If You Believe

God, he was tired of this. . . .

He closed his eyes and prayed for a night without nightmares. He needed sleep, needed it something awful, because tomorrow it would start all over again. Mad Dog would leave this wonderful little farm and hit the road for some smoke-filled hellhole in the bad part of town. And Jake would follow.

He had nowhere else to go.

Chapter Four

Rass glanced at his precious specimens, now lined with military precision along the shelf above his desk. Mariah had been at it again.

He shook his head slowly and crossed to the window. Pushing aside the lacy curtain, he gazed outside. The land, his land, looked as it always looked in the first short evenings of autumn. Night was beginning to creep in. The sky was an endless lake of midnight blue studded with diamondlike stars. Gretas grave was a dim glimmer of pale gray against the velvet shadow of the grass. The bunkhouse was an indistinct white square against the advancing night.

He stared at the little building, wondering about the man within. Though he wouldnt have admitted it to Mariah, Rass had a niggling sense of worry. Of doubt.

He didnt know exactly what hed thought when he tacked the slip of paper to the wall at Mas Diner, but he knew what hed expected.

A husband for Mariah. Someone to take care of her when Rass was gone.

What hed gotten was an irresponsible drifter with a ready smile and itchy feet, a man who moved on but never moved in. At first, Rass had meant to tell Mad Dog the job was filled. Hed even opened his mouth to say the words, then hed looked into Mad Dogs eyes. Really looked, in the way Greta had taught him. And there, beyond the cocky grin and the easy going manner, hed seen the same quiet loneliness he saw when he looked in his daughters eyes, or, lately, in his own.

Somehow, they were the same, the three of them. The surprising thought had come to him out of the blue. Then a breeze touched his forehead in almost a caress, and hed sworn it carried with it the lavender-sweet scent of his late wife. And so, without even thinking, hed invited Mad Dog into his home.

But now, without the breeze, he wasnt so sure.

Sighing, he rested his forehead on the cold window. "What do I do, Greta? Ive got to take care of her. . . . "

For a split second he found himself actually waiting for an answer. But, of course, there was nothing; no sound in the lonely room except for the whispered cant of his own breathing. He was alone, he reminded himself for the millionth time in the eight months since Gretas death. There was no one to bounce his ideas off of, no one to give him the advice he needed so desperately.

He drew away from the window, let the curtain flutter back into place. The house was depressingly quiet, without even an echoing remnant of the laughter that had once filled its walls. Without Greta, it had lapsed somehow from a home to a house, and he had no idea how the transformation had occurred. He knew only that he missed what this place had once been, missed it desperately. Without Gretas guiding hand, he and

Mariah had become strangers, hearing without listening, talking without communicating.

Somehow, everything he said to his daughter was wrong, or her reaction made it feel wrong. He knew it, could see it in the stiffening of her back or narrowing of her eyes; he could hear it in the reedy, defensive tone of her voice. He knew instantly when hed said something wrong, but he didnt know how to correct it. She was so

. . . remote sometimes. And she was hurt so very easily.

Ah, Mariah, he thought, feeling a familiar surge of regret. They were together now, but someday shed be jl alone, rattling around in this big house with no one to talk to.

He was an old man, and old men died.

And what would she do then? That was the question that had prompted him to tack the ad to the diner wall.

He couldnt leave her alone and lonely and closed off from the world around her.

Hed let her hide here with him too long. Years ago, when shed first come back, humiliated and emotionally battered, he should have forbidden her to return. He should have forced her to recuperate in the real world, instead of allowing her to lick her wounds here, in safety. Because he and Greta had been so soft and forgiving and safe, Mariah had never healed.

For a while, theyd thought she was improving. Her smile came back; the bounce in her step returned. She was, if not the impetuous, passionate child of her youth, at least content. Then they noticed her reluctance to leave the farm. At first it was a family joke. Mariah couldnt open the gate. Mariah couldnt go to town.

Greta and Rass had laughed loudly, then quietly, and then not at all.

He and Greta had handled it badly. He saw that now. They shouldnt have allowed her to remain within the safety of the white picket fence. They should have pushed her out.

It was a lesson well learned. Theyd let her have her way because she was in pain.

Because shed lost so much.

No more, he vowed silently. Now the stakes were too high. No matter how hard he

had to be or how cold, he had to force Mariah to break down her defenses. Shed grieved long enough—or not at all. He wasnt quite sure which. But either way, it was time for a change. Now, finally, she had to face the fear that kept her trapped behind the ordinary picket fence.