“Oh,” I said. That sounded like the Cade I knew. Cade had always been that kind of guy, the one who would run into a burning building to save your dog.
He had always been a good guy.
“Is- is he back here in West Bend?”
“Oh, no, honey,” Connie said. I could feel her gaze on me, knew she was trying to assess what I was thinking. I felt transparent, asking about Cade, and Connie C. was a gossip. The last thing I wanted were a bunch of questions from people in town about why I was moving back home. The last thing I wanted was for people to assume I was moving back home to see Cade.
He’s probably married with kids by now.
“Oh. I didn’t think he would stay here," I said.
Connie leaned closer, her voice dropping. “Ran off to California, the year before his mom died.”
California.
Not here.
I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved.
“Don’t say you heard it from me,” Connie said. “But as I heard, he joined some biker gang. It broke his dad’s heart.”
A biker gang. That didn’t sound like the Cade I knew.
It was years ago; the Cade you knew is long gone.
“I didn’t know,” I said. Of course, I didn’t know much about this place anymore. I hadn’t been back here since the end of my junior year in high school. That was when everything in my life had changed.
Why had I come back here?
My therapist had warned me about this. You’re jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, she had said. You think you can quit medicine and get away from the trauma from Afghanistan, yet you’re running right back to the place where your family died?
She thought it was all about running away from the trauma of Afghanistan. She didn't understand it was about more than that, because she didn't know the whole story behind why I was running. I had to come back here. It was the only place that could heal my soul. I realized how corny that sounded. But I believed that there was something about coming home, back to this place, that could fix the part of me that was broken.
There had to be.
My therapist had acted like there was something wrong with running away.
But weren't we all running away from something? What was so wrong with wanting something different? Everyone fantasized about it.
During deployment, on my down time after finishing my shift, I'd sit around with some of the other doctors, smoking cigars and bullshitting about what we’d do when we got back home, or what we’d do when we left the military. All of that medical education among us, the financial investment in our futures, and none of us, at least in our fantasies, wanted to practice medicine. Not anymore. In our fantasy lives, we wanted to be bartenders, stay-at-home moms, chefs, scuba dive instructors.
The difference between me and the other doctors was that I'd had the courage to do it - to walk away from it all. Well, that was one difference. The other difference was that they weren't murderers.
“He hasn’t been back here in years,” Connie said, picking up a bag of groceries. “Are you parked right outside?”
I nodded. My voice seemed to have left me. I followed her, my arms laden with bags.
“You should stop in and see Mr. Austin,” Connie said. “I know he’d like to see you.”
“I will.” I could feel my chest tightening, and I willed myself to take in slow breaths, trying to stave off the feeling of panic building inside me. I didn’t expect it to be this hard, coming home. I was thirty-five; my parents and sister had died eighteen years ago, over half of my time existing on this earth. All of this should be a distant memory. I was an adult now, and so much more had happened since then.
What had happened with my family wasn’t Mr. Austin’s fault.
It wasn’t Cade’s fault.
Logically, I knew that.
“Thanks, Connie C.," I said. "I appreciate the help.”
Connie reached around me, her arm squeezing my shoulder. “It’s real good to see you, honey. You're so grown up.”
I nodded. I suddenly didn’t feel so all grown up. It was funny how going home could make you feel like a kid again. I shut the trunk of my car. “I’ll see you, Connie C.”
In a town like this, I’d be seeing her, and everyone else, all the time. I might be leaving my past as a Navy doctor behind me, but in a way, moving to a small town like this wasn't so different than all the places I'd lived when I was in the Navy.
I cruised down the winding road on the way to my new home, the sunlight bright even through my dark tinted lenses. The hills rose up from the road on either side, covered in sagebrush so green it looked like it had been painted on the landscape. I rolled down the window so I could breathe in deeply the smell of freshly cut grass, and felt my heart rate immediately decrease. It smelled like home. It reminded me of being a kid, running through the meadows behind the house for hours. Getting lost with Cade in the clusters of aspen trees. That memory sent a shiver up my spine.
I came back to West Bend because it’s where I had to go. It was a part of me. Even after all that had happened, all the pain and heartache, this place was where I belonged. It was never a question of whether I would return. It was only a question of when. Even if it dredged up painful memories, this place was where I had to be.
That possibility only became real after I decided I was not going back to surgery. Practicing medicine was behind me now. It’s no longer who I was. I didn’t care if I was running away or not. At least I wasn’t breaking out in cold sweats at the thought of holding a scalpel.
At least by running a bed and breakfast I wouldn’t have blood on my hands.
I sat outside on the porch with a cup of coffee, drinking in my surroundings as I sipped from the mug. The warmth of the liquid was soothing, and I desperately needed the caffeine. I wasn’t even fully unpacked yet, but this house already felt like home. My border collie, Bailey, wandered around the field in front of the house. She was already at home here too, much more content with the open spaces in Colorado than she'd been in Chicago. Country life suited us both.
I hated thinking about the future. If there's one thing I had learned in my life, it's that everything was fleeting and unpredictable. But as much as I could think about my future, West Bend was the only place I could see myself living.
I looked across the pasture to Stan Austin's ranch, where Mr. Austin was outside, slowly making his way around the deck with his watering can, touching it to each of the hanging plants. Even from this far away, I could see that his hair was white now, and he walked slowly, taking his time with the flowers.
I suddenly felt fourteen again, watching him, like it was the summer before high school. At any moment, I expected Cade to walk outside, dressed in jeans and his cowboy hat. He'd walk up to me, dip his head down so that the hat covered the top part of his face, and then look up at me with those dark brown eyes, that stupid half-grin covering his face.
Mr. Austin looked up and waved, breaking me out of my reverie.
I should go talk to him.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself, then gulped down the rest of my coffee. As I strode across the pasture that separated our houses, I watched the dust kick up around my boots. It was nice to put a pair of cowboy boots back on again. The familiarity felt comforting.
I was nervous as I approached the house. It had been a long time since I'd been here. A lifetime, in fact. I'd been intentionally avoiding coming by since I'd moved in last week.
“June.” Mr. Austin set down his watering pitcher and put a hand up over his eyes to shield them from the sunlight. Walking down the front steps, he greeted me in the dirt driveway. “Welcome back. So you’re my new neighbor now.”
He brushed his hands on his jeans before awkwardly reaching out to shake my hand, then pulled me toward him in a hug.
“Hi, Mr. Austin.”
“Oh, stop with the 'Mister' bit,” he said. “You’ll make me feel old. It’s Stan.”
“Stan.” It soun
ded funny to say it. He'd always been Mr. Austin to me.
“Come on up, we’ll have a glass of - lemonade? Coffee?" He paused for a beat. "Beer? It’s probably too early for beer, huh?”
I laughed. “Coffee would be great.”
“Here, we’ll stay out on the porch. It’s a nice day for some porch-sitting. I’ll bring out the coffee.” He gestured to the rocking chairs on the deck, and I sat, the rhythm of the rocking peaceful, hypnotic even. Bailey meandered across the lawn, finding her way over to the porch and making herself comfortable in a patch of sunlight.
Closing my eyes, I reveled in the silence of this place. No honking horns, no hum of cars passing incessantly. Just birds chirping, the hush of the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, and the tinkle of the wind chimes on the porch. It was idyllic. I wanted to believe that this place could be my refuge again, like it was when I was growing up. It was a silly idea, the realist in me knew that. But I wanted to hang on to that fantasy as long as I could.
“Here you go, dear.” Stan handed me a cup. “I’m afraid it’s not the best. Molly used to say it was more like jet fuel than coffee, but I’m old, so there’s no use changing it now.”
“No, I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, taking a sip, then choking. “Oh. You’re right. That is awful.”
Stan laughed, the sound deep from his belly, and I couldn’t help but join him. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Although, if you were in the Navy, your tolerance for piss-poor coffee should be better than that.”
I took another sip. Nope, still bad. “It is. And that should tell you exactly how bad this coffee is.”
He bellowed. “I reckon that’s about right. Well, goes to show you how much company I’ve had lately, since Mrs. Crawford passed on.”
“I heard about Mrs. Austin passing too, Stan,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He nodded. “Cancer,” he said. “No, I didn’t figure you would know, not after everything that had happened. Figured you would want to be as far away from this place as possible.”
“I did, for a while.”
“I heard about you joining the Navy. Cade kept track of you for a while there.”
“He never got in touch.”
Stan shook his head. “No, I don’t think he would. He couldn’t forgive himself for what happened.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said, surprised.
Why would he think it was?
“No,” he said. “But that wouldn’t stop Cade from accepting responsibility for it.”
“You know I never blamed him," I said. "Or you. Right?"
Stan was silent, sipping on his coffee. “It’s good of you to say that, June. Your sister, she was a good girl. You know we loved you both.”
I tried to swallow the lump forming in my throat. “She was. But she was also headstrong, reckless."
“If I'd have been looking out more, if I’d have made sure I knew what was going on -”
I held up my hand. “My sister was eighteen and wild. You had no way of knowing what would happen."
Stan shook his head. “It was an awful thing, June."
“Yes, it was.” I was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm. I didn't want to continue talking about this.
“After your sister ki - died,” he said. He started to say killed herself. No one ever used the actual word. They always said my sister died, like it was from natural causes. Or they lumped her death in with my parents, with their accident. The accident that my sister caused.
“We wanted to take you in, you know that,” he said.
“It was better for me, going to live with Margaret.” It was easier to forget, to be taken in by my aunt, to leave the past behind. I didn't want to be surrounded by memories.
“I just wanted you to know.” He cleared his throat. “So you’re back now, taking Mrs. Crawford’s old place?”
“Yep,” I said. “Going to open a bed and breakfast.”
“Now what’s a Navy doctor doing, coming back to West Bend, opening a bed and breakfast?”
What was I doing? That was a good question. “I needed some time off, I guess, after the deployments and things.”
Stan was quiet, studying his mug like it was filled with something interesting. “I thought the same thing would happen with Cade. Thought he would eventually find his way back home.”
I had to stifle the urge to pepper him with questions, to ask about the biker gang. I opened my mouth, willing the words to sound casual. "Connie said he went to California."
Stan peered off into the distance, somewhere behind me. He looked older, sadder, not the way I'd remembered him when I was a kid. Back then, he always looked like he stepped off the set of an old western. Tall, well-built from manual labor, with a chiseled face weathered by the elements. Now, the sadness gave him this air of vulnerability, made him look less like a cowboy and more like just another old man.
“He did. Went off to California a few years ago. Hasn’t kept in touch.”
I wanted to ask about the rest of the story, but I forced myself to say something casual. “That’s hard.”
Stan was silent for a while, then cleared his throat. “Now, you best not be a stranger, June. I used to help Mrs. Crawford out with the repairs on that old place after Mr. Crawford died. We kept it up pretty good, but there’s some stuff that needs fixing, I know it. I don’t want to hear about you hiring anyone to do it. Not when I’m here. It keeps me busy. I’m not pushing too many cattle anymore. Got too much time on my hands as it is.”
“That's kind of you, Stan." I took that as my cue to leave. Then, just as I stood, I heard the sound of motorcycles coming down the road. Looking up, I saw dust being kicked up on the horizon. “What is that?”
Stan rose, shielding his face and squinting. “Probably bikers passing through,” he said.
“I wouldn’t think you’d get much of that, back here on this road. It’s not really a main highway or anything.”
He grunted. “No, we don’t get much of that.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road, just stood there motionless as they drove into view, two bikes and a minivan. He set his coffee down. “Huh.”
The caravan pulled into Mr. Austin’s driveway.
“Were you expecting company?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said. A dark look crossed his face, and I suddenly felt like I’d stepped into some business that was not my concern.
I should leave, I thought.
“I should probably be going-” I started to say, but stopped, watching the two bikers dismount. Both wore helmets and leather jackets, and as one bent to pull off his helmet, I could see the words on the back - Inferno Motorcycle Club. My heart raced.
Connie had said he had joined a biker gang out in California.
Then the other guy pulled off his helmet. His hair was longer now, falling ragged in pieces around his face and down past his chin. A few days of stubble dotted his cheeks, giving him a rough look.
As if he needed to look any wilder; he looked plenty rugged in the dusty bike gear he wore, eyes bloodshot and dark circles underneath. Yeah, he definitely looked rough.
He looked up, making eye contact, and my heart stopped. I felt an immediate jolt of electricity pass through my body as his eyes met mine. He might be older now, but I’d know that face - those eyes - anywhere.
Cade.
Axe
I pulled off my helmet and walked up the gravel driveway toward the porch, steeling myself for the conversation I didn’t want to have with my father. It was funny how going through town might have calmed me, but as soon as we pulled into the drive of my childhood home, my heart was thump - thump - thumping in my chest like crazy.
The sprawling white ranch house looked the same as it always had when I was growing up, but the pastures by the house were overgrown. It wasn’t like my dad to let that go, and I wondered if he was okay. Guilt ripped through me at the thought that I'd left my dad here alone, minding the ranch by himself, while I'd been in California
running with the Inferno Motorcycle Club.
I felt guilty, but I was also afraid of my dad's reaction, of the disappointment that would inevitably color our relationship.
Five deployments with the Marines, three years of being the club's enforcer, and the thought of seeing my dad again was what struck fear into me.