Chapter Eleven
Early the next morning, Bix presented her plan to Denver. “This looks good,” he said.
He passed the paper to Justice, who looked it over. “Damn good.”
Arizona grabbed a page and skimmed it quickly. “This is great.”
Landry took it last. “I’m in,” he said. “What’s your time frame?”
“Well, we need to determine a formula. So we’re going to have to consider what we think the signature should be for King’s
Crest. Assuming that’s how you want to go. A beer for each ranch.”
“Let’s start with King’s. I think we’ll wait and see if anybody else wants to invest,” said Denver.
She nodded. “Seems fair. So, what do you all like to drink?”
She spent the next hour listening to them talk about their favorite beers. She put it all together, synthesizing it and trying
to figure out the right direction. She wanted something hearty. Not an IPA. A stout. Maybe wheat ale. Yes. That was what she
wanted to do. She felt a surge of excitement. No, she wasn’t really a beer drinker, but she understood the clientele. And
that was the key anyway.
“Bix,” said Denver, right before they began construction work for the day. “I might have Daughtry take you into town to buy the supplies for brewing.”
“Oh, that’s... I mean, I do know how to drive. I could do it.”
Though she realized she hadn’t done much of that recently.
“Yeah, I know. But he knows the place. He’s off again in a couple of days. So work on getting your list together.”
“Sure,” she said. She felt jittery, and excited about spending time with Daughtry, and she really shouldn’t, considering they
lived together. But they often passed each other, not actually spending a significant amount of time together.
And she was still stuck on the town hall meeting. On the way his hand had felt against hers. When she should be thinking about
her future. And brewing beer. So she shook that off.
“The other thing is I need to know if you need a crew.”
“I will. Eventually. If we’re going to bottle on-site then we are going to need some help. And managing different equipment...
is just helpful. And if I can get a space in one of the unused buildings...”
“You’ve got it.”
They went back and forth, talking about what she would need. He offered to dedicate a crew of five to the beer-brewing endeavor.
And she would be the boss.
She felt completely undone by that. Being somebody’s boss when she had barely been able to get a job until recently.
It was crazy.
When Daughtry came back from work that night, they ended up eating at his house. And over barbecued chicken, she excitedly
told him about his siblings’ buy-in for the venture.
“Thank you,” she said. “He’s actually giving me a team.”
“Did he say how much he was going to pay you?”
She was stunned to realize that she hadn’t actually secured payment. It was very off-brand for her. Normally, that would be
the first thing on her mind.
But it was the opportunity that was getting her now. Not the money. Yeah, she’d been able to put a lot away, but actually
having work, having a purpose, that was worth more.
“He was saying that maybe we should go to town together and pick up everything on my list.”
“Sounds good,” he said.
Her palms got a little bit sweaty.
“Great.”
“But he should tell you how much he’s paying you.”
“Don’t you have the authority to mandate that?”
“I do. But I’d rather see how much he’s willing to give. It might actually be more generous, and in fairness, Landry is actually
the one who knows more about the budget than anybody else. So, it’s probably going to need to be Landry.”
“Right,” she said.
“Denver got a little bit annoyed with me the other day,” he said.
“He did?” She couldn’t imagine being annoyed at Daughtry. Which was strange, since she had begun their relationship being pretty annoyed with him.
“Yeah. I think he doesn’t believe that I have a big enough commitment to the ranch.”
“He doesn’t? How can he think that? Everything that you do is... I mean, you...” Well, in fairness, he didn’t really
work that much on the ranch. But she felt like his presence was an essential part of it.
Plus he was... amazing.
She blinked. She was beginning to hero worship him a little bit, and it was ridiculous. She needed to remember that he was
just a human man. She needed to remember the condoms in the bedside drawer. He wasn’t any better or any worse than a normal
dude.
No. Okay. Maybe thinking about the condoms in the drawer had been a mistake. Because that made her feel a little bit warm,
and she couldn’t afford to go feeling warm.
“I disagree,” she said.
“That’s nice. But, he is my brother, and he does run the ranch. So, I think that his opinion on it might be a little bit more
important.”
“No,” she said. “His opinion is based on his own bias. I think that people respect you. And I think that you being part of
the family, part of all this, I think it matters. I know the way that everybody talks about the family here on the ranch.”
“What did they say?”
“Just how... great you are. How fair. Some of them remember working for your father, and I think every body is very impressed with how you have handled yourselves. The people say all the time what a great man you are, Daughtry.”
He looked uncomfortable at that. Hell, she was uncomfortable saying it. But nobody had ever said such glowing or nice things
about her. If they did, she would want to know. Someday, maybe she would earn it. Someday.
“Well. Thank you.”
“Plus...” She scrunched her face up. “If it wasn’t for you, I would still be making moonshine in the middle of the woods.
Starving... I... Thank you.” She needed to say it. She had avoided saying thank you, and really meaning it for a long
time, because it made her feel like she was beholden to him. But the truth was, she was beholden to him. And she should be.
Because what he had done for her was more than a little bit wonderful. It was more than a little bit of amazing. It was life-changing.
All the books in all the little free libraries hadn’t quite done it.
But a hand up from Daughtry had given her this.
“Bix, I really appreciate that, but the truth is, if it wasn’t for how strong you are you wouldn’t be here. You took the opportunity
you were given and you proved yourself twenty times over. You don’t owe me.”
She understood what he was doing. That he was trying to be nice. But actually, it hurt a little bit. She was okay owing him, she decided. Because he had done something great for her. There wasn’t anything wrong with acknowledging that. And a month ago, she would’ve said there was. A month ago, she would’ve said that she didn’t want that.
“So, when will we go shopping?”
“Two days. We’ll take a truck and a trailer so that we can haul it all. Congratulations, Bix. You’ve got yourself a business
venture. One on the right side of the law.”
“Wait a minute. Does that mean we’re actually going to... get a license?”
“We will indeed be getting a license.”
Her heart stuttered. “I probably won’t be able to get one. I have a record.”
“The ranch will be able to get one.”
He said it with such certainty. So much trust. That things would work just the way they were supposed to, and not even a little
bit different.
What must it be like, to be able to trust in things like that?
“I...”
“You should bring your ID. We can go get you a bank account as well. You’re going to need one.”
She blinked. “A bank account.”
“Yes. So that you can have your checks deposited. You can even use one of those newfangled debit cards to buy your things.”
She knew that he was teasing her a little bit, but it made her throat get scratchy. “My dad would be... Well, if he was
that he would be rolling over in his grave. As it is, he just sat bolt upright in his prison cell and screamed into the void.”
“What did your dad ever do for you?”
It was an uncharacteristic moment of him looking absolutely grim.
She frowned. “Well, he did keep me alive for the first several years of my life.”
“That’s not a gift. That’s the bare minimum. I know that you care about your dad. I know that part of you even admires him.
But trust me. From the child of one narcissist to another. He doesn’t deserve your loyalty. He doesn’t get to hold you back,
not anymore. You said you would do all those things if you were free to do them, if he hadn’t chosen your path for you. So
choose it now. And let go of all his bullshit. You deserve better.”
“How do you know?” she whispered. “I mean, seriously, how do you know? What have I ever done to indicate that I deserve better?
All I’ve managed to do is the job that you gave me, and then, I guess I didn’t steal from you. That’s not... that’s not
exceptional.”
“That’s not true.”
“How can you say that? Look at you.”
“Look at me what?”
“You... you didn’t have to try at your dad’s lifestyle before you decided to be a decent human being.”
“You don’t know what I did or didn’t do,” he said. “Because we haven’t talked about it.”
“But you know about me.”
“I found you in the middle of what we could both agree is maybe a low moment.”
She recalled herself then. Skinny. Scabbed.
She lifted her chin up. “I don’t know that I would call it a low moment. It was a teachable moment. It was a moment rife for
problem-solving.”
“And that is why you’re exceptional,” he said. “Because that’s how you see things. And that’s pretty amazing. When your dad, and the world in general, hasn’t given you much of a reason to be persistent, to be hopeful, you are. You have been. I’m proud of you for that.”
She despised herself for feeling so warmed by that. Knowing he was proud. It mattered so much, and she wished it didn’t. Because
caring about the opinions of other people was kind of a dead end. At least, in her experience.
She hadn’t done it much. In fact, she had always felt that it was best to do it as little as possible.
If you didn’t care, you couldn’t be disappointed when they were disappointed in you.
She paused. “Wait a minute. So what is it about you that I don’t know?”
“A lot of things,” he said.
Like who he used those condoms with.
She did not say that. She felt flushed all the same.
“Like what?”
“My dad was kind of a loan shark.”
“A loan shark? I was unaware that small towns had such things.”
“Doing the kind of work that you do, you’re surprised about it?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I guess... No, I think I’ve seen people that are like that. You’re right, those are the sorts of
people who hover around the edges of businesses like my dad’s.”
“My dad charged extortionate fees to loan people money, and then... he took everything. But he liked to trade in favors, plots of land. He cheated and hurt the people in this town. He would come in all charming, acting like he was offering to really fix something. But often, he would make sure that the situation and the terms of the agreement were impossible. He was good at that. There were other things he was into. Drug dealing and all that.” He cleared his throat.
“Oh hey,” said Bix. “Twinsies.”
He smiled ruefully. “Yeah. I didn’t know about the drugs.”
“Oh, I did,” she said, cheerfully.
“Anyway I was his... I went with him. I was there to be muscle. Just in case.”
“How old were you?” She tried to imagine it. Tried to imagine Daughtry being intimidating, being there to take things from
people. A menacing presence rather than someone who radiated... well, not menace. Yes, she had been a little afraid of
him right at first, but not because she actually thought he was bad. It was because she was... well, because she was doing
things that weren’t entirely aboveboard, so she had reason to be uncomfortable around him.
But the idea that he had been... something other than the man that stood before her now rocked her.
“I was old enough to know better. It went on until I was about seventeen. I was big for my age.”
She could believe it.
“What changed for you?” She found herself desperate to know. Because something had turned the whole world on its head for him, and she wanted to know what that moment was. Since she herself was in the midst of a come-to-Jesus, she was curious what had led him to his.
“We pulled up to the house one day, and there was a little girl at the place. She saw us coming. She ran away. I knew that
if we were the kind of person that made little kids run away, then we weren’t the good guys. And I had never put a lot of
thought into that.” He cleared his throat. “It was after that when Dan Patrick was killed, by somebody he went to collect
from. At the behest of my dad. So basically, it was a combination of things. But that little girl’s face really stuck in my
head. It changed things for me.”
He looked grim, and she found she wanted to reach up and smooth the lines that had appeared on his forehead. She also felt
like she didn’t have the right to. They lived together. He had taken care of her. She still wasn’t quite sure what they were
to each other. And he was telling her this now. This thing that seemed personal and real. She wanted to hoard it like food.
The corner of his lip tugged upward. “I wanted to be a good guy. But it was also my first real understanding that my dad was
a bad guy. He wasn’t like your dad. I feel like your dad had a certain amount of pride in going against the law.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah. He loved to grandstand on why he was actually sort of a hero. Fighting the man and all of that.”
He shook his head. “My dad was never one to grandstand. He spoke with this very real conviction that made you feel like he couldn’t be anything but right. It was why when he showed his true colors it was always a bit of a shock. Arizona was in a terrible accident when she was seventeen. She had injuries, scars on her body—it took a long time for her to recover. He was horrible to her. He just said the most poisonous things. It was painful because there were other times when he seemed nice.” He stared at a point just past her head. “He was like a snake. Slithering in and out between the rocks. Sometimes he would catch the light and you would think he was pretty. But at the end of the day, he was a pit viper. And he was poison.”
“My dad had all kinds of justifications for what he did,” said Bix. “But I always knew. When you have to be secretive about
what you do, when you don’t have any friends, when you’re not allowed to go to school, when you can’t tell anybody what your
dad does for a living, you know that you are the ones that are wrong. I have clung to a whole lot of what he taught me because
I didn’t want to feel like I was a bad guy either.”
But she didn’t know what else to be. Didn’t know what other move to make. Except now she did. Maybe that was what mattered.
Maybe they were more alike than she had realized before.
“You’re not a bad guy,” he said.
Warmth bloomed in her chest. “Well. I appreciate that.”
The days flew by until it was time for them to go on their shopping trip, and she found herself fretting over what to wear. She had never done that in her life. But Daughtry always looked... well, like Daughtry. And she wanted to look like a woman who ought to be walking with him.
She chose another one of the dresses that she had bought. It was short and pretty, with buttons all the way down the front,
and a flower pattern. She had bought a few dresses like this because they were frivolous. Because they were something she
never would have picked in her other life, and she was working on making something new.
She felt a cracking sensation in her chest. Like something old and calcified was beginning to loosen. Beginning to ease. It
was terrifying, and she wanted it. In spite of the terror.
They were going to buy supplies to brew beer, and she had put on her nicest dress. She rolled her eyes at herself as she looked
in the mirror, and wished that she had just a little bit of makeup. Just something. A little bit of brightness to make him
look at her and see that she was different.
What exactly do you think is going on?
Nothing. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that...
She shut down that train of thought. This was what she had always been afraid of. Cracking the door on hope. Because then all these other dreams would push in. And that was exactly what was happening. She had food and shelter, so she’d begun to think maybe she could have stability too. And then she’d started to think if she could have the job brewing beer maybe she could also go to college. And then she thought if she could begin to make friends here at the ranch, maybe Daughtry...
There was just a limit to how much she could put herself through. To how much she could test this new, fragile hope that was
blooming within her.
She reaffirmed within herself that she was absolutely fine without makeup.
Because she didn’t need Daughtry to see her different. She needed to keep on trying to see herself different.
That thought pulled her up short, and as she walked out of her bedroom and into the living room, where she was waiting for
him, she let that settle. She saw herself as a fighter. But more than that, she realized she saw herself as an underdog. It
was something that had fueled her. The idea that she had an enemy, somewhere out there. She had gotten that from her father.
The idea that everything she did wasn’t just about surviving, but was about opposing someone who was pushing against her.
For her dad, it had been the system. She had taken on a bit of that herself, but she realized that a huge part of how she
functioned was fashioning weapons against imagined enemies.
What if she didn’t need enemies?
What if all she needed was to want something better for herself?
It was a radical idea. Something that made her feel off-kilter. She wasn’t sure she was going to accomplish it in a day. But
someday, she hoped she could feel that way. That she could do things just for her. For her own well-being. For her own improvement.
Her own happiness.
Happiness.
That had never been a goal of hers. Another thing that seemed desperately out of reach due to the budget of her own personal
economy.
She had aimed for survival, and very little else.
But what if she could have more?
She heard Daughtry’s bedroom door open, and he came walking down the hall. He had traded the black T-shirt for a white one,
white hat on his head.
“I didn’t really think cowboys were real,” she said, not meaning to say that out loud. But she had.
“And now you’re here with a whole mess of them.”
“That I am.”
She felt lightheaded as they walked out to the truck.
“What are you thinking?” he asked as they began to drive away from the house, down the dirt road that would take them to the
main road.
“Just that I can’t quite believe that now I do live on a ranch with a whole bunch of cowboys, and I’m about to start heading
up a beer-brewing operation. One that’s legit.”
“Shocking. I know.”
“I mean, do you?”
“Sometimes when I think about my life. When I think about what I’ve done, where I’ve been, when I think about my father, I
can’t quite believe that I put on that uniform most days and go out and enforce the law, rather than my father’s terrible
loan terms. So yeah. I get that.”
She didn’t think he did, though, because for her it came with a whole bunch of other feelings that she never had before. This desire to plant roots. To stay. To get closer to the people around her rather than building a wall around her. After digging a moat around the place where the wall was meant to go.
And then there was him.
This fluttering that she felt when she looked at him, and the fascination with the condoms she knew were in his bedside table.
It was all bad. And yet it was also good.
It was like she had been a paper-doll version of a human being when he had found her. Thin and one-dimensional. Needy for
food, shelter. Warmth. Not understanding that there was a fuller, deeper human experience out there.
She’d had tastes of it through reading. But it was hard to say which parts were fantasy, and which were actually obtainable.
She certainly had never been able to work it all out. She was wondering about it now.
They made casual conversation about the area, the weather and brewing plans on the way to Mapleton, and when they arrived
at the outdoor store which had all the supply, he got a big flat cart and pushed it through the aisles while she managed finding
all of the equipment. They were an efficient team.
People stopped and talked to Daughtry, and he chatted with them easily. They knew him because he was a police officer.
She wondered if any of them knew him as his father’s son, or if this new thing that he had done had entirely replaced that
image in their heads.
She was just wondering for a friend. Who was her. How long it took to be defined by your own actions, and not the reputation of a sketchy family member.
The tab for all the items left her nearly gagging, because it was more money than she’d ever had in her life. But Daughtry
didn’t seem shocked by it at all. He pushed the flat cart out to the truck and lowered the bed. She rushed to bend down and
pick up one of the metal bins, and he grabbed it at the same time, his hand going over the top of hers. Her eyes flew to his,
the breath exiting her lungs in a sharp gasp.
His face was still. If he felt anything over the contact he didn’t show it. She jerked her hand back, and stepped away.
“How about bank account next?” he asked.
She flexed her fingers, curled them into a fist. “I still don’t know about the bank account.”
“Why not?”
“It is very traditional. Very in the system . It kind of freaks me out.”
“Bix,” he said. “I hate to break it to you, but you are now gainfully employed. You need a bank account.”
He finished loading everything into the back of the truck, and shut the tailgate. She just stood there staring as he rounded
to the driver’s side and got in. Her fingers were still burning. She hustled to open the door and get in, feeling a strange
rush of relief when she was. Because riding shotgun in his truck was normal, at least. And what had just happened a moment
ago had not felt normal at all.
He drove them both to the center of town and parked against the curb. The bank was housed in a historic old building, and something about that made her feel a little bit more calm. But this was weird.
“Will you come with me?” she asked, looking up at him as they stood outside the front door of the bank.
“I’m about to walk in with you,” he said.
“No, I know. But will you...? I can’t talk to a banker by myself. I can’t... I need you to go with me.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll go with you.” They waited behind two people before they were able to see the banker at her shiny
wooden desk in the center of the old-fashioned room. There were gold posts with thick velvet rope delineating the lines to
the different tellers. It was such a strange thing. Velvet rope.
The kind of thing Bix was always behind.
But she felt like she was crossing over.
Was this a betrayal of everything she had been raised to believe? And was that actually a bad thing? Or was it something that
needed to happen?
They sat down at the desk, and Bix swallowed hard. She looked at the woman’s name plastered on the desk. Hope Berkey. It was
a very fancy thing, to have a nameplate like that. And that was one reason Bix noticed. The other reason was that the woman’s
name was Hope. In context with what she had just been thinking earlier, it seemed a pretty big coincidence. Bix didn’t especially
believe in signs from the universe. But she did believe and trust in her gut. Listening. Paying attention.
Right now it definitely seemed like she was being told to have a little bit of hope.
“I need to open a checking account,” said Bix. She frowned. “The problem is I’ve never had one before.”
“Well,” said Hope. “Let’s go over our different products and see which one is right for you.”
Bix was entirely sold on the free checking account option and didn’t need to hear about anything else. And there was the option
to add a high-yield savings account if she had more than two hundred dollars to deposit. A special offer to a new bank customer.
And she did have more than two hundred dollars.
It was strange, depositing all her money.
She sat in the seat and waited while Hope went to get papers for Bix to sign, and waited for her debit card to print.
Daughtry leaned in, and her heart fluttered. “That’s not all your money, is it?”
“I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I’ve got some stashed away too.”
She hadn’t been able to imagine sending all of her money to this weird theoretical place, where it would just be a number
on an ATM screen, theoretical as she swiped her card. No. It was too weird. She couldn’t bear it. She felt like she had to
have real, concrete backup.
The woman came back, and Bix signed the papers, and then found a shiny debit card with a picture of a mountain being slid
toward her.
Bix Carpenter.
It had her name printed on it.
She ran her fingertips over the top of it, just staring. And then she felt Daughtry’s gaze on her. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
Bix shook Hope’s hand, and she and Daughtry walked out of the bank and back onto the street. Bix clutched her packet to her
chest, her debit card safely in her purse.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You looked... wistful.”
“I guess I am. I’ve never had a card with my name on it before. It feels very official. I feel very official in a way that
I never have.”
“You’re doing great,” he said.
She wondered if he would ask her if she wanted to have lunch. She would like that. Sitting in a restaurant having lunch with
Daughtry. She didn’t want the afternoon to end.
“Thank you.”
“We better head back,” he said. “If we’re quick the food will still be out on the tables. We can eat, and then you can start
getting your space set up.”
Disappointment made her stomach bottom out. Which was stupid. There was no point being disappointed that Daughtry didn’t want
to have lunch. That he couldn’t read her mind. It was a workday, and this had been a work trip.
It wasn’t personal. That was the thing. She had to remember that. But it was getting harder and harder to do.