Free Jake by R. C. Ryan

And now both were gone, and he was probably feeling so alone.
    Jake had suggested that she ought to know what the boy was going through, but in truth, she didn’t have a clue. What could she possibly have in common with an aloof little kid who could barely stand to be in the same room with her?
    How would he adjust to living in a big city? Even with a haircut and new clothes, she couldn’t imagine Cory adjusting to living in her posh town house, attending a private school in D.C. while she worked. And what would she possibly do with him on the weekends, when she put in another twenty or more hours on the high-profile cases the firm handed her?
    It would be a lonely, unsatisfying life for a little boy who’d grown up wild and free here in Wyoming. She knew that only too well.
    Still, what choice did she have? She’d made a life for herself in D.C. Was she supposed to just walk away from all the hard work she’d put into her career to care for a kid she hadn’t even known about a week ago?
    So many worries. And another headache beginning to throb at her temples.
    She walked through the house, pausing to study the dusty photographs. On a cluttered mantel she found several framed pictures of her father with his third wife and Cory.
    Meg wiped away the dust to study their faces. Her father, looking so much older than she’d remembered. And his wife looking like a schoolgirl in faded denims and skinny shirt. She’d been a pretty little thing. Pale, dark-haired. She looked so proud holding the baby.
    What in heaven’s name had her father been thinking, to marry again and have a kid? At his age. He should have been more responsible than this. Setting the photo aside, Meg climbed the stairs to her father’s bedroom and began pulling things from his closet. The least she could do was to box up his clothing for a local charity.
    As she worked, she came across a photo album on a top shelf. After wiping away the layers of dust, she opened it to find, on the very first page, a picture of her father and mother holding a baby and looking so proud and happy. The caption My Meggy had been written in her father’s distinctive scroll.
    Meg dropped down on the edge of the bed and began flipping through the pages. Here was a small framed picture of her with her father and mother when she’d been about five. She’d been bundled in a snowsuit, barely able to move her arms or legs with all that bulk, and the three of them were standing beside a giant snowman. The sight of them had her laughing aloud. Her father had jokingly held up his fingers like devil’s horns behind his wife, who was, as always, frowning.
    Meg had forgotten what a prankster her father had been. When he wasn’t giving orders like a drill sergeant, which he confessed to doing only because he wanted to drill into her the importance of being orderly, he was constantly playing jokes or doing pratfalls to make her laugh. It had been his most endearing quality.
    A few pages further along she found a photo of her and her father with her beloved Strawberry. Meg looked at the little girl, eyes dancing, smile so wide it would have lit up the entire sky, and her father, his arm around her shoulders, looking for all the world like a superhero.
    He had been her hero that day.
    She’d loved him so much. And loved that pony almost as much.
    The thought had her smiling as she continued flipping through the pages and staring hungrily at her childhood unfolding before her. So many memories, and all of them forgotten until now.
    How could she have forgotten the way her father had allowed her to drive the tractor—with him seated alongside, of course—while they rolled across the fields? Or the fact that on the first snowfall of her ninth year, he’d hitched a team to an old-fashioned sleigh and had taken her on a sleigh ride across the pasture? Oh, how she’d loved that feeling of skimming across the frozen land, their laughter ringing in the frosty air.
    There was a picture of