6. Jack
Chapter six
Jack
E verything about tonight had thrown me for a loop.
No, it threw me into a bottomless pit of quicksand where I felt like I would drown if I didn’t say the right thing.
It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders with the baby bomb Maggie dropped.
And now she was moving with me to Wyoming.
Her and our baby. I had no idea how I had gotten into this situation.
Well, I did—but I sure as hell didn’t expect her birth control to fail.
I was unsure about everything in my life, but I was adamant about staying with Maggie through it all, mistake or not.
Between that and not being able to reach my mom in the last two months, my anxiety was running high.
I wanted it to feel unfamiliar since it had been dormant for a few months, but it came back like a storm I couldn’t escape.
This called for a lot of beer and even more alone time.
While I was scared out of my fucking mind, a very, very small part of this whole situation comforted me knowing I was sharing the heaviness of everything with someone I knew and trusted.
Someone I had known forever. Maggie and I had become closer friends while she worked for me.
She was enjoyable company, and someone I liked myself around. She was just…familiar.
We were two days from packing up my trailer—and our entire lives—and making the almost 2,000-mile trip to Golden Meadow, Wyoming.
With ten horses, most everything Maggie and I owned, and a baby on the way, those two days were stressful as shit.
If I didn’t believe you couldn’t make plans without God laughing at you before, I sure believed it now.
Turned out a packing list for the trailer would have been helpful before I decided to shove everything in the tack room and pretend I had my shit figured out.
It wasn’t until Luis looked in the barn at my pile of things stacked everywhere that he shook his head and helped me pack everything in an organized fashion.
I wasn’t sure how much room I needed to make for all of Maggie’s things, so I allotted over half the space in the tack room for her and kept the backseat of my truck open.
And, because I was afraid I wasn’t doing enough, I bought a car pillow for the passenger seat, a soft blanket, and her favorite snack and drink from when we were kids for the road trip.
I was in the barn looking through a folder of my horses’ medical records and agricultural documents when my dad appeared, two open Pilsners in hand. He offered one to me when I looked up. “How is everything going?”
“Pretty good,” I replied. “Once Luis helped me figure out what was mine and what was yours—you have a lot of my tack just hidden in boxes by the way—packing it all in the trailer was easy. Now it’s just my clothes I have to pack.”
“And Maggie’s coming with you as well, right?” His heavy German accent reminded me to cover my own a little more. My dad raised his eyebrows.
As much as it looked like we had intentions other than work for going to Wyoming together—because let’s face it, leaving so abruptly looked suspicious as hell—it was very common for grooms to follow their employer wherever they traveled to play.
And since whatever tournaments Maggie had lined up to play here were down the drain, she may as well have come with me.
“Yes, she is. I guess she just couldn’t resist working for me.” I winked.
We had decided to keep our pregnancy a secret for the time being. We didn’t want anyone to think we were running away because of some crazy mistake, even though that was exactly what we were doing.
Was it smart? Probably not.
Was it realistic? Fuck no.
But Maggie and I were swimming in a sea of uncertainty, and if we could keep other people’s opinions out of the boat for just a little while, we would do it. We were overwhelmed enough as it was.
“And Richard is okay with that, too?”
“She’s a big girl, Dad. I don’t think she needs his permission to go somewhere else.” I sipped my beer.
“I mean, going away with you. In the times we’ve talked about it, he never seemed too giddy to put you two together.”
My dad was a smart man, and while he wouldn’t put together Maggie’s and my real situation, I needed to diffuse the possibility in his mind of us ever being romantic.
“This is a strictly professional relationship. I don’t want to mess up what I have with such a good partner.
She knows her stuff, and I’d like to keep her around. ”
He clapped me on the shoulder and shook it. “I am damn proud to hear you say that, son. I know your eyes like to wander, but I’m glad you’ve managed to keep this relationship friendly.” I choked on my beer.
“Yeah, nice and friendly.” My gut twisted in shame at his compliment about my lie.
My dad walked down the aisle of the barn, inspecting each stall.
He was a perfectionist, nitpicking at every small detail and ensuring everything was perfect for his horses.
He did the same thing when I was younger, after he told me to clean my room.
Dad would point out every single thing that wasn’t tidy in its place.
“Have you talked to your mother lately?” he asked, staring absently into one of the stalls.
I shook my head after another gulp of beer.
My panic and worry formed an impending cloud of doom above me, waiting to take me down at any second.
Even after the excitement of figuring out the details with Mike, I called my mother countless times, only to be met by her voicemail.
It wasn’t unusual for her to disappear off the face of the earth, but she had never been silent for this long.
I tried to push my worry away with the knowledge that she had somehow managed to survive hundreds of dangerous adventures. What were a few more?
“I’ve called her a bunch.” Dad squinted his eyes and pinched his forehead. “I know she likes her space, but I can’t help thinking she’s gone off the grid for good.”
“She didn’t change her number,” I replied with the confidence I knew my dad needed. “Her voicemail still works.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Leah to lose her phone in a ditch and never come back for it,” he muttered. My heart squeezed. He didn’t speak about my mother much, and because of it, I occasionally misremembered how deeply my dad missed his wife.
And now I was leaving him.
Fuck .
But I put on my mask anyway. “Try not to worry about her too much while I’m gone. You’ve got Luis here to help you and plenty of horses to keep you company. Leah isn’t necessary to be happy.”
That earned a somber smile from my father. He clinked his glass bottle to mine.
“You’re the best thing I’ve got, son. Try not to get yourself hurt out there in the wild West.”
I grinned. “You called the States the wild West before we moved here.”
“How would you know?” my dad let out a chuckle. “You were two years old when we moved from Germany.”
“Mom told me,” I answered as I shoved more beer down my throat. Shit, she gave me a sick feeling. For disappearing on my dad and our family.
“She did love the adventure,” he sighed. “She was the only reason I agreed to move here, you know.”
I raised my eyebrows in reply.
“Surprised we’ve never spoken about this, but no, I never wanted to leave Germany. I was happy in our quiet little village. I had my family, my polo community, my life. It wasn’t until your mother became pregnant and spoke of moving to the U.S. to raise our child that I even thought about it.”
My stomach flipped at the parallels between our situations. I was leaving my whole life here, in Pennsylvania, and moving to Wyoming with the woman carrying our baby to start a new life together. At least, for a little while.
“Anyway, I wanted you to be born in Germany, so we were surrounded by family for the first few years. Since Leah’s mother was born in America, her dual citizenship allowed us to come to America and build a new life here.
Things with Leah didn’t turn out the way I imagined, but I’m damn glad we came.
” He looked at me with a hopeful smile, one that held more hurt than I chose to feel.
“Don’t underestimate the choices life gives you, Jack.
You never know what you’ll get from choosing the road you never thought you would. ”
***
In most pregnancy cases, I’d always heard the nesting stage didn’t start until right before the baby was born. In Maggie’s case, she was three days into it.
“You’re sure you have everything?” she asked for the fourth time that hour.
We were loading the last of her suitcases and a few boxes into the backseat of my truck.
I was pretty sure we had everything. Her knack for preparedness and organization, however, more than made up for the military-grade stress she was putting on us.
“Yes, this is everything,” I answered patiently. I wanted to stay on her good side on this road trip. I didn’t know when the pregnancy hormones were going to kick in, but I was planning on walking on eggshells and catering to anything she needed.
Maggie and I mapped out our stopping points, at which farms we would stay every night. The twenty-seven-hour drive meant we had to stop for two nights and let the horses out to eat, drink, and rest. Plus, we needed our sleep too.
“Okay, I’m just making sure.” Maggie slammed the back door shut and headed towards the passenger door, her small bag in hand. I followed by closing the back door on my side and hopping into the driver’s seat to start the truck.