I closed my eyes and sighed. I had hardly talked to my father the last three months. Did he even realize how little we talked? Not that our conversations were anything great, even on a good day. It was mostly me calling to check in. He would ask how I was doing. How I liked the new job, and if I needed anything. I asked how he was doing, if he was working long hours, and when we might be able to get together for lunch or dinner. I always got the same reply on that last question.
“Soon, princess. When things calm down.”
Opening my eyes once more, I stared out the window. Daddy’s latest girlfriend, Sherry, was his main priority, second only to his job. Not his daughter.
The drops of rain that ran down the window blurred the view of outside, and a part of me was thankful for that. I closed my eyes once more and imagined the beautiful, snow-capped mountains of Montana and Utah. I had fallen in love with Utah after a college ski trip there a few years back. Park City had become my dream. The place where I would lay down my roots and start my life. Start the job I truly dreamed of doing. That was until my cousin Kaylee sent me pictures of Hamilton, Montana. When I went there for her wedding, I fell head over heels in love with it. The memory of me and Kaylee sitting on the swing while she told me about her life for the last few years made my chest ache slightly. God, how I had missed her. She had always been there for me. In both the good and bad times.
Kaylee was older than me by four years. Her father was my father’s brother, and it wasn’t often we got to see each other. But when we did, it had always been a blast. Once I got to college and lived closer to Kaylee, we grew closer. She was like a sister to me. I had told her all my fears and worries, and she listened to them and offered such amazing insight. She was my rock when I needed something strong and sturdy in my life. When she decided to move to Montana, I was heartbroken, but I had to hide it. The last thing I wanted to do was crush her dreams. Plus, I knew it would be good for her to leave behind her own demons. Her fiancé had killed himself a few years ago, and I hated seeing how sad and lost she had been through that. I knew the move to Montana was what she needed. So I hugged her goodbye and watched her follow her heart, knowing the only thing that would ever separate us was the miles. Watching her choose love spurred something in me, and I realized I needed to follow my own dreams.
But after visiting Kaylee, I knew Montana was a strong contender for my move. I never thought anywhere could be more beautiful than Park City. Boy, had I been wrong. Of course, I wasn’t sure I’d admit that a certain cowboy who had occupied my thoughts…and dreams…had something to do with me leaning more toward starting my new career in Montana instead of Utah.
I couldn’t help but smile at the memory of Tanner Shaw. He was handsome, with those pale blue eyes and dimples when he smiled.
“Timber?” Candace, my roommate and best friend, called out my name as she walked into the apartment.
“I’m in the living room,” I answered.
“Hey, sorry I’m late. How was your day at the hospital?”
I sighed and turned back to face her. “Awful.”
She frowned. “That bad, huh?”
With a nod, I walked over and dropped onto the sofa. “I simply wasn’t made to be a nurse.”
Candace smiled. “It’s okay if you don’t like it. But you are a damn good nurse.”
I shrugged. “I had to be.”
She gave me a confused look. “Why?”
With a roll of my eyes, I chuckled, not wanting to get into the details. “No reason.”
“You could always go back to school. Learn something new and then you’d have two degrees!”
I scrunched up my nose. Candace was always the optimistic one of our little group of two. I, on the other hand, always waited for the floor to fall out. In my almost twenty-four years of living, nothing had ever seemed to go right for me. I didn’t even get to pick what I wanted to do for a career. That decision was left up to my mother. My mother had put a letter in her will, telling me what career to choose in case she died before I started college. My father kept it until my senior year of high school and then gave it to me. He sat there while I read it, that same neutral look on his face he had perfected not long after my mother passed. It was the kind that showed zero emotion, so I never truly knew how he felt. About anything, including me. Before my mother died, my father made me feel like I was his everything. After she died, he slowly drifted away, leaving me to constantly wonder what had happened to his love. Did he resent the fact that I lived and she died? I knew my father loved me, but he had never showed it since that fateful day.
When I opened that letter and read it, I wasn’t even shocked. My mother asked for me to follow a career in nursing like she did, and like her mother before her. I knew I had to do it, not only for her, but for my father. I wanted to please him. Maybe this could be the one thing I got right, and he’d finally be proud of me. Maybe even make him want to spend more time with me. It had been years since my father had really paid me any sort of attention, other than the occasional moments he told me he was proud of me. The first few weeks after my mother died, he had clung to me as if he were afraid I would slip away from him like she did. We did everything together. He was the one who first introduced me to horseback riding at the suggestion of the therapists I talked to each week. After that day, I spent a few months hardly speaking at all. There was safety in my silence. I knew my father was worried. Once I sat on my first horse, though, it all came back to me. I remembered all the times my mother had talked about the horse she had when she was little. She was there with me. From that point on, horses were my life. Once I resumed talking and acting like a six-year-old, I noticed my father spending less time with me and more time at work. He also spent more time in our home office where he drank a lot. One night when I walked into his office he was crying. I quickly ran to him, and he held onto me so tightly, I thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe. He kept whispering that he was sorry. What had he been sorry for? That memory flooded my mind at random moments.
It wasn’t long after that that he met his first of many girlfriends. Women who were more interested in his money than him…or his young daughter. Daddy hired Rachel, my nanny, and from that point on she did everything with me and for me until I was able to do things on my own. I hadn’t realized until I was older how unavailable my father had been during those years. Every event I had with my horses, he promised he would show up, only to tell me he had an emergency surgery or an event that he couldn’t get out of. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I stopped asking altogether.
“Timber, did you hear me?”
I shook my head and let the memories go. “What was that?”
Candace slumped back on the couch, her light brown hair piled on top of her head in her signature messy bun. Her hazel eyes looked at me with a questioning gaze. “Why didn’t you change majors if you didn’t like nursing?”
With a humorless laugh, I shook my head. “You know why. I couldn’t.”
She stared at me with sadness in her eyes. “Timber, I know you did it because it was what your mother wanted you to do, but you could have changed it. Maybe if you had talked to your dad, he would have understood.”
I shrugged. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was a last-ditch attempt to win my father’s love. And like all the other attempts, I had failed. I simply wasn’t good enough in his eyes.