by Natalie Dean
“Mr. Touhey?” Benji asked, offering his hand.
The man took it in a solemn and brief sort of shake before he spoke. His voice was gravely and strained, like someone who had been holding so much emotion inside of themselves that it had physically hurt them.
“Nice to see you, young man. We’re mighty pleased to have you here to help us.”
“Yeah, of course,” Benji said with a nod. “And speaking of helping you, I figured I’d get right to it. What would you have me do first?”
They looked to each other, as if the idea of him showing up had been so doubtful that they hadn’t planned that far ahead.
“Well,” Mrs. Touhey said. “A lot of our animals ran off in the blaze. The ones that stuck around are crammed into our minor barn and extra pens, but most are still missing. We think they’re still around, so if you’d be willing to search the entire area to round up any you can, we’d be mighty appreciative.”
“Yeah, sure. What should I be looking for? Horses? Chickens?”
“Goats and horses mostly. Some fowl but we’re most worried about the goats. They’re prime targets for coyotes.”
“Right. I’ll drive around where I can in the truck now. Tomorrow I’ll bring a horse. You got a map of your trails?”
“Yeah, yeah we do,” Mr. Touhey said, seeming to perk up ever so slightly. “I’ll go grab it for you.”
“Sounds great. In the meantime, I have plenty of rope in my truck, but I’d like to grab some hay and a water trough if you still have some. That way any critters I pick up can have a more comfortable ride on the way back.”
“Oh yes, thank you. I didn’t even think of that,” Mrs. Touhey said, pointing to the other side of the house. “They’re over by the sheds. We salvaged everything we could. Do you need anything else? Water or food for yourself?”
“No, thank you. I ate before I came, and Ma made sure I had plenty of water bottles, including frozen ones for later.”
“Ah, she really is a kind woman, isn’t she? We couldn’t believe she called us, all things considered.”
“She’s something else, my Ma,” Benji agreed with a smile.
He liked to think of himself as a nice person, but he didn’t think he’d have the idea to help them on his own. No, that was entirely Ma’s doing.
“Well, we’re eternally grateful for you helping. It really does mean a lot.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Benji answered with a smile, glad that he had chosen to do the Christian thing. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Thank you. Do you need me to come with you while you get ready?”
Benji shook his head. “No, I’ll be fine. You get rest for now. I’m sure that the two of you have been through quite a lot. Take a couple of days, and if I need something, I know where to find you.”
“All right, dear. And thank you, again.”
Benji just gave her a little tilt of his head and went around the back of the house. He was feeling a lot better about his decision and felt more than ready to kick some butt and help these people out.
Besides, the faster he got things done, the sooner he could get home so things could get back to normal. Not that normal was terribly exciting, but hey, it was his life, and that was all that he could ask for.
Benji smiled to himself as he drove one of the many trails back to the main house. He’d been out for around five hours and had managed to find three goats, a rooster, and two chickens. That had pretty much filled up his extended cab, even with the critters tied up for their safety, so he was heading back to the spare barn by the main house.
It hadn’t been that hard, thankfully, with most of the animals milling about in pastures, looking like they were expecting something. Benji guessed that was due to the consistent care that the Touhey brand was known for when it came to their goats. While they were no Miller Ranch, they did pretty well for themselves and their animals.
He rounded the corner of some windbreaker trees that had been planted and saw a figure just a bit away, digging out post holes for a new pen. Which they would certainly need considering all the animals he was going to round up over the next couple of days, but it certainly wasn’t a job for a single person to be doing.
Benji wondered if they needed help, so he pulled up beside the field and approached the person. As he approached, the figure stood, and he realized that the person was a woman. If he hazarded a guess, he’d be willing to bet that it was the Touhey daughter. She was plump, like her mother, and dressed in oversized overalls as well as a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her copper hair was up in a high ponytail on her head, and even from a distance he could see that she had dozens and dozens of freckles. Must have taken after her Pa in that way.
There were bandages on her hand, however, and more just below her elbow. Benji remembered vaguely that Ma had said their youngest had been hurt too, so he imagined that no doctor would want her out in the midday heat doing a job that was meant for a whole team. The least he could do was introduce himself and lend a hand. After all, that was how one was a good neighbor, right?
3
Danielle
Digging was just the sort of mindless, menial task that Dani needed. Push the shovel into the ground, step on the edge to make it go deeper. Tilt up. Fill with dirt. Move to dirt pile. Repeat. She could time her breathing to it, slipping into a state where there wasn’t much thought involved.
Because when she thought, all she could see were her brothers.
Her hand stung as sweat soaked into the bandages covering her burns. She needed to clean them, but she could do that later. When her head was on right. When it felt like she wasn’t about to spin off into a chasm of guilt and despair.
Why them? The arsonist had never targeted anywhere with people before. What had made them choose her family? They never did anything to hurt anyone. They weren’t really involved in the town drama. Was it just random chance? Bad luck?
It didn’t feel that way.
Dani shook her head, loosening her grip on her mindless state as thoughts crept in. Sighing to herself, she went to grab her canteen only to see someone striding across the field toward her.
She had no idea who it could possibly be and tensed. They’d had plenty of well-wishers and people who had offered to help, mostly by giving her family precooked casseroles and maybe offering a little house cleaning. But the house didn’t need to be cleaned. No, the kind of help her family needed was expensive, labor-intensive, and what few people were willing or able to give.
Dani shaded her eyes with her hand and recognition slid into place. She knew that face, although in a more notorious way than anything else, because dollars to donuts, she was looking at a Miller boy.
Which one, she wasn’t sure, because once you saw one muscle-bound, stunningly classic Miller boy, then you’d seen them all. They were like someone had hit print five times on that family and just shot out one quintessential, handsome cowboy right after the other. They were the darlings of the town, even from middle school.
Dani wouldn’t have minded them being so beloved if it, in turn, didn’t make people seem to feel like the Touheys were in the wrong for daring to run their own business. It wasn’t like her family was stealing from them or anything, but many in the town seemed to act that way.
The Miller boy continued striding up to her, and she couldn’t help but roll her eyes at whatever it was he wanted. He didn’t seem to catch it, however, because suddenly he was within socializing distance of her and offering his hand.
“Howdy there,” he said.
His voice was nice, as was his strong, chiseled jaw, and his wide cheekbones, and blue eyes. There was a thin but long scar on his chin that wrapped under onto his neck, but instead of distracting from his whole look, it just added to it.
And dang it, was that annoying.
“I’m Benjamin Miller. I assume you’re the Touhey girl?”
She looked him over. Part of her knew that she should be polite and see why he was around, bu
t her mind couldn’t quite get there. His pleasant, open face just reminded her of how people treated her family like they were encroaching on Miller land when they were just trying their best to provide for themselves. It wasn’t like the Millers had a monopoly on ranching.
“You figured that out yourself, huh?” she said caustically.
The man looked surprised at her tone, which she was sure he was. Because everyone was always tripping over themselves to ingratiate to the Millers while no one had ever cared about how Dani thought or felt.
She felt her anger bubble as she recalled some of the things her classmates had teased her for. Gossiped about her. The man in front of her had probably either heard the rumors or added to them himself. No one had ever stood up for Dani back then, and that left her with little to no love for the man in front of her.
“Uh, yeah.” There was silence for a moment. “This is usually when you tell me your name.”
“Is it?” she asked, leaning against her shovel.
Goodness, what was he thinking in that ridiculously handsome head of his? He was basically a rich, gorgeous man who had the world handed to him, and she was a fat, dirty competitor who was digging a fence post because everything her family had been working towards had gone up in flames.
“If we’re going by what my Ma taught me, then yeah.”
“I see.” She took a long, long drink from her water bottle, never removing her eyes from him. “And you always do what your Ma says?”
He seemed utterly confused by her terse responses and honestly, she loved it. It felt like she was taking power back when she’d had so little of it lately. Or ever. There wasn’t exactly a lot of adventure or choices when she’d been focused most of her life on helping her family succeed.
“Well, historically, she does have some pretty solid advice.”
“I’m sure she does.”
He stood there awkwardly, seeming like he was trying to find the right words, before he sighed and gave her an uncertain look.
“I feel like you’re having a joke at my expense, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” she countered. “We went to school together. You really don’t need to use honorifics with me.”
“We did?”
She nodded. “Well, I’m pretty certain we did. The eldest Miller boy was too far ahead of me, but the rest of you were all either right before or behind me.” She squinted. “And I never could tell you guys apart. So, which one are you?”
“My brothers and I look nothing alike.”
“Sure, you don’t.”
That seemed to irritate him, and he smirked a bit. She supposed she should maybe feel bad but had any of them ever stepped in and stopped people from teasing her? From making fun of the old used jeans she wore or her waistline? No. And if they weren’t actively stopping the bullying from their little gaggle of worshippers, then they were just adding to the issue. That’s the way it worked with bullying. There were no gray areas.
“Look, I’m just here to help your family—”
“And no one’s stopping you, are they?” She glanced over his shoulder to see the animals peeking over the hay in the back of his truck. Wow, she had to admit, he was pretty productive for just one day.
She felt a flash of guilt. She really shouldn’t antagonize someone who had obviously just spent the day helping her family, but it felt like her manners were taking a backseat to everything else. Anger, resentment, sorrow, shock, all of that was sitting in the front seat, driving her body while the rest of her mind tried to process everything that had happened that night.
But every time she tried to think about it, she just saw flames. Burning higher and higher, without mercy or restraint. Consuming everything that was important to her.
Shaking her head, she realized that the man had been talking to her again.
“Look,” she said, suddenly very tired of him, and the interaction, and the whole situation in general. She wished that she could just go to sleep and wake up when her brothers were happy and healthy, and she wasn’t surrounded by reminders of the trauma they’d barely survived. “I need to finish this pen. You should go drop off those animals before going back to that McMansion of yours and patting yourself on the back for helping out the poor folk down the way.”
“Did I ever do something to you, ma’am?”
The earnestness of his question surprised her, and she stopped short as she looked him over. It would probably be so easy to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was pretty, and pretty people were always assumed to be good, weren’t they?
“I don’t know,” she replied before turning to dig more. “Did you?”
He let out a very dry snort, and she felt a bit of triumph at getting him to lose his perfect aw-shucks demeanor.
“You’re something else, you know that?” he said.
She stood up and affixed him with the flattest glare she could. “The same thing could be said about you.”
He seemed surprised at that, staring at her for several moments and seeming to try to think of what to say. But instead, he turned on his heel and walked back toward his truck. Dani dismissed him from her mind as he went, letting him walk out of her thoughts as they settled back into their rhythm.
Shovel in the ground.
Step on the edge.
Fill with dirt.
Put in the pile.
Do it again.
Don’t think.
Thinking always ended up hurting her, making the tears prick at the corner of her eyes.
Just dig.
4
Benji
Benji did his best not to have his hackles raised as he stomped into the main house, his hunger that much more exaggerated by his anger. Of all the things in the world he had expected while helping out the Touheys, a daughter with the bite of a viper certainly wasn’t one of them.
He hadn’t even done anything wrong! He’d marched right up to her with the intent to help and she’d done everything from dismiss to insult him. He knew that sometimes people were raised differently, but he couldn’t think of any sort of upbringing where that was the way to talk to someone who was helping out of the goodness of their heart.
…or because their Ma had asked them to.
But that was beside the point.
“Oh, there you are, dear. I wasn’t sure if you’d be stopping by.”
Ma came out of the kitchen, a fresh cup of iced tea in her hand. Before Benji could say a word, she turned on her heel and disappeared. The pause gave him a few more minutes to shove his feelings down before she was back with another glass that she pushed into his hand.
“How was it, dear? Were they hurting terribly?”
Benji took a long sip of his tea, thinking very carefully about how he was going to say what.
“It’s not too bad, considering they got insurance and all. I was mostly rounding up some of the animals who got spooked. I’m sure they’re still going to lose a few to wild animals or just being lost permanently, but it’s not as bad as it could be.”
“Oh really?” She took his hand and lead him to her favorite couch; the one that faced the bay window that overlooked a beautiful slice of their land. “That’s a relief to hear. Two boys in the hospital, and their girl just barely out of there herself… I can’t imagine. I was enough of a mess when you lot all decided to get sick with mono.”
Benji chuckled lightly at that. “Yeah, because we had a committee meeting about that and it was a unanimous vote that we all come down with one of the most uncomfortable sicknesses of our lives at once.”
She ribbed him gently with her elbow before picking up her knitting. “Don’t be cute now.”
“I can’t help it,” he retorted, pulling her into a side-hug. How did Ma always know how to make him feel better? “I am adorable, aren’t I.”
She made a harrumph and busied herself with her work. There was something inherently soothing about watching Ma make something soft and comforting out of thin threads of yarn, so Benji watched
her for several moments.
Unfortunately, those same feelings that he had after talking to the Touhey girl began to bubble up, and as much as he didn’t want to ruin the mood, Benji knew he needed to speak.
“I don’t think that I can help that family anymore.”
Ma sat bolt upright and looked at him in surprise. “What? Why?”
Benji wasn’t sure what to say. He could tell the truth and explain that the youngest was so incredibly rude and unwelcoming that he felt uncomfortable going back. That he didn’t want to do anything to make that vicious woman’s life easier.
But that didn’t seem right.
Perhaps it was because, deep down, he knew that he should keep helping no matter how nasty she was. That the whole family didn’t deserve to be punished for one bad apple. But her words were still stinging at his pride so intensely.
Nobody talked to him like that.
“I just don’t think I really will be much use beyond today. And there’s some obvious tension with me being a Miller—”
“Really?” she interrupted skeptically. “They seemed so grateful when I talked to them.”
Benji swallowed, trying to think of something that would convince her. He knew that dancing around the topic wasn’t really fooling her, so perhaps a little more truth would be better than not.
“I just worry that certain characters on the farm would make me act in a sort of… unchristian manner.”
“Is that so?” she questioned, her voice soft and gentle.
That in and of itself made him suspicious. He expected a lecture, maybe, or disappointment. Not… whatever she was doing now.
“Yeah. I think it would be better.”