2. Meg
CHAPTER 2
MEG
TEN YEARS LATER
T he best thing about working with livestock was that you could lean against them and they wouldn’t budge. So if you were, hypothetically, completely exhausted to the point that you couldn’t remember what day it was, a cow made an excellent place to catch a few seconds of rest.
Meg was so wrung out that she had resorted to using a random cow on the lot as a pillow, leaning a cheek against her flank. The fur was warm, soaking into her skin, and Meg could almost imagine she was back in bed. Almost. If anyone asked, she would just say she was checking the animal’s heartbeat or something. She just needed to close her eyes for a few seconds; that was all…
Having to lean against livestock for a few seconds of rest wasn’t exactly where she had envisioned her life ending up, but here she was. It could have been worse. The cow was clean. Relatively clean, at least.
After accepting admission to college and moving three states away, her veterinary degree had somehow morphed from looking after dogs and the occasional rabbit to learning everything she could about livestock. In her first year of college, she’d somehow convinced a local vet to give her a job as a receptionist, mostly because she just kept showing up. After an incident where they’d needed all hands on deck to dehorn a particularly upset goat, Meg’s career trajectory had taken a sharp turn. Some people sought out an adrenaline rush by going skydiving. Meg got her kicks by getting blood work from cattle big enough to total a hatchback. And seeing as this particular heifer was being so accommodating, Meg was going to stretch out her standing nap for as long as possible.
She was so tired that her very eyeballs felt like they were crying out for a break. The hours were always crazy for a livestock vet; that was just part of the gig. They were especially crazy in the role Meg had found herself in. Working for an industrial-sized beef farm, there was a constant stream of tasks that needed her attention. Vaccinations, hoof care, general cuts and scrapes were all ordinary items on her to-do list. Not to mention if an animal decided to get extra spicy or extra stupid, she might have to help wrangle it out of a fence or some other predicament.
Office hours weren’t a thing around here. Animals got sick and injured any time of day or night, not just conveniently between the hours of nine and five. This was all fine, really. Meg had known what she was signing up for. Occasionally you were going to get a call at two in the morning that a heifer was having trouble giving birth and you would have to get up and go to work. The problem was that Mitch, the weasel, had found an excuse to call her out almost every night for a month running.
Industrial lots like this, big farms with thousands and thousands of cattle, ran things a bit different to what was in kids’ storybooks about old MacDonald. It wasn’t a rancher that tended the land, keeping a watchful eye over the herd; it was a company. The company hired employees, just like they had hired Meg. And the company, in its eternal wisdom, had decided to promote Mitch Walsh, of all people, as lead supervisor a month ago. Which was about the same time that Meg’s life had become a living hell. What a coincidence.
“You’ve been a super good cow,” Meg mumbled into the furry flank. “Definitely my favorite cow in the whole yard. You just keep standing there. You’re doing a great job.”
The heifer didn’t bother to acknowledge her gratitude speech, which was just fine. It meant that Meg could keep using her as a pillow for a little while longer.
“Hey, Meg?”
Never mind.
“Go away,” she said, refusing to open her eyes. She was going to squeeze out every second of relaxation that she could.
“Are you okay?”
Luckily Meg didn’t need to open her eyes to know who had found her.
“I’m on a break, Dougie. This better be a life-or-death situation.”
Dougie was quiet and said nothing, but Meg didn’t hear any footsteps walking away either… She sighed and prepared to reenter the world of the living, reluctantly peeking an eye open. But she was also going to keep leaning against the cow for as long as humanly possible.
Dougie was an extraordinarily tall farm hand with blond hair, wearing the same standard-issue coveralls that they were all given. Right now he was looking at Meg with a grimace.
“Is your walkie off?” he asked with much the same hesitation as if he had just poked a snake with a stick.
“Yes.”
“Ah. ’Cause Mitch was saying that he hasn’t been able to contact you.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Life or death, Dougie. Either spit it out or I’m going to continue with my siesta.”
Dougie’s grimace turned into a look of full-blown pain. “Just don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”
Meg somehow found enough energy to raise an eyebrow.
Being a woman in agriculture was… a lot. No matter what position you were in, it was always going to be an uphill battle to get the same respect, let alone the same basic decency, as the boys. Especially when you were built like a toothpick like Meg was, who still looked younger than her twenty-eight years. But when you were the head veterinarian in a place like this, a position that was automatically an authority figure, that uphill battle became ten times steeper. Over the last few years, though, all of the farmhands had seen Meg work her magic enough times and now gave her her due respect. Not to mention that they’d seen her flip out enough that there was a healthy dose of fear in the mix as well. So Dougie acting scared, acting like she was going to bite his head off, had Meg reluctantly opening her other eye.
“What?” she asked, watching Dougie’s throat bob as he swallowed.
“Mitch said there’s a heifer that needs to be assessed to figure out if she’s pregnant or not…”
He took a step back as Meg’s eyebrows rose further up her forehead.
“ That’s your emergency?” she asked, almost irate enough to stop leaning against the cow. Almost. Dougie raised his hands in self-defense.
“Not me! Mitch. And I knew not to bother you about that. You have a schedule for checking that stuff. I know that. We all know about the schedule…”
“You’re babbling, Dougie.”
He swallowed, gulping loud enough for her to hear.
“Mitch said that if you didn’t come and do it within the next fifteen minutes, he was going to be reorganizing your calendar for you since you didn’t know how to ‘time manage effectively.’ Please don’t blame the messenger. I’m begging you.”
Meg straightened up slowly, shoulders square, both her eyes fully open. Dougie’s face went visibly pale, and he took a step backwards.
“How long ago was this?” Meg asked, her voice perfectly calm, bordering on cheerful.
“About ten minutes. Took a little bit to find you, you know, with your walkie off.”
“Right. And I’m assuming he’s in his office.”
“Ah-huh.”
“Excellent. Well, if you could start digging a ditch, I’d appreciate it. I’m going to need somewhere to hide his body after I’m done with him.”
“I’ll grab a shovel. If you need anything else, I’ll be… not here.”
He practically ran away after that, and Meg, suddenly feeling very much awake, strolled towards the office where she would find Mitch.
She didn’t bother to knock before she slammed the door open.
Mitch had the gall to look surprised, sitting at his desk, his computer open and his black hat too big on his head. He was a scrawny man, like someone had stretched a piece of taffy out too thin and given it sentience. He’d never been made for working on the yards, always more of a management sort. That was fine; the world needed people like him. What the world didn’t need, however, was someone who let a little bit of power go to their head. People who thought a managerial position made them a god amongst men. People like Mitch.
Meg wasn’t really the superstitious sort, but one saying had always stuck with her. Never trust a man in a black hat . Once again, it seemed to be proven true in the form of the skinny man behind a desk.
“What’s this about you touching my schedule?” she asked, not bothering to close the office door, which was still swinging slightly.
Mitch blinked, slowly closed his laptop and pushed his wheelie chair away from the desk. He folded his long hands over his stomach in a thoughtful position, like he was some wise old man. Meg had to fight very hard not to roll her eyes.
“Meg, we need to have a discussion about you turning off your walkie while you’re on the yard.”
He said it with the tone of a disappointed school teacher, and it made Meg’s eye twitch. Trying to talk to him about anything, ever, was always a matter of going in circles. Like a snake eating its own tail.
“ Mitch ,” Meg said, with such venom in her voice it would have had Dougie ducking for cover. “Don’t. Touch. My. Schedule.”
Mitch tutted. Actually tutted.
“I wouldn’t have to touch your schedule,” he said, “if you ran it properly. You?—”
“There’s a heifer you wanted me to check?” Meg said, cutting him off. She just wanted to be out of this office, and if it meant appeasing this man, then… whatever. She’d just do it to shut him up.
Mitch paused as if he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You told Dougie,” Meg said, enunciating slowly so that he’d understand. “That there was a heifer you wanted pregnancy checked or you would rearrange my calendar. Which heifer? ”
“Well, not one specifically.”
“What are you talking about?! So you don’t want any heifers checked?”
“I didn’t say that ,” he snipped.
“Then explain it to me. Like I’m four, please, because right now I have no idea what you want, Mitch.”
“You need to be more on top of things,” he said, standing up and puffing his chest out as if he were a bigger man. “How many cattle are out on the yard right now that we have no idea if they’re pregnant or not?”
Meg felt her brain cells dying off as he spoke.
“I have a rough estimate for early pregnancies,” she said, explaining slowly, amazed that she had to explain this at all. “And then solid numbers for late-term pregnancies. Is that the information you want?”
“We need solid numbers for all stages. You need to begin testing sooner.”
Oh. My. God. This can’t be an actual conversation I’m having.
Meg simply didn’t know how to respond. The statement was too stupid to even compute. This was just further proof that this idiot, who was in charge of an industrial cattle farm, had no idea how cows worked. Like, at all.
Meg could only describe her current feeling as an out-of-body experience. In fact, it felt just like the end of high school, where for a moment everything was so awful and so hard that hitting rock bottom had provided her a few seconds of perfect clarity. Back then, that clarity had helped her make the decision to leave for college and not look back. Now it was the same. She was done here. She deserved better, and she’d be damned if she ever set foot here again. The moment she made that decision, a thousand-pound weight lifted off her shoulders, and suddenly, Meg could breathe again.
She took a deep, long breath to savor the feeling and looked Mitch dead in the eye.
“I quit,” she said. The satisfaction of seeing his face drop was priceless.
“What?” he asked, his voice rising about three octaves.
“I quit. I’m quitting. I’m going to walk out that door, and you are never going to see me again.”
“W-why?” he stammered.
“Because, Mitch, I would rather eat a brick than have to talk to you ever again.”
“Meg, c’mon. We can work this out,” he said, sounding even more sniveling than normal, which was an impressive feat. “Let’s talk this out. You can’t just quit!”
“Why not?” she asked.
“What are we supposed to do without you?”
She shrugged. “If you’re such an expert, you won’t need me.”
“I am an expert, actually,” he said, puffing out his chest. “That’s why I get paid more than you.”
Meg actually laughed at that, and Mitch’s face turned pinker.
“I really, seriously doubt that,” she said.
“How much does a farm vet even make?” he scoffed.
“Two hundred thousand.”
Mitch’s mouth fell open like a cartoon, and he was momentarily lost for words. Oh, this was so satisfying. She was going to be riding this high for weeks .
“Anyway,” Meg said breezily. “Have fun getting those super accurate numbers which are absolutely within the realm of possibility. Don’t bother calling me when this place starts burning down the second I leave. Tell Dougie I said bye.”
When she turned to actually leave the room, Mitch finally found his voice again.
“How are we supposed to check the — the pregnancies that are important , which is why we were having this talk ?”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Just make sure you’re wearing a really long pair of gloves.”
Before he could say anything else, Meg shut the door in his face.
It took her call being transferred three times to people of increasing superiority, but Meg was finally able to speak to someone named Fiona at Head Office who actually knew what they were talking about. Thoroughly done with any sort of politics or niceties, Meg cut straight to the chase.
“Give me a transfer or I quit.”
There was the smallest of pauses.
“I’m sure we can organize something,” Fiona said in a calming voice, the perfect representative for Human Resources. “Is there a problem in your current position?”
“Yes, his name is Mitch.”
There was the faint tapping of computer keys from the other end of the line.
“I’ll be sure to set up a meeting with you, Meg,” she said, repeating Meg’s name in a bid for familiarity. “We can discuss your concerns, and I really would love to hear any feedback you might have. In the meantime, you’re a valuable asset to the organization and we’d hate to see you go. Let me just pop you on hold, and I’ll see where we might be able to transfer you.”
The same generic tune came on that Meg had been listening to all afternoon, and she settled back in the seat of her truck. She’d stormed off the lot, grabbed her things and not left her truck since. It wasn’t an empty threat that she really was going to quit altogether if she wasn’t transferred, so she’d made the initial phone call to her boss’s boss with all guns blazing. It had done the trick, apparently. She’d been taken seriously. And Meg let herself preen a little at how they all seemed fairly desperate to keep her on the books. She’d known that she was good at her job, but hearing all of them scramble to make sure she didn’t quit was a nice little confidence boost. At the very least, it made her even more determined to never set foot on that lot again to be talked down to by a scrawny man in a too-big hat.
The music clicked off a lot sooner than Meg had anticipated, and Fiona’s soothing voice returned.
“Are you still there, Meg?”
“Yep,” she drawled.
“Excellent. I’m pleased to inform you that we do have a position for someone of your caliber that we need to fill rather urgently.”
Meg felt herself sink into the seat of her truck like her bones were melting. For all of her bravado, it was a relief to know there was a place for her. Thank God for that.
“Is it another lot?” she asked, because despite everything, jumping straight into a new job with absolutely no information wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
“No,” said Fiona with just a flicker of hesitation. “I understand that you’re in Texas currently?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a property in Wyoming that we’re looking at acquiring,” Fiona continued, sounding more like a thesaurus with every sentence. Wyoming. Jeez, how long had it been since she’d been back there? Too long to think of the answer off the top of her head.
“That’s fine,” she found herself saying. “Wyoming’s fine.” Because what was keeping her in Texas? Nothing really.
Fiona’s relief was palpable through the phone. “That’s excellent, Meg, really. We need someone experienced to evaluate the property and give us some detailed reports on the land, the current livestock, and that sort of thing. We’ll send you with a detailed checklist, of course. It may take a few weeks to get through the whole evaluation since we need to be quite thorough. The current owner has agreed to all of this. He has room and board provided and asks in return that whoever is sent out is able to see to the animals in a veterinary aspect, which I’m sure you’ll agree is quite reasonable.”
It was reasonable, but Fiona was on a roll with her spiel, trying to convince Meg to take it, she could tell. Meg jumped in with her questions before Fiona could steamroll ahead.
“So it’s a small place?” she asked. “This property?”
“Landwise, no, it’s quite a decent property, hence our interest in acquiring it.”
Hence? Who used the word hence? Were all office people like this?
“But,” continued Fiona, back on her sales pitch, “it’s currently run by just one person who is no longer able to keep up with the place. He’s been in contact to finally accept our offer.”
Yeah , Meg thought, I bet you’ve been hounding him for years. She couldn’t help feeling at least a little sorry for this rancher, whoever he was. She knew firsthand how persistent these companies could be when there was a piece of land that they wanted.
“Okay. So where in Wyoming is it? North, south, central?”
“It’s quite remote. It looks like the nearest town is a place called Fordswell…”
Meg nearly choked. Going back to her home state was one thing; going back to a ranch outside her home town was another. Her knee-jerk response was to say never mind, she didn’t want it, no thank you. Then the sensible part of her brain that tended to sound like the voice of her mother chimed in. With the amount of money she earned, she could afford to quit and figure things out, but she’d really be pretty stupid to pass up on a job that was just being handed to her on a silver platter. Maybe it was all some sort of sign from the universe that she should brave going back home and conquer some of her demons or something. Maybe even visit her parents. Maybe.
Either way, spending some time on a smaller ranch, just ticking off a list and looking over a small herd… well, that sounded like exactly what she needed right now.
“You know what? That sounds great,” Meg said, biting the bullet. “I’m guessing you’ll have a bunch of paperwork for me?”
“I will email it straight to you,” Fiona said, sounding ten times more chipper all of a sudden.
The phone call was wrapped up with technicalities and contract talk. Despite the existential dread of moving back close to home after a decade of being away, there was a sense of relief that she really wouldn’t have to go back to working with Mitch. She wouldn’t even have to be in the same state as that idiot anymore. She was just going to work with some guy that wanted to sell his ranch.
So sure, moving back home hadn’t been on the top of her to-do list, but there was no way her new coworker could even be half as bad as what she was used to dealing with.
Right?