Hero for the Holidays (Four Corners Ranch #9)

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“I THINK WE should have a birthday party for Lila.”

“Her birthday isn’t until May. Also, Thanksgiving is in two weeks.”

Fia sighed and crunched her phone between her shoulder and ear as she straightened up a display in the farm store, keeping one eye out the window on Lila, who was standing in a group of chickens with a look of delight on her face. “I know. But she turned thirteen in foster care, and I just think that we need to make sure that something special happens to mark that. She needs a real birthday party. With her family.”

Landry made a musing sound on the other end of the phone. It was weird how much she talked to him now. They had talked more in the last few weeks than they ever had. In all honesty, their teenage relationship had not been based on conversation. It had been hormones and feelings. A lot of feelings. But feelings all the same.

“Yeah. That sounds like a good idea. Who all would we want to invite?”

“Well, your family and mine, obviously. I wonder if we should try to invite some of the kids that go to the school? Since eventually we want to integrate her there. When she’s ready.”

“Yeah. That is true. Is there anything more awkward than being a teenager and being forced to interact with teenagers you don’t know?”

Fia laughed. “Okay. Granted. Maybe you can find out from Daniel if there are one or two people he might think are good to invite for her. He knows her pretty well now.”

“Yeah. They get along great. He loves taking on that older cousin role.”

“Perfect,” said Fia. “Then he can play older cousin and we can figure out a couple of people to invite.”

The rumor mill had definitely done its job on Four Corners. Word had spread about her and Landry’s child. And Fia had intentionally not taken a couple of calls from her mother. She was certain that by now one of her sisters had talked to her mom. But she just didn’t have it in her.

They’d come to an okay place. Not a place of talking all that often or anything, but Fia had visited her mother in Hawaii a couple of times since she’d moved there. There was no good reason to turn down a trip to Hawaii. Not even childhood trauma.

But they didn’t talk about those dark years when her mom’s marriage had been crumbling and Fia had been doing her best to hold things together while falling apart.

She’d never been able to figure out quite why she’d made her mother so angry. She probably never would. That was okay. She didn’t need to.

She didn’t need to rehash the past any more than she already had to right now.

“Are your parents ever going to come back?”

He asked that as if he could read her mind. That was the strange thing about Landry. They really hadn’t done a good job of communicating when they were younger. She wasn’t sure they did a great job of it now. But he seemed to know what she was feeling and thinking almost as often as she did. Maybe that was why it had felt like such a betrayal when he hadn’t agreed with her then. On the most important thing. The most essential thing.

She swallowed. “I doubt it. I think we’re just going to have to accept that Lila doesn’t have functional grandparents. Though, it sounds like she didn’t before either. Jack and Melissa were isolated from their family. I don’t know why. They didn’t say. I just know that she didn’t have other relatives.”

“Yeah,” he said. “At least we have... Well, all of us.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Obviously I’ll make the cake. And we can handle a few other aspects of the food.”

“We’ve got dinner,” said Landry. “It’ll be great. A big teenage birthday party. Hell, it’s kind of a first birthday party for us.”

Fia was suddenly gripped by regret. Anguish. His words forced her to imagine a chubby one-year-old sitting in front of the cake with a single candle. Her grip slipped on the phone.

“Fia?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“I wish... I wish we had pictures of her. I’m sure they’re...somewhere. But what happened to all of her things? What happened to everything she had to give up when she went into care?”

“I can try to find out. But I have a feeling if it was easily accessed her caseworker would have said.” He sighed and Fia felt it across the distance. “I have a feeling finding it would be somewhat miraculous.”

“Well,” she said. “I guess we’re in the middle of something some people might call a miracle. You know, centered around tragedy and regret.”

His voice lowered. “Do you have regret, Fia?”

“Don’t you?” She was doing it. Turning it back around to him. She did that. She made it about what kind of father he would’ve been. She avoided thinking about what kind of mother she might have been.

“Of course,” he said. “I regret the way that I handled things with you. How can I not? I let myself get steeped in regret this whole time. But I ignored too many things. I ignored what my part in all of this could have been, should have been. Most of all, I didn’t take care of you.”

It was such a simple, stark statement. And she felt nearly undone by it.

It was what she’d wanted. To have Landry take care of her. Because of all the people in her life, she had loved him the most. She knew not to count on her parents. They had always been more interested in themselves than in their own children. But Landry had been hers . And she had needed him. She had clung to him like she did because she’d needed him. And then when she’d needed him most he’d become her enemy.

“Fia?”

“I’m just thinking. Sorry. I did need you. That was the worst part, Landry. Well, it wasn’t the worst part. But of some of it. When I was sleeping at Jack and Melissa’s in the room that was going to become Lila’s, I just wished that I could call you. I just wished that you would be there to hold me. I didn’t wish that I had my father. I didn’t wish I had my mother. I just wanted you.”

She was grateful for the distance they had. For the fact that he was on the phone, and Lila was outside safely. The fact that her store was empty. Because her heart felt like it was crumbling.

Because she loved that child outside, but still felt some distance. Some hesitance. Because she was a whole tangle of memories she wished she had, and memory she didn’t want.

Because the man on the other end of the phone had been her sworn enemy for the past thirteen years, but was also the only person who had shared this with her in any capacity. Because in many ways he still felt like the closest person to her, even when he had felt like the most distant.

Because she felt justified in the decision that she had made to give Lila up. But she felt sad.

And with Lila here she couldn’t defer the sadness.

“I’m here now,” he said. “It’s not going to erase the last thirteen years, but it’s something. I hope.”

She thought of all the life she’d lived since she’d taken that pregnancy test. She’d had to grow up, stand firm. To love sacrificially. She’d gone to stay with Jack and Melissa, where she’d experienced a kind of stability she’d never imagined before. A stability and care she’d brought back to her sisters, and had carried forward in the way she cared for them.

She’d found strength she hadn’t known she’d ever possessed, which had helped her when it came to forming the Four Corners collective, doing battle with the men when necessary to make sure that Sullivan’s Point got what it needed to survive and thrive.

She’d started the baking business. Planted seeds, grown gardens. Opened a store.

She’d given her daughter up, and while she’d known it had been best for Lila, she’d also done what she could to make it matter in her own life too.

“The hardest truth is...is we don’t need to erase the last thirteen years,” she said. “We’ve done a lot. A lot of work on our ranches. A lot of work on ourselves. Lila was out there having a whole life. It wasn’t nothing .”

There was silence between them for a long moment.

“No,” he said, his voice heavy. “It wasn’t nothing.”

It just didn’t have you.

She thought that while looking at Lila. She thought it with Landry’s breath in her ear on the phone. She wasn’t sure which one of them it applied to more. But then half the time she still couldn’t figure out the nature of her feelings for Landry.

“Saturday night. Let’s do the party. I’ll make sure that all my family is available, but who are we kidding? None of us do anything off the ranch.”

“Untrue. Your brothers like to go out to Smokey’s.”

“That is true. I just don’t care.”

She was pondering yet again the conversation they’d had in the car. About the way that he didn’t enjoy hooking up. She wondered if he was just built that way. Or if it did have something to do with her.

She didn’t ask.

“Okay. Well, I will make some plans. What presents should we get her?”

“I have an idea. But don’t get mad at me.”

“Why would I get mad at you?”

“Because you’re going to accuse me of stealing your thunder.”

“I will not,” Fia said.

“I thought I would give her a horse. Back at CPS I mentioned that we had horses and she lit up, and she really likes coming out with me on the ranch and riding,” Landry said.

“Okay. That isn’t fair. My name has to go on the tag for that.”

He laughed. “I think that can be arranged. And then I think maybe we need to do a family trail ride.”

The word settled strangely in her chest. A family trail ride. He meant her. He meant him. He meant Lila.

Lila made them family. Maybe that wouldn’t be true for everybody, but it was for them. For the situation. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information. With that feeling.

“Why don’t you come by later? You know, when it’s time for you to drop Lila off. And then we can choose a horse together.”

“From your horses?”

“Actually, I was thinking I might call Gus. I know he’s got some great, gentle animals. I know he needs a lot of them for the equine facility, but I heard him saying something about taking on some new rescues.”

“I can call my sister about it. You know, since he’s my brother-in-law.”

Landry laughed. “Yeah. I guess he is. I can’t get over that one.”

“Why not?”

“Okay, I think at this point everybody knows we would be the most unlikely couple on Four Corners. But I think Gus and your sister would’ve been a close second.”

Fia frowned. “Because of their age difference?”

“That, and... The everything about Gus.”

“Yeah. I would’ve agreed with that. But it’s amazing how good they are for each other. He just loves her. Actually, that’s true of all my sisters’ men. Nothing could be more of a relief to me.”

“You really had to take care of them, didn’t you?”

“Yes. When everything imploded it was... We were adults when our mom left, but she had checked out way before that. And once Dad left somebody had to see to the running of the ranch. He’d left so much baggage. And so many enemies. He’s not as widely loathed as your father, but he did some shady, underhanded dealings. Levi Granger hated my family for a reason. And thankfully, my sister sorted that out by falling in love with him, but yeah. There was just a lot. It was a lot to take on when I did. I was never more grateful that I’d made the choice to give Lila up than during all of that. I couldn’t imagine trying to be a mother to her while I was trying to mother my sisters and get everything in order. Start up the collective with Sawyer, Denver, Daughtry and Gus.”

“I’m not the oldest, Fia. So the responsibility, all of that, it was never going to fall to me. I’m the youngest. I think there are some difficult things in that. The ways in which the people around you don’t include you in decision-making. We were the same age, hell, I’m a little older than you, but I wasn’t included in the making of Four Corners as it is now because everybody above me had more decision-making power in our family. I didn’t have the responsibilities that you did. That’s not an excuse. But maybe it’s part of why to me things always seemed a little bit simpler.” He blew out a breath. “My life was simpler. People don’t like admitting that. Hell, I don’t like admitting it. Because of course you feel like you work hard. Like you’re doing everything you can. To look over and see that somebody else is dealing with more, and with more grace than you manage on a given day is difficult.”

She closed her eyes. “Thanks. You are right, though. These years haven’t been nothing.”

“No. And you know what’s even better? The next years won’t be either.”

She looked out the window at Lila again, who was now dancing around the chickens looking happier than Fia had ever seen her.

“No. They won’t be.”