Mayfly Melodies

Fourteen

Caroline

PTSD doesn't make you weak. It makes you a survivor—DaShanne Stok

Noah had a date.

Caroline watched from the porch as her brother loaded up the back of his new truck.  New was a subjective term.  Noah had bought it used from some guy who lived on a ranch on the other side of town the day after his truck had broken down for good.  It was black and big and grumbled when he turned it on, though not nearly as loud as his old one had.

Noah has told her that he was going out but hadn't specified that it was a date. To Caroline's eyes; however, it was very obvious that it was.  Her brother had combed his hair and washed the mud off of his boots.  He was wearing a navy blue buttoned-up shirt and had changed out of his work jeans.  He'd even gotten flowers at some point.  She watched as he opened the front door to the truck and placed them inside on the passenger's side seat. 

She wasn't entirely certain what to think about Noah going on this date.  He normally wasn't one to hide what was going on in his life.  Caroline knew that he often over-shared in an attempt to get her to speak but, while she always wanted to respond and let him know what she thought, she could just never formulate the words and get them to come out of her mouth. 

Noah seemed excited enough and Caroline knew that this was the first date he'd gone on since he'd broken up with Abby Noland.  In a way, Caroline had been glad when that relationship had ended.  She'd known, along with everyone else in Wichita Falls, that Noah and Abby were likely going to end up married had the awful thing not happened.  Caroline had also known another truth, something Noah hadn't even known.  Something that only a sister could know.

Abby and Noah never would have worked out.  Her brother was an honourable man, more so than many of the other men she'd met in her twenty-two years.  He would've done right by Abby, would've tried to make her happy and content and comfortable for the rest of their lives.  But he would've gotten bored.  Not that he would ever have admitted it. 

In truth, Abby Noland was just too different from the type of girl that Caroline knew her brother needed.  She was high-maintenance, hardly down-to-earth, and while she'd lived around horses all her life, Caroline knew that she'd never had an appreciation for the animals, not like Noah had.  And she'd hated the rodeo.  Abby had confided to Caroline once that the circuit was too grungy and dirty for her and that she'd wanted Noah to quit. 

She hadn't understood that the rodeo was a large part of who Noah was.  That, while he sometimes had his doubts about competing, rodeo was who he was in his soul.  He could no sooner give it up than he could give up his right hand.  If he did, he would be lost, directionless.  Retirement was one thing.  Being given an ultimatum and asked to quit by the person who was supposed to be supporting you was an entirely different matter.

And Abby had never really gotten along with Caroline's family either.  She put on an act whenever she'd arrived at the Hartley ranch to see Noah, one that rarely came off.  But Caroline had caught the other woman roll her eyes and scoff at Caroline's family when she thought that none of them were looking and this had always rubbed Caroline the wrong way.  She never confronted the other woman about it, but the thought of doing so had always weighed heavily on her mind.

It wasn't like Caroline could have told Noah any of this, of course.  At the time, he'd been head-over-boots for the girl.  Caroline couldn't blame him for that, either.  Abby was easily one of the prettiest girls in town.  She hailed from a nice family, rich and a tad stuck up, but nice where it mattered.  Abby's parents had adored Noah but not in the way one might think.  Abby's father had regarded Noah almost as if he were a prized horse, needing to be groomed and trained to perfection in order to fit into their world.  They hadn't looked at Noah like he could one day be family, nor as if he were to be like a son to them if he were to marry their daughter.