Chapter 50
CHAPTER FIFTY
My morning coffee was too hot to drink yet.
I sat on the front porch in one of the two mismatched rockers Brody had dragged home from an estate sale in Ennis, mug cradled between my palms, bare feet tucked up under me.
Bare legs. Bare everything, under Brody's flannel—the one from the hook on the back of the bathroom door, buttoned crooked because I'd done it in the dark without lookin'.
My panties and Brody's flannel.
Because I was Calvin Jennings, and nobody ever accused me of being a lady.
The sun was working its way up over the ridge. A meadowlark was running its three-note routine somewhere past the drive. Cat was inside doing whatever Cat did when she wasn't supervising me, and Brody was inside asleep or pretending to be—hard to tell, with him.
I blew across the top of my coffee.
I'd woken with his arm wrapped around me from behind, good shoulder against the mattress, the bad one laid heavy and protective across my waist. Took me a second to figure out where I was. Took me longer to figure out I hadn't left.
That part I was still sittin' with.
A truck turned off the main road.
I heard it before I saw it. The downshift of a diesel engine that was overdue for service, the dry squeak of brakes that needed replacin'. A truck that lived on the road.
Tires hit our gravel drive, and I set my mug on the porch rail.
Tugged the hem of Brody's flannel down over my thighs. Didn't do much. Tugged it again anyway.
The truck rolled up and stopped thirty feet short of the porch, and the man who climbed out of it wasn't a surprise.
Denny Jennings stood in the same beat-up boots he'd worn in the arena yesterday, hat already in his hands, not a thing about him different than every other time I'd seen him across the last three decades of my life.
Same set of shoulders. Same sunburn under the collar.
Same face I'd spent a childhood trying to read.
He didn't come up the walk.
"Calvin."
"Denny."
"Went on a wild goose chase findin' you this mornin'," he said. "Asked Calloway—the older. He don't know shit. Asked the younger. He told me to get fucked."
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth pulled. Rhett.
"Started askin' around town. Buncha gossips 'round here couldn't wait to spill the beans. Heard all about your boy. Got yourself a reputation of bein' a homewrecker."
I huffed a breath through my nose.
"But I set 'em straight."
I kept my face still.
"Your mama raised you right, and anyone who can see straight would know better 'an that."
The floorboards creaked behind me inside the house. A soft step. Then the screen door eased open and Brody stuck his head out.
He was shirtless, hair sleep-wrecked, bandage on his forehead, the bruise up his left side turned overnight from purple into a more committed sorta color. He looked at Denny once—assessing, unfriendly, not threatening, just getting a read. Then he looked at me.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
He held my eyes a beat longer. Nodded. Then he let the screen door close soft behind him and I heard his bare feet cross back into the kitchen. Not far. Close enough.
Denny watched the door close. Watched me for a beat after that.
"'Bout yesterday." He cleared his throat.
"I didn't see it clean. Was lookin' at the chute and turned my head when the horse went.
But somethin' weren't right. Wyatt had somethin' in his hand.
I didn't get a good look. But there was somethin' in it, and he weren't supposed to be back there.
Your boy hit the dirt a breath later, and I ain't stupid. "
The coffee steam rose between us.
"I shoulda been watchin' closer. Shoulda clocked he was back there 'fore he got that far." He worked the brim of his hat with his thumb. "I'm sorry, Calvin. For whatever he done."
I watched him.
He kept his eyes on the hat.
"He took off last night. Truck and trailer both. Didn't tell me where but I 'spect he knew better 'an to come sniffin' back around after three men and a lady told him to get gone in the dirt." He shook his head. "He ain't comin' back through Meagher County. I can tell you that."
He looked up at me then.
"I'm done with him, Calvin. Got eyes in my head now I didn't have in 'em yesterday. Reckon I shoulda had 'em a long time ago."
I didn't answer.
I looked at him and said nothing. He flinched, just a little, at my silence.
He'd been Wyatt's daddy more than he'd been mine.
Put his hand on Wyatt's shoulder across a hundred different fairgrounds while I stood three feet away, alone.
Called him son. Laughed at his jokes and slapped his back and handed me over to him at fifteen like I was a rope Wyatt could use however he saw fit.
Years of that didn't get unmade in one night.
I was thirty-four. Not twelve. Not sixteen.
I knew better than to believe a man had new eyes because the stakes finally got high enough to force 'em open.
I said nothing.
He nodded once, slow, like he'd expected that.
Then he turned the hat in his hands again and started into the part I knew was coming. I could feel it shaping up in him the way a storm shaped up over the ridge—you saw it rollin' in before you heard it.
"I wasn't fit to be no one's daddy, Calvin."
The old name. The one my mama used. The one he hadn't earned in twenty-two years and was using now.
I didn't correct him.
"Your mama was a good woman. Too good for the likes of me, and I reckon we both knew that the day we said hello. She'd be damned ashamed of me. Of what I did to you. Of what I let happen under my nose 'cause lookin' too hard meant I'd haveta do somethin' 'bout it."
The meadowlark had gone quiet. Sun was hitting the front of the house now—warm on the porch boards, warm through the flannel.
"I ain't askin' for forgiveness."
He said it flat. Unperformed. Not an apology and not an ask.
Just a fence he was putting up around what this moment was and wasn't.
"Couldn't take it if you offered it. Ain't mine to have."
He lifted his eyes to mine.
"Just keep on bein' someone your mama would be proud of."
He set his hat back on his head, gave one short nod, and turned.
Walked across the drive.
Opened the door of the truck that had been his home longer than any house ever would be.
Climbed in.
Pulled out the way he came.
I didn't call after. Didn't say it's okay and didn't say I forgive you. Didn't say good riddance, which felt closer to honest than either of the others would've.
I just watched his truck disappear down the drive and past the tree line and out onto the main road.
I was still sitting with my knees pulled up and Brody's flannel tugged down over them when I realized the wet on my face had started somewhere in the middle of all that and I hadn't noticed.
Not a sob.
Just water, finding its way out, because something had cracked open that had been sealed up for twenty-two years, and my body was handling it without my brain's input. The way it had done a lot of the heavy lifting for me lately.
My mama had been a good woman.
I'd known that. I'd been carrying that knowledge in the shape of a twelve-year-old's grief for more than two decades.
But the rest of what Denny said—keep on bein' someone your mama would be proud of—landed somewhere I hadn't been ready for.
'Cause for sixteen years, I hadn't been doing much living.
I'd been surviving. Running. Staying alive out of spite and skill and the kinda stubbornness my mama would've recognized but wouldn't have been proud of, exactly. Just relieved by.
It was the last few months that would've made her proud.
A boy scout. A job as a ranch hand. A granddad down in Livingston.
A pixie of a friend who'd hugged me goodbye yesterday and told me she'd hunt me down.
A kitchen island big enough for a family.
A cat named Cat who made biscuits on my stomach every morning.
A bathtub full of dirty laundry and nobody running for the door.
Her daughter, finally living.
I wiped my face with the heel of my palm.
Behind me, the screen door creaked.
Didn't swing wide. Didn't rush. Just opened.
Brody.
Giving me the choice.
I reached back with one hand without turning around, and his fingers found mine like he'd been waiting for the cue. Warm. Steady.
He stepped onto the porch, pulled the second rocker up alongside mine with his foot, and eased down into it slow—favoring the bad side, hissing through his teeth just once.
He didn't ask what Denny said.
He reached over and took my coffee off the porch rail, took a sip, made a face because it was still too hot, and set it back down.
Then he took my hand again.
"Mornin', viper."
"Mornin', boy scout."
The sun came up over the ridge the rest of the way. The meadowlark picked up its three notes again somewhere past the drive.
Some day, when the words were mine and not Denny's, I'd tell Brody what had been said on this porch. He'd listen steady and unhurried and let me process it out loud. Not today.
Today, I was living.