LITMIR.BIZ

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of despair until she and Gordon drove into the yard at the main house and he said, “I’ll take care of the Center. And of Shane. Forget him for a week and go find something that’ll make you smile.”

      Surprised, she’d leaned back against her door and watched him as he parked and turned off the motor.

      “What’s different, Gordon?”

      He looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

      “You never cared if I smiled before now. You never insisted on helping me with anything until now. What’s the deal?”

      He shrugged. “Things change.”

      As he threw open his door and got out, he said, “I’ve got a truckload of money sunk in that drug rehab center. Why wouldn’t I want it to produce results?”

      She got out and they walked toward the house.

      “The question is why did you build it? It’s not something you’d do.”

      He shot her a look.

      “How do you know? You don’t know squat about me.”

      “I know some,” she said. “Or I should say, I did know some about who you used to be. Any kid who wants a parent’s love knows more about that parent than either of them realizes.”

      He shook his head.

      “You always did read too much,” he said. “You’ve let your imagination run wild.”

      With that, he went straight to his office and closed the door.

      She went up to her old room and looked at herself in the mirror. It hurt her to look at herself. She looked horrid. She looked exhausted and haggard and old and wrinkled and sad, sad, sad.

      She forced a smile. It hurt her muscles. It looked fake. It looked so false that it still hurt her to look at herself.

      How could she help Shane to believe in hope for recovery if she looked so hopeless?

      She felt like crawling into bed, pulling the covers over her head, and never coming out to be seen again. The thought was scarily tempting.

      She stared at her image.

      “You’ve never given up,” she told it. “Don’t start now.”

      Gordon was in control of Shane. Gordon was talking to her—a little—and listening to her. A little. She wanted some influence over what Gordon did to Shane.

      The work, for example. He was finally going to take Micah’s advice and find a director who’d put the inmates to work. She wanted Shane to be with horses because they had great healing power.

      Certainly more than hauling hay or digging ditches would have.

      So she’d put on her shorts and running shoes and hit the road that ran across the valley to the river. Once there, she walked for a while and then sat for a while and made herself think, for once, about something besides Shane. It was an exercise in will that made her brain feel as stiff as her face had done when she forced a smile.

      She looked into the water and tried to see her plans for the future, the ones she’d had two years ago when the nightmare began. Before her every thought had been fixed on Shane and his problems.

      Right now, her dreams of buying a cabin in Wyoming where she would go to rest and read and think and learn to paint landscapes—in other words, to actually discover who she was and what she wanted for the rest of her life, since she’d never had a minute free to figure that out since she was seventeen—were hopeless.

      Her profession was one she loved, but other than that, what did she want to do? Gordon was right. Someday Shane would be gone. What would be the most important thing to her then?

      Her savings had vanished like snow in the sun, along with all the money she’d raised by selling the few luxuries in her life: her show horse and saddle and her sporty little car. Gordon was right about that, too. She couldn’t recover financially if she sold her practice.

      She couldn’t let Shane’s troubles take everything else away from her because the stronger she was for herself, the greater the chances she could help him. She’d made the right decision. She’d hang on to her practice, stay here and deal with Gordon the best way she could.

      He really was different toward her, and she thought about that. In the past, he would’ve exploded and then chewed her up and spit her out for questioning him and arguing with him on the way back from the jail.

      He would’ve been furious at her asking him why he built the Center.

      As far as she’d observed, he was still his old hair-trigger self with everybody else. Did he pity her so much that he was trying to be kind to her? Act like a father to her twenty years too late because she was such a lousy mother?

      No. Negative thoughts. She was doing, and had done, the best she knew how. That was all anyone could do.

      She got up and started slowly jogging back toward the house. No negativity. It was self-fulfilling.

      Only positive thoughts. This was the turning point. Shane had hit rock bottom this morning and his only direction now was up.

      She would hold that thought.

      The houses, barns, pens, arenas, all passed by in a blur. For the first time in what seemed a lifetime, she was comfortable in her body and her mind. For these few minutes. Her blood was pumping warm in her veins and hope was growing in her heart.

      When she got back to the house, Gordon’s truck was gone. Andie Lee pounded up the stairs, pretending she had more energy left than she had thought. In her childhood room, she stripped and stood in the shower for the longest time, willing the hot water to wash away the traces of tension left in her muscles and her mind.

      Tonight, for the first time in a long time, she’d have a chance of getting some sleep.

      She was standing at the window drying her hair when the big white truck came rolling into the glow of the dusk-activated yard light. Gordon got out and slammed the door behind him, but she never heard him come into the house.

      When her hair was only damp, she pulled on some soft pants and a T-shirt, stuck her feet into some flip-flops and went down the stairs. All the rooms were still dark except for the lamps they always left on in the huge old living area. She walked out onto the porch. He was standing down on the north end of it, one foot propped on the railing, staring out into the night, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t turn around.

      “I guess you know that stuff’ll kill you,” she said.

      After a heartbeat he answered. “Somethin’ will.”

      She walked halfway to him and sat down in the swing.

      “Hmm,” she said, “I thought you considered yourself immortal, Gordon.”

      He gave his little bark of a laugh, set his foot on the floor, and turned around.

      He looked at her. In the faint lamp glow that came through the window she couldn’t see his eyes.

      “That was before the doc said cancer.”

      She gasped. “What? You have…”

      “Turns out he was wrong,” he said. “Even the experts can’t win ’em all.”

      He walked to one of the leather rocking chairs, turned it to face her, and sat. He rocked it slowly back and forth.

      “Made me think, though,” he said. “What’ll happen to the Wagontracks when I’m gone?”

      The question stunned her. Gordon had never talked to her about anything personal before. He never talked to anyone like this. Not even Micah, as far as she knew.

      “I’m thinking that would depend on your choice of an heir,” she said.

      He gave a bitter chuckle.

      “Just

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