Chapter 2

Victoria looked up and saw Audra coming in, and she stopped just as she was about to open her mouth and answer Jarrod's question. Audra saw her hesitation and stopped. So did Jarrod, and he turned and saw Audra.

"How is Silas coming with dinner?" Victoria asked.

"Fine," Audra said. She realized she had walked into something here. "Were you having a private conversation? I can go into the library – "

"No," Jarrod said. "No, it's not private for me. Mother, if you want to answer the question, I'll leave it up to you."

Victoria shrugged. "I have no trouble answering it. I think we all know the answer. You have your secrets, Jarrod, but you've never hidden who you are at heart. From the moment you were an infant and started crawling, you've been trying to get away."

The way she put that took Jarrod and Audra by surprise, but Victoria didn't seem to be bothered. In fact, she smiled a little more, a soft smile of happy reminiscence.

"We were living in the first house then, we didn't have any help, and I had left you lying on the floor in front of me while I did some sewing. You had learned to turn over but you hadn't shown any signs of getting up to move around yet, but suddenly there you did it. You were up on all fours and scrambling fast for the front door. I was afraid when you got there you'd pull yourself up, open the door and take off."

Jarrod and Audra both laughed.

"You were just as sudden with your first steps," Victoria said. "Your father got you on your feet and held onto you. You wobbled like any year-old would. I was about eight feet across the room, holding my hands out to you. You laughed and your father let go. I thought you'd come straight into my arms, but you ran right by me, heading for the front door again. Your father took you outside that very same day and you laughed your head off when he let you start running and he chased you. I think you fell down a dozen times, but you never cried. You just got up and kept going."

Jarrod laughed. "Stubborn little fella, wasn't I?"

"Relentless is more like it," Victoria said. "Everyone around – your father, the people working for us, every single one knew that if you were on your feet, they had to keep an eye on you. And then!"

"Then what?" Audra said when Victoria stopped.

Her eyes grew brighter, but more sad in a way too. "When Nick was a baby and I had my hands full with him, you were turning five and you figured out how to climb up a saddle and onto a horse. One day I Nick was fussy and I was preoccupied and I looked and you were gone. We couldn't find you anywhere. Then someone realized his horse was gone too. We were worried sick. We had no idea where you'd gone or if you'd been thrown or what, but there you came back again, feet coming nowhere near the stirrups but you had those reins in your hands and a big grin on your face."

"Until Father gave me a tanning on my backside," Jarrod said. "I remember that vividly."

Audra said, "And I thought I was the one who was always mounting up and riding off."

Victoria said, "It seems to run in the family, but Jarrod had all of you beat. And you kept it up. We had no idea where you were going, because you never would say, but you were gone every chance you could get."

Jarrod remembered exactly where he had always gone. The lake near the mountains he had named Isla del Cielo when he thought he was a poet. He smiled at the memory. "One of my secrets," he said.

"You always wanted something other than staying put on the ranch," Victoria said. "Nick, he grew right into doing whatever work around here he could do. He tagged along after your father every chance he got, as soon as he was on his feet. But you, Jarrod, you always had your eyes on somewhere else. Maybe you didn't know what you wanted, but you knew it was something and somewhere else."

"What led you to suggest the law?" Audra asked.

"We were always needing lawyers, and this brother of yours was already learning to resolve disputes," Victoria said with a smile.

"Nick," Jarrod said with a nod, and a look that said he long ago gotten wise to that connection. "If you think he gets into trouble now, you should have seen him when he first started school."

"Sometimes you came home more roughed up from straightening things out than he did for messing them up in the first place," Victoria said. "And you loved to read. Not just fiction. Biographies, philosophy, poetry. The law just seemed a good fit for you and a good fit for us." She lost every bit of a smile, though. "I'm sorry if it's not what you wanted for yourself. I'm sorry if you just did it for me."

"Mother, that's not what happened," Jarrod said. "I don't know if it was what I wanted, but I know that I wasn't averse to it. And I chose it, and even if I have regrets now and then, I'm not sorry, not really. I love practicing law, but I am, however, tired and I have a headache."

"Maybe you need a holiday," Audra suggested.

The thought made Jarrod cringe, and he shook his head. "I have far too much to do."

"Maybe you should put it aside, at least for a little while," Victoria said. "Audra's right. I can't remember the last time you took any kind of a holiday or even a day off. You've even worked on Christmas Day."

"I know, I know," Jarrod said, "but Nick and Heath don't take days off very often either."

"They take more than you do," Audra said.

"Why don't you at least think about it?" Victoria said. "Dream a little. If you could go off by yourself, do no business of any kind, family or other clients – where would you go? What would you do?"

The first picture that flashed into Jarrod's mind was a fishing pole, the second a couple books he'd been reading so slowly that he usually had to go back to the beginning because he kept forgetting what he was reading about. The third picture was of the family lodge, but that picture faded. He'd been there too often and too often done lawyering work while he was there. If he was going to get away, it would have to be away.

Away. He thought about what his mother said that started this entire conversation, about how since he was barely crawling, he was always trying to get away. Heck, even going off to war when he was not quite 18 was getting away. He remembered how Audra didn't know who he was when he came back, he'd been gone so long and she was so small when he left. Jarrod looked at his sister now, with a bit of regret that she caught and looked unhappy about.

Audra had read his mind. You could always read it in his eyes unless he blocked you, and he wasn't blocking her now. "After you came home from the war and decided to go back to San Francisco, I gave you grief. I complained that you were leaving again. But Jarrod – I'm not complaining now. I think it would be a good idea for you to get away. Not for four years, please, but maybe for a week or two, or even three."

Jarrod looked to his mother, then back at Audra. "Maybe you're right, honey. All right. I'll get my work in town settled, then I'll go to San Francisco and settle my office there, and then I'll take that break and get away."

The women both smiled. "And where will you go?" Victoria asked.

"Well, now, I don't know yet," Jarrod said. "Someplace new. Someplace I've never been at all, or I haven't been very often. Let me think about it and I'll let everyone know."

"Let everyone know what?" Nick's voice came in from the foyer. He and Heath had heard the end of that.

Jarrod knew that Nick was not going to like what he was about to hear, but in a perverse sort of way, Jarrod wanted to tell him and grin as he did it. Payback for that headache.

"That I'm going to go away on a bit of a holiday for a while," Jarrod said. "You're going to have to deal with the likes of the army by yourself after I get my workload settled down."

"Don't worry, Nick, that'll never happen," Heath said.

"Oh, no," Jarrod said, getting up. "It will happen." He smiled at his brothers like he'd just struck gold and they hadn't. "Get used to it."