Hello!
I finally got some time to update-yay! Please enjoy, leave your comments and criticisms! Feedback is always appreciated!
I know this story is little different-but hang in there! All will be revealed eventually! I do switch perspectives halfway through (Which I don't usually do) but it seemed to fit in this situation.
Usual disclaimers! apply Thank you for reading
Chapter Three
"License and registration please ma'am."
Somehow, unbelievably Vic's hellish day had gotten worse. She wasn't aware that it was possible and yet, it had. She just shakes her head as she reaches over to the glove compartment to dig out the appropriate papers. Callie is smirking.
Satan himself was riding along for this one, that was the only explanation Vic could come up with.
The officer at the door is Ferg. Of course, it's Ferg, maybe a couple of pounds heavier and minus the vast majority of his hair, sweating under the Wyoming sun in his deputy uniform. There's a tarnished gold band on his ring finger and a multicoloured rainbow loom bracelet around a wrist. Vic stares at it as she hands over the papers like it's the weirdest part of her day.
Ferg as a father. Huh.
"Are you aware that you were going thirty miles over the limit miss?"
He doesn't recognize her. Of course, nothing about of the situation screams Vic—not the Subaru, or the Maryland plates or the hair, streaked with grey. Maybe if they had been Pennsylvania—no, probably not even then. Vic was certain that Ferg was not expecting the woman behind the wheel of a speeding car on a Thursday afternoon in rural Wyoming to be his former co-worker and ex friend.
The ex friend part was her fault. She was aware of that, that was for sure.
Vic waits impatiently, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel as he scans over the license and suddenly freezes. The same reaction as Ruby, almost identical. Vic would have laughed if the whole situation hadn't been so mortifying.
"Vic?"
"Hey Ferg." she smiles weakly, waves a hand "How've you been?"
Walt glows with pride as he watches Nina Little Sun carefully guide Jenny, the paint pony around the dirt ring. When Nina had first come in with her aunt nearly two years ago, she had been too scared to even touch the horses. Now, the twelve-year-old was strong and confident, her face scrunched up in concentration and determination.
It was only a trot around a dirt ring on a Thursday afternoon and Walt was still standing in the centre but it might as well have been the Olympics.
Beside him, Amber Little Sun beams as Nina circles them "She's so beautiful." Amber envelopes him in a hug, her words muffled in his shoulder "She's the sun."
Walt couldn't agree more.
Nina's lesson wraps up and Walt leans back as he watches the girl and her aunt groom Jenny, waiting for his next client. The barn is tidy, stall doors open to reveal the beautiful day outside. When Walt had first started his therapeutic riding barn, he had two horses. That number had grown to seven and enough clients to hire two Cheyenne kids from the res as stable hands. One of them, Alex nods at Walt as he walks by, pushing a wheelbarrow of manure.
Ella Sparks was his next lesson and she was never late. Walt fidgets with the ring, glances out at the driveway to see if she'd arrived yet. Ella was eighteen, had been in a wreck on senior prom night thirteen months ago and lost her leg. Walt didn't usually work with amputees—it was mostly kids, autism and behaviour issues but he had made an exception for Ella. Because Ella was a teenager and stubborn and headstrong and reminded him just a little too much of Callie.
He hadn't seen his daughter in two years and every singe day, it hurt like hell.
He hadn't seen Vic in ten years and that hurt like hell too.
He pushes the thought away because Vic was gone, there was nothing he could do about that. Callie was gone too, no matter how much he tried to avoid that painful reality. The days of her short summer visits had long since passed.
Dana, his receptionist and full time stable hand, pokes her head out from the office, her long black hair pulled back in a plait "There's a lady here to see you."
"Ella Sparks?"
"Nope," Dana pauses, looks like she's choosing her words carefully "Um...not a client."
"Tell her to book an appointment with me and I'll get back to her. I have a lesson."
"Yeah, that's what I told her," Dana grimaces and looks down at a paper in her hand "And she told me that if you don't come out here immediately, she'll strangle you. Or shoot you but she has no gun, so she may have to use yours." Dana looks up from her paper, holds up the paper "That's a direct quote."
If Walt didn't know any better, he would have sworn that it was Vic. He also knew that it definitely was not Vic because Vic would never travel anywhere without her gun.
"Ella Sparks is here," Walt says, reaching for a grooming kit "Tell her that she can just wait."
Dana winces "Do I have to?"
"Yes."
It's not even thirty seconds later when that door bursts open and Walt is confronted by Victoria Moretti for the first time in ten years
"Walter Longmire, I am going to murder you!"
A normal man may have expected an apology. Maybe a hug or some tears.
Somehow, deep down Walt knew that this was the only way that their reunion could have gone. Vic yelling like a homicidal maniac and him standing there, a little concerned and rather bewildered.
Some things never change.
Again, thank you for reading! Predictions? Why do you think Vic finally came back to Wyoming? How is Walt going to react to her and Callie? And who do those sunflower boots belong to?
