Cowgirl, Unexpectedly

by Vicki Tharp

  “Get your hands off me, Hank.”

  He didn’t let go. Instead, he stepped in front of me, shielding me from his wife’s smug, curious gaze. He ran his hands up my arms, over my shoulders until they cupped the sides of my face. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I didn’t want to see that he was hurting or worse yet, that he wasn’t.

  “I’m not warning you again,” I said.

  I’d learned early on that he wasn’t good at following orders. It came as no surprise that he ignored me and stepped closer, crowding me physically, pushing me cognitively. I placed a hand on his wrist and tried to ignore the brief thump of his pulse under my finger as I slid my grip into place on the pressure point in his hand. I squeezed, dropping him to a knee. Nausea rolled in my belly.

  I really wasn’t fit to be around normal people.

  I stepped across the porch, and the wife shuffled aside and said, “I’ve heard of women who brought men to their knees before, but it had always seemed a figurative interpretation, not a literal one.”

  My brows hitched up, not expecting her to have anything bigger than two-dollar words in her vocabulary. “Don’t worry. He’s all yours.”

  I clomped down the stairs because it was a hell of a time to discover I was in love with the man.

  Here I’d been concerned I’d be the one to mess things up between us. Hank was right. I didn’t screw up. He did. So much for thinking this man would never hurt me. He’d effectively taken a knife and sliced me from stem to stern like gutting a fish.

  Nausea boiled in my stomach again. No, not nausea, I realized, but good ol’ Dread, with his hands wrapped around his belly, laughing his ass off.

  * * * *

  I mucked the manure out of the round pen and tried not to think about Hank. I filled water buckets and hay bags and tried not to think about Hank. I washed the mud, the stink, the fetid scabs off my horse and tried not to think about Hank.

  I couldn’t.

  It was really starting to piss me off.

  “Hey, Mac.”

  “What!” I rounded on the voice behind me, my hand still on my horse’s lead rope. She jostled forward a step to keep up with the motion.

  Dale stood with his hands on his hips, his hat on his head and an expression on his face I couldn’t exactly read, but it somehow made me feel ten again.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Go on up and get your breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  “I’ve work to do.”

  He stood there, strength belying his age as he held a steady hand out for the lead rope. Make that nine. I felt like I was nine and in trouble. I sighed and blew the pout from my lips. I handed my horse over and turned toward the house.

  I’d made it a couple of steps when Dale said, “I know there is something going on between you and Hank, and I know it isn’t any of my business.”

  I turned to give him my attention, because even though I didn’t want him messing in my relationship, I had enough respect for him to let him have his say.

  “After what my daughter put Hank through, he deserves a little happiness. He likes you. Jenna admires you. The other guys have grown to respect you. While I don’t know what it means to have my daughter home and tossed into the mix, what this old man does know is you belong here. You have earned your place on this ranch, and in this family. Don’t let anyone take that from you.”

  When I didn’t say anything, Dale added, “You fought for this country. It’s time you fought for yourself.”

  My horse blew a cloud of dust and snot from her nose and bobbed her head up and down as if she was saying, “Yeah, what he said.”

  My own nose clogged and I sniffed hard to keep it from running. I nodded once and I knew my voice would crack, but I didn’t care. “Thanks.”

  I turned back and trudged up to the house to the clomp of horse hooves and the squeak of the round pen’s hinges as Dale put my horse away. I climbed the porch steps and stopped with my hand on the screen door. There was laughter inside. The scrape of a knife on a plate. The muttering of thanks as food was passed around.

  I’d chew on Dale’s words while I ate. I didn’t know how long I’d stay. At least long enough to see the ranch safe, for the foal to be born and my mare to get healthy. Then we would see. However, with Hank’s wife back in town, I couldn’t see a way this was going to work.

  Dale was right, there came a point where I needed to fight for me, for what I wanted, and I couldn’t avoid everybody forever. Might as well get it over with. I wrenched open the screen door the way I’d rip off a Band-Aid.

  This was going to hurt.

  When I walked in, there was a hiccup in the chatter, but then it picked back up as if everyone had agreed to pretend nothing had happened. Besides the prodigal daughter returning unannounced, Alby, Santos, Quinn, and Link probably believed that was true. The other half of the table knew better.

  When he saw me, Hank scrambled up and pulled out the empty chair next to him, but I chose Dale’s empty spot at the head of the table near Lottie and filled my plate. Not that I was that hungry, but I had a full day of work ahead of me and my body needed the fuel.

  With her fingers twined with Quinn’s, Jenna couldn’t take her eyes off her mother for more than a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if it was because Jenna couldn’t believe her mother was there or if she were afraid if she glanced away too long her mother would vaporize for another sixteen years.

  Lottie’s eyes were raccooned in red and she had a crumpled tissue in her hand. On normal mornings, Lottie sat long enough to eat, then she’d make sure all of the platters remained full or was clearing plates as soon as anyone was finished. This morning she slumped in her chair as if the starch had been washed from her body. Because today was not a normal day.

  Even as everyone tried to ignore the red-and-denim-clothed elephant in the room.

  The elephant who picked at her breakfast, not as if she were uncomfortable, not as if she weren’t hungry, but as if the simple fare was beneath her.

  I wasn’t here to judge.

  Or have a fling.

  I was here to work. I was here to make money. Then maybe I could leave. And yeah, I needed to stay off the road and get on with the rest of my life, but nobody said it had to be here. This was nothing more than a speed bump. Dread blipped the throttle on my motorcycle, tempting, taunting, and I knocked him in the head with a mouthful of pancake.

  Link cleared his throat and the miscellaneous conversations ended mid-sentence. “How much longer on the cross fencing?” He aimed his question at Santos.

  “Three days, maybe.”

  Alby swallowed and added, “Thought we’s roundin’ up the hosses next week, Boss.”

  “The sooner we can get the young stock trained, the sooner we got more money coming in. Weatherman’s predicting storms sometime in the next few days. ’Sposed to dump a bunch of rain. Maybe snow higher up. We don’t get them now, it could push us back a couple weeks or more depending on how bad it gets.”

  “Give us Hank and Quinn and it’ll take a day, day and a half.”

  Link’s face turned sour. “Take Quinn. I’ll help ya or Dale will.”

  “I can help with the fences,” Jenna said, with the enthusiasm of a kindergartner raising her hand saying, “Pick me, pick me.”

  “You’re takin’ the day off.” Hank’s eyes slid to Becca—or rather the egg donor, as Jenna had so delicately put it—then back to Jenna.

  I could get used to the nickname. She may be a perfectly nice woman, but I figured she’d been getting a manicure, spraying on her tan, or having her teeth whitened when they’d passed out motherly instincts because somehow she’d missed them altogether.

  “But—” Jenna started.

  “No buts.” Hank’s voice brokered no argument. “Catch up with your moth
er.”

  Lottie stood and started clearing plates. “I have to run a carton of eggs over to Doris.”

  Doris was one of the names on the list Pearl had given us.

  “But it won’t take long and then maybe the three of us can run into town,” Lottie said, that last part with a lightness like it was every day she, her daughter, and her granddaughter went shopping together.

  “What about me?” I asked Link, though I couldn’t keep my eyes from hopping to Hank for a beat. Hank’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally as if he wondered if I was asking that of him. Of us. “Where do you want me working today?” I clarified.

  “I want you on the front-end loader carrying off debris. If you don’t know how to work it, Hank’ll show you. We still need to get the rest of the barn razed.”

  I didn’t know how to run a tractor, but I accepted my work assignment. Not that I particularly wanted to be around Hank right now, but I was a quick study so it wouldn’t take long. Besides, I was an adult. I could separate the work from my personal disasters.

  * * * *

  Hank had been all business when he’d shown me the levers to raise and lower the bucket as well as to tilt it up or down. The gearbox was a basic stick with a clutch. It shouldn’t have been a problem. After all, I was used to the concept of a clutch from riding my Harley. Maybe I wasn’t as adult as I’d thought because I’ll be damned if I couldn’t stop thinking about last night, this morning, Becca, and how she’d exploded in my life like old ordnance from the Gulf War. You know it’s there. You know it’s potentially dangerous, but it still catches you by surprise when it suddenly explodes.

  Clouds rolled across the mountains in long thin streaks as if the jagged peaks had torn them into strips. They were still as white as goose down, and the sun was out but within the past hour fingers of cool air started blowing in, favoring us with a hint of what was coming.

  Link worked with Hank and me on the barn. Lottie, Jenna, and Becca were in town doing God knew what since shopping was extremely limited. The rest of the guys were digging holes and concreting posts into the ground. There were a lot of rocks so the posthole digger couldn’t always be used, but I could definitely see progress.

  With a thumbs-up, Link told me he was ready for me to raise the bucket and take my load to the burn pile. I swung the tractor left and the engine backfired and coughed up a bolus of black exhaust through the stack.

  Something whacked the side of the bucket with a resonance of a Chinese gong. “Hey!” There came a shout over the growl of the engine and I slammed on the brake and cut the engine.

  Hank lay on the ground, partially beneath the bucket, a scorched beam he must have been carrying laid across his chest. I scrambled out of the cab of the tractor and ran over to him. “Are you okay?”

  Link dropped to his knees beside Hank and tossed the beam aside. “Hurt anywhere?”

  Hank coughed, and fought to catch his breath, but he shook his head. My chest was tight, the tips of my ears burned, and my skin smoldered as if I’d rolled in acid.

  I could have killed him.

  I wanted to say I was sorry, but the words were so dull, so inadequate on my tongue. When Hank started to roll over, I went to help him up, but Link brushed me out of the way and lifted Hank himself.

  Over his shoulder, Link said to me, “Why don’t you go help with the fence?”

  Link sat Hank on a cooler where we had bottles of water iced down. Hank’s head hung between his shoulders fighting for air. He turned his head and spit a wad of dirt from his mouth and I saw the abrasion across his left temple, a short trickle of blood followed gravity down past his eye.

  “I—” Words cemented in my dry throat. I couldn’t break them free.

  Hank glanced up at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. If he was thinking at all. His eyes weren’t exactly focused. Maybe I’d scrambled his brain.

  “I’ll get you cleaned up,” I said.

  Then his eyes cleared.

  “Link’s got it.”

  “Sure.” I nodded and left feeling more than dismissed. Not that I blamed Hank for being pissed. I’d earned that and more. I needed to get my head back in the game.

  Easier said than done.

  I’d been working on the fence line for a couple hours when Lottie, Jenna, and Becca returned. No smiles, no laughter, no packages.

  “Ouch, Mac. Watch what yer doin’.” Alby hopped on one foot. I’d dropped an eighty-pound bag of concrete on the toe of his boot.

  Dale stepped over. “Why don’t you take a break, Mac?”

  “We took a break fifteen minutes ago.”

  I went to go grab another bag, but Dale stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “First you hit Santos in the back with a post. Then you drop concrete on Alby. Go. Take a break. Take an hour. Take two. Clear your head. You’re going to get somebody killed.”

  Dale had a paternal smile on his lips. He was joking, but then he’d been busy when I’d accidentally clobbered Hank with the bucket of the tractor, so the truth stung.

  Dread blipped the throttle on my bike again and jerked his head in a let’s-blow-this-chicken-joint gesture. Maybe Dread was right. Maybe I needed a little wind in my face to blow all the personal shit out of my head.

  I removed the deer-hide gloves from my hands and passed them to Dale. “I’ll make up the time. I promise.”

  “Don’t worry about the time. Just get your head on straight.”

  “I will.”

  I retrieved my bomber jacket and my bike and was almost finished filling the tank when the screen door slammed at the house. A crack so loud I jumped a tad and spilled gasoline down the side of my tank.

  Jenna came running up to me. Dink tried to keep up but the cast slowed him down. Tears streaked her face, even though she wiped them away as quickly as they fell. “I wanna go with you.”

  Hank was headed back with the tractor after a trip to the burn pile. He stopped by us, killed the engine, and jumped down, taking the majority of the weight on his good leg.

  He leaned against the back wheel of the tractor, held out a hand, and to Jenna he said, “Come here, sweetheart.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She ran into his arms and he scooped her up, held her tight against his chest, and ran a soothing hand down the back of her hair. She sobbed. Snot and slobber and red, blotchy face. He kissed the side of her head and met my gaze over her shoulder.

  I saw the anger distilling in his features, but it wasn’t directed at me. I knew that the front and rear sights of his dark, fluid emotion was targeted on Becca. On what she was doing to us, but more importantly, what she was doing to his daughter. Yes, his daughter. The sentiment was a clear as if he’d spoken it. Becca was ripping his daughter’s heart out and his along with it.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry,” he murmured over and over into her ear.

  Her crying jag slowed. She hiccupped and said, “I thought you two were divorced.”

  “It’s complicated,” he hedged. “But no.”

  “I thought…I thought she’d come back to see me. Growing up, I always hoped she’d come back. Like she did today. Show up out of nowhere on my birthday or Christmas. Like this big surprise. I’d be happy. So happy. But you wouldn’t be.”

  “No?”

  “No, because she’d show up telling you how she wanted me to come live with her. That she loved me. That she was taking me away and there wasn’t anything you could do about it. That she would fight you until the day she died to get me back.”

  He didn’t say anything. I wasn’t even positive he was breathing. I stepped up to him and rubbed my hand on his shoulder. At that point, I didn’t know who was hurting more, Hank or Jenna.

  He cleared his throat and said, “Is that what you want?” But he squinted and his brows crinkled over his nose as if he were afraid to hear the answer.

  She dr
ew her red bandanna from her back pocket, scrubbed it over her face, and shook her head even as she said. “Sometimes. At least, I did.”

  “And now?”

  “God, no.” A sob-laugh erupted. “She doesn’t even love me.”

  I got a sharp pain in my chest. I sniffed and blinked back the excess moisture in my eyes.

  “That’s not true,” Hank said with such conviction I knew he truly believed that. “We all have our faults. Whatever your mother’s are, I know she loves you the best way she can.”

  “She has a funny way of showing it,” Jenna said. Then I watched as a little of Hank’s anger seeped into her fiber, strengthening her voice. “She didn’t even come here to see me. Not really. She came because now she wants a divorce. She’s getting remarried.”

  Hank huffed out a harsh breath. “I figured it was something like that.”

  Jenna turned to me. “So can I go with you?”

  “I’m not going anywhere in particular. Just going to clear my head.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She glanced up at her dad. “Well?”

  He hesitated, but then he nodded.

  “Helmet,” I said, as I tossed my chin toward my helmet strapped to the bike.

  “Ah, but—”

  “It’s non-negotiable,” Hank and I said at the same time.

  She glanced from me to Hank and then back again. “Fine,” she said, in that way that meant it really wasn’t but she would humor us if it got her what she wanted.

  As she put the helmet on, Hank trapped my chin between his thumb and forefinger and held my gaze. He searched long and hard, considering. His eyes flicked to his daughter and then back to me. “You okay?”

  You’re going to get someone killed.

  Dale’s words rattled around in my brain. I knew what Hank was asking. It deserved thorough contemplation. This was his daughter I was taking out after all. So many things were not okay right now, but controlling the bike, being safe on the road, that was something I could do, something I could control. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  He didn’t let go right away. I figured he was waiting to see the truth of it in my eyes, then he said, “Okay, then.”