The Ranchers Son (11 page)

Nate spoke softly.
“C’mon, E, you can do this…. It’s okay…. I know…, I promise you, I know.”

“Is he okay?”

His dad’s voice
was the last thing Ethan wanted to hear right now, not when the red mist of
anger was mixing with the grief and making it unbelievably hard to keep it all
in.

“Go back inside,
Marcus,” Nate ordered.

“I’m not leaving
until I know he’s okay. What happened?”

Anger got the
upper hand over the grief. All thoughts of how it was Adam here and not Justin
fled at hearing the question in his dad’s tone. “He isn’t Justin!” Ethan
shouted, staring at his father, allowing the venom bubbling inside him to spill
out.

His dad took a
step back, shock on his face as Ethan shouted. He should stop there, but he
couldn’t. “If you hadn’t thrown him out, he would still be here now.”

Marcus blanched
and pressed a hand to his chest. “Ethan—”

“Don’t, okay. Don’t
say you’re happy to have Adam here when you were determined they were dead. You
stole every bit of hope from everyone around you.”

Nate stepped
between Ethan and Marcus and held up a hand to Ethan. “Ethan, that’s enough.”

Ethan shoved at
Nate to get him away, and the surprise tactic made Nate stumble away from him
and straight into Jay, who was standing behind him. Nate recovered quickly, but
he didn’t come closer to Ethan again.

“Shit, Nate, I’m
sorry,” Ethan said.

Nate looked at him
in
shock
, and Ethan’s guilt index ramped a little higher.

“I couldn’t let
myself believe it,” Marcus snapped, interrupting whatever Ethan thought he was
going to say by way of apology to his old friend. “I couldn’t have that hope. And
I don’t expect you to understand.”

“He was a kid,”
Ethan said, the words tumbling out of him. “You told him to leave, that you
didn’t want him here. I heard you, so don’t stand there telling me that I don’t
understand.”

Marcus paled. “You
heard that?”

“What? You think I
stayed away from you for my health? I hate what you did.”

Unspoken was the “I
hate you” that would have completed that sentence.

“You can think
what you want,” Marcus mumbled. “It was an argument that got out of hand. I
didn’t mean it. I just want my son back.” He stepped away, turned on his heel,
and walked back to his house. Sophie was there at his side, linking arms with
him, but not before she’d stared back at Ethan, shaking her head a little. Was
that a reprimand? Or a warning?

Ethan turned and
braced his hands on the wall, staring down at the churning water as it spilled
and hissed around the stones under the bridge.

He stayed there
long enough for everyone who’d witnessed that shameful breakdown to have walked
away. He didn’t expect anyone to be standing there still, but when he turned
back, he was shocked to see both Nate and Adam standing there.

“Are you okay?”
Nate asked.

“I pushed you
away,” Ethan said miserably.

Nate stepped close
and pulled Ethan into a one-armed hug, with some backslapping added for good
measure. “I understand. Friends sometimes push friends around.”

Nate moved away
and looked at Adam, then left the bridge, walking past the Allens house to
where Ethan could see Jay standing. Ethan owed Jay an apology as well before
Jay could get all defensive of his boyfriend, so
he
raised a hand in a simple wave, which Jay
returned. Ethan couldn’t make out Jay’s expression from here, but at least Jay acknowledged
him.

“Are you okay?”
Adam asked softly. He’d moved a little closer, bracing his hands on the bridge
like Ethan had done. They were shoulder to shoulder, and Ethan liked that
proximity, that evidence Adam was real, was here.

“Fucking lost my
shit,” Ethan muttered. He was embarrassed, exhausted, ashamed, and any one of a
hundred other shitty emotions.

“Your dad—he and
Justin argued and you heard it. Why did they argue?”

Ethan shivered in
the cold now that the heat of anger had left him. “Let’s walk.”

Adam followed
Ethan past the Allens house and up the slight incline, following a path that
was nothing more than compacted dirt and stones in among the bushes. He didn’t
know where they were going, but trusted that Ethan had some kind of plan and
that he would answer Adam’s question when they arrived wherever the final
destination was.

He stopped as
another man walked down the hill, a man who stopped but couldn’t quite look
Adam in the eye.

“This is Henry,”
Ethan said, shaking the old man’s hand and stepping back to allow Adam to do
the same thing. “He’s worked at Crooked Tree for many years. How many is it now,
Henry?”

“Too long to count
now.” Although Henry was talking to Ethan, he was staring at Adam like someone
had said there was a unicorn on the property, with shock and disbelief in his
eyes.

Adam held out his
hand but Henry didn’t immediately take it.

“They said you
were here,” he began, his tone gruff. “I can’t believe it.”

“Henry was the
last person to see you and Justin,” Ethan explained.

Adam understood
then why the man was staring; he’d probably been asked the same questions over
and over about what he’d maybe seen. “Hi, Henry.”

Finally, Henry
took his hand and gripped it, not shaking it but holding on tight.

“Oh,” he said, and
his voice was choked. “It’s the best thing to see you here.” He dropped his
grip, which Adam was pleased with because boy, the old man was strong, and it
belied his more fragile looks.

Henry turned to
Ethan. “You done finding Adam, now you find young Justin, eh?”

Ethan nodded, and
Henry tipped an imaginary hat before continuing down the path.

Adam concentrated
on the view of Henry leaving, willing a memory to happen. He had to know Henry,
had to have the man in there somewhere. But there was nothing except a strong
feeling of déjà vu. Not at the man, but the voice, the scents in the air, and
the way the trees bent to form a canopy over the path.

Was déjà vu the
first sign he was getting memories back?

They went on up
the hill and came to a stop outside a house very similar to where they’d just
eaten dinner.

Ethan waved a hand
at the wooden structure. “This is yours.”

Adam cast a
critical eye over the construction: wood and stone, with a massive chimney and
a front porch. He felt like he had to correct Ethan and wasn’t sure why.

“Mine and Cole’s,”
he half whispered.

“Yes, it’s half
yours, half Cole’s,” Ethan took the steps to the porch and pushed open the
front door. Then he turned back to Adam. “Do you recollect anything, standing
here?”

That question was
starting to piss Adam off. He knew he’d be asked it over and over again, but
from Ethan it was something he wished didn’t need to be said. He stared at the
wood, following the grain of it, the smooth railing that ended close to a small
stone wall. Stepping up to the porch, he ran his hand over the wood, stopping
when his fingers encountered bumps in the smoothness.

Initials carved
into the softwood, which he traced with touch.
CS
,
AS
. That made sense;
this place was where he and his brother lived. Pain snapped through him, but
not a grief; this was visceral, like the smack of a hand on his face, and he
winced. Pain connected to those carved letters.

“I don’t think
your dad was over happy you and Cole did that, and me and Nate felt so guilty.”

“Why?”

“We dared you to
do it. You were only a kid, and you and Cole were always so good, never broke
the rules, y’know.”

The picture Ethan
was painting was one that sent the cold dread of fear through Adam. “He hated
that we did it,” Adam said. “Not so much a memory,” he added before Ethan could
show relief that Adam had recalled something. “Just another feeling.”

He touched his
fingers to his cheek, traced the split on his lip, and traveled over the bumps
and lumps on his broken face. The pain he felt as he touched each one seemed
the right thing to be feeling as he stood here. His eye was the most painful,
the swelling still pressing his skin and leaving him unable to open it.

“I need to talk to
Cole,” he said, his voice low. “I need to tell him—” Nothing. An absolute blank
in his head.

“Tell him what?”
Ethan pressed gently.

“I don’t know.”
Adam sighed and moved away from the railing, crossing to the open door.

Another feeling
washed over him, maybe an instinct? He didn’t want to go in. He never wanted to
go in. But he would. He needed to see what ghosts were inside this place, so he
moved past Ethan and stepped inside.

“Anything?” Ethan
asked.

“I was expecting
something to happen,” Adam confessed. “A memory, or a scent.”

“But nothing’s
there.”

“I know… my
bedroom was this one?” He pushed open the door to the front bedroom and stepped
inside. Critically he examined the contents. One small double bed—the iron
bedstead and mattress, with dark blue bedding. He guessed someone had taken the
time to do that when they found out he was coming home, because the room
smelled of laundry detergent. The drapes on the window were sapphire, the walls
held no posters, no sports trophies or toys from a forgotten childhood. But he instinctively
knew one thing: this had been his room.

Ethan said nothing
to confirm or deny it,
just
waited at the threshold with a carefully blank
expression on his face.

“This window looks
out on the path,” Adam murmured, leaning against the window frame and looking
beyond to the path that wound past the house. “I wanted the back room, but Cole
was the oldest and he chose that room. He’s a big guy, my brother, and he never
hurt me. He looked out for me. My dad… he hated us.” He had no idea where each
word he spoke came from, but he knew that truth was in every syllable. “I
remember one time, I tried to climb out this window—anything to get away—but I
could hear Dad hitting Cole, so I stayed.”

Ethan crossed to
stand next to him, placing a hand on his arm. He didn’t show surprise or
elation that a memory—albeit just the one horrible one—had filtered into Adam’s
head.

“I’m so tired of
remembering the shit things,” Adam admitted.

“I get that,” Ethan
said. Then he looked determined, like he wanted to replace the bad memories
with good ones. “You and Justin, you were alike in so many ways, then sometimes
so different. I remember when you told him you had feelings for me. It was a
Friday, and you and he had this camping trip all planned out for the weekend.”

“To the lake.” He
said this like it was fact, then shook his head. “No, I don’t know how I know
that.”

“You loved it up
there. You and Cole would spend hours away from the house, as many hours as you
could, really. Oliver Strachan was a man who was grieving, and turned into a mean
and moody drunk who used his hands more than his words.”

“No surprise I
wanted to escape, then. How did Justin take the news about us?”

“Justin saw us kiss that one time—and you
told him you wanted to kiss me some more
. I don’t think he hated what you told him. I think he
felt… I don’t know… betrayed that his brother and his best friend had somehow wanted
to kiss without him even realizing. I tried to talk to him, but he said it was
okay, and he walked back to the house. I knew there was something not quite
right….”

Ethan didn’t
finish the sentence but that was okay, Adam knew what he meant. If Adam and
Ethan had been a thing behind Justin’s back and then Justin found out, he would
have been pissed.

“And was that what
caused Justin to argue with his dad?”

“No, he was
already pissed with Dad. I followed him home and caught the tail end of it. I
heard Dad tell him to leave, that he’d had enough of Justin. He threw the Mom-dying-for-Justin
crap at him.”

“Dying for Justin?
He didn’t mean it, did he?”

“Fuck no. He and
Justin had a fiery relationship at the best of times, and when Mom died… well,
she refused treatment for cancer because she was pregnant with Justin. Didn’t
matter that Dad loved us, he always wanted more from Justin, as if Justin was a
miracle baby, a replacement for Mom. I know he didn’t mean to send Justin away.
In here.” Ethan placed a hand over his heart. “And what I said today was old
hang-ups. I just have all this shit in my head, and a lot of personal stuff I
need to work through. I hear Dad say he wants his son back, and I rise to it
every time.”

“He already has a
son in you. So it hurts.”

“Yeah. Stupid,
isn’t it?”

“Not at all.” Adam
sat on the edge of the mattress and then raised his legs to lie on his back.
“Come here,” he said, hoping that Ethan would just come sit with him so they
could talk in comfort. Seemed to Adam that they both had a lot to get through.

Ethan went around
the bed and lay down next to Adam, putting his hands behind his head and
staring up at the ceiling.

For a while they
lay in silence, and Adam tried all his relaxation techniques to try and recall
some other memory. Everything was there, he knew it, but it was all
just
out of reach,
like a cloud or something. “I have a head full of smoke,” he announced, then
realized he had just vocalized what was in his head.

“Yeah,” Ethan
said. “I feel like that sometimes.”

“Maybe if I don’t
concentrate so hard. Tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“Um… being a cop,
tell me about that.”

“I catch the bad
guys if I can, and then spend hours writing up reports.”

“You make it sound
so glamorous.”

Ethan huffed a
laugh and turned his head to look at Adam. “I love what I do. I was always
meant to be a cop, I think. And what about you? You said you work with horses.”

Adam hated that
Ethan had deflected away from himself. Adam didn’t want the focus back on himself
so soon. He didn’t answer at first, only stared into Ethan’s eyes. Something
told him he’d done this before, way back when he’d first thought about boys,
but he wasn’t pushing that memory by asking. He wanted everything he’d felt as
a teenager to come back by itself.

“Did your partner
find anything on my tattoo?” Adam changed the subject. He knew Ethan was trying
to track who did the tattoo, to find out who Adam had become after he’d left
Crooked Tree.

“Some leads she’s
tracking down.”

“Then I’d know,”
Adam said. “I’d be able to have someone else tell me everything I’ve forgotten
about the last twelve years. You know what I could do, though?”

“What?”

“Well, my life
didn’t come flooding back to me when I kissed you, and it was a really nice
kiss, so maybe I should do it again.”

Ethan’s lazy smile
vanished. His open mouth and wide eyes screamed shock. “I don’t think we
should—”

“Hush,” Adam said,
“I was only teasing. Whatever we had back then was only as kids, right?”

Ethan’s shock
subsided. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Just kids.”

“So I wonder what
I did after I left. Working with horses… maybe I’m a horse whisperer, or a
mounted cop.”

“Or you gave
lessons?”

“Or maybe I was
just around horses. Like I was rich and owned them.”

“Maybe.”

“And I had a horse
here, Smoke, but
he’s
gone now.”

Ethan hesitated
before answering. “Yes.”

“Sad,” Adam
offered. “Not that I feel sad. I don’t remember him, actually. Just that I
think
he
was gray. Tell me something about Cole and you. A story.”

“Cole knew I was
gay before I did,” Ethan said.

Now that was a
comment out of left field. Adam hadn’t expected the conversation to center on
the whole sexual-orientation thing. “How?”

“Said he knew when
he and I were seven, but he never explained how. He was my biggest supporter.
Of course it helped he was the odd one out, being that Nate was gay as well.”

Adam smiled over
at Ethan. “There’s something in the water. The three of us, me, you, Nate.”

“Well, kind of.”

“Kind of what?”

“Justin was always
loose with his affections. He had a girlfriend called Maisie, and then went to a
dance with a boy called Colin. I never did find out if it was teenage rebellion
or if he actually was dating the guy.”

“You can ask him
when we find him,” Adam stated firmly.

Ethan scrambled to
sit up, bracing himself on his hands. “You don’t even know if he’s alive.” He
sounded stressed again, and Adam hated himself for suggesting they would find
Justin. “Shit, I know he’s alive. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Sorry, I didn’t
mean to start something.”