Heartbreak Town (COMPLETED)

Chapter Eleven

Renne knew that she couldn't spend the rest of the day in the barn with the horses, as much as she wished she could. Knowing her time had come, Renne slowly made her way back into the house. She wasn't surprised to see Mamaw cooking in the kitchen, cutting up fresh tomatoes from the garden that she would most likely can later today. Mamaw turned around at the sound of the wooden screen door shutting behind Renne.
"Mamaw..." Renne started, walking further into the house. "Mamaw, I wanted to apologize for losing my temper earlier and storming off." Renne was in the kitchen now, standing across the island from her grandma.
Mamaw wiped her hands on her apron before replying. "I forgive you sweetheart. We know that you have a lot on your mind. Ever since you got here, I know it has been a steady stream of stress. We never meant for it to be that way."
"I know Mamaw. I guess everything just hit me at once. Just being back in this house brings back so many memories for me." Renne said, looking around the kitchen.
     "We hope that you can forgive us too." Mamaw said, taking a slow step towards Renne.
     Renne snapped her head down to look at her grandma. What did she mean forgive them? Surely she wasn't talking about- "For not telling you about Mallory sooner and forcing this on you. We should have just told you to come down when you were ready. Your Papaw and I feel horrible for not letting you know sooner. I hope that you can forgive us, Reag-" Mamaw cleared her throat. "Renne." She corrected.
     Renne pushed her lips up in a smile. "You can call me Reagan, Mamaw. That is my name afterall; I shouldn't expect y'all to call me by anything else." That made Mamaw smile, but there was still something else that she wanted Renne to say. "I forgive you Mamaw. Y'all did the right thang in havin' me come down here when y'all did. It was so good to see Mallory and the kids today."
     "They have all certainly missed you." Mamaw said. She let out a breath. "It's good to see you again." Mamaw said and closed the gap between them by embracing Renne in a hug.
     Renne hugged her grandmother back and breathed in her scent. She still smelled like fresh mountain air and apple pie. Pulling back, Renne smiled. "It's good to see you too, Mamaw."
Mamaw turned and wiped something from her eye, keeping her head down. "Now, we have a lot of tomatoes to can, and I could use your help. If you're not doin' anything, grab a knife and come on over."
Renne chuckled to herself. There were certainly things that she missed about her family. Cooking with Mamaw was one of those things.

After several hours in the kitchen, peeling, cutting, and canning tomatoes, Renne went out to the porch and sat down on the porch swing, hoping to relax a little. She pulled her phone out of its holster when it vibrated. It was another text from Matt. Renne expected it to be a happy, sweet, "I miss you" text, but instead he was asking about one of their clients- no, one of their kids. Sighing, Renne dialed Matt's number. This was something that needed to be discussed over the phone. Of course, she would've preferred to talk in person, but obviously that wasn't possible.
     "Hey babe. You get my text?" Matt answered the phone.
     "Yeah I did. So tell me exactly what happened please." Renne leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
     Matt took a deep breath and dove into the story. When he finished several minutes later, it was Renne's turn to sigh. "So what do you have to do now?"
     "We are at the jail now, waiting to sign the release papers. There will be a court date next week in which we will see if Jerome gets arrested and sent back to jail or if his probation officer will let him continue workin' at the ranch."
     "How did this happen though? You know you are not allowed to let the kids leave without a supervisor." Renne was getting upset at this point. She rubbed her forehead because she felt the stress of the situation giving her a headache. Jerome, one of the troubled teens at Healing Hearts Ranch, had left the premises of the ranch and went off went friends and ended his night out with getting arrested. Jerome told Matt that he was "going to a Bible study with friends" and since it was Wednesday night, the night of the Bible study at church, Matt believed him.
     The adolescent delinquents are allowed to leave the ranch, but they must have a supervisor since nearly every teen had served time in juvie, or could cause harm to themselves or others. Since Jerome is eighteen now, he is an adult and is allowed a little more freedom, but he's still on probation. Working at the ranch is in exchange of him having to do time in jail, per request of his probation officer.
Two years ago, Jerome was arrested for possession of drugs and was involved in a gang. He was sent to a juvenile detention center, where he served his time, but then a year later, he was arrested again. The second time it was for driving under the influence of alcohol, resisting arrest, and harassing police officers. The second arrest is what landed him at Healing Hearts.
Jerome had a very hard home life growing up. His dad was in a gang and was brutally murdered when Jerome was just four. His mom worked two questionable jobs, both of them involving illegal activity. The drug, alcohol, and gang scene were an everyday part of life for Jerome; he didn't know any better.
Since he has been at Healing Hearts Ranch, the work and being around horses has seemed to help him a lot. Like most of the adolescent delinquents at the ranch, Jerome was very hostile and unwilling to work at first, but now he has learned manners and is much more respectful, but still has a long way to go.
Last night, Matt had let Jerome "go out with friends" and since he had worked very hard for a long time, Matt, for whatever reason, thought it would be okay to let him go, and without a supervisor. Matt reckoned that Jerome wouldn't lie about going to the Bible study because he had been going for several weeks. It never crossed Matt's mind that Jerome wasn't at the Bible study, however. That is until Matt got a call from a place station about 100 miles away from the ranch. They had Jerome there. He was arrested for, no surprise, driving with a provoked license and trying to evade cops. Jerome was speeding; he was going 71 down a 45 mile per hour back road. However, Jerome was not under the influence, surprisingly. He was simply just trying to do a good thing and be the sober driver for his drunk friends.
Jerome knew what he was getting himself into when he agreed to drive his friends home. He also knew that if he was gone for too long, Matt would realize that Jerome wasn't going to the Bible study, and something bigger was going on. Because he wanted to get his friends home and get back to the ranch before he was suspected of going elsewhere besides church, Jerome thought it would be okay to drive a little faster down the backroads. What Jerome didn't account for was that there was a cop who just happened to be turning onto the same road that Jerome was speeding down. By the time Jerome saw the cop car, if was too late. As he approached the car, he tried slowing down, but the cop had already clocked him at 71 mph. The cop pulled out, with sirens on to catch Jerome and site him for speeding, ending the night with a speeding ticket, but Jerome knew that he couldn't get caught. He knew he was driving with a provoked license and was outside of the radius of his probation, so Jerome thought the only solution was to try to outrun the cops. His plan didn't work, however and now, as a result, Jerome was sitting in a holding cell in a town about 100 miles away from the ranch.
"Renne, I know. I'm sorry; I screwed up. He told me he was going to the Bible study with his friends, and I believed him. I know I shouldn't have let him leave by himself. I messed up and I'm really sorry." Matt replied, his voice tense as well.
"Matt, do you understand the severity of this situation?" Renne was upset. She hadn't been away from her ranch for 72 hours and things were already falling apart there.
Matt seemed to hesitate for a few seconds. "Yes, Renne. Of course I do. And I know I messed up."
"Jerome was doin' so good; he only had a month left at the ranch before his probation was over. Now, thanks to you, he could be serving years in a big time jail and everything we have taught him over these past several months is all goin' to be wasted over one stupid little mistake!" Renne didn't mean to yell at Matt, but she was frustrated at him for being so irresponsible. Sure, she had put him in charge of the ranch while she was gone, but that doesn't mean he has the authority to ignore the rules and let the kids run haywire.
"Babe, I said I'm sorry. I don't know what else you want me to do." Matt's voice was angry on the other end of the line.
"I need you to fix this, Matt. This is your fault. I can't run the ranch from here. This is your problem now. You got yourself into this mess, you need to figure out a way to get yourself out of it." Renne replied harshly. She hung up before Matt could come up with another meaningless apology. All Renne wanted to do was drive back to Montana to the safeness of her ranch and yell at Matt for being so irresponsible. If she had never left Montana in the first place, none of this never would've happened.
Renne hadn't heard Swayde walk out onto the porch, but when she looked up from her phone, she saw him standing between the swing and the door, looking at her with a concerned expression. Letting out a breathy chuckle, Renne remarked, "So you heard all that, huh?"
Swayde walked closer to Renne. "Just enough to know thangs aren't hunky dory back in Montana."
"Yeah, not so great." Renne drew out each word. She tucked a piece of flyaway hair behind her ear, leaning back against the porch swing.
The heels of Swayde's boots clicked against the wooden floorboards as he walked over to the swing and sat down next to Renne. "Do you want to talk about what happened?"
Renne looked at Swayde. She had forgotten how silver blue his eyes were. They were intimidating, yet so comforting...so caring. "Matt let one of the kids leave the ranch and it's one of our kids who's on probation and he ended up getting arrested. There's a court date next week to see what his future holds, whether if he is goin' to jail or if he can just extend his probation and keep working at the ranch." Renne sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "I can't believe Matt thought it would be okay to just let him leave!" Renne said, her hand slapping her thigh.
Swayde seemed to hesitate, but decided it was okay to put a comforting hand on Renne's shoulder. "I'm really sorry, Reagan. Is there anythang I can do?"
"No. No, this is Matt's fault, so he needs to deal with it himself; I'm not goin' to clean up every mess he makes. I'm tired of it."
Swayde retreated his hand from Renne's shoulder. "So this isn't the first time he's done something like this?"
Renne looked at Swayde. He looked concerned, yet upset at Matt for hurting Renne. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything." Renne replied. She was angry; she didn't want to start telling Swayde all of the problems that her and Matt had or make Swayde think that Matt was a bad boyfriend because he's not...he's just not perfect...no one is.
"I'm glad that you said something though. It's okay to vent; it's not good to hold everything in." Swayde said.
"It's just that...Matt's gone...a lot. He's a rodeo cowboy, so he's rides on the circuit and he's really good at bulls and he's workin' towards gettin' his pro-rodeo card so he's gone nearly every weekend and often for a whole week. Nearly every other week he's gone for seven, eight days, sometimes more, at a time. He's off for all of this week and next week because he got hurt a couple weeks ago, so we were finally going to spend some much needed time together, but this trip down here changed that. Whenever he leaves I always take care of my ranch by myself, no problem. I've gotten used to it with him being gone so long and so often. Sure it's hard, but I've always managed. I have a couple employees who help me out a lot when Matt isn't there. I was hoping that while I was here in Wyoming, Matt would be able to handle the ranch by himself and that everything would go smoothly, but yesterday, one of our mares got into a pasture with one of the stallions and she was in heat, and possibly pregnant, and now last night, Jerome got arrested...it's just...so much is goin' wrong there. I really need to be there; if I was there, none of this would've happened." Renne sighed. This was all so overwhelming right now.
Swayde rested his hand on Renne's shoulder again. "Have you talked to him about this?"
"I've tried, but he always tries to guilt trip me and make me feel like it's all my fault." Renne was still upset and she knew it. She really didn't have many friends back in Montana that she could talk to about this kind of thing. It felt good to finally get it out.
"It sounds like he hurts you a lot." Swayde looked at Renne. His jaw was clenched, as if holding back words he wanted to say about what he really thought of Matt.
"Yeah." Renne admitted, just barely audible. Her head was hung low.
"You know that I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you, right?" Swayde leaned forward to try to get Renne to look at him.
All Renne could think about was five years ago when it seemed pretty clear that Swayde did intentionally hurt her, but she knew that Swayde wasn't referring to that time right now.
     "I know." Renne replied simply. She stared at her phone, almost half expecting Matt to call her back and apologize again, but like Renne told Swayde, she was tired of cleaning up Matt's messes. This time though, Matt is all on his own. Renne is tired of getting taken advantage of. Now it was time to prove that to Matt.