8. Dallas
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dallas
The storm’s been throwing punches at us all day.
By late afternoon, it feels personal. The wind’s still shoving at the ranch as if it’s got a grudge, rattling gutters and whistling through every gap this old wood frame has collected over the years.
The world past the barn is a solid blur of white.
Somebody painted over Buckhorn in frost and forgot to leave a way back out.
My legs are half numb, my back aches, and there’s ice in my beard. We’ve been out in it since first light, and the snow just keeps coming.
Boone’s ahead of me on the east fence line, a dark, broad shape through the flurries. Nash is a blur of motion a few posts down, stomping snow off the bottom wire. Clay’s up at the corner, testing the brace post with a gloved shoulder, ready to fight it if it so much as creaks wrong.
Rusty weaves between us all, chest deep in powder.
“Gate’s still holding!” Nash yells, tugging on the chain.
The wind steals half the words, but the thumbs up translates just fine.
“Check the shelter again,” Boone calls back. “If that roof’s sagging, we move ’em to the north lot before dark.”
We slog toward the calf shelter in a line, heads down against the gusts. My eyelashes keep freezing together, and every other breath is glass going in, steam coming out. It’s the kind of weather that turns a ten-minute job into an hour.
A dark shape is already moving near the rough-hewn door of the shelter. My stomach drops, too many years of seeing things that shouldn’t be there in fields. Then the shape straightens, shoulders squaring, and lifts an arm.
Caleb.
He’s half crusted in snow, jacket dusted white, hat pulled low. He gets the door shoved open another foot with his shoulder, then braces it with his boot so it doesn’t slam back on the calves crowding inside.
“Hey!” he calls over the wind. “You guys finally decided to join the party?”
Nash snorts. “Look at this overachiever.”
“Some of us don’t need a personal invitation,” Caleb shoots back. “They’re all in. Roof’s holding. Lost some straw on the north side, but I patched it with bales.” He jerks his chin toward the interior. “They’re spooked, but they’re fine.”
I step up beside him and peer in. Big dark eyes stare back, ears flicking, hides steaming faintly in the cold air. The shelter’s not pretty, but it’s doing its job. The boards I replaced last fall are solid, no bow in the ridge beam, no snow pushing where it shouldn’t.
“You check the line?” Boone asks, nodding toward the frost-rimmed waterer.
“Yeah,” Caleb says. “It’s sluggish, but still running. I wrapped more insulation around the exposed pipe.” He pauses, thinking. “Might wanna crack the valve a hair more before night, if it drops again.”
The words are crisp. No slur, no jittery shifting. No thinking more about the next card game than the calves. His eyes are clearer than I’ve seen them in I don’t even know how long.
Rehab put some meat back on his bones, but it stripped some of the twitchiness off him, too. He looks… better. Older in the right way. No longer addicted to gambling.
“Good,” Boone says simply.
For a McCoy, that’s a damn medal.
Caleb’s ears go a little pink under the hat. He grins quickly—he can’t help it. “Figured if I’m gonna be the idiot who almost cost you a herd once, I should at least be the first one out here this time.”
“You’re not the idiot anymore,” I say, surprising myself with how easy it comes out. “Now you’re the guy who gets up before the rest of us and does the damn job.”
He blinks at me. He wasn’t expecting that and doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Rehab might’ve given him tools; it didn’t make taking praise any easier.
“Thank you,” he says finally. “I’m not messing up again.”
Boone claps him on the shoulder hard enough to jolt him half a step.
“Then don’t,” he says. “That simple.”
Caleb huffs a breath that might be a laugh and reaches for the shovel leaning near the door again.
We work the rest of the line together, the four of us and Caleb, a little unit moving post to post. The wind cuts, the snow piles, the light starts thinning.
By the time my watch hits somewhere around four, my fingers hurt even through my gloves, and my toes might as well belong to somebody else. Clouds are sinking lower, bleeding gray into gray.
Boone squints toward the house, just visible as a soft, glowing rectangle through the mess.
“We’ll do one more pass after we thaw out,” he says. “If we stay out, Mom’s gonna march down here herself, and I’m not getting chewed out in front of the calves.”
“Speak for yourself,” Nash says. “Her bringing soup would be worth the lecture.”
“She’ll ‘bring’ it to your head,” Clay mutters.
We trudge back up toward the yard, boots disappearing, appearing, disappearing again in the drifts. Rusty gallops ahead, tail high. He’s about to file a complaint with the kitchen that we’re late.
As we hit the porch steps, heat fogs the inside of the kitchen windows, blurring silhouettes moving around in there. The wind claws at my back, trying to drag me off the top step. I shoulder the door open and step into a wall of warmth and noise.
Laughter hits first.
Not just my brothers’ rough barking kind, either. Higher, lighter, rolling over itself in bright waves. The TV is on low somewhere in the background, some animated show making fuzzy sound effects. The heater hums. Pots clink.
And under all that, clear as a bell…
“Okay, okay, but if Star jumps this high, she might land on the roof,” Faith says.
I shove my gloves into my pockets and toe off my boots on the mat, snow melting into dark puddles beneath them. My shoulders drop a notch.
The kitchen smells of tomato soup and grilled cheese.
Mom stands at the stove, ladling soup into bowls lined up on the counter.
Her robe’s been traded for jeans and a sweatshirt, but the look on her face is the same one she’s worn every Christmas storm since I was six: equal parts worry and “I told you to wear your hat.”
“There you are,” she says, without turning. “Soup’s ready. Don’t you dare step past that rug in wet socks or I’ll make you mop.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we chorus automatically, a half-frozen choir of idiots.
But my attention’s already drifting past her, drawn into the living room.
Rose is on the floor by the coffee table, sitting cross-legged on a blanket they’ve spread out as an indoor picnic.
Colored pencils, markers, stickers, construction paper…
Ellie’s art bin exploded, and they decided to roll with it.
Ellie is kneeling beside her, talking so fast that half the words blur together, waving a purple marker in the air.
Wyatt snoozes in his baby swing, socked feet twitching now and then, cheeks pink.
Lila is sprawled on her stomach on the other side of the blanket, feet kicking lazily, socked toes wiggling.
Her braids are a little fuzzy now, strands escaping around her face.
She’s holding up one of her toy horses, voice pitched deep and serious as she makes it trot across the paper arena they’ve drawn.
And next to her…
Faith.
She’s propped on one elbow, hair pulled back into a low, messy ponytail, my old gray sweater layered over the jeans and T-shirt Rose dropped off this morning, still swallowing her to mid-thigh.
She’s got a pencil tucked behind one ear, stickers stuck to the back of her hand, and a streak of green marker on the side of her thumb.
She leans in, as if the story Lila’s telling is the most important thing happening in the world right now.
“…and then Star goes to the big Christmas rodeo,” Lila is saying carefully, “and she’s a little scared, but her best friend Daisy is like, ‘you can do it,’ and her dad says, ‘I’ll be right here,’ so she’s brave. And she wins.”
“Not because she’s the fastest,” Ellie adds, bouncing slightly. “Because she tries the hardest.”
Faith laughs, soft and delighted. It hits me square in the chest.
“That’s a really good story,” she says. “I like that she’s brave because people believe in her.”
Lila glows under the praise. Her cheeks go pink.
“She has a necklace too,” Lila adds suddenly. “Like yours.” She taps her own throat, then reaches out, a little tentative, and brushes the edge of Faith’s locket where it peeks out above the sweater collar. “For courage.”
Faith’s hand flies up, fingers closing around the silver oval. The whole room falls away from her face.
“Necklaces are good for that,” she says. “For remembering who you are, even when you’re scared.”
My heart does a weird, slow roll in my chest.
Ellie pops up suddenly, shoving a piece of paper toward Rose. “Look! Miss Faith helped me draw the barn and the tree and Lila’s horse and Rusty stealing cookies.”
Rusty, lying suspiciously close to the coffee table, thumps his tail and pretends he’s innocent.
Rose smiles. “That is a very accurate depiction of Rusty.”
“Faith taught us how to make the snow look like it’s really falling,” Lila adds, flicking her fingers in a showering motion above the paper. “With little dots and swooshes.”
Faith looks up then.
Her gaze sweeps across the doorway, catches the four of us standing there half thawed, and snags on me.
For a beat, everything else blurs.
The wind still howls outside. Mom clatters bowls. Ellie’s halfway into a new monologue about Star’s backstory. But all of that fades, and the only thing left sharp is the way her wide green eyes find mine.
There’s surprise in them. Relief. A flash of warmth. Maybe she’s glad I’m here.
My pulse kicks hard, once, twice, then settles into a faster rhythm that has nothing to do with the work we just did.
She’s wearing my damn sweater.
It hangs off her in a way that makes my chest ache. It’s familiar and brand new at the same time: her in clothes that smell of home, in a room that’s held every version of my life, laughing with my kid.
A smile starts at the corner of her mouth, small and tentative, then grows.
Not the social one she used to put on at school dances when somebody else’s parents were watching.
The real one. The one I remember from summers at the lake, from late nights in this very room while we argued about movies and terrible country songs.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I manage, because apparently that’s all I’ve got.
“Y’all coming in or just gonna stand there dripping on my rug?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
The spell snaps. The room comes rushing back: sound, light, the smell of soup, the sting of heat on frozen cheeks.
Boone huffs and steps fully into the room, clapping a hand on my shoulder on his way past. He knows damn well I’m stuck in place. Nash follows his nose to the stove. Clay veers toward Wyatt’s swing and gives it a gentle push, the baby grunting in his sleep and clutching tighter at his stuffed cow.
I finally make myself move.
Lila twists around, her whole face brightening when she spots me. “Daddy! You’re back. We made a rodeo.”
“Yeah?” I cross to them, my knees cracking as I crouch near the blanket. “Looks like y’all have been busy.”
She thrusts the paper toward me. Crayon arena, bleachers, a lopsided Christmas tree, two dramatically scribbled horses in the center. A big stick figure in a cowboy hat. Two smaller ones: one with braids, one with… a really big smile, if I’m guessing right.
“Star was scared,” Lila says. “But she did it anyway ’cause she’s brave. And Miss Faith said we can make a sequel.”
“A whole series,” Faith says. “Star at the Summer Rodeo. Star and the Pumpkin Festival. Star Saves Christmas.”
Ellie gasps. “And a prequel. Star as a baby.”
“Star: Origins,” Nash calls from the kitchen around a mouthful of bread.
“Chew before you talk,” Mom snaps.
I ruffle Lila’s hair.
“This is pretty great, Beanpole,” I say honestly. “I’m proud of you.”
She beams, then leans back into Faith’s side like it’s the most natural thing in the world, turning her attention back to the next page.
Something hot and soft and dangerous flares behind my ribs. I straighten too fast, my knees protesting.
“Soup,” Mom says firmly. “Before you pass out on my floor.”
The kitchen’s all steam and heat and the low-grade carnage that comes with too many grown men and not enough counter space.
Boone’s already halfway through his first bowl. Nash is trying to decide if he can sneak a second sandwich without earning a smack. Clay is pretending he doesn’t want seconds while hovering strategically near the stove.
I slide into my usual spot at the table. My shoulders ache as they finally relax another notch. Mom sets a bowl in front of me, soup hot enough to fog my glasses if I wore any.
“Eat,” she orders. “All of it. You’re not too old for me to start counting bites.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, automatically obedient.
Nash tips his chair back on two legs, balancing with a death wish.
“Looks like the girls have adopted Faith,” he says, nodding toward the living room. “Ellie’s already planning matching outfits.”
“She’s good with them,” Mom says without turning. “Not many people look a child in the eye when they’re talking. She does.”
“She really didn’t know about Lila?” Nash asks me, dropping the front legs of his chair with a thump.
I shake my head, swallowing a mouthful of too-hot soup that burns all the way down. “No. We lost touch. I didn’t exactly send out birth announcements to everybody I used to know.”
He nods slowly, accepting that.
“She’s getting the advanced McCoy course,” he says. “Weather, chores, stray runaways…”
Clay snorts. “Storm’ll be gone by New Year’s.”
“Maybe,” Mom says, glancing toward the window where snow still smears the world into gray. “Snow like this has a way of hanging around longer than you think.”
Nobody argues with her. About the weather, or anything else she might be talking about.
Boone nudges my elbow with his. “You doing all right?”
I could lie. Say yeah, fine, I’m good, and swallow it all the way down as I always do.
Instead, I stare into my bowl for a long second, watching the steam curl and fade.
“I don’t know yet,” I say finally. “Feels strange. Good and not good at the same time.”
He huffs under his breath.
“Seems about right.” He takes another spoonful, chews, and swallows. “If you need to get out of your own head for a bit, I can find a gate that mysteriously needs fixing.”
“Gonna need a gate to mysteriously break first,” I say.
He grins. “I know a guy.”
I shove his shoulder with mine, half a shove, half a thanks.
Out in the living room, Lila laughs at something Faith says. The sound threads through the doorway and lands right under my breastbone.
I tell myself it’s just been a long day. Just storm stress and too little sleep, and the shock of the past walking back into my kitchen.
But the truth is, standing there a few minutes ago with snow still melting down my collar, watching my daughter lean against Faith, my heart didn’t just kick. It remembered something.
And now I’m not sure if the walls I’ve built are as solid as I thought.