Chapter 20
Devyn
N o, Penelope! You gotta stay with your babies!”
The little girl’s voice fills my ears as I’m rounding the corner of the bright red lean-to stationed a few hundred feet left of the farmhouse.
Now that I’ve had a plate full of bacon and seen the note Hunter left next to it, I’m feeling a tad less anxious about what may or may not have happened last night.
Ponygirl,
Two Rules for today…
1. Don’t freak out—we’re fine.
2. Wear your hair down again.
When you’ve had your fill of bacon, and you better eat the whole damn plate, like I know you want to, come find me in the barn.
Don’t run, Dev. Please.
Love,
Your Husband
Husband. That word.
Who knew one word could make my body heat from the inside out? And number two on that list? Wear my hair down?
Stupid sexy cowboy knows exactly what he’s doing to me with this little note.
But I won’t run. Rubbing my fingers along the Starburst ring, I let a smile steal my lips before a spontaneous giggle breaks free. Despite how much I hate that I blacked out and don’t remember everything that went down with this whole fake-marriage thing, I can’t ignore what Claudette just told me.
I got the job. The job of my dreams. And so did Hunter.
How the hell did we manage that?
I walk slowly toward the noises of animals and…the little girl. My spiky heels aren’t the best choice of footwear for a farm. I wish I had those old worn-out boots of mine from the blanket chest right about now as my heels penetrate the soil, sinking into the ground with each step. The crazy thing is, I’d normally be concerned about ruining my six-hundred-dollar designer outfit. I’d be as ruffled as Claudette was at the start of my interview. But I couldn’t care less right now if I keep these shoes in pristine condition.
I just want to see Hunter. I can’t explain much else, but I have an inherent need to see him right now. To find out what he’s feeling about all of this. To see if his thoughts line up with mine. To be close to him, most of all.
Frustrated with the sinkhole I seem to be falling into, I lean my hand against the fence and support myself while I yank my stuck foot from the ground. My foot comes loose, but the shoe doesn’t. It mocks me, just the tips of the pink opening visible from beneath the mud.
Screw it. I chuck the other one off and settle my foot back down, curling my toes into the soft, squishy mud, and remembering a time in my life when I never knew where my shoes even were, my body always bare and flush with the earth. My soul connected to something bigger than myself.
I probably look a bit ridiculous in my bar crawl outfit from last night, mussed up hair, dark circles, and smelling of bacon and Hunter. This is by far my most eventful walk of shame ever. I giggle thinking about that, because the more I’m up and moving, the more I’m positive we didn’t go all the way last night, and I let some of that stress drift away with the breeze.
It’s been long enough for me that I’d know. Chad wasn’t all that endowed, so to speak. With Hunter’s specific…package… in mind, I would most certainly be feeling signs .
So, that might mean things between us will be okay. We just have to figure out what the heck we’re going to do when Claudette finds out the marriage she’s so excited about isn’t real.
“You can do this, Penelope. I know you can. Please, sweet girl, they need their mama.”
It’s the little girl again. Padding my bare feet toward the sound, I spot her lying on the roof of a bright yellow chicken coop. A smile breaks over my face. She reminds me of myself when I was that age. I was always getting into things I shouldn’t have, climbing coops and tree stands. She’s about eight or nine, maybe. Reddish-blondish curly hair frizzes around her face as she lies on her back and stares up at a white hen she’s holding above her. The hen stares back at her, unconcerned that she’s being manhandled by a mini human with an attitude.
Is she having a heart to heart with a chicken? I smile at the sentiment because kids are great like that. They don’t care if it’s weird or if a chicken can’t understand them. If it makes sense to them, they just do it.
I wish I could be more like that.
I stay hidden behind the lean-to while I watch her interaction with the bird. She flips over on her belly and shoves the chicken into her armpit while she climbs down from the side of the coop, using the door latch as a foothold and then hopping the rest of the way down, chicken still in tow. Now, that’s a kid who knows her way around a farm.
Wait. Whose kid is this?
My chest is a little tight. My throat, too.
This is Hunter’s farm. And the more I think about that, the tighter my throat gets. It shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, staring at the little girl I don’t even know.
But it does.
I swallow the lump in my throat and shake my head because no, he wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t blindside me about a kid he’s had for nearly the entire time I’ve been away. Not after what we’ve been through.
Unless he was afraid to tell me.
If he felt sorry for me.
I think back to the summer I came home before college, and a pang of jealousy hits me as thoughts cascade through my head. The river, the party, the freaking girl he took to that bedroom. Right in front of me, like I wasn’t there. Like I wasn’t his best friend. Like we hadn’t shared a life, and a trauma, and a fucking child together. All that pain and sadness comes swirling back, wrapped up in a dark, menacing bow.
But he wouldn’t, would he? Last night…what he said. He wouldn’t say those things and have a secret kid hanging around he never planned to tell me about. He couldn’t.
The girl’s bright hair, hair that looks more like Hunter’s the longer I look at it, streams behind her in the wind as she skips to the nesting boxes and shoves the bird back into them.
“There! Now, I don’t want you comin’ outta there ‘til you have lots of babies hatching under you. Got it, Penny?” She wags her finger at the nesting box as if the chicken has any idea what words are, and even though her presence disturbs me, mainly because I don’t know if she is or is not Hunter’s, I feel an acute sense of respect for this child who seems to go after what she wants and has the courage to keep trying.
“If she won’t stay on the eggs, you know, you can try letting one of the silkies sit on them instead,” I say, creeping up from the side of the coop. She turns to me and narrows her eyes, probably because I’m a stranger. Smart kid. But she inclines her head, waiting to hear more, so I go on, moving a few steps closer so I can take a look at the nesting boxes, too.
And take a closer look at her.
There are eight eggs in the box she just shoved the bird she calls Penelope into, and there’s another hen in there beside her laying on her own eggs. Scanning my memories, I think this one is a barbed rock, because it’s got those beautiful pencil-etching marks over its wings. The barbed rock is in the box beside Penelope, and she seems content where she is. She has no plans of moving off her eggs anytime soon.
I watch the little girl scrape her bright blue eyes over the other bird, then puff her bottom lip out in a decisive frown. It’s obvious she’s wondering why the one bird will do what she’s supposed to, but the other won’t.
A familiar anxiety tenses inside me.
You can’t make any living thing bend against their will. She’s lucky she’s too young to have learned that.
“Why silkies?”
I smile as I see her defenses against me drop a little. Seems she keeps her walls secure, too.
“They are amazing mamas,” I tell her, picking up a furry black hen and running my hand down its back. The hen purrs, and I close my eyes, taking in the warmth the creature offers back to me. The chickens always were my favorite. “They almost always adopt the eggs if you give them a chance. I’ve even seen silkie hens raise a duck before.”
She sputters with laughter and complete wonder. “A duck? There’s no way! We have ducks…maybe I can convince Papa to let me try it.” She picks up another furry hen and holds it above her head, inspecting it, before turning back to me with a grin that’s a mix of half grown, half baby teeth. “Whatta ya reckon we’d call a duck baby raised by a chicken?”
“Hmm.” I tap my finger to my chin. “What about Chuck?”
“Chicken duck! I like it!” Out of nowhere, she widens her eyes like she’s just had the best idea ever. “Tag! You’re it!” she shouts, taking off toward the cattle.
“Wait!” I shout back, unable to stop the laughter pouring from my soul as I chase her through the wheat with my toes covered in mud and my hair wild and free, flowing like hers.
No, flowing like mine .
Like it used to. And with the wind against my skin and the tickles of blonde tendrils hitting my face as I run through the field with wild abandon, I sense how dead I’ve been inside. And how alive I feel right now.
“Wait up! You never told me your name!”
“Catch me, and I’ll tell youuuuu,” she screams, turning to look at me briefly before darting to the side with a quick tuck and roll. With practiced moves, I watch her bounce onto a mini trampoline, using one hand to hoist herself over the fence, and then landing on her feet like a total badass.
I think back to a time long ago, when a boy not much older than this child in front of me jumped over fences and let his scrappy, reddish-blondish hair fly through the breeze, and my heart stills.
I come to a stop at the fence, threading my fingers through the chain-links of the metal and pressing my face to the side while I take in deep breaths. I haven’t run that fast in years, but the running isn’t what has me breathless…it’s her. I tried to convince myself it can’t be, but…her spunk, her farming skills, her hair.
And those blue eyes.
I think back to our conversation just a few minutes earlier.
‘Maybe I can convince Papa to let me try it.’
Papa.
“Wait!” I shout as she slings a knobby-kneed leg over the side of a massive stallion and gets ready to take off to who knows where, covered in dirt with pine stuck in her hair.
“What’s your name? Your name!”
I probably seem like a crazy woman. A strange lady in last night’s clothes, strolling onto her farm and demanding personal information. But there are just too many coincidences for me to ignore.
I have to know.
“Your name! What is it?”
She squints, assessing me. Her horse rears back on two legs, letting out a whinny, ready for whatever adventure she’s about to take him on. And I watch closely then, as the little girl I’ve just met, the one with the deep blue eyes that match those of my dreams, clutches the horse’s mane and brings him down on all fours again with expert precision.
Precision you only learn if you’re raised by a real-life cowboy.
And in a matter of seconds, she whips her head back toward me, lifts her chin to the sky, and breaks my heart into a million pieces with two simple words.
“Ellie Isaac.”