Chapter 15 #2
“No problem.” Her heart sank. Adulthood snuck up on her at the most unexpected times.
She was in Arizona, staying off the beaten path with her parents, but she hadn’t been able to spend that much time with them.
It was like the holidays provided too much time, but without their vacation days, there wasn’t much time for visiting.
She watched the city go by, seemingly identical stucco home after stucco home, on the way to the house and chatted about the weather and what they planned for supper. Dad let her into the house and took off.
Brigit changed into plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt.
No car. Not ambitious enough to brave public transportation.
And bored. She padded through the house.
Where would she live if she moved here? An apartment?
A condo? Would she eventually buy a stucco home with a ceramic tile floor and a pool? She glanced around. Done all in beige?
This was a nice place, and much newer than her family home. But it looked like every other house in the development. Mom had added her own touches, and some that were obviously Dad’s, but there was nothing to suggest Mom and Dad used to live in the country on a ranch.
She missed those touches. The photos of their own horses grazing in the pastures. The aerial view of the property. And especially artwork of the prairie countryside.
She would miss all of that. Having her own place in a cubicle farm held no appeal.
It was one thing if the work appealed to her, but it didn’t.
At all. There was nothing about nature in this type of work.
She wouldn’t have any reason to keep up on cattle feed trends, or work with Justin on which colostrum worked better for his lambs, or have a hand in Caleb lowering the open rates of his cows.
Already, her mind fit ideas into place. Start with mineral. Change silage from corn to sorghum. Research another bull to purchase to breed in heartier DNA.
But here, she’d get farther and farther out of touch with the industry the longer she was working behind plated glass on the fifth floor of an office building.
Digging out her phone, she called Caleb. When he answered, she briefly closed her eyes. Hearing his voice was a balm to irritations she hadn’t known existed.
“Hey,” she said. “Interview’s done.”
“How’d it go?” His words were taken by the wind. A car door opening and closing was muffled over the line.
“It went well. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Nope. I might have to go when my mom arrives, though.”
“Your mom’s in town?” She hated that she couldn’t be there for him. She’d always thought of his mom as a petite natural disaster. She rolled into town, caused some sort of devastation—usually with her own son—and left for an unknown, often extended, amount of time.
“With a new dude. I guess Russ kicked her out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is.” There was Caleb’s eternal tolerance for his mom’s behavior. Her own mom saw it as a failure of his, but not Brigit. It was self-preservation. Anger and bitterness at Adele would only hurt him, not her. “They wanted to see the place so I’m meeting them out here.”
“I’ll let you go then.”
“You don’t have to. They’re not here yet.” The edge in his voice was unmistakable.
“When is she supposed to get there?”
“Twenty minutes ago.” Ouch. “So, the interview? How’d it really go?”
“The interview? Perfect. They seemed happy with me. The job, though…”
“That bad?”
“No. It’d be okay for someone who was into that kind of work. I don’t know if I’m cut out for it.” She almost whispered. But no one was home. Just she and Caleb knew the truth.
“You’ve always liked to get your hands dirty, literally. You were born and raised a rancher, Bridge. It’s okay to do that for a living. It’s okay to want to do that for a living.”
“I think I’m realizing that now.” Her breath froze. That was a hell of an admission.
“You’d be willing to stay in Moore. With me?” The awe in his voice warmed her more than the Phoenix sun ever could.
“I’ve grudgingly started seeing Moore’s appeal.” She’d stood up to Maisy. Priya wasn’t the mean-girl monster she recalled. Seeing her twin everyday was more than a bonus, and living close to her other brother and his family was something she’d missed more than she thought.
And dammit, like that credit union in Minneapolis thought, she was educated and experienced. The Teddies of Moore would just have to deal with her. She’d make sure of it.
“And you’re in Moore,” she said.
“Then come home. We’ll figure it out. You and I.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “My flight’s tomorrow, anyway.” She was going home. Home. Phoenix wasn’t her home, and she didn’t have to make it be her home.
“I know. It sucks waking up without you.” And he’d said his ranch was her ranch.
“Can I do this? Can I really do this?” Was she brave enough to change a life’s worth of expectations to spend her time with the man she loved? She hadn’t told him she loved him. But she’d rectify that when she got back.
“You want to do it, Brigit. We’ll make it happen.”
“Twenty-four hours and I’ll be home.” They disconnected. She had to stare at the phone for a while. She’d just made plans to stay in Moore. To stay with Caleb and use the animal science degree she’d snuck into her coursework.
And it felt right. So, so right.
She grinned and squealed, pumping her arms and wiggling her hips. Tonight, she’d talk to Mom and Dad. It might be a heavy conversation, but a long, long overdue one.
So… What now?
She no longer had to hop online and go through more classifieds. Watch TV?
That wasn’t appealing. Too much anticipation flowed through her veins. Her dream job was at her fingertips. But she couldn’t just pace the hard floor until Mom and Dad came home.
Did Dad still subscribe to ranching magazines?
A guy who’d ranched as long as him couldn’t just drop it.
Over the last year, she’d avoided all her favorite reads on agriculture trends and animal practices.
All her stuff had been online, but Dad was old-fashioned.
Maybe she could find something to page through while dreaming about her wide-open future.
Ooh—maybe she could write for a magazine like that. Start her own blog. People made money off those, right? She could figure it out.
Thinking outside the box was easy when that box had been busted wide open. All those ideas banging around in her head—workshops, presentations at ag conventions, or even just short seminars for farmers and ranchers in her own area. None of her education would go to waste.
It’d take time to build toward profitability, but with Caleb’s help, she had time. They had time. Together.
She entered the second bedroom that functioned as an office and catchall room. Bookshelves flanked the desk. Perusing the first shelf didn’t unearth anything she was dying to read, and the Farm & Ranch mags stacked on the second shelf she’d already read.
“Where’s the new stuff, Dad?” she muttered. She might have to look on his nightstand.
As she turned to round the desk, her thigh hit a pile of papers. They fluttered to the floor.
“Damn.”
Squatting, she swept them into a pile and was in the middle of straightening them out when she stopped. These were tax documents, and the pile included correspondence with their accountant.
Brigit sifted through them. Withdrawals from their retirement account over the years had all her attention. Calculations about catch up and how much longer they’d have to work to make up for the difference knocked her on her ass. She folded her legs under her and read through the documents.
Her parents had paid for her school. All of it.
She’d assumed they’d saved for her and her siblings’ college tuitions, but they hadn’t really.
Travis’s, maybe. But being hit with twins and saving enough to get them both through school after the firstborn had gotten not only a degree, but a PhD, had tapped them out.
Her parents weren’t working to stave off the boredom of retirement. They didn’t have enough to retire.
Tears welled in her eyes. Her parents were broke and hadn’t told anyone. And they were broke because of her.
Her phone rang. She stared at it numbly. An unknown number.
“Hello,” she answered woodenly.
“Brigit Walker?”
“Yes.” She had no desire to be pleasant.
“Hi, this is Emily from Murphy and Associates. We’d like to meet with you about the operations analyst position. Are you available early next week for an interview?”
Early next week? She had a flight home tomorrow. Into Caleb’s waiting arms. She was supposed to tell her parents about what she really wanted to do with her life. But they were working. Because they’d spent all their money on her education.
“Yes, I can meet with you next week.”
As the wait grew longer, his only solace was tomorrow. Brigit would be home tomorrow, and they could start planning their future together. He could rely on Brigit. Apparently not his own mom. But then he knew that.
Then why, after an hour, was he still waiting, wasting his gas as he idled in the driveway on his property?
He should’ve dressed for work, but he thought he’d come here and give his mom and her new man a tour.
A new man. Caleb had stupidly wanted to make a good impression and see if the man measured up at all to the man he called Dad.
Russ had never earned being called Dad, but dammit.
Caleb took one more looked around his property. He’d messaged Mom a few times, but she hadn’t replied.
He heaved a heavy breath and called her.
“Yeah?” she answered in her raspy voice.
“Hey, Mom. Weren’t you going to meet me and look around?”
“Oh that. It’s cold and this town ain’t got nothing for me. I don’t even know why I came back.”