Chapter One
“Are we really going to do this again?” Clint took a deep breath and clamping his eyes shut, counted to five before exhaling. It was getting harder and harder to communicate with Carol. He’d tried his best, working two jobs, moving them to a larger house in a nicer neighborhood, holding his old blue Ford together with spit and a prayer instead of getting a new work truck the way he needed.
He just didn’t understand what had gone so wrong. Why was his wife so terribly miserable? Happy one day, desperate the next. He’d begged her to go to therapy; even though he couldn’t afford it, he’d find a way. Something had to give. With Jason tucked in and sound asleep, he started for the kitchen to help clean up after their dinner of warmed up canned ravioli, only to have Carol start throwing silverware at him. Instead of reasoning with her, he gave up. Grabbed his jacket and his keys and headed for Kelsey’s bar. He’d probably had one, okay, two more than he should have, and he probably shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel of his truck, but he needed to escape from the hell his marriage had become at least for a few hours.
Parking in the driveway, he almost tripped into the house, collapsing on the lumpy sofa rather than make his way upstairs and risk another fight with Carol. He’d been asleep before he remembered closing his eyes.
Hot. Fan, he needed the fan. So hot. No. November. Not hot. No fan. Rolling slightly, he almost slid off the sofa. That’s right. Not in bed. So hot. Blinking, he looked for the fan, but couldn’t see. Blinked again. And again. Still so dark. Then he heard it. A sizzle, or a crackle, or… his eyes flew open. Fire. The house was on fire. The kitchen was bright orange. The dining room sparked. The stairs. He needed to get to the stairs. His lungs felt weighted. Heavy. Hard. Pulling the hem of his shirt up over his nose and mouth with one arm, he stumbled to his feet. Had to get upstairs. So much smoke. Something somewhere in the back of his mind repeated, stop, drop, and roll, only he wasn’t on fire…yet. Still, he got down on all fours and crawled up the stairs, barely able to make out where he was going. The smoke was so thick. Feeling his way as much as looking, he found Jason’s door. Ignoring the sharp pain on the burning knob, he opened the door and hurried inside. On his bed, coughing but asleep, his son was at least still breathing.
Clint threw a blanket over Jason’s head, then placing another around them both, upright now, he rushed out the door and down the stairs. The living room was almost fully engulfed. The sofa he’d been sleeping on only minutes ago was a sea of dancing orange and yellow flames, shooting high to the ceiling. He barely had a path to the front door.
Not caring about his hands, he pulled the door open and hurried outside, nearly collapsing on the lawn. Carol. He had to get Carol. Only at that moment, still coughing, Jason hacked out, “Daddy.”
“It’s okay, Son. You’re okay.” Turning his head, the house was almost fully engulfed. Windows exploded as flames continued to burst through the house.
“You wait here,” he told his son, then turned to the house.
“Clint.” A hand clamped on his arm. “You can’t go back in there.” It was Jerry, their next-door neighbor. “We called the fire department. They’re on their way.”
“Carol,” was all he managed to spit out. “I have to get Carol.”
He saw Jerry’s eyes widen. The neighbor on his other side had turned on the hose and was watering down his own roof, turning the spout from time to time toward Clint’s house.
“It’s too dangerous,” Jerry repeated, his grip on Clint’s arm even tighter. “You can’t.”
“Carol!” he shouted as loud as he could, as if she could hear him and would wake up and run out of the house on her own two feet. “Carol!” he screamed again.
“Clint!” another male voice shouted at him.
“Carol!” He had to save Carol.
“Clint!” the voice shouted louder. “Wake up, man.”
Wake up? Clint blinked, forcing his eyelids open. Where was he? The fire. No. Not the fire. Not his house. And then, closing his eyes, he slumped back against his pillow.
“You okay?” The voice belonged to Benny, the new hand they’d hired.
It was all coming back to him. He wasn’t living in Wyoming anymore. He was in Texas. Working on the Sweet Ranch. A foreman. If he wasn’t so exhausted from his nightmare, he would have laughed at that. “Sorry, kid. I guess it was a bad dream.”
“One helluva dream. You were screaming so loud I thought the place was on fire.”
Right. On fire. “Sorry.” Since they’d fixed up the old foreman’s house for one of the Sweet newlyweds, he’d insisted he’d be fine bunking with Benny. Now maybe he should have given that more thought. “I’m okay. You go back to sleep.”
Nodding, Benny straightened, eyed him a moment longer, probably convincing himself that Clint was indeed okay, andthen turned on his heel and went back to his bunk in the other room.
Unlike most bunkhouses, this one was broken into more private cubicles with a living area in the middle, so he stayed on his end and Benny moved into the other end. Throwing his feet over the side of the bed, he dropped his face into his hands, then wiping the sweat from his forehead, raked his fingers through his hair and blew out a long slow breath. He’d thought the nightmares had finally stopped. Pushing to his feet, he walked to the single photo that had survived that horrible night. Him and Jason in happier days. That sunny-faced little boy brought a smile to his face. What Clint wouldn’t give to go back in time and fix everything.
“This is heaven.” Alice Sweet sat in a rocker. There was no place on the planet she loved more than the view of the horizon from this porch. The plans she and Kade had worked out for a guest annex would have a nice little porch with the same view over Sweet land under the Texas sky. Someday, when it was time, she’d move out of the big house and into the smaller one. And that would be just fine with her. Until then, though, she had about fifteen more minutes to enjoy her coffee before it was time to head back into the house and deal with her chores. Maybe it was time to add cleaning up the garden to her chore list. Since Charlie passed, she couldn’t bring herself to mess with it. For them it hadn’t been a chore, it had been something fun they did together, oohing and aahing over flavorful vegetables and laughing when they grew into odd shapes or big enough to make the record books. Maybe.
“Mind a little company?” Her newest daughter-in-law Cassie stood in the doorway.
“Of course not.” She patted the arm of the big green rocking chair beside her. “The sky is big enough for everyone.”
“That’s sort of what I thought the first day I arrived here.” Cassie settled into the seat. Rather than kick the chair into motion, she put her feet up on the caned seat and leaned back. “I heard from Jacob’s father today.”
“Oh,” Alice had been very proud of her town, the way everyone came together to help Jacob’s family and make sure that Emily got the treatment she needed. There hadn’t even been a need for an official fundraiser, folks just came forward and before anyone knew it, everything was arranged and moving forward.
“The judge signed off on the deal. Jacob will have to have scheduled therapy and do community service, but he won’t be doing any jail time.”
