by Claire Adams
“I’ve got a new one coming in,” I said, looking over at Lacey. She was staring out at the field. It was second thing in the morning, so the horses weren’t out there yet. “I just bought a colt from a rancher outside of Dallas. He’s spirited, I’m told.” I took a sip of my lukewarm coffee. “I’m driving out there tomorrow, if you want to ride along.”
“Hell no,” she replied, that troublemaking grin on her face again, her brown eyes squinting at me as her eyebrows scrunched down. She had a spray of freckles traveling from one side of her nose to the other, but none on her tanned cheeks and forehead. “I have no interest in running up to Dallas and back again in one day, especially not with all the work that needs doing around here. I’ll help train the new colt once you get him, though.”
“I’d hope to hell so. Why else am I paying you?”
She gave a deep belly laugh and reached to sock me in the arm. She was skinny but solid, so her fists packed a punch. “You’re lucky I like you, Pete Gains, or I’d leave you to make the big bucks at some other ranch.”
She really could make a lot more somewhere else, but we’d known each other since first grade. She’d grown up on this farm, same as I had, and we both knew she wouldn’t feel comfortable anywhere else. Our whole lives had been horses and bailing hay. We didn’t know anything else. Lacey could have, if she’d wanted to, but she stayed home instead of going off to some fancy college upstate. I spent so much time screwing off in school that the ranch was my only option after graduation. Not that I minded. I couldn’t have made it through another four hellishly boring years of school.
I shook my paper to straighten it out and kept on reading while Lacey reached to scratch old Riley behind the ears again. He didn’t even lift his head, but his tail thumped once on the floor, letting her know he appreciated her.
“What do you have planned for today, old man?” she asked.
“I need to go by the feed store.” I thought a moment, staring hard at the paper without reading a word of it. “The lumberyard, too. The fence fell near the rear of the property line.”
She turned to stare out at our view of the farm, the pointy front of the barn and the grassy paddock beyond it. “What time are you leaving for Dallas tomorrow?”
I dropped my boots onto the wood floor of the porch and leaned over onto my knees, the paper hanging down from one hand so it was almost touching the floor. “First thing, probably.” I grinned over at her, meeting her eyes when she turned her head. “Well, after I go by the Texan, of course.” I’d been going there for breakfast as far back as I could remember, riding the distance into town in the back of my daddy’s old pickup. The morning just didn’t feel right without their biscuits and gravy.
“Of course. You have to see what the other old timers are doing before you head out. You have more in common with them than you do men your own age.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I replied, lifting my chin a little.
The smile she gave me reminded me that I shouldn’t take anything she said as a compliment. She’d played the part of the thorn in my ass since we were both knee high to grasshoppers. Not that I didn’t rain on her parade whenever I thought she was getting too big for her Stetson. What else were friends for?
“You’re never gonna find yourself a wife if you keep hanging out with the old timers at the Texan every morning.”
I wrinkled my nose, making like I’d just tasted something I didn’t agree with. “What use do I have for a wife?”
“She could teach you how to dress, for one,” Lacey said dryly, one sandy eyebrow cocked high.
I looked down at myself — long-sleeved chambray shirt, faded jeans, a broken in pair of cowboy boots — and then back up at her. “What’s wrong with what I have on?”
“It ain’t just what you have on,” she said, going on without really answering my question, which was her way. “It’s everything. Acting like you’re about to turn eighty-three instead of twenty-nine. Your ratty clothes. Your messy place looking like a tornado just ran through. Oh, and your hair, too. That needs serious help.”
“Damn, Lacey, tell me how you really feel.” I currently had my terrible haircut tucked under a cowboy hat. I’d worn it the same way since high school. If something was working for you, why change it? And, anyway, I wasn’t interested in finding a girlfriend. Why advertise if you aren’t looking? I didn’t need any more complication in my life than I already had with keeping the ranch up and running and dealing with Lacey’s smart ass.
“You know I love you, Pete,” she said, shooting her pointy grin over at me as her giggling started up again.
“I’d hate to see how you’d treat me if you hated me.” But I was laughing, too. I couldn’t help it.
“You’re too damned silly for a wife right now, anyway. Even if you did stop hanging out with the old timers. Who would want to put up with your ass?”
Now it was my turn to reach over and shove her, so hard she nearly pitched out of her chair and onto the floor next to Riley.
“Pete!” she hollered, struggling to keep her balance, her arms going around in wild circles.
Before she could regain her feet, I sprang from my seat, jumped down the porch steps, and ran off around the side of the house towards the barn. I’d always been faster than her — on my feet, at least, as no one could beat her on a horse — but I could hardly run with how much I was laughing.
She didn’t come after me, just screamed from where she stood on the porch in between laughing herself. “You better keep running, boy! Don’t let me catch you!”
I slowed down right outside of the barn, not wanting to spook the horses. Since I was over there, I figured I might as well see about feeding and watering them. I’d been putting off hiring someone to take care of them full time for a few months. Between Lacey and me, we were doing okay. But the new colt was going to take up a lot more of her time. And, I had the rest of the ranch to worry about. As much as I didn’t want to put out the money, I was going to have to deal with finding someone sooner rather than later.
Chapter Two
Emma
Friday
I brought the skillet of eggs to the table, serving Daddy before I sat down myself.
“Looks good, Emma,” he said. His clear blue eyes met mine for a long second, his thin lips pressed into a calm line. We’d been communicating this way — with heavy, meaningful glances — for years, starting right after Mama died.
I nodded once, then put a biscuit and a few slices of bacon on his plate before Kasey could take all of it.
Kasey reached for the bacon, taking all but a slice of it, the way she always did. The girl could put away some pork. “What?” she asked when I shot her a look. “I’m a growing girl.”
She flipped her shiny brown hair over her shoulder with one hand while she poked at her eggs with a fork. She liked them sunny side up, but Daddy preferred eggs fried all the way through, so that was how I made them. I had my own brand new place a few miles up the road, but Kasey struggled to boil water without burning it, and I knew Daddy appreciated a home-cooked meal whenever he could get it.
When I was in high school, the three of us used to switch off nights, and Kasey’s nights were always something we had to suffer through. The girl couldn’t cook to save her life. But, damn, could she eat. The only thing she ever showed up with at a potluck was her appetite.
I served myself last with the rest of the eggs, the remaining strip of bacon, and a piping hot biscuit that I broke open and slathered with butter and jam.
“What are you going to do now that you’ve finally finished college?” Kasey asked, mouth half full of biscuit. Everyone had missed my big breakfasts while I was off getting my degree in agriculture in Austin. “Did you decide on a job yet?”
I waited until I’d chewed through my own mouthful of biscuit before I answered. “I need to find something.”
“Do you know what you want to do?” she asked. She was dressed for work in a pair of tight black sh
orts, red company t-shirt with Murdock’s on 6th Street! printed on the front, and comfortable tennis shoes. She had a full face of makeup on, too, with extra sparkling color on her eyelids and bright red lipstick to match her shirt. She drove all the way out to Austin every day for work, but she managed to make pretty decent money in tips. It was nice when I was in school over there. I saw her all the time.
“I’d like to be outside working with animals if I can.”
Daddy was listening to all this as he slowly ate his breakfast, his light eyes traveling from one side of the table to the other. “There’s plenty of work like that around Round Rock,” he said and left it at that.
I nodded to show I agreed with him and then filled my mouth with a bite of cooling eggs. I was going to start looking on Monday. Graduation was only last week. I needed a little down time before I jumped right into the next part of my life.
“I can’t believe you moved all the way back to Round Rock after spending the last four years in Austin!” Kasey said. She flipped her hair again. She’d cut it since the last time I saw her, donating more than twelve inches. But she wasn’t used to it. She kept batting it away from her face. It was cute on her, though. She had it curled this morning, adding extra wave to what had come naturally from Mama. I got Daddy’s hair — bone straight and shiny, with a little tint of red at the bottom, but mostly solid brown.
“I like it here,” I said, simply.
“No place is better than Austin.” She pointed her wide green eyes at me. They were a shade or two lighter than mine. “You should come up with me this weekend. I’m staying over at Amanda’s apartment tomorrow night. She has room for you too. We could party on Sixth Street to celebrate your graduation!”
The last thing I wanted was to go out drinking with Kasey and her wild friends. They got up to all kinds of trouble that I just wasn’t interested in. Even at school, I left the partying mostly alone. Not that I didn’t have fun. It was just that my idea of fun didn’t often match with Kasey’s.
“I have some things to do around the house,” I said. “And after all the excitement of graduation last week, I just want to relax before I start looking for jobs on Monday.”
Kasey rolled her eyes, looking extra dramatic with all the mascara and eyeliner she had on. “You’re so boring, Em. You just graduated from college, but you’re acting like you’re forty years old or something. Why would you ever go buy a house immediately when you could just keep on living with Daddy?”
I didn’t dignify that with a response, just took a bite of my biscuit and let Kasey take the conversation wherever she wanted it to go. Daddy wasn’t even bothering to follow along, or it didn’t look like he was. His eyes were on his rapidly disappearing breakfast. It did my heart good to see him grab another biscuit. I’d brought his favorite blackberry jam from the farmer’s market in Austin. I’d sure miss that market. But it was only a thirty-minute drive from my place in Round Rock if I ever got the hankering.
“I’m never moving out of here!” Kasey exclaimed in a loud voice that echoed in the dining room. We were used to her outbursts. She’d been loud since the cradle.
Daddy and I exchanged a look, his light eyes suddenly weary, but his mouth twitching into a small smile that he swallowed back as quickly as it appeared. Mine lasted a little longer.
“Unless I move to Austin, that is,” she added.
“What time do you need to be to work?” I asked to bump her off the subject of me returning to Round Rock.
She looked down at her watch. “Oh, shit! I have to go.” She jumped up from her seat, ran around the table, and gave Daddy a hug. “Bye, Daddy! Bye, Em.” She waved at me before hurrying from the room without clearing her plate. We listened to her footsteps running back to her room to grab her purse and whatever else she needed for the day before running out the front door. It slammed behind her.
Daddy let out a long breath after the worst of Tornado Kasey blew through the house.
“She hasn’t changed a bit,” I said, still smiling. She’d always been unable to keep quiet for more than a few seconds and cleaning up after herself had never been one of her strong points. It wasn’t that she purposely avoided it. Her mind just moved so quickly that it never occurred to her to double back to take care of the messes she routinely left in her wake.
Daddy made a noise to say he agreed with me, but wasn’t going to comment on it. “You have an idea where you’ll look for jobs?”
“Not really.” I meant to spend the morning combing the internet. I didn’t have many friends left in Round Rock that I could ask. Most everyone had run off to colleges all over the state after high school. Not everyone had come back. But I liked Round Rock and couldn’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else.
“I’ll keep an eye out in the Register,” he said.
I bit my tongue. The Round Rock Register was the local paper. They did have a help wanted section, but most places listed their job openings online now and had for a number of years. I didn’t bother telling Daddy that. He was old school. He didn’t even have a computer. It had taken a lot of coaxing to get him to buy a cell phone a few years back. He still only carried it half the time, never seeing the reason behind keeping a phone on him for the twenty-minute drive into town to get to work.
Without Kasey chattering nonstop in the dining room, it was easier to sit and enjoy each other’s company. I liked this, the times when we could be alone together. I loved my sister and counted her as one of my best friends, but she couldn’t stand a single silent moment. Things were easier between Daddy and me. Always had been.
I’d missed him something terrible in Austin. Not that I hadn’t driven home, but it was different. It would still be different now, I supposed, since I had my own place a little ways up the road. But I could see him every day now if I wanted. He wasn’t the type to talk on the phone more than once a week, and even that was pushing it.
I watched him from the corner of my eye. He hadn’t changed much in the last few years. His skin, browned from a lifetime spent working outdoors in the blazing Texas sun and lined with light wrinkles, his dark hair, now more gray than brown but still just as full as it had been when Kasey and I were girls, and his light eyes, the only blue pair in the family. Mama’s had been green, too, but dark like mine, not Kasey’s watery emerald.
We finished our meals in that companionable silence, listening to the sounds of silverware lightly scraping plates, both of us considering the day ahead and our part in it.
Chapter Three
Pete
Sunday
I’d run into some nasty weather during the trip to Dallas — high winds, hail, and pouring rain. It wasn’t safe to transport the new colt with all that plus a tornado warning, so I spent the night holed up in a hotel down the street from the ranch while the power flickered on and off for half the night.
The following morning, I drove over to the ranch, loaded the new colt into my horse trailer, and drove the nearly two hundred miles home under blue, cloudless skies. I made pretty great time, too. The roads were empty this early on a Sunday. I pulled up to my ranch at just past ten.
I got out of my truck and walked around back to let out the new colt just in time to see a big gray pickup pull in behind me, so close I didn’t have room to unload the trailer. I lifted my hand, waving at Sawyer, who was grinning behind the wheel. He hauled himself out of the truck and came over, fixing his the cowboy hat on his head as he approached.
“Hey, Pete,” he said, reaching to shake hands.
I pounded him on the shoulder. “What’s going on, Sawyer?”
“I saw Lacey in town this morning. She said you drove out to Dallas yesterday.” He hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. They looked brand new. Sawyer was the only guy I knew whose jeans always looked fresh from the clothing supply store. Not his boots, though. They were so worn, you’d swear they were the ones he was born in.
“Yeah, I was expecting to run up there and come straight back again, but the wea
ther went sour on me. A tornado touched down outside of the city, and there was hail as big as baseballs. It wasn’t safe to bring a horse home in that.”
He hawked some spit onto the hard-packed dirt driveway. He had some chew tucked in behind his bottom lip. “Sure enough.” He wiped his mouth. “How far into the city did you have to go?”
“The breeder’s place is outside of Dallas, but I had to go through the city to get there. I wouldn’t want to put up with that kind of traffic every day.” I whistled to show how bad it had been as I shook my head and leaned back onto the trailer.
The colt was moving around inside, curious to check out his new surroundings. The rancher had named him Elroy, which might’ve been part of the problem. Sticking a poor horse with a name like that. I’d have to see what Lacey thought about it. She’d named all the other horses we’d had come through the ranch for the past fifteen years. Hell, she’d even given Riley his name after he showed up on the farm as a scrawny, underfed puppy. “I got a good deal on him because he’s so difficult to handle.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“The breeder’s older and doesn’t have a lot of help on his farm. The colt just hasn’t been socialized well. He’s only a year old. It’s nothing Lacey can’t fix. She’s got the magic touch.” I tipped my cowboy hat back off my head so I could mop my sweaty brow with the handkerchief I kept tucked in my back pocket before putting it back on again. “Speak of the devil.”
Sawyer turned to watch Lacey pulling up in her big red truck, keeping far enough back so he’d be able to maneuver his own pickup around when he was ready to head out to town again. We watched Lacey step down from her truck and saunter our way, already smiling her big, shit-eating grin.
She wasn’t wearing her hat — she must’ve left it sitting on the passenger seat in her truck — and her curly blonde hair was hanging down around her shoulders. She almost never wore it loose, so it caught me a bit by surprise. As though reading my thoughts, she pulled it back out of her face and tied it low on her neck with a band she’d been wearing on her wrist. How she could mess with her hair and walk at the same time was a complete mystery to me. I had to stand still in front of a mirror when I combed my hair. Daddy used to tease me that I couldn’t chew gum and ride a horse at the same time.