I’m falling apart every day.”

Mel didn’t know why her eyes pricked with tears or why she suddenly wanted Summer’s hand to stay exactly where it was. Or maybe she did know why. Because wasn’t that exactly what she felt? Falling apart. She’d finally found a place where her whole life hadn’t felt like that, and she’d been so afraid it wouldn’t last, it wasn’t real, she’d pushed it away.

You had to. You had to.

Why did that voice in her head sound so desperate?

“You guys ready?” Caleb stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. He offered a smile for Summer, but it was all frayed at the edges, as jerky as Mel’s fiddling and Summer’s hand clasping.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, we’ll never be ready for this,” Mel muttered. And again, admitting that was like that moment in Dan’s cabin when she’d said the horrible thing and everything after it was easy. Except those weren’t so much painful as they were…freeing. “It’s awful and painful and I wish I could just run in the opposite direction.”

“I am dreaming about a bottle of Jack Daniel’s,” Caleb said in a scratchy, grumbly voice.

Summer’s laugh was something more like a hysterical giggle. “I want to go home. Only…I don’t have one.”

She realized Summer was still clutching her hand, so Mel swallowed and held out her free hand for Caleb. It took him a minute, but he finally took the steps necessary and clasped Mel’s hand. Then with a throat-clearing sound, offered his other hand to Summer.

They made a circle, the three of them, and Mel knew it was important to make this mean something, no matter what happened when they told Dad. She couldn’t control Dad’s reaction, she couldn’t make the past what she wanted it to be—dear Lord, wasn’t
that
a realization—but maybe if the three of them could be honest with each other, they’d somehow resemble some kind of normal sibling relationship.

“This is awful. But, that’s not on us.” Mel took a slow, deep breath and let it out. “Maybe…somehow we can make it less awful.”

“You guys already have. Really.” Summer’s hand squeezed Mel’s. “This is more than I…well, not more than I fantasized, because I fantasized you guys were like royalty and had a spa and stuff, but this is way better than any of my
realistic
fantasies.”

“This girl,” Caleb said, shaking his head. “Where did she come from?”

They all seemed to look toward the entry to the dining room, where Dad apparently was. Time to face the music.

Dad was parked at the table, somehow managing to look surly and blank at the same time. Mel went first, Caleb almost next to her, their shoulders nearly pressing together, a human shield.

Shielding their little sister.
Sister
—still a term she wasn’t used to, but it was becoming easier to think. It was pretty damn obvious this girl needed some sheltering.

“Dad, we have someone we want you to talk to.”

“If this is about the nurse thing, I called up Fiona myself today and did the apology bullshit, and she agreed to come back,” he said, not looking at them, his gaze completely focused on the rich wood of the table.

It was a surprise, that was for certain, enough of one that she and Caleb stopped and exchanged a glance.

“
You
called her?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So.” Caleb shook his head. “That is something. What we have to talk to you about is something too. Something important.”

“We want you to meet someone,” Mel said, sounding far more firm and in control than she felt. But she and Caleb parted, and Summer stepped in to be shoulder to shoulder with them.

“Who is that?” Dad demanded, but it obviously took him a few seconds to really look, because he jolted a little, eyes going from Summer to Mel. His hands gripped the armrest of his wheelchair. “What is this?”

“Hi, um, my name is Summer. And…” She looked to Mel, biting her lip. Mel didn’t do anything—what could she do? But in some bizarre twist of something, Summer seemed to take strength just from looking at her. “My mother is Linda Shaw, and she says you are my father.”

Dad looked surprised, but there was no confusion, no denial in his expression, and that made Mel’s stomach tighten and cramp. He couldn’t have known. No, this had to be the poker face he’d learned so well.

He didn’t say anything for the longest while, and Mel thought Summer and Caleb were holding their breaths just as she was. Silence stretched. Then he looked down at his lap and moved to wheel away.

Mel opened her mouth, but Summer grabbed her hand again. Held on to it for dear life. “Did you know about me?” she asked into the heavy silence.

Mel looked at her, shocked she’d blurted out the question like that. It hadn’t been the plan, mainly because Summer said she’d never be able to ask him directly, that she’d chicken out.

But she was standing there, holding on to Mel’s hand for dear life, and from the looks of it, Caleb’s as well. Holding on to their strength and doing something that just hours before she’d claimed she couldn’t.

There was probably a lesson in that, if Mel wanted to look for it, but Dad’s answer interrupted any lessons.

“Yes.”

Summer’s grasp loosened, but Mel held on. Held on because…well, she didn’t know. For the first time in her life, holding on to someone seemed like the right thing to do, the thing that would get them through the other side.

Yeah, definitely a lesson.

“Dad, you need to explain this to us,” Mel said, her voice far more authoritative than she felt.

He’d turned away from them, his wheelchair halfway out the other entrance toward the hallway to his room.

A sigh, silence, his body kind of slumped. “I knew your mother was pregnant when she left.” He let that hang in the air. “What more do you want to know?”

“Why?” Caleb demanded, finding words Mel couldn’t. “How? How could you have never told us? How could you have let that happen? How could you, when she…”

Dad glanced at Caleb, and the look they shared hinted at all kinds of deeper secrets. Dear God, what on earth was happening with her family? What
had
happened that she’d never known about?

“She told me she was leaving. That she couldn’t stand being here for another second, and when I argued…” The first flicker of emotion crossed his profile, his hands tensing on his chair. There was a long pause before he finally spoke again, raspy and uneven. “She said she’d take Mel and disappear if I tried to stop her.” Then he shrugged, all hints of emotion gone. “So I didn’t.”

Take Mel and disappear. Take
her
and disappear. Mel glanced at Caleb, the flicker of an emotion she’d seen many times and never understood on his face. She still didn’t understand, but Mom only wanting to take
her
didn’t make any sense. Surely Dad misspoke.

“But…that was over twenty years ago,” Summer said, her voice small and wavery but there, ringing out. “You had all this time.”

“To do what?”

“Find me. Be there for me.”

“You had your mother.”

“But I could have had this.”

Dad looked around like he didn’t understand what
this
meant, and Mel thought maybe he didn’t. Maybe the paralysis had taken away all his love for this place, or maybe it had been gone long before, only she hadn’t wanted to see it.

Or maybe, worst of all, he’d pushed away all the love and good because he was afraid it would break him. Because it had so many times before.

It was hard to breathe past that thought, because it struck a chord so deep it roused all the feeling she was trying to ignore. Push away. Forget.

All to end up like her father? No, no she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be the one in a roomful of people begging for her love and pushing it away because it was too much, too hard, too scary.

She’d take that burning lance of pain every time someone left or disappointed her over this…not living. What was the point of being alive, so many years stretching before her, if none of it mattered? Not her family, not Shaw, not…

Love.

She loved Dan. Her heart ached for him. Even when she tried to push thoughts of him away, even when she tried to pretend he didn’t exist, he was there. In her heart. She couldn’t muscle through that or pretend it away. She just wasn’t that strong, and for the first time in her life, she was glad she was weak.

“I did what I thought was right,” Dad said, his tone flat and emotionless. “I’m sorry if that hurt you.”

“That’s…it?”

“I can’t move my legs and I can’t even take care of myself half the time. I am and have nothing. What else would you want from me?”

“A father.”

Summer’s answer repeated in Mel’s head. It reminded her of all of the things she’d ignored and pushed away for five years. Ever since the accident, she’d just been so glad he was alive, so much so that she’d accepted the emptiness he’d become, because at least he wasn’t dead.

It wasn’t enough anymore, and being afraid of saying that, of hurting him…it didn’t matter anymore.

Better to break and fix than ignore, or lie, or pretend.

“I would like that too,” she said, squeezing Summer’s hand.

“Same for me,” Caleb said.