Aiden looked up and met Derek’s eyes. But his mind was not on the question at hand. He had moved on.
“You got any idea why Livie never showed up here yesterday?”
“Well, Aiden. It’s like this. I would allow for the possibility it might’ve made it back to her ears that this was not the happening spot to be.”
“She could have come to support me. I would’ve done as much for her.”
“If you want a supportive-type girlfriend you’re gonna have to let go of Livie and pick again. You know that as well as I do, buddy.”
“Yeah,” Aiden said. “I guess that’s a decent point.”
Aiden stood at the fence behind the barn and watched his cow horses lope up the golden-brown hill. He had opened the stall doors in the barn. Not even haltered them. Not even led them with a rope. Just opened the doors and trusted them to move in the direction of grass, through the wide-open gate and into the horse pasture. And they had not let him down.
Dusty was another story. Aiden didn’t like the idea of turning a stud out with all those geldings, right on the other side of the fence from the brood mares. So Dusty would stay in. Aiden would have to think of a bigger place to house him, or a way to get him worked.
He heard the four-wheeler, heard its engine. It was coming closer, but he didn’t bother to look around. Just stared at his horses. Watched them go. Felt it like a loss in his belly. They were still his, and yet not the way they had been just a few days ago.
An order of business had been broken. A way of living. Gone.
Derek drove the four-wheeler up beside him and cut the engine.
“Nice to see you up and around,” he said to Aiden.
Aiden said nothing in reply.
“Why’d you turn ’em out?”
“So they can get some exercise.”
“You don’t figure they’ll get their exercise the old-fashioned way?”
“No. I don’t figure they will.”
“How long you think it’ll be before you ride again?”
“Remains to be seen.”
“What’d the doctor say?”
“It’s not about what the doctor said and you know it.”
A long silence. Derek stepped down from the four-wheeler and they stood at the fence together, staring at nothing. The horses had disappeared over the rise.
“You ever gonna tell me what’s going on?” Derek asked after a time. Then, when Aiden didn’t answer, he said, “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. We’re not friends like that anymore. Or maybe we never were. I just don’t know.”
More silence. Aiden had not bothered to put his hat on, and the sun burned where it baked his scalp. A reminder that his hair had gone a little thin of late.
“Let me ask you a question, then, Aiden. I still got a job with you?”
“For the moment, yeah. Of course you do.”
“And after the moment?”
“I don’t know, Derek. I really don’t know what happens from here.”
Aiden waited until nearly 1:00 p.m. before driving into town. Partly because he wanted the bulk of the painkillers to wear off before he got behind the wheel. Mostly because Livie took her lunch break at 1:00.
He parked perpendicular on the street outside the salon. Eased out of the truck and onto the curb at about one-tenth the rate of speed he might’ve shown on any previous day.
When he swung the salon door open with his left hand, all eyes came up to him—both the women cutting and styling hair and the women having their hair cut and styled. They all looked at Aiden. They all stopped talking. Aiden stood holding the door open into all that toxic silence and wondered if this was his world from here on out. Everybody staring at him in utter, wordless disbelief.
Livie stood in the far corner of the shop fussing over a pot of coffee. But Aiden sensed she had seen him. She was moving with that fierce determination that suggested she had some outrage to grasp and control.
Aiden moved through the sea of silence and caught up with her in the back.
“What’re you doing here, Aiden?”
“Nice to see you, too.”
“I heard you were banged up pretty good. Didn’t expect to see you out and around.”
“And you couldn’t even come by to see if I was okay?”
Her eyes came up to him then. Burned through his outer layers and scorched him all along his gut. It was unlike her, tough as she could be. Something had cut her more deeply than usual. There must have been a wound to her pride.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said. “I’m working.”
“Looks to me like that coffee is all made. I think it can do the rest on its own.”
Livie did not cut or style hair. She greeted customers, made appointments. Coffee. Made the hair on the floor go away. Ordered supplies.
“I don’t need you to be snide with me, Aiden. I got things to do.”
“You take your lunch yet? I thought we’d go over to Dennison’s. Eat. Talk.”
“I can’t get away. Nobody to cover me. Besides, I brought my lunch in a bag.”
“I could go to the take-out place and get us something. We could eat it here.”
“I just told you I brought my lunch in a bag!”
Her voice had come up, and he could feel everybody listening. Maybe everybody had been listening all along. Aiden hadn’t heard a single voice that was not his or Livie’s. Not since stepping through the door.
“Maybe we could just talk outside. One minute. We’ll stand on the sidewalk out front. If a customer comes in, you’ll see it.”
Livie sighed a loud and dramatic sigh.
Yeah. It was worse than usual this time. He just didn’t know why yet.
“Fine,” she said. But she spat the word as though it wasn’t fine at all. As though it didn’t even rise to the level of acceptability.
She poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup and Aiden followed her to the door. The people they passed, the hairdressers and their customers, pretended to look away. But Aiden believed their gazes still followed him. Just more peripherally.
She banged through the door and they stood on the sidewalk together in the waves of rising heat, not looking at each other. She sipped at the coffee that Aiden had hoped was for him.
“I could use a cup of coffee,” he said gently.
“Fine. Take this one.” She thrust it in his direction.
“Never mind,” he said, pushing it back. “We okay?” He knew they were not.
“You tell me, Aiden.”
“I don’t know how to answer. I don’t really know what’s going on with you.”
“You? Don’t know what’s going on with me? I think the question here is what’s going on with you. Every single person I’ve bumped into today has asked me, ‘What’s wrong with Aiden?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘What’s got into him?’ Then three people I didn’t bump into called on the phone to ask. You got any idea how humiliating it is to have to tell them I don’t know? To have to more or less admit that you haven’t bothered to share that information with me?”
He watched a one-ton truck go by and slow. Behind the wheel was Charley Ross, who had worked the roundup the day before. Aiden met his eyes briefly, and Charley shook his head and gunned it, driving on.
“You’re right,” Aiden said quietly. “I should tell you what’s what.”
A silence as she waited. She sipped the coffee again and took to tapping her foot, which made it difficult to think.
“It’s hard, though,” he said. “Because I don’t really understand it very well myself.”
“Try,” she said.
“Okay.” He stared down at the hot sidewalk as he spoke. “Something changed in me just recently. And now it’s like . . . like when I’m near an animal . . . dog, horse, steer, buck, whatever . . . when they feel something unusual—really big or really sudden—if they’re scared, or in pain, I feel it too. I don’t want it. I don’t want this to be happening to me, but it just is. I can’t help it. I can’t
make it stop.”
He looked up from the concrete and into her face. She looked mad. He hadn’t expected that. He’d expected his honesty to make things better. To bring out her gentler side. She did have one. He’d seen it. Just not for a while.
“And what am I feeling?” she asked, still tapping that infernal foot.
“You look mad.”
“But you don’t know.”
“Not really. You look and sound mad. But I don’t really know why.”
“So what you’re telling me, Aiden Delacorte, is that your heart breaks for every dog or calf you see, but you have no more idea what’s going on with me than you ever did. Which is a pretty sorry amount to know.”
Oh, he thought. That’s why she’s mad.
He could almost see her point about that. But there was not much he could do. It’s not like he pulled the strings on what he did and did not know.
Meanwhile he was not answering.
“You got nothing to say about that, I see.”
“I told you, Livie. I don’t want the damn thing. I’ve just got it. I don’t know why it doesn’t work on people, too. I don’t know anything about it. I just can’t make it go away.”
Livie shook her head. “I need a break,” she said.
“From what?”
“Us, Aiden. A break from us.”
Then she threw the rest of the coffee into the street just outside the curb and marched back inside the shop.
Aiden did not follow.
Aiden stood in the market, staring into the freezer case. He had no idea how long he’d been staring. Several minutes at least. He had no idea what he was looking for, which likely explained why he wasn’t finding it. The pain had ratcheted up three or four levels of volume, but he didn’t want to take more pills until he was safely home.
“Need help finding something?”
Aiden turned his head to the voice. Gwen was standing by his right shoulder, staring into the case with him.
“Oh. Gwen. Hey.”
“I never did catch your name.”
“Aiden Delacorte.”
“Oh, you’re Aiden,” she said.
He didn’t have to ask what she meant by that. The subtext was obvious. It spoke for itself.
He didn’t answer.
“Can I help you find something?”
“I doubt it. Since I have no idea what I want.”
“Hmm. Yeah. That would make it harder.”
“Thing is, I had my mouth all set for Dennison’s. They have this really good baked brie with slivered almonds. And French bread they make fresh. And their fish-and-chips is something else.”
Aiden liked their ribs, too. But he didn’t add them to his out-loud list. Because he knew he would not have ordered them. Something about chewing on the bones of a steer. It was not the way this day was destined to go.
“Fish? Around here? It is fresh, even?”
“Oh yeah. We get good fish in these parts. The coast is less than a three-hour drive from here.”
“You should go,” she said, sounding very sure.
“To the coast?”
“No, silly.” She bumped his right shoulder with her own. It hurt, but he didn’t let on. “Dennison’s.”
“Oh. Right. See, I’m not good at that. It’s not a takeout place. It’s a real sit-down restaurant. I was never one of those people who could walk into a restaurant alone and sit at a table all by myself. It’s too awkward. I never know where to look. I always feel like everyone’s staring at me.”
Yeah, Aiden thought. That would be the worst. Everyone staring at me.
“I bet they’d make you something to take out,” Gwen said. “I think any restaurant will. Takeout place or not.”
He looked over at her. Right into her face for the first time. A little something stirred inside him as he met her eyes. Something that felt nervous, yet not unpleasant at all.
“You’re right,” he said. “They would. I just have to go ask.”
They held each other’s gaze for a split second longer. Then Aiden looked away. They moved off together toward the door. As they stepped out of the air conditioning and into the outdoor heat, Aiden looked over at her again.
“You’re leaving?” he asked.
“Yeah, I just got off my shift.”
“I thought you worked evenings.”
“No. Not usually. Usually I work days. That one evening when you saw me here, I took over a shift for Maura. She had a cold. It was my only day off, but I needed the money. That’s how it is when you have two kids and you’re on your own. You always need the money. But then subtract the money for the babysitter and I didn’t net much.”
“You eaten?”
“No,” she said, tentatively, the end of the word coming up like a question. She seemed to sense where he was going with his questions.
“Come with me to Dennison’s then.”
“Oh. Well . . . yeah. I guess I could. It would be nice to actually get to know somebody. For a change. And the kids don’t get off school until three. Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.”
It would get back to Livie by the end of the day. If not by the end of the lunch.
He did it anyway.
They sat across the table from each other, a table with a nice white tablecloth and a fresh-flower centerpiece and leather-covered menus. The way people ate when they had the time to treat themselves well. If Aiden hadn’t been dealing with a concussion and two broken ribs, unmedicated, it might have been a lovely moment.
“Oh,” he said, picking up the printed card with the specials on it. “Salmon fish-and-chips today. I know what I want.”
“I’m thinking bacon avocado cheeseburger. I know. Don’t say it. If I ate like that every day, I’d be as big as a house. But I’m thinking of this as more of a special occasion.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort.” Then, before he could say more on the subject, he looked up to see his neighbor Roger walk in with his wife, Nadine. In the middle of a weekday, no less. “Crap,” he breathed out loud.
“What?”
Aiden held the menu up in front of his face. “Somebody I just had a little falling-out with.”
For a few seconds, she said nothing. Then, “Won’t you have to put that menu down when the food comes?”
Aiden laughed a bitter bark of a laugh and dropped the menu onto the table.
“Sorry,” Gwen said.
“Don’t be. Do not be sorry for pointing out when I’m being an idiot.”
“So . . . maybe I shouldn’t ask, Aiden. I don’t know. And you don’t have to answer, of course. But a lot of people were talking about you in the market today.”
“Yeah. They hate me.”
“I don’t think they hate you. I think they’re worried about you.”
“No, I mostly think they hate me.”
A long silence fell, during which the waitress came to take their order. Aiden thought she stared at him a few beats too long, but it might have been paranoia building up.
Then again, it might not have been.
“Okay,” he said to Gwen when the waitress left them alone again. “You deserve an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Common courtesy.”
There was a plant by his right shoulder, a big fiddle-leaf fig, and he felt like it was crowding him. It also needed water, which was a disturbing thing to be able to feel. The condition of its leaves had not visually tipped him off, and Aiden had no special bond with plants. At least, he never had before. Plus there was music playing, just a hair too loud. It made it hard to organize his thoughts.
“Truth is, I made a big public statement over the weekend. I guess I pissed some people off and hurt some feelings. I basically said cattle ranching is cruel. Or . . . I guess it doesn’t have to be, but . . . seems mostly it is.”
“Yeah,” Gwen said. “That could make some waves. Around here. So what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a cattl
e rancher.”
That just sat on the table for a moment. On the clean, starched white cloth. Aiden tracked Roger and Nadine from the corner of his eye. It did not appear they had seen him.
“How long you been in the business?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not even old enough.”
“My dad died when I was fourteen. Not my birth dad, but I thought of him as my dad. He was my stepdad from the time I was six, and then he adopted me. When he died, he left me this ranch I live on. And operate. But it went into a trust. I got it on the day I turned eighteen. Uh-oh. Roger just spotted me.”
Aiden pulled halfway up from his chair as Roger stormed the twenty or so steps across the dining room. At first Aiden’s hands balled up into fists, but then he decided that if Roger wanted to batter him, he would not fight back. He would take whatever his community thought was his due. His debt to pay.
Roger did not assault him. He stopped two or three steps away and unclenched his own fists. The two men stared into each other’s eyes for the count of three.
Nadine came and pulled her husband away.
“Stop it, Roger,” she said. “We’ll go someplace else for lunch.”
Aiden remembered then why his neighbors might be out having a fancier-than-average lunch on a Monday. It was Nadine’s birthday. She was sixty-four today.
Roger turned away and stomped out the door.
Nadine stayed.
She put a hand on Aiden’s shoulder before speaking. “Honey, how are you? We’re all worried about you.”
“I don’t think Roger’s worried about me,” Aiden said. His voice was a tiny bit shaky from the leftover adrenaline of what could have been a fistfight, but he didn’t think it was audible.
“Roger’s a hothead and we both know it. How long have we known you, Aiden? Since you were six years old. And you have not been yourself lately. And I’m worried.”
Aiden glanced at Gwen, who returned something of an “I told you so” look.
“It’s just been a hard week, Nadine. You better go talk to Roger. He’ll be pissed if you’re more worried about me than him.”
“There. See?” Nadine reached out and touched his cheek. “You always were a thoughtful boy.”
The Wake Up Page 8
