Home for Good. Jessica Keller

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      Chapter Three

      Scientific research said mint-and-tan-painted walls were supposed to soothe her, but each step Ali took toward her mother’s room weighed her down like shuffling through deep mud. She nodded to other residents of the facility as they teetered down the hallway, gripping the railing that ran waist-level throughout the nursing home. She clutched her purse against her stomach. Mom didn’t belong here. People in their fifties shouldn’t be stuck like this.

      Paces away from Mom’s door, Ali leaned against the wall and sucked in a fortifying breath. It stung her throat with the artificial smells of bleach and cafeteria food. She pulled the paper out of her purse and read it again.

      I saw you together at the Independence Day picnic. If you value what’s important to you, you’ll stay away from him. You’ve been warned.

      Ali didn’t know whether she should run to the police department or laugh. The glued-on magazine letters looked straight out of a cheesy television crime show. But was the threat serious? Who would leave such a thing tacked to her front door? Thankfully, her head ranch hand, Rider, found it before Chance woke up. Her son could pretend bravado, but with something like this, he would have dissolved into a puddle of tears.

      She racked her mind, tallying a list of the people she remembered seeing at the picnic yesterday. Not one of them would have cared in the least if they saw her speaking with Jericho. Who wanted to keep them apart? Not that she minded. That’s what she wanted anyway, right? All the more reason to steer clear of the man, but it grated to be threatened.

      Unless... No, it couldn’t be. Abram Freed had never been fond of his son’s attachment to her, but she’d made her peace with the cantankerous cowboy years after Jericho left. Besides, with the paralysis on the right side of his body, the man couldn’t move—he lay in a bed here in the same nursing home as her mother. He couldn’t harm her, and he’d keep her secret about Chance, too.

      A nurse wearing a teal smock broke into her thoughts. “You gonna go in and say howdy to your ma?”

      “Hi, Sue. How’s Mom doing today?”

      The nurse’s blond eyebrow rose. “No disrespect, but your ma’s the most ornery patient we have. But we don’t mind none. She’s a fighter at that. I think most people would be gone already with what she’s got, but she just keeps hanging right on.”

      Ali gave a tight-lipped smile. “She’s a handful.”

      Jamming the menacing letter back into her purse, she smoothed down her shirt and ran a hand over her hair before entering her mother’s room. The sight of Marge Silver—weak with pale skin hanging in long droops off her arms and a map of premature wrinkles covering her face as she whistled air in and out through the oxygen nosepiece—always made Ali’s knees shake a little bit.

      “How you feeling, Ma?” She came to the side of the bed. Ali felt a deep emptiness. Her mom’s eyes stared back, cold and hopeless. Shut off, like her spirit had already given up.

      “Dying... Been better.” The words wheezed out, stilting every time the oxygen infused.

      Ali crossed her arms and buried her balled-up fists deep in her armpits. She wanted to take her mother’s hand in both of hers, but she knew better. Never one to show affection, her mother wouldn’t have considered the touch comforting. “You aren’t dying.”

      “Want to.... Nothing left...here.”

      “You know that’s not true. There is Kate and me and Chance.”

      “Not that any of...you...care.”

      “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care, and I know Kate visited just the other day.”

      “The ranch?”

      Ali straightened a vase on the bedside table. “It’s fine.”

      “The...lawsuit?”

      Ali bit her lip. She should be used to this by now; her mom asked the same questions every time she visited. But somehow, the little girl in Ali who wanted to know her mom loved her came with expectations that left her drifting in an ocean of hurt every time. Besides, she didn’t want to think about the deaths of that poor couple. It was an accident.

      “Don’t worry about that. Tripp’s taking care of it. He always does the best for us.”

      “Has to.... None of the rest of you...have any thought...in your heads. Never...happen...if your father...still alive.”

      Ali pulled her purse tighter up on her shoulder, then gripped the bed rails. “I miss Daddy too, Ma.”

      “Your fault...he’s dead.”

      “Don’t say that.”

      “So...selfish, had...to ride. Had...to...rodeo.”

      “It’s hardly my fault Dad got caught under that bull’s hooves.” Ali stared out the window, fanning her face with her hand to dry the tears clinging to her eyelids. She tried to block out the memory of her dad, the amateur rider Buck Silver, being crushed again and again by two thousand pounds of angry muscle and horns. She saw his body go limp, remembered trying to run into the arena but Jericho’s strong arms held her back.

      “Your fault...men leave. Your dad...your husband.”

      “You’re wrong. Jericho’s back,” Ali ground out.

      “If he finds...out. He’ll...take your son. You’ll...be alone.”

      “He doesn’t know about Chance, and he has no reason to ever know.”

      “People...always leave.”

      “That doesn’t have to be true. Chance will always be with me. And Kate’s back right now.”

      “How long...before she goes...too?”

      “I don’t know, Mom. Here, I brought you some stuff from the house.” Ali set a bunched paper bag on the nightstand. “I’ll see you next week.”

      Ali barreled out of the doorway—and straight into Jericho Freed’s СКАЧАТЬ