5. CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
DEACON
I can tell something’s up with Freya. We’ve been together long enough that I feel the fine tuning of her emotions the minute she walks through the door.
Slate picked her up, and he goes down the hall and takes his boots off. Freya walks in, setting a yellow envelope on the table. I come up behind her, kissing the back of her neck, breathing in the sweet scent of my wife. She bakes all day and comes back smelling like pastry. I love it, but she says sometimes, she wishes she could smell like nice perfume, anything but vanilla for once. I think she smells just like my home.
“You hungry? Ginny made chicken. It’s in the oven,” I say.
She nods, turning to give me a kiss. When she pulls back, her face is sober.
“You alright, sweetheart?” I press.
Slipping a hand behind her back, she picks up the envelope and takes out a few sheets of cream paper.
“Tracy wants to give me the café,” she whispers.
Speechless, I take the paper and flip it over. Sure enough, it’s a copy of the paperwork for the transfer of the deed. At the bottom, the amount owed is one dollar. The corner of my mouth turns up. Tracy is a good woman. She has always been a good boss and a steadfast friend to my wife. She took a chance on Freya when nobody else did, and for that, I’ll always be grateful to her.
“Congratulations, sweetheart,” I say. “This is…big.”
Her eyes are perfectly round. “I don’t know…if I can do this.”
“You’ve been managing the café for years,” I point out, sliding the paperwork away. I take her by the waist, lifting her on the table. She’s chewing the inside of her lip, brows creased. “I’ll be here to help. I know a thing or two about running a business.”
Her shoulders sink, and she gives me a weak smile. “Yeah, I just…I don’t know why she chose me.”
“I think that’s pretty obvious,” I say. “You love that café and you’re good at what you do. Tracy’s trusting you with her baby because she knows you’ll take good care of it.”
Her hand comes up, cradling my face. “You’re too good to me,” she whispers.
“I don’t think it’s possible to be too good to you.”
She bends in, and I kiss her, real slow and thorough, the way I did the very first time all those years ago, under the northern lights over Ryder Ranch. The day I married her, I promised myself I’d never take this woman for granted. I’ll treat her good, kiss her and fuck her like it’s the first time until the day I die. It’s the least I can do after everything she’s done for me, after everything I put her through.
The back door opens, and I hear Red and Remington crash down the hall. They start fighting over who’s putting their boots where. Then, Red swings around the corner, making a disgusted face.
“Ew, gross, they’re kissing,” he announces.
Remington makes a choking sound and collapses against the wall like he’s sick. I pull back and take a playful swipe at them, grabbing them in each arm. They start giggling, wrestling against me. Freya gives me a don’t-get-rowdy-in-my-kitchen look. Alright, time to get out. I pick them up and toss them unceremoniously onto the living room couch. They launch themselves at me, and we end up tousling on the living room floor.
I’m out of breath—maybe a little too old to be roughhousing like this—when Freya calls for me to lift the chicken from the oven.
“Go on, get cleaned up,” I tell them.
“After dinner, can I smoke a cigarette?” says Red.
“Fuck, no, you can’t,” I say.
Freya leans into the hall, brows raised. “Language.”
Red crossed his arms. “I saw you smoking outside last night with Slate. How come Slate can smoke and not me?”
“Because you’re not seventeen,” I say. “And when you do as much work as Slate does around this ranch, you can have the privileges he does. Now, go on. Get.”
I take another swipe at them and they run, pell-mell, up the stairs, arguing the entire time. Then, the water starts running. I assume there will be some washing up, although I have my money on more water getting on the floor than their hands.
In the kitchen, Freya has dinner on the table. After we got married, I told her to buy the things she wanted for the kitchen. Ginny said thank goodness, we can get rid of those bachelor dishes after almost twenty years. She and Freya went into the city and came back with the truck full of cookware, dishes, furniture, and the like. In a few days, they had the kitchen looking a lot brighter, more floral. I don’t care, so long as she’s getting what she wants.
Now, I watch her, even more beautiful than when I met her, put the food in her beloved blue patterned bowls. She handles them with the same care she puts into everything, the same care she offers her family.
I set the chicken down, peeling off my oven mitts. It’s moments like this when I look at her and see her like a snapshot.
In these moments, I marvel that this is my life. My lovely Freya filled my house with everything I ever wanted. But more than that, she showed me that love isn’t just heat and lust. Of course, we have plenty of those moments. But as I’ve aged, I’ve learned that love is more like the deep parts of the forest: earthy, long lasting, less like fire and more like the far-reaching roots of old growth pines.
It isn’t something I knew before. It’s something learned.
The tiny moments. Memories, snapshots in my mind. Seeing her with one son after another in her arms. Watching her do the same things every day with the same love and care. It’s working for her, so she has everything she wants and needs.
It’s in the secret parts—not just like the scorching hot ones, but the quiet ones. Seeing her read her books, watching as she built her collection back up and painted her flowers and leaves all over the attic. It’s the intimacy of early summer mornings, the way her mouth tastes, the warmth of bare skin on skin. It’s woven through the evenings, when all I can do is think about getting home to her again.
I’m overwhelmed with the richness of the life she’s brought me. Some days, I worry I might pinch myself and wake up alone in my bed.
But no, here she is.
“Why’re you staring at the wall?” Freya asks, coming up beside me, brows creased.
I shake my head. “Sorry, long day.”
We sit as the rest of the boys come in and take their places. Then, it’s impossible to have a conversation over their chatter. I hold her hand under the table, and she plays with my wedding band. It’s an absentminded habit of hers, spinning it around my finger.
Freya says she wants to go take a bath and relax, which means she’ll sit in water up to her chin and overthink. I have to lock up the barn and do some fence repair, but I promise I’ll hurry back. I kiss her in the hall and duck into the living room in search of my two eldest sons. Slate is sitting in the armchair, his laptop balanced on his knees. Recently, he took over doing monthly inventory and expenses. He’s good at it, better than I ever was. I credit the brains to his mother.
Gage is laid out on the floor, flipping through a farming magazine. I knock on the wall, and they both look up.
“Let’s get the barn locked up,” I say. “And I’m riding out to the eastern pasture to check some damage if anybody wants to come.”
“I can do that in the morning,” Gage says.
I shake my head. “We’re headed out to Carter Farms in the morning. I need you both to go with me.”
“I’ll go,” says Slate, yawning and setting aside his laptop. He gets up, and Gage peels himself off the floor.
“I’ll lock up the barn,” he says. “You all can go on ahead and do the fence check.”
I jerk my head in a nod. “Good, thanks. Alright, let’s haul out.”
In the barn, I grab a couple of electric lanterns while Slate brings out the horses, Silver Phantom and Booker, and saddles them up. Gage waits around to see us off, standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips and hat on his head. He’s starting to look like a real cowboy these days.
“We’ll be back in about an hour,” I call as we head up the hill.
The air is starting to cool down a little. We’re both quiet as we ride, which isn’t unusual. I’m pretty worn out after a day of working in the heat. Slate seems to be thinking hard. He’s got a big crease in the same place I get one across his forehead.
“You good?” I ask.
He shakes his head once. “Yeah, all good. Just thinking.”
We pull up beside the portion of damaged fencing, and I dismount, grabbing the bag that always hangs off my saddle horn. Slate follows me, leaving the horses waiting. He starts taking the tools out as I assess the damage. It’s not bad, but we might as well get it fixed up tonight.
“What’re you thinking about?” I ask, crouching to cut away the rusted portion.
“The ranch,” he says. “About what happens when you retire.”
I glance up. He’s never mentioned this before.
“I’m not retired yet,” I say. “But it’ll come.”
He takes the rusted wire and starts crushing it up to take back. “And what happens then? You thinking of parceling it up?”
Truthfully, I’ve thought about that a lot. I have four boys, and it wouldn’t be right to have one of them take over for me. None of them have expressed an interest in leaving, so I assumed they would each want at least a fourth of the land. Maybe I was wrong.
“What do you want for yourself?” I ask.
Slate hands me the wire and a set of gloves. “I don’t know, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I get good grades. I think I could get into college if I wanted. But I like it out here.”
I wind the wire around and around, securing the top section. It takes longer than normal because I need a second. Never in my life before Freya did I think my children would have the opportunity to go to college. I barely have more than an eighth grade education. Everything I have is because I taught myself the ins and outs of business, buckled down, and worked for it.
“There are colleges out here,” I say. “And if I parcel up the land, you’d have your portion when you got back.”
He nods, jaw working.
“I get it,” I say quietly. “It’s a big decision.”
He jerks his head in a nod. “What would you have done?”
I rise, my leg aching where I got stabbed twice the year I met Freya. The moon is a pale disk in the sky. Everything is quiet, save for the frogs chirruping in the pond in the lower cow pasture.
Truthfully, I never considered leaving. Back then, I had no prospects, no concept I could reach beyond the little I had and ask for more. I could argue that the day I laid eyes on Freya was when I got brave enough to dream of a real future.
I clear my throat. “I didn’t have a vision,” I say.
That crease in his forehead appears again. “Nothing?”
“My dream was to put food in my stomach,” I say. “And get out from under the thumb of people who hurt me. That was about it.”
The corner of his mouth turns up. “That ups the ante for me, huh?”
I shake my head. “Nobody will fault you if you want a simple life. Both Freya and I ended up picking that for ourselves when we did have a choice. If you want a wife, a quarter of this ranch, that’s a good choice too.”
His face is sober as he watches me get more wire and finish wrapping up, pulling the opening in the fencing shut. I gather everything while he ties it off. Then, we mount up and head back at a slow pace. It’s pretty dark now, even with the lantern. The horses take it easy as they move over the rocky path.
“I guess I have a lot of thinking to do,” Slate finally says.
“Yeah, I guess you do,” I agree. “Ryder Ranch is rural, even compared to Sovereign Mountain and Carter Farms. It took me a while to find somebody to start a family with. That’s something to consider.”
He nods, eyes narrowed.
“But you’re young,” I assure him. “And waiting isn’t a bad thing.”
He nods again, and I can tell he’s lost in his thoughts. We ride down the hill in silence and put the horses away in the dark barn. In the dark, the windows glow gold. Through them, I see Red and Remington in the living room. Gage must have gone to bed already. Red is laying upside down on the couch, reading a book. Remington has the TV going, his controller out, playing one of his games. There’s a single light on upstairs, the one in our bedroom. My wife is likely sitting at her vanity, braiding her curls for the night.
It won’t always be this way. I breathe in, holding it.
But for tonight, it is. And that’s enough.
We go inside and Slate says goodnight. I turn out all the lights and give the younger boys a warning to shut the TV and fireplace down before bed. Then, I head up the stairs that creak now from constant use.
Freya is right where I knew she would be: sitting at her vanity, hair braided, her dressing gown slipping to reveal her bare shoulder. I come up behind her, putting my palm on her neck to bend her head back. Her mouth is soft. I kiss it thoroughly and let her go, going to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Did you get the fence all done?” she asks.
“For now. We’ll need to replace a short section,” I say, pulling my boots off.
She gets up and goes to stand between my knees. Her energy is off, distracted. I put my hands on her waist, just holding her.
“I worry running a business will change everything,” she confesses. “I love things the way they are. I don’t want to mess that up.”
My mind goes back to my conversation with Slate. I felt the same way on the ride back, but I also have the perspective to know there’s no fighting change and winning. Time is a swift river, and there’s no point in resistance.
“Hey, sweetheart, look at me,” I say gently.
She obeys, chewing her lip hard.
“You and I will always be the same,” I say. “When the day’s done, it’ll always be me and you, just like this.”
Her chin quivers, but she smiles, leaning into my chest. I wrap my arms around her body and listen to her heart thump. Her fingertips stroke over the back of my neck, tracing the faded ink. She does that so much, like she might forget every little detail.
“Let’s go to bed,” she says after a while.
“It’s late. Tomorrow’s another day,” I say.
I shower then lay down beside her. And like always, somehow, we end up fucking beneath the quilt. Because I was right. Despite getting older and the world moving fast around us, she and I will always be the same at the end of the day, when it’s just the two of us.