Chapter 9 #2
Then something strange happens. Almost in perfect unison, they come to a stop, and then both men tip their hats toward Grace. “Nice to meet you, Grace,” Grady says.
It’s a miracle Grace can form a coherent sentence, a feat she doesn’t even realize she’s capable of until “Nice to meet you, too,” comes tumbling out of her mouth.
“They were just leavin’,” Renata chimes in. She’s turned around now and leaning onto the rail with her elbows. “Weren’t you, gentlemen?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tripp says, his voice several pitches lower than Grady’s. They start to walk toward the cruiser, but as they go, Tripp turns around and says, “Please keep in mind what we discussed, Mrs. Caldwell. Highest temps on the record. Gonna be a mean August.”
“Tripp McCade,” Renata calls out, standing to her full height and pointing at him with a firm index finger. “If you call me Mrs. Caldwell one more time, after I have politely and consistently asked you to call me Renata, I’ll show you mean.”
Grace hears them chuckle, the footsteps descending the stairs, and the truck doors open and shut.
As the engine hums to life, Renata peeks over the railing and sees Grace holding on to the wood of the porch.
A strange thrumming in her ears is overtaking all other sound.
Her knees suddenly start to buckle, and she’s sinking to the ground, landing atop a soft thatch of grass.
“Grace—” Renata is off, rushing down the steps and toward Grace’s side. Once within reach, she steadies Grace, helping her stand with two hands on her arms. It sounds like she’s speaking from underwater as she pleads, “Grace, look at me.”
Grace tries. She really does. But everything feels like it’s happening in slow motion. Except her heart—that feels like it’s about to burst in her chest, like a balloon floating toward a wall of needles.
Renata’s voice is even, soft but imploring. “Honey, I don’t know what’s happening—you gotta talk to me. Is it those men? They’re harmless—they just came by to tell me to move the herd out to the summer pasture sooner than we did last year.”
Grace barely hears the explanation. Her vision continues to swim until she almost teeters over again. Renata’s grip tightens on her biceps, straightening her back up, and then her hand is suddenly cupping Grace’s cheek, cool to the touch.
“Grace, listen to my voice. Listen.” The last word is sharper than the rest, like it finally broke through the surface of the water.
Grace nods. A slow, syrupy movement. It’s the best she can do.
“Good. Now, I want you to do something for me,” she urges. “I want you to think about your boots. Think about the grass beneath them. Think about digging your heels in. Think about the texture of the dirt against the soles.”
Grace nods again, the frenzy in her brain slowly starting to fade into a dull roar. She closes her eyes and sees the grass, the dirt, the heels of her boots pressing down.
“Good. That’s it. Now, I want you to breathe in slowly, and when you do, I want you to try to smell everything you can, okay? We can do it together. On the count of three. One, two, three.”
Renata’s chest rises slowly, and Grace’s does, too, but with less vigor. Her breathing is unsteady—like it could easily spiral into chaos at any second.
“What do you smell, Grace? I smell sourdough made with Ronnie’s thirty-year-old starter.” Renata takes in another deep breath, a satisfied sound leaving her lips at the tail end. “That’ll make for a mean turkey sandwich.”
Grace breathes in, too, and she picks up on something—just a hint. “Eucalyptus,” she whispers weakly.
Renata nods, then gently releases Grace’s arms. “That’d be my perfume. Anything else? I can definitely smell horse shit, but that’s kind of a permanent thing around here, as you know.”
Despite herself, Grace smiles. It feels foreign and wonderful on her lips. She’s still here. No one has taken her away from this place. For now, for this moment, she gets to stay in this little corner of heaven.
After a long, calming moment of silence between the two women, Renata sets two fingers under Grace’s chin and gently lifts until Grace is forced to meet her eyes. Grace takes in the perceptiveness in her expression, the cleverness, the earnestness.
“Okay,” Renata says with a firm nod. She wraps an arm securely around Grace’s shoulders and turns them around, then begins to march them both up the stairs toward the house. “Let’s go have ourselves a girls’ lunch, shall we?”
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Ronnie’s sourdough is still warm when Grace bites into it.
Her eyes fall shut involuntarily at the first taste of the sandwich; it’s all she can do to not moan.
It’s stuffed with turkey, salami, tomatoes, and some sort of spicy mayo concoction that’s starting to drip down her palms, and the bread doesn’t scrape the roof of her mouth like others sometimes do.
The crust is perfectly crunchy, and the center is pillowy soft.
After the second bite, Grace decides, with absolute certainty, that she could eat this sandwich every day for the rest of her life and not get sick of it.
So focused on the meal, she hardly notices Renata, sitting catty-corner to her at the head of the kitchen table, studying her.
Grace catches her eye and gulps down a big bite.
She dabs her mouth with the cloth napkin in her lap and smiles.
“This is amazing. Thank you.”
Renata waves her off. “Don’t thank me, honey. But be sure to tell Ronnie you like the bread. It’s a real point of pride for her.”
“Of course.”
A steaming cup of an undisclosed liquid sits in front of Renata’s plate, which has gone mostly untouched save for a few nibbles at the corner.
Grace is flabbergasted by this—how is Renata not devouring it with abandon the same way she is?
She’s staring at the uneaten sandwich when Renata says, “Crew tells me you got to see my youngest in rare form the other night.”
Grace’s brow hikes upward, and for a moment, she’s unsure how to respond. Renata has a way of sniffing out the truth, and Grace doesn’t know how much Crew has shared of the ranch hands’ sordid adventure with Cooper. She replies simply, “Yes, ma’am.”
“They get that from their father, you know,” Renata says.
Grace tilts her head, unsure what that means.
Renata’s lips turn into a flat line. “The idiot gene. That’s all Clint. No DNA of mine would have someone trying to ride a wild horse while three sheets to the wind. He’s lucky he didn’t break his damn neck.”
Grace can’t help the little snort that escapes her nose. She nods, amused by the comment, and by Renata’s natural ability to be funny even in uglier moments. “Yes, ma’am,” Grace repeats.
A companionable silence settles between them for a beat, and then Grace looks up to find the older woman tapping her lips with her index finger. She gives Grace a reassuring look, then lightly puts her hands up, like a book falling open.
In a gentle but notably firm voice, she asks, “Would you like to tell me what happened out on the porch just now, Grace?”
Not really. Not really at all.
In fact, Grace wants to finish eating her sandwich, then she wants to eat Renata’s sandwich, and then she wants to go back to the stables and forget it ever happened.
But she knows Renata’s not really asking—she’s prompting.
Waiting expectantly for Grace to supply the information she’s after.
Regretfully, Grace sets down her sandwich.
“The TDA—they used to come around Braxton a lot,” she says, looking down at her lap.
“My uncle was always being investigated for one thing or another. And when they’d come, he’d make me and the other hands hide any evidence that could get him into hot water.
He wasn’t good to the animals, and he knew if they saw the way he neglected them, he’d get fined.
Or worse. So we covered it up. Strategically placed healthy animals around and kept the others out of sight.
It always felt so—” She hates this—hates remembering those awful days when she, too, felt like a criminal for helping him.
“It was terrible. There’s no other way to slice it.
He should’ve never been allowed to buy them in the first place. ”
Renata stays quiet, but there’s a tightness to her features that wasn’t visible before.
A tense moment of quiet stretches between them until she finally asks, “So he was abusing his ranch hands, abusing his animals, and lying to the TDA.” She shakes her head, a little curl of disgust folding into her top lip. “Anything else?”
Grace considers what she should say next.
It would be easy to give him up to Renata, and it would be nice to tell someone all of his secrets.
All of his cut corners, his tricks and scams. She thinks about how yellow his teeth would look when he would grin after closing a deal, after swindling yet another poor, gullible bastard.
The image is nausea inducing. “Yeah,” Grace says, nodding firmly.
“There’s a lot. But his principal con, his bread and butter, is the stud scam. ”
Renata’s eyes widen slightly at that, and she leans forward, her face turning steely. With that determined, no-bullshit-taking look in her eyes, she nods in Grace’s direction. “Go on, then,” she says. “Tell me everything.”
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
Grace spends the rest of the hour telling Renata everything she can remember of Bellamy’s infractions, from small to massive in scale. Renata listens patiently, and though she doesn’t write anything down, Grace has a feeling she’ll remember everything in stark detail.