by Lisa Wingate
I tried to put Jack out of my mind as Nick and Pecos wandered off to some nearby equipment to play. Pecos stood by faithfully while Nick crawled onto a green tractor and pretended to drive, as he’d seen the ranch hands do. When the men passed by our house occasionally, Nick always stopped what he was doing and waved wildly at them, hoping they would pause to let him ogle whatever machinery they were using, but so far, the ranch hands had continued to steer clear of us. I felt like a pariah most of the time.
“Looks like Nick found a redneck jungle gym there,” Daniel observed as he came out of the lab building. He paused to punch in the security code before crossing the distance between us. His hand slid warm and solid through the curtain of my hair and rested on my shoulder, his fingers rubbing softly there.
I leaned into him, enjoying the moment. Around us, the golden light of afternoon faded into softer hues, the hills casting veils of shadow and sun. Nick was talking up a storm, giving instructions to Pecos, pretending to be doing some very important job with the tractor, but I couldn’t quite hear the words. “Thank goodness for that dog.” In our weeks at the ranch, Pecos and Nick had become inseparable, and if anyone remembered that the dog was actually Jack’s, no one said so.
“As soon as we get a little time to breathe, we need to do something about that.” Daniel pointed at Nick, and his fingers paused against my skin.
I sighed, reluctant to discuss future plans, or what we should do once we had a little breathing room. I was breathing right now, and it seemed like enough for the moment. The longer we stayed at West Ranch, the more I was sure we needed to leave. That wasn’t what Daniel wanted to hear. But there was something just not right about this whole situation. It was becoming more and more clear that Jack West didn’t care what happened to our family, as long as he got whatever it was that he wanted from Daniel.
I couldn’t help wondering: What would happen the minute he didn’t?
“Okay … do something about what?” I asked hesitantly. Nick and Pecos had moved to the next piece of equipment, an odd-looking apparatus sitting in the weeds, gathering rust. It looked like a narrow gangway that might be used on a ship, but with a single set of wheels in the middle, so that it could be moved around like a trailer. Alone, Nick could walk along it without tipping it end to end, but he had just discovered that the presence of Pecos added enough weight to cause the entire structure to tilt back and forth, bouncing lightly on the ground when it hit. With their combined mass, Nick and Pecos had created a giant teeter-totter and they were enjoying it, the dog wagging his stubby tail and Nick laughing and talking.
“He’s over there talking to a dog,” Daniel observed. “He needs some real friends. Other kids.”
“He and Pecos have some good conversations.” I’d never had a dog, but Pecos was growing on me. Most of the time, he kept the wandering peafowl, chickens, and guinea hens out of the yard, and he was extremely protective of Nick. I felt certain that, were anything dangerous to sneak in, like the rattlesnakes I’d been warned about but had not seen so far, Pecos would chase them away. He didn’t allow anything near Nick, including Jack West. You had to wonder what kind of a man is considered a threat by his own dog.
“I’m serious.” Daniel stretched his neck side to side, the bones crackling. The tension in him was palpable, flowing into me even as I tried to resist it. I didn’t turn to look at him. I knew what I would see. Exhaustion, a new network of furrows and worry lines around his eyes. This job, and all the ways it wasn’t working out, nipped at him constantly, even with the boss far away. Jack West’s eventual return was the King Kong–sized monkey on our backs, even during quiet moments like this.
A question hovered unspoken. It teased the surface more and more now, when Daniel and I were alone. He wondered if I blamed him for this. If I was disappointed. If I was sorry I’d said yes the night he looked across the map and proposed. If I regretted this marriage. He hadn’t asked outright, and I didn’t want him to, for fear that no matter what I said, he would see how completely out of place and unhappy I was here. He would know that at least a half-dozen times a day I held my head in my hands and thought, I can’t do this. I can’t.
I wanted to be strong, and bold, and fearless. But instead, I was afraid and tired and lonely and worried.
Daniel’s observation about Nick brought up another issue that had been niggling me. I’d watched Nick’s eyes light up whenever we happened to see the summer enrichment kids in Moses Lake enjoying a picnic in the park behind the church, or sitting outside the convenience store eating ice cream, or helping to plant gardens in a courtyard between an antique mall and a little Books and Java store.
I knew Nick was lonely, that he was left to his own devices, forced to make a playmate out of a dog for hours on end while I worked on the house. I wondered what my mother would say about Nick and Pecos walking back and forth on the makeshift carnival ride, Nick chattering up a storm. Was it healthy for a kid to spend so much time talking to a dog?
Keren Zimmer had invited Nick and me to the summer program twice now, but I hadn’t taken him. The truth, if I let myself give it a voice, was that I needed Nick. I dreaded the idea of him moving onward into friendships, activities, playdates, and preschool. I was scared to death of being left all alone here.
“One thing at a time, okay?” I rubbed Daniel’s arm, intertwined my fingers with his where they curved gently around my rib cage, cupping the two of us together. “I just … feel like we’re so … unsettled right now.”
“Okay.” Daniel’s chin scratched against my hair. “Thanks for looking after Nick. I know I haven’t been much help.”
My emotions did a strange loop-de-loop, and words came before I even knew what was happening. “Of course I’m looking after him. What else would I be doing?” There was a sharp edge, a tinge of resentment I didn’t want to feel. Daniel had a new job, odd though it was. Research lay in his future, hopefully. Discoveries. Achievements. Meanwhile, I was stuffing steel wool in gaps and talking about Veggie Tales and Thomas the Tank Engine. I was looking around town and realizing that my career in politics was done.
Daniel angled away, dark brows painting concern over brooding eyes. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Just that I feel like I’ve been AWOL a lot, that’s all.”
“Sorry.” To my horror, tears crowded my vision. Looking down at my hands, I pretended to be busy picking off little flecks of caulking. “I know what you meant. I’m all over the place lately. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It’ll get better.” Would it? What if it didn’t?
Daniel took one of my hands and brought it to his lips, caulking and all. His kiss touched just beside the modest diamond ring that symbolized the commitment made on a rainy evening in a little white church. “You’re amazing, Mallory. I get wrapped up in everything, and I don’t say it enough.” He inspected my white-speckled fingers, kissed them again. “Who knew you had all these hidden talents?”
“Pppfff!” He was buttering me up now. And it was working, of course. I was putty in his hands when he looked at me like that. After weeks of filling cracks in closets, I knew all about putty. I was on intimate terms with it.
“All that steel wool packing and closet fixing … the way you stuck that wallpaper back in place, the catch-and-release mouse program …” Daniel trailed off as if to indicate that the list could go on and on.
“Don’t stop.” I tipped my chin up and fluffed my hair with exaggerated grandiosity, imagining myself posing like Angelina Jolie, only shorter and blonder and more … clueless. The urge for tears vanished as quickly as it had come. When Daniel and I were close like this, everything vanished. Wasn’t that the definition of love—a devotion that could eclipse everything? “I want it all.”
“And then there’s the caulking … the way you lay it on there so smooth and even. I love a woman who can handle a gun.”
I felt a blush travel through my entire body, just the way it had the day Daniel and I met. The rush was as heady and as fresh as
ever. Just as thrilling. If there hadn’t been a three-year-old and a dog nearby … “Excuse me? How much time have you spent with gun-toting women, Daniel Webster Everson? And with whom, exactly, might I ask?”
“None … until this woman,” he answered smoothly. “But I like it.”
Skyrockets and butterflies. I was melting. Just melting. I wanted to call Jack West and say, Listen, you can have him from eight to five, but at five-o-one, he’s M-I-N-E, mine.
The noise of a truck rattling up the cow path disturbed the normal hum of boats in the distance, birds chirping, and trees swaying overhead. As always, the approach pulled the strings of tension tight, playing an unpleasant tune. Please don’t let it be Jack West. Please don’t let it be Jack West.
Once Jack returned, these long evenings together would be gone. Daniel was never willing to point out to Jack that we needed family time. He was afraid to. He’d already observed that the slightest thing—a gate chained too loosely by one of the ranch hands, a windmill that hadn’t been properly greased, ranch equipment poorly parked or left in less than optimal working condition—could set Jack off on a red-faced tirade of phone calls and threats.
Daniel stiffened and took a few steps away to get a better view of the vehicle approaching. “Oh, that’s just one of the ranch hands.” The tension in his shoulders eased. “Tag, I think. Jack’s horse trainer. I gathered that while watching Jack ream him out one day, not because anyone officially introduced us. I don’t think he has a clue what I’m here for. None of them do. When we run across one of the guys, they still look at me like I just landed from another planet.”
Peeking around the corner, I observed the tan ranch truck, its paint job pitted and marred by dents, dings, and rows of short scratches along the hood. “You’d think Jack would explain it to them.” I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice. Daniel deserved so much better.
The driver rolled down his window, and I could see that there was a teenager and a little girl in the truck with him. After the introductions, I realized that the teenager, Chrissy, was actually the little girl’s mother, and probably a little older than I’d guessed. Maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. Tag couldn’t have been past his early twenties, himself. I tried to imagine being their age, working here, raising a child.
Tossing a mop of curly red hair over her shoulder, Chrissy stretched across her daughter, McKenna, who was belted in a booster seat between them. “Hey, I’m sorry we haven’t been by to meet y’all.” She gave her husband a sideways smirk. “Dingbat here told me y’all were Mr. West’s relatives.”
Tag jerked a hand in the air, then let it fall to the steering wheel. “That’s what Floyd said he thought, and he’s the ranch manager. How am I supposed to know if Floyd don’t know?”
Chrissy responded with a petulant eye roll, then pointed at Daniel but directed her comment to me. “Anyhow, your husband does look a lot like Mr. West’s son, so it’s not hard to figure how Floyd made that mistake, considerin’ that your husband and Jack West are cooped up together all the time. I’ve never actually met Mason West, and far as I’ve ever heard, Mr. West and his son do not talk, period. But there’s plenty of pictures in Mr. West’s house up at the big ranch headquarters. Tag and me take care of the place anytime Mr. West’s out of town. But anyway, just so you know, Tag and me and McKenna aren’t normally this snotty. We just figured anybody who could stand to spend that much time near Jack West had to be related to him. We thought maybe him and his son were getting back together. Everyone’s been all stirred up about what that might mean, by the way.”
Tag gave her a warning glance and tried to hide it by tugging on his hat brim. There was a whole paragraph in that look, and I didn’t like what it said.
Chrissy would not be shushed, though. “Pfff! Don’t try to hush me up, Tag Reese. I’ll say what I want to about that man. He isn’t here to hear it. Thank-the-Lord-and-phone-the-saints for that.”
Daniel and I traded sideways glances the way customers might when the first person in line is harassing the checker at Walmart.
Chrissy turned back with a quick flash of eyelashes, like we were talking girl-to-girl now. “So, anyway, is he drivin’ you crazy yet? Mr. West, I mean? It’s hard when you’re new around here. Tag and I’ve been here nearly a year, but the first six months was about as nice as havin’ a picnic in a cow pie.” She paused for a breath, her gaze shifting between Daniel and me expectantly, like she was ready to get down to some good gossip.
“We’re still learning our way around,” Daniel’s reply was cautious. He squeezed my hand in a way that said, Does this girl seem crazy to you?
“I’ve been busy with the house, mostly,” I hedged.
Red curls bounced pertly over Chrissy’s cheek. “Whoa, you from New York or someplace?”
“DC.”
“It sounds like it.” Tucking the loose hair behind her ear, she leaned closer to the window. Compacted in the booster seat, her daughter squirmed and whined, “Mama!” She was a miniature of her mother—creamy skin that was a patchwork of freckles, big brown eyes, wisps of curly red hair, a pert little nose, and cupid’s bow lips. Right now they were turned downward into a frown.
Chrissy responded with a quick, “Hush up!” Then she turned back to us. “So, we’re headin’ down to mess around at the beach across from Firefly Island for a while, since Jack’s not here to have a hissy about it. Y’all wanna come? McKenna would love to play with your little boy. She’s got kids at the day care during the day—I work in Gnadenfeld at the City Drug. If you ever have a prescription, just call me and I can bring it by for you on my way home—but McKenna doesn’t have anybody on the ranch to play with. One of the other guys is single. Floyd, the manager, has kids that’re grown and off on their own, and the other three have kids that’re in high school. We’d love to have your little boy over sometime.”
“Oh, well, I …” The flood of information clogged the synapses in my brain, waiting for processing. Chrissy’s train of thought seemed to jump back and forth across several tracks.
“Sure, that sounds like fun.” Daniel gave me a pleased look, as if to say, Hey, we wanted a friend for Nick, and here one is. “Nick would like that. And I’ve been wondering how to get down to that beach across from the island, too. So far, I’ve only seen it from a distance.”
Chrissy pursed her lips in an expression that made her look more like Congressman Faber’s persnickety old secretary than a girl just a few years out of high school. “Tag won’t take me down there unless Jack West’s out of town. He’s afraid I’ll swim over to Firefly Island and get us fired. I guess y’all probably already heard that nobody’s allowed on Firefly Island. I figure that’s where the b-o-d-i-e-s are buried.” She glanced at McKenna when she spelled out the word.
Tag sighed and rolled a look our way, as if to say, Now you see what I deal with every day of my life.
In the center seat, McKenna pushed her mother out of the way and peered over the dashboard as Nick and Pecos started toward us. From the bed of the truck, a short-haired gray dog barked, wagging its stubby tail.
Tag wheeled a hand, an amiable grin forming beneath the blond mop of an old-fashioned handlebar moustache that was pretty respectable for someone so young. “Why don’t y’all just hop in back? Your truck’s not four-wheel drive. Prob’ly won’t make it where we’re goin’.”
I glanced at Tag’s vehicle, wondering what he meant by in the back. While some of the ranch trucks were of the four-door variety, this one was not. Surely, he didn’t mean for us to ride in the open bed, with the dog …
But he did, of course, and I was quickly introduced to the concept of the cowboy convertible. After grabbing the swim stuff from our vehicle and doing a quick change behind the lab building, we rattled off, Nick up front because McKenna insisted on it, Daniel and me in the bed, balanced on the spare tire, and the dogs leaning against the tailgate, tails wagging with enthusiasm.
As we jounced across the hills, rolling over rocks, chuckhole
s, and small trees, the dogs nipped the air joyously, Nick giggled in the front seat with his new friend, and Daniel and I clung to a tire in the bed, laughing at the dogs. Suddenly I realized that in this lonely, desperate first month here, I’d been so focused on the life I’d left behind that for the most part, I’d been missing the fun of where I was.
No more, I promised myself. From here on out, I was going to stay focused on the here and now. The present. The gift of limestone hills, live oak trees, and rides in a cowboy convertible with the lake breezes ruffling my hair. If I couldn’t control the circumstances, at least I could control my attitude toward them.
After a white-knuckle ride across the pasture on what looked more like a mountain goat trail than a road, I finally saw the lake below. It appeared and disappeared as we bobbed over several small hills. The breeze was cool and sweet, the scent implying open water and endless sky. The tires churned madly on the way up the final boulder-strewn slope. Grabbing the side rail, I stared straight down into a canyon and briefly reevaluated the wisdom of riding in the back of the truck. And then all of a sudden the vehicle lurched over the hill, the kids squealed, and Chrissy tapped the back window, pointing toward the view splashed before us like an artist’s rendering.
My heart quickened with a primal sense of discovery, of having found something I wouldn’t have believed could really exist. I’d never seen a place like this—the meeting of water, land, and sky intertwined in such an untouched and perfect way. I breathed it in as we rolled down the incline and drifted to a stop on a rocky slope by the lakeshore.
Daniel hopped out of the truck and made an agile landing on the gravel, then stopped and reached for me. “Here,” he said, smiling. “Careful.” He held my hand as I exited less than gracefully. Tag and McKenna opened the tailgate of the truck, and the dogs jumped out, then cavorted around the vehicle, sniffing patches of milkweed and rooting in nests of last year’s leaves.
