Page 5 of The Little Things
He took the dusty, worn cowboy hat off his head and set it on his lap, letting out a sigh as he looked out across the land. “Nah. Believe it or not, she’s resigned to lettin’ you have your time. Knows you need to get your head on straight on your own. But you know your mama. She only has so much patience, so if I were you, I wouldn’t take too long.”
I let out a short, hollow chuckle as the screws in my chest twisted tighter. “So I’m guessin’ everyone knows.”
I felt my grandpa’s gaze on me but couldn’t bring myself to turn and meet it. “It’s a small town, son. You know that. Would’ve found out sooner or later, was only a matter of time.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. I’d lived in Hope Valley most of my life, but until Rory pulled me from the nightmare of a foster home I’d been living in when I met her, I’d only been an outsider looking in. She had brought me into the fabric of this town, making me a part of something bigger than the small, closed-off world I’d been forced to live in. When she and Cord officially adopted me after they’d married, she’d stitched me in even tighter. I was officially a part of this place, so I knew exactly how it worked, and how thorough the grapevine was.
“I guess I should count myself lucky it took a whole day for word to spread.”
Pop snorted, giving his head a shake. “Cord got the phone call not ten minutes after Captain Walker’s truck pulled away from the barn. We’ve just been lettin’ you process in your own way.” He jerked his chin in the direction of my hand. “Which it would appear was a little more hazardous than any of us was expectin’.”
I heaved out a weary sigh removing my own cowboy hat and resting it on the ground beside my cocked knee as I raked my uninjured hand through my hair. “I don’t know why this is getting to me the way it is. I should be over it.”
His hand came down on my shoulder, my grandpa’s grip still firm and strong as he gave me a jostle. “There’s no gettin’ over a nightmare like that, Zach. You learn to deal. Learn to heal. Learn to appreciate the good that comes along. But you don’t get over it. Best you can do is keep pushin’ forward. That’s what you did.”
I shook my head. My grandfather was the wisest man I’d ever known, but in that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was seeing something in me that wasn’t actually there. “I don’t know, Pop. I think maybe I just buried my head in the sand and chose to forget. It explains why hearin’ that they got out would hit me so damn hard.”
As long as they were locked up, it was easy to forget they existed, but that was what today’s visit had been about.
I’d spent a good portion of my childhood in the foster care system, being bounced from one place to another. Foster houses, group homes, you name it. None of them were five-star luxury, that was for damn sure, but the last house I’d been in had been the worst. When Pop had referred to it as a nightmare, he’d been putting it mildly. The Caswell home was a literal hell on earth, and I and the other kids who had been stuck there with me had spent each and every day in torment. Twenty-three years later and I could still remember the state of the house I’d lived in, could still smell the stench of filth and rot and decay. I could still remember the abuse. Being locked in a dark room for days on end, forced to sit in our own mess because we weren’t allowed a toilet. Being beaten and starved to the point of desperation. It was the fear of starving to death that led me to my mom, Rory.
I used to dig through the dumpster behind her family’s bar, the Tap Room, searching for food. There had been one time I was so frail, so weak with hunger and dehydration, that after I managed to climb into the dumpster, it had taken hours for me to find the strength to pull myself back out. I’d eat what I could, only enough to hold me over, and take the rest of it back to the other kids trapped in that hell hole with me.
When I snuck out of the Caswell’s house one night to go dumpster diving for another meal, I found that Rory had installed a padlock, thinking raccoons were getting in and making a mess. The panic that had gripped my chest at the sight of that lock nearly took me to my knees. I didn’t know what the hell to do if I couldn’t get in there to get food. The Caswells had locked up the fridge and pantry, refusing to feed us as punishment for our sins. I’d only been twelve at the time, one of the oldest kids in the house, so finding a job so I could make money was impossible.
I’d molded that panic into rage as I grabbed up the biggest rock I could find and threw it right through the window of her bar. When I took off running, I remember being scared half to death of what would happen if the big man she’d been inside with caught me. And once he did, I remember thinking that my life was over. I never could have imagined that instead, it would officially start that night.
One look at me and Rory knew something was wrong. Cord, the man who’d raced after me and brought me back to face the consequences of my destructive actions, saw it too. He’d been a foster kid himself and knew all the signs.
That night had changed the entire course of my life. Rory took me home with her, and I never left. From that moment forward, I was hers. It had taken a while for her and Cord to bust through the thick granite walls I’d built around myself, but they never gave up trying.
They loved me and weren’t afraid to show it, pouring that love on me until I had no choice but to fall in love right back. They married, adopted me as their own, then went about giving me a little sister.
For me, life started at twelve, and, Christ, it had been a good life. I had the best parents. The best grandparents. Lennix, my little sister, could be a pain in my ass most days, but I wouldn’t trade her in for all the world. I loved my job, my home. My town.
So when Hayes Walker, one of the detectives who had worked my case all those years ago and was now the captain of the department, showed up on the ranch today to tell me that Doreen and Charles Caswell had been paroled and were getting out of prison, it had been a blow I still hadn’t quite recovered from.
“You truly believe that, you’ve let them win,” my grandfather said in the hard, no-nonsense tone he had used throughout the years when the message he was trying to get across was an important one. “You let them poison everything that’s been given to you since you came into our lives and everything you built for yourself. Don’t let them have that power over you, Zach. Your head hasn’t been buried in the sand. You chose to live instead of giving them more than they’d already stolen from you.”
Those screws that had been steadily wrenching tighter and tighter since the visit from Hayes began to twist in the opposite direction at his declaration, loosening their hold enough for me to pull in the first full breath I’d managed in hours.
“You’re right.”
He leaned over, bumping his shoulder into mine. “Damn straight. Always am. Despite what your grandma and mom might say.”
I let out a laugh, that peace I’d been struggling to latch onto finally filling me up and causing my chest to expand. As I looked at everything before me, I was able to see it all with the appreciation I usually felt.
This ranch had been my safe haven from the moment Rory brought me here twenty-three years ago. Hence the name, Safe Haven Ranch. For generations it had simply been Hightower Ranch, but when my grandparents officially handed it over to me, they’d told me to rename it. I was family, blood or not, but I wasn’t a Hightower. I was a Paulson, having taken Cord’s last name after he and Rory married and the adoption was finalized. My grandparents wanted me to carry on the family legacy, but they’d also wanted me to give it a name that meant something. I’d wracked my brain for weeks, trying to find something that fit this place perfectly, each name I came up with sorely lacking. Until I landed on Safe Haven. Because that’s what this place was.
And as much as I hated knowing those monsters were out there somewhere, free to walk the streets and breath fresh air, Pop was right. I’d be damned if I let them take more from me than they already had.
“Ah, I see you finally managed to work it out and get yourself back to center. Knew you’d get there. You always do.” The pride in his tone eased my heart that had been aching all damn day.
“Mom’ll be relieved it didn’t take me too long.”
Pop chuckled. “She sure will. Because I was lyin’. She did send me out here. Told me I had until she got back to town in the mornin’ to screw her boy’s head back on straight or she’d be doin’ it her damn self.”
I smiled, because that sounded more like Rory than her giving me time and space. “Wait. Where’d she go?”