Forever & Always: The Ever Trilogy (Book 1) by Jasinda Wilder Page B
Authors: Jasinda Wilder
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and hit the road again, driving through the drowsing, heavy darkness. Nothing lay beyond the span of my headlights except blackness and the high silver moon, nothing existed but music and the yellow center line and the blacktop and the white road-edge borderline and the occasional pair of headlights whipping past.
I wondered often who that was in the car approaching, what their life was like, what problems they’d lived through, faced down, and survived. Did they have friends, or were they lonely like me? Maybe next year I’d do better. Hang out with someone at school, a guy who shared interests with me. Or maybe even a girl. A girlfriend.
Yeah, right.
I passed Kearney, Lexington, and North Platte. Empty fields lit by gray. Cows in scattered clumps, horses browsing and nosing and shaking manes. Sidney. I stopped at McDonald’s, ate, and called Gramps. Those calls became my goals on the trip. Make it four hours, call Gramps. It meant a break, a chance to breathe, to stop and realize how far I’d driven.
It was well past midnight on the second day of travel when I passed under the sign announcing that I’d arrived at M-Line Ranch. My tires crunched over the half-mile-long, ruler-straight driveway leading up to the sprawling, three-story log home. The house—the log exterior, at least—was older than some of the states, Gramps liked to say, having been built in 1843. The interior had been remodeled extensively over the last few decades, so that it was open-plan and modern, with a huge two-story living room with massive windows, a kitchen with miles of granite counters and gleaming stainless steel appliances. I loved Gram’s and Gramps’s house. It was huge and luxurious and fun. As a kid, they’d let me run in the hallways and skid in my socks on the hardwood floors, and Uncle Gerry could often be persuaded to toss me the football from across the living room, lobbing it up to the top of the twenty-five-foot-high ceiling.
I shoved the shifter into park, shut off the engine, and just sat in silence. There was only one light on in the main house and no other light for miles. I slid out of the car and closed the door quietly, then leaned against the vehicle and craned my neck back to stare up at the sky. The stars were infinite, numberless and beyond counting, sparkling and twinkling and scattered and spattered across the inky black, a universe of silver light. The moon stood at the center of it all, a thin crescent amid the wash of stars. A falling star streaked across the horizon, slanting down in a slash toward the ground before vanishing.
I didn’t make a wish.
I heard the side door off the kitchen squeak slightly and click closed, and then Gramps’s slow and steady tread clomped in my direction. I kept my gaze starward; I picked a tiny square of stars near the moon and tried to count them as Gramps approached. He stopped a couple feet away from me, body angled partly toward me. I heard the rustle of cardboard, and then a metallic grinding accompanied by a sparking flame. Gramps lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke skyward. He smoked four cigarettes a day, no more, no less. It was his one vice, carefully chosen. He didn’t drink, didn’t take days off, didn’t sleep in. He drank a pot of coffee every day, and smoked his four cigarettes. One in the morning with his first cup of coffee, one after lunch, one after dinner, and one late at night right before bed. The smell was nostalgic, for me. It made me think of Gramps, of late night conversations and early mornings on the range with a thermos of coffee and the smell of smoke trailing from Gramps as we brought the herd of green-broke quarterhorses out to the north pasture.
“Long drive, huh?” Gramps asked around a long exhale.
I nodded. “Yeah. I stopped to sleep just past Omaha, but only for about two or three hours. I’m beat.”
“Those miles from Iowa into Wyoming are the worst, if you ask me. Nothing but nothing
I wondered often who that was in the car approaching, what their life was like, what problems they’d lived through, faced down, and survived. Did they have friends, or were they lonely like me? Maybe next year I’d do better. Hang out with someone at school, a guy who shared interests with me. Or maybe even a girl. A girlfriend.
Yeah, right.
I passed Kearney, Lexington, and North Platte. Empty fields lit by gray. Cows in scattered clumps, horses browsing and nosing and shaking manes. Sidney. I stopped at McDonald’s, ate, and called Gramps. Those calls became my goals on the trip. Make it four hours, call Gramps. It meant a break, a chance to breathe, to stop and realize how far I’d driven.
It was well past midnight on the second day of travel when I passed under the sign announcing that I’d arrived at M-Line Ranch. My tires crunched over the half-mile-long, ruler-straight driveway leading up to the sprawling, three-story log home. The house—the log exterior, at least—was older than some of the states, Gramps liked to say, having been built in 1843. The interior had been remodeled extensively over the last few decades, so that it was open-plan and modern, with a huge two-story living room with massive windows, a kitchen with miles of granite counters and gleaming stainless steel appliances. I loved Gram’s and Gramps’s house. It was huge and luxurious and fun. As a kid, they’d let me run in the hallways and skid in my socks on the hardwood floors, and Uncle Gerry could often be persuaded to toss me the football from across the living room, lobbing it up to the top of the twenty-five-foot-high ceiling.
I shoved the shifter into park, shut off the engine, and just sat in silence. There was only one light on in the main house and no other light for miles. I slid out of the car and closed the door quietly, then leaned against the vehicle and craned my neck back to stare up at the sky. The stars were infinite, numberless and beyond counting, sparkling and twinkling and scattered and spattered across the inky black, a universe of silver light. The moon stood at the center of it all, a thin crescent amid the wash of stars. A falling star streaked across the horizon, slanting down in a slash toward the ground before vanishing.
I didn’t make a wish.
I heard the side door off the kitchen squeak slightly and click closed, and then Gramps’s slow and steady tread clomped in my direction. I kept my gaze starward; I picked a tiny square of stars near the moon and tried to count them as Gramps approached. He stopped a couple feet away from me, body angled partly toward me. I heard the rustle of cardboard, and then a metallic grinding accompanied by a sparking flame. Gramps lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke skyward. He smoked four cigarettes a day, no more, no less. It was his one vice, carefully chosen. He didn’t drink, didn’t take days off, didn’t sleep in. He drank a pot of coffee every day, and smoked his four cigarettes. One in the morning with his first cup of coffee, one after lunch, one after dinner, and one late at night right before bed. The smell was nostalgic, for me. It made me think of Gramps, of late night conversations and early mornings on the range with a thermos of coffee and the smell of smoke trailing from Gramps as we brought the herd of green-broke quarterhorses out to the north pasture.
“Long drive, huh?” Gramps asked around a long exhale.
I nodded. “Yeah. I stopped to sleep just past Omaha, but only for about two or three hours. I’m beat.”
“Those miles from Iowa into Wyoming are the worst, if you ask me. Nothing but nothing
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