Mom got out of the car and glanced nervously at the front door of the house. She stretched out her hands, made a fist, and stretched out her hands again while looking around the neighborhood as though checking to see if anyone was watching them. She’d been eager to confront Mae yesterday, but today she had been in no hurry to return, coming up with all kinds of tasks and errands to do before coming here. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was stalling. It was already three o’clock and the office was only open until five. “Everything okay, Mom?”

  She looked from the house to him and pulled her eyebrows together. “Of course I’m okay,” she snapped.

  “You just seem a little . . . never mind.”

  He turned toward the front of the house, his eagerness contrasting with Mom’s hesitation. Something was going to happen, finally! They would get orders or papers or something drawn up so that he wasn’t at Mae’s mercy anymore. He turned his head and blew a raspberry on Sienna’s freckled cheek. She giggled and tried to pull away. He spun around with her in his arms, her two little pigtails flying, and then blew another raspberry on her cheek. After today I will have a chance to make things different, he thought as her giggles filled him from top to bottom.

  He was standing on the porch before Mom had reached the bottom step. He turned to look at her but bit his tongue to keep from asking again if everything was okay. Seeing Mae’s life through Mom’s eyes had showed Mark the depth of the ugliness that Sienna was subjected to every day. Would still be subjected to, but specific visitation rights would solidify his role as Sienna’s dad. If Mae were arrested, he would for sure be contacted. If the neglect continued or if he ever found out that Mae had given their child vodka again, he would have something more than just a birth certificate to use in asserting his rights.

  Mom finally joined him on the porch and made a “go ahead” motion with her hands and eyebrows as though he were the one taking his time. He knocked on the door and braced himself as he always did. He never knew what to expect from the other side of that door.

  The door opened, and David filled the door frame. Mark didn’t let himself shrink back even though he had really hoped David wouldn’t be here.

  “We’re here to see Mae,” Mark said, glad his voice sounded stronger today than it had yesterday. It was a little pathetic that it was because his mom was here, but whatever.

  “She’s not here.”

  Mark felt his face tingle. “She said she would come with us to the Department of Justice today, to start working on official visitation and stuff.” He huffed out a breath and cursed in his mind. Mae always found a way to take the upper hand. Crap.

  David pulled his eyebrows together. “She said she was going to go with you?”

  Mark lifted his chin. “Yes, she said we could take Sienna last night and then come back today so we can go to the offices.” He turned to his mother. “Mom, what exactly did she say?”

  “Just that. She, uh, didn’t want Sienna last night, but she said she would go with us today.”

  David was looking between the two of them. “So, when you left last night she was okay?”

  “Well, she was high or drunk, I guess,” Mark said in another show of bravery. Was David hiding her? “But that’s kind of Mae’s standard these days, right?”

  David leaned against the door frame, as though he were feeling casual even though the tension was unchanged. He crossed his thick arms across his chest. “Ya know, one thing about Mae is, she knows her limits. All these years she’s never OD’d ’cause she knows how much is too much. Last night she managed to take two days’ worth of heroin—I wouldn’t guess she could even stay conscious long enough after half that dose to take another one.”

  “She was blitzed when we got here,” Mom said defensively. “You give her too much credit.”

  David’s eyes seemed to zero in on Mom. “Do I?”

  She returned his gaze with the same hardness. Seconds ticked by, and a car drove past on the street. Mark boosted Sienna farther up his hip. She was leaning against his shoulder, silent and tense. It was cold, but he wasn’t about to ask David if they could go inside.

  “So, what, she’s too trashed to come with us today, David?” Mark asked, his frustration growing. “Is that what you’re saying?” Crap. What if Mae found a way to keep this court stuff from happening until Mom had to leave? Mom had sounded so sure last night when she’d explained the conversation she and Mae had had after he went out to the car. He should have known Mae wouldn’t keep her word. His neck started feeling hot, and his relief at having a solution on hand began to fade.

  “Like I told you,” David said in reply to Mark but with his eyes on Mom, “she’s not here.”

  “When did you last see her?” Mom asked.

  “Here’s the thing.” David’s voice was low and menacing, and Mark swallowed. If this man wanted to, he could brush all three of them off the porch with one sweep of his beefy arm. Sienna snuggled in even closer. “Mae’s gone, and I’ve got a pretty good feeling she’s not coming back. I think you know why.”

  Mark was startled by the accusation, and then froze as two pink spots appeared on Mom’s cheeks.

  David continued. “I spent the day getting things together here.” He nodded toward the house behind him, and Mark looked inside for the first time. The part of the living room he could see from here was . . . tidy. He could smell Pine-Sol. “I’ve been waiting for you guys to come so that I could see what you knew, but I need to call the police and file a missing person’s report pretty soon. It would be better for all of us if our stories were straight. I don’t want any trouble, and I’m betting you don’t either.”

  “What?” Mark asked sharply. Sienna whimpered, and Mark automatically kissed her on the forehead and shifted her to his other hip. His feet were starting to tingle from the cold.

  “That would be a good idea,” Mom said.

  Mark’s head swiveled to look at her but words failed him. What was she talking about?

  David nodded. “Mae and I had a fight about her drug use last night before I went to work, you guys arrived to pick up Sienna for an overnight visit just as I was leaving. When I got home, Mae was gone. I thought maybe she was with you guys working things out with the custody stuff.” He included Mark with a glance. “She was wearing a black sweater dress and house slippers—not even a coat, which was weird. I went to sleep like I always do after working the night shift and expected her to be there when I woke up, but she wasn’t. Now you guys have come back, so I know she’s not with you and realize that I need to call the police.”

  Mark stared at David, and his heart raced. Why was he saying all of this?

  “We talked to her after you left last night,” Mom said, picking up the narrative. “We argued a little bit about us taking Sienna for the night, but she finally agreed. She was obviously high and—”

  “No, she wasn’t,” David interrupted. “She’d been clean for a few weeks because I told her she couldn’t stay here if she wasn’t—my girls come every other weekend. So, yeah, maybe she’d been drinking before you came, but then she must have left to get a hit after arguing with me and sending Sienna with you guys. She hasn’t been doing any drugs here, not in my house. The cops might want to search the house, and I’m gonna let them do it ’cause they won’t find anything. Do you understand what I’m saying? They won’t find anything that might interfere with me and my family. Mae and I had a fight yesterday afternoon because I told her that things weren’t working out and I wanted to reconcile with my wife—I have a family, after all. She was upset when I left for work, but I expected her to calm down so we could talk things over this morning.”

  Mom nodded slowly. “You’re right, she’d been drinking when we got here, but she was upset and agitated, probably from the fight you two’d had.”

  “Mom, what the hell are you—” Mom grabbed Mark’s hand and held it tight enough that he jumped and shut up. She kept her eyes on David while her grip remained as tight as a vise.

  “After you left, she told us we couldn’t take Sienna, but then I sent Mark and the baby out to the car so I could talk to her a bit. She calmed down some and finally said we could take Sienna for the night and that today we would start work on the custody stuff. I was surprised that she gave in so easily but not about to argue. Then she said we had to go because she had someone to see.” She paused, raising an eyebrow as though seeking approval.

  David nodded.

  Mom nodded too, let out a shaky breath, and continued. “Mark’s name is on the birth certificate, and he is fully capable and willing to take responsibility for Sienna. We’ll be fighting for that as things move forward.”

  Birth certificate? Responsibility? Sticky dread was beginning to settle into Mark’s stomach. Mom and David were doing exactly what David had suggested, getting their stories straight. They would do that only if they both had something to hide and something to protect.

  “That works,” David said easily. “Sienna’s all yours, and it sounds like our stories match up pretty well. So long as I don’t get charged with nothin’, I’m good to stick with it and move on with my life. Know what I mean?” He pushed himself away from the door frame and took hold of the knob. “Sienna should stay with you guys while things get sorted out. I imagine the police will be contacting you for your side of the story. I’ll be telling them you came by tonight and we all talked. It won’t surprise them that we both told the other person our side of things.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Mom said. “You have Mark’s number to give the police?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then what?” Mom asked. “What about, uh, Mae?”

  “Give it a few days. Junkies turn up in a bad way all the time—they get dumped, ya see, after partying too hard. The folks they’re with don’t want to take the heat so they get rid of the body.” He looked at Mark, then at Sienna in a way that made Mark pull her closer and rub her back. David’s light blue eyes came back to Mark’s. “I think it’ll all turn out okay in the end. Live and learn and all that, ya know.”

  He shut the door. Mark blinked and then turned his head slowly to look at Mom. “What was that?”

  “Let’s get that baby out of the cold.” Mom turned around, going down the steps toward the car. Mark followed her. She let herself into the passenger side while Mark buckled Sienna into her car seat. He slid into the driver’s seat and started the car but didn’t shift into drive. He rested his hands on the steering wheel, took a breath, and stared straight ahead. “What happened after I took Sienna to the car last night?”

  Mom took a breath of her own, then let it out. She swallowed and cleared her throat. “You love that baby, Mark?”

  “Yes,” he said, his hands tightening on the steering wheel as he braced himself.

  “You’d do anything for her, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything?”

  He turned to look at her and was surprised to see tears in her eyes. He’d never, not once in his life, seen his mother cry.

  “I’d do anything,” he said.

  “Don’t forget that,” she said, her voice catching. She laid her shaking hands in her lap. A tear rolled down her cheek. “You would do anything for that child, and I know this because I would do anything for mine.”

  38

  Sienna

  June

  I stand on the front porch of the ranch house, watching Dad through the front window as he moves around the kitchen—he hasn’t seen me. The buzz of insects and lowing of the herd are like music on the summer breeze around me, and I wish I could stay for a little while. I’ve been standing here long enough to watch Dad rinse his plate, wipe down the counters, and pull a beer out of the fridge—I better understand now why he never has more than one. He looks stronger now that he’s working the ranch more, but tired. Lonely. It’s been two months since that phone call when he told me what he knew and said how sorry he was over and over again until we were both crying. We have not spoken since. We’ve texted about ranch stuff—Where did I put the seat cover for the tractor? Do I know where the pin for the trailer hitch is?—but I told him I needed time and he has given me that. My dad has always done everything he could to help me—whatever it takes. I haven’t forgiven him for that yet.

  I am on my way to Chicago, where I’ll be going through the storage unit for real this time. I need to bring my stuff back to Cheyenne, where some of it will go into another storage unit half a mile from my apartment I’ve been living bare-bones in for the last six weeks. My life in Chicago is over. My life on the ranch is . . . on hold. My new life in Cheyenne is just getting started. I had texted Dad this morning to see if I could stop on my way through town and say hi as though I’m a distant cousin who doesn’t get this way very often. He was so excited to have me come that I almost changed my mind. Not because I don’t want to be here but because I have missed him so much. It scares me to think we might try to go back to who we were. That can’t happen, but I am ready to have him in my life again. One step at a time.

  Dad disappears from view, probably heading into his office, where I couldn’t find my mother. He’s kept up his blog—I read every post—and he hired one of Uncle Rich’s grandsons to help out for the summer. Beck said he sent a dozen yearlings to a feed lot to get quick money. I’m thinking about going to London after all or a folk-art school in the hill country of North Carolina where I can “major” in leatherwork. It’s a whimsical idea, but I’ve worked out the numbers a dozen times all the same. An unexpected side effect of learning that the mother I idolized never existed is that I no longer feel as if I need to be her. Or Beck. Or the Sienna I thought was the only Sienna for me to become. I am just . . . me, and I’m okay with that for the first time in a really long time.

  I let myself in through the front door of the house. “Hello?”

  “CC,” Dad calls from the study, his feet following his voice in my direction. His face lights up when he sees me. I wonder if David’s other daughters have ever seen the kind of warmth I have taken for granted all my life. I haven’t talked to David since I fell off his porch, and I’m not sure I ever will. I’ve learned enough from Tristin, my half sister, to know that he’s not someone I want to know. Dad crosses the space between us but then stops before hugging me, insecurity entering his expression. I don’t initiate a hug either, but I smile at him and feel those still-hard places soften as I look into his blue-blue eyes.

  “You look good, CC.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “So do you.”

  He grins proudly. “I’m doing more around the ranch and started going to the gym with Rod and the guys a few times a week. Stopped eating red meat too.”

  I smile at the irony of a cattle rancher who doesn’t eat beef. We continue standing there, looking at each other with everything between us. I wonder if he knows he’s not my biological father, but I’ve decided that I will never ask—the day I realized that was a big step for me. He lied to me as a form of protecting me. I am doing the same thing for him, and that helps me better understand what he’s done.

  He half turns toward the kitchen, graying eyebrows lifted and thumb pointing over his shoulder. “Do you want me to make you some eggs?”

  I laugh because it’s such a Dad thing to say. He smiles again, and everything feels a little more . . . right. Good. Normal. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

  “Can we sit?” Dad asks, waving toward the living room where I watched 60 Minutes on Sundays and put together countless puzzles with Grandma Dee, who isn’t really my grandmother and engaged her friend to write letters because she thought that would make things better for me. Or maybe the fact that it made things better for her was a bigger factor. I wonder if her guilt was what stood between us all those years. I wonder if every time she looked at me, she saw my mother. Maybe it could have been different between us if I’d known the truth, but maybe it would have been worse. I’m attending a breast cancer support group, and one of the women said, “I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but I think God can help us find purpose in the struggles.” I’ve gone to her church a few times, and I like the way they talk about God. It’s not Grandma Dee’s church. It’s not Beck’s church either. But it might be mine, and it’s helping me to forgive and look ahead and decide what I want to choose for myself.

  I sit on the couch and Dad sits next to me. “How are you doing? How are the treatments going?”

  “I’ve had the first two rounds of radiation. It makes me sick for a couple of days afterward, but overall I’m feeling pretty good. Two more rounds and then I’m done with that.” No chemo, so I get to keep my hair.

  “Radiation was worse than chemo for me,” he says sympathetically, shaking his head.

  I tell him about my part-time job at a sporting goods store and my tiny apartment that Tyson is paying for because working part-time doesn’t pay the rent—Ty got a raise when he extended his contract and I’ve chosen not to feel like a leech for accepting his generosity. I’ve never lived alone before. I had asked Dad to set out my leatherwork kit—I need something to do with my hands when I’m home in the evenings all by myself. That same lady from my support group talks about how we are all creators and that making things—babies, food, crafts—puts us in touch with God. It’s a little hippy-dippy, but I like it all the same. She taught me how to knit but all I’ve made are scarves so far. I’m missing my leathercraft.

  “And where are things with Tyson?” Dad asks.

  “Better.” We talk on the phone at the end of his day and the start of mine a few times a week. Last night we talked about the embryos for the first time. Tyson said it would be a shame to waste them, and I laughed. Dr. Sheffield’s given me the name of a specialist who’s successfully helped cancer survivors conceive. I won’t make a consultation appointment until I’m a year past treatments, but it’s something to look toward. A possibility. It is no longer my whole life, and I feel more capable of dealing with what might come next. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I think, but I hope not to be bitter either.