10. Epilogue 2
Ty
Four years later
My daughter stole my hat.
She is two years old, her name is Emery, and she is currently running through the living room with my hat over her face, which means she cannot see, which means she is about to hit the bookshelf.
I count to three in my head. On two, she collides with the bottom shelf and sits down hard on the floor.
She pulls the hat off. She looks at the bookshelf. She looks at me. She laughs.
This is my life now.
“Em, give Daddy his hat.”
“No.”
“Emery.”
“No hat. My hat.”
She puts it back on. It covers her entire head. She stands up and runs toward the kitchen, arms out, navigating by memory and hope.
Kayla intercepts her at the kitchen doorway. She scoops Emery up, removes the hat, and hands it to me over our daughter’s head while Emery protests at a volume that seems medically improbable for a person her size.
“Thank you,” I say.
“She gets it from you.”
“The stubbornness?”
“The hat obsession. She sees yours on the hook and her entire day has a mission.”
Our son, Jack, is four. He is sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal and reading a Barnaby the Brave Horse book.
He reads slowly, sounding out the words, one finger tracing the sentences.
He has Kayla’s blonde hair and my build, which means he is going to be very large and very determined, and Kayla says she is going to need a bigger house by the time he’s twelve.
She’s not wrong. The house that was too big for one man is exactly right for four.
The kitchen has changed. There are drawings on the fridge held up by magnets.
A high chair pushed against the wall. A basket of toys in the corner that migrates across the floor by noon and gets pushed back every evening.
There is a jar of goldfish crackers on the counter and a sippy cup drying next to the sink and a grocery list in Kayla’s handwriting that includes “Pull-Ups, bananas, wine, MORE FORKS.”
We have twenty-three forks. I stopped counting. Kayla has not.
Saturday morning. I’ve already been out.
Fed the horses. Checked the cattle on the Caldwell acreage, which has been my land for years now but I still call it that.
The grass is coming in thick after the spring rains and the creek is running clean and the windbreak trees along the north line are taller now.
I run the ranch. I also consult for two neighboring operations on herd management. The work is steady. The land is good. I expanded the barn last year and brought in three new horses.
Kayla is the Director of Events at Wylde Mountain Lodge.
She was promoted two years ago after the Winter Festival she created drew regional press and doubled the lodge’s off-season bookings.
She runs a team of four now. She still carries a clipboard.
She still makes lists. She still color-codes things that do not need to be color-coded, and when I point this out she tells me organization is a love language and I should be grateful.
I am grateful. For all of it.
The morning unfolds like most do now. Cereal for Jack. Banana for Emery, half of which ends up on the floor. Coffee for me and Kayla. She drinks hers fast because she’s due at the lodge by nine for a wedding walkthrough.
“I’ll be home by four,” she says. “Your mother called. She wants to know what Jack wants for his birthday.”
“He wants a horse.”
“He’s four.”
“He wants a horse.”
“Tell your mother he wants a truck. A toy truck.”
“He has six toy trucks.”
“Then he’ll have seven. We are not getting a four-year-old a horse.”
“Cash had his daughter on a horse at three.”
“Cash is a professional horseman. You are a man who let his daughter steal his hat.”
“Fair.”
She kisses me. Fast, on the mouth, tasting like coffee. Emery reaches for her from the high chair and Kayla leans down and kisses her forehead and Emery grabs a fistful of Kayla’s hair and doesn’t let go.
“Em. Release.”
“No.”
“Emery Kate.”
“No let go.”
I untangle our daughter’s fingers from my wife’s hair. Kayla smooths it back into place, grabs her bag and her clipboard, and heads for the door.
“Four o’clock,” she says.
“I’ll be here.”
She stops at the door. She looks back at the kitchen. At Jack reading his book. At Emery smearing banana on the high chair tray. At me standing by the counter in the kitchen I built years ago for a family I didn’t think I’d ever have.
“I love this house,” she says.
“It’s a good house.”
She smiles. The full one. The one I first saw when she said she’d take the room because it was clean and I had seven forks.
“Bye, Ty.”
“Bye, Kayla.”
She leaves. I hear her car start. I hear the gravel under her tires as she pulls down the drive.
Jack looks up from his book. “Daddy. What’s a ‘bron-to-sore-us’?”
“Brontosaurus. It’s a dinosaur.”
“Is it in the barn?”
“No.”
“Can we get one?”
“No.”
“Can I get a horse?”
“Ask your mother.”
He goes back to his book. Emery drops her banana on the floor and looks at me with an expression that suggests this was my fault.
I clean up the banana. I pull Emery from her highchair and carry her to the window.
The valley is green and gold in the morning light.
The mountains are sharp against the sky.
The cattle are moving along the creek on the Caldwell acreage, and the horses are at the fence line and the barn roof I rebuilt catches the sun.
Emery puts her hand on the glass.
“Horsey,” she says.
“That’s right.”
“My horsey.”
“Sure, Em.”
She leans her head against my shoulder. She smells like banana and shampoo and the lavender soap Kayla buys.
I think about the man who stood in this kitchen five years ago with one coffee mug and one chair and a quiet that lasted eleven years. I think about a woman who walked in with a blue mug and a list of conditions she broke within a week.
I couldn’t tell you what this house sounded like when it was empty.
I’ve tried to remember. I can’t. The quiet that used to live here has been replaced so completely by cereal and banana and laughter and arguments about forks and hats and horses that the silence feels like it belonged to someone else.
It did. It belonged to a man who thought he didn’t have room.
Turns out the room was always there.
“Daddy. Down.”
“You sure?”
“Down please.”
I set Emery on the floor. She walks to the living room, finds my hat on the couch where Kayla left it, and puts it on her head.
It covers her entire face.
She runs.
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Thank you for reading Ridden by the Wylde Mountain Cowboy. Have a great day!
XOXO, Cindy Smoke