The Memory of What He Once Loved

Welcome to Day 19 of the Rainbow Advent Calendar!

This year I had to keep my Rainbow Advent story at a low simmer, rather than doing a full blown novella, as I’ve done in the past. Along the way, while writing this, I realized that I have a thing about characters being rescued from blizzards and being given shelter. (That is because I’ve driven through blizzards a number of times and always longed to be rescued.)

You’ll find this theme in a number of my books (Honey From the Lion, Hot Chocolate Kisses, The Christmas Knife, Kind Hearts at Christmas, and The Detective and the Sheriff). There would probably be more stories with this theme, except the majority of my stories take place in summer so that my characters can be attractively sweaty and manly.

I wanted to try something a little different from my Ranch stories, but still set in the State of Wyoming, which I have an odd fascination with. I like how this story gets to the heart of the relationship between the two MCs and I hope you will, too.

If you enjoyed this story, I think you will enjoy my Farthingdale Ranch series, and if you’d like to be notified when I have new books or sales for my backlist, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

And if you enjoyed this story, you should check out all the other amazing stories in the Rainbow Advent Calendar – 2022.

The Memory of What He Once Loved

When Dale had been headed along Palmer Canyon Road out of Wheatland, going south to his organic cattle ranch, he’d not expected to see two little girls walking in the slatted, pre-blizzard rain. He’d just gone past Laffite Church when he saw them, his wipers doing double time as he put on the brakes.

Given the lack of recent snow, the chemicals on the road rose up in a foam, and he skidded sideways, almost hitting them. When he came to a stop, his heart was jackhammering in this chest, his palms sweaty, the back of his neck tight.

The two little girls were behind him now, on the wrong side of the road than they should be, as they were walking with traffic, not against it. Luckily there was no traffic, just him and his over enthusiastic brake-brake-brake reaction.

Turning the wipers to slow, he pulled over, watching ahead of him on the road, and behind him in the rear view mirror at the same time, thinking crazy bad thoughts about how maybe he’d actually hit them, that they were so small, he’d not even noticed.

Leaping out of the truck that he’d left in idle, the parking brake solidly on, he went around the front of the truck at a trot, and there they were. Two sad-eyed, wet-haired, shivering little girls, wearing not enough coat for the coming weather, which was going to be a two day blizzard, if not more.

Any fool could see the way the clouds clawed at the low ridge of mountains to the west, any fool could see the way the sky was coming down like wet, gray towels. So what fool let his kids go outside like that?

“You girls okay?” he asked them, slowly, keeping his voice low and calm.

They both looked at him silently, the wind pressing their wet hair against their pale faces. The smaller girl had bright pink earmuffs that were falling back off her head, and the other girl had a scarf that was still letting in the wind and snowy rain.

“Where you headed?” he asked, coming a little closer.

His truck was a bit too far out in traffic, not enough on the shoulder, for his liking, and somebody might hit it if they weren’t paying attention. Luckily there was no traffic, so as long as he kept watch, he could get the girls safely in his truck, and take them wherever they were wanting to go.

“You going home?” he asked, still patient. “Can I give you a lift?”

The two little girls, their eyes dark and solemn, looked at each other, and the smaller girl tugged on the older girl’s hand. They weren’t old enough to be teenagers and they weren’t so little, either. He didn’t know much about kids so it wasn’t easy for him to guess their ages, just the same.

“Melanie says we’re going to the store to get Daddy some soup,” said the younger girl. “Maybe some throat candy.”

The older girl, Melanie, shook the little girl’s hand, scowling, blinking against the large snowflakes batting her face.

“Which store?” asked Dale. “I can carry you there, if you like.”

“The grocery store,” said Melanie, the older girl. “In Wheatland.”

“That would be Wheatland General store,” he said, knowing it was almost two miles away. Easy enough to do in a truck and while not impossible for two determined little girls, with the weather coming down hard the way it was, still not an easy feat. “Can I take you there? Where do you live?”

The girls looked at each other, hands still clasped, almost as if they were silently communicating about the rule where they should never talk to strangers and would it be okay to break it just this once.

“Is your daddy real sick?” he asked, trying a different tack. What adult would be haphazard in his child care to send two little girls to get him some soup and cough drops in this weather? It sounded irresponsible, to begin with, and maybe even downright cruel.

“Rebecca got scared because Daddy won’t wake up,” said Melanie.

“He’s been on the couch all day,” added Rebecca, moving closer to her older sister.

That sounded to Dale like the girls’ dad had a bad cold or maybe even the flu, which would explain why the two little girls were out in such weather, unprepared, shivering, and soaked to the bone.

He debated in his mind whether it would be worth it to carry the girls to the store and then take them home or whether he should take them home first so he could assess what was the matter with their dad. And then either head to the store for cold medicine or call an ambulance.

Deciding on heading wherever their dad was first, he moved close and then crouched down so he wouldn’t be looming over them. Holding out his hand, propped on his knee, he could now look them level in the eyes.

“Where do you live, little ones?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, not wanting to betray his growing sense of urgency as the snow began slapping on the back of his neck.

Taking a deep breath, Melanie looked at Dale with dark eyes and he could see in them that she’d decided to trust him. That she’d run out of options and was desperate.

“We live under a tree in a trailer,” said Rebecca, chiming in.

“It’s the old Meyer’s place,” said Melanie. “We don’t have a home anymore so Daddy brought us here, where his grandma an’ grandpa used to live. It used to be a farm, with chickens and cows, but it’s just a trailer under a tree now.”

Dale rubbed his jaw, and then his nose, which was dripping with freezing rain. In fact, all of him was pretty damn cold, and if he was cold, the little girls, Melanie and Rebecca, must be chilled all the way to the bone.

“Look,” he said. “I’ll take you two home and check on your dad. See if he just needs medicine or maybe something more. Okay? I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. Let’s just get in the truck where it’s warm and dry.”

Melanie sighed as she nodded, and then she let Dale put her and Rebecca in the passenger seat of his truck. The step up was too high, and there was a wind whistling under the truck, pulling dampness with it, so he lifted them in, and buckled them in together. Then, when they were carefully secured, he closed the passenger-side door and hustled around to the other side. When he got in, he cranked the heat up to high.

“Which way is home, Melanie?” he asked.

Both little girls pointed down the road, past Lafitte Church, and left in the direction of the flat of land that was mostly used for ranching and farming. But where was the trailer under the tree? It couldn’t have been far, after all, Melanie and Rebecca had just come from there.

“The old Meyer’s place?” he asked, an odd memory fleeting across the back of his eyes. He pushed on the accelerator very gently, and guided the truck down Palmer Canyon Road.

It wasn’t even half a mile later when Melanie pointed to the left, to the dark group of old pine trees that someone had planted long ago as a windbreak. On the other side of the trees, if you looked hard, was an old pale blue single-wide trailer, listless among the scrubby weeds, an old tire, a little white freezer on its side, the lid hanging from one hinge.

Dale pulled into the driveway, which was only two side by side depressions in the thick mat of snow that had formed in the last five minutes as if the coming blizzard had determined to mark its territory early.

“We didn’t bring back any soup,” said Melanie, a forlorn waver in her voice. “Or throat candy.”

“I have groceries in the truck bed,” said Dale. In fact, he had overdone it at the store, since they’d had a sale on sweet glazed ham, which he loved. “Let’s go see what’s up with your dad.”

He parked the truck close to the door of the trailer, expecting that someone would come to the door to check who had just arrived in the yard. But no one came and the yard was eerily silent except for the sound of snow blowing across the frozen grasses.

He helped the little girls out of the truck, and then followed them up the rickety metal steps. Melanie opened the door and Rebecca scampered under her arm to go inside. Then Dale followed Melanie, shaking the snow off him as he stood on the worn avocado-colored carpet and looked around the dimly lit single-wide.

The air inside seemed listless and dank, and it was almost as if the trailer were leaning to one side, as if it hadn’t been settled right or had begun to sag. And there, on a worn couch with lumpy cushions was a man beneath a single tattered blanket.

Dale had to blink, absently taking Rebecca’s hand when she scooted up next to him, and reached up for his hand.

“Is that your dad?” he asked, his voice thin.

In spite of the bruised look of the man’s face, the aching thinness of shoulders where the blanket wasn’t covering him, Dale knew the man. It was Pete Branson, who Dale had known back in his school days. They’d been best friends since junior high and that feeling had only deepened during their high school years.

The summer of their senior year, when Pete had been planning to go to local two-year college in Cheyenne, while Dale worked on the family cattle ranch, Dale’s feelings had begun to grow. From shy acknowledgement that he liked boys to a full blown crush for Pete, he’d tried to keep everything to himself and then had miserably failed when his feelings had developed into a full-out devotion.

He’d always felt that Pete had the same feelings in return, as Pete would welcome Dale with hugs and friendly touches, and always sit by Dale at the baseball games, come to pick him up for swimming in the lake, save the last bite of his Peanut Buster Parfait for Dale at the Dairy Queen on Main Street.

But then Pete had started hanging out with Raynette, a nice enough girl, Dale had figured, at least in the beginning of that summer, thinking that Pete would come back to him eventually. But eventually turned into never.

Raynette had gotten pregnant and named Pete as the father, and the two of them got married and moved to Casper and then, even before the baby was born, to Houston, Texas. Which left Dale in a dusty hollow place with only his memories of Pete to keep him company.

That had been just a little over twelve years ago, and now here Pete was, two children in tow, living in a dilapidated trailer. The walls of the trailer were like sieves, and Dale could feel the growing cold outside leaching into the living room, even as he looked at Pete’s still form.

Now he knew why he remembered the old Meyer’s place. It was where Pete had gone from time to time over the years to spend time with his grandparents. That had been when they all lived in a suburb south of Cheyenne, went to school together, and spent their time at the drive-in and the city pool.

He’d never been to the farm Pete’s grandparents owned, but he’d seen pictures, only back then there’d been a cute white two-story farmhouse, a barn, a grain silo. Chickens. Kittens in springtime. There had even been an old-fashioned windmill. Now there was nothing but the trailer and scrap metal littering the yard.

Between then and now, Dale had grown up, saved up, and bought some land outside of Wheatland to raise his small herd of grass-fed Gelbvieh cattle. He had done his best to move on from the sorrow that followed in the wake of Pete’s leaving, though nobody he’d met along the way had ever made him feel the way Pete did. Like he was strong and wonderful and funny and smart. Handsome too, or maybe he’d merely interpreted the way Pete used to look at him.

Pete’d had the face of an angel, fair, easily freckled. Big brown eyes, long-lashed to trap Dale’s heart. Ginger hair. Narrow shoulders. And the sweetest voice, warm, burry when he’d whisper to Dale in the front seat of Dale’s dad’s truck when they would go to the drive-in, just the two of them. And that when everyone else they knew would stuff themselves into somebody’s station wagon and treat the event like a tailgate party at a football game.

No, those times he’d spent with Pete, building up to daring to kiss this beautiful boy, they’d always been on their own. Even when they went bowling with their friends as a crowd, it always ended up with him and Pete heading over to the snack bar to share onion rings and a coke. Like nobody else existed. Like they were the only two people in the entire world.

And it had come to this. Pete had come to this. Alone, ill, unable to care for his kids.

As to where Raynette was, or why Pete was alone with two little girls was a question that would have to wait. The more important thing was to figure out how to best take care of Pete. Which meant either making the trailer livable by fixing the heating, and checking the windows to make sure they were all closed properly. Apply a bottle of Pine-Sol to get rid of the musty, moldy smell. Make something to eat for Melanie and Rebecca. Wake Pete up–

Pete sat up as if suddenly aware that there was someone standing over him, and that he and his two little girls were not alone.

“Rebecca?” he asked, rubbing his chest as if holding back a cough. “Melanie?”

“Daddy,” said Melanie. She came close and sat beside him amongst the frowsy flump of cheap blanket. Rebecca came and stood right by her. “A man is here.”

Dale realized he’d never introduced himself to the girls, but he’d been so intent on getting them off the road and out of bad weather that it had gone clean out of his mind.

Now, on top of the absence of that nicety, he was looking straight into the tired brown eyes of the boy he’d once loved, a thousand thoughts swirling inside of his brain, memories of starlit nights, and breakfast, just the two of them, at the local Denny’s. And the time he’d leaned forward, determined to brave it out, waiting for the touch of those sweet lips on his.

That’s when the waitress had come by, and that’s when Pete had spotted Raynette. Who, as Dale recalled with a sudden, painful burst of clarity, had, at that moment, begun her campaign to win Pete over. A girl who, Dale recalled with a dart of pain to his heart, was later rumored to already have been pregnant when she’d fetched up to Pete.

He guessed he couldn’t blame her for trying to fix her life so she’d have a chance in hell to bring those kids up right, but did she have to pick Pete? Did she have to take Pete all the way to Texas and, effectively, cut Pete off from all of his friends, including Dale?

Well, maybe Pete was the father, and maybe he wasn’t. But that didn’t matter now. What did matter was that Dale had to make a decisions and that right quick, as to whether he’d fix up the trailer, heat up a frozen pizza, dose Pete with some Theraflu, and leave–

Or.

Or he was going to pack them all into his truck and take them home with him. His small white farmhouse was tight as a drum, stocked with supplies, and could shelter them all. A blizzard was coming, and by nightfall the roads would be slick with ice and everywhere would be covered with six inches of snow, or maybe more, depending on how hard the wind blew everything into drifts.

“Hey, Pete, it’s me. Dale.” Dale crouched by the couch in the same way he’d crouched down next to Melanie and Rebecca on that snow-strewn road. “How long have you been sick? Is it a bad cold or something worse?”

“Flu, I think.” Pete’s doubled over cough, punctuated by him clasping his chest, made up Dale’s mind for him.

“Do you remember me?” Dale asked, just to be sure.

Pete nodded, looking up at Dale, his face drawn and pale, those brown eyes sad and dim.

In those eyes, Dale searched for the memory of what they’d once shared, those laughs at school, hanging around their shared locker. The time they snuck off campus to go to McDonalds, surely the most forbidden of treats, particularly during school hours. When they’d experimented with pot just before band class.

When they’d both signed up to try out for the baseball team, and both failed miserably. But they’d snuck a bottle of Pete’s mom’s gin and hung out at the baseball field, sitting on the bleachers in the moonlight, just about holding hands as they traded that small bottle back and forth. Dale had not minded not playing baseball, not as long as he had this.

Some of those memories seemed to hang in the air between them, sweet, ethereal strands stretching between his heart and Pete’s as though in an effort to twine them together forever–and then Pete coughed again, his whole body shaken with it.

“Okay.” Dale stood up and clasped his hands together as if finalizing a to-do list in his head. “Girls, can you go grab your backpacks or whatever, and pack for a few days? I’m taking you and your daddy to my house till the storm blows over.”

“You have to–” Pete paused to cough. “You have to help them.”

“You wait on the couch, then,” said Dale. “I’ll help them and then you.”

Pete seemed obedient in his silence as Dale followed Rebecca’s tugging hand to a little room at the other end of the trailer. The room was at the north end of the trailer, so was getting the brunt of a cold wind whistling down from the mountains, which made him even more desperate to get them all out of there.

He was shown two backpacks, one that was blue with a white haired girl on it, the other that was pink with a girl with red hair on it. Disney, he suspected, but he saw that they’d not really unpacked, which meant that the little family had arrived only recently, perhaps even the night before.

Silently, he picked up both backpacks, and looked at the little girls.

“Is everything still in these?” he asked. They nodded solemnly and silently at him, so he led them back into the living room, where he spied a hard-sided suitcase on wheels. This suitcase was opened a little way at the top as if Pete had started digging around for something, medicine maybe, and then just stopped.

He zipped the suitcase up, and said, “I’m loading these and I’ll be right back.”

He tromped out of the trailer into the face of a hard, slanted, ice-drenched wind, and tucked the backpacks and suitcases in the truck bed where they wouldn’t fall out.

When he turned, he realized that Rebecca and Melanie had followed him outside, holding hands, two silent sentinels in the snow.

Instead of sending them back inside, because what was the point, he loaded them into the back seat of his four-door pickup and buckled them both in. They didn’t say a word, which was kind of freaking him out, but maybe the whole thing was kind of freaking them out.

“We’re going to be fine,” he said, pulling the old black and red checked blanket he kept back there over their knees.

“What about Daddy?” asked Melanie, her eyes worried.

“I’m going to get him right now,” he said. “We’ll be on our way in two minutes.”

He went back inside, where Pete was standing, wobbling as he attempted to pull on a dingy green crewneck sweater over his head.

“Sit down,” said Dale, his voice on the verge of being hard-edged, his worry and concern rolling themselves into a little storm of panic. “Shoes?”

Pete sat down on the couch, pointed at a spot by the door, where a pair of tasseled loafers rested in a small, citified heap.

Dale’s mouth opened to start a speech about how Pete should have known better, at this time of year especially, just about Christmas, than to be driving anywhere in Wyoming without good footwear. What if his car had broken down and he needed to get out to look at the engine? Which led Dale to question what he’d seen, or rather not seen, in the yard.

“Where’s your car?” asked Dale as he bent at Pete’s feet and gently rubbed his ankles, tugging his fancy, thin socks up all the way.

“Taxi,” said Pete, breathing hard, like he was trying to hold back a cough. “From town.”

“Did you come by bus?” asked Dale, already knowing the answer was yes. The Greyhound bus station was on the other side of the highway, and perhaps the taxi had gone by the grocery store, which might explain how Melanie and Rebecca had decided to head in that direction.

At Pete’s nod, Dale made himself stop asking questions, or even wondering about them. His job was to get the four of them back to his place before the snow really started to come down.

He’d keep his memories about him and Pete to himself, at least until Pete was better, and maybe not even then. Pete didn’t deserve having to explain himself to Dale, especially since he was obviously on his last legs, having come to a situation where bringing his daughters to a shithole of a trailer on the outskirts of a very small, nothing-ever-happens-here town had been his only option.

Dale did his best to wrestle those tasseled shoes onto Pete’s feet. But the shoes were hopelessly misshapen, having not been stuffed with rags as they were allowed to dry.

He gave up on that, stood up, and stood close while he grabbed the wool coat from the back of the couch, and helped Pete put it on. For good measure, he wrapped the thin blanket around Pete’s shoulders like a cape. Then he picked Pete up in his arms, ignoring Pete’s squawk of surprise, and hauled him bodily out to the truck, buckling him in, and shutting the door.

The only reason he went back to the trailer to shut the door solidly was because it was the right thing to do. Just because it was a shitty trailer didn’t mean that Pete would appreciate Dale mistreating his property. And maybe Pete would want to come back and fix the place up so he could live within a ten or fifteen minute drive from Dale forever and ever.

A pipe dream. Foolish. Based on a younger man’s heart. Based on a love grown out of innocence, so long ago that sometimes Dale felt he’d imagined it. He needed to let go and move on, but first, he had a rescue to complete.

He got into the truck, turned on the engine, and put the heat on full blast. Had he been any farther from home, he would have been quite worried about the amount of snow that had built on his windshield in the short time he’d been inside the trailer.

He was close to home, so close he could have closed his eyes and driven the distance by memory. But as he pulled out onto the snow-covered road, he kept his eyes open, for he had a burden to carry, so precious to him that he even went slower than he normally would, just to make sure they all arrived in one piece.

***

When Pete opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was. The last thing he remembered clearly was collapsing on the couch the second he’d shut the door to the old trailer behind him.

His grandparents, who had owned the land, had long ago moved away, retiring to Arizona, years before the old farmhouse had collapsed. Another relative had purchased the single-wide trailer and moved it to the location, perhaps with aspirations of starting the farm up again, or maybe they’d just wanted a place to set up camp when they’d go hunting.

At any rate, the trailer had offered shelter from the storm he knew was coming so that’s where he’d gone. But no matter how bad the blizzard was predicted to be, it was smaller and more insignificant than the disaster he’d left behind. No, scratch that, that he’d been running from. With two little girls in tow and barely enough time to gather their things together.

Rebecca and Melanie had been real troopers the entire journey, wide-eyed and brave as they pressed their noses against the windows of the Greyhound bus and watched the world go by. Watched the landscape of southern Texas turn into the bumpy, high-altitude stretch of Colorado, and then to the windy slope of the middle of Wyoming.

Twelve years ago, he’d believed Raynette when she told him she was pregnant with his child. He’d married her and they’d moved to Houston, Texas, and his old life had been subsumed beneath the polished suburban life that Raynette wanted.

And he’d wanted to please her, at least in the beginning. He’d gone to accounting school, and taken a job at a downtown firm, and spent many an hour in a cubicle on the 8th floor without a view of the sky. Which was one of the things he’d missed most of all. The sky. The fleecy clouds chasing each other. Real air, untouched by an air conditioner. Corn on the cob, fresh from the field, and dropped into boiling water on the stove as soon as it could be shucked.

Well, Houston wasn’t to blame for how it had all turned out, nor was the state of Texas. Turned out that the sweet, romantic beginning of their marriage, including the birth of two amazing little girls, silky haired, dark eyed, and sweet as sugar, could not have foretold how it would end.

With screaming matches. Doors being slammed. A useless month’s worth of marriage counseling. The girls, Melanie, and especially Rebecca, suffering silently until the nightmares suddenly showed up more nights than they did not.

As to why? Raynette had discovered, at around the same time as Pete himself had discovered, that Pete wasn’t in love with her. That Pete, in fact, preferred men to women. That he’d been bringing up the idea of going to Cheyenne for a week, just to see their old stomping grounds. Maybe attend the high school reunion. Maybe see his old friend Dale, who had moved up to Wheatland.

She wouldn’t have it. She wanted a Caribbean cruise instead. Not a Disney World cruise, where they could bring the girls, but an adults-only cruise, with cocktails and shuffleboard and some glamorous week-long event that she could parade herself about as though to announce to the world how wonderful she was. As for Rebecca and Melanie, Raynette wanted to find some nanny to move in and look after them while they were away.

Even as half of him balked at having a stranger looking after the girls, he’d started looking at cruises, thinking that if he could make her happy in this one thing, that would cascade into the rest of her, and she’d be happy with him.

That was when Pete had finally found out how many credit cards Raynette had been using, had maxed out. She’d hidden her spending from him, and then screamed at him for not making more. Working harder. Kissing more ass in exchange for raises.

It had turned vicious from there. The bankruptcy proceedings had gotten him fired from his job at the accounting firm. They lost the house, the cars, everything. The only blessing, and the one thing he’d insisted on, was custody of the girls. The judge had agreed, and Raynette had gone ballistic. The truth came out, then, the secret she’d been hiding for years. Melanie was not his child, but Rebecca most assuredly was.

In his heart, they were both his true child, and the third time Raynette had come to the little apartment Pete had found while he figured things out, drunk, banging on the door, waking up the girls, he knew he’d had enough. It was time to go home to Wheatland, where his grandparents owned some land.

And then there had been–yes, he had to admit it to himself, other reasons than simply wanting a glimpse of the wild fields around Wheatland, a breath of that high prairie air–he wanted to see Dale.

Coming home meant he could take up the edges of his past and pull them closer to him. Walking those same simply small town streets meant that he could retrace his steps and find out where he’d gone wrong.

And finally, after all these years, he could discover whether those boyish feelings he’d had in junior high, in high school, and all the summers in between, meant anything or whether they’d been his imagination.

A rush of air escaped him as he looked at the darkness of the ceiling of a home he’d never been inside of before, but yet knew. He’d come to Wheatland because he knew Dale lived there and he’d been hoping to bump into him at some point. Instead, Dale had rescued him from that trailer that, rather than being an island providing respite, had paper-thin walls and a furnace that barely cut the chill.

This was Dale’s house. Dale, who had inexplicably showed up just when Pete needed him most. Who had entered that trailer all tall and grown up, with shoulders broad enough to move mountains, hands enough to lift the world, and legs long enough to stride him right back into Pete’s life.

Pete remembered feeling a little shocked at Dale’s five o’clock shadow scruffing his chin, his jawline, making him more impossibly handsome than he had been in Pete’s memory.

And, oh, those blue eyes had been the same, just the same, looking at Pete as though Pete was someone Dale liked looking at, very much. That Dale liked him, all the way down to his bones.

It had never been anything they’d talked about, him and Dale. But there had been gazes between them over the years, long ones, as though they were on the verge of breaking the silence between them and telling the truths of their hearts.

Just around the end of ninth grade, when the world of junior high was about to burst forth into the best summer of their lives before entering high school, he’d turned and there was Dale.

Of course, Dale was always there, had always been there. But that time, just pushing into manhood, tall, gangly, Dale had looked at Pete in a way he’d never done before. And Pete had been smitten from that moment on.

Not smitten enough to do anything about it, no. But obsessed enough to take tons of photos on his camera of Dale, whether they were amidst a group of their friends goofing off at Lake McConaughy, or alone in Dale’s dad’s truck, running an errand, bringing back bags of salt or grain for the cattle. Dale, Dale, Dale, over and over, as though the camera simply didn’t want to focus on anyone else.

He’d always thought that Dale hadn’t noticed, or wasn’t paying attention. But then, he started finding pictures of himself on his own phone, as if Dale had picked it up when Pete had put it down, taken the picture and then quickly returned the phone. It was not as if Pete wouldn’t find out eventually, but they never did talk about it…except that Dale seemed to be posing more deliberately, as if he wanted to create the nicest image for his friend Pete.

The poses included Dale looking over his shoulder at Pete, or looking away so Pete could capture the line of his profile against a clear blue and pink Wyoming sunset. Or he would pretend to be asleep so Pete could stare and stare and stare to his heart’s content until finally taking that picture, only to moon over it later. For hours.

Dale had been handsome, back in school, dark haired, blue eyed, his body lean angles as if it waited for the day when his shoulders would fill out, his torso became dense with muscle, his long legs living up to the promise of dense-thighed strength.

All of that had come true, and then some, and Pete, as he sat up and turned on the bedside light, wanted to cry at the time they’d lost together.

The door to the small bedroom opened, and in walked Dale, making Pete catch his breath at the way Dale filled the room, all masculine energy and smelling like woodsmoke, his dark hair a mess over his forehead, his blue eyes just the same as they’d always been, except now there were little laugh lines at the outer corners.

Pete’s quick-drawn breath turned into a raspy, chest-rattling cough.

“Don’t do that,” said Dale, his voice rumbly and warm. “Here, here.”

He sat on the bed next to Pete, his arm around Pete’s shoulders, just as would always happen back when they were boys. A gesture of camaraderie, a press of muscle and warmth, to tease, a little roughhouse, or to comfort, when needed.

“Where are the girls?” asked Pete when he could speak, a sudden worry overtaking him.

As he stood up, Dale stood up, as well, pulling a soft cherry-red wool bathrobe around him, helping him into it. Gesturing to the floor where two leather slippers, lined with sheep’s wool, waited for his bare feet.

Obediently, Pete did as Dale silently told him, then looked up.

“They’re fast asleep,” said Dale, straightening the lapels of the bathrobe that surrounded Pete with the sensation of Dale’s scent. Woodsmoke, lavender soap, a bit of cologne. “I’ll show you.”

Dale took him the two steps across the short passage to another room and slowly opened the door. Light from Pete’s room sliced into the darkness to show two little girls tucked beneath a vanilla-white duvet, their dark hair streaming across the lace edges. They were safe. Dale had rescued them all.

“How did you–” Pete waited until Dale had closed the door, then tugged the warm robe around him as a shiver ran through him. “How did you find us?”

“I was driving back from the store when I saw them walking to town,” said Dale. He was close to Pete, but he didn’t move away. “They were fully aware that they shouldn’t talk to strangers, but I managed to convince them to let me help them–and that’s when I found out they were going into town for soup and cough drops. That’s when I found out who their daddy was.”

There was no recrimination in Dale’s voice, only the slight question running through the words as to what had happened to Pete to land him where he’d ended up.

The last thing Pete wanted to do was labor Dale with all of his problems, but a bit of luck kept him from having to answer as a cough rose up in his chest, and he staggered away to keep it from waking the girls.

Dale followed him, almost guiding him from behind as they walked into the large farm kitchen.

“I got you all here, and told the girls to change into dry clothes while I got you into bed and dosed you with Theraflu,” said Dale. He filled an electric kettle with water, and turned it on, then guided Pete to sit down at the kitchen table. “When you were in bed, I fed them, let them watch TV for a little while. Put them to bed, put their wet clothes in the washer, and watched over you.”

Dale’s voice fell on that last word. You. As if Pete was the most important among all of it. Making Pete shiver even as he lowered his face into his hands at the thought of Melanie and Rebecca deciding together that they should stride out into the danger of a growing storm to help their dad feel better.

If Dale hadn’t come along, perhaps some other person would have picked the girls up, as Wyoming tended to be a tight knit community, for all its size, and neighbors looked out for each other. But of all the people who could have stopped, Dale had been the one who’d rescued his girls, and him.

Dale deserved an answer, so when a white china mug was placed in front of him, Pete drank the hot, metallic tasting liquid, and told his story. Not all of it, not too much so as to overwhelm, but enough of it, as Dale was always clever enough to read between the lines.

“I don’t know why I trusted her,” said Pete, wincing at the bitter dregs of the medicine as he swallowed the last mouthful. “Or why I left without really saying goodbye.”

“You were doing what you thought was right.” Dale rubbed the scruff along his jaw. “You looked after your family.”

“I’ve loved Melanie as if she were my own.” Pete couldn’t take his eyes off Dale, leaning forward, his elbows on the table, sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up to show corded forearms, the dark hair on the back of Dale’s wrists. “She is my own, just as much as Rebecca is, even when I found out she wasn’t.”

“That was cruel to do to you.”

Pete looked up from where he’d been staring at the point where the undone buttons on the flannel shirt showed a sprightly burst of dark chest hair. Looked into Dale’s eyes.

“I’ve forgiven her,” said Pete, softly. “I think.”

“You were always nicer than me,” said Dale. “I will never forgive her for what she did to you.”

The words were meant to be kind comfort, but Pete could hear the anger just below the surface. And he couldn’t blame Dale for being angry about what Raynette had done, not when that rumbly voice floated in the air to land on his shoulders like a soft, determined, protective blanket.

“I should put you back to bed before that stuff knocks you off your feet.”

“I don’t want to go to bed,” said Pete. He glanced at the clock over the white stove. “Even if it is midnight.”

Dale’s gaze was as warm and steady as it ever had been, but there was a question in them now, low beneath the blue of those eyes, rising up like a creature freed, at long last, from a vast depth.

“Then let’s sit for a while.”

Dale stood up, and when Pete stood up and wobbled, Dale was right at his side, a strong warm arm around his waist, a broad chest to support him, slow steps to take him to the couch, which was set in front of a slow-burning fire of orange embers, coal-black logs, the pop of blue and cherry flaring from time to time.

“This your place?” asked Pete as he looked around the fire-shadowed room, which seemed to be the great room in an old farmhouse that had been updated to be a little more modern, but still cozy. The walls were painted some soft color, and the floor beneath his feet was warm. “Heated floors?”

“Yeah.” Dale laughed, his head going back, the way it always used to when he thought something was funny. “I don’t mind heading out in freezing temperatures to feed cattle or to break up ice in the water troughs, but I have never liked coming home to a cold house.”

He looked right at Pete as his laugh settled into a smile and casually, quite casually, he flung his arm along the back of the couch, right behind Pete’s head. And then Dale was still, watchful, waiting as though for a signal from Pete.

Maybe it was the medicine, kicking in, making his head feel like it was swimming in a vat of cotton wool. Or maybe it was the fire in the stone fireplace, sending tendrils of warmth into the room as though inviting Pete to sink beneath that warmth and rest forever and ever. Or maybe it was Dale himself, a steady presence, a warm body so close to his that if Pete melted into it and disappeared, that would be a fine ending to a life half-lived and choices made in fear.

Or maybe it was simply time to say the truth out loud and face what might follow.

He took a breath and froze, expecting that his rattling cough would rear its ugly head, but the medicine had kicked in well and truly now, and the cough abated before it even began.

That’s when he curled into Dale’s side, into that warmth and steady tide of love and affection that he’d always felt coming from Dale. Slid his arm around Dale’s back, as he’d often done when they were kids, half-wrestling, half goofing around, playing at affection and then darting away again.

He was doing what they always did, especially when they were hanging around with other guys at ball games in early summer, at the skateboard park down by the rec center, at the Dairy Queen–everywhere. They simply pretended it was nothing other than what it was, pretended it was just guys being guys, and not a bone-deep, soul-imprinting love.

This time, he did not pretend.

“Dale,” he said, half-choking on the well of feelings that rose up inside of him as he buried his face into the curve of Dale’s flannel-clad shoulder. Gripping folds of soft shirt in hard, claw-like fingers. “I missed you. Every minute of every day.”

He wanted to cry when both of Dale’s arms came around him, folded him close against Dale’s strong chest, one hand coming up to cradle the back of his head.

“Me too.”

Pete could hear the ache in Dale’s voice, as though his throat had grown too thick to say more than he had.

But behind those two words was more–everything that had always shone out of Dale’s blue eyes. Affection. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Love. Most of all love, all of it. Every bit of it. As though the words they’d never said to each other had been packed carefully away, staying safe over the years, held for just this moment to be spoken. Only it was too much, too much to be said aloud, at least not yet, not just yet.

He felt the rasp of Dale’s beardgrowth scratch along the side of his face, and then a kiss, warm, plush lips tenderly pressed to his temple. Pausing, a start of hesitation from Dale’s body as if he feared he’d done too much, risked too much. Loved too much.

“Dale.” Pete whispered the name against Dale’s strong neck, curled his head down to brush his forehead to the hard muscle, then swept a kiss to Dale’s collarbone where it rose amidst a rumple of flannel shirt. “I’ve missed you,” he said, almost a whisper. “Over and over, I missed you, and now I’ve come back, but my life’s a mess and I’ve got kids and I don’t know–”

“Of course,” said Dale, not hesitating to say it when Pete paused. “You’ll stay with me. You and the girls. Starting from now. I can’t wait to get to know them, and I can’t wait for it all to be like I imagined it–”

“You imagined it?” Pete looked up, touched a hand to Dale’s jaw. His fingers trailed Dale’s mouth, his lower lip, tickling the tips of his fingers around the corner of that mouth that was starting to curve into a slow smile.

“Yeah.” Dale’s voice was low and quiet, and the word yeah was said with such certainty that the force of it sank into Pete’s whole body. The room was starting to swim around him, but he could feel Dale’s warmth, the hardness of bone along his jaw, the scratch of beardgrowth, the whisper of a kiss to his fingers. “Just like this. A farm. A small herd of very good cattle–”

“Gelbvieh cattle,” said Pete, interrupting.

“You remembered,” said Dale, pleased wonder in his voice.

“Of course I did,” said Pete. “Tell me what else you imagined.”

“A little white farmhouse, complete with an old fashioned windmill drawing up water from a pure, clear well.” Dale paused and cleared his throat, his solid arm around Pete like a beautiful proud angel. “And a family around a farmhouse table. Which I don’t have–” Dale stopped again and then gestured to the kitchen counter and the two barstools placed along its length. “Hadn’t needed one, seeing as it was just me I was cooking for. But now–”

Pete squinted where Dale had gestured, but either the room was too dark or he was too doped up to be able to focus, for all he could see was Dale’s face, the profile of his jaw, the darkness beyond his arms.

“Now, I’m going to need to buy one or build it–”

“You could build us a table?” Pete asked, not allowing himself to question that what Dale was talking about was anything other than a true marriage proposal.

“Sure could.” Dale’s smile was proud, as it had every right to be. “Got me a little woodworking shop next to the barn. It’s got heat and running water and tools. Everything I need.”

“I’d like it built rather than bought,” said Pete. He was sliding into darkness so fast that it almost felt as though he was falling. And he was falling, for he’d stood up, and strong arms caught him, effortless and sure and true. “And you’ll teach me, right? I don’t wanna be an accountant anymore–”

He stopped, pressing close to Dale as they stepped through a doorway into where Pete had been sleeping before. He waited as Dale steadied him on his feet, took the robe away, knelt to take off the wool lined slippers. Waited while Dale took off his blue jeans so he was dressed only in the flannel shirt and pale blue boxers.

Pete hadn’t even started to wobble and fall over before Dale had tucked him into the bed and then slid in beside him, reaching to turn off the bedside light. And there, in the darkness, Dale’s arms came around him, warm and steady, a gentle hand guiding his head to rest on Dale’s shoulder.

“It’s you and me now, Pete,” said Dale’s voice, almost disembodied from the warmth that encircled Pete completely. “Like it always was.”

In spite of the newness of what Dale said, Pete didn’t doubt the words or their truth, a finality from which he would never return, never turn away from, never regret agreeing to in a soft murmur, his lips kissing Dale’s cheek before he sank back. He’d found his way home. After many years and living a false life, he’d found his way home to Dale.

The End