Chapter 3 Reese
“Mama?” I holler into the house when I open the dutch door she had put in so she could keep the breeze flowing. Ever since Levi’s murder, she’s been obsessed with nature and ‘connecting with the earth’. Whatever that means.
Being over a decade older than him, I didn’t know him, not really.
And the things I do know now… I’m ashamed he got to share my mother’s DNA.
A woman so broken by my birth father, whose resilience and kindred nature rebuilt her life to be better.
Levi fooled us for too long, the way he violated women so callously.
It shouldn’t be fair, but life ain’t fair. Never has been, never will be.
“Reese, baby! That you?” Her accent’s gotten thicker since moving to Goldspur Ridge, or maybe that’s the years I’ve gone without seeing her.
“Yeah Mama, it’s me.” My grip on the flowers from the pretty woman at the farmers market tightens when I spot Jarrett, my youngest half-brother, on the couch stretched out like a lazy dog that’s got no will to work.
Another one of the reasons I couldn’t stay. I love my Mama, she’s always been a strong woman but when it came to Levi, and then Jarrett, she’s the biggest pushover I’ve ever met.
“Oh, my baby!” She hollers across the kitchen as the back screen door swings shut, bounces, and finally settles against the door frame. “You need a shave.”
The chuckle that leaves my chest makes me feel lighter. Being near my mother always sends me back to a time when I had little worries and big dreams. “My beard’s fine, Mama.”
“This is why you’re not married, women don’t want to baby their husbands–” she starts and like always, I wrap her up in my arms and hug her. Cutting off her usual speech about meeting someone and sharing my life with them.
I know she means well, it’s what any mother wants for her children. A marriage and babies to keep up the family legacies, though, I’d rather not carry on the legacy I was born from.
“Ahh, I know my eyes don’t see what they used to, but Callie baby, I think our oldest son is standing in our kitchen.
” Yates–the man who raised me after my Mama got as far away from my father as she could–chuckles at his own joke.
He’s considerably shorter than me but still manages to slap my back with a hearty hug. “Jare, come say hi to your brother.”
Jarrett groans, legs flopping over the arm of the couch before he stands. He’s taller than I remember, then again, the last time I saw him, he was a pre-pubescent boy with horrible acne. Though he’s filled out a bit, his attitude sours his growth.
“Hey,” he yawns, boredom clear on his face.
“Jarrett,” I nod.
After everything started coming out about Levi, Jarrett’s opportunities in rodeo started to dwindle.
I felt bad for him, until a few rumors about his involvement in a prank on a teenage girl spread through the rodeo.
I’ve been retired for years now, out of the circuit with my own ranch to take care of, but I still hear a few things.
“I’ll go ahead and wash up, Yates and I wanted to take you out tonight,” Mama says, taking the golden flowers from my fist and plopping them in a jar.
She adjusts them on the small wooden table that serves as their family table.
“Make yourself at home, I’ll only be a minute and then we can catch up for a bit before we go to dinner. ”
Jarrett’s the first to walk away, jogging up the stairs that still creak with any weight placed on them. The house Yates bought with Mama when Levi came along had more character than we were used to.
Crumbling apartments with shady people were our normal, until Yates. He swept Mama off her feet, pulling her out of what I now know was depression, and made her feel alive again. If it weren’t for Yates, I’m not sure where the two of us would be.
I was born in Washington, to Nash and Callie Rockwell. Mama’s story remains the same, even to this day. My father was a loving, amazing husband, until the day he wasn’t. She’s never told me the extent of the abuse, but I remember some of it. The bits my psyche can’t forget, the blood and tears.
The screaming…
To be honest, I don’t have any memories of my father other than when he’d hit her. Back then I was too young to understand what was happening, but I’ll never forget the fear in her eyes when she saw me.
How utterly broken she’d been before she packed our bags and pulled me onto a bus. How she struggled in every city to stay away from him, scraping pennies to put us on another bus until we ended up clear across the country.
When we hit Tennessee, nearly a decade later, something about the mountains and lakes that ran through the scenery made her feel at peace.
When she trusted that we could finally put down roots, we moved into a small apartment that had peeling yellow paint in the kitchen, and threadbare carpet in the bedrooms. But she was happier, I remember that.
Yates came not long after Mama found the apartment, and he was nice, though the two of them hit it off real fast because Mama was pregnant and moving us once again in a matter of months. This time into a house Yates bought just for our family in Goldspur Ridge.
“Your Mama's been-a missin’ you,” Yates says pulling out a chair at the table, sliding the one next to him out, he gestures for me to take a seat. “You considered my request, son?”
Letting out a deep breath, I nod and prepare to disappoint the man who’s been a father to me when I had none. I hate it, shame curdles in my gut, but I can’t risk everything I’ve worked for, most definitely not for the prick upstairs.
“I can’t move Jarrett in,” I don’t look away, it’s not what a man does.
He sits eye to eye with the person he’s talking to and delivers the news he has to.
It’s not easy, and it hurts like hell sometimes, but Yates taught me how to do it and I’ll be damned if I don’t respect him enough to have this conversation.
“He’s got some growin’ to do, and I don’t have the time to be a father figure. ”
He nods, running a hand over his sagging jaw.
It’s hard to see those bits and pieces of your parents getting older, like the gray hair my mother embraced when it came time.
Her dark brown hair’s gone fully salt and pepper now.
Yate’s is balding worse than he was when I was a teen, and now they’re skin’s getting soft and less taut.
My own dark hair’s shot through with gray now, more so at the temples.
“He’s a good kid,” Yates says, looking over my shoulder then back to me. “He needs a role model, and I’m afraid I’m gettin’ too old now, too soft.”
The thought of Yates being too old, or too soft to do anything makes my heart ache, he was there when I won my first rodeo, took my first spill on a horse, and when I fucked up my first date. Every memory I have of my parents makes them invincible in my mind, but they’re not.
“What about the dude ranch up the way, the Turner Ranch, can’t they take on another worker?” I ask, remembering working there one summer to pay Mama and Yates back for when I broke one of the neighbors windows.
He sighs and shakes his head, “Times are tough, son. Hardly anyone’s got work, and when they do it’s snatched up quicker than a hungry hog.”
“No one in town is hirin’?” I ask, knowing damn well they aren’t. I drove through just to see even one ‘help wanted’ sign in hopes I could find something for Jarrett.
“It’s alright son, your mother and I will figure somethin’ out,” his smile is punctuated by another clap on my shoulder. “We always do.”