“Dad? Nothing,” Leo said. “Hey, I think we might have a chance at getting that free agent defensive back out of Miami. Holgenstizer, or something like it.”
Stalling. No one knew Leo like Luke, and Luke knew when his little brother was stalling. “Nothing, huh? So why did Aunt Patti call? Why does she say you guys haven’t been out at the ranch in days?”
“Shit,” Leo muttered. “Look, everything is going to be fine,” he said, the cheerfulness gone out of his voice. “We’ve got it all under control.”
Now Luke worried. “Got what under control?”
“We found a place in town that works just fine. Little house, and I can roll right out onto the park—”
“A place in town?” Luke exclaimed, and his heart caught. “What the hell, Leo? Why aren’t you at the ranch? Where’s Dad?”
“Look Luke, I’ll be straight. It’s not the end of the world, but Dad did something kind of stupid. Well, not kind of. Definitely.”
No, no, no. The thirty years of Luke’s life went skipping by him. All the times his life had been derailed because of his family, all the plans shot to hell because of them. He closed his eyes, sinking his fingers into the corners, rubbing hard. “Do I need to come home?”
Leo didn’t say anything for a moment, then said quietly, “Yeah, I think you should.”
FOUR
The only good thing about the drive to Pine River was Luke’s vintage 1975 Ford Bronco, a fully restored jeep with leather seats and a Hemi engine Luke had rebuilt by hand. It was a sweet ride, and until only recently, it had sat unused, untouched, in the Kendrick family garage. Luke had bought it four years ago on a whim during one of the many times he’d had to uproot his life and come home to fix things. Only that time, he couldn’t fix things. That time, his mother had called to tell him she’d been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. She said she’d never noticed the lump until about three months prior, and then, she was so busy, she couldn’t get around to seeing a doctor about it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Luke had helplessly demanded.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” Mom had said. “You’re right in the middle of classes.”
Mom had done the best she could for as long as she could, but Dad and Leo were hopeless, and she’d finally been forced to call Luke home. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she’d said, wearing the scarf around her head to hide what the chemo had done to her. She’d been sorry that she was dying and interfering with his school.
Of course Luke had come home. He’d come home to pay the bills and to cook for Dad and Leo and to make sure everything was running on the ranch when his mother couldn’t do it anymore. He’d come home to keep track of her meds and help her in and out of bed and drive her to her oncology appointments in Durango.
The Bronco purchase had happened during one of those trips to Durango. The doctors had wanted new tests, and they’d kept his mother longer than either of them had anticipated. The waiting was the worst part about his mother’s illness, all that time spent standing around, feeling helpless. So Luke had left the hospital and had ended up buying the Bronco on a whim.
With Dad’s help, he’d managed to get it home. The truck had given him something to do, something to take his mind off the fact that his mother was dying and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He’d spent long evenings working under a single bulb in the garage, restoring the hell out of the Bronco. He’d even hand polished the lug nuts.
Two years ago, Luke had finished restoring the truck. Three weeks later, Cathy Kendrick finally gave in to the pain and the loss of dignity cancer had inflicted upon her. It seemed almost as if she were waiting for him to finish the Bronco, to come to terms with the fact that he couldn’t fix everything. She’d died, leaving a husband of thirty-two years, two sons, four dogs, and a void in the lives of those who knew her.
For two years, Luke thought of that void every time he saw the Bronco in the garage.
After a time, when he was sure Dad and Leo could make it on their own, Luke had left the Bronco and his family behind and had returned to Denver for a third time. He’d finished school, earned his architecture degree, started his own fledgling business. He’d quickly realized that he needed to know how to run a business, and had enrolled in graduate school to earn an MBA. He was in his second semester.
A few months ago, on a cloudless, blue-sky afternoon, he’d come home to see his dad and Leo, and he’d looked at the Bronco in the garage and thought, okay, it’s time. The pain of his mother’s death had receded into a shallow, slow-running stream. He didn’t think of the void now, he thought of her laugh and her smile, of the way she tucked her hair behind her ears and ran her hand over his head, even when he stood several inches taller than her.