by Sarah Monzon
Had that really just happened? Would we actually have a decent surplus this year? Expand? We weren’t on our way to becoming Deseret Ranch in Florida—330,000 acres, 44,000 head of beef cattle, and over sixteen million dollars in revenue—but we could breathe a little easier. Maybe not worry about next year’s taxes so much. Put some money aside for Miriam’s college fund. Pay off Nate’s personal loan.
My thought train came to a screeching halt as if someone had thrown on the emergency brake. Paying off Nate’s loan meant he wouldn’t have to sell Domino. Which meant Jocelyn wouldn’t lease him. Which would leave her with no reason to come back.
My chest squeezed, but I tried to tell myself this was good news. This was what I had wanted all along. What was best. A quick split and I could stop torturing myself by being so close to her and yet entirely too far away. Having her within arm’s reach but no right to trail my thumb across the crest of her cheek. Being enraptured by her easiness while simultaneously struck inarticulate.
But the problem with trying to convince yourself of something was that, deep down, you knew you were filled to your eyeballs in steaming piles of nonsense. And right then, I reeked of my own lies.
Because the truth was, Jocelyn leaving and never coming back didn’t solve anything. I couldn’t pretend that I’d never met her and that she hadn’t awakened something inside me that had been dormant until now. Yes, I could go back to how things were before she’d turned up on the ranch. I could bury myself in my work and collapse into my bed each night, but even exhaustion wouldn’t keep the regrets of what if at bay.
What if I’d pushed past my awkward discomfort and met her eyes for longer than a heartbeat?
What if I’d forced myself to put to words my growing feelings, no matter how clumsy or inelegant such a declaration would have been?
What if the only thing standing in the way of seeing what could grow between us was my pride?
The heels of my boots ground into the dirt below me. I had twenty-eight years of life lessons that had taught me the best things were the ones a person worked hard for. I’d never been afraid of demanding labor before, but that was work that had roughened my hands and lined calluses along the pads of my palms. I could pull calves from sunup to sundown, spend days in the saddle, move thousands of pounds of hay in a day, and cajole the inner workings of a cantankerous tractor into motion, but putting my thoughts and emotions into words to let Jocelyn know how I felt about her was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done.
One of the rules on the ranch: never put off to tomorrow what can be accomplished today. But first, Thunder. Twenty minutes later, the Appaloosa’s hooves neatly trimmed, I let him out to graze with the others. The farrier tools went back to their spot in the barn, and I made my way up to the house.
The creaking of the rocking chair sounded from the corner of the porch. Gran sat, an open Bible on her lap.
“Hey, Gran, have you seen Jocelyn?” I asked.
Her eyes pinched as she looked up at me. “She left a few hours ago.”
“Left?” The question roared in my ears. “Why?”
“She got a phone call saying her mama was in the hospital.” Gran sent the chair to rocking again. “Poor girl.”
I ran a hand down the length of my face, my tenuous hope sinking with the action. She was gone. That was it. The end before there had even been a chance at the beginning.
“I’ve been here praying. For her and her mama.” Gran folded her thin fingers over her Bible as she studied me. “For you.”
I took a half step to the side and leaned my spine against the support column of the porch railing, letting my eyes slide shut. Just a moment. I’d allow myself a minute to imagine what could have been before putting my hands back into the work of the here and now.
“Truth be told, I’ve been praying for that girl even before I met her.”
I blinked. Stared at my grandmother and the way she regarded me with her knowing expression. “What do you mean?”
She lowered her eyes and used her finger to trace words as she read aloud. “‘Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.’” She looked back up at me. “Song of Solomon chapter eight, verses six and seven.”
“Gran.”
“I’ve been claiming this verse as a benediction for you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. Praying for the girl who could love you so fiercely and completely that your passion for each other would burn like a wildfire that nothing in this world could put out.” She laid her Bible aside and stood. Walked my direction and planted herself right in front of me. “I know you’re smarter than to let that girl go without so much as a by-your-leave.” Gran reached out and gripped my hand, pressing a folded piece of paper into my palm. She squeezed then let go and walked away.
I glanced down at the torn paper in my hand. At the top was Jocelyn’s name. Below that, her phone number.
19
Jocelyn
“Jo Jo, sit down. Your pacing is making me dizzy.”
I stopped in front of my brother, my hands twitching at my sides. He grabbed my fingers and pulled me to the empty seat next to him. I let myself fall into the uncomfortable chair then leaned forward and rested my head in my hands.
How long did it take to run a few tests?
A man moaned to my left as he clutched his stomach, and I shifted closer to Damien. Already we’d been subjected to a bloody gash on a kid’s forehead, a broken arm with the bone protruding, and a woman obviously in labor being wheeled in by a frantic husband. We didn’t need to add projectile vomiting to the list of horrors the ER waiting room provided.
The automatic doors to the ambulance bay opened, and paramedics wheeled in a gurney.
I slammed my gaze down to the floor before I’d be forced to steal the sick man’s barf bag.
Black-and-white-checked Vans stepped into my line of vision. My eyes trailed up and met with a brown paper cup, steam swirling and then disappearing from the hole in the lid.
“Hear anything yet?” Betsy asked as I took the coffee.
I sipped, wincing as the scalding liquid burned my tongue. “Not yet.” I turned back to Damien. He looked as rumpled as I felt, his Cal State LA T-shirt wrinkled from hours of sitting in these infernal chairs. “Tell me again what happened.”
He sighed but launched into the recitation of events for the third time. “Like I said, Mom and I were having breakfast at a little bistro by campus when she started having trouble breathing. She got super lightheaded, broke out in a sweat, and said her chest hurt. I called 911 and the ambulance was there in less than ten minutes. They whisked her back, you endangered hundreds of drivers getting here as quickly as you did, and we’ve been waiting ever since.”
“You want me to talk to the person at the desk?” Betsy eyed the reception area.
I leaned back and let my hands fall to my sides. “No, but thank you.” I squinted up at her. “Don’t you have someplace you need to be?” Amanda had squeezed me tight and made me promise to update her but hadn’t come to the hospital at all. Phobia, I think, or something like that. I’d insisted Nicole not bring Sierra and expose her to all the germs. Molly had stayed for a while but then needed to get home to Chloe before Ben had to leave for his next shift.
I pulled my phone out of my purse and waved it like jazz hands. “I’ll text you an update as soon as we hear anything.”
Ping.
I lowered my phone. A new message bubble lit atop my lock screen photo of Domino. I swiped the screen and face ID unlocked and opened the message. I didn’t recognize the number at the top.
Just heard about your mom.
I hope she’s ok.
This is Malachi, by the way
“What are you grinning about?”
Damien’s shoulder bumped mine as he leaned in. He grabbed my phone and tilted it toward him.
Nosy pest.
“Who’s Malachi?”
Betsy bent at the waist, her head casting a shadow across the screen. “Malachi texted?”
I pulled my phone to my chest and slanted a look at my brother. “He’s a friend.” To Betsy I said, “I guess so.”
Damien jutted his chin toward Betsy. “She usually gets this flustered over a text from a friend?”
Betsy snorted. “I can’t even remember the last time a friend texted her.”
I deposited my phone back in my purse, even though I wanted nothing more than to punch out a response to the text. But that would only make these two hound dogs sniff around all the more. “You guys are awful.”
“No, we’re bored,” Damien corrected.
“Damien and Jocelyn Dormus?” A nurse in blue scrubs stood at the double swinging doors, scanning the waiting room. Damien and I stood, and the nurse smiled at us. “You two can come back and see your mother now.”
I gave Betsy a hug and then followed Damien and the nurse down a long corridor. She stopped beside a partitioned off area and pulled back the curtain. Mama lay prone on the hospital cot, her dark hair sprawled across a white pillow, a sheet pulled up to her chest. Tubes and wires and a whole lot of other medical stuff that I knew nothing about trailed from her chest and arm to monitors and what nots.
My stomach rolled. There was a reason I’d never entered the medical field.
I swallowed back rising acid and forced my lips into a smile, hoping they didn’t tremble as much as my knees were shaking. I took a few steps toward Mama and half sat on the edge of her bed before the grayness crowding the edge of my vision totally took over and I wiped out on the hospital floor. I slipped my fingers into her cupped palm. “How are you feeling?”
She gave me a wry twist of her lips. “I’ve been better.”
“Kind of extreme measures to get our attention, don’t you think?” Damien touched her shoulder.
A feeble laugh pushed out of her chest. “You’re the drama king of the family, not me.”
“That’s right. Which means we need to get you out of here soon so the world can start revolving around me again.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Mama smiled, for real this time, and the hard knot in my diaphragm began to loosen. Everything wasn’t spiraling out of control. With the doctor’s insight, we could form a plan, stick to it, and stave off any further upsets. Diet, exercise, medication. I could talk to Jayden and maybe work remotely for a while to oversee Mama’s regimen.
As if my thoughts of the doctor had somehow summoned him, the curtain rolled back and an older man with a stethoscope hanging across his shoulders entered our small, semi-private space.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Melendez.” He introduced himself as he squirted hand sanitizer into his palms from a dispenser on the wall. After rubbing the liquid over his hands, he put the ends of the stethoscope into his ears and listened to Mama’s chest.
The mmmm noises he hummed brewed an impatience in me that made me want to leap across the cot and shake him by his shoulders until he spilled whatever medical knowledge was in that big brain of his. Didn’t he realize we were waiting with bated breath to know if Mama would be okay or if we would always be worried about her having another heart attack? Or if she needed surgery? Good heavens, were they going to cut open and spread her chest?
I squeezed my eyes shut tight, willing the room to stop spinning.
“The good news is that you didn’t have a heart attack.”
My eyes popped back open, the fluorescent lights over-bright. “She didn’t?”
“No.”
Mama sighed in relief.
“However, you did experience a flareup of unstable angina, which is commonly a result of coronary artery disease.”
“That sounds serious.” Damien gripped Mama’s hand.
“The chest pain you experienced, Mrs. Dormus, was caused by the heart not receiving enough blood and oxygen it needs to pump properly. We call this unstable angina. Now, we ran your blood work, and there hasn’t been any damage to your cardiac muscles, but you are at risk for a heart attack in the future.”
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked, my voice sounding small in my ears.
“We’re going to start you on some blood thinners so your blood can flow more freely through your arteries. Your angiogram showed the area where your artery has narrowed and will need monitoring. If it continues to narrow or build up blockage, you’ll need angioplasty and possibly a stent put in.
“Your chart indicates that you aren’t a smoker, so that’s good. Other lifestyle changes you will want to implement to keep your heart as healthy as possible are exercising regularly, lowering your stress, and making sure to eat a healthy diet.” He met all our gazes in turn before continuing. “We’ll keep you overnight for observation, but you should be able to return home tomorrow. You might feel tired, so make sure you get plenty of rest. I’ll have the nurse write you up a list of symptoms to look for and when you should call your primary care doctor as well as a recommended diet plan.”
My mind spun with all the information he’d just shot at us, feeling the report in the base of my skull.
“Thank you, Dr. Melendez,” Mama said as the doctor exited. She ran her fingers along the folded crease in the sheet. “All this fuss for nothing. You two acting like I was dying or something.”
“It’s not nothing, Mama.” I gaped at her. Downplaying the seriousness of her condition wasn’t the best first step. She might not have had a heart attack this time, but that bell could toll in the future.
“Watch out. Jo Jo is going to come up with a life plan for you,” Damien teased with a mock-serious expression thrown Mama’s way.
They could make fun of my plans all they wanted, but those decisions had safeguarded me against certain hardships, not to mention paved the way for Damien to have a better future. And if devising a blueprint for Mama’s life kept her with us and protected her from a future heart attack, then why wouldn’t they be on board with it?
Mama closed her eyes and pulled the sheet up to her ribs. “I’m too tired to fight either one of you or listen to you two squabble. The doctor said I need rest, so that’s what I’m going to do.” She shooed us away with her hand.
Damien opened the curtain for me, and I passed through, pivoting on the ball of my foot a few feet later, a fist punched to my hip. “What’s wrong with making a plan and sticking with it?”
He pushed me forward through the hall with a hand at the small of my back. “Do we really have to discuss this now?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “When else should we discuss it? When I call and you ignore me?”
He gripped my elbow and pulled me into an alcove. “Fine. You want to do this now? We’ll do this now. I’m dropping out of college.”
“What?” The question exploded like the bomb he’d just dropped.
“You heard me. I’m dropping out and enlisting in the Marines.”
No. He was supposed to earn his degree in software engineering, get a steady job behind a desk that paid him more than a living wage, marry, and live happily and with as little struggle possible ever after.
His hold on me gentled. “I appreciate all you’ve done, paying for school and everything, but working with computers was never my dream. It was always only your vision for my life.”
“But it’s…safe.”
“There’s more to life than a false sense of security, Jo Jo.”
My neck snapped back. “What do you mean false?”
“I mean…” He turned his head and stared out the window. After a few seconds, he looked back at me. “You can get all your ducks in a row, but that isn’t going to keep Elmer Fudd from taking shots at them.”
“What?” Same question, but this time it floated out of my mouth on a ripple of laughter.
He smirked. “All I’m saying is that you can order your lif
e in a certain way, but you can’t stop bad things from happening or hardships from knocking on your door.”
“I know that.”
He tapped my temple. “Here maybe. But you’ve always traveled the road of least resistance instead of the one that would bring you the most joy.”
“You don’t know that.” I sniffed.
He laughed. “Jo Jo, you hate math and yet work with budgets all day.”
Dang it if I didn’t have a comeback for that.
“I love you and your neurotic drive for security, but I’m going to make my own way from here on out, okay?”
When had my baby brother grown up and gotten so mature? “Okay.”
“And I hope you consider veering off that comfortable but insanely boring path you’ve blazed for yourself.” He tweaked my nose. “No risk, no reward, right?”
My purse felt heavy on my shoulder, my cell with its unanswered text from Malachi flashing in my mind like a caution road sign. Pulse accelerating, I considered what type of risk the cowboy posed in my life.
And what kind of reward…
20
Malachi
The tractor engine rumbled under me as I drove toward the storage canopy that housed large round bales of hay. Two prongs protruded from the front of the tractor, and I lined those up with the center mass of the hay rings, poking the rolled flakes and lifting the thousand-pound bale. Then I backed out and steered the tractor toward the cattle in the stockyard. What grass there was in the enclosed area had long been trampled and eaten down. Until the cattle could be released back onto the expanse of the property to graze, they’d feed off the hay and some grains.
I maneuvered the tractor until the bale hovered over the feeder to keep the cattle from trampling and wasting the feed. The engine idled as I jumped down and snapped open a pocketknife, cutting into the nylon strings that wrapped around the bale to bind it together. If one of the cows ate the string, they could get very sick. I wound the string then deposited the length into my pocket, jumped back into the tractor, and lowered the bale into the feeder, backing up to slide the prongs out of the bale’s belly.