When the sign welcoming them to Okotoks flashed by Lou's SUV, Amy was starting to get second thoughts about their little trip to the neighboring town of Hudson. It wasn't as if she had suddenly changed her mind about going to see Tim's dad - their grandfather - but the uneasy feeling she had had since Lou had suggested this had just grown over time.
"I don't think we should be doing this", Amy finally opened her mouth.
Lou glanced at her from the driver's seat and scoffed. "What are you talking about? I thought we agreed that we'd both like to see our other grandfather after not seeing him for... what, almost 20 years."
"I do want to see him, just not like this", Amy corrected. "I think we should go back and talk to dad first. Ask for his blessing. You saw how mad he was at the dinner when his dad was brought up."
She was somewhat surprised Lou would go against what seemed to be Tim's wishes because the two were usually not only on the same page, but at least had each other's backs, where as Amy felt like she usually disagreed with him more than her sister.
"Ask for dad's blessing...?" Lou repeated. "Who are you and what have you done to Amy?"
"Excuse me...?" Amy asked, wondering if being in a car with Lou had been such a good idea after all, especially since everything was still a bit tense between them. Maybe she had, naively, thought that something like this would actually bring them more closer than divide them even more.
"I just never thought my sister to be someone who was asking for anyone's permission", Lou explained, thinking back all the times Amy had gone against people's wishes and rules because in her heart she had known something to be the right thing to do. "You've changed."
Amy couldn't deny that Lou was somewhat right; she had not always asked people's permissions, but she had also gotten in trouble for it, too. Like the time she had stolen Spartan back, saved Will's horses from the cull or went to Europe and then made Ty mad.
"Maybe I grew up", she said, hoping to evoke a reaction in Lou that would make her realize maybe she had not since she had always been like this, from sneaking Scott inside the house while babysitting Mallory to moving away to New York after reaching her limit with her own family.
But instead giving it a second thought, Lou just kept going. "If you're going to ask people's permission with everything, you're never going to get anything done. Trust me; I wouldn't be where I am today if I had asked permission to do everything I wanted to do."
"But aren't you worried about what dad's going to think?" Amy asked. "How he'll react and how all of this will make him feel."
"He'll be fine", Lou trusted. "He'll understand. Besides, it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."
Amy almost couldn't believe what she was hearing and the arrogance in Lou's words. "So you know he'll be mad, but you do it anyway?"
"Yeah?" the older sister didn't see the problem with it. When she glanced at Amy again, she saw the judgement on her face and felt the need to explain. "Come on, it's not like everyone isn't doing the same thing. Don't hate the player, hate the game."
"Maybe that's the problem", Amy pointed out. "I mean, can't you see what it's doing to everyone? This constant cycle of willful ignorance and hurt."
"Well, yeah, but... it's the survival of the fittest", Lou shrugged. "It's just the way it is. The world isn't a nice place, Amy."
"We shouldn't just allow it to be like it is without even trying to make a difference. Shouldn't we break the cycle if we know it to be wrong?" Amy asked. "I mean, when did people get so selfish, anyway? What happened to taking others into consideration, filling them in, not blindsiding them with whatever you're doing."
The tone in Amy's voice was so heavy that Lou felt the need to pull over on the side of the main street as soon as she noticed a vacant spot. Maybe they weren't exactly in the best terms right now, but Lou still worried about her sister.
"I feel like this is no longer about me or dad", Lou said when they sat in silence for a while, and Amy was taking shallower breaths. "What's going on?"
Amy looked down, at her hands, and realized her reaction probably seemed a little over the top for something like this. So, maybe Lou was right. Maybe this had been a trigger for something else.
"I don't know... I just feel like... I'm losing a sense of reality", Amy admitted. "I feel like I've always known what my life is like. Who the people around me are. What I am about, but... lately I realize I have no idea. I have no control over what other people do and how it affects my life. The decisions they make when I'm not around and the consequences that forces me to live with and who that makes me."
Lou opened her seat belt, so she could turn to face Amy better. "Is this about Ty...?" she took a guess. They had not properly talked about him going to prison even though Lou was aware about it all, thanks to Lisa who had kept in touch when she and her girls had been in NYC.
"Him too", Amy admitted. "But also... there's this pattern, in our family. We don't share things. And the little that we did, we no longer do. It's like we've been broken into pieces and then those pieces become even smaller pieces. Like I have no idea what's going on with you in New York, which I know is partly on me, but I also had no idea dad's dad was still alive. Why did I never asked him about our other granddad? Or that Ty had realized he didn't want to live in Hudson anymore. Why didn't he feel comfortable enough to tell me about it? It's like I've had some kind of blinders on and it's all hitting me now, all at once, and I don't like any of it. Or, well... that's not right either", she said, wiping away tears, trying to think a better way to explain it. "I guess I just need a break, or something, to adapt, but it's hard when so many things are all happening at once, and I feel like I'm expected to response - and not only response, but response correctly right away. That I'm not allowed to just take a moment to see how I actually feel instead of responding how I think I'm expected to feel."
Lou listened, nodding.
"I know how it feels to be in the dark, and I don't want to do that to anyone else. Not anymore", Amy refused. "I want to meet our other granddad, but not on the expense of hurting my relationship with dad. I know it's so easy to take it for granted what we have with him now and that it makes you said what you did, but I'm just realizing how fragile everything actually is, and that we have some say in it, if we want to."
Amy looked Lou in the eyes, hoping to make her see what she did.
"And maybe you are right, maybe I have changed. But maybe you're also right, maybe I should be a little bit more selfish sometimes and not let others conduct my life for me", she admitted. "But I don't think everything has to be just one note all the time, we need to know which approach to choose. Maybe I have been too selfish in the past and caused some problems I've had, but now I'm also causing some problems by not being more direct about what I want. I need to find the balance."
For a while now, Amy had felt like she had handed over the reins of her life to someone else because she had struggled with the changes and decided it was easier to just go with the flow, hoping the turnout would be good. She had trusted the people around her to know better than her, but what she had learned was that even though they had always thought to have their best intentions in mind, it didn't always directly translate to it being her best interest.
And the problem with all that was that ever since then, she had also made it harder for herself to get the control of her life back from everyone because it had felt as if she no longer had the right to decide for herself anymore since she had been the one handing the right for others to determine what her version of her life would turn out to be.
But now with Ty being in jail and them getting divorced, he no longer had a say with her or their day to day. With Lou being in New York, she no longer helped her with her business or offered a listening ear with some unsolicited advice. With Georgie away, Amy realized how much she had leaned on her to help with the horses and how having her around had made her act as a role model or a teacher of some kind. With Grandpa taking a step back, Amy had been forced to take even more responsibility with the ranch than before and her decisions for the future. With her dad now being mad at the rest of the family, she was starting to see the wrongdoing around her and the way she chose to react to it.
Suddenly all the strings she had had attached to her, pulling her to different directions, were broken and she had crashed down like a freed doll, not knowing what to do with herself. She had found herself somewhere she had not realized she had ended up and was trying to claw her way back to make sense of who she had become along the way.
And so now, she was putting her foot down.
Even if it would hurt and people would protest, she was going to take back the reins and start steering on her own. She knew she could do it, she just had to have the courage to claim it all back. She had the right to it.
Amy had never been good with change, but now she would have to be because her life had to change for it to be good with her.
After a beat, Lou turned to face the wheel again, buckled her seat belt and turned the engine back on without saying a word. When she drove back to the street, Amy wondered if Lou was simply just ignoring what she had just said or doing something else.
"Lou...?" Amy said, not knowing what to exactly ask from her. Attention? Clarification? Something, at least.
"You're right", Lou admitted, knowing from her own experience with Peter that she didn't appreciate being blindsided. "We should talk to dad first."
Amy sighed out of a relief, feeling like a winner. If she was just not afraid to open her mouth more, maybe change was able to happen.
A good kind of change.
"Oh, the house looks nice", Lou commented when they drove to Tim and Casey's place. This was her first time visiting, so maybe in a way this whole thing had given her a good excuse to see her dad's new place of residence before she would get back to New York again.
"They've done great job with it", Amy admitted. "It didn't look as nice when they bought it."
Parking the car, Lou kept looking around curiously and noticed Casey riding closer with her horse, looking like she was in the middle of chores. Amy got out of the vehicle and tried not to look so nervous.
"Hey, Casey", she said.
"Hey, girls. What brings you here?" Casey said when Lou opened her door, feeling like the timing of the visit wasn't exactly great because she was in the middle of something, and Tim was in one of his moods, but she also didn't feel like turning Amy and Lou away right off the bat, especially because she didn't know why they were here. Maybe Tim had actually invited them over without her knowing since he wasn't talking to her.
"Hey, Casey. We just came to see dad", Lou said, stepping outside. "Is he around?"
Lou's question made it seem like maybe the visit wasn't actually planned. Casey nodded toward the house. "He's inside. But... a word of warning, he's not in a good mood."
"I think that might be our fault", Amy figured, walking closer. "If it's about his dad."
"Yeah..." Casey confirmed. "Though, I'm not exactly innocent either. I knew I was poking a bear with my discoveries, but... I also feel like maybe it's something he needs to deal with or he's never going to make peace with it."
"We had no idea that he had kept something like this from us", Lou said as she closed the door of her car.
"Makes three of us", Casey said. "The thing I keep thinking about is... we've even gone to see my folks, and he never said anything about visiting his dad. I don't know - I feel like that should have been his opening, if there ever was one. He made me think both of his parents were already dead, and I believed him."
"Well, we are hoping to help him with all of this", Amy said, so Casey wouldn't feel like the only one responsible.
"Who knows how much time his dad even has left. If there ever was a moment to deal with this and whatever he is going through, it's now that they still have a chance", Lou joined Amy. "Time is fleeting."
"Don't I know it..." Casey said, still reeling from the loss of her brother and her late husband. "Thanks", she added, appreciating their help. She had tried, but the more she had pushed, it seemed like the more Tim had pushed her away. She didn't know what else there was for her to do. Tim had to be the one to decide to deal with it on his own. "I think it might be different coming from you girls than if it's coming from me; this involves you more than it involves me."
"We'll try our best", Amy promised. "Thanks, Case."
"No problem. I'll see you around", Casey said, riding off to check the fences.
Lou glanced at Amy as they started to make their way inside, thinking that even despite everything that had happened between them these past few days, their bond was still strong and wasn't easily broken by anything, and when they joined forces, they made a good team.