Chapter 7
ANNIE – MID-SEPTEMBER
Once Upon a Time…
It’s been three days since I got that message from Auston.
His name back on my screen after all this time shook me up.
I might’ve thought the text was a mistake, if it hadn’t been for the words Are you there?
Because that’s how he used to message me when we were fooling around during college breaks.
When he’d come to the ranch with Colton for weeks at a time, accepted into our family as if he was our own.
When we were together in an exciting, illicit secret for three years, every holiday.
He’d message me are you there? before sending any other messages. Before telling me to meet him out by our tree on the land. Or in the pool house or the barn. Sometimes even his guest bedroom, where he’d hold a hand over my mouth as he brought me to—
Well, no matter. Those days are done and he hasn’t sent another message since I ignored the first.
It’s been a year and a half since we spoke. Since I told him I was pregnant with his baby and he told me to fix it.
I thought his reaction was shock. For so long, I thought he’d change his mind.
That we’d tell my family the truth, together, sitting on the sofa, hand in hand.
Maybe he couldn’t move to the ranch but I could go to him in St Louis and visit the ranch often.
We’d ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.
But our story isn’t a fairy tale and Auston is no white knight.
Thankfully, I’ve been so busy these past days with college and helping the team set up for the start of the season at Sunshine Ranch that I haven’t been able to dwell on Auston’s message and what it might have meant.
Not much, anyways.
And I’ll never find out why he messaged out of the blue because I haven’t replied. The girl who waited around for him to want her, who’d jump as soon as that man clicked his fingers, she’s weathered and hardened. A woman. A mama.
Though the dough I’m currently kneading my jumbled feelings into might disagree.
I sense Daddy in the room but in that Sonny Quinn way, he gives me a wide berth and doesn’t ask why I’m pushing this bread to the very limit of breadmanity.
He doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want to know. He loves me and that’s never in doubt. But I truly don’t know how my daddy would handle me trying to have a heart-to-heart with him.
He pours himself a coffee from the filter pot and takes it out to his rocking chair on the porch, drafting the scent of dry earth and mountain cedar into the house.
We have four respite lodges here at the ranch, each sleeping up to four people, and for our opening weekend, we have Unicorn Dreams, a charity we’ve worked with for a few years now, bringing their teenage kids to stay.
Our Sunshine Ranch team is qualified to support – Mama was, too – running activities and games that are as fun or as calming as the kids want.
In the evenings, we grill, which is Daddy’s forte, though the volunteers help, too.
In the daytime, we provide picnics and this dough that I’m currently beating the crap out of will be one of the breads for the welcome lunch today.
This is a place of peace. A rare opportunity for our guests to relax.
They spend their days caring for others when they should be egocentric the way kids are entitled to be.
So, Daddy needs to take his coffee and stop silently moping about the fact Mama won’t be here this weekend.
And I… I need to vent all my pent-up anger and frustration with the shitty cards life deals sometimes, pull on my favorite scuffed boots and screw in my fakest smile.
If the bread beating doesn’t fix me, mucking out ten stables will have to.
As I set the bread to proof in a dish and check on the other two bloomers that are baking, Nelson wakes.
I needlessly check my watch because the morning rise is my son’s most consistent of the day – seven thirty, almost to the second.
It’s during the night that’s hit and miss.
Last night, it was very much miss. Nelson woke three times and I ended up sleeping on his nursery floor, my fingers entwined with his through the crib side.
“Guess who it is?” I sing into his room, willing him to say mama again. But my boy is as stubborn as the rest of us Quinns. He’ll say it again when he’s good and ready.
He does though give me that damn cute belly giggle when I pop my head around the side of the door. A remedy better than any dough bashing.
He holds up his arms for me and I squish his warm body and very wet diaper to my body. “Alright, my little stubborn mule, we’ll clean you up, get some yummy oatmeal and you can help me mucking out. Sound good?”
I’m not sure the gurgled response is a yes or a no but I choose to consider it acquiescence.
Between Nelson having an unexplainable meltdown, his milk interval, dealing with lunch prep that forced me to switch out of my coveralls, then back into them, I’m still wearing my filthy denims, hair stuck with sweat to my dirty face, by the time the Unicorn Dreams minibus arrives.
As I stand among the Sunshine Ranch team, it feels odd that I can’t loop an arm around my mama’s waist. That instead, I’m having to accept subtle condolences from the Unicorn Dreams team and turn up my lips to our guests.
“Let’s get y’all set up in your lodges,” Daddy says, gesturing down the hillside from the ranch. “Then we can have a picnic lunch. Y’all must be hungry, right?”
The kids give a resounding yes and while I’m chuckling at their excitable response, I’m also stunned. Daddy, my daddy, took the lead, played the role of extrovert and emotionally available. Who? What? Where? When? How now?
Bear gives a gentle bark of giddiness and Daddy ruffles the fur on his head. “This here’s Bear and he’s soft as a teddy, but he might be excited to see y’all. If he licks and you don’t want it, you say no, Bear and I assure you he’ll leave you be.”
Daddy turns to me and beams from beneath his dusty cowboy hat. I’m as discombobulated as if I’d been playing dizzy ducks.
He hooks his thumbs behind his belt buckle as he leads the way to the lodges, calling back to the kids following him, “Now, my name’s Sonny and this here is my ranch. It’s been in the Quinn family for—”
“We’ve got this, Annie,” Jenny, one of our coordinators, and Mama’s friend, tells me. “Why don’t you go freshen up while Nelson’s sleeping?”
I grab the collar of my coveralls and sniff. “Are you politely telling me I stink?”
She smiles as she plants a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve earned a break, darlin’. Take it.”
I feel a peculiar mix of heavy and light as I trudge the stairs in the house. It’s nice being back at it. I love what we offer here. But I can’t deny there’s an ever-present sense that something, someone, is missing. My mama. My best friend.
I finally understand the saying that losing a person you love is like losing a limb. That’s exactly how I feel, as if part of me, an integral part, is gone.