But Aiden knew she was giving him undeserved credit.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
She smiled sadly and then rejoined her husband on the street.
Aiden looked up at Gwen again.
“Sorry about all that.”
“It’s okay. I think. I mean, I don’t know what it is, but . . .”
“How good are you at keeping a secret?” Aiden asked.
When Aiden had told her everything he was willing to tell about his week, they ate in silence for a time. Two or three minutes at least.
Aiden figured this would be the last he would see of her. After what he’d admitted. Then again, what did it matter? He had a girlfriend anyway. Even if they were on a break. It’s not like this was going anywhere special.
“It’s not a bad thing, you know,” she said. Startling him.
For a moment he only stared.
“It’s a terrible thing.”
“Well, I’m sure it feels bad. But to have that kind of empathy with what a helpless animal is feeling? That’s good. I wish my own son could be more like that. The world would be better. You know? We couldn’t do as much harm if people could feel what they were doing.”
Aiden swallowed his mouthful of salmon and stared at her for another beat or two. He could tell that his mouth was slightly open. He didn’t speak.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Oh. Sorry. I guess because . . . what you’re saying never even occurred to me. I never once saw it as anything but a curse. It’s been a curse, really. I feel like my whole life is coming down all around me. Stuff it took decades to build.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
One of her hands, her right one, slid across the table and landed lightly on Aiden’s arm. His skin tingled where her skin touched it. They both stared at the hand for a second or two, shocked the way static electricity shocks. At least, Aiden felt it that way. Then she quickly pulled back again.
“I think I should have said this before,” Aiden said quietly, and his tone made her face flush red. Or something did. “And I’m sorry if I waited too long. But . . . I have a girlfriend.”
“Oh,” she said. As though trying to sound casual, and not hurt. She sounded hurt.
Oh crap, Aiden thought. Now I’ve gone and messed things up again.
“At least, I think I have a girlfriend. She just told me she wants a break from me. But I don’t think that means I’m free to get too close to somebody else.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry if I should’ve said that right up front.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s just a friendly lunch.”
“Right,” Aiden said.
But it wasn’t. Or, at least, it was beginning not to feel that way.
“Won’t she be mad when she finds out you took me out to eat?”
“Oh yeah. Very.”
“Why even do it, then?”
“That’s actually a really good question. So I’m not going to answer off the top of my head. I’m going to think on that for a minute.”
They ate in silence for a time. Aiden had mostly lost his appetite, and he could not keep his mind off the pain and getting home to the medication that would ease it. But he just kept shoveling in the food out of habit.
The music made it hard to think. It was as though Aiden could no longer ask his brain to do more than one thing at a time.
“I needed to talk to somebody,” he said. It wasn’t the result of any apparent thought process. It just came out. “I tried to talk to her, but she wasn’t having any of it. She does this thing where she controls people with her anger. She wants life a certain way. If you don’t do everything just right, she’ll punish you with her anger.”
“Punish?”
“Not like that. Not physically. She’ll just make your life so damned uncomfortable by being mad at you. And . . . I hate the turmoil. Always have. Can’t stand any kind of fighting. So I tend to give in and do what she wants. But when she said she wanted a break today . . . it was like I had nothing left to lose anymore. Like maybe I could just be me. It felt good. It was this amazing experience to do what I wanted. What was best for me. And if she gets mad, then she does. I hope you don’t feel like that’s using you. I didn’t mean for it to be that way.”
“No. Not at all. I’m glad I could be somebody for you to talk to.”
“Me, too. Because I’m fresh out of that.”
“I think you have people all around you who want you to talk to them.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe they wish I could. But I can’t. It’s just not something they could ever understand.”
As he walked her to her car, she said it.
“You could see somebody, you know.”
Aiden didn’t know what she meant by it. Not at first. He thought she was saying he was free to date, which they had both agreed he was not.
“See somebody?”
“Like a professional.”
“A professional what?”
“For a year or two before I left Sacramento I was seeing a . . . counselor. You know. You don’t have to be crazy—that’s a common mistake. You can just be somebody who’s under stress or can’t quite figure out your life right in that moment. It helped me. It helped me see I had to leave my marriage.”
They stood in the street together for a moment, near the driver’s door of her car. It was an older Toyota. Green. Aiden was thinking you didn’t see a lot of green cars anymore. Everybody went for black or white or silver these days. He purposely ignored the cars and trucks that passed them by, because he assumed their drivers were mad at him. Or worse yet, wanted him to confide in them regarding his recent troubles.
“I’m sorry,” she said, probably because he wasn’t answering. “Maybe I shouldn’t have suggested it.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s another one of those things I never would have thought of in a million years. But it’s not a bad idea.”
“Okay, good. I was afraid I offended you. Well. Thanks for lunch.”
“Thanks for having it with me.”
“And don’t worry. I don’t even know anybody yet. Around here. Except you. And even if I did . . . I mean, when I do . . . I’m not one to tell tales.”
“Thanks.”
Aiden had no idea what to say, or how to end their meeting. He couldn’t just turn and walk away. He wanted to say something like “Okay, ’bye” and make a break for it. But his mouth wasn’t working right.
He stepped in and gave her a quick, awkward hug. She hugged back, just for a second, and it was all he could do not to cry out in pain. But he kept it to himself.
“See you,” she said.
“Yeah.”
As he turned back to his pickup truck, he saw her. Livie, who absolutely should have been at work—who wouldn’t take off to have lunch with him because there was no one to cover her job—was sitting in her car at the end of the block. Watching him.
When he got home, Aiden took two of the painkillers and turned off his phone, then napped briefly on the couch.
When he woke up, he turned on the phone again. There was a message from Livie. As he’d known there would be.
He played it. Wincing. Trying to listen and not listen at the same time.
“We’re through, Aiden. Through. I’ll box up anything that’s yours in my house and give it to Trey and you do the same. But don’t try to call me or talk to me. It’s over.”
Right, Aiden thought, clicking to delete the message. I knew that.
Everything else I thought I wanted is over, so why not?
Chapter Eight
The Parting
A couple of days later Aiden woke in the morning and decided he couldn’t tolerate his neighbors’ rabbit situation a moment longer.
At first it had bothered him only as he was driving by his neighbors’ property. Especially if one of them was being culled for slaughter. Or had been recently. Or was about to be. But the moments of panic had g
otten more protracted, and closer together. And now Aiden could feel it even when he was home in bed.
He rose, dressed quickly, combed his hair, and drove his truck to the ranch closest to his own. About half a mile down the road.
Aiden honked at the gate, because it was padlocked.
His neighbor Benny came out of the barn and waved to him. A little suspicious but not downright hostile. Benny walked closer.
“Wait a minute,” he called to Aiden. “I’ll go inside and get the key.”
“Don’t bother,” Aiden called back. “I’ll come see you on my feet.”
He shut down the truck’s engine and stepped out, ducking gingerly through the boards of his neighbors’ fence.
“What can I do for you, Aiden?”
“I came to talk to you about your rabbits.”
Benny tipped his cowboy hat back on his head. As if his brain needed fresh air to comprehend a conversation. “What about ’em?”
Aiden took a deep breath and noted that all was still. The rabbits seemed to rest in a state of relaxation. Relatively speaking.
“How many have you got?”
“Twenty-some, but I couldn’t tell you exactly. Depends on who gave birth and if all the kits survived.”
“You eat them yourself or sell them for food?”
“They’re just for me and Estelle.”
“Would you consider selling me the whole lot of them?”
“Um.” Benny paused. Scratched his head in front of his battered hat. “I suppose. If the price was right.”
“Well, you tell me then, Benny. You make me a special price. For what it would cost to sell me every rabbit you got and not buy any more.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s pretty simple, really. You sell me all your rabbits and go out of the business of raising them. If you get a taste for rabbit, you can buy one somebody else raised and slaughtered. You just tell me what it’s worth to you to make that happen.”
As he pulled off the road and onto his ranch’s long dirt driveway, he saw Derek and Trey waiting for him. Standing with their arms crossed. Aiden could practically smell a confrontation waiting to happen. Smell it like coffee brewing.
He parked his truck in front of the barn and turned off the engine, stepping down into the dirt.
“What?” he said simply.
“This true what we’re hearing?” Derek asked. He seemed to have appointed himself ringleader. Of a very small ring.
“Now how the hell do I know what you’re hearing?”
But he knew.
“Something about how the cattle’s feelings are more important than ours all of a sudden?”
“Who told you that?”
“Who do you think?”
Aiden’s mind swirled with anger. And disappointment. He had thought he could trust Gwen. But why had he been so sure? His head and ribs hurt. He wanted to go inside and hit the medication bottle, but this mess required sorting out.
“She swore she didn’t tell tales,” he said bitterly.
“Of course she tells tales, Aiden. Come on. You’ve known her four years. When have you known her to miss out on a good piece of gossip?”
Aiden’s insides cleared. Just like that. Like silty water when the sludge settles out, but faster. Suddenly you can see the bottom. See everything.
Meanwhile Trey had said nothing. He only stood silent, two steps behind Derek. Like the coward he had always been.
“Livie told you,” Aiden said.
“Of course Livie told us. Who else did you think? Look, to some extent your business is your business, Aiden, but you’re not the only one whose livelihood depends on this little operation. Trey and I got bills, too. So we got one question for you. We’re supposed to take forty head to the feedlot tomorrow. That’s how you make payroll, in case you forgot. We taking ’em there or not? I hate to tell you, but if we do, they’ll fatten ’em up and send ’em on to the hamburger factory. You have to be man enough to face that fact, I guess.”
“Don’t press your luck with me, Derek,” Aiden said, his voice steady.
“Right. Whatever. Sorry, I guess. Do we take ’em?”
“You can,” Aiden said. “I’m still on painkillers and not much fit to help.”
It would be a terrible morning, even if Aiden stayed inside the house. A nightmarish morning. But Derek was right. It needed to be done.
And meanwhile everybody was so upset with everybody that nobody even bothered to ask Aiden why there were ten metal cages full of rabbits clearly visible in the bed of his pickup truck.
Aiden woke suddenly to the sound of frightened lowing, and a feeling in his body and gut as if in danger of being crushed from both sides.
The sun was not even fully up.
He wrapped a pillow around his ears and tried to make it all go away.
It did not go.
It did not rely on his sense of hearing. It was something else entirely. And even a few seconds of the feeling was more than Aiden could stand.
He pulled himself stiffly out of bed and ran to the front door, still wearing only boxer shorts and the compression wrap around his ribs. Out into the cool, mostly dark morning. Feeling terrified. Battered. Unable to hold still in his panic. Feeling as though he had no space to breathe.
As though his life were almost over.
Derek and Trey had the stock trailer filled with ten or so steers, and they had just put the truck in gear and begun to drive.
“Stop!” he shouted after them.
The truck and trailer braked with a puff of dirt, and Aiden felt the jolt of bodies trying to balance. Felt the fear of being trampled if he went down.
Aiden caught up with the truck and flipped the lever that allowed the trailer gate to unlatch. He swung the door wide, more concerned about the terror in his mind than the pain in his ribs. He stood as far back as possible to keep his bare feet safe from trampling hooves.
The cattle came surging out.
They ran to the gate, hoping to rejoin the herd in their familiar pasture. The gate was closed. But they settled there. They settled on the inside of themselves, waiting to be let back in. So Aiden settled, too.
He looked up to see Derek standing in the dirt in the dim light, not three paces away.
“Open the gate and let them back in,” Aiden said.
“Hell I will. You want ’em back in, you put ’em back in.”
Aiden walked to the pipe fence. He didn’t want to push through the cattle to the gate, because his feet were still bare. So he cut a wide path around them, climbed over the fence, and opened the gate from the inside.
The steers loped up the hill to rejoin their herd.
As he latched and chained the gate, he saw both Derek and Trey moving in his direction. He tried to feel nothing about the fight headed his way. How had he used to do that? Why couldn’t he anymore?
“So, you want to tell us how you plan to make payroll?”
Derek had spoken. Trey was still hanging back.
“I can cover you guys for a month at least.”
“In other words, this’s our notice.”
Aiden stood a moment, gulping air. Realizing how nearly naked he was. Asking his brain to grasp the moment. Still waking up, really.
“I suppose it is. I’m sorry, guys.”
“So it’s true. You care about them now more than you care about us.”
“You’re grown men. You’ll find work.”
Derek moved in. Close enough to engage Aiden’s eyes in the dim barely dawn light. Close enough that Aiden assumed a fist might be about to swing in his direction.
He cut his eyes away to telegraph that he did not want to fight.
“I remember your daddy, Aiden. I knew Harris. Don’t forget that. This was his legacy. If he could see you right now, he’d be ashamed.”
For a moment—just for the flash of a fraction of a second—it was almost Aiden’s fist that swung. Almost. He told himself, silently, Don’t you dare.
“Get the hell off my property,” Aiden said, sounding reasonably composed. Far more composed than he felt. “Don’t come back.”
“So now you’re revoking notice.”
“You revoked it for yourself, when you said what you just said to me.”
They stood, almost nose to nose, for another tense second.
Then Derek peeled away.
“I take it back,” he called out to Trey. “I said don’t tell him. I was wrong. Tell him.”
Aiden almost said, “Tell me what?” He wisely refrained. There was no need to push. Whatever this news turned out to be, it was speeding toward him like a freight train. You don’t tell the train that’s bearing down on you to hurry up.
“I asked your ex-girlfriend out on a date,” Trey called, his voice full of puffed-up arrogance. “And she’s so mad at you, she actually said yes.”
It hit Aiden’s gut the way the two men had clearly expected it to hit. It roiled and twisted in his stomach like a nauseous cramp. It was over with her, so it shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. He had lost a battle, and now the winner was gloating. It couldn’t not hurt.
He refused to let them see.
“Well, I’m glad she at least has some good reason for it. It sure as hell wasn’t going to be for your good looks or your sparkling personality.”
For a moment or two, Trey behaved like a windup toy. He came toward Aiden, he jerked away. He balled his fists, he let them drop.
“Forget it, Trey,” Derek said. “Let’s just go.”
And they did.
They left Aiden alone, barefoot and nearly naked, in the near dark, on what had used to be a small but thriving cattle ranch.
What it was now, Aiden couldn’t say.
PART THREE
AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY
PRESENT DAY
Chapter Nine
The Remembering
By the time he had given Hannah what he thought was a brief just-the-facts outline of the recent turmoil that was his life, he looked at the ticking clock and saw that forty minutes of his session had flown away.
“These are fifty-minute hours,” he said. “Right?”
“That’s right.”
The Wake Up Page 9
