“Don’t know how.”
“The fence, Caleb. You haven’t been checking the fences. You haven’t been holding your weight. You promised me.”
Something ugly flashed in his eyes. “I have done everything you asked me to do. Maybe I got a little carried away last night and am having a bit of a late start this morning, but I’m carrying my weight just fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am one person and I am doing the best damn work that I can. Don’t act like you’ve never had an animal escape on your watch. That you’ve never made a mistake. Don’t not be around when this place is going to shit and place all the blame on my shoulders. It was in shit when you left.”
She wished she could argue. He wasn’t far off. The place was falling apart when she’d handed over the reins to him. But holding it together didn’t feel necessary anymore. Not when she was the only one who seemed to be able to do it. “What am I working so hard for, Caleb? You? Dad?”
Caleb jerked a shoulder. “I thought you were doing it for you. For Shaw. Because you are Shaw. Those are your words.”
She was…this was it. The bottom. The breaking point. She didn’t have any more fight left, any more armor or bravado. “I don’t know who I am.”
“I’d say you’re walking your way toward being Mom.”
The pain was deeper than anything, and there had been a lot of pain. She had spent her life trying not to be a woman who would walk away, but…
All she could see if she stayed was year after year of this. Of this black oppressive pain, of secretly wishing someone would help, of being failed time and time again. If this was what Mom had been up against…maybe she couldn’t even blame her anymore.
“Maybe I have to be her to save myself. It’s a far better alternative to drinking myself to death. To sitting in front of a TV all day, pretending like my family means nothing. And I am done being the one trying to keep it all together. I quit.” She struggled to say the rest without tears. “I quit both of you.”
“You said Shaw was the most important thing.” Caleb’s voice was rough, hurt. Like she was abandoning him the way everyone always did.
She wished she could bring herself to care.
She looked around the house she used to love like part of herself. Her father sitting there not saying a damn word. Her brother standing there full to brim with a pain she didn’t understand, a pain he used to hurt himself, and her. She didn’t feel love anymore. She felt it press down on her until nothing was left.
She had sacrificed so much to love this place, these two men, but it wasn’t ever going to love her back any more than they were.
“I lied,” she whispered, because it had been a lie. To him. To herself. Shaw had been the last thing she could hold on to, but it wasn’t her. It was just a fortress she’d built around herself. “If you fail it, so be it. I won’t be around to see.”
She turned and walked out of the room. The tears stayed at bay, but she was shaking as she walked up to her room. All of her worst fears were coming true. She was her mother, and her father. All mixed up into someone who had nothing left. No family. No home. No life.
Dan.
She squeezed her eyes shut against that thought, leaned against the railing for a second. No, she did not have him. She did not want him. The last thing she was going to do was place all her hopes and needs in another person.
She had trusted every single person in her family. Mom to love her, Dad to comfort her, Caleb to keep Shaw going.
And all of them had failed. She had failed.
So, no, she didn’t have Dan, but she also had nowhere else to go.
*
“You’re going to have yourself some friends, Mystery.” Dan worked on changing out the water in the buckets, doing his normal chatting. Sometimes, in the dusky golden rays of sunset, it didn’t feel so stupid. It felt right.
Talking to the llama breeder on his own had felt pretty right too. Like he knew what he was doing. Haggling with the guy over the price of the small group of llamas he wanted to get rid of.
Winning.
Yeah, all in all, a pretty right day. Made even righter by the sound of a motorcycle engine interrupting the quiet. Mel.
They were going to have a talk. A real talk because…because despite all the doubts and whispers in his head, he knew he wanted to be here. Maybe not this year, but eventually. And if he was going to be here, build this, it meant he had to start believing he could.
Not just the llama ranch, not even just hockey. More. He had to believe in more. In her? That was the real kicker, he supposed. Screwing up hockey or the ranch was…well, intangible. It might bruise his ego, hurt his pride. It might even be hard.