“Well, Malcolm, you could have told me the truth. Telling me wouldn’t have made life any more dangerous than it was already. You lied to me.”
“I know,” he said without arguing any further.
“I don’t like being lied to.”
“I’m sorry.”
Malcolm stood in front of me without putting up an argument at all. I had dreamt about that moment. I had imagined all the things I would say to him, but actually having him there in front of me was totally different.
He had on a pair of dark jeans, a white cowboy shirt, and some fancy, dark-brown boots. The hat he was wearing looked oddly familiar and I could have sworn it was my father’s. He looked good. Damn him. Malcolm looked so good that I had to hold onto the horse stall to prevent myself from running over to him.
I wasn’t going to give in to him though. He was probably there to appease his conscience and make himself feel better. So be it. I wasn’t going to give in to him. I’d let him say his peace and then he could leave and go back to the life of his that he had in Los Angeles.
“So is that all you wanted? You could have just called.”
“Actually, there’s something else,” Malcolm said as he walked toward Buckjoy. “I’d like to take Buckjoy out for a ride, if that’s all right with you?”
“Sure, whatever you want.”
“Do you and Bambi want to come with us? I was thinking of riding out to the river.”
I had to laugh at his assumption I would want to go anywhere with him. After leaving me without a word and then showing up months later, he actually thought I would want to ride with him all the way out to the river? He had lost his mind.
“Nope, but enjoy,” I said as I turned to walk away.
Just as I was almost out of the barn, my mother showed up with a huge smile on her face and open arms for Malcolm.
“Malcolm,” she said eagerly as she walked into the barn. “Sid said you
were here.”
I looked at my mother and then over her shoulder to my father who was standing near his office with a big grin on his face. So at least I knew where he had been on that day, but it didn’t explain all the other days that he had been missing from the ranch.
“Dad picked you up?” I asked loudly.
Malcolm just shrugged his shoulders and smiled as he and my mother hugged and started to talk. I needed to get to the bottom of all this. My father had obviously known that Malcolm was coming if he had gone into town to pick him up; why wouldn’t he have told me?
I stomped on over toward his office to talk to him. He had a lot of explaining to do and I wasn’t going to leave until he told me everything.
“So you knew he was coming?” I asked.
“Who? Malcolm? Sure, I knew, why?” my father said nonchalantly.
“And you didn’t think you should have told me?”
“Why? You said you didn’t like the guy. I wasn’t going to get you upset by telling you he was coming. He just wanted to take Buckjoy out for a ride and I told him it was all right.”
“So let me get this straight. You’ve been talking to Malcolm and you told him he could fly all the way out here just to see the damn horse?”
I was so confused. My father was acting like he didn’t know I had feelings for Malcolm. Of course, I hadn’t come straight out and said how much I was missing him, but my father knew the reason I had struggled so much when Malcolm, or Garrett, had left. He was pretending like he believed all the lies I had told him about not caring at all about Malcolm.
“We are friends. Can’t I have a friend?”
“Dad!” I yelled.
“What, darling?”
“What am I supposed to do with him here?”