by Carter Ashby
“Why don’t you have some tea while you wait,” Clara said.
The sheriff obliged and sat on the sofa opposite Ivy. They drank in relative silence for a moment. “He’s on his way,” Ivy said at last. “I texted Jake, too.”
The sheriff merely nodded. He looked pretty funny in his uniform with his big strong hands holding a dainty, feminine teacup.
A few minutes later, the back door opened. Apparently Gideon wouldn’t let his boys vanish on him, because he’d come with them, an angry glower on his face. Of course, that might have just been his natural expression. Clara could hardly tell anymore.
“What’s this about, Sheriff?” Gideon asked. “We got work to do. Don’t much appreciate having the day interrupted like this.”
“All I needed was Boone,” the sheriff said.
Boone was right behind Gideon, followed by Jake and Cody. Jake’s eyes went wide at the sight of Ivy. “Ivy!” he exclaimed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Having tea with your mother,” she spat, though if her tone was any indication, she wanted to say something much harsher. Clara couldn’t blame her. The boy hadn’t exactly offered the warmest of greetings. Then again, he wouldn’t…not in front of Gideon.
“Boone, this conversation might be best just the two of us,” Sheriff Rivera said as he stood.
Clara sat in a chair across the coffee table from where Ivy was perched, teacup in hand, ankles crossed. To Clara’s right stood the Sheriff, back to the wall. To her left stood Gideon, blocking any exit from the sitting room. Behind him the boys were fanned out. Clara looked up and saw Dallas appear at the edge of the hallway in his pajamas.
“You got something to say to my boy, you’ll say it in front of me,” Gideon said.
“Gideon, your boy ain’t a boy anymore. Frankly, I don’t need your permission to talk to him. I just need his.” He cocked his head to make eye contact with Boone.
Boone shifted on his feet. “It’s…it’s about her?”
The sheriff nodded. “Richard Allen says you did it.”
Boone turned his horror-filled eyes to Gideon who was now glaring over his shoulder at Boone. “What did you do, boy?” Gideon snarled.
“Nothing. I didn’t do nothing, I swear!”
Gideon turned on Boone. “Don’t lie to me, you little hellion. What did you do?”
“I swear, Pop—”
Gideon smacked him on the ear.
“Hey, Pop, come on,” Jake said, stepping in between them.
Now Ivy was on her feet, tea spilled on her dress. “Come on, Boone, I’ll go with you. Let’s step outside and talk to the sheriff.”
Gideon turned to face her, eyes bright with rage. “I’ll thank you to mind your own business. What the hell are you doing in my house anyway?”
Clara didn’t know Ivy terribly well, but she recognized the flush as one of rage. Some instinctive reflex deep in the most primitive part of her brain made her sink back into the chair and make herself smaller.
“I’m here as a friend to your wife, and now your son, which is perfectly within my rights,” she said, keeping her tone shockingly civil.
“You ain’t welcome here. I don’t want any Turner blood in my house, especially not you!”
The cup and saucer landed on the carpet unharmed as Ivy shouted, “You ridiculous old bastard, I’ll go wherever the hell I want and talk to whomever the hell I want. You can act like you own this place and the people in it, but you don’t own me. Fuck you, Gideon!”
“Fuck you, you little brat. Sheriff, this girl’s trespassing and I want her out.”
Ivy laughed. “You are absolutely out of your mind!”
Jake stepped forward, faced Ivy, and in a low voice said, “Maybe you should go. We can talk later.”
For some reason, his words made Ivy go pale, like the calm before a storm, and then redder in the face than ever. She sucked in a breath and shoved him in the chest. “I’m not here for you. I was here for Clara. And now I’m here for Boone, so if you don’t have the balls to stand up for me, at least have the balls to keep your damn mouth shut! Boone, let’s go outside with the sheriff.”
“He ain’t going anywhere,” Gideon snarled.
“Ivy, please,” Jake said.
“I want you out, girl! Sheriff, get her out.”
“Ivy, I’ll walk you. Come on,” Jake said.
Her head turned back and forth between them until finally her hands curled into fists at her side, she threw her head back, and screamed. “Enough! Oh, my God, I hate this! I’ve hated this for so long and I’m so fucking sick of it! Fine, Gideon, you’ve obviously got your boys fully in your service. Every last one of them cowers to you—”
“My boys know the meaning of respect.”
“That’s what you call it? Respect?” She spun to face the sheriff. “Boone and Molly were having an affair, okay? Richard found out she was having an affair, but he didn’t know who with. All he had was Boone’s phone number. Since Molly had him programmed in her phone as ‘sex god’ Richard didn’t have a name, but he’s been harassing Boone with threatening texts. We’ll be happy to go with you to the station and give statements.”
Ivy spun to face Gideon. “Jake and I have been fucking. That’s right. The dirty little Turner slut’s got her hooks all up in your oldest son.” She pivoted, pointed her finger at Dallas, and said, “He hates you so much that he’d do anything to get off this ranch, Gideon. Anything. Jake didn’t poison Dallas. It wasn’t Jake’s negligence that lost you your cattle. It was Dallas pulling the dumbest sabotage ever. And Cody—”
“Ivy, please,” Cody said, stepping forward and shaking his head. “Please don’t.”
With tears streaming down her cheeks and her face screwed up in pain, Ivy sucked in a breath. “Cody’s gay. He’s having an affair with one of my ranch hands. And I do believe he’d have took that secret to his grave to keep you, Gideon, from ever finding out. Is that respect? Or is it fucking fear?”
The room fell utterly silent except for the little chokes and sobs coming from Ivy whose face was buried in her hands. Clara looked down at her own hands and saw that they were shaking. Dallas had collapsed and was now sitting on the floor with his back to the wall staring straight ahead. Cody’s face was pale and expressionless. Boone looked about to throw up. And Jake was…angry. Jake was fire-ant mad. In all of Clara’s memory, she couldn’t conjure up a time when Jake had stared at someone with such pure and heated anger as he was staring at Ivy.
But it was Gideon who broke the silence. “You vile little bitch,” he snarled.
Suddenly, Jake turned, and Clara saw clearly for the first time. His anger wasn’t meant for Ivy, it was meant for Gideon. And it had been there, simmering away, for years. “You ever talk to my girl like that again I’ll deck you, you understand?” Jake shouted.
Gideon’s rage amped up even more. “Watch your mouth, boy.”
“No, sir, I’m done watching my mouth. You did this. All of this. Shit,” he said, shoving his hands through his hair. He paced a few steps before seeming to remember Ivy. He closed the distance and brought her into his arms. “All right,” he said, looking around. His eyes landed on Boone. “Boone, go on with the sheriff. Tell him everything you know, everything you’ve been hiding. We’ll get you a lawyer if we need to.”
Ivy pushed back and dried her eyes with her palms. She sucked in a breath. “Um, yeah. I need to go with them.”
“We’ll just step outside,” the sheriff said. “Depending on their answers, we may not have to go anywhere.”
The sheriff, Boone, and Ivy filed toward the front door. Ivy stopped in front of Cody. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to…”
Cody turned away from her, his jaw ticking.
She followed Boone out to the front porch. Jake was still pacing the living room while Gideon seethed where he stood. Clara couldn’t be certain where his rage would land. By all rights, it belonged on Dallas who had betrayed the family in a wa
y that shocked Clara to her core. The second choice would have been Jake who had never so blatantly disrespected Gideon before, let alone in front of strangers. But apparently what rent Gideon’s soul more than everything else was Cody, because he turned and backhanded the boy across the cheek.
Cody just took it, his head snapping to the side, and then slowly turning back to meet Gideon’s gaze. “You’re dead to me,” Gideon said.
Cody simply nodded and walked out the back door.
“You want off this ranch so bad,” Gideon shouted to Dallas, “congratulations. You got your wish. You got one week to get the hell off my property.”
Dallas didn’t move. He just stared straight ahead.
“And you,” Gideon said.
Jake stopped his pacing and faced him. “You ought to be real careful about what you’re fixing to say. Because you just threw away half of your work force, and I’m your best hand.”
“I can hire more,” Gideon said belligerently.
“Not at what I work for. You’re not hiring anyone who does the work I do for what I get paid.”
“This ain’t about money or jobs. It’s about family. And you ain’t family. Not after you betrayed me with that—”
“Call her a whore one more time, Pop, and we’ll see if you can can take as good as you give.”
Gideon clamped his mouth shut, glaring at Jake for a moment.
For the first time ever, Clara saw just how old Gideon was. How worn and tired. Jake towered over him, young and strong and no longer willing to submit. “Get out of my house. You’re no son of mine,” Gideon said.
Jake didn’t react any more than Cody had. Instead, he went to Dallas and knelt in front of him. “You wanna stay with us while you get better?” he asked.
Dallas nodded listlessly.
“Good. I’ll come get you in the truck later. We’ll get you back on your feet. Then I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.”
Dallas gave a hint of a grin. “I’ll look forward to it.”
Jake stood and left out the back door.
No one had spared Clara a glance. A thought. She was a part of the background, woven in to the tapestry of their environment. Not a real person with feelings, but a nameless, faceless, soulless servant.
Clara buried her face in her hands and wept.
There were so many things that needed his attention. Dallas needed moving. Ivy and Boone needed support. But it was Cody that Jake went after first. He found him in the field.
It appeared Cody had walked just far enough to lose sight of the house before falling to his knees and crying. Jake knelt beside him, rubbed his back, and said, “This is a good thing. For both of us.”
Cody shook his head, his face covered by his hands. It was quiet on the pasture, the grass tall, now—up to their shoulders when they were sitting in it. Not much breeze, but the heat of the sun wasn’t overwhelming.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “It is. Now we can love who we want to love. No more hiding.”
Cody turned and threw his arms around Jake’s neck. Jake laughed at first, the first tendrils of the excitement of freedom reaching into his soul. He pounded Cody on the back even as Cody clung to him. “It’s all right, little brother. You’re gonna be okay.”
This was what made it possible for Jake to stand up to Gideon. His brothers all, in the moment that Ivy spilled their secrets, needed support. They needed their father to counsel them and comfort them. Instead, they’d gotten slaps in the face and disownment. Gideon was the only father Jake had ever had, yet he somehow knew that he would never treat his own son like that. It wasn’t enough to eliminate the sense of guilt he found at rejecting Gideon’s authority, but it was enough for him to decide that the guilt was worth the action.
Cody let out one sob that might have been a laugh, muffled against Jake’s shoulder. “I didn’t want anyone to know. Not ever. How could she do that?”
Jake was certain had she not been in the throes of passionate rage, she would have kept Cody’s secret. His wasn’t like the others, and he didn’t deserve to be outed like that. “All that matters is that she did. It’s out, now. We do know. So you may as well make the best of it.”
“I thought she was my friend.”
“She is, man. She screwed up and you can tell her all about it when you pull yourself together. Right now, let’s just get our bearings, okay?”
Cody fell back, sitting with his legs splayed in front of him, squinting at the horizon. “You’re sleeping with her?”
Jake sat next to him, hugging his knees to his chest. “Hopefully.”
“How long has that been going on?”
“A few weeks.”
“That’s how the rumors got started?”
Jake frowned. “You know, I still don’t know how that happened. She and I did…that…a week before the rumors began. And then when Myra started gossiping, it wasn’t about that particular…incident…which no one could have known about. So I really don’t know.”
“Are you in love with her?”
Jake took a moment to inhale and exhale and roll the thought around in his mind. “Yeah,” he said at last.
Cody laughed. “Wow. Well, she’s lived next door forever. What took you so long?”
“Never had occasion to talk to her until after her mom passed and she took over the business. She had that city boyfriend for years, I just never gave her much thought. Plus, she was a kid for most of the time I’ve known her. Hell, I think I even changed a diaper or two back when our moms were friends.”
“That is really fucked up.”
Jake smiled. Not fucked up. Just…interesting. “What about you? Are you in love with the guy? Jordan, right?”
Cody was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was back to its usual low and quiet. “I don’t know if it’s love. But I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”
“How did Ivy find out?”
Cody snorted. “She caught us after the fact in an old abandoned barn on her property.”
Jake winced. “Bummer.”
“You should have seen her,” he said, laughing. “She closed her eyes before she turned to run, had to feel her way out of the barn and back to her horse. Pretty cute.”
Jake smiled to himself, glad that Cody had already begun forgiving her. He could justifiably refuse to forgive her forever. Spilling Cody’s secret was the worst thing she’d done that day. No one else, not even Jake, had had the right to ask her to bear the burdens of their secrets.
Still, maybe it was because he had such a soft spot for her, maybe it was because he knew she regretted it the instant it happened—but he wanted Cody to forgive her. She deserved a second chance.
As if reading his mind, Cody said, “She was a good friend to me. She blew her top, is all. Who wouldn’t? Can’t believe Dad talked to her like that.”
“I can’t believe she’s been juggling all this. And I don’t know how many times I’ve accused her of sleeping with one of you guys. She ought to turn around and never look back. But I hope she doesn’t. I hope she can forgive me.”
“She will. She’s a good person.”
Jake nodded. A breeze kicked up. The smells in the pasture weren’t always pleasant, but this breeze carried a hint of lilac from where it grew on the fence bordering the Turner property. “What are we gonna do?” he mused quietly.
“I guess we’re gonna apply for jobs with Mr. Turner.”
“Gideon will come around. He’ll have to.”
Cody shook his head. “I’d hate to abandon you, Jake. But my father just looked me in the eye and told me I was dead to him. He almost lost a son for real last week and he turned and said that to me, Dallas barely home from the hospital. I don’t think I could ever work for him again.”
“He just needs time—”
“Yeah? Well, he can’t have it.” Cody got to his feet and started walking in the direction of their house. Jake followed. “You think this isn’t hard enough for me? You think I wanted this for myself?”
Jake sighed. He was right. Gideon’s behavior was unforgivable. Still, this ranch was family property, and he couldn’t help but hope they could all stay together in the end. But right now, this was about Cody’s struggle. “When did you first know?” Jake asked.
“That I was gay? I’ve been denying it all my life. I can’t remember a time I didn’t prefer guys. Couldn’t even get it up for a woman without thinking about…” he trailed off.
“About who?”
Cody shook his head. “Never mind.”
“No, no. You have to tell me. Who?”
Cody stopped and rolled his eyes, looking at Jake in exasperation. “Brad Pitt’s character in Thelma and Louise.”
Jake burst into laughter.
“Shut up, asshole. I don’t care how straight you are, he was hot in that movie.”
Jake shook his head and fell back into step beside Cody. “No way. I’ve never thought a dude was hot.”
“Never? Really?”
“Well…I mean, I can acknowledge that a guy’s good looking or in good shape or whatever, but it’s never turned me on.”
“If you say so.”
“Stop trying to make me question my sexuality.”
“Why shouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t we all? Maybe we wouldn’t have so many problems if we didn’t draw so many hard lines about it.”
They finished the walk home confessing to embarrassing crushes. Inside the house they found Ivy sitting on the end of the sofa. Boone was laying down, his head in her lap as she stroked his hair like a puppy.
The jealousy surged through him, but Jake didn’t allow himself to react to it. He took a seat in one of the armchairs. Cody took the recliner. Ivy would only meet Cody’s gaze, tentatively. She kept her head, low, in an uncharacteristic posture of humility. “We got Dallas put back in his room,” she said. “He’s sleeping.”
“Thank you,” Jake said.
Ivy gulped, her attention focused on stroking Boone’s hair. After a long moment of silence, she looked up at Cody. “I feel like any apology will be completely inadequate. I don’t deserve your friendship after that,” she said. “Even as I was saying it, this voice in my head was screaming for me to stop.”
