Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

By the time the Gulfstream turned off the runway at Callahan Field, the Texas sun hung high and hard above the Panhandle.

Seven thousand feet of paved runway stretched behind us.

Runway lighting.

Fuel storage.

A private hangar large enough to hold two business jets.

Enough concrete to make Mama ask why a man needed to pave half of Texas just to avoid standing in an airport security line.

Callahan Field was a registered private-use airport.

Officially.

Mama called it the world’s most expensive driveway.

The plane rolled toward the hangar and stopped.

Nobody moved.

The cabin carried the exhausted stillness of people who had gone too long without sleep and no longer trusted their own thoughts.

Bodhi remained half-curled around Rachel beneath a blanket.

Kristy Lee sat closest to the cockpit with the rifle across her knees, eyes heavy but refusing to close completely.

Gene occupied the forward seat, watching the pilots without actively intimidating them.

Progress.

Sasha lay against Bodhi’s feet.

Her head lifted when Rachel moved.

Nothing else did.

I unbuckled and looked through the window.

Home.

For the first time all day, my chest loosened.

Not completely.

Enough.

Texas had that effect on me.

You can travel the world.

Play in stadiums packed with seventy thousand screaming fans.

Sit in penthouses overlooking cities that never sleep.

None of it compares to seeing your own land after being gone too long.

Land speaks.

Even in daylight.

I had used the satellite phone twice during our descent.

Called Mama.

No answer.

Called the staff house.

Nothing.

My own phone was somewhere inside the burned remains of the Lost River house, and any calls Nain or the ranch staff had made would have gone straight into that wreckage.

Still…

Hannah Callahan had never allowed a telephone to dictate her schedule.

Mama ignored calls when she was outside.

Ignored them when she was praying.

Ignored them whenever she decided the person calling could wait.

I told myself that was all this was.

The cabin door opened.

Warm Panhandle air rolled inside carrying the smell of grass, dust, and distant livestock.

I started down the stairs.

Then stopped.

No ground crew.

No ranch vehicle waiting near the hangar.

No one coming to help the pilots secure the aircraft.

Callahan Field didn’t employ an army, but somebody should have been there.

Usually Nain.

Sometimes one of the ranch hands.

At minimum, somebody curious enough to see why my plane had returned without warning.

Nothing moved.

One of the pilots appeared behind me.

“Mr. Callahan?”

“Secure the plane and stay here.”

“Yes, sir.”

I stepped onto the tarmac.

The group followed in uneven formation.

Gene first.

Then Kristy Lee.

Bodhi and Rachel.

Sasha stayed close to Bodhi’s leg.

Rachel paused halfway down the stairs and looked across the property.

Her expression changed.

Curiosity.

Maybe recognition.

That bothered me immediately.

“You all right?” I asked.

Her eyes moved toward me.

“You built this?”

“Bought part of it first. Built onto the rest.”

“How much land?”

“A little over two thousand acres.”

Gene whistled behind me.

“Man, mob money was clearly the wrong career path.”

“Football paid better.”

“That sentence makes me physically ill.”

Despite myself, I smiled.

A little.

Good.

Normal.

Human.

I needed normal.

Several custom golf carts waited beneath the hangar awning, plugged into charging stations.

Bodhi stared at them.

“You drive golf carts around your ranch?”

“They do fifty.”

“That’s somehow worse.”

“Wait until you see the cupholders.”

Gene climbed into one immediately.

“Oh, this is rich-people nonsense.”

“It’s practical rich-people nonsense.”

“Still nonsense.”

Kristy Lee slid into the rear seat behind him, rifle resting across her lap.

Even exhausted, she stayed close.

Not touching.

Close enough to matter.

Gene glanced over his shoulder.

Just checking.

Making sure she was there.

Rachel noticed.

“Tsk, tsk.”

Soft.

Dismissive.

Like Kristy Lee was an obstacle someone had forgotten to remove.

A cold feeling moved through me despite the afternoon heat.

I climbed into the lead cart.

Bodhi took the seat beside me with Sasha between his feet. Rachel sat behind us.

Gene followed in the second cart with Kristy Lee.

We started along the paved path toward the main house.

The ranch unfolded slowly around us.

Rolling pasture.

Split-rail fences.

Horse barns.

Long windbreaks of cottonwood and elm bending beneath the Panhandle wind.

The original property had been much smaller when I bought it from the bank.

A woman and her teenage son had owned the place before me. They left after something happened that nobody in the county could explain the same way twice.

Drugs.

Smuggling.

Violence.

A bookbag people discussed as though it had opinions.

Small towns collect stories like barns collect dust.

I never paid much attention.

The land came available.

I wanted distance from the world.

So I bought it.

Then I bought the neighboring parcels.

One came from a collection of cousins so strange I still wasn’t convinced the closing documents were legally binding. The largest one spent half the signing ranting about bookbags and government surveillance.

Behind me, Gene sat forward.

“What?”

I glanced back.

“What what?”

“That story.”

“What about it?”

Gene stared across the pasture.

“Nothing.”

Then, quieter:

“Sounds familiar.”

I filed that away.

Before I could ask, the main house appeared beyond the trees.

Two stories of stone, timber, and glass.

Wide porches.

Long east and west wings.

Too many rooms.

Too much money.

Mama called it my monument to overcompensation.

She wasn’t wrong.

Usually, seeing it settled something inside me.

That afternoon…

nothing settled.

No grounds-crew trucks.

No ranch hands near the barns.

No movement around the staff house.

Several horses stood clustered near a fence, watching us approach as though waiting for someone who had missed feeding time.

The property wasn’t peaceful.

It was empty.

My hands tightened around the steering wheel.

Bodhi noticed.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

I wasn’t.

We passed the equipment barn.

One of the side doors stood open.

A feed bucket lay on its side.

No one had picked it up.

The closer we got to the house, the worse the feeling became.

Then I saw the yellow tape.

A short length remained tied beside the rear entrance, snapping in the wind.

Crime-scene tape.

My foot came off the accelerator.

The golf cart rolled to a stop.

Someone stood beside the back steps.

Huge.

Motionless.

Built like someone had carved a mountain into the shape of a man.

Nain Stevens.

The Pain himself.

Gene practically exploded out of the second golf cart before it stopped moving.

“No way.”

Nain looked up.

Gene pointed at him like a child spotting Santa Claus.

“No. Way.”

Even exhausted and bloodstained, Gene bounded across the yard.

“Nain ‘The Pain’ Stevens?”

Nain blinked once.

“The six-time world tag champion?”

Nain remained motionless.

Gene turned toward us.

“You people understand this man once powerbombed another human being through a flaming coffin?”

Kristy Lee climbed out and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Oh, my God.”

Gene reached Nain and grabbed one of his arms.

“Still huge.”

Nain tolerated this the way statues tolerate birds.

Gene dropped into an announcer’s voice.

“Standing six foot seven! Three hundred thirty pounds of unresolved childhood trauma—”

Nain planted one enormous palm against Gene’s chest and shoved him backward.

Gene stumbled.

His face lit up.

“He touched me.”

I smiled despite myself.

Then Nain looked at me.

The smile died.

Something was wrong.

Not suspicious wrong.

Broken wrong.

Nain carried grief like physical weight.

I climbed out of the cart.

Walked toward him slowly.

“Nain?”

He didn’t answer.

Nain hadn’t spoken in years.

Usually, he didn’t need to.

That afternoon, his silence felt different.

His eyes moved briefly toward the house.

Then back to me.

“You okay?”

He reached inside his coat and removed a small leather notebook and pen.

His hands trembled.

I had never seen Nain’s hands tremble.

He wrote carefully.

Ripped out the page.

Held it toward me.

DAN.

I AM SORRY.

My stomach dropped.

The Texas heat disappeared.

“What happened?”

Nain looked down.

He didn’t write.

Didn’t have to.

Something inside me already knew.

“No.”

His shoulders lowered.

“No.”

He wrote again.

Slower.

YOUR MOTHER IS DEAD.

The world tilted.

Not metaphorically.

Actually tilted.

My knees gave way before I understood they were moving.

Bodhi caught my arm.

Held me upright.

“No.”

The word came out small.

Useless.

Hannah Callahan was dead.

Han and Dan Callahan don’t need no man.

She used to say it whenever I asked why other boys had fathers standing beside them after games.

Han and Dan Callahan don’t need no man.

She would flex one skinny arm.

Make me laugh.

Make our family of two feel complete.

Except now there was no Han.

“No.”

Nain stepped forward like he wanted to help.

Grief hit me so fast it became anger before my mind could stop it.

“Where were you?”

Everybody froze.

The words came out sharp.

Ugly.

Accusing.

“It was your job to watch her!”

Nain absorbed the blow without flinching.

That made it worse.

“You left her alone?”

His face collapsed.

Not defensively.

Not guiltily.

Devastated.

I hated myself immediately.

Nain loved Mama nearly as much as I did.

He looked down at the notebook.

Wrote.

SHE SENT ME AWAY.

I stared at the words.

“What?”

ERRANDS.

SHE INSISTED.

The anger drained as quickly as it had arrived.

Only grief remained.

“I’m sorry.”

Nain shook his head.

Like forgiveness didn’t matter.

Like nothing did.

I looked toward the strip of crime-scene tape.

“When?”

Nain wrote.

JUST AFTER NINE THIS MORNING.

The same window in which the Order had surrounded the Lost River house.

The same hours in which Marcus and Jeb had died.

Gene stepped closer.

All humor gone.

“They knew where we were going.”

“No.”

My voice sounded far away.

“I didn’t know we were coming here yet.”

Gene looked at me.

That truth settled between us.

The Order hadn’t killed Mama because we chose Texas.

They had killed her because of me.

Rachel stepped closer.

“Nain.”

The giant man looked at her.

Recognition flashed across his face.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

I stared at him.

“You know her?”

He nodded.

“How?”

He wrote:

YOUR MOTHER KEPT NOTES.

HER FACE WAS IN THEM.

A cold feeling moved through me.

“What notes?”

Nain hesitated.

Then wrote:

SHE SPOKE TO PEOPLE.

“What people?”

PEOPLE TRYING TO STOP THIS.

Not the Order.

People fighting them.

Mama had known.

Maybe not everything.

Enough.

She had known there was a war before I knew there were sides.

“How did she die?”

Nain’s jaw tightened.

He wrote:

SHERIFF SAYS METH USERS.

HOME INVASION.

Gene gave a humorless laugh.

“Sure they do.”

Nain nodded and continued.

NO MONEY TAKEN.

NO SIGN OF ROBBERY.

ONLY HANNAH.

I looked toward the house.

“Where is she?”

CORONER TOOK HER.

SHERIFF LEFT AN HOUR AGO.

That explained the tape.

It didn’t explain anything else.

“The staff?”

Nain wrote:

THEY WENT HOME.

TOO AFRAID TO RETURN.

The same network that had found us in California had reached Texas before we did.

It had emptied my ranch.

Killed Mama.

Left Nain alone to tell me.

I looked past him toward the house.

Mama’s kitchen.

Mama’s favorite chair.

The coffee cup she left beside the sink no matter how many times someone moved it.

Suddenly, walking inside felt impossible.

Rachel moved beside me.

Quiet.

Measured.

“She must have loved you very much.”

That broke me.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Completely.

I bent forward and covered my face.

The sobs came before I could stop them.

Nain caught me.

Huge arms closed around my shoulders like collapsing walls.

I cried into the chest of a silent giant while the others stood helpless beneath the afternoon sun.

Gene looked away.

Kristy Lee lowered her eyes.

Bodhi stood frozen beside Sasha.

The dog whined softly.

Only Rachel kept watching.

Studying.

Learning.

The Panhandle wind moved through the grass.

Crime-scene tape snapped beside Mama’s door.

And for the first time since the nightmare began…

home no longer felt safe.