point he shouldn’t be surprised.
“He’s fifteen,” his mom said. “I can’t control a fifteen-year-old. When you were that age I didn’t always know where you were.”
“Not for weeks at a time, Mom,” he said. “That’s not normal.”
“If he needed something he would come home.”
Why would he? He wouldn’t get what he needed from you.
West bit that part back, found it best not to say anything. But he ended the call quickly after that, and then he called the police department in the county his mom lived in and filed a report himself. Difficult to do since he didn’t have an accurate description of the kid, wasn’t sure of his exact birth date, and had no idea exactly where he was last seen or what he was wearing, because that would require his mother to have told him these things. And it would require her to know them.
It frustrated the hell out of him.
When he was finished he felt pissed off and figured it was as good a time as any to go and fix Pansy’s roof. He gathered his tools and walked toward her house.
The roof hung low on one side and he put his tools on the edge and then gripped the edge, hauling himself up.
He walked up to the ridgeline and looked out over the top of the trees, off toward the horizon. The sun poured down over the mountains. Mountains that went on forever in great, jagged layers. First green, then fading to blue until they nearly disappeared into the sky.
He still felt like he was a stranger in this land. An outsider asking permission to be here every time his boots hit the dirt.
Texas had gotten into his bones.
It was the first place he’d owned his own land. The place where he’d started to feel like he was his own man, and not tied to the drama his mama created around town. To the fact that he was a bastard with no daddy. A poor urchin with one pair of shoes and no winter coat.
He’d become a winner. He’d become rich.
He’d become a husband.
He’d become a convict. And when he’d come out of that prison Texas hadn’t been in his bones anymore.
He wasn’t sure there was anything but anger there. Nothing but an alien feeling of helplessness that he’d never experienced before, even when he was a kid. For the first time in his life he hadn’t known the path. Hadn’t known the answer.
And he’d realized that the only reason he’d ever thought he’d known was youth and arrogance. Not because he’d actually known. But because in spite of how little he’d had nothing had truly knocked him down. Nothing had shown him his efforts might not pan out after all.
He’d always had just enough glimmers of sunlight to hope.
The discovery that the world could be turned upside down into darkness, that he could be betrayed by the woman who shared his life, his bed, had shaken what he was.
Made him a stranger in the place that had become home.
Had made him aware that his own blood was a stranger to him. Had sent him across the country to Gold Valley, Oregon, to try and find something out about that blood.
So there he was. Fixing a roof. Starting a ranch.
Waiting to feel home.
He shook his head and stopped staring into the distance, and got to the task at hand.
Pretty soon the midday sun was destroying him. It wasn’t that hot, but being up there on the roof, in the direct sunlight was. He stripped his black T-shirt off and wiped his face with it, throwing it down onto the roof next to him as he continued to pound shingles.
And that was when Pansy’s little car started coming up the driveway.
It surprised him.
He hadn’t expected to have her home today. She got out of the car, and he looked down at her, watching as she pulled out a couple of bags and then started to head toward the front door of her cabin.
“Hey,” he called down. She jumped and he noticed her reflexively reaching to her side as she stumbled back. “Were you looking for your gun?” he asked.
“Don’t scare me like that,” she said. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Fixing your roof. How’s that for gratitude.”
She looked up, squinting into the light. “Why are you doing stealth repairs? Can’t you...give notice like a normal person?”
“I decided on a whim to fix your roof today. Because the weather is nice.” He put his hands on his hips