Read Online Woodrose Mountain by RaeAnne Thayne - Free Book Online
Authors: RaeAnne Thayne
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She wouldn’t.
This wasn’t right. She was going home but it wasn’t the same. Out the window, she saw trees, flowers, mountains.
Home.
Everything else was normal. Not her. Not anymore. Never again.
She was broken.
* * *
I N THE REARVIEW MIRROR , Brodie watched his daughter’s chin tremble and he thought she would cry. He’d been afraid of this. She wanted her regular room, her regular life. That she couldn’t have those things right now would be one more stark reality-check for a girl who had endured far too many already.
He kept his gaze on the road as he drove the wheelchair-accessible van he’d purchased for an ungodly amount from a dealership in Loveland just a few days earlier, but he allowed himself occasional glances at Taryn in her wheelchair—secured by latches to the lowered floor behind the driver and passenger seats—until finally the distress in her features eased a little.
She was still pretty, his baby girl. Her facial features might seem a little more slack than before the accident and she would always have faint traces of scars but most of them were beneath her hairline.
Her hair was short since they’d had to shave it during her various procedures, but it was dark and impishly curly, and her eyes were still the same blue of the sky just before a twilight thunderstorm. He wondered if others would see the courage and strength inside her or if they would only register the wheelchair, the scars, the halting, mangled words.
“Oh, it will be nice to be home,” Katherine said from the seat beside him.
She gazed out the window as if she’d been away for years and he was grateful all over again for his mother’s sacrifices for him and his daughter. After the accident, Katherine had basically given up her own life and moved to Denver to stay at Taryn’s bedside around the clock. He had spent as much time at the hospital as he could and had turned many of his business responsibilities over to his associates at Thorne and Company. He had eventually set up a mobile office at the apartment they had rented near the hospital and had scrambled the best he could to keep everything running smoothly.
“Look at that,” Katherine suddenly exclaimed.
He followed the direction she was pointing and saw a six-foot-long poster driven with stakes into a grassy parking strip near Miners’ Park. “Welcome Home, Taryn,” he read. A little farther, splashed in washable paint in the window of a fast-food restaurant, was the same message.
On the marquee at the grocery store that usually broadcast the latest sale on chicken legs or a good buy on broccoli was another one. “We love you, Taryn.”
And as they headed through town, he saw another message in big letters on the street, “Taryn Rocks!”
The kids at the high school had probably done it, since it was similar to the kind of messages displayed during the Paint the Town event of Homecoming Week.
He was grateful for the sentiment, even as a petty little part of him thought with some bitterness that the message might have been a little more effective if a few of them could have been bothered to visit her on a regular basis in the hospital.
That wasn’t completely fair, he knew. The first few weeks after she’d come out of a coma, Taryn had been inundated with visitors. Too many, really. The cheerleading squad, of which she was still technically a part, the captains of the football team, the student body officers.
Eventually those visits had dwindled to basically nothing, until the last time anybody from Hope’s Crossing High School stopped in to see her had been about a month ago.
He supposed he couldn’t really blame the kids. It was obvious Taryn wasn’t the same social bug she had been. She couldn’t carry on a conversation yet, not really, and while many teenagers he knew didn’t particularly need anybody else to participate when they jabbered on about basically nothing, it would have been a little awkward.
This gesture, small though
This wasn’t right. She was going home but it wasn’t the same. Out the window, she saw trees, flowers, mountains.
Home.
Everything else was normal. Not her. Not anymore. Never again.
She was broken.
* * *
I N THE REARVIEW MIRROR , Brodie watched his daughter’s chin tremble and he thought she would cry. He’d been afraid of this. She wanted her regular room, her regular life. That she couldn’t have those things right now would be one more stark reality-check for a girl who had endured far too many already.
He kept his gaze on the road as he drove the wheelchair-accessible van he’d purchased for an ungodly amount from a dealership in Loveland just a few days earlier, but he allowed himself occasional glances at Taryn in her wheelchair—secured by latches to the lowered floor behind the driver and passenger seats—until finally the distress in her features eased a little.
She was still pretty, his baby girl. Her facial features might seem a little more slack than before the accident and she would always have faint traces of scars but most of them were beneath her hairline.
Her hair was short since they’d had to shave it during her various procedures, but it was dark and impishly curly, and her eyes were still the same blue of the sky just before a twilight thunderstorm. He wondered if others would see the courage and strength inside her or if they would only register the wheelchair, the scars, the halting, mangled words.
“Oh, it will be nice to be home,” Katherine said from the seat beside him.
She gazed out the window as if she’d been away for years and he was grateful all over again for his mother’s sacrifices for him and his daughter. After the accident, Katherine had basically given up her own life and moved to Denver to stay at Taryn’s bedside around the clock. He had spent as much time at the hospital as he could and had turned many of his business responsibilities over to his associates at Thorne and Company. He had eventually set up a mobile office at the apartment they had rented near the hospital and had scrambled the best he could to keep everything running smoothly.
“Look at that,” Katherine suddenly exclaimed.
He followed the direction she was pointing and saw a six-foot-long poster driven with stakes into a grassy parking strip near Miners’ Park. “Welcome Home, Taryn,” he read. A little farther, splashed in washable paint in the window of a fast-food restaurant, was the same message.
On the marquee at the grocery store that usually broadcast the latest sale on chicken legs or a good buy on broccoli was another one. “We love you, Taryn.”
And as they headed through town, he saw another message in big letters on the street, “Taryn Rocks!”
The kids at the high school had probably done it, since it was similar to the kind of messages displayed during the Paint the Town event of Homecoming Week.
He was grateful for the sentiment, even as a petty little part of him thought with some bitterness that the message might have been a little more effective if a few of them could have been bothered to visit her on a regular basis in the hospital.
That wasn’t completely fair, he knew. The first few weeks after she’d come out of a coma, Taryn had been inundated with visitors. Too many, really. The cheerleading squad, of which she was still technically a part, the captains of the football team, the student body officers.
Eventually those visits had dwindled to basically nothing, until the last time anybody from Hope’s Crossing High School stopped in to see her had been about a month ago.
He supposed he couldn’t really blame the kids. It was obvious Taryn wasn’t the same social bug she had been. She couldn’t carry on a conversation yet, not really, and while many teenagers he knew didn’t particularly need anybody else to participate when they jabbered on about basically nothing, it would have been a little awkward.
This gesture, small though
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