Don’t Close Your Eyes

by Ali Parker

  “I’m going to be meeting her dad,” I told Tanner on Friday afternoon. It was a pretty personal conversation to be having with a man whom I had only recently met, but we had become pretty good friends as time went on, and I knew that I could trust. There was no preamble or anything, but I trusted Tanner to overlook that.

  “Isn’t it too soon for that?” Tanner asked, looking surprised. “What, did you get her pregnant or something?”

  “No!” I said, even though that sent a bolt of panic through me. That would definitely explain why Brea had been so wishy-washy. But no, she had explained that it was just that her father had some sort of grudge against my family.

  I was still wondering about that, but I still hadn’t heard back from Daddy and Mama. As far as I knew, they were still at their retreat. I hadn’t been able to talk to them about it. It was one of the things still niggling at the back of my mind, like a sore tooth, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to solve the question just by thinking about it. I just didn’t have enough details.

  Maybe if I met Brea’s dad, though, he would tell us both why he was so against my being with her. I could only hope. As soon as I knew what it was, I would do whatever was in my power to fix things. To show him that I could be right for her.

  “Well, if you didn’t get her pregnant, isn’t it too soon to be meeting her dad?” Tanner asked. “I didn’t realize the two of you were that serious. Not that I’m discouraging it. I’m still not sure about it in terms of you being her employer and all, but mostly I’m just surprised.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I think we’re both okay with the employer-employee thing. It doesn’t really feel like that. I’m not the one paying her, and I don’t really interact with her when she’s here to train Duck. But the thing with the dinner is different. Turns out that her dad isn’t exactly my biggest fan, so I’m hoping that by meeting him, I can smooth things over. It’s important to Brea.”

  Tanner winced. “That doesn’t sound very good,” he said. “What did you do to piss the guy off?”

  “Date his daughter, I guess,” I sighed. “I don’t really know. He wouldn’t explain it to Brea, he just doesn’t want her to have anything else to do with me or my family. That’s all she could tell me. She and I were both trying to figure it out, but we couldn’t really come up with anything.”

  Tanner grimaced. “There’s got to be some sort of story there,” he said. “Your families have both been here for a while, right? You and Brea both grew up here, at least. Maybe your parents had some sort of fight. Over land, maybe? You’re both out in the same area.”

  “It’s a good thought, as good as anything that we could come up with, but I just really don’t see that being the case. Wouldn’t I know if there was some sort of issue like that?” I asked.

  Tanner shrugged, and we turned our attention back to work. I was still nervous about the whole thing, though. The more I thought about it, the more it just plain didn’t make sense to me. I started to think about what Tanner had said. Maybe I really had gotten Brea pregnant and she just wasn’t ready to tell me yet. Maybe this whole thing that her father had against me was all made up. Something she was using to get me to meet the man.

  I didn’t really believe that, though. I trusted Brea to tell me the truth. But I still couldn’t figure out what was going on with her dad.

  When I finished work on Friday and headed inside, I found Brea waiting for me, sitting on the steps leading up to the house. Duck was there next to her, looking particularly happy. I couldn’t help but smile at the two of them.

  “Good day?” I asked Brea.

  “Yeah, really good,” she said, beaming at me. “Duck is doing really well. Pretty sure you’ll never have any problems getting her to retrieve again.”

  “Awesome,” I said. I wanted to ask if this meant she was finished working with Duck, and that this was the last time I’d see her over here. I hated the thought, but with this question of her dad hanging between us, I didn’t feel like I could ask. I didn’t want her to think I was pressuring her.

  “About tomorrow,” Brea said, but then, she trailed off, looking down at the ground.

  “About tomorrow?” I prompted. “Are we still meeting your dad for dinner?”

  “He’s not happy that you’re coming over,” Brea blurted out finally.

  I stared at her for a long moment. When she had told me on Wednesday that it was all settled, I had taken the words at face value and thought that things were all settled. Now, it sounded like that might not be the case.

  “Do you want me not to come?” I asked slowly.

  “No!” Brea said immediately. “That is, I want you to come. I just want to warn you that he’s not happy about it.” She paused, “But he did agree to have you over there. It just took some convincing on my part.” From the way her eyes shifted away from mine, I could tell that it must have taken some serious convincing.

  Wanting to groan at the thought of it, I imagined the scene. He was just going to tell me to my face that he didn’t want me there. And what would I do then? Did manners require me to get up and walk out of there, when he made it clear I wasn’t a welcome guest? Where would that leave things with Brea and I?

  “Brea, if you don’t want me to go, I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing things,” I said slowly, even though I felt my chest constrict at the thought that she might want me to stay away. I knew that if I didn’t meet her dad, things were never going to progress between the two of us. He would continue to insist that she stay away from me, and there would be nothing I could do to get her to change her mind about things.

  “No, I want you to come,” Brea said softly, coming down the stairs until she was standing in front of me. She put her hand on my chest, looking up at me. “I want you to come with me.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “I want to be able to date you for real, without worrying about it. I’m just sorry that you’re getting dragged into all of this weirdness, but I hope we can work it all out tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll be there.”

  Brea looked relieved, and she stretched up on her toes to kiss me. She pulled away only a second later, though, looking embarrassed. “I should go,” she said, already stepping around me and fleeing toward her car.

  I could only grin and wave at her retreating form, though. I knew that if she had stayed even a moment longer, I would have asked her to come inside, to have dinner with me again, and to stay the night. I had done really well at keeping my hands off of her all week, waiting until after I had met her dad so she could be with me without feeling guilty. Now wasn’t the time to spoil that.

  Grinning ruefully to myself, I headed inside. The house phone rang just as I was kicking off my shoes. I hurried into the kitchen to answer it. “Hello?”

  “Hey son,” Daddy said. “Just wanted to check in.”

  “So your retreat is done?” I asked. “How was that?” It was a tongue-in-cheek sort of question, because I had a feeling I already knew. He was just a simple farmer from Oklahoma, and he thought yoga and meditation and things like that were pretty hippy-like.

  “Ask me again when your mother isn’t sitting right here,” Daddy said wryly, and I could picture him rolling his eyes while Mama smirked at him. The whole trip had been Mama’s idea, and nothing more so than this retreat. But Daddy was still going along with it, in spite of himself. All because he loved Mama.

  I had to remember that for tomorrow night. I wasn’t meeting Brea’s dad for me. I was meeting him for us.

  Not that I loved her or anything like that. I wanted to date her, sure, but I wasn’t ready to start putting labels on my feelings for her just yet. It was too soon. Enough to know that I didn’t want to stop seeing her, and especially not because her dad had something against me. If Brea said she didn’t want to see me anymore, it would be different. We had to get to the bottom of things, so our decisions about it were our own.

  “So, how are things going around the farm?” Daddy asked.
<
br />   “Really good, actually,” I told him. “We’re just starting the planting. It’s been really warm for this time of the season, and even though I’m afraid we’ll have a cold snap to contend with, it seemed like it made sense to at least get some of the stuff planted and hope for the best.”

  It was something that I’d talked to Tanner about for days, but I hoped it would pay off in the end. If not, we had enough crops we were holding off on planting that if they did well, we would at least break even for the year and have enough to head us into next year. It had taken some careful attention to the budget to figure it all out, though.

  “Hmm,” Daddy said. “Seems a little early to be starting planting, but I’m sure you know what you’re doing. How’s the manpower?”

  “It’s okay,” I said, shrugging even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “Ted still isn’t back, and I haven’t seen Mason since before you guys left. But Tanner has been doing a ton around here, and he does a good job suggesting things for the other hands to do while they’re here. That’s really helped, having him around. It was weird as hell trying to make friends with someone that’s been family my whole life, but we figured it out.”

  But I felt a surge of pleasure go through me at Daddy’s unexpected praise. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. He had left me in charge of the farm because he trusted me, even though I’d never had any formal training on how to run a place like this. Even though there were plenty of days where I doubted myself, Daddy seemed to think everything would turn out all right in the end. And hearing him say that made me almost believe it, too.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Daddy said. “I had a feeling you could use him, and Billy’s boy is good people..” He paused, “And the dog training? How has that been going?”

  “That’s been really good too,” I said. “Tanner and I actually took Duck hunting last weekend and she was able to retrieve one of the ducks I shot. And Brea is a really good worker too. She gets things done.”

  “Brea?” Daddy asked, sounding surprised. “Is she from around town?”

  “Yeah, she actually grew up at a place not far from our farm,” I told Daddy. “It’s Brea Knight. I don’t know if you know her family.”

  There was a long silence, and I waited with baited breath to hear how he would respond. Maybe there really was something else going on here, something other than Brea’s dad being over-protective. But what was it?

  “Knight, did you say?” Daddy said, and there was something in his voice that told me that he knew exactly who the Knight family was, and didn’t want me to have anything to do with them.

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Is that a problem?”

  “You don’t need to have anything to do with them,” Daddy said, his voice sour. “I think it would be better if she didn’t work there at the farm anymore.”

  “Why not?” I asked, unable to keep the frustration from my voice. Between Brea’s father and now my own, I was really starting to wonder what was going on. If something had happened between our families, surely someone would have mentioned it by now.

  Daddy wasn’t going to tell me what the problem was, though. Instead, he just made a noise of disgust. “Fortunately, it sounds like she’s through with training Duck by now, so I trust you’ll have nothing more to do with her,” he said.

  I wanted to tell him that it definitely wasn’t the case. That not only was I going to keep seeing her, but damn it, I was going to keep dating her. I already had plans for us, places that I wanted to take her to. Literally and figuratively.

  We weren’t even really dating yet. But I wanted it so badly that we might as well be.

  But I didn’t want to give Daddy the chance to forbid me from seeing her. It wouldn’t really mean much, since he was out of town right now anyway. But all the same, I shouldn’t let him know that I planned to outright disobey him.

  “Yeah, she should be mostly done with training Duck by now. I don’t know, though. I think she still has a few more lessons planned for next week.” It was another one of the things that I hadn’t wanted to bring up today, when Brea was leaving. I didn’t know if she would be back Monday or not. I liked to think that she would, of course. But I didn’t want to pressure her.

  “That family is bad news,” Daddy finally finished. “I’m going to make a call over to the training center and see if that other woman, Nina, can work with Duck for the rest of her training. She was the one I thought I’d be getting to begin with. And her family is good friends with ours. There will be no problems there.”

  But still, he didn’t tell me why, and I filed it all away to talk to Brea about. I hoped that this wouldn’t affect her job. There was nothing wrong with the way that Brea had been working with Duck. And in fact, I was tempted to protest. To tell Daddy just how much Duck had learned, even in the first week with Brea. I wanted to tell him that changing trainers now might make things take a lot longer.

  But I didn’t think those things were going to change Daddy’s mind. Really, I needed to talk to Brea. Maybe together, we could figure this out. At least it clearly had something to do with our families, not just something to do with her father’s worries for her, or something specific about me.

  In some ways, that made it easier to believe that we could one day overcome it.

  But all the same, I ended the conversation with Daddy, feeling more confused than when I had started. I knew Daddy was a man of few words, but it wasn’t like him to be so close-mouthed on all of this. If there were a problem with the Knight family, I would have expected him to just come out and say it. To tell me why he wanted me to stay away from Brea.

  Daddy might not always say everything that he was thinking, but he was blunt, and he believed that if you gave a man a reason for something, they’d be a better worker. He’d always reasoned through the rules around the farm and the work that we had to do. But this time, he didn’t explain himself. He didn’t tell me why he didn’t want me to associate with Brea anymore.

  What’s more, he didn’t ask the questions I might have expected from him. He didn’t seem to want to know if I was dating the girl or anything else. He just didn’t want me to have anything to do with her. He didn’t even want her training Duck anymore.

  It made me even more nervous, knowing that I was headed over to Brea’s dad’s place the following evening for dinner. But overall, it just made me feel confused. What had happened between our families, and how had I never heard about it before?

  Maybe it was down to the land, just like Tanner had said. But where our family was involved in farming as well as ranching, the Knight family had only ever had their horses. They didn’t need a place like this for ranching. They were better off with the smaller, more manageable place.

  It couldn’t be about the land. But I didn’t have any idea what else could have happened.

  For a second, I debated calling one of my brothers. Maybe David or Ted could shed some light on things. But David was busy with his tour, and Ted was busy on his trip with Lauralee. The only other person left was Mason, and he wasn’t that much older than me. I doubted he knew anything about this family feud either. Besides, he probably had things that he was busy with at his own farm. The Brock farm.

  So once again I was on my own, dealing with a problem related to the family farm, while everyone else was doing their own thing. I was jealous and bitter, I recognized that. But recognition didn’t make those feelings go away.

  No, whatever this was with Brea’s family, I needed to deal with it on my own. I nodded to myself and set about making dinner, trying to pretend that this confusing phone call had never happened. Everything was going to be fine tomorrow night. If not, Brea’s dad never would have agreed to meet me.

  I clung to that belief.

  26

  Brea

  I smiled at Nina from across the table on Friday night. “Thanks for having me over,” I said. “This all looks great.”

  Nina laughed. “Well, I have to do something with my evenings when my
husband is out of town and my kids are away on sleepovers,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “God, do you know how weird it is to have the house to myself for the night? That hasn’t happened in years.”

  I laughed as well. “I can’t even imagine it,” I told her, shaking my head. “You’re an amazing mom. And an amazing cook too, apparently.”

  Nina grinned as she dished out food for both of us. “The thing is, my cooking skills have gotten so much better. I’m better at picking out recipes, better about following them to the letter, and better about mixing things up in good ways when I really feel like being adventurous. But as a mom, I have to keep it kid-friendly. I’m not saying I make mac ‘n cheese and hot dogs every night, but you know? I can’t make, I don’t know, couscous. Who am I kidding? Half the adults I know still won’t eat it.”

  I took a bite of my pasta. “God, that’s amazing, though,” I told her. “What’s even in this?”

  “I’ll send you the recipe,” Nina said, winking at me. She took a sip of her wine. “So what’s up with you anyway? Are you any closer to the perfect family life?”

  “No,” I groaned.

  “Uh oh,” Nina said, shaking her head. “I assumed that when you were back over at the Dawson place for the week, it meant you had decided to ignore your dad’s warnings and keep things going with Luke after all. That not the case?”

  “Not entirely,” I sighed. “I went over there on Monday, after we talked. We went for a ride and had a good visit. I told him about Dad’s worries.” No reason to tell her about the rest of it.

  “Good communication is the key to any relationship,” Nina said sagely, but I could tell from the way that her eyes twinkled that she knew something of what Luke and I had gotten up to. No doubt she had read it from the blush on my face.