busy they all were, and they couldn't walk away from their lives to tend to hers. She looked so lost and scared that it broke my heart, so I quit a job I hadn't even begun, and I stayed.
"They only came to visit twice after that...both times at Christmas. By then, Mama didn't know who they were. She didn't remember her grandchildren, and she was loud and defiant. It scared them, so none of them ever came back until I called to tell them she'd died."
"Wait. What? But they helped you, didn't they?"
"No. And everything at the ranch began falling apart. Money got tight, and I sold everything that wasn't tied down to make ends meet. Mama set the kitchen on fire, then she began hoarding stuff. She wandered off onto the five hundred acres of prairie on our ranch and got herself lost."
John flinched. "How did you find her?"
"Buzzards. Daddy always said if there was flesh on the ground, there would be buzzards in the air. And there were."
John tightened his grip. "I cannot imagine living this...let alone living through it."
Gracie shrugged. "Thinking of it all together, it is a lot, but remember, it was just me and Mama, taking it one day at a time. Besides the day she stabbed me, the worst time for the both of us was losing air conditioning. It quit working four years before she died, and if you have ever spent a summer in West Texas, you would wonder how anything can live in that heat. But we did. And we would have gone hungry, but for my brother's ex-wife sending us her alimony every month."
John was holding onto both of Gracie's hands now, still locked onto that casual comment that had stopped his heart.
"Stabbed you? As in tried to kill you?"
Gracie nodded. "I never saw it coming, and it was certainly nothing she'd ever tried to do before. She liked to put up the clean flatware. I laid a handful on the table, then turned my back on her when, all of a sudden, she's screaming at me and stabbing me in the back and chest. I fought her, knocked her down, then called 9-1-1 before I passed out. I nearly bled to death.
"I stayed in the hospital a week. They put her in a psych ward for a month. When I got well enough, I brought her home because there were no safe places for people like that, and no money to put her in one of the fancy ones. And life went on. I have scars...all over my back, on my chest, and in my soul. She didn't mean to hurt me. She just didn't know who I was, and I guess she got scared."
"Why didn't you call your brother and sisters?"
And that's when he heard the rage in her voice.
"Because they'd already quit us, and I don't beg."
Within seconds John was on his feet, and she was in his arms. He felt her tense and try to pull away, so he started talking, his voice shaking—needing to get this said before she decked him.
"I'm hugging you because you need it. And because I need to fix the horror in your life, and I can't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry this happened to you, and I'm so sorry that happened to your mother. She would have been horrified, wouldn't she?"
It was that simple statement of understanding that shattered Gracie's resistance, and she melted against his chest, his shirt fisted in both her hands.
"Yes."
And so they stood there in silence. John with his chin resting on the crown of her head, and Gracie with her cheek up against his chest. Then he tipped her chin until she was looking at him.
"Okay. So, here's what you have to remember. You shared your pain, so from this day forward, it is no longer yours alone. I'm helping you carry it, and one of these days, I'll help you bury it, just like you buried your mother. Understood?"
Gracie's eyes welled. "Understood."
John wanted to kiss her so bad he ached, but all he did was wipe tears off her cheeks. Lord have mercy, she was breaking his heart.
"I'll call you tomorrow to hear all about your first day at work. I'm excited for you, Gracie. Tomorrow is the first day of a new path, and knowing you, you'll be running, not walking." Her smile was wobbly, but a smile nonetheless. "This was our first date, but I'm hoping for more."
She nodded.
"Count on it," she