There was silence in the room. “I am,” she said finally.
Flynn fell asleep with a smile on his face.
Chapter 14
I fear hope will make a fool of me.
—Belle Martin’s Diary, June 1869
Flynn was such an early riser, it really was irritating. But she got to climb up into his truck with a thermos full of coffee and ride around Lonesome Ridge with him, having a look at his ranching spread. And best of all, at his elk herds.
They parked on the edge of one of the fields where the elk liked to hang out, and she looked out at all the majestic animals, her heart beating hard.
“They’re beautiful,” she said. There was a large bull lying in a patch of grass, his massive rack of antlers branching out high above his head. Elk really were preposterous creatures. They had long faces, long necks with dark shaggy hair, and large bodies, with a light tan patch on their rear shaped like a heart.
“When you hunt for them, that’s what you see,” he said, gesturing toward one cow that had her back turned away from them. “Those heart-shaped butts.”
“They’re so majestic. It’s kind of sad to think about hunting them.”
“Don’t worry. They’re smarter than most hunters. There’s actually a reason they call it hunting and not catching.”
She laughed. “Did your dad take you hunting?”
“Sometimes. Not here. There are rumors that there’s a wild elk herd out here, but I’ve certainly never seen it. We would go overto the coast mainly. Did it a few times. When Dad could get all the paperwork done and get his shit together for the license. I can still remember standing in the woods, and suddenly there was all this crashing going on around us, and the little whistling noise the elk make. And then there they were. Thirty of them, running through the trees. And just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“they were gone. Completely silent. No evidence that they were ever there. It’s like magic. There’s a reason elk used to be called the Ghosts of the Forest.”
“Wow.”
“My dad used to say that elk are where you find them.”
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly.”
She shook her head. She felt a strange, expanding sense of pride that this place belonged to Flynn. That he had taken up a different sort of ranching. That he’d set himself apart from his brothers.
“My brother is going to ranch,” she said. “Apparently he bought a plot of land.”
“No kidding,” he said.
“Yeah. I … I had no idea. But it’s something he wants to do. I mean, I did always have the sense that the Wild West Show wasn’t his one true love or anything, but I never thought he would leave.”
“It seems like the two of you don’t really share much with each other.”
It was an observation devoid of judgment, but it felt painful anyway. Because he wasn’t wrong. She and West didn’t share that much with each other. And she didn’t really know why.
“I wonder if it’s a side effect of hiding the reality of our life. We never wanted our parents to get in trouble for anything. And I think also we never wanted to really say anything bad about them. Because we love them. I don’t think they could function outside the life they’ve made for themselves, and when you really think about it, it’s brilliant. To fashion a different life for yourself when you can’t fit. They did so much well, so much right. It feels disloyal to complain. And still, in my heart, I find it all really complicated.”
“You’re both practiced at keeping up a barrier so that you never have to talk about your parents’ shortcomings.”
“That’s exactly it. We’re just too good at it. We’re both … trying to protect them, trying to protect each other. Not burden each other, but then it all comes out in weird ways. Like him telling me he’s doing this without there being any lead up to it.”
“You’ve got a good family,” he said. “And I’m not saying you have to be grateful for them all the time. You can have complicated feelings. I’m just saying, they do love you an awful lot, and that’s obvious. I think your dad is really proud of you; I think your mom is proud of you.”
“She’s maybe a little bit prouder of all the different spurs she’s collected.”
“Maybe. But I suspect you are equal to the spurs. She said a lot of nice things about you. She also said you never brought a man home before, so she was surprised to meet me. She understood maybe I was special.”
Those words made her chest feel as if it was caving in on itself.
