Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,77

plots of land each surrounded by low, vertical, white fences with barns in the distance. Cattle meander along, not bothering to look up at us. As we make another left, I begin to orient myself. I know this land. I know where we are. I turn my head and see Paragon Ranch just up over the rise. Nothing but land behind the metal gate that arches over the one road in.

When I was in school we all got to take a field trip to the Paragon Ranch. As we walked through the well-tended landscape, the stables, and into the main ring where they train the horses, I remember thinking how beautiful it all was. Felix Coburn sitting tall on the most gorgeous horse I’d ever seen, his Stetson bigger than all outdoors. Arabella Coburn, small, but fierce, controlling those horses (and the cowboys) as she leaned against the bars of the ring. I looked up to her. She was everything my mother wasn’t. Strong. Loyal. Proud. People respected her. Feared her.

When I saw her again, I remember the look on her face after Everett asked if he could take me to the Saturday dance. She was at the school and I remember thinking that if I could just talk to her she’d like me. I walked up to her, and the teacher she was speaking to called me by name. As Everett came up behind me, she snatched him close, as if to protect him from infection. They left quickly. The hallway emptied out. I was eleven. I was understandably crushed.

I know what she did was wrong. I was an eleven-year-old kid and she was an adult. She was obviously misguided. But knowing it and acting on it are two very different things. Leaving North Star allowed me to live in a vacuum. I could create endless monologues about Arabella Coburn and tell an imaginary Laurel exactly what I thought of her as I showered and got ready for a day in some faceless kitchen in some new city. I could yell into the night sky that Felix didn’t know me and how dare he tell Everett I’d ruin him. It was my own private bubble where I could kick and scream and these ghosts couldn’t hurt me. They existed in an abstract snow globe that would collect dust on the sill until I was ready to shake ’em up again.

But now that I’m back, I realize how vulnerable I feel. How that eleven-year-old kid is never far away. From me or Merry Carole.

And on we run.

This entire plateau belongs to Paragon. I look from the metal gate to over the rolling hills. The view is spectacular. The wheat-colored landscape stretches on forever. As I stare down the main road, I see Everett ever so slowly ambling along as the mist crawls and hovers over the very hills his family owns. I’d recognize him anywhere. His cowboy hat sits low as he walks along with—I crane my neck. It’s Arrow, Everett’s dog.

When Everett was eighteen his family’s chocolate Labrador had a litter of puppies. Arrow was the runt. Everett took to him immediately. He always did have a habit of choosing the underdog. They became inseparable. When Everett drove through town in that old truck of his, Arrow was always right up in the front seat, sitting tall with his face out the window trying to catch the wind. When we shipped off to college, Arrow had to stay with the Coburns . . . and he was a nightmare. All heart and no brains. He spent his days attacking drapes and getting himself locked in closets, eating kitty litter, and making himself sick when he lapped up a bottle of the best bourbon Felix had mistakenly left on the counter. Everett always defended that dog. When he finally came home after college, he and Arrow took up right where they’d left off.

“Hold up a sec?” I wheeze to Cal. I stop and clutch my side.

“You all right?” Cal asks, beeping off his stopwatch.

“Yeah, just a stitch,” I say. Cal nods and runs over to the long, white, vertical fence. He begins doing push-ups.

I stare at the slowly ambling pair. Arrow must be thirteen or fourteen by now. He looks frail. I watch as Everett slows his pace, waiting for the now barrel-bodied dog to catch up. I can hear Everett talking to the dog; I can’t make out any words from as far away as I am, but the