Sam got out of her grandma's yellow Buick and looked up at the green-trimmed ranch house that she hadn't seen in 5 years. She felt a bit like Anne, seeing Green Gables for the first time, except that instead of rolling hills of green on Prince Edward Island, she had landed in the middle of the high deserts of Nevada. It was night time and she shivered in her yellow sundress. She had been in San Francisco for too long, and hadn't remembered how quickly the abrasive heat of the summer could disappear once the sun had left the sky. She pulled her holey brown sweater more tightly around her, and drew in a breath. She scoffed, remembering what her mother had told her before she had left for the airport:
"You'll fit right in there with that sweater, I'm sure. No one cares about their appearance over there. It's all about those damned cattle. Cattle and horses. Feed. Two minute showers to save money. Is that what you really want?"
Sam's mother, Sue, was a beautiful woman, dark auburn hair, wide green eyes, and a wide smile plastered on her face at seemingly every occasion, unless that occasion was talking about River Bend. But Sam didn't remember River Bend that way. Before Sue had left and taken Sam with her to San Francisco, they had been living at River Bend, working alongside the hands to maintain the ranch. Sam had loved it. It was hard work, but rewarding.
Sue didn't enjoy the work. In her spare time, she had indulged herself in watching too much TV and ever since she had turned 16, as Sam now was, no one at the ranch could remember her being satisfied with her life. She had begun to feel like she lived in a backwards world, where people cared little about keeping up outward appearances, where women were expected to spend too much time in the kitchen, where her life was ruled by men, and where water was scarce and laws too harsh. Sam's accident had been the final straw. Sue had left, with Sam in tow, on the premise that the River Bend life was too dangerous for her daughter, but everyone knew that Sue had really insisted on leaving more for herself than for her daughter. After leaving River Bend, Sue followed one rule steadfastly: Sue first.
You couldn't blame Sue too much for how she had turned out. When they were both 17 years old, she had her heart broken by Ryan Slocum, son of River Bend's rich former neighbor Linc Slocum. Ryan and Sue had fallen wildly in love, so much so, that they became engaged within a few months of meeting each other. Unfortunately, Linc had some other ideas for his son, namely that Ryan shouldn't marry some poor girl from the ranch next door. He didn't want his son mixed up with someone like that when he was so young, and threatened to cut Ryan off if he didn't leave Sue. Ryan was a much better character than his father, but he was too young to stand up to his father and his wiles at the time, therefore, soon after his father found out about Ryan and Sue, Ryan left to live with his mother in London. Linc himself lost interest a few months later and went on to pursue his next project, building a chain of steak houses. He left the ranch in the care of his foreman Jed Kenworthy, who married Lila Anderson, a rodeo queen and Southern belle who inherited a large fortune from her father upon his death. With the money, they purchased Linc's ranch and renamed it Harmony Ranch, a suitable name for a land that had experienced its most tumultuous and conflict-ridden ownership since it first came to belong to humans. Sue was left alone, pregnant with Sam, and the story became the talk of the town until Sam was born. Sue vowed that this would be the last time she had her heart broken, and she would spend the next 16 years jumping from man to man, never satisfied, and always hungering for more.
The month before, Sue had married her fifth husband, an eclectic millionaire who had made his money by creating several games. He had little patience for anything that wasn't electronic, but even he had been smitten by Sue's never-ending cheer and beauty. As usual, Sue and Johnny had married within months of meeting each other. Johnny had told Sue before they married that he was wont to wandering from place to place because he became bored if he stayed anywhere for more than a few months. Sue had agreed to marry him without a thought to how constantly moving would affect Sam. Sam, tired of dealing with stepfather after stepfather, decided to take that as her exit. After a few loud arguments, Sam convinced Sue that she would be better off spending the rest of her high school years at River Bend Ranch with her uncle Wyatt and her grandmother Grace.
Sam herself had inherited Sue's looks, but little of her personality. Where Sue was flirtatious, Sam didn't have the patience for anything that wasn't straight-forward communication. With the plane of her mother's love life changing so often, she felt that she was stuck in a never-ending romance novel or a tragic comedy, depending on how you looked at it, where love triangles were more like perpetually evolving love tetrahedrons; she had felt no need to get involved with anyone herself, believing firmly that it was not worth the headache. Sam's lack of love-life only served to strengthen the walls between her and her mother, Sam believing that her mother was an absent-minded disloyal avoidant flirt and Sue believing that her daughter was cold, closed-off and thoroughly disinterested in her mother's life. Neither belief, of course, was true to the extent that the other thought, but these misunderstandings, compounded by lack of communication are the greatest causes of rifts between family members.
A lonely neigh sounded from the paddock, and Sam spun quickly to locate the responsible horse. She grinned as she saw him, a red-brown mustang impatiently pawing at the dirt as if he had been waiting for ages for company to arrive. Seeing that he had Sam's attention, the mustang trotted closer to the fence and slung his short stout neck over. Sam trotted over and stroked the horse's velvety nose, flattening her palm as his mouth nudged her arm. He lipped at her hand for a few seconds before he lifted his nose and snorted, as if disgusted by Sam, and returned to the other end of the paddock.
Sam's grandmother finished grabbing the groceries from her car and looked up in time to see the mustang's dismissal of Sam. She could already see that Sam's five years in the city had done little to diminish her love of animals, and marveled at how different Sam was from Sue. She said,
"Samantha, I see you've already met Ace. Wyatt bought him from the BLM. They've been doing a heck of a lot more horse gathers this past year. He wouldn't normally buy a mustang, given how feisty they normally are, but Ace was just too smart to pass up. He was training him with Jake so that he could sell him off later, but then he heard from your mother that you'd be coming."
"Really? Ace is mine?! I thought it would be a while before I'd be allowed to ride!" Sam exclaimed. A wide smile split her face.
"Careful now," Grace chided. "You haven't seen a horse in five years. You'll have to take it slow and steady until Wyatt and I are sure that you can handle this. But yes, he's yours. You'll have to tag along with Jake and help him finish with Ace's schooling for a bit, but that should help you bond with him more quickly."
Suddenly, Sam remembered that although the ranch was nothing like loud San Francisco, it really was unusually quiet, even for a Friday night.
"Where is everyone anyway?" Sam asked her grandmother.
"It was raining pretty hard yesterday, and the boys have been out for the better part of the afternoon checking on the calves. The Kenworthys are short-handed at the moment since two of their workers took off for two weeks to visit their families, which is why they haven't been back yet. But they should be coming in now any minute. Wyatt and the boys probably won't show it properly, but they're excited to see you again. They all still remember your eleven year-old self, though I daresay they'll be in for a shock when they see how much you've grown, " her grandmother responded.
Sam nodded, then glanced around the ranch. Standing there, she felt suddenly lost in this place which was so familiar and dear to her heart, yet so foreign to her recent memory. Grace, picking up on her granddaughter's confusion,
"Come on, Sam. Grab your suitcase, and we can go on and start dinner. I'm sorry we came in later than you thought we would, but I had run out of butter, and grilled cheese is an easy meal to prepare after a spending the day getting ready to go get you from the airport."
Sam, "I'm sorry to be so much trouble…"
Her grandmother's eyes shot up in rebuke, "Don't be silly dear! We've all been looking forward to you coming back. It's never any trouble to go to the airport to pick up the people you love!"
Sam smiled and went to pick up her suitcases, slamming the trunk of the yellow car behind her. She followed her grandmother to the ranch house's door. As the screen door clicked shut behind her, Sam heard her grandmother in the kitchen,
"By the way, Jake will be joining us for dinner. The poor boy has been hanging around River Bend all day doing chores, so that he'd get to see you. He's really excited!"
Sam felt a little kick of apprehension. She hadn't seen Jake since the accident, and he wasn't much of a talker, so the phone calls which his mother and Sue had encouraged between them did little to keep her up to speed on how he was doing or what he was up to. Still, from their brief conversations she had gathered that for some reason, he blamed himself for what had happened. Sam and Jake had known each other all of their lives; he was only six months older than her and Sue and Maxine, Jake's mom, had immediately thrown the two together out of convenience more than anything. Three Ponies' ranch, the ranch where the Ely family resided, was closer to River Bend than the other ranches and the two were so close in age. The two had stuck together (or been stuck with each other, as Jake preferred to say) ever since. Despite the small difference between their ages, Jake had taken it upon himself to act like the more mature, "adult" figure in their relationship, and so, while taking responsibility for Sam's accident as an 11 year-old boy looked perplexing from the outside, those who understood Jake's thought process could see why he had made that leap.
Sam was certainly familiar with Jake Ely and his crazy mind and so understood his assumption of responsibility. Still, she was, like any Forster, stubborn and determined. As she dropped her suitcase by the stairs and went to join her grandmother in the kitchen, she pursed her lips and gave a determined nod. She would do her best to absolve her best friend of his perceived duty as her protector and derail the nightmare that their relationship would become if he persisted in treating her like his responsibility rather than his friend.