Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Rhett
Work usually calms my mind. Fix the fence, move hay. Sweat into your shirt until the thoughts smooth out and the day shrinks back to chores and checklists. That’s the deal I’ve always made with myself: keep your head down, keep the land running, the rest will sort itself out.
This morning it doesn’t.
I run new wire along the north line where the storm bowed posts toward the creek.
Staple, pull, set. The rhythm should settle me.
Instead, it winds me tighter. Every creak of cedar reminds me of the barn last night.
Every catch of sunlight on the wire is her laugh cutting through the crowd.
I bend, set another staple, hear her voice anyway: I’m not afraid of hard. I’m good at it.
I told her to rest. Told myself I was being kind. The lie sits sour. She didn’t need a blanket and a nap; she needed the truth and a place to set it down. I gave her half.
By mid-morning, the sun has burned the fog away. I walk the last quarter mile with my hat pulled low and my hands uselessly empty.
I hear the ATV before I see it. Luke kills the engine and coasts to a stop with a spray of gravel that’ll make me fix another patch of road later.
“Fence looks good,” he says, hopping off. “Only took you six hours to do a three-hour job.”
“Morning to you, too.”
He squints up at the sky, hands on his hips. “Feels different today.”
“That right?”
“Yep.” He toes a leftover staple with his boot.
“Luke.”
“What?” He digs a thermos from his pack and waves it. “Peace offering. Grandma said you ‘forgot how to hydrate.’ Her words.”
I take it despite myself. Coffee hits my tongue hot and sweet, and my shoulders drop a fraction. Damn him for knowing what I needed.
He leans against the post and watches me over the rim of his own cup. “You gonna pretend nothing is happening here? That last night didn’t change things?”
“I drove the tractor, hauled kids around, didn’t hurt anyone—”
“Not the Haunt,” he says, patient in the way only a younger brother can be when he’s about to be a problem. “Her.”
I take another drink and aim for neutral. “She’s a tourist.”
“Uh-huh. And Grandma’s a nun.”
“Are you here to help or drive me crazy?”
“I can multitask.” He tips his head, eyes softer now. “You were alive last night, Rhett. Not just functional. Present. I haven’t seen that in a while.”
“You want me to clap for myself?”
“Nope. I want you to stop acting like caring about someone is impossible.” He taps the post.
“I know it’s not impossible, but it’s not something I can do.”
He sips, lets the quiet settle. “You still carrying the thing with—” He doesn’t say her name. He doesn’t have to. “—like a backpack full of rocks?”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting.” He shrugs, at ease. “I’m just saying, she left. That’s on her. Not you. You didn’t choose the ranch over someone.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It isn’t.” He kicks off the post and dusts his hands. “Besides, this one isn’t asking you to pick. She’s asking you to be honest.” He nods toward the house. “Maybe try it.”
“I was honest this morning.”
“You were scared this morning.” He smiles without teeth. “Happens to the best of us.”
He climbs back onto the ATV and starts it up. Over the engine, he calls, “Festival ain’t the only thing that got your blood moving last night.”
Then he’s gone in a spit of gravel.
I finish the line. It holds. The sun pushes past noon. I move hay in the south barn, clean the gutters on the shed, check the sump at the mill, and anything else that lets me keep my hands busy while my head keeps failing at quiet.
It’s worse in the stillness. I keep seeing Frankie at the fence after the dance, jacket on her shoulders, eyes steady.
I saddle my horse, Teddy, and take him out to the back field because staying in motion is the last trick I’ve got.
The land out there rolls easily, a long sweep toward the cut of the ridge and the silver loop of the creek.
The grass, rinsed clean by the storm, shines like new money.
A hawk shadows us low and then lifts off, bored of pretending to be ominous.
I let Teddy find his pace. The saddle creaks and the soft thud of hooves eats ten minutes, then twenty.
I think about what she said in the barn: You think you’re warning me off, but all I hear is that you’ve been hurt. Simple. True. No judgment wedged in the words. Just a named thing and the space to breathe around it.
By the time I turn back, the sun’s leaning west, smearing gold against the cottonwoods. I stable Teddy, run him down with a brush, and head for the big barn.
Dusk comes fast this time of year. The sky goes purple at the edges, the fields bruising into night, the porch lights blooming one by one like old habits returning.
I head up the yard with that ache in my shoulders that means the day did what it was supposed to.
My mind’s still running, but it’s not trying to throw me anymore.
On the porch, Grandma has a bowl of pumpkin guts and a knife she’s far too casual with.
She’s carved half a cat face into a big pumpkin.
It looks more like a coyote and a raccoon had a baby.
She’s pleased anyway. Frankie sits beside her with a bigger pumpkin and a terrible star.
They’re both laughing at the mess they’ve made.
Frankie’s hair is twisted up with a pencil, a few curls escaping to frame her face. She’s in my flannel again and an old T-shirt that also looks like something from my closet. Her sleeves are pushed to her elbows, pumpkin strings webbed between her fingers. She looks like she belongs here.
Grandma sees me first. “Come tell me why this cat looks like it lost a bar fight.”
“It looks exactly like a cat,” Frankie says, wiping her hands with no success. “A cat that’s been genetically mutated into a cat/rat hybrid.”
“Don’t sass your elders,” Grandma says mildly to Frankie, then to me, “You’ll be honest, won’t you?”
Frankie glances up at me through her lashes, amusement tucked into the corner of her mouth.
The porch light catches in her eyes, little fireflies trapped in amber.
I hang my hat on the hook and sit on the rail because if I stand too close, I’ll forget where and who I am and what I told her this morning.
Grandma points at a pumpkin next to Frankie on the stairs. “There now,” she says. “Carve.”
“I don’t—”
“Boy, you were born on Halloween. You’re going to carve and you’re gonna like it.”
Luke snorts. “He was born in March.”
“Hush. The point stands.”
Frankie bites her lip to hide a smile. “What are you carving?”
“An actual jack-o-lantern,” I say, and cut a triangular eye that comes out more square.
We work like that for a while, quiet, companionable, the porch filling with the sweet smell of pumpkins.
Luke tells a story about the time he tried to make the maze actually haunted with Bluetooth speakers and got chased by a goose.
Grandma corrects his lies and adds better ones.
Frankie invents a game where you have to describe your pumpkin in three words: Luke picks handsome disaster goblin, Grandma picks cat survived apocalypse, and Frankie, after a long, thoughtful pause, gives hers wish, light, forever.
I pretend that last word doesn’t catch on something inside me I thought I’d boarded shut.
When we are done carving, we light candles inside them. The faces glow, crooked, yet perfect in their imperfection. The air cools sharply enough to make breath visible.
Grandma shows us the steps with her carving. “Go on,” she says to Luke. “Carry these to the rail. Rhett, take the stars. Frankie, bring that poor cat so it can haunt the neighborhood properly.”
Luke grabs his armload and salutes. “Aye, Captain.”
He disappears around the post. Grandma gathers her bowl and heads inside, muttering about pie. That leaves me and Frankie on the top step with our pumpkins, and it's too quiet.
“Frankie.”
Her chin tips up like she’s bracing and reaching at the same time. “Yeah?”
“I was wrong this morning,” I say, carefully. “About thinking distance was kinder.”
She holds very still. Doesn’t rescue me. Doesn’t push. Just waits.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I add, honestly, because lying has gotten me here and nowhere else. “But I—”
“Hey!” Luke yells from the yard. “Grandma’s cat-coyote is a masterpiece all lit up!”
Frankie laughs, bright and easy, and the moment breaks before it can make me say something I can’t take back.
We carry the pumpkins down and set them along the rail. The wind shifts colder, the candle flames stutter and then steady. The porch becomes a soft avenue of light. It feels like an altar. It feels like a start.
Grandma returns with a plate covered by a towel. “Biscuits,” she says, triumphant. “Eat while they’re hot.”
She passes one to Frankie, who tears it open and hisses when the steam burns her fingers. Without thinking, I take half, blow on it, and hand it back. Our fingers touch, and the spark I feel is electric.
“Thanks,” she says, softly.
“Yeah,” I say.
We eat and watch the candles burn low. Luke tells another story that has no ending because he likes the sound of his own voice. Grandma nods off in her chair and denies it when she wakes.
After a while, Frankie stands and gathers plates. “I’ll help clean.”
“You’re a guest,” I say.
“And I can help.”
We move around each other in the kitchen like we’ve done it a million times before. When the last dish is in the rack and the counters are wiped, she turns in the doorway and meets my eyes.
“Goodnight, Rhett.”
“’Night, Frankie.”
She goes upstairs. I stand in the dark a minute longer, listening to her steps, then to the quiet that follows, then to my own heartbeat arguing with old rules.
I make a decision and head up the stairs. I stand in front of Frankie’s door and battle with myself.
My knuckles hover, then tap gently against the guest room door. It’s late, the house is quiet, the only sound the faint creak of old wood settling and a distant owl outside.