With Bodine, Cora led the horses back to the stall area. “I was going to unsaddle them here so Jessica got the practice, then rub them down at the BAC. But we can do that here if you need to talk to me. Want a Coke? We’ve got some in the tack room.”
“I’ll get us some.” Bodine carried the saddle back, stowed it, grabbed the drinks.
Cora had the second saddle on the post, already toweling off Wrangler. “What’s on your mind, darling?”
“I never asked you because I didn’t want to make you sad.” Bodine picked up a fresh towel, got to work. “If it makes you too sad and you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll stop.”
“This sounds serious.”
“It’s about Alice. I think I understand why Grammy gets angry, and why Mom does. Grammy—you’re her daughter, and it makes her angry somebody hurt you so much. And Mom, it’s the same. And I think hurt of their own, too.”
“I know that’s true, and we don’t talk about it much because it stirs up the hurt.”
“I don’t want to do that.” As she brushed the mare, Bodine looked over at her grandmother. “I don’t want to add to the hurt.”
“But you wonder about it. You’ve got questions stored up, and you’re somebody who wants answers.” As she worked, she met Bodine’s eyes. “You go on and ask.”
“I guess it was Karyn Allison’s mother who gave me the push on this, Nana. How she just wanted to die, and she might. And I talked to Billy Jean’s mother myself, and know even though they weren’t close the way you hear Karyn and her mother were, her grief was beyond measuring. It made me wonder what it’s been like for you, all these years, not knowing for certain if Alice is…”
“Alive. If she’s alive,” Cora finished. “I feel in my heart she is. I need to believe she is.”
“But why aren’t you angry? I see Grammy and Mom angry, and understand it. I see you believing she’s just alive, and I understand it. But why aren’t you angry with it?”
That formed the core, Bodine realized. She’d never known Alice Bodine, and the name alone lit an anger in her.
“Alice just walked away, she cut all of you out of her life. What kind of person, Nana, doesn’t even let you know she’s alive and well somewhere? What kind doesn’t understand the hurt and worry or care?”
“I was angry. Oh, angry’s a small word for it. I don’t have a word big enough.” And still she combed out Wrangler’s mane with patient hands, steady strokes. “She lit out the day of her sister’s wedding. Her sister’s happiest day. The night of, really, as we pieced it together. Left a note how she wasn’t going to settle like Reenie for the chains of marriage, the boredom of ranch life. Got some shots in there about how I never understood her, didn’t love her the same as I did Reenie. Hurtful. Deliberately hurtful. Alice had a way of poking her thumb in your eye.”
Though Bodine kept her thoughts to herself, she wondered if leaving hadn’t been a favor to the rest of the family.
“I didn’t want to tell Maureen and Sam, didn’t want to spoil their honeymoon. But they stayed in a cabin that night, and when they came back to say good-bye to everybody before they left on their honeymoon, I had to. Then I had to make them go, had to tell them—and I honestly believed it right then—Alice was just stirring everybody up as she liked to do, and would be back in a few days.”
“But she didn’t come back.”
“She didn’t come back,” Cora echoed. “Postcards here and there for a while. I hired a detective. I wasn’t going to make her come back. She was eighteen, so I couldn’t anyway, but it’s no good trying to lock somebody in who wants to go. I just wanted to know she was all right, that she was safe … but we couldn’t find her.”
Drawing in a breath, Cora stroked a hand over Wrangler’s neck. “I stopped being angry, Bodine, because being angry didn’t change a thing. I’d ask myself: Had I been too hard on her, too easy on her? I was working to keep the ranch going, then the dude ranch, and the bare start of the resort. Had doing all that taken too much away from being a mother to her?”
Self-blame wouldn’t do, Bodine thought. No, she wouldn’t allow it.
“Nana, I see how you and Mom are with each other. I see that and I know what kind of mother you were, you are. I hate knowing you’ve doubted yourself.”
“Mothers do, every day. It’s funny, Bo, how a woman can bring two children into the world, raise them up the same way—the same rules and values, indulgences and disciplines. And still two separate people come out of it all.”
For a moment Cora rested her cheek against Wrangler’s neck.
“My Alice, she was born with hard edges. She could be funny and sweet, and, God, charming. But where Maureen thrived on the ranch, Alice always felt limited by it. I know Alice felt I favored Reenie, but when one child is working hard to do well in school, and the other is skipping classes, well, one child’s going to be praised and the other punished.”
Cora let out a sigh, a half laugh. “Alice never seemed to understand how it all worked. When she was in a good place inside herself, she was a delight. Bold and questing and curious. Where Reenie could be too serious, too worried about all the details fitting just right, worried too much about pleasing everybody at once, Alice would pull her out of that some, tease her into some adventuring. A lot like Chase and Callen—but Callen … he didn’t have those hard edges, never in his life resented Chase for being what he was, having what he had. There’s the difference.”
“And none of it mattered, or matters now,” Bodine said quietly. “Hard edges, resentments, bold or curious, she was yours. You loved her. You love her.”
“I did, and I do. The loss of her? The knowing she’s chosen to forget me, forget all of us? It’s as keen as it ever was.”
“How do you stand it? How do you get through it?”
“I have to look at the whole picture, not just that dark, empty spot.”
Digging peppermints out of her pocket, Cora fed them to the horses.
“When your granddaddy died, the one you never knew, my whole world broke. I loved him, Bodine, so much I didn’t know how I’d take the next step in a world he wasn’t in. But I had your ma, and she needed me. I had Alice inside me. I had to take the next step.”
After running a hand down Bodine’s braid, Cora picked up a hoof pick.
“Your grammy and grandpa … I know Ma and I squabble now and then. Two women living in the same house are bound to. But there’s nothing in this world will ever brush away a speck of my love and gratitude for her and my father. They sold their own place to come here because I needed them. I couldn’t have gotten through without them. I might’ve lost the ranch, even with your uncles helping me.”
“You could’ve let it go, sold it. No one would’ve blamed you.”
Cora looked up, under the brim of her hat as she cleaned Wrangler’s right rear hoof. “My Rory loved the ranch. Risked everything he had to build it. I could never let it go, but without that help, I might have lost it. Instead, it thrived, and I know my Rory would be proud of what we’ve done.”