Leave It to Chance (9 page)

She gave Emory a quick smile before fastening her gaze on Chance again. “That’s a great idea, sweetie.”

“Here, Mom.” Braden puffed as he ran up with the halter and rope.

Sierra took the twisted black nylon with its conglomeration of metal rings and buckles. She turned it three different directions, and finally guessed at the most likely spot to fit Chance’s ears. She walked slowly, so slowly, toward the horse, and exhaled a quavering breath when he ignored her.

She held the halter like a noose and bent—one foot in the flower bed, the other on the lawn—and reached for his lowered head. He swung away, and she jerked up to find that she was now pinched at the edge of the flower bed between the large gray horse and a mammoth hydrangea bush.

Sierra breathed in three short gasps and stared at the gray back that was at eye level and smelled damp and horsey. The heat of its body radiated toward her. Sierra reached out and tentatively pushed against Chance’s giant hip. The horse shifted his weight closer, narrowing the gap. A sparkler-like zap of panic ignited in her chest, sending bursts of light down her nerve endings.
He’s only eating. He doesn’t want to hurt you.

She took a couple of hyperventilating breaths. The only exit was around the back end, and no way was she heading in that direction. Since pole vaulting wasn’t an option, the only other exit was over the leggy hydrangea behind her.

“Mom?”

She couldn’t see the kids, but a worrying edge of anxiety filled Emory’s voice.

“It’s okay, honey. I’ll be right there. Don’t move!” She surveyed the shoulder-high bush next to her, heavy with the remnants of faded blue-green flowers. “Braden? Stay there and hold onto Trevor. I’m going to go back over the fence to the pasture and come around.” Sierra’s front teeth dug into her bottom lip.

Munching the delectable ground cover, Chance took another bite and crowded a few inches closer. He took another step, ostensibly to snag a morsel on the far side of the next shrub, but he shifted his posterior toward Sierra, a large hoof missing her right tennis shoe by millimeters. Sierra leaped for the hydrangea. Three difficult steps into the thick-stemmed bush, and she knew she’d made a big mistake.

“What in the blue blazes is that woman doing?” Ross stood frozen at the picture window. The horse was grazing on his favorite begonia and Sierra looked like she was trying to swim through his hydrangea bush. The pair was wrecking all his hard work! Teeth clenched, he stormed out the back door. A pop on the rump encouraged Chance to saunter a few steps away, where he began to nibble the climbing wisteria, giving Ross room to approach Sierra.

He surveyed the mangled plant. “A machete would have been a lot easier.” The hydrangea was one of the few original plants he’d kept from his mother’s yard. It colored many of his childhood memories.

“I’m sorry, okay?” She sounded fearful and annoyed with a third of the bush crushed under her feet and twisted around her thighs. “I thought my safety was a little more important than a plant.”

“You weren’t in any danger. This horse isn’t—”

And then the bare dirt caught his eye. A naked spot where an heirloom honeysuckle used to grow. His mother’s
treasured
honeysuckle—he laced his fingers on top his head and tilted his chin up.
Lord, if You don’t help me, I’m going to strangle someone.
Someone being a somewhat attractive—okay, amazingly attractive—woman who obviously didn’t know a darned thing about horses.

He took a deep breath and prodded the dirt with the tip of his boot. He could never replace that plant. His mother was going to be devastated.

Sierra attempted to step back, but the thick stalks had twisted around her shoe. She swayed, trying to pull her foot clear. He reached to catch her, but she regained her balance, though she wasn’t any closer to getting free.

“Do you need help?”

She kept her head bent to the task. “No, I think I got it.” But her foot remained trapped under a crisscross of greenery.

“Here, give me your hand.” He stepped toward her, the green stems crushing under his boots.

Her hand slid into his, warm and strong, and the extra stability helped her get one foot free, but her other remained stuck.

“Grab on and I’ll pull you out,” he said.

She looked uncertain but put a tentative hand on his shoulders. He wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her free. He immediately let go and she hopped, one hand clutching his upper arm.

“My shoe.”

He looked down at her foot encased only in a white sock. She gave him a tiny grin, and despite his irritation he felt his own lips curve. He shook his head.

“I gotcha, Mom.” Braden grabbed her other hand and she leaned in to her son while Ross retrieved the buried shoe.

Sierra took the shoe. Ross’s face was still dark, but less so. Like the patches of gray and light after a heavy thunderstorm.

She nodded at the bare patch of dirt. “What was it?”

“
Lonicera fragrantissima
.” Undercurrents of annoyance remained. “A honeysuckle my mother dug up from her grandparents’ homestead in Kansas and has worried over and babied for the last thirty years.”

Oh, crud!
Then the next thought blurted before she could stop it. “If it was so important why didn’t she take it with her when she moved?”

He stared at her, as if trying to comprehend the stupidity of her words. “Why didn’t she—?” He blew out a breath and looked around, as if he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or order her off his place.

Trevor had clung close to her since Ross made his dramatic entrance. He whispered. “Pick me up, Mommy.” She leaned down to hoist him to her hip, wishing she could reel back her words.

Ross waved an annoyed hand at the bare spot. “She did! But it started dying, so I took a cutting from it and moved it from my greenhouse to here last month.”

“Oh.” She swallowed hard. “Can you get another cutting?”

“Her plant died. We were going to transplant this one back to her place when we were certain it was hardy enough.” He rubbed the back of his neck and frowned at the horse. “I guess we should have taken our chances.”

Braden whispered near her elbow. “Chances. Get it, Mom?”

“Mmmhmm.” Sierra wondered about the consequences of Chance having eaten an entire bush. A thirty-year-old one at that. She couldn’t afford a sick horse. “Is it poisonous?”

His lips curved in the barest of smiles, and he slid her a look. “It’d solve one of your problems, wouldn’t it?”

“Not the way I’d like.” She felt a blush take over her cheeks and looked away from the hint of intimacy in the secret joke.

He shrugged. “I don’t think it’ll make him sick. You’ll know in a couple of hours.” He nodded toward her arm. “Can I have that?”

She looked at her arm where she’d looped the halter. “Oh. Certainly.” Relief that she wouldn’t have to put it on Chance coursed through her. She handed it to him, quickly plucking a few trailing leaves before he strode off to capture their horse.

Emory and Trevor hung close to her, but Braden shadowed Ross as he led Chance back across the yard.

Ross turned to ask over his shoulder, “How’d he get out?”

“Braden left the gate open.” The words were out before she could contain them.

Ross nodded once, but her son glared at her, then looked away, his body stiff.

Remorse washed through her. Great job building her son up.

Two days later, Sierra woke and stretched, a luxurious, joyful stretch, then laid there with a grin. She had a job interview today! At McMillan’s Brake Shop. She pulled her robe on and sauntered into the kitchen.

“Morning, guys!”

Emory smiled and waved her fork. “Morning, Mom.”

Trevor gave her a cheesy grin, a piece of toast jutting out of his mouth.

Braden barely looked up from his plate of eggs. “Are we going to Dad’s tomorrow?”

Sierra hesitated pulling the peanut butter and jelly out of the cupboard. “No, honey. He said it won’t work this weekend.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” her mom’s voice sounded from the living room. Braden slouched further down in his chair.

Sierra started toward the front door with the kids’ lunches, but stopped when she saw her mom ironing the black pants she’d set out last night.

“I grabbed these out of your room this morning, honey. Were you going to wear that red shirt? I really think your white blouse would be better.”

“Oh.” The white blouse hung from the back of the recliner, freshly pressed. “But I always wear the red one to interviews.”

At 9:50 Sierra walked into her interview wearing her black slacks and the white blouse.

The woman behind the desk was kind and asked a few brief questions, but after ten short minutes she stood. “Thank you for coming by, Sierra. We’ll be in touch.” The polite smile told Sierra quite succinctly that there would be no job offer coming from her.

Sierra pressed her hand against the door to exit the building, and stopped, the glass cold under her hand. Why wasn’t she getting anywhere in her job search? With all the résumés she’d spread around, she’d gotten hardly any return calls and only one interview.

She exited the building and pressed the button to power her phone back on. Two missed calls. One from Elise, the other from an unfamiliar number. She dialed her voice mail and opened the door to her van.

“Hello, Mrs. Montgomery. This is Celia Ward from the district attorney’s office returning your call. I’ll be out of the office until Monday if you’d like to try me then.”

Sierra groaned and dropped her head against the steering wheel. She was going to be stuck at her mother’s forever.

Chapter 10

Early Sunday morning Sierra rolled over in bed and willed her body to relax back to sleep. She’d stared at the ceiling for hours last night, shuffling through the unpaid bills in her mind. And it didn’t help that her mother had harped last night about Sierra’s child-support situation and what she’d do to Michael if she could lock him in a room with some twine and a pair of pliers. Mom had grown up on a cattle ranch.

Her door cracked. “Honey, are you coming to church?”

Sierra groaned. “No, Mom.” But the guilt-o-meter went into full alert, in her mom’s voice, no less.
Go to church. Go to church.

She pulled the covers higher, gray morning light filtering through her window. God didn’t want her there if she couldn’t trust Him, did He? As it was, she and God had drifted to a state of disillusionment. Kind of like meeting someone new and gaining a certain impression of them and then finding out over time you were wrong.

Like really wrong.

But this ingrained sense of guilt clung to something deep inside her. All that childhood training that there was a God, and if she so much as glanced at her schoolmate’s math test, He knew. And was it really her place to tell the kids that God wasn’t overly concerned with their lives? Some things they would have to figure out on their own.

And maybe just a tiny part of her hoped … hoped that He cared.

Her mom didn’t even try to hide her pleased smile as they scooted up the steps next to her into the foyer of The Gentle Shepherd.

“Do I have to go to Sunday school?” Braden complained, all but dragging his feet.

Her mom raised her brows, as if to say, “See? You waited too long.”

Was it sacrilegious for Sierra to roll her eyes in church?

Emory grabbed Abbey’s hand and swung it. “Grandma, can we pray that God will let Chance live a long, long time?”

Trevor hopped next to her. “I want to pray for a Power Ranger.”

“Oh, honey.” Grandma laughed and gave Emory a squeeze. “Now, kids.” She included Braden in the hushed address, lining them shoulder to shoulder in front of her, like little soldiers. She straightened Trevor’s collar. “God is
very
busy with a lot of important things to do. We don’t want to bother Him about things like horses or toys.”

So where did that leave room for the faith that Elise was always talking about? Her friend praised God for answering what Sierra thought were some of the funniest prayers. Like the time she asked God to help her find a lost pearl earring. She said that the next day God led her to the fake Christmas tree in the storage closet, and there was her earring, resting on the lowest branch. Sierra didn’t know what to think about that, but it didn’t stop Elise from sharing.

What would her mom think about a God who cared about horses and pearl earrings? But if He cared, why didn’t He make Michael listen to his children’s hearts, or bring her a job when she so desperately needed one? Where was the caring God Elise talked about?

Sierra watched out the kitchen window the next day, as the school bus stopped and the kids poured out and ran up the walkway. Emory dashed into the kitchen for a quick hug.

“Where’s Grandma?”

Sierra bent down and said, “Grandma got a call this morning that Great Aunt Marta broke her hip, so Grandma flew out to Florida to help her get better.”

Emory’s face grew worried and she looked like she might cry. “For how long?”

She wrapped her arms around her daughter. “A few weeks.”

“Can we go too?” Braden looked hopeful.

“No, sweetie, you have school.”

“Awww. You never let us do anything fun. Dad said he’d take us to Disney World sometime.”

Like that will happen.
Sierra kept the thought to herself.

The phone rang, and Braden ran to answer it. He walked back from the kitchen, holding it out for her. “It’s Ross.”

She turned away from the kids to answer it. “Hello?”

“It’s Ross.” The masculine voice sent a tingle up her spine.

“Hi.” She felt a slow grin sweep over her lips.

“Sorry to call, but Chance keeps getting loose, so I’m going to put him in a stall until I find where he’s getting out.”

“Oh.” The tingly feeling swept away.

“I can feed him in the morning, if you can get the evening shift.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind.”

“Two flakes of hay and a cup of grain is all you have to give him until we turn him back into the field.”

She realized she was nibbling her fingernail again and tucked it under the elbow holding the phone. “All right. Thanks.”

A heavy silence held the line.

“I guess that’s it.”

Was he trying to stay on the line? She pressed her hand to her forehead, bouncing on her toes. Think! Say something intelligent to the man. “Uh huh.” She dropped her hand.
Real smooth, Sierra
.

“I’ll see you around.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.” His voice held the hint of a smile. And the line clicked.

She scrunched her eyes shut and wanted to stamp her feet. Didn’t she have
anything
intelligent to say? Her eyes shot open. What was she doing? She didn’t
want
to date anyone. She had more pressing problems like finding a job than drooling over some hunky guy who was probably all wrong for her anyway.

Emory frowned at her. “Are you all right, Mom?”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m fine, honey.” She put an arm around Em’s shoulder and walked with her toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you start on your homework, and I’ll get dinner going.”

Emory spread her books across the table, and Sierra pulled a bag of lettuce from the vegetable crisper and started rinsing it in the sink.

Braden moped in and set Sierra’s cell phone on the counter.

She shook the dripping leaves over the sink. “Who were you calling, honey?”

He turned away, his face heavy with dark emotions. “Dad.”

She dried her hands, followed him to the living room, and put an arm on his shoulders, hoping he’d lean in for a hug. “Did you talk to him?”

Braden stepped free of her arm. “He wasn’t there.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged and walked upstairs, and her heart grew heavier with each step he took away from her. And she knew it was
away
. They were losing their son, and Michael didn’t even seem to care.

Back in the kitchen she mixed bread crumbs and egg into the ground beef. How could she reach Braden? How could she be both mother and father to her kids? Her eldest child was at a critical age in his development. He craved a father. And she was powerless to make Michael see that.

And how healthy was it for the kids to live under their grandma’s continuous hovering? Sierra needed to move them into a place where they had the freedom to leave their markers and the like strewn across the table on occasion.

She opened the oven door and set the meatloaf inside, then reached for her phone to call Elise. When she flipped open the phone, her message icon popped up. Her heart beat a little faster, taking on a cadence of hope.
Please. Please. Please—be a job offer.

Maybe God did care. The thought caught her by surprise. Maybe—a tingle of awareness lifted each hair across her arms—maybe God was trying to reach her, to show her, like Elise said. She pressed the button for her voice mail.

A brisk female voice came on. “Hello. This is Cheryl from Webberling Heating Systems.” Anticipation shifted to despair as she heard, “We have filled the position you applied for. We’ll keep your application on file for one year—”

Sierra pushed the button to delete the message. The prickle in the air evaporated. Hormones and stress could create weird feelings. She felt exposed and silly all at the same time. Was she so desperate that she’d actually thought God was working on her behalf? She wanted to brush a tough protective coating over her throbbing nerve endings. Even her mom didn’t believe that God spoke like that. The strange impression that there had been a job waiting on her voice mail, that it’d been sent from God, was just that: a strange impression. Because she’d forgotten one critical detail, God was much too big to worry about a small thing like her survival.

After their bellies were full of dinner and slices of leftover peach pie her mom had made after church, Sierra loaded her excited brood in the van.

“Can we ride him tonight, Mom?” Braden hung over the front seat as she started the car.

She tried to sound upbeat. “Um, I’m not sure.”

A few minutes later, wipers whipping, she turned up the familiar driveway and headed toward the barn. Seeing the empty cement apron next to Ross’s house dissipated a tendril of worry that he might be home. She didn’t want to see him until she figured out her weird reactions to him
and
what to do about his honeysuckle. She drove past the house and parked next to the barn.

Braden and Emory were out of the van before she shut it off. Trevor unbuckled and hurried to follow.

“Where’s your coat, honey? It’s raining.”

He didn’t even pause as he jumped out. “I’m okay.” Her mother would be raising her eyes in that “See what I mean?” manner.

Sierra zipped her coat and hustled out of the van. It took major willpower to step through the darkened doorway of the barn. She flipped her hood back and walked toward the kids, who were crowded in front of the stall. The barn wasn’t nearly as dark as it looked from outside the door. Yellow light cast a pall over the dusty wooden beams and old stairs that climbed up the loft on her right.

Chance looked at them from over the stall door. Braden rubbed the gray forehead, while Emory stood on one of the bales stacked against the enclosure and scratched behind a long ear. Trevor watched from a few feet back, hands in his pockets.

Then Chance swung his heavy head and Braden dodged back. Sierra leaped toward them and pulled Emory down and Braden back a step. Chance swung his head lazily around again.

Braden pulled his collar free and stepped toward the stall. “Geez, Mom.”

Emory stared at her with wide eyes.

“I thought—he looked like he was going to … ” To what? Knock down the stall door? She closed her eyes.
Get a grip, Sierra.
She took a breath and studied the horse locked securely behind the heavy wooden gate.

Emory pointed down the aisle. “I think he just heard a noise.”

Sierra attempted a smile. “You’re probably right.”

Her daughter took a small step toward Chance. “Is it okay—?”

Sierra nodded and Em hopped back up onto the bale. She let them pet him a few more minutes before she said, “Okay, guys. We need to feed him.”

Ross had said two flakes of hay. Hay stuck out from the bale Emory stood on like a bunch of blonde bristles. Sierra grabbed two handfuls and Emory jumped down.

Braden crouched next to her, with Emory and Trevor on the other side. She grinned at the way the four of them were bent in position like sprinters at a track meet. “Okay. One, two, three … pull!”

The effort left her hands red with white lines where the straw slid through her grip. The hay was wedged in tight and she dropped the wisps she’d managed to pull free. The kids stood holding tiny bits of straw in their fists.

Braden studied the bale and then straddled it, attacking one of the twin metal bands and digging his fingers into the straw under it.

Sierra worked on the other one. The wire binding the bale together was like a taut rubber band around a ponytail. She could barely edge the tips of her fingers under it. No way they could tug it off the bale.

What now?
Straddling the bale, she looked around. Braden ran for the tack room. Emory and Trevor trailed after him, searching until Trevor found a pair of rusty clippers under a workbench. The red dust ground into her palms, but after a few minutes of maniacal squeezing she managed to cut first one wire, then the other.

When the second wire sprang free, she saw what Ross meant about flakes. The hay folded over into thick files. An opening in the stall divider allowed them to drop the hay and grain Braden got from the tack room, right into the feeding trough. A few minutes later the heavy crunch-crunch of colossal molars grinding the granola-looking mixture filled the barn. Sierra leaned on the gate that separated her from the horse.