LOOKING BACK

A breath of crisp mountain air snapped Amy Fleming to a new level of consciousness when she stepped through the door of her rustic cabin in Pike River. She was sharing the accommodations with her dad, Tim Fleming, and grandfather, Jack Bartlett. They had made the trip here as a favor to Joanna Hawke, the daughter of one of Jack's old friends from his rodeo days. An impending wild horse cull threatened a herd that the woman's father had been looking after for several years now, and she asked if Jack would be willing to come to Pike River to see if he could help him find a way to stop it.

The well-known lady horse wrangler had lagged behind in the cabin this morning to spend a few extra minutes in peace, taking a bit more time for makeup and curly hair than was required to herd wild horses, and she did not want to give her father any more fuel to feed his limitless need to pick at every little detail that came to his attention.

Shortly after arriving at the Pike River community Amy discovered that her father had somehow tricked Ty Borden a fourth year veterinary student, her ex-fiancé, into coming along with him under the guise of helping his friend and mentor, Jack, who was supposedly suffering from some form of new health issues and in need of an extra hand for a couple of days. Unaware that either of them would also be along on the trip, it had been a tentative two days between the ex-lovers, and the jilted cowgirl felt that she needed to put her best boot forward, so to speak.

Everyone was already in the restaurant having their morning coffee and breakfast as Amy trudged across the loose gravel of the parking lot. Ty had chosen to spend the past two nights sleeping in the truck, too stubborn to use the pull out sofa in the cabin, as if it might show some sign of his conceding to their disagreement. Amy snuck a glance toward the dually as she walked past it to see if he was still inside, but the windows were foggy and it was too hard to tell if he was still recovering from the eventful day they had shared twenty four hours earlier.

"Well, Jack, look who's here, it's 'Bonnie', the newest jail bird in the family! C'mon in honey, 'Clyde's' already here!" said Tim said with a cackle, not passing up the chance to poke some fun at his daughter who had been falsely arrested along with Ty the day before on trumped up charges of attempted horse theft after they had set the wild herd free. They were released soon after they were placed in the jail cell when it was revealed that the horses were illegally trapped, negating any claims of ownership from the accusing rancher, Matt Pincher.

"Thanks a lot, Dad, I should have known I could count on you for a word of encouragement this morning," his daughter scowled back at him.

Ty sat on the far side of the table, relieved to see his partner in crime to come in and absorb some of the onslaught of tongue-in-cheek bantering that Tim had been directing at him since they had sat down for breakfast.

"I gotta say, Amy…, Ty here, he's a much better sport than you about all of this. Just think of it as 'Amy and Ty's Big Adventure!' You know, something to tell the grandkids about when you're old and gray, sittin' in the 'ol rockin' chair, thinkin' about all of your accomplishments way back in the good ol' days!" he chuckled again, savoring the opportunity to entertain himself at his daughter's expense.

Appreciation of early morning humor was hard to come by for the newest target of her father's wise cracking. Ty was first to break into Tim's comic rhythm, saying, "Don't worry, Amy, he'll get tired of this by noon…, in the year 2020!" he scoffed. It was the first time Ty had seen Amy smile at one of his remarks without the aid of horses for nearly two months, since he had asked for a break in their relationship. "That's about how long it'll take him to come up with a new line!" he added with a smirk aimed toward his near father in law.

"See, Amy, that's how it's done, all in good fun, right, Ty?" Tim countered as he slapped the younger man soundly on his shoulder. "Lighten up, sweetheart! Geez!"

After everyone had finished eating, the four rescuers piled into Tim's truck and aimed it toward the ranch of Will Vernon, Joanna's father, the site of the wild horse roundup. A deal had been arranged with the rancher's association for them to capture, examine, administer to any health issues, and then transport the wild herd back to Heartland Ranch, the soon to be seventh generation Bartlett homestead located a hundred miles to the southeast in the Alberta foothills. Amy would then work with the horses individually and try to find an owner for each of them after Ty had checked them and signed off on a clean bill of health.

Tim had made sure that Jack would drive, and then he squeezed himself into the front passenger's seat ahead of his daughter who had reached for the front door, assuring that Amy had to take a seat in the back next to Ty. She gave him a shot of stink eye when he grinned at her as he blocked her away from the safety of the shotgun position, then she shuffled back to the rear door and slouched into the seat beside her ex-fiancé. The meddling father had made it a personal mission to get the two back together and over the never ending sulking that became the new normal after they had become at odds. The level of awkwardness between them had been elevated another notch up the ladder of shaky relationships after they shared a passionate kiss in the excitement after the stampede they had caused to free the trapped horses, creating even more confusion between them than before. Neither one of them had budged on the personal affection boycott, and without any success at trying to talk about the rift, there was little hope for improvement without some sort of intervention.

The ride out to the Vernon farm was bumpy at best. The truck heaved back and forth over washed out creek beds and ill maintained tracks leading up to the old farm house in the hills a few miles outside of town. This morning's plan was for the trio of riders to herd the first batch of horses into a makeshift corral with Jack manning the gate, and for Ty to examine them. The toughest part of the process would then be to pick which stallions could be gelded safely, based on their age and behavior tendencies, and unfortunately, extremely violent stallions would need to be separated into a secure pen where a few trainers and investors would have a chance to look at them to see if they might be interested in taking them for breeding purposes, and culled if there were no takers. The remaining healthy mares would be shipped first, mostly because they should be easier to manage and to let the geldings heal before their journey in the large trailer bound for Heartland Ranch.

"OK, everybody, let's get to it!" Jack instructed. "We have a big job ahead of us today!"

Amy, Ty, and Tim tacked up three of Will's horses and rode out to the hill on the far side of the large pasture across from the house. Jack prepared the corral while he waited for the first few horses to arrive when the others managed to herd them back to be processed.

'Figured Will would be out here by now, I wonder where he is?' Jack thought as he scanned the old house to see if there was any sign of his old friend. He looked into the distance where the riders had disappeared through the tree line and decided he had plenty of time to go and knock on the door to try and raise the old guy out of bed.

Thirty minutes had passed when eight horses galloped through the open gate at the foot of the hill and stormed across the open field at full stride with the three riders in strategic pursuit. Ty rode to the right, Tim to the left, and Amy brought up the rear to keep the small herd moving. Luck was on their side as the gate was wide open and all eight of the wild horses ran straight down the pre-arranged chute leading into the corral without incident. Ty was quick to man the gate, assuring that none of the animals would escape and cause them to have to get the horses into the same place for a second time, which would not be as easy next time around.

"OK, Ty, time to put all that education to good use for a change!" Tim hollered.

"I got it!" the young vet replied. "Amy, can you single one of them out so we can get him in the horse stocks, and be careful, please! That will make it safer for him, and us," he instructed.

"Sure thing," Amy replied, the awkwardness between them fading with the task at hand, bringing back pleasant memories of how they had always worked so well together.

"Where the hell is the old man?" Tim huffed, looking all around to try and locate the missing cowboy.

Amy had singled out another patient for the busy Doctor Borden to examine as soon as horse number one had been loaded onto the trailer.

"Has anybody seen Grandpa? Or Will?" Amy asked.

"There he is! Well, Jack, it's about time!" Tim took the opportunity to take another sarcastic rub at his former father in law, but when he noticed the look on Jack's face he knew that something had gone seriously wrong and eased back with concern. "Will?" he asked.

Jack held his gaze to the ground and shook his head, "Went looking for him and found him…, still in bed…. Died in his sleep. Looked just as peaceful as if he never had a care in the world."

When the second stallion was secured in the stocks, both Ty and Amy walked up to the old cowboy to offer him the support of loved ones.

"I should go and tell Joanna," Tim remembered, thinking of Will's daughter who had called and asked them to help her dad with his horses. "She needs to hear it from someone like me, not some sheriff's deputy or from some random voice on the telephone," he said as he turned to walk toward his truck. "Don't worry, I'll be back after a while, can't leave you stranded out here, now can I?"

The day passed slowly with the tedious chore of working the wild horses. The ever present sense of loss loomed over them as they busied themselves gathering the horses and processing them to load on the truck, just as Will had expected them to do. The roundup had to continue if there was any hope of saving the majority of the herd from a mass cull. It was Will's last request of an old friend, and Jack was going to see it through to completion come hell or high water.

The coroner and sheriff had come to attend to the deceased rancher and Tim had brought Joanna to oversee her father as he was placed in the van for the journey back to the funeral home. He approached the corral and leaned against the fence as he told his family, "I am going to ride with Joanna in the van with her dad. I'll leave the truck here and you can take it back to the cabin when you're finished here. I can meet up with you later, OK?"

"That will be fine, Tim," Jack replied. "Just make sure Joanna has everything she needs and we will take care of getting the first load of horses on the road to Heartland. I already called the truck driver. He should be here any time now."

It was forty five minutes past midnight when Amy looked through the front window of the darkened cabin toward the dew covered truck to see if Ty had settled in for the night at his usual outpost. She could tell he was struggling to get comfortable in the passenger's seat, the tossing of covers barely visible through the reflection of a full moon's glow across the windshield. After watching for a few minutes longer and entertaining the idea of an intervention, of sorts, the restless and saddened rancher's daughter eased on her sweater and slipped through the front door, walking as steadily as she could across the uneven rocks on the driveway toward her former fiancés makeshift fort on wheels.

The exhausted young veterinarian's assistant lay back on the reclined seat, wrestling with two old army blankets that Joanna had loaned him, and trying to decide if freezing to death would be better than dealing with the scratchy, stuffy excuses for a bed cover. He nearly jumped out of the whole tangled mess when a tap came from a few inches to the right of his head, just in front of a shadow on the outside of the dew covered glass.

"Sorry! Ty, can I come in? Or…, you come out? Or…, whatever?" he heard the familiar voice in a loud whisper.

He reached down and pulled the handle to let the door swing open. "Amy! You scared the crap…, never mind…, I'll come out…, anything to get out of this seat for a while!" he tried to laugh. "What's up? Everybody OK?" he asked.

"Everybody is fine, I just couldn't sleep and…, and I need to talk to you, if that's OK?"

"Sure. Let's go sit in the gazebo, down by the river. It's warmer out here than it was in that damn truck!" he grabbed his trusty blankets, just in case, and forced another nervous chuckle.

They walked under the octagon roof and sat on the bench that overlooked the rerouted Bow River which had found a new path after the previous summer's flooding.

"Boy, I can't believe what the floods did to the river!" Amy said in awe of the devastation the river had suffered from the high, raging waters.

Ty looked at the moonlight sparkling in the lazy late summer river and reasoned, "Yeah, it's sad, in a way, but everything we know as normal probably had to endure something like this at some point to become the beautiful things we love to see now. If you think about it, mountains, rivers, prairies, islands…, they all had it rough in the beginning, and time made them beautiful, and peaceful, and special!"

"Wow! That's some profound philosophical thinking, coming from a guy that makes his living sticking his hands inside of animals," she teased.

Caught off guard by the unexpected spontaneous remark, he countered, "Listen to you, Horsey Girl!" he replied, causing the first honest laugh to be shared between them in what seemed like ages.

Sadness snuck up from within the two of them, unexpectedly pulling them both into the reality of life, remembering the loss of the old rancher and the honor of fulfilling his last wish to protect the wild horses that he had gotten so attached to. The slow churning of the river passed the time until one of them could recover enough to rekindle the long overdue conversation. The events of the day were sobering enough, but the unresolved issues that had wedged them apart had taken them to a place in their lives that neither of them wanted to be.

"Ty?" she started.

"Humm?" Ty turned toward her and caught a glimpse of the glistening streaks making their way down both of her cheeks. His heart leapt in his chest, 'Well, here it comes!' he thought. Although neither of them had mentioned it, he had noticed on the first day that Amy's ring finger was bare, leaving him to believe that she had finally decided to give up on their relationship altogether and move on without him.

"I have some things I need to say to you," she said. "I should have said them a long time ago." The nervous former lover drew in a deep breath and tried to gather her thoughts for what she knew would be some of the most important minutes she would ever spend in her life. "Judging by the way you have avoided me for the last few weeks, even when I have tried to talk to you, it may already be too late to say these things to you. But, please, Ty, promise me you will let me have my chance to tell you the things I want you to know, OK?"

The solemn faced listener nodded to her and pursed his lips in anticipation of the unpleasant reality about to hit him square in his gut. "I have been waiting until you were ready to talk," he said. "I needed for it to be your idea, without feeling like I was putting pressure on you to say things you hadn't thought through or maybe don't really mean. That is why I have kept my distance, because I knew that neither of us could think straight if we were too close. That kiss between us the other day is proof of that! All I ask is that you tell me like it is, don't hold back, and remember who you are talking to. It's me, Amy. No more bullshit!"

"OK, that's fair, I guess," she said, trying to not let his challenge rattle her. "But, that was a pretty good kiss, by the way," she added without looking up, and then continued. "I couldn't get to sleep tonight," she began. "All I could think about was of Will laying down to go to sleep for the last time, and wondering if he was satisfied with the life he had lived," she confided. "I got this image in my mind, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I was sitting on the front porch at home, I was very old, and I was remembering my life and thinking about all of the accomplishments I'd enjoyed, but also, thinking about the regrets."

Ty sat silently, watching her nervous fingers randomly intertwining themselves together as she spoke.

Amy took another breath and recounted, "I was remembering that I had had a pretty good life, maybe with a couple of kids and still living at Heartland. I had spent my years working with horses like the ones we will rehome from Will's farm, and with some of the finest horses anywhere, brought to the ranch from all over the world for me to train!"

"That sounds to me like the life you already have, Amy," Ty interrupted, "All you have to do is, never give up, and that is how it will be for you, if that is really what you want."

"Maybe…, but…, there was this one regret that kept me from feeling like my life had ever been complete, and it was just as sad for me then, like a burning heartache that could never be healed, all those years later, because I knew it was my fault that I had had to spend all of my best years without my one true love."

Amy's shoulders shivered from the chill of the early morning air. Ty took his arm and spread a blanket around her, giving her a gentle squeeze with his hand to offer her encouragement to continue.

"You see, Ty, I remembered having a good man in my life when I was young. He wanted to marry me, and I had told him that I would. He was kind, compassionate, smart, funny if he put his mind to it, and very handsome….He was a self-made man who could figure out how to succeed on his own, and everyone that got to know him loved and respected him. And, above everything else, he loved me so much that he would have given me anything he possessed, just to make me happy. He proved that to me, many times over! He had put himself in dangerous situations to protect me. He even willingly took the risk of giving up his freedom to save me from my own stupid actions when I hadn't thought about the consequences of taking the most special horse I'd ever owned back from the man who tried to steal him from me." Amy adjusted her position on the bench and continued. "I had everything that I needed to have a long happy life, but I still wanted more. Then, one day, I asked him to let me take a four month trip overseas to advance my career. I thought it would be the opportunity of a lifetime! I knew it would be hard for him to do it, but he let me go, putting me first, like he always did. But that trip turned out to be the ruin of everything I had planned for my life! I let what we had slip away, little by little, and in the end, I hurt him very badly. I was too afraid to tell him what had happened while I was gone. The man that I worked for, a man that I considered to be a valued friend, had thrown a huge party in my honor the last week before I was to leave for home. We talked about the success we had enjoyed as a team, and my personal success as a trainer, and what that would mean for my career. He gave me gifts, ones that I assumed to be from him and my co-workers from the team, and toward the end of the evening, he leaned in and kissed me, and I let it happen. When I realized what he…, and I, had done, I panicked. I thought if I made a fuss about it, everything I had gained during the trip could be lost, so I did the best I could to back away quietly and I told him that I couldn't be what he wanted, that I had the life I wanted waiting for me back in Alberta. After that, he gave me my space and I hoped we had put all of that behind us," pausing to swallow and re-moisten her dry throat, she took a quick glance upward to see if he was still with her as she tried to explain her side of the story to him.

Ty remained silent, but the muscles in his jaw tensed when he clinched his teeth at the memory of Amy's awkward return to him and her Canada home.

"I was so ashamed of myself for allowing things to get so far out of hand, and terrified of what might happen if my fiancé found out about it!

That is when I made the biggest mistake of my life! I made the stupid decision to keep everything that happened between me and my boss a secret from him, thinking that would be the end of it, and I would never have to face him and see the hurt that it would cause. I couldn't have been more wrong! I ended up hurting the man I loved very badly, and I was so scared of losing him that I couldn't bring myself to do what I should have done immediately…, to explain, apologize, and ask for forgiveness!" She stopped to look directly into his eyes as she began again. "Please, Ty, I need you to look at me…, I want you to know that I mean what I say," she requested. Her hands trembled at the realization that she was only seconds away from saying the most important words she had ever spoken, and all of the years that she had left in her life were going to be affected by the how well she said them, if it wasn't already too late.

Ty squirmed in his seat, doing his best to relax enough so as not to discourage the nervous young woman from continuing with her thoughts, the ones he had patiently waited so long to hear her say, nodding as he looked into her tense blue eyes.

Boldly, Amy reached and wrapped her shaking hands around his free one before she went on, barely able to force the words from her lips. "I don't want that woman to be me in sixty years!….And I don't want to live my life without the man that I want, and need, to spend it with! I don't want to lay down on my last night on this earth with my heart broken for the love I lost and had to live without!" Her hands tightened their grip and she inhaled slowly to give herself the push she needed to bring her point home. "I would give back every second, every memory, every achievement I earned on that trip to see those beautiful green eyes look at me the way they used to. Ty, I know the feeling I got when you looked at me, and those eyes told me that everything was going to be alright, told me that I was loved so completely, and honestly, and that you wanted to be with me, forever! And I know how it felt to be touched with the rare kind of love you have, by these hands of yours, knowing that we belong together and that I would never have to be alone, in good times or bad. There isn't enough money, or fame, or anything else that could ever replace a love like that! It is a precious gift of life, not something that can be bought! I know that I hurt you because of everything I did, or more like what I didn't do. I don't have any excuses for what I did. I made the mistake of not trusting myself to tell you the truth, or trusting that you would listen to the truth when you heard it. I am so very sorry, Ty, and if it's not too late, do you think you can forgive me? Will you give us a chance to get past this?"

Amy reached into her pocket and held her engagement ring up to him. "This is your ring and it is yours to do whatever you think you should, and I will respect whatever decision you make, and I will always love you, no matter what you decide tonight."

The spent woman shuttered again as the tension released itself from her chest, the first gasp escaping her lungs as she started to breathe again. Amy knew that there was nothing left that she could say or do, that there was no backup plan, and that her story was about to turn a very important page in her book of life. She lost all sense of time, the seconds dragging on into what seemed like minutes while she scanned the flecks of moonlight dancing in the emerald eyes that held the answers she was looking for.

And then, there it was! A softening shade of green telling her everything she needed to know without a spoken word. Amy shot up from her seat, hoping her legs would not fail her when she stood in front of him. She pulled Ty up to her and wrapped him up into the tightest squeeze she could manage as she buried her face in his chest, sobbing with relief. The strong arms she had missed so badly now surrounded her with the old army blanket and held her firmly in his grasp, making her feel safe and warm. Ty placed his hands on Amy's shoulders and gently pushed her away. When her eyes questioned his action, he simply smiled and said, "Hey, Horsey Girl, I need to fix something!" Placing her left hand in his palm, he took the ring and slid it onto her finger and gave her hand a pat. "That's where it belongs!"

They stood entwined in the gazebo, drinking up the excitement of the moment. Ty brushed the back of his fingers along Amy's cheek and slid them under her chin to bring her lips within reach of his, kissing her slowly, softly, and making up for the time they had lost during the separation.

"That eighty year old lady?..., sitting on the front porch at Heartland thinking about her life?...," he suggested, "Well, she is about to have that story re-written…, from the beginning…, and when we are looking back over those sixty years, we will be reminded of the night that the love of your life kissed you from midnight until sunup inside a gazebo beside a beautiful moonlit river, the place where it all began, again, forever."