Hope Against Hope: The Hope Brothers Series (5 page)

“Breakfast is on the stove waiting for you. Seth and Jesse are helping me mend the fence in the lower pasture today. Renegade tried to get out again last night. Managed to get the door of his stall open again and made it all the way to the fence before getting stuck in it. Hank found him this morning.”

“That freakin’ horse is going to kill himself,” I said. Renegade was Dad’s horse. Ever since the accident, he hadn’t been quite right. This was the third time he had tried to escape.

“Yeah, I think he misses Dad,” Crit said softly.

“He’s not the only one,” I replied. My eyes filled with tears, as they had a thousand times since I realized I would never feel my father’s arms around me again. As if reading my thoughts, Crit reached for me, pulling me into a bear hug, his huge biceps almost smothering me. I inhaled his familiar, Earthy scent, and gratitude filled my heart. At least I still had my brothers.

“Are you okay, George? I know this has all been so difficult.

Lee’s face flashed in my mind again, but I pushed it away.

“I’m okay, I’m getting through it.”

“You know you can talk to me about anything, okay? I’m always going to be here for you, no matter what.”

“I know, Crit. Thank you. What can I do to help you today?” I looked up at him, and was filled with admiration. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he was worried about me. I decided then and there I wouldn’t add to his burden.

“Can you clean the stalls? I’ve already fed the horses for you and put them out in the small pasture. I’d do it but I need to mend this fence pretty quickly. And then, I have to head down to the arena for practice.” The week after the accident, my brother had decided to go ahead and compete, even if Dad wasn’t there. It was what he would have wanted, and Crit and Beau Haggard were the two top winners of the bull riding portion of the Sugar Hill Round-Up Rodeo. Crit had been practicing every free moment since then to get ready for the state championship. Beau, and all the other riders from around the state, were going to provide some fierce competition for him, though. However, Crit had one advantage - he had the biggest heart of any of them, and I just knew he was going to blow them all out of the arena.

“Of course I can,” I replied, smiling at him. “I’ll pay the bills, too, and have dinner ready by six.”

Crit leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.

“You’re a good kid, George.”

“I’m twenty-one, for fuck’s sake.”

“You’ll always be a kid to me, so don’t say ‘fuck’, it ain’t ladylike!”

He stood up, ruffled my hair and walked out of the room.

I laid back in bed, the harsh reality of my life now washing over me. I felt nothing but dread.

“Fuck,” I whispered to the empty room.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Being the oldest son comes with a lot of responsibilities. To be honest, it’s kind of a pain in the ass. You’re supposed to be the role model, the strong one, the perfect student. All the while, my dumb ass brother, Lee, gets to be the one to fuck off and get in trouble. I’d say that he gets to be the one having all the fun, but jail and the after-effects of booze and drugs was never all that fun to me.

I knew, because I had learned the hard way. The real fuckin’ hard way. As soon as I started running with the wrong crowd when I turned thirteen, my life plummeted down an ugly spiral of drinking and doing really stupid shit. I shuddered when I thought about it all, still to this day.

It’s been so many years, and I can still see Marisa’s face. We were seventeen, and I’d lost her in a stupid split-second mistake, on an empty back road with a lifted truck and a handle of whiskey. I had made the fateful choice to race a friend and instead of winning, I rolled the truck. I made it. Marisa, my sweet girlfriend, did not.

If it hadn’t been for that whole thing, I’d probably have ended up just like Lee. I’d not been much of a drinker since, to say the least. A few beers here and there, a whiskey or two when I was stressed, but that was it. After the accident, I spent a year in juvie, a small price to pay for Marisa’s life. Once I got out, I stayed on the straight-and-narrow for the most part.

As much as I tried to convince the black-sheep of our family of the existence of greener pastures, the more he resisted. He was as stubborn as a black Angus bull, that fella. Lee wasn’t known for taking advice well. Anything I said to him, he took as a criticism. After a while, I just gave up. He was a grown man now, hell, we all were, and it was time we all took responsibility for ourselves.

Lee was a mess, it’s true. Thankfully, he wasn’t here today, so I didn’t have to deal with his bullshit. He was around less and less often these days. Where he went was anyone’s guess, since he wasn’t too keen on keeping us informed of his whereabouts. But if I had to guess, I’d say he was laid up with a woman somewhere. That was just how he worked. Booze, drugs and women were all he ever seemed interested in.

The thing that pissed me off the most about Lee was that he had no real reason to rebel so hard. These days, he was only fighting against himself, but he had always been like this. It started with getting in fights at school, stealing from the corner gas station, and it just escalated from there. Maybe it was because he was the middle child, and he always thought he was ignored or something. I don’t know.

But what I do know was that Lee Haggard came from a damn good home, with a loving family, and wonderful parents. He had no reason to act like such a fool. He was blessed to have parents like ours. Hell, we both were, but I figured it out pretty quickly.

Not everyone was so lucky.

I thought about the Hope kids as I sat at the kitchen table surrounded by my family. I knew what it felt like to lose someone close to you, but I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to lose your parents.

We had tried to help out as much as possible, with Mom delivering casseroles and Dad volunteering to mow their fields or help out with their crops. Finn was good friends with George, since they had always been in the same class together before she went off to college, so he tried to spend as much time as he could with her.

I tried to help Crit out with the horses, but the truth of the matter was that the Hopes had trained their kids so well in the family business, that they knew everything that needed to be done and exactly how to do it.

As time passed, they needed less and less help. I admired the way Crit stepped up and took charge. He was a good man. His parents would have been proud of him.

It was just as well, anyway. There was more than a little animosity between us. Not only were we competitors, but now our parents had turned into the ones that had survived instead of theirs. It was awkward, to say the least.

Because of all of that, I hated having to compete against Crit in the rodeo so soon after his parent’s death, but that was just how everything fell. There’s something about having a heart full of grief that drives a man to be able to break through any limitations, and Crit did just that. I fully expected him to do it again at State, when I’d have to compete against him once more.

And yet, he had accepted his win with perfect humility and grace. It was hard not to admire the man.

“Finn, I heard you on the phone with George earlier,” my mother said as she passed a platter of biscuits to my little brother.

“Yeah, I’m going over and helping her with her chores today and we’re gonna hang out afterwards,” Finn said. Finn was a quiet boy, sensitive and kind to everyone he met. He was so different from the boisterous and rebellious Lee and I was incredibly grateful for that. Our family couldn’t handle two Lee’s, or two of the younger Beau’s for that matter. We were known as the bad boys of Sugar Hill, much to our chagrin. I was happy Finn saw right through our bullshit and had learned to be kind and respectful.

He was the youngest, and therefore, my mother’s favorite. I knew it, but I didn’t care. They were close and loved spending time together.

“That’s very nice of you, sweetheart,” my Mom said, the love shining in her eyes as she looked at him.

I looked around at my family again, my heart filling with gratitude for everything I still had in my life. Marisa’s face would always haunt me, but we all had to go on.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

There’s no smell in the world like hay and horse shit. As I cleaned up the stalls of our six horses, I inhaled as much of it as I could. It was my favorite thing to smell in the world, right next to burying my nose in one of the horse’s fur.

Renegade and Rusty were Mom and Dad’s horses, and they were both huge chestnut quarterhorses. Black Jack is a sixteen hand black mustang, and he’s Crit’s. Blue is Jesse’s blue roan and Shiloh is a buckskin Arabian that belongs to Seth. And the prettiest, most awesome horse in the barn belongs to me - Cherokee. He’s a fifteen-hand, black and white tobiano paint, and I’ve had him since he was born ten years ago. He was the coolest thing I had ever seen then, and he’s only gotten better. Besides Ruby and Finn, he’s my next closest friend.

I was finishing his stall when Finn walked in.

“Hey, George,” he said, his southern drawl always present. All of the Haggard boy’s accents were so thick, you wouldn’t be able to understand them if you weren’t from around these parts.

“Hey, Finn,” I replied.

“How you holding up today?” he asked. And that’s what I loved about Finn - he never asked me how I was, because obviously, I was fucking awful, but instead he added the word ‘today’ to his question, which made it so much more bearable and didn’t ignore all the pain I was going through.

“Okay, I guess,” I replied, “trying to stay busy.”

“Anything I can help with?” he asked. Finn had been coming over several times a week, always offering a helping hand, and I had been thankful for his company.

My entire life had been split in half when my parents died. Everything was now referred to as ‘then and now’ or ‘before and after’. So much had changed and everything felt different. Sometimes, it seemed like I was just floating through the days, my feet never touching the ground, with nothing to anchor me to the Earth. I found it next to impossible to connect with anyone.

The only two that I was able to find some sort of connection with had turned out to be Cherokee and Finn.

Neither of them demanded anything from me. They didn’t ask a bunch of prying questions, like every one else had. Even Ruby had been irritating me, her questions growing more detailed every day, as if she was writing a story about the worst night of my life or something.

But Finn didn’t do any of that. He hadn’t once asked me how it happened or anything like that. I mean, sure it was public knowledge that the driver of the semi had fallen asleep, crossed the median and hit my parent’s car. The semi had barely missed the Haggard’s car. They had managed to stop and miss all the wreckage, but by the time they got to my parent’s bodies, it was too late. They had stayed with my parents until the coroner took them away and then driven back to the cabin, woke us all up, and broke the news to us in person.