Chapter 18 – Sunshine/Kaitlyn #2
Bliss: Don’t say something stupid like, he’s a cowboy. And you’re a city girl.
Me: Why is that stupid? It’s true.
Mom: You’re a cowgirl, born and bred. You just happen to live in the city.
Me: Oh my God, I’m sorry I asked.
Well, that wasn’t helpful at all, I thought.
But it was…nice.
I decided that when I went back to New York, I would stay in the group chat, no matter how annoying it got.
“Let’s go, little sis.”
I looked up from the computer at Ethan, who had poked his head into the study.
“Oh,” he said, drawing up short when he saw my business suit. “You’re in work clothes. Why are you in work clothes?”
“Because I’m at work,” I said, as if that was obvious. “Even during Covid I always dressed for work in case I ever needed to be on camera.”
“Yeah, but not the bottoms, right? Please tell me you wore PJs on the bottom.”
“The partners would often have us stand up during the calls. They believed half dressing led to half measures.”
“Sounds like a fun bunch of guys. Well, I’m recommending you change out of that get up back into your horse riding clothes.”
“Are we having another lesson?” This was immediately exciting to me. I felt like Shirley and I had just started our journey together.
“Sort of. We’ve got some cows going into labor. Carter thought you would like to see the operation in action.”
“Isn’t it a little late in the season?”
Ethan shook his head. “This is our grass fed beef. The calving season for them runs after the regular heard.”
Did I want to see a cow give birth?
No?
“Come on,” he encouraged me. “It will inspire you.”
“But the markets…” I said, although I knew that it was shutting down overnight in the Asian markets.
The signals I was looking for to make the larger move, wouldn’t happen for hours, possibly days.
I had programmed all the alerts onto my phone during breakfast with Tag.
There was nothing really keeping me chained to the desk anymore.
“Will be waiting for you when we get back,” he assured me.
He seemed excited about me joining them, so I was on board.
I ran upstairs and quickly changed back into the jeans and boots Harmony had leant me.
I found a t-shirt in her drawer and pulled that on over my head, thinking maybe if I was going to be here a little longer, I needed to get my own clothes.
Ranch clothes.
By the time I got to the barn, Ethan already had Shirley saddled and waiting for me.
“Where’s Tag?” I asked, because I still didn’t know how to get on a horse without help.
“Already down at the south pasture helping Carter and Mac,” he said. “Here. I brought a step stool to help you mount.”
He put the stool to the side of Shirley, and while it took a few moments to get my bearings on which foot needed to get into the stirrup in order for my other leg to be free to swing over, I finally got it.
Settling into the big western-style saddle, I felt more comfortable than I had last time. Which probably had more to do with my faith in Shirley, than my riding skills. I followed Ethan out of the paddock and down over the paths that led to the different grazing pastures.
The sun was hot on my head and I wished for Tag’s baseball cap from last time.
If I was honest, I wished for Tag full stop.
We passed another cabin, this one significantly larger than Tag’s, but not as big as the Lodge. It wasn’t familiar to me, so it had to be built in the last fifteen years.
“Whose house is this?” I asked Ethan.
“Carter’s and the kids’. When Lilly first got pregnant, they knew they needed their own space.”
“I’ll bet Old Man McGraw wasn’t happy about that,” I said, then realized I was referring to Ethan’s father. To my father as Old Man. It’s just, that’s who he was to us growing up. Some distant villain who ruled his ranch and this town like a royal fiefdom.
Except, my mother loved him.
“Dad never liked it when any of us left,” Ethan said. “Whether that was a mile away or a hundred miles away. He wanted all of us under his thumb.”
“He must have been pissed off at you by like a lot. You went all the way to Seattle.”
“It was as far as I could go at the time, without leaving the country.”
I shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, because the questions I had were ones I shouldn’t ask the man married to my sister.
“Go ahead,” Ethan said, smiling at me. “You can ask.”
“If this wasn’t what you wanted for your life, why are you staying in The Gulch now?”
He shrugged. “Love.”
I shook my head. “That’s not enough. All the love in the world can’t keep two people together if they want different things from life.”
“I’m here to tell you, that’s not true,” he said easily.
“Let me be clear, I’m not sitting around pining for my old job back in Seattle.
I left home and saw what the world had to offer me outside of this place.
Then I came home and saw what the world had to offer me here.
Here is better, and, yes, that’s because of Harmony. ”
“Did you ever think of asking her to leave? Once you guys decided you weren’t fake married anymore?”
He shook his head. He wore a sweat-stained Stetson and hardly looked like a heart-surgeon.
“She belongs here. I would never take her away. This is going to sound corny as hell, especially coming from me, but home is where the heart is. The rest of the stuff, it’s just that. Stuff. Easily sacrificed.”
“Like what, specifically?” I prompted. I needed things to be explained to me explicitly. Because, leaps of faith were not my thing.
I could think of any number of things I would need to give up in New York. My work. My identity. My gym. The best food in the world. The best shopping in the world. Walkable streets. Central Park.
Although, to be fair, Wyoming had it all over Central Park.
“Uh, hello, the coffee, obviously. And I’m not talking Starbucks. I’m talking about the best coffee houses in the world. Small little cafes with the most incredible baristas. Lattes that will make you cry. Macchiatos that will make you believe you’ve tasted God’s tears.”
“So, you’re saying you love my sister, more than you love coffee.”
“It was very close, but, I went with your sister over the coffee.”
“I’m telling her you said that,” I warned him.
He simply laughed. “My point is, when it comes down to it, nothing else matters more than the person you’re in love with. You just don’t know that until you’re in love.”
Well, maybe that explained it. I’d never been in love. There’d never been anyone I would sacrifice everything for.
Had Tag ever been in love that way?
As soon as I asked myself the question, I pushed it aside. It wasn’t my business and it wasn’t relative to my life.
We eventually crested over a hill that gave way to a beautiful, lush, green valley filled with beef cattle.
The sound of them lowing became an oddly comfortable rumble in my chest. There were so many cows, and after all my calculations, I knew exactly how much each of them was worth, down to the penny.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen a pasture filled with cows, but it was the first time I was connecting these animals to the money I’d pulled out of the ranch’s equity to invest in crypto.
Something that was so real, so tangible, you could see them, smell them, and hear them, and I was turning them into something no one could even hold in their hands.
No wonder everyone was worried about what I was doing. One false step and this place could legitimately face bankruptcy. All those cows gone, like they never were. This ranch. The jobs.
“Maybe I should go back?” I called over to Ethan, the anxiety rolling over me, crushing me under its weight. “Maybe I should be keeping a closer eye on the markets?”
“You’re here now. Come see the magic happen.”
Tag was marching over to us with some determination. “Ethan, what the hell did you bring her out here for?”
I snapped back at his words. This wasn’t the same man who’d kissed me before he left this morning. This man was all business. Or, maybe he was cranky because he hadn’t gotten any sleep last night. I filed that away as something to know about Tag.
He needed his food. And he needed his sleep.
“Thought she might want to see the calves dropping,” Ethan said, dismounting from his horse. “What’s the problem?”
Tag was snapping off some plastic gloves. “We’ve got wolves in the area.”
“We always have wolves in the area when the calves come.”
“This pack is a little too close for comfort to have her out here. It’s not safe for someone who doesn’t know what she’s doing on a horse.”
Ethan looked back up at me. “Tag’s a bit worried about you, sis. Wonder why that is?”
I shrugged, but said nothing. Perhaps I could not outrun a wolf, but I had total faith in Shirley.
Mac and Carter were trailing behind Tag. Both men’s shirts were covered with bloody wet stains and they were also snapping off plastic gloves and shoving them in their back pockets.
They both wore baseball hats as opposed to Tag’s cowboy hat. Seeing them made me realize my nose was already stinging from the sun on my face. Tag hadn’t been there to remind me I needed a hat, and Ethan hadn’t thought of it.
Maybe if I was going to add some clothes to my wardrobe, I could get my own hat, too. Something that didn’t say Swinging D on it.
Something I could leave here for when I came to visit.
Because, really, I should have been visiting more often. It was something I would change moving forward.
“Last one just gave birth,” Carter announced. “Sorry, you missed it.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure it was special.”
“It was healthy,” Mac said. “And that’s all we care about.”
“Are the wolves going to get any of those calves?” I asked them, as my eyes trailed over the newborns who were finding their feet and latching on to their mothers’ teats.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Tag said, mounting a large, brown horse, where a rifle holster was secured to the saddle.