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  Chapter 2

  The hallway leading to the bedrooms seemed narrower than Ruby remembered, still painted an ugly dusty rose semi-gloss. She’d walked it so many times. At the landing separating her parents’ room from Granny Rube’s, she ran her finger over the uneven plaster where Jake accidentally discharged their father’s shotgun, making a huge hole in the wall. The blast knocked him right on his butt, scaring the daylights out of everyone else.

  I want to be just like you, Daddy, her little brother cried when their father asked why he pointed a loaded gun in the house. No matter how hard he tried, Jake didn’t feel like he’d lived up to their father’s expectations. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise that Jake continually tried to show off, especially since their father continually pushed that macho crap on him.

  He’d insisted on taking Jake hunting, fishing and on cattle drives when the poor little guy just wanted to explore and collect bugs. Ruby never felt sorrier for anyone in her life. Her brother hadn’t touched a gun again after that day, even though their father kept pressuring him to be a man, more upset that his only son wasn’t cut out to be a cowboy than the damned hole in the wall.

  Granny Rube hung her only daughter’s yellow orchid painting over the patched spot in the wall. Covering it up kept Jake from feeling bad and prevented their father from picking at him about it every time he passed it by. The painting never hung straight no matter how many times they straightened it.

  Ruby stood in front of the awkward looking arrangement of flowers depicted on the canvas, remembering how her mother fussed over each and every brush stroke. Ruby loved it simply because it was a small piece of her mother she could still touch.

  She reached to straighten the painting out of habit, then glanced cautiously toward Granny Rube’s closed door and realized she wasn’t ready to go in there just yet. Instead, she turned the opposite way and climbed the two stairs leading to the rooms that were added on for her and Jake.

  “Oh my God,” was all she could manage when she opened the door to her old room. Everything was the same. It smelled of Sandlewood incense and dried prom flowers. The purple and lime green paisley bedspread with matching curtains she had begged her mother to buy, still where she left them. Hideous. Seriously, hideous. “Whew, what was I thinking? Talk about bad taste.”

  Yellowed tape held old posters of Jim Morrison, Waylon Jennings, and The Eagles. On the far wall, above the antique chest of drawers, she saw proudly displayed school award certificates and riding ribbons. There were even some record albums belonging to her mother stacked on top of the old turntable she’d gotten from Granny Rube for her eighth grade graduation. Her father wouldn’t let Ruby take them when they left.

  Two steps into the room, Ruby spied small photos of her and her mother pinned to the corkboard above the dresser. Tears freshened, seeing the faraway smile on her mother’s flawless face. Ruby remembered riding in that field of wildflowers like it was yesterday. And then, maybe a month later, her mother was gone. Sadness and frustration pecked at Ruby’s heart. It was so long ago. How could it still hurt this much?

  Jake’s room was cluttered with old toys they had no room to pack, as well as the bug and leaf collections their father refused to let him take. The unmade bed revealed the treasured Batman sheets their mother ordered special from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

  In the corner of the room stood a stack of unopened presents wrapped for missed birthdays and Christmas, each with dated cards that read: To my little Jakey, love, Granny Rube. Ruby hadn’t seen any gifts in her room, but she understood why. Granny always tried to make up for the love Jake was missing from their father. It looked like she continued trying even after they left the ranch.

  “Jake is not going to believe this.” Tears stung Ruby’s eyes once again. “I’m so sorry, Granny. What did we do?”

  Ruby descended the stairs and stood for a long moment in front of the room her parents once shared. A spring breeze blew up through the hallway from the kitchen windows Billy cracked, urging her to go inside.

  A familiar low whisper echoed through the house, welcoming her home. Ruby wasn’t afraid. Funny, she’d forgotten the voice of the house. Granny called it, Augie.

  “Oh Augie, I’m so glad you’re still here.” The air warmed slightly as a gentle breeze brushed against her. Ruby couldn’t help but smile, feeling the special welcome home.

  “I’ve missed you,” she whispered to the warm energy. The quiet tap of the door against the jamb was her reply. She stood there, tracing her hand around the crystal knob, remembering.

  There was no beginning to the voice, it had just always been there. At least for Ruby and her grandmother. No real words or visions, just simply a presence of energy that emanated throughout the house, lighting her way through the trials and tribulations of growing up here.

  Augie had been in her room every night Ruby could remember, staying with her until she fell safely asleep. She always felt embraced and guarded by this friendly energy when she lived at the ranch, but now, as good as it felt, Ruby realized she never really understood what Augie was and why it had chosen their family to watch over.

  Ruby wished she’d asked more about Augie. Was he a ghost? Whose ghost? Granny never made sense when she talked about it. Ruby figured it was some kind of guardian angel. A medicine man that only Granny could see. It came to her in her dreams and held her when she was sad.

  Ruby’s mother had always shushed Granny when she started talking about it, saying her mother was out of her mind. Ruby wished now that Granny was here to explain it again so she could understand. The energy made Ruby feel calm. Safe and happy. She’d missed its sweet, protective caress.

  If she’d come home before Granny Rube had died, would those questions have answers?

  Chapter 3

  When Ruby finally worked up the nerve to push open the door to her parents’ room, the scalloped, lace curtains hanging behind the queen size bed fluttered gently from the breeze at her back. The musty lemon scent of old perfume filled the room. Her mother’s prized goose-down comforter lay unnaturally flat against the mattress after years of not being fluffed properly. Oddly not a speck of dust had settled in this room.

  The floppy sun hat her mother wore to tend her precious orchids, still hung from the bedpost and the heels of her powder blue slippers peeked out from beneath the striped bed skirt. Brushes and claw hair clips that once managed her mother’s long auburn hair lay scattered across her glass dressing table as though she’d just searched through them to find the perfect one. If not for the aged labels and dry, cracked contents of her makeup bottles, it might have appeared her mother had used them only this morning.

  Her father’s things, the few she remembered him leaving behind, were the only items noticeably missing from the room. His side of the closet was empty aside from a few abandoned hangers and a cobweb or two. By contrast, her mother’s far-too-frilly-for-a-farm dresses still hung in plastic, ready for her to wear, exactly where they had always been.

  “Jesus, Granny,” Ruby muttered under her breath. It was all too weird for her to deal with so soon. She wasn’t sure what was worse in the room, the total erasure of her father’s existence or the eerie presence of her mother.

  Ruby had expected to face a lot of things when she came back home, but having everything frozen in time like this was a little too much just now. “I can’t do this.”

  It suddenly occurred to her that taking this little journey back in time had left her guest alone to fend for himself. Though the clock showed she’d only drifted for a mere fifteen or so minutes, it seemed like hours.

  When she finally made her way back to the kitchen, she found Billy leaning over the sink, dunking tea bags in a saucepan of boiling water. The aroma of Lipton tea mixing with the smell of her grandmother’s gingerbread cookies, made her think of food for the first time today.

>   She watched Billy in silence, marveling at the way his muscular back flexed against his shirt as he leaned over the sink. In all her years at the ranch, she’d never seen a man working in this kitchen. For some reason, she couldn’t quite explain, he seemed even more masculine fixing that tea than when he dropped his sexy self out of the truck.

  While he’d waited patiently for her to tour the house, he’d pushed up his sleeves, washed his hands and face, and did his best to clean up. He’d tucked the long shirt into his nicely fitting jeans, and combed his gorgeous, wavy hair. His hat now hung on the coat rack next to the door, just above where he had stepped out of his dirty boots.

  “How thoughtful of you to fix us a drink,” Ruby finally said, hoping he hadn’t caught her gawking. “I should be doing the fixing. After all, this is my home now.”

  “Oh no problem. You needed some time to check things out, and I knew where Granny kept the tea bags, so, happy to do it.”

  Ruby admired him for a few more seconds. “You’re too sweet.”

  “Were you talking to me earlier?”

  Ruby figured he’d probably heard her talking to Augie, but she wasn’t ready to explain. She did her best to act nonchalant even though she felt very uneasy about what she’d seen so far. “Oh no, just talking to myself. This place is a trip.”

  “Stan wasn’t sure the attorneys would be able to find you. He wondered if you’d come back even if they did.” Billy ignored the comment about the house. “He wasn’t sure what kind of stories your dad might have told you over the years. We all know how bitter he was when he took you guys away. Stan and the boys are out bringing the herd down from Kelso Creek.”

  “I can’t believe Stan’s still going on drives? How old is he?” Ruby asked, glad for the change of subject.

  Billy gave a little laugh, before staring sadly out the window toward the distant horizon. “He’ll cowboy until he can’t sit a saddle, ornery old coot. Besides, I think he really needed to get away from the ranch for a while.”

  “I suppose he did.” Ruby was thankful Granny had him around all these years. “He’s as close to family as my grandmother had left.”

  “Anyway,” Billy shook the faraway look. “I told him I was sure you would, at least, contact him in one way or another. I knew you wouldn’t just let Ruby’s Ranch go to strangers.” When he finally turned, he instantly withered her growing melancholy with his handsome, slightly crooked smile. “Did I tell you how great it is to have you back here?”

  Ruby smiled demurely back at him. She walked over and opened the dish cabinet where Granny had always kept the glasses, and found, to her surprise, the same set of mason jars they’d always used still sitting on the shelf.

  “Will you look at this? Good grief. Are these the same jars?” Ruby grabbed one and held it to her chest, greeting an old friend. “So tell me, Billy, did Granny Rube go crazy or what? The truth! Please?”

  Ruby could tell by his fidgeting that Billy searched for a gentle way to answer her. She started to pace, pointing down the hall. “Come on, seriously. I know some people believe in tradition and some don’t like change, but this place is just creepy. There’s no trace of updated technology in this whole place. No TVs? And this,” she pointed to the phone hanging on the wall, “still with the rotary phone?” Her voice wavered as she grabbed the receiver and held it up to him. She placed it gently back in the cradle, waiting for him to give some kind of feedback. “Creepy.”

  “Ruby, whewwww.” He blew out a long breath before turning from the counter, wadding the damp tea bags into a paper towel. “Try to keep a little perspective. Granny had some real serious trouble coping when your mother disappeared. I know I don’t have to tell you that. She really lost it when your father took you and Jake away. You were all she had left. All she had left of your mother, too.”

  Billy paused for a second to reflect, then shook his head as if he had more to say but didn’t dare. “I’m sorry, Ruby. She was just never the same.”

  “Oh God,” Ruby let out a long breath. The thought of her sweet Granny, alone at this ranch, slowly losing her mind was too sad. She wanted Billy to say her grandmother had been okay, she had recovered and pulled herself up like all the other times hardship had hit. She prayed he would say her grandmother liked old things and it wasn’t weird at all that she never changed one thing in this house in twenty years.

  Something else had happened here, something sinister. Something that probably started long before she and her brother ever left the ranch. Ruby had just been too young and naïve to realize. Guilt welled inside her. “I had no idea she was this bad. She was always a rock. I wish someone would have let me know. I might have been able to help in some way.”

  “You can’t blame yourself. Besides, I’m not sure what you could have done. My mom tried to find you, you know. She even talked to your dad at one point, many years ago. I whined until she called.” He looked up at her and winked. “It was just so strange that you were just gone and never even tried to get in touch with Claudie. It was like you’d died. We were all devastated.”

  Ruby caught her breath, shocked. “Your mom talked to Daddy? He never said a word. Not a word. He wouldn’t let me call or write, or anything. He wanted us to forget about this place. I think he thought if we just erased this place from our memory, we wouldn’t hurt like he was hurting. He told us that he prayed our mother was dead because abandoning us like she did would be unforgiveable. He wanted us to be mad at her, because anger is easier than that kind of heartbreak.”

  She was steaming inside, wondering what else her father might have kept from her. Wondering how things might have been different if he had told them this one thing.

  “I think she said you guys were at his parents’ house,” Billy added, trying to help her piece things together.

  Since they had only stayed at Noni and Pop’s for a couple of months, Ruby pinpointed the time of the call down to about two years after they had left the ranch. “So, he knew and he didn’t bring us back?” She pulled the band from her hair and ran her hand through the knotted ends, trying to sweep away the anger.

  “Ruby,” Billy’s voice caught for a moment, “now isn’t the time to blame your dad either. He tried to look out for you. He probably figured coming back here would only make things worse for her, anyway. That’s what he told Mom. He told her that crazy old lady was not going to ruin his kids like she’d ruined their mother.”

  “What about the ranch?” Ruby asked, pulling her hair back up tight. “How did she manage all of this if she went nuts?”

  “Stan ran things, mostly.”

  “Stan took care of all this?” Ruby pulled out a chair to sit.

  Billy took a moment to place ice from the freezer into the jars, then poured warm tea over the ice. The room had fallen so quiet, Ruby heard the crackle of the cubes as they melted. “Your grandmother wasn’t helpless by any stretch. She was just really lost. Lonely. Distraught, kind of. And so sad.” He sipped, testing. He added two spoons of sugar to each glass, stirring them like there was no other way to fix tea.

  Billy went on as he placed the jars on the table in front of her. “Old Stan always had a soft spot for your grandmother. He stuck pretty close to her after your grandpa passed since they were best friends and Stan must have felt like it was his duty to take care of things because she was left all alone. He really watched over her after you all left. I personally think it was more than duty.”

  Ruby scrunched her face up in disgust, considering what he was suggesting. Not really wanting to know, she asked anyway, “So, you think . . .?”

  “Well now, she wasn’t a granny to him. And life on a ranch can get pretty lonely. They were kind of a handsome couple, if you ask me.”

  “So you think Granny and Stan were lovers?”

  Clearing his throat, Billy sat the chair back down on all four legs
. “That’s way more information than I’d care to know, but they did seem to be more than just friends.” He shifted in his seat to face her directly. “All I know for sure is he loved her. It was obvious enough. I know he misses her something awful and he’ll do anything in the world to help you because that’s what your granny would have wanted him to do. I suppose that’s all that really matters now.”

  “I hope he’ll be able to explain what happened here. Do you think he will?” she asked, looking sadly around the room.

  “I don’t know, Ruby. I’m not so sure he really can. I know he did try to pull her out of herself as much as possible. He built the greenhouse for her a couple years back. It seemed to help some. She spent a lot of time in there.”

  Billy took another drink of tea, then set the jar down and leaned close. “Ruby, if I were you I’d just try to remember what’s beautiful about this place. I’d do my best to leave the sadness behind because there’s not a damn thing you can do about it now. You’re the first light Ruby’s Ranch has seen since your mother disappeared. I hope you can let it shine.”

  He leaned in and gently kissed her forehead as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do. “Come on now,” his tone lightened, coaxing her playfully, and he patted her shoulder. “Let’s get you settled. I’m sure you’re exhausted. Why don’t you stay at our house for the night?”

  Ruby stood up with him and instantly protested, “Oh no, I’ll be fine here. I didn’t come all this way to put you or your family out.”

  “You wouldn’t be putting us out. You know better. Momma would love to fuss over you.”

  “I’m good, really, but thank you.” She took another sip and wondered why she’d ever stopped drinking tea this way. Country sweet tea was one of God’s little gifts.