by Lexie Ray
Of course, it wasn’t my imagination. I was simply reliving what had happened those ten years ago.
“You okay?” Zoe was standing in the kitchen, looking at my finger pinned on the calendar. “Special day today?”
“Not particularly,” I said, yanking my finger back like I’d been burned. “Just another day in paradise.”
“You got that right.” She rustled around in the refrigerator until she came up with some eggs. “You think Chance might tolerate some chickens around here? Could be a good way to save on eggs — and fresh meat, now and then. You Corbins and everyone else go through fucking eggs like no one I’ve ever seen before.”
“Did I hear you say chickens?” My oldest brother snagged the pot of still-brewing coffee and stole a cup before replacing it and letting it finish its cycle. “First cattle, then horses, and now chickens. Keep it up, and we might have a real farm around here.”
“You’re the one who’s going soft,” Zoe teased. “Saying yes to any goddamn thing. I just thought I’d get in and strike while the iron’s hot, that’s all.”
“I’m not going soft,” he complained, but he looked pleased. If I weren’t so squirrelly from a night of lost sleep I might’ve been a little more delighted to realize that Zoe and Chance were flirting. Maybe this family was getting old and soft. Seemed like just about every one of us was finding someone we liked and pairing off. Good for Chance and Zoe — if that really was a thing.
Then again, the more I watched them, the more I wasn’t sure. He sneaked glances at her as she moved around the kitchen, whisking the eggs she’d cracked into a bowl with milk, salt, and pepper before dumping it into a sizzling hot skillet. When she happened to look his way, he busied himself with a crumpled trade magazine spread on the kitchen table, though I wasn’t sure he was reading a single word. He didn’t so much as turn the page, even when he’d supposedly been reading it for more than ten minutes. Chance wasn’t that dense, and neither was I. If they hadn’t already paired off, then there was certainly something there, something brewing that wasn’t just the coffee percolating.
Zoe hummed tunelessly as she bustled around. It hadn’t taken her long at all to settle in, and she fit this place like a glove. It helped that she was as foul-mouthed as the worst of us, that it didn’t make her blush or bolt if a couple of us got into heated arguments, that if anyone was lowering their eyes in shame, it was Zoe who had done the shaming. She could put the most arrogant son of a bitch right on his ass with a withering word or phrase — some of which made even my eyes widen. She was so accustomed to the less polite manner of speaking that it populated her everyday vocabulary. It was something of a wonder that her son, Toby, hadn’t picked it up yet, or else his teachers would have a field day trying to chase it out of him.
“Sounded like you didn’t sleep very well last night,” Zoe remarked casually, making my face color without a colorful word. “Bad dreams?”
“I guess so,” I said, embarrassed she’d thought to bring it up.
“You look dead on your feet,” Chance said, distracted from watching Zoe make breakfast long enough to make observations about my appearance. “Didn’t you get any rest at all?”
“Just an active night,” I said. “Tonight I’ll probably be too tired to dream, so that’ll even out.” I hoped that would be the case. I already planned to spend the night over at Avery and Paisley’s house. The change of scenery should jolt my brain out of whatever track it was insisting on pursuing, and maybe I would get some much-needed rest. Plus, they had plenty of rooms to spare — so many that we joked that the dude ranch barracks should’ve been in the house instead of at the newly developed property we’d built.
“You won’t be much good if you’re too tired to stay on your horse,” Chance pointed out.
“I think I’ll be able to keep myself from falling off my horse.”
“That’s how most mistakes are made, you know.” He sipped his coffee, and I felt an unreasonable spike of anger. He could be such a know-it-all prick sometimes. If he even had an inkling about what I was dreaming about and why, he wouldn’t tell me a word.
“How are most mistakes made? Falling off your horse?” I asked, dense on purpose.
“Being too exhausted to think straight,” Chance said, practically preening with self-importance. I knew it was a show for Zoe, or else I would’ve kicked his ass. It had been a while since we’d had a drag-out fight, but I was pretty sure I could take him. He was the tallest of us, but I was denser than he was. I had police training under my belt, too, while he was just a brawler. He didn’t stand a chance.
“Morning.” Toby’s appearance in the entrance to the kitchen saved me from firing back something sarcastic. He looked rumpled, like he’d just rolled out of bed, one pajama pant leg inched higher on his calf than the other.
“Well, look who decided to grace us with his presence,” Zoe said, putting one of her hands on her hip in mock astonishment. “It’s Toby Holland himself. Risen from the dead.”
“I’m not risen from the dead,” he protested, rubbing his eyes with a fist, his dark hair sticking up from every angle.
“You sleep like you’re dead,” his mother informed him. “Your alarm’s been going off for thirty minutes now. School’s going to start soon, and then what are you going to do? Show up late every day? They won’t let you in anymore.”
“They have to let me in,” he said, looking vaguely panicked but still sleepy. “I want to go to school.”
“If you want to go to school, you’ll have to wake up on time,” Zoe said gravely. “No rolling around and hitting the snooze button on your alarm clock. When that buzzer goes off, boy, you’d better hop on out of bed and get ready. You’re too much of a man to have your mama yanking you out of bed and getting you ready every single day of your life.”
Toby was just going to be six, but he nodded, face serious, looking much older. “I’ll wake up on time tomorrow,” he vowed.
“Good,” Zoe said, curt. “Now, go wash your face and get your clothes on, and by the time you come back down here, breakfast should be ready.”
Apparently motivated by the needs of his stomach, Toby scampered off, pounding up the stairs to go to his room.
“You have some pretty effective training going on for that kid,” I observed, pouring an extra large coffee for myself and dumping some sugar in it for an added jolt — hopefully, to keep me on my horse.
“He’s my little man,” she said. “He takes care of himself pretty well as long as he doesn’t have anywhere to be in the morning.”
“I don’t trust morning people myself,” I confessed. “It’s just not natural to want to wake up before the sun.”
“If only they had night school for little kids,” Zoe mused. “Toby would do so well. I can hardly get that little shit to settle down at bedtime.”
Anybody else who called their offspring a little shit would’ve made me raise my eyebrows, but Zoe was all affection. We were all doing our best to spoil that boy rotten — with the exception of Chance. I darted a quick look over to the table, where he actually did turn a page in the trade magazine he’d been pretending to read for the better part of a half hour. He could’ve jumped in here at any time to engage with Zoe or say something to make Toby laugh, but he didn’t. Maybe Chance had finally woken up fully himself and remembered he had a ranch to run. That was the thing he worried most about.
“Maybe you should take today off,” he said, locking eyes with me as I sat there staring at him, trying to figure out what his deal was.
“You’re crazy,” I informed him. “We can’t afford to be a man down out there. You know that just as well as I do.”
“We also can’t afford any stupid mistakes,” Chance reasoned. “Or injuries.”
“Hell, I could get shot right off my horse on a regular day here,” I joked, pleased to see my brother’s face darken. He was so self-righteous right now that to knock him down a few pegs would do him some good.
“Or you could
mess up because you were up all night,” he said. “What were you doing, anyway? Do you need more work to make you tired? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That you’re not working hard enough?”
“Oh, yeah, you know me so well,” I simpered. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d been dreaming of an awful night ten years ago and that’s why I wasn’t one hundred percent. He would be too invasive about it. I hadn’t told my brothers much of anything about why I’d decided to come back to the ranch after my stint as a police officer. They had just about all the information I believed they needed. I’d been wounded in the line of duty, and that was that. I hadn’t hidden anything, or lied. If any of them cared to research it, to corroborate the dates I’d left with the current events going on in the Dallas area, they’d probably be able to piece together what had happened. I just wasn’t about to volunteer any information about it that I didn’t have to.
“Seriously, though, when was the last day you had off?” Chance asked, pushing the magazine away from him as Zoe carried steaming plates of eggs and toast over to the table. There was usually bacon or country ham or sausage or some form of meat, but we were cutting costs everywhere in an effort to funnel all the money we possibly could in the ranch. Things would ease up a little bit once the rain fell — if it decided to fall ever again. Until then, we were doing without breakfast meats.
“No one ever takes days off around here,” I said, tucking in to the plate in front of me. I was convinced that Zoe could make a delicious feast out of absolutely nothing. That’s what kind of magic she possessed in the kitchen.
“I take days off,” she said, putting a pitcher of juice on the table.
“You’re smarter than everyone else here,” I said.
“You haven’t had a day off in a long time,” Chance said with a frown, watching Zoe spread jam on her toast.
“It doesn’t feel right, really,” she said, welcoming Toby back into the kitchen with a jerk of her chin toward the open chair. “Taking care of you all is a full-time job, one that doesn’t have weekends.”
“We don’t need taking care of,” Chance rumbled.
“That’s not true,” Toby piped up, his mouth already full of eggs. “Mama says y’all wouldn’t be able to wipe your own asses if she wasn’t here.”
I burst into laughter as Chance choked on his juice. Zoe gave her son a disapproving stare.
“That’s not nice language for a little boy,” she said, and I laughed harder once I noticed that she didn’t bother correcting the content of his statement.
“That’s what you said,” he tried to reason.
“Yes, that’s what I said. That doesn’t mean you get to say it. I’m a grown woman, and you’re just a little boy.”
“I thought I was a man,” Toby said, scrunching his nose up, his young mind receiving so many messages this early morning that it was hard for him to divine which was the right one.
“You’re a man when you get up on time and get yourself ready without being asked,” Zoe countered, eating calmly. “I’ll let you know when you’re man enough to start saying ‘ass’ and the rest of it. Certainly not in school.”
“Just take today off, Tucker,” Chance told me again, but I shook my head and pushed myself back from the table.
“No can do,” I said. “There’s just too much we need to be doing. You know that as well as I do.”
I was out the door before he could press the point again, and I found that the fresh air helped, as had the tumult of the Corbin family breakfast. Well, the Corbin-Holland family breakfast. We were beginning to be quite a foursome, Chance, Zoe, Toby, and me. Toby kept everyone on their toes, and Zoe didn’t take shit from a single human being anymore. It seemed that once our baby brother had gotten her out of her bad housing situation in Hadley’s hometown, Zoe had really started to flourish.
I started my workday by taking inventory of our supplies in the barn. We’d had to add a couple of shipping containers outside to augment our storage space. That was how much hay and grain we had been ordering. I tried to bury myself in the task at hand, checking and rechecking our supplies before writing out a couple of purchase orders for Chance. I met with a couple of potential ranch hands who had been clamoring for work. We needed the help, but I didn’t know how much we’d be able to pay them, and told them as much. The final decision would be up to Chance to see if he could magic some additional paychecks out of our already-strapped budget.
Then, I saddled my horse and rode.
I wasn’t sure what pasture the herd was grazing today. We’d combined both Paisley’s herd and our herd some time ago, and she’d recently come up with a brand design that seamlessly integrated both of our families’ designs. This was becoming important, especially due to the recent thefts we’d been victim to, along with several other ranchers in the area. Still, I didn’t relish the hard day that would be — branding and rebranding the entire combined herd.
It was nice to just ride, to focus on the horse’s gait beneath me and the roar of wind in my ears, blocking out any worries about my dream. It didn’t matter that I really was tired, that I’d been having the dreams for weeks, now. What mattered right now was the animal under me and the undulating hills ahead of me. That’s all I had to focus on right now. Not some nightmare from an entire decade ago.
I tracked down the herd — it was an eventuality with how big it was — and started helping the hands do the cattle log. It was a group effort, now, not just something Avery could be tasked with. Avery loathed it, and I supposed I could understand why. It was tedious stuff, picking individual beasts from the herd and checking them carefully for signs of problems or progress. Everything we observed had to be meticulously recorded in the cattle log, which was also monitored for discrepancies or signs that something wasn’t working. I didn’t look forward to the next time we would run the herd through the scales. If they weren’t gaining or maintaining weight like they were supposed to, it meant that we needed to step up hay and grain purchases. Underweight cattle meant we’d lose money on the animals we eventually decided to sell.
But my recent sleepless nights caught up with me quickly in that heat. The weather didn’t seem to care that it was supposed to be autumn already. Back to school sales were in the store windows, but the sun still beat down like it was summer. There wouldn’t be any fall color on any of the trees; they’d already lost their leaves to the drought much earlier in the summer. Winter wasn’t usually something anyone who worked a ranch looked forward to, but relief from the heat was much needed.
I volunteered to run the log back across the ranch and to the barn, where Chance and Paisley would review it, and then decided a nap was just what I needed. I didn’t dare go back into my room in the house, as that had been the scene of many rude awakenings from my nightmare. I could fool my brain into thinking things were different if I could just rearrange the scenery where I fell asleep.
At least, that’s what I was trying to convince myself.
I let my horse loose to graze in one of the empty pastures — she wouldn’t range far — and I settled under a grouping of cottonwoods, enjoying some relative shade. The wind cooled the air considerably, though air conditioning would’ve made everything a lot more bearable. Maybe the heat would burn out whatever was causing the nightmares.
Exhaling heavily, I got as comfortable as I could in the dry grass, crossing my legs at the ankles and my hands over my stomach, after pushing my hat down to cover my face. The buzz of some late cicadas sawed through the air, and I focused on those as I felt myself slowly slip away …
… and found myself crunching through the all-too-familiar underbrush, in the dark of night, approaching a copse of trees where I knew no good thing could ever happen.
As self-aware as I was in these dreams, I could never stop myself, never halt the progress that I knew had to be made. I’d lived each and every one of these steps, and they always led to the exact same outcome.
I came face to face with the killer.
> He shot me multiple times, beat me, and dumped my body into an open grave.
I stopped him from slaying the woman he’d been out to kill.
He got away, leaving the two of us for dead, already in the grave he’d dug.
Here, though, at this point, as I sprawled on top of the injured and sobbing woman, details would shift and merge. I knew there was really no way to know exactly what happened at this point. I was weak with shock and blood loss, and I didn’t think I had been conscious for much of my time beneath the surface of the earth.
I wished I had been. It would make the ending to the nightmare much less problematic.
Because sometimes, when I heaved my wounded body up and looked down at the woman, it was me.
Or sometimes the walls of the grave began to crumble inward and downward, covering us with the cold earth, filling our mouths and noses.
Or sometimes I was the killer, running away, intoxicated on the feeling of just barely escaping justice.
Or sometimes I was nothing — and perhaps that was the worst. I was just some anonymous observer, looking down into the gaping maw of the hole in the ground as a weakened woman wept and tried to shake a bloody man awake. I knew I was the bloody man, but I was so detached from it all that it didn’t matter, somehow. Nothing really mattered anymore, because there would be a time we would all be on the ground, or scattered in ash form to the winds, or some other end. We would all die, so why was I making such a fuss about it now? Nobody really understood just how simple it was to slip away, to stop fighting and hurting and just drift.
I jerked awake at that, ripping the hat off of my face to ward off the darkness that was creeping in.
“Well, that’s a relief.”
I blinked up into the bright sunlight and finally realized my baby brother, Hunter, was standing over me.
“What’s a relief?” I asked, shielding my eyes with my hand before struggling to a standing position.
“That I’m not the only one who hides and takes naps during the day when I’m supposed to be working.” He grinned and clapped me on the shoulder, shifting his weight expertly between his flesh-and-blood leg and his carbon leg.