The Cowboy's Baby: Devlin Brothers Ranch

by Joanna Bell

  After telling my mom she could call the woman at Fischer back and tell her I would be there in time for the start of the summer semester, I composed another message to Jackson:

  "Where r u? We need 2 talk. Want u 2 know I love u so much. Msg or call me ASAP."

  It honestly never occurred to me that Jackson would be the missing link in the chain. Of all the weak points in my plans that morning, he was the last person I thought wouldn't come through. I was so certain of his love. So sure he would understand everything.

  But he didn't understand. And my certainty in his love soon seemed to be the misplaced trust of the naive teenager I still was.

  Chapter 19: Jackson

  When I woke up there was sunlight streaming into the trailer and something rough against my neck.

  Carpet. It was carpet. I was on the floor. And my pants were wet. What the fuck?

  Slowly, it started to come back to me. Cillian and the bottle of whiskey. My dad offering to look at the steer's hoof.

  I wasn't alone. Someone was in there with me. I rolled over and then spent a good 30 seconds sweating and fighting to control the nausea that roiled my stomach like a storm-tossed sea.

  "Cillian?" I croaked at the figure sitting at the kitchen table, backlit by sunlight so bright I couldn't actually tell if it was my brother or some kind of hangover angel, come to mop my brow and bring me cups of chilled juice. Fuck I was thirsty.

  "It's not your best look, son."

  Fuck. It was my dad. What the hell was he doing in my trailer?

  "The hoof..." I started, retching as my dry throat struggled to get the words out. "The hoof – is it – did you –"

  "The hoof is fine, Jackson. To be frank I'm a lot more worried about where your head is at than some steer's hoof."

  The hoof was fine. Good. Treatment would have meant being unable to sell the beef as organic. Unless my dad actually had to treat it, that is.

  "Wait," I said, struggling to get myself into a sitting position. Jesus Christ, how much did Cillian and I drink?! "Did you have to, uh, did you –"

  "Do you know what day it is?"

  I looked up, shielding my eyes from the blinding daylight. Did I know what day it was? My dad didn't ask questions like that unless the answer was bound to embarrass someone. Had I been passed out all night? Was it the next day? And what day was it yesterday? Thursday. No, Friday. Which would make today... Saturday? Right?

  "Saturday?" I suggested hopefully.

  "It's Tuesday, Jackson. And I think you need to put some clean pants on."

  Tuesday. Tuesday? Wait. How could it be Tuesday? Where was Cillian? What the hell did my dad want, so I could give it to him and go back to sleep? And if it really was Tuesday, what was Hailey thinking about my whereabouts?

  Hailey.

  That thought woke me up. She was a worrier. She would be freaking out by now. I reached into my pocket but it was empty. Goddamnit.

  I lurched to my feet and began stumbling around the trailer, raking my sore eyes over every surface.

  "You looking for this?"

  "Yeah," I grunted, grabbing my phone out of my dad's hand.

  There were no messages from Hailey. Not a single one.

  "What the fuck?" I grumbled.

  "Son, we'd like you to come up to the house. We need to talk to you."

  "I'm good," I told him. "If you're gonna lecture me just do it here."

  "No one's going to lecture you. It's good news, actually. Well – mostly good news. And if you're looking for a message from that grocery store girl, we need to talk about her, too."

  He couldn't let a single opportunity to talk shit about her go. Not a single one. 'Grocery store girl.' One day, I was going to refer to my stepmother as a gold-digger and finally get myself into the fistfight that had been brewing between me and my dad since I was 12.

  Twenty minutes later I was sitting in clean jeans at the dining room table in the main house with my dad, Darcy and two of my brothers – Cillian and Patrick. I wouldn't have gone, but he said we had to talk about Hailey and I wanted to know what it was about.

  "So what is it?" I asked, downing the entire glass of water that had been placed in front of me. "What do you have to tell me about Hailey?"

  A flash of annoyance crossed my father's face. "We've got more important things to talk about, Jackson. Let's get them out of the way first, shall we?"

  "Is something wrong?" I asked, my chest suddenly tightening.

  "Nothing's wrong," Darcy replied, resting one perfectly manicured hand on the table. "She's fine. But your father really does have something important to talk to you about."

  "Fine. What is it?" I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms.

  No one had anything to say about how I'd apparently been blacked out for days – but they sure had a lot to say about everything else.

  Turned out my time in ranching purgatory was over. Turned out I passed the test and 35% of Devlin Ranch was mine – rising to 50% in 5 years time, before I would even be 30 years old. Turned out I didn't have to live in that goddamned trailer for one more day, and my dad was paying me a bonus of $300k to build my own place on the property, away from the main house. A real place of my own.

  It was weird, though. The atmosphere in the room was weird. There was no back-slapping, no congratulations. If anything, they all seemed oddly on edge.

  And it didn't take me long to find out why.

  Because Hailey Nickerson was fine – as far as they knew, anyway.

  She was also gone.

  Gone to New York City. Gone without a word. Talk of the town, Darcy said. One of Sweetgrass Ridge's own, off to New York and a new life with the sophisticated artsy set.

  I remember simply not believing them at first. Because it wasn't believable, what they were saying. I knew Hailey Nickerson. I knew her better than I knew myself. I knew she loved me. I knew she wouldn't leave me.

  And then I remembered those unanswered messages. And the fact that there still hadn't been anything from her and it was days later.

  "Jackson!" My dad yelled when I pushed the chair back from the table so hard it left a dent in the wall. "Jackson, get a hold of yourself!"

  Cillian chased me all the way back to the trailer, yelling at me to stop. Before I could get into my truck, he grabbed my shoulder and turned me around so we were face to face.

  "What was that?" I shouted, angling my head towards the house. "What the fuck happened, man? We share a bottle of whiskey and I pass out for 4 fucking days? And now Dad's had a change of heart about the ranch and oh yeah, almost forgot, my girlfriend and the only reason I didn't jump off a fucking bridge months ago is – what? Gone? She's just gone? How do you know? How do any of you know any of this?!"

  "She got into that school," my brother replied, understanding which of my questions was most important to me. "That art school in New York. She got in and – I mean, can you blame her? Wouldn't you do the –"

  "HOW DO YOU KNOW?" I yelled again.

  "It's Sweetgrass Ridge," Cillian replied calmly, enjoying the fact that I was losing my shit and he wasn't losing his. "Everyone knows everything – you know that. Darcy heard it from someone at the Super Mart, I think. You knew about it, too. You were ranting and raving about her for hours, going through my whiskey like it was apple juice and –"

  "What?" I asked, baffled. "What did you say? I knew about it? No I fucking didn't! You came over here on Friday or Saturday or whenever the hell it was with the whiskey and the chit-chat about burying the hatchet. What the fuck are you talking about that I knew? The first I heard anything about it was just now, in the house."

  Cillian looked down at the ground. "That's, uh – that's not how it happened, man."

  Was I losing my goddamned mind? I'd had too much to drink a few times in high school. OK, maybe more than a few times. Sure, there'd been times when I'd wake up on people's sofas and not quite remember how I got there. But a bender so intense I lost 4 days? Poof, just like that?

  Even a
s I argued with my brother, though, a nagging doubt entered my mind. If anything was going to send me straight to the bottle – and oblivion – it would be Hailey leaving me.

  "Are you shitting me?" I asked, my voice suddenly more pleading than angry. "Cillian, listen. I know Dad doesn't like her. I know that. But she wouldn't just leave. She wouldn't do that."

  He still wouldn't look me in the eye. At the time, I took it for awkwardness. The awkwardness of having to break very bad news.

  Hailey was gone?

  She wouldn't do that.

  "She wouldn't do that," I whispered. "She wouldn't. She –"

  "She's gone." Cillian responded shortly. "Bitches, right? Can't live with 'em, can't –"

  Before he could finish I grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the truck. "Shut up, asshole! You don't know a single thing about Hailey, because none of you assholes ever bothered to give her a chance! So don't think you can tell me what –"

  My brother put his hands on his chest and shoved me away. "Get your fucking hands off me, Jackson. I didn't do shit. And it's got nothing to do with me if some dumb slut thinks New York Ci–"

  I punched him. I punched my brother full on in the face, hard enough to send him reeling backwards, grabbing his nose and howling with rage. And right away, he punched me back – a hard blow to the chin that I didn't quite manage to dodge.

  Within less than a second we were on the ground, trading blows and bellowing at each other. I don't even know who won. All I know is my jaw hurt, my right hand hurt, and Cillian was bleeding when our father and two of our brothers managed to pull us apart.

  "Don't act like animals," my dad admonished as we were held apart, panting and eying each other.

  But I had bigger things to worry about than Cillian Devlin. Or Jack Devlin, or the Devlin Ranch. When Patrick and Connor loosened their grips on me I jumped into the truck before my dad could launch into a lecture and reversed wildly down the driveway towards the main road into town.

  ***

  The first thing I noticed was that her mother's car wasn't parked in the usual parking spot. No reason to panic, maybe she was at work? But even as I knocked on the door it's like part of me could sense that whatever lay on the other side of it wasn't going to reassure me about anything.

  "Hailey?" I called out, knocking again.

  Nothing, no sound from inside. Maybe they were both at work? Hailey did say she was going to ask for more hours.

  I knocked again, harder that time.

  There was still no sound from inside. I walked around the side of the building and, after a quick glance around to check if anyone was watching, jumped over the fence to the little outdoor patio at the back. The sliding glass door was locked when I tried it so I leaned in close to the glass, holding my hands up around my eyes to block the light and see inside.

  My hands immediately fell back to my sides and my stomach dropped into my feet.

  No. No. No. She wouldn't leave. She just wouldn't...

  But there was no mistaking the fact that the condo was empty. Almost. There were still a few boxes scattered around on the floor, a random dish sitting out on the counter. But it was otherwise empty. And as I was standing there in shock a man appeared in the living room and spotted me.

  "Where are they?" I asked, my words pouring out in a rush when he opened the sliding glass door. "Where are the Nicker–"

  "What the hell are you doing out here? You interested in renting the – oh. You're Jackson Devlin, aren't you? This probably isn't your type of place, if you're looking for somewhere to –"

  "Where's Hailey?" I cut him off. "Where are the Nickersons? Did they move into a different unit?"

  The man looked me up and down, and I knew if he hadn't recognized me as a Devlin he would have told me to get the hell off the patio right then and there.

  "No, they left. Left town. Real quick, too. The young girl got into some big fancy school in New York, did you know that? That's something, ain't it? Coming from a place like this and –"

  He probably said more than that. I don't remember. I do remember a sudden loud rushing sound in my ears and staggering back to my truck clenching and unclenching my fists because I didn't know what else to do and I didn't know how to process the information I'd just been given. The empty condo. The maintenance man's words.

  She was gone.

  Back in the truck, I wondered if I was dreaming. Everything was surreal. The 4 day bender I could barely remember, my dad's sudden change of heart about my worthiness to own part of the ranch, the lack of communication from Hailey herself – and then that awful, empty condo.

  I stayed up all night in my trailer, sitting at the kitchen table in the dark with a glass of water and staring at my phone, willing it to buzz with a message notification. I could have called her or messaged her again, but my pride was already kicking in. It was her turn. Especially if she really was gone, and she really did leave me in the way it was starting to look like she did.

  I don't remember thinking about anything much. I couldn't think. All I was capable of was feeling, and all I was feeling was loss.

  When dawn was just about to break, I finally knew it was true. She was gone. She was gone and she hadn't even bothered to tell me.

  I couldn't even tell myself she was pissed off about the 4 day bender, because she'd stopped responding the day before Cillian even came over with the whiskey.

  I remember when my mom died I used to have these weird moments of consciousness every now and again, amidst the torments of grief. It would just hit me as I sat at the kitchen table watching my dad try to make sandwiches for 5 boys, or sat in class at Sweetgrass Ridge Junior School. The fact of my mother being dead would just swim up in front of my mind and sit there. It was no longer something that might happen. It was happening. Right then. To me.

  Those same weird, transitory moments of perspective came back to me that night in the trailer. Not just the suffering, but the awareness of suffering. The 'oh, so this is what it feels like to have a broken heart' moments as the sourness and physical exhaustion of loss spread through my veins like a sickness.

  I've never been good at sitting with my emotions. Not the awful ones, anyway. As soon as it really sank in that Hailey was gone, I started to itch with the need to do something. Anything. At about 6 a.m., what I did was put my fist through one of the trailer's flimsy walls.

  So apparently everything my dad ever said about women was true? They really were the duplicitous, lying, absolutely cold-hearted half of the species?

  I mean sure, decide to ditch the man you love to go to New York City and art school. Maybe I could understand that, even if it hurt like hell. But to do it like that, to just up and leave without even telling me? To do it in a way guaranteed to maximize my pain at the expense of her own?

  "How didn't I see it?"

  That's what I asked my dad when he showed up around 10 to find me still sat at the kitchen table, staring into space.

  He opened a cupboard. "Jesus, Jackson. You've got no food in here. Come on, let's get going, there's some papers I need you to sign."

  I didn't respond.

  "You should have listened to me," he continued, "when I told you how women are. You're lucky it was just that little grocery store chickie. I hope you're not planning to sulk about this all week, though. Let's ride up to the top pasture and check the yearlings. It's been such a late spring and the ground is a little too fuckin' muddy for my liking – not good for their hooves. Jackson! Did you hear me? Let's go!"

  Sometimes a side effect of having awful shit happening can be an new understanding about other parts of your life. My dad didn't say anything surprising. His dismissive tone wasn't new. I guess maybe you could say I had a moment of clarity.

  Jack Devlin didn't give a shit about me. He gave a shit about his legacy and his ranch and I guess you could even say he gave kind of a shit about his family, if only when it came to how we made him look. Hell, even Darcy knew if she started slacking on all t
hat shit she was constantly pumping into her face my dad would have been out in a hot minute. My father walking around Sweetgrass Ridge without a hot young wife on his arm? There was no way that was happening.

  Jack Devlin giving a single fuck about the fact that I'd just lost the girl I loved? There was no way that was happening, either.

  Hailey was gone. And in realizing and accepting that fact came a kind of terrible, unwanted freedom. She was the only thing I cared about. Without her, I was free. Without her, nothing mattered.

  "What are you looking at?" My dad asked when I stood up from the table, my limbs aching with the inertia that had kept me there all night.

  I stared at him for a second, and then around at the trailer I was never going to see again. Then I turned around and walked out the door.

  "Jackson! Jackson, where do you think you're going? Jackson! Get the fuck back here!"

  I laughed as he ran after the truck, waving his fist in the air uselessly. Maybe one day we'd get around to having that fistfight – but not that day.

  He chased me all the way down the driveway and almost all the way to the main road before I put my foot on the accelerator and left Jack Devlin, Devlin Ranch, and everyone who lived there behind.

  ***

  Just outside the Sweetgrass Ridge city limits there's a bridge that crosses over the Yellowhead River as it meanders its way through the foothills. Sometimes it runs almost dry, but it was a wet spring that year – as my dad said.

  I pulled off the road before crossing the bridge and took my phone out of my pocket one more time. Still nothing. My heart beat fast in my chest, but I couldn't do it without one more try.

  Is it true? I wrote. You've gone to New York and you didn't feel the need to tell me? If there's some explanation for all this let me know. This sucks. Msg me.

  Part of me hated myself for being so pathetic. So needy. But another part had to know. I sent the message.