Montana Reunion
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Jen Gilroy
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17,8K
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21
CHAPTER ONE
“IT’S ONLY A SKY. There’s nothing special about it.” Twelve-year-old Ellie spun away from Beth to roll her wheelchair along a wooden pathway toward a square log building sheltered by pine trees, the welcome center for Camp Crocus Hill.
Except, it was a Montana sky, streaked with soft gold, blue and gray in the early July evening as the sun settled over the distant mountains. A sky as big as Beth remembered and with the same sense of endless possibilities.
She clicked the remote to lock the SUV, slung her bulky purse over one shoulder and jogged to catch up with Ellie, the purple ballet flats she’d traded for her signature heels click-clacking. “This part of the camp looks almost the same as it did the summer your mom and I were here. That big log building behind the welcome center was the dining hall. It likely still is. Sometimes we ate outside.” Beth gestured to the picnic tables and barbecue near the building’s entrance. “With those big windows, gable roof and wide eaves, I thought it looked like the Swiss chalet in a Heidi storybook I had when I was little.”
“So?” Ellie braked to a stop and fiddled with a tab on the backpack propped on her lap. “Even if it looks the same, it’s not, is it?” She gestured to her wheelchair before tugging on a strand of thick honey-blond hair. “There weren’t kids like me here then.”
“No, but your mom...she wanted you to come here. For us to come here together.” Beth’s throat clogged, and the path lined with red-and-white flowers in rustic barrel planters blurred. Help me, Jilly. You had almost thirteen years to get used to being a mom. I’ve only had six weeks. How can I help your girl? As always, only silence greeted Beth’s inner plea.
“Whatever.” Ellie grabbed a pair of oversize sunglasses from her backpack and stuck them on her face, hiding her eyes but not the sullen tilt to her mouth.
Beth made herself count to three and focus on the camp’s Welcome sign, a vintage barn board nailed to an old wagon wheel propped against a rough-hewn log. Being almost a teenager was hard enough, and Ellie had just lost her mom. Hopefully, things would get easier and time away from home would help. That was why they were here, one of the last promises Beth had made to Jilly.
“Why don’t we get checked in, find our cabin and decide what we want to do tomorrow? Or maybe you want to have a snack and head to bed. We’ve had a long day.” Another one in a succession of long days. However, they were here now. This was the safe place Ellie needed to begin to heal from her mom’s death and where she and Beth could figure out how to become a family.
“I don’t care.” Ellie shrugged and hugged her phone like she’d once embraced the pink teddy bear she’d carried everywhere as a toddler. A bear that, along with almost everything else in the pink-and-gray bedroom Beth had decorated for her, Ellie now called babyish.
“Look.” Beth pointed to a brown horse with a white star on its forehead on the other side of a rail fence beyond the path.
The horse whinnied as if in welcome.
“So? It’s a horse.” Ellie barely glanced at the animal.
“Yes, but we don’t see horses back home in Chicago, do we? Your mom loved horses. She was a good rider too. When she was your age, she won ribbons in shows.” Beth made her voice bright.
“Like I don’t already know that? She was my mom, not yours.”
“Of course.” Beth pressed her lips tight together. On the long road trip west, she’d tried to engage Ellie in conversation, but the girl had remained silent, earbuds wedged in her ears. Ellie had stared out the passenger window as the flat Midwestern states slipped by, until they’d finally reached these rolling Montana foothills. Camp Crocus Hill was nestled on almost two hundred acres of hilly treed land a few miles from the small town of High Valley. Located in the heart of ranching country, the pretty spot was tucked at the base of the majestic Rocky Mountain range, white-tipped peaks visible in the hazy distance.
As she and Ellie drew closer to the main camp building, Beth sucked in a breath. She and Jilly had met in almost this exact spot the summer they were fifteen, only a few months away from turning sixteen. Both were new campers marooned for four weeks in a place that at first neither of them had wanted to be. From almost that moment, Jilly had been Beth’s best friend and one of the few people who’d ever truly understood her.
“Hang on. Let me help.” Beth darted forward to grab Ellie’s backpack, which had fallen off her lap onto the ground.
“I can do it myself. I’m not a—”
“Hi. Welcome to Crocus Hill.” The voice was deep and male.
As Beth jerked her head up, her purse swung outward and whacked the owner of the voice smack in the middle of his jeans-clad knees. “Sorry. Hi.” She registered a pair of scuffed, muddy cowboy boots and long legs in faded denim before stumbling to her feet. “Thank you.” She took a step back as the man handed the backpack to Ellie.
“No problem. You must be checking in.” His voice was as warm as his smile, and he tipped the rim of a battered black cowboy hat.
“Yes.” Beth fumbled with her overstuffed purse. She was a professional woman. A chief financial officer for a fast-growing technology company. And until Jilly died and Beth had become Ellie’s guardian, she was always in control. Now, however, the self-assuredness she’d prided herself on had deserted her when she needed it most. Instead, she lurched from one crisis to the next, saying and doing the wrong thing, uncharacteristically awkward.
The man directed his attention to Ellie. “What’s your name?”
“Eleanor, but everyone calls me Ellie.” An unexpected smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Something stinks around here.”
“Ellie.” Beth’s face burned. “You don’t—”
“It’s okay.” The man’s laugh made Beth want to laugh too. “That’s a ranch for you. I just came from the barn. It’s my mom’s book-club night and, since you’re the last to check in today, she called me to come meet you so she could leave early to pick up a friend. Have you met Princess?” He gestured to the paddock.
Ellie shook her head. “Why is she called that?”
“My sister, Molly, named her. When she was a kid, Molly loved books and movies about princesses. Cinderella was a favorite.”
Beth had loved that movie too, back when she’d believed in fairy tales and happily ever after. She suppressed the thought of the romance books on her e-reader, including a few new releases she’d downloaded especially for this trip. They were fiction, a way to relax and escape from the pressures of a demanding job. Her life was fine. There was nothing missing, and now, with Ellie, it was fuller than ever. She didn’t need a man to make it complete.
Ellie studied the horse. “I used to like Cinderella but I haven’t watched it in years. I’m almost thirteen.”
“I’m almost thirty-seven, but I still watch it.” His laugh rolled out again. “There are way more little girls than boys in my extended family.” He turned back to Beth. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the list, so I’m sorry I don’t know your names or details, but I can help you get checked in and answer any questions.”
“Thank you.” Beth handed him the sheet of paper with the confirmation email.
He scanned their information and turned to Ellie. “You and your mom have arrived at a great time, and—”
“She’s not my mom, she’s—”
“I’m her guardian, Elizabeth Flanagan.” Beth spoke at the same time as Ellie. “I emailed the office about the change of plans.” She stopped and swallowed hard.
“Of course.” The man studied her, and something flickered in the depths of his blue eyes. Compassion followed by puzzlement and a faint glimmer of what might have been recognition.
“Beth Flanagan? From Chicago?” He checked the email again, and his eyes narrowed.
Eyes as blue as a Montana sky in high summer. A whisper of memory stirred and Beth’s heartbeat quickened. “I go by Elizabeth now.” Except, she’d been Beth here and to Jilly and Ellie too.
“Zach Carter.” His voice got rough.
The boy who, along with Jilly, had made the month of that long-ago summer the happiest time in Beth’s life. For an instant, the world seemed to tilt. “Zach.” She forced his name out. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” Although his family had a ranch half a mile along the main road and it wasn’t surprising he’d still be in the area. Still, if she’d known Zach had anything to do with Camp Crocus Hill, she’d have found a different summer camp and never made that promise to Jilly. “It’s been years.”
“Yes.” His voice was clipped, formal and with none of its prior good humor. “Good to see you again.”
“Likewise.” Her stomach knotted. The boy she’d known was now a man and, except for his eyes and a hint of something in his smile, a stranger. She glanced at Ellie, who stared between the two of them, her expression curious. “Ellie is Jilly Grabowski’s daughter. She—”
“Died.” Ellie’s voice was flat. “That’s why I’m here with her.” She jerked her chin in Beth’s direction, and her mouth trembled.
“I’m sorry.” Zach’s voice was gruff, and his gaze skittered from Ellie back to Beth as his expression softened in sympathy. “I remember Jilly. She was great. There aren’t any words.”
“No.” Beth gripped a handle of Ellie’s wheelchair as her heart twisted.
Zach took off his hat and ran a hand through his thick light brown hair, darker now than the tousled sun-bleached blond in the picture Beth still had in an old album. “Come inside, and let’s get you settled.” He moved toward the single-story log building with white trim, his booted feet making a rhythmic thud on the boards. The automatic door, accessible for wheelchair users, whooshed open as Ellie rolled along the ramp and through the wide opening.
“Thanks.” Beth followed them inside, and her arm brushed Zach’s bare forearm as she stopped where he stood beside Ellie. She stilled for a fraction of a second, and he did too, his indrawn breath sharp in the sudden silence.
Then she made her feet move and found a chair on one side of the wide wood desk where Zach indicated, his expression shuttered.
Beth had been at Jilly’s side as her friend had fought so hard to live—the roller-coaster journey from hope to despair and everything in between until the oncologist had shaken her head and left the curtained hospital room. Beth remained, holding Jilly’s frail body in her strong embrace, her friend’s sobs muffled against her shoulder. And it was then she’d promised Jilly she’d be there for Ellie, no matter what.
Her gaze caught Zach’s and held. For a brief instant, the expression in his eyes catapulted her back to the girl she’d been and the dreams she’d dreamed before her world had imploded and she’d taken another path. A path that had led far away from a life in High Valley, Montana—a path that had now brought her back here, where everything had started.
And yet, although Zach was the first boy Beth had ever kissed and the only one she’d ever thought she’d love forever, they were adults now, and the past was the past.
ZACH’S STOMACH LURCHED as he sat behind the desk in the welcome center and processed Beth and Ellie’s check-in paperwork. He struggled to focus on it, not the woman who sat across from him. Her curly dark hair that he remembered was now ironed sleek, and Beth held herself rigid as if the slightest touch might cause her to shatter into pieces.
He clicked away on the computer keyboard. The fact Beth was here again had to be a coincidence. And Ellie. He snuck a glance at the girl hunched in the wheelchair, sunglasses atop her head. Her thumbs darted across the keypad of her phone, and her face was half-hidden by a curtain of honey-blond hair. Now he knew who she was, the resemblance to Jilly was both startling and heartbreaking.
“You’re all set.”
Jilly had almost lived at the camp stables where he’d worked the summer he’d turned was seventeen, but it was Beth—quieter, more introspective and at first scared of horses—who’d snagged his teenage heart.
He handed Beth a key ring and a large white envelope with the camp’s logo, a horseshoe intertwined with a crocus, on the top left corner. “You’re in Meadowlark. It’s our smallest cabin since there’s only two of you. We have twenty-five cabins with different capacities for different size families. As you likely saw on the website, we can accommodate up to a hundred campers at a time. There’s a minimum of one staff member for every five campers, and a higher ratio depending on a camper’s needs. We pride ourselves on giving individual attention and care.”
“How many campers are here now?” Beth’s voice was business-like.
Zach glanced back at the computer. “Now that you’ve arrived, we’re at eighty with two more families arriving tomorrow. We’d be full if we hadn’t had a couple of late cancellations.” Despite the cancellation fee, they couldn’t afford to have empty cabins. The familiar worry slid through Zach’s mind.
“Apart from fresh paint and more flowers, from what I’ve seen so far, the camp looks almost exactly the same,” Beth said.
Zach nodded. “When my folks bought it, they wanted to keep the name, look and feel as well as the sense of community Camp Crocus Hill stood for. The cabins are still in several interconnected loops beyond the dining hall, but they’ve been remodeled and upgraded for families, specifically for people with disabilities. We also renamed them since you were here. I’ve marked your cabin on the map.” He passed another sheet across the desk and made sure his fingertips didn’t brush against hers. “There’s a parking space behind your cabin, and all the camp information you need is in the envelope and on laminated sheets you’ll find on the kitchen table. If you need help with your luggage, I can—”
“We’ll be fine. Thank you.” Beth’s voice was as stiff as her posture. Although she’d always been reserved, this elegant woman in crisp dark jeans, a filmy white top and purple shoes with bows on the toes was almost unrecognizable from the girl she’d once been.
“Enjoy your stay.” Zach made his tone neutral.
Beth was a guest, and although she and Ellie would be here for five weeks, longer than most visitors, he wouldn’t have to see much of them.
“I’m sure we will.” Beth’s tone was also neutral, her smile looking forced.
“Let us know if we can help you with anything.”
Although Zach pitched in at the camp when he could, his priority was the ranch and making it profitable again. He wouldn’t lose the legacy entrusted to him by the four generations of his family who’d loved and tilled this land from when it was still the tall grass prairie that had given Tall Grass Ranch its name. Not now and especially not after everything he’d already lost. As he studied the framed watercolor of Camp Crocus Hill that hung on the log wall behind Beth’s head, one his older brother had done a few months before he passed, sadness nipped at Zach with the bite of an early frost.
“The camp’s activities are listed on the schedule in the envelope. You can be as busy or as relaxed as you want. We have trail riding, short overnight camping trips, nature excursions, as well as art, cookery and singing and drama activities. We’ve also got a heated swimming pool, and our riding lessons are always popular. You can book those here or online.”
“Riding lessons?” Ellie looked up from her phone, a spark of interest in her angry brown eyes fringed by dark lashes.
“Sure.” Unless Zach was related to them, he didn’t have time for children, and he didn’t have time for a relationship either. That part of his life was over. “My cousin’s wife, Lauren Carter, is one of our teachers. She was on the US equestrian team for two Paralympic Games. We’re real proud of her.”
“Wow.” There was both respect and admiration in Ellie’s voice. “Do you... Could I, like—” she hesitated and worried her bottom lip “—meet her sometime?” The hope in her voice chipped a bit of the ice in Zach’s heart.
“Of course. I’ll introduce you. If you want, Lauren can even give you a lesson.”
“On Princess?”
“Only if she’s gentle,” Beth broke in and darted a glance at him. “Ellie hasn’t ridden before.” Her eyebrows drew together in a worried crease under a fringe of hair. She’d been pretty as a teen, but she was gorgeous now and had an air of city polish that made Zach tuck the boots he’d worn to do chores farther under the desk.
“All our horses are gentle, but Princess is the biggest softy of the lot. You don’t have anything to worry about.” At least, not when it came to horseback riding. Having taken on guardianship of Jilly’s daughter, Beth must have plenty of other worries. “If you want, I can help Ellie get started.” He gripped the edge of the desk. In addition to qualified riding instructors, they had camp counselors. There were plenty of people to help apart from him, but he’d opened his big mouth and spoken before he’d thought.
“That would be...wonderful.” Beth’s tense expression eased. “You were so good with horses. I remember...” She stopped and avoided his gaze, staring instead at the framed photographs that lined the wall behind him. “Didn’t some of those pictures used to be in the dining hall?”
“Yes. A few go back to the early days when this camp was founded and then most years until we took over. My mom found them in boxes in a storage room.” Family. The irony didn’t escape him that he was surrounded by families, his big extended one and all the families that came to stay here each summer, but he didn’t have one that truly belonged to him.
“That’s great.” Beth’s brown eyes shone, and the warmth in them was like a punch to Zach’s gut. How long had it been since a woman had looked at him like that? “Maybe there’s a picture of Jilly and me there. Tomorrow, Ellie and I can come back and take a look.”
“I have lots of pictures of my mom.” Ellie’s sullen expression was back. “I keep them in a special album. A private album.”
Zach studied the girl’s bent head. Beneath the anger, she was hurting—the kind of hurt that resonated with a part of himself he’d buried deep. “I don’t know how much you miss your mom because I’m not you. However, I know what it’s like to lose someone you love, and I’ve found one of the best ways to keep their memory alive is to talk about them.” He picked up a framed photo from beside the computer. “This man here is my dad, and along with my mom, this camp was his dream. He passed a few years ago, but he’s still a part of everything we do here.”
And his dad’s legacy was also the reason Zach was here. Dennis Carter’s example was one that both inspired and tethered him.
“I’m sorry about your dad.” Beth’s voice was soft with sympathy.
“Thanks. He was a good man.” And now Zach was torn between following in his dad’s footsteps and still being his own man—one who’d come back to the ranch, because he’d seen the bigger world, and this little corner of Montana was where he not only wanted but also needed to be.
Unlike Beth, who’d come from that bigger world and had gone back to it and made a success of herself in it. A woman who, in those trendy clothes and with that big-city sophistication, was as out of place in Montana ranch country as he and Princess would be in Chicago’s urban canyons.
Beth was the girl who had once turned his teenage world upside down. If that brief, accidental touch after they’d come into the office was any indication, she’d become a woman he wasn’t entirely immune to. Yet, apart from one letter, she’d never gotten in touch with him again after she’d returned home. Like a fool, though, he’d checked the mailbox at the end of the lane for months still hoping to hear from her. As he stood and came around the desk to point Ellie and Beth in the direction of their cabin, Zach reminded himself to focus on the present, not the past, and what was, instead of what might have been.
