Blood Brothers

for runaway rabbits,” he said over his shoulder.

“What? Oh-” She managed a little laugh. But she followed him out at least and stood on the porch to watch him go.

They stared at each other again. No laundry between them now.

The “everything” no longer reduced to that-the memories, the might- have-beens crowding in, piling up.

Then in the stillness, Gabe heard the sudden pounding of swift footsteps coming down the gravel drive.

“Mummy! Mummy! Gabe!” It was Emma, feet flying, cheeks blazing. “Come quick! Charlie’s gone up to Dawes’s field to ride the bull!”

Five

It was Freddie’s worst nightmare.

Worse than her worst nightmare. So bad-so fraught with the potential for disaster-that she would never let herself think or dream about such a thing! She was frozen where she stood.

“Come on!” Gabe was grabbing her hand and towing her to the car. “Show me where they are,” he commanded Emma. “And tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Heck,” Freddie corrected faintly. But as her fingers knotted and her heart lodged in her throat, she really thought hell felt more like it.

Emma pointed the way. “Ch-Charlie…thought it would…be a good idea,” she told Gabe, her words coming in bursts as she gulped enough air to say them. “T-to prove he could do it. S-so you’d t-take us w-with you!”

“Jesus!” Gabe let out a sharp exhalation of breath. “Your mother told you-”

“But if he p-proved it-if he did it-she wouldn’t have to worry a-anymore,” Emma cut him off determinedly. She gave Freddie a look that was both nervous and defiant. “Charlie said so!”

That wasn’t how it worked, Freddie wanted to tell her. Mothers worried. It went with the role. Sometimes-since Mark had died-worrying seemed to define her role. For all the good it had done. Her fingers knotted tighter.

Please God, don’t let anything happen to Charlie.

They were almost to Dawes’s field now. Freddie could see Mrs. Peek’s old bicycle propped against the hedgerow.

“What’s Mrs. Peek doing here?” Gabe demanded.

“She came up while I was sitting on the wall waiting for Charlie. An’ she never just goes by, you know. She always stops to talk. An’ she asked what I was doing. An’ I thought…I thought maybe she’d write a story about it, about Charlie being so brave an’ all and then we could send it to you an’ you’d come back an’… She told me to go get you quick. She said she was going to try to find Charlie before the bull did.”

Gabe leapt out of the car. “Wait here!”

“I’m coming!” Freddie was hot on his heels when he stopped suddenly and she slammed right into him.

“No,” he said fiercely, “you’re not! The last thing we need is somebody else out wandering around in that field. I can’t take care of all of you. You stay here with Emma. She seems to be the only one with any sense.” He flicked Emma a quick strained grin, then focused again on Freddie. “You’re staying, got that?”

“I-”

“Just say you’ve got it. You’re the one who doesn’t take risks, remember? Don’t change your mind now.”

“But-”

“Got it. Say, I’ve got it.”

“I’ve got it,” Freddie said desperately, frantically. She knew Gabe was right, even though every maternal instinct wanted to insist it was her duty-not his-to go after Charlie. “Stop wasting time badgering me! Just find Charlie and get him out of there!”

Gabe had been scared a few times in his life-the first time he’d ridden a bull, the night his father had had a heart attack, the day his mother said, “I guess we’ll have to sell the ranch if you don’t want to run it.”

He’d been scared enough of his inadequacies never to have done any rodeo bullfighting at all. And he quaked in his boots whenever he heard his name mentioned along with the words commitment and marriage.

But he’d never been as scared as he was now.

A boy-a little boy!-was out looking for a bull to ride.

Because of him.

A little boy might get trampled, gored-killed!- because of him!

Because Charlie worshiped him. Because he wanted to be like him. Because Gabe had opened his big mouth and said he wouldn’t coddle his children.

“If they were mine, they’d learn to be cowboys,” he’d said after the sheep-riding fiasco, like he knew everything, like he had all the answers, like he was some blinkin’ god!

Gabe’s relationship with the Almighty was casual, but steady. Any man who rode bulls for a living and courted disaster on a daily basis was generally on speaking terms with God.

Gabe spoke now. He murmured one prayer after another as he strode across the field, eyes darting this way and that, looking for Charlie’s navy anorak or Mrs. Peek’s red sweater or, in the best of all worlds, neither of them-only the bull.

“I didn’t mean it,” he told God. “Well, maybe I did. But I was only trying to help. I don’t want her raisin’ ’em to be sissies. I never meant for him to do somethin’ dumb. So take care of him, huh? And You damned-er, darned-well better take care of Mrs. Peek, too!”

As he crested the hill, he glanced back once to see Freddie and Emma perched on the wall, arms hugged across their chests, eyes intent on him. He wished he could yell back that he’d found them, but the field rolled on, trees and rock outcroppings scattered here and there.

No Charlie. No Mrs. Peek. No bull.

Gabe hurried on, yelling Charlie’s name as he went, then stopping to listen for a response.

And then he saw the bull.

Huge, brown and mud-caked, the animal was pacing agitatedly between two beech trees, twitching his tail, snorting and huffing and pawing the ground.

Gabe stopped dead. He looked around for Charlie or Mrs. Peek and was relieved not to see either of them.

Then he heard Charlie’s voice. “Gabe! Hi, Gabe! We’re up here!”

Gabe looked around desperately. But he only saw the field, the rocks, the trees. And, of course, the bull.

Then a leg dangled down from one of the trees. “Here! In the trees.”