Page 10 of All We Carry Home

I winced.

The man cursed, grabbed the tender place on his arm, and fumed to me, “But I’m not accepting clients like this.”

Taking care of this horse might not be as straightforward as I’d hoped.

The crowd around me looked on, but I didn’t let their judgmental gazes distract me. Phantom was a product of war, and the terror and anger in his eyes hit me to the core. I’d seen it in some of my men after a rough campaign.

I had to find the right person to pull Phantom from this dark, broken place.

Two

Eva

APRIL 22

BAKER, OREGON

I checked the drip on Gramps’s IV line. Again.

“Sit down, honey,” Gramps mumbled from his hospital bed, peeling one eye open and grinning despite the pain that morphine didn’t seem to touch. “You’re not on duty anymore.”

“Well, maybe I should be. They don’t run a very tight operation around here.” I crossed my arms and shot a glare down the long hallway of the hospital ward, which was vacant of all but a desk nurse at the entrance to the building. It was well past the morning shift change. “They’re thirty minutes late for your next dose.”

Gramps held up a large, wrinkled hand that was freckled and tanned from a life spent outdoors. I took his hand, squeezing it gently and smiling down at him with my most practiced bedside manner. Those hands had done so much in his life—carved the gates and barns of Birkstrom into works of art, sheltered animals and humans alike from the cold world.

“There are probably more pressing needs,” he said.

The underlying message was clear. Some people had a chance of walking out of this hospital. And then there was Bill Birkstrom. A respected and beloved institution in the town but, with advanced lung cancer, a few days or weeks from his passage into the great beyond.

My stomach clenched and my chest tightened at the thought. I wasn’t ready for this. I’d never be ready for this.

I’d returned from Virginia a few weeks ago after my fruitless attempt to buy Phantom at auction. I had hoped to pick up the life I’d led before, training horses, winning championships across the nation, furthering the sterling reputation of Birkstrom Ranch. Instead, I’d come home to find the stalls nearly empty, the buildings falling apart, and the property awash in debt.

And the man who’d adopted me at age six on the edge of death.

He’d hidden more than I could have imagined.

What if I hadn’t joined the nurse corps? Would I have caught his cancer symptoms sooner, forced him to see the doctor? What if I had been able to save him, this man who had saved me?

“Honey, wipe that worried frown away,” Gramps said, tugging my hands playfully. His thick, unkempt black hair framed his rectangular face, and wisps of gray hair dotted his bushy eyebrows. The eyes below were kind, perceptive, and creased from constant smiling. “You were telling me more about the auction when I nodded off. Restart that, would you?”

Those memories only sank the knife deeper in my heart.

“I can’t. I’m so disappointed I couldn’t bring Phantom home. The bloody shoulder mark, the perfect build. Such a fiery spirit.” Never mind the recollections of Captain Warren Hayes. Those were just for me.

“Perhaps it’s time to think about a different future for your life.” His tone shifted ever so slightly.

I pulled up the chair beside his bed and sat down. “What do you mean?”

“Victor Merrick has been trying to buy the ranch for some time now.” His eyes, dark brown and full of sorrow, fell to his lap. “With how much I owe, it might not be long before the bank takes it anyway.”

“Gramps.” The Merricks were the proverbial Hatfields if the Birkstroms were the McCoys. And I’d allow no future where they took over Gramps’s ranch. “Quit saying such things.”

“I don’t want you burdened with the mess I’ve left. If I hadn’t been so sick these past few years—” He broke into a wheezing cough. I stood to place the oxygen tent mask over his nose and mouth and patted his shoulder reassuringly. Once the fit subsided, he nodded his thanks. “I’ve left you the ranch,” he said with a crackling, dejected voice. “I trust you to do what you think is best with it all. There’s nothing much here in Baker for you anyway. Travel the world and find the love of your life.”

Pain shot through my body again, and I busied my hands by refolding some of the clean linens at the table next to his bed. “I did travel the world. I love being here, at the ranch. I love the sunrises over Beacon’s Bluff and the memories of all the horses we’ve saved.”

“You’ll be alone.” He coughed once. “It means nothing without family by your side. Without love.”