The Long Ride Home by Marsha Hubler Read Free Book Online Page A

Stables a few more days. Wait until he hears about my father.” Skye was totally oblivious to Mrs. Chambers’ last words. “Look here. There are two western AQHA shows right in the Gatlinburg area next week.”
    “Then it’s settled,” Mr. Chambers said. “Come Sunday after church, we’re on our way to Tennessee.”
    Skye held up the piece of paper with the phone number. “And if this isn’t my father, the first thing I’m going to do is find a new phone book and see if the other Jacys might be listed,” Skye said. “The locator website just might be outdated.”

Chapter eight
    A n hour later, and every hour thereafter until bedtime, Skye called the number for Jacy Nicholson Number One. When no one answered, she went to bed disappointed.
    All day Saturday while she taught riding lessons and helped with a hayride, she called the number every hour on the hour with the same result.
    Sunday after church, the Chambers’ family said their teary farewells at the ranch and set their sights on Gatlinburg. Again, all afternoon and into the night, Skye had no success with the phone. “This guy has got to be on a vacation or something,” she groaned in the truck cab and flipped the cell phone shut after her last try around 9 p.m. For a while, Skye’s mouth ran nonstop about trying to find her father, but soon pure exhaustion wooed her into a sound sleep. Her dreams flitted from her father to horse shows to the kids she had just left behind to Chad and then back to her missing dad again… Jacy Nicholson … What if he doesn’t want to see me … Does he have other kids now? … Which Jacy is it? … Maybe it’s none of them…
    Close to midnight, the Chambers family pulled into a KOA campground on the outskirts of Pigeon Forge. After Mr. Chambers registered at the office, he, Mrs. Chambers, and Skye bedded down the horses in a small pole barn, then they and Morgan crashed in the bunks in the log cabin and were asleep in seconds.
    At seven o’clock the next morning while Mr. and Mrs. Chambers prepared breakfast at a small brick fireplace and camper’s table in front of the cabin, Skye hurried to the camp office with one goal in mind: to find a phone book.
    “Mom! Dad!” Skye yelled as she charged back to camp. Mr. Chambers was stirring his trademark scrambled eggs in a pan on the fire while Mrs. Chambers buttered biscuits at the table. The table hosted a mishmash of paper plates and cups, plastic utensils, and a quart container of orange juice. Morgan sat by the fire holding a marshmallow on a stick over the low flame.
    “Sounds like you have some good news.” Morgan’s glance darted from the marshmallow to Skye then back.
    “There are two Jacy Nicholsons in the phone book,” Skye said. “One number is the same as what I found online. Can I call them both now? Can I?”
    “Skye, I hate to keep saying this,” Mrs. Chambers said, smiling, “but you’ll have to hold your horses again.” She glanced at her watch and went back to her buttering job. “It’s not even 7:15 yet.”
    Mr. Chambers lifted the frying pan and shifted to the table where he scraped the eggs into a large plastic serving dish. He then set the pan on the ground beside the fireplace. “Skye, we have to think this through. If those guys are up and about at this hour on a Monday morning, they’re probably getting ready for work or whatever.”
    Skye flopped on a canvas chair near the table. “If, and that’s a big if, Jacy Nicholson Number One is even around here. Maybe he moved.”
    Mrs. Chambers poured four glasses of orange juice. “Skye, I’m sure that sooner or later you’re going to get through to one of these men.”
    “At this hour of the day, they’d probably think it’s a prank call and slam the phone down quicker than you could say, ‘Dada,’” Morgan said. She wheeled her Jazzy to the one side of the table, plopped her gooey burnt mess onto a paper plate, and giggled. “Scrambled eggs and marshmallows. What a