Chapter 22 Julian
The call comes through on the landline.
I’m at the kitchen table with my laptop open and a cold mug of coffee at my elbow, and the phone on the wall starts ringing.
Wyatt is out in the fields.
“Duffield.”
“Hey Julian.” My lawyer’s voice has a smile in it, which is not a thing I have heard before. “They’ve come back. Third offer. Are you sitting down?”
“I’m sitting down.”
He tells me the figure.
I do not react. I have trained myself, over fifteen years of negotiation, not to.
“That clears Wyatt’s mortgage.”
“That clears the mortgage and the arrears and the realtor’s fee and leaves a number behind it that I’d like to talk to Wyatt about investing, Julian, when you have a minute.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Take your time. They want a yes by Friday. We have until Friday.”
I hang up. Biscuit, who has decided over the past weeks that I am a person who occasionally drops cheese, lifts her head from the rag rug, considers me, and lowers it again.
I push the chair back.
Wyatt is on the south fence line. I know because I watched him go out at first light and I have not heard the truck start, which means he is still down at the south boundary where the wire has been sagging.
The yard is cold. The frost has gone off the grass but the ground is still hard underfoot, and my breath is white in front of my face.
I cross the yard and go through the gate and down the slope toward the south pasture. I can see him from a quarter mile out: the set of his shoulders, the line of him against the pale grass. I would know him anywhere now. I would know him in a crowd. I would know him in the dark.
He hears me coming and he straightens but he does not turn.
“Wyatt.”
He turns.
Pregnancy has softened something at his jaw, and the weight he has put on has filled the hollows under his cheekbones, and when he looks at me now I can read him.
He reads me back.
“What’s happened?”
“You got a good offer.” I tell him all the details.
His hand comes up, slow, and goes flat against the small hard curve of his belly through the flannel. He doesn’t seem to know he’s doing it. He has been doing it for weeks now.
“It clears it.”
“It clears it. It clears the bank. It clears the arrears. It clears the realtor. There is money left behind it.”
His breath goes out of him in a single long exhale, white in the cold air. He puts his hand over his eyes for a second, then takes it away. His eyes have gone wet but he is not crying. Wyatt does not cry where anyone can see him. I have learned that.
“Julian, I need to sit down.”
There is nothing to sit down on. We are in the middle of a pasture. I take his elbow and we walk back toward the gate, slow, his hand still pressed flat to his belly, mine at his elbow, neither of us saying anything. At the gate he stops and leans against the post and breathes.
“Take your time.”
“Don’t tell me to take my time.”
“Sorry.”
He almost laughs. It is a small wet sound that gets caught somewhere in his throat, and he looks at me and shakes his head, and I want to put my mouth on his more than I want almost anything in the world, but I don’t, because Wyatt does not like being kissed in a field where someone might see, and I know that now too.
“You ready to accept?” I say instead.
“Yeah, let’s do it now.”
We walk back up to the house.
He sits at the kitchen table and dials the lawyer. I look at the picture of our baby on the fridge instead. She has been there since November. The thermal print has gone faintly yellow at the edges.
He calls the lawyer first. It’s a short call. We’re told we can expect documents for an online signature by end of day.
Wyatt calls the bank next.
“Mrs. Holloway. It’s Wyatt Briggs.”
A pause.
“Yes. Yes, I’m calling about that. I have an offer.”
I can’t make out the words she says but I can hear the shape of them.
Wyatt says, “Yes.” He says, “Yes, I will.” He says, “Thank you.”
He hangs up.
He sits with his hand on the receiver for a count of five. Then he lifts his head and he looks at me across the table, and his face does something I have never seen it do.
It comes apart.
Not crying — Wyatt Briggs does not cry — but I see the moment that relief takes hold and all the weight that he has been carrying suddenly dissipates.
I am out of the chair and around the table before I have decided to be.
He stands up to meet me. I get my arms around him, careful of the bump between us. His face goes into the place where my neck meets my shoulder and he breathes there, slow and ragged, his hands fisted in the back of my shirt.
“I’ve got you,” I say, into his hair.
We stand there for a long time.
The boys come home at a quarter past three.
Caleb comes in first. He hangs his jacket. He looks at our faces — both of us, in turn — and he stops with his hand on the hook.
“What?”
“Sit down.”
He sits. Matthew comes in behind him with his lunchbox banging against his thigh and his shoelaces undone, and he stops in the doorway when he sees the three of us at the table.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, bud. Sit down.”
Matthew sits. He puts the lunchbox on the table. He looks at Wyatt and his small face has gone serious.
Wyatt clears his throat.
“We’re not moving.”
A beat.
Caleb’s shoulders come down half an inch. He has been carrying this for months.
Matthew goes very still.
“What?”
“We’re not moving. The Linden Group has made an offer. It clears the mortgage. We’re keeping the ranch.”
Matthew looks at Wyatt. He looks at me. He looks at Caleb. He looks back at Wyatt. His mouth opens.
“We’re staying? Forever?”
Wyatt’s jaw works. “For as long as I can manage it. Yeah.”
Matthew’s face crumples.
He puts both hands over it and he starts crying. Wyatt is up and around the table before I can move, and he has Matthew on his lap with the bump between them.
Caleb has not moved. He stares at the table. I put my hand on his shoulder. He does not shake it off.
That is all. That is all that happens. After a minute he reaches up and puts his hand over mine for one beat, and then he takes it off, and I take mine off.
I say, “I’m going to call my mother.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to tell her I’m moving up.”
He turns.
“Are you?”
“You know I am.”
He looks at me across the kitchen. The bump is visible under the flannel from this angle, the small clear curve of her. His hand goes to it without his knowing. It always does now.
“Okay,” he says.
I look at the most gorgeous omega I have ever seen and I think: I live here now. It’s a good thought.