Chapter 28 Bode
Ash pushes his long brown locks from his eyes and frowns up at me as I scoop feed into the bucket. His eyes narrow at me, protective and stern, just like his Mama’s. “That’s not how Miss Maggie does it.”
“Well, Maggie isn’t here.” I mock a frown back at him and hand him the bucket. “Besides, Wanda doesn’t need bottles anymore.”
He huffs and shifts in the slush, looping his arms around the bucket handle. “I’m telling her you said that.” Ash grins up at me as he turns on his little boot heels and shuffles towards Wanda’s pen.
“Traitor!” I holler back with a laugh and tug my phone from my pocket.
It’s well past seven a.m. She should be here by now.
Maggie is never late. Even when she stops at Dot’s to grab a muffin or coffee, she’s still here by now.
I’d be lying if I said my nerves weren’t wired.
I’m excited. I want to see her, touch her.
At this point, I’d beg to just be in her vicinity.
Part of me thinks maybe I’m distracted, that tripping over thoughts of Maggie is a bad thing, but then I catch myself smiling at the whisper of her breath on my skin, and I convince myself that she’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time.
I follow Ash down to the pen, letting myself drift away as I walk, and as Ash feeds the calf, I mindlessly give her some scratches between the ears.
I’m in the middle of my favorite daydream, the smell of her shampoo in my nose and the sound of her laughter in my ear, when Ford stomps by and ruins the illusion.
He tosses a toolbox into the back of the wheeler and turns to me, his shoulders are pinned back like he’s ready for a fight. “You seen Crew or Peter?”
“Crew took him out for rounds this morning. I don’t think they’re back yet. Have you seen Maggie?” I ask, glancing down to watch Ash dump the rest of the feed inside Wanda’s barn.
“She’s not coming today.” The tone in his voice forces me to look up.
His eyes don’t quite meet mine, which is unusual for him.
Ford isn’t the one to break a stare down, let alone with me.
In an instant, the ignorant bubble of bliss I built in my head shatters, and my stomach churns with every worst-case scenario.
“What happened?” I force the words through my teeth, ignoring the tightness in my jaw. When Ford doesn’t answer right away, my gut twists further with worry as I step forward. “What the fuck happened, Ford?”
I watch the moment his demeanor returns and his dark eyes narrow in on me. I’m not getting an answer without a fight, and if he doesn’t tell me whether or not she’s fine within the next minute, not even Crew will be able to drag me off of him.
“Why do you care all of a sudden?” he spits, stepping forward. “You didn’t want her here in the first place.”
“Things change,” I bite to defend myself.
“Was it before or after you fucked her that they changed?” he says, low enough that only I hear. He laughs wildly at the flicker of shock that floods my face for a second and nods, “Yeah. I know.”
“I’m not answering that, and if you talk about her like that again–”
“You’ll what?” he taunts. “You’ll lay me out? Last I checked, you still punch like a child.”
Before I can stop myself, I snatch the collar of his jacket and eat up the distance between us. “Just tell me what the fuck happened.”
He stares at me, and I realize he’s letting me have the upper hand. Why? I don’t have time to figure it out because the words that come out of his mouth punch me harder than he ever could. “Her mom died.”
My vision clouds over as I let him go and turn to head to my truck. I hear him shouting behind me, the sound of his boots follows, but I don’t dare stop. I’m not letting her be alone. Not with this.
“Hey, asshole!” Ford barks just as I feel a clump of slush hit the center of my back. “You hurt her, and I’m going to bury you so far in this earth–”
“If I hurt her, bury me out in pasture nine,” I bark back, meaning every word, and yank open the door to my truck to climb inside. I don’t wait for the engine to finish roaring to life before throwing it in reverse, sending slush and gravel flying in Ford’s direction.
I don’t care anymore if he knows. Hell, I don’t care if any of them know.
The minute I turn down Maggie’s street, I want to throw up.
Silent flashing lights force me to slow down and pull to the side, allowing the ambulance to pass me in the opposite direction.
For a second, I whisper a prayer for Daphne and wait for them to turn the corner before pulling into Maggie’s drive.
My boots are on solid ground before I can even think about what I’m walking into. She might not even want me here, but it doesn’t matter, I need to make sure she’s alright before my common sense can straighten itself out.
The front door is wide open, and the cold air rushes inside in unforgiving waves of frigid air. I don’t even announce myself as I step over the threshold and close the door behind me.
“Maggie?” I call out a second before something crashes to the floor above me in the house.
I look around, still not entirely familiar with the floor plan, and find the stairs tucked around the corner.
Everything is old: coats of paint, time-warped wood, and pictures taken before Daphne was sick.
My heart clenches in my chest. Losing a parent is hard, but Daphne was a part of Maggie in a way I’d never seen a woman connected to her mother.
I take the stairs quickly, following the sound of her frustrated cries until I find her throwing things out of a dresser in a bedroom at the end of the hall.
Her hair is tied back in a loose, dirty mess of blonde strands, and her face is red, swollen, and sore from crying as she whirls around the bedroom like a force of nature.
Her chest is heaving with sobs, and she’s so focused on whatever she’s looking for that she doesn’t even notice me standing there. The dresser wobbles as she rips out the top drawer and throws it to the floor, then moves on to the one below.
“Maggie,” I say, stepping into the mess she’s creating.
“Hey,” I try to get her attention, but she’s lost in a storm of emotions, and she can’t hear me over the sound of her self-made thunder.
She stops briefly, and for a second, I think she might be lucid as she braces herself, but with the same ragged breath, she moves to the closet and starts ripping boxes down from the top shelf.
There’s paper everywhere, and she doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, so I call out to her again. “Magnolia!” I snap and watch her face flinch.
Her body freezes just as another box tips off the shelf and spills documents across the old wooden floor. She clenches her jaw and rubs her face clean of tears with the back of her hand.
“Yes?” she snaps, and I’ve never heard her voice so void of joy.
“What are you doing, baby?” I lower mine and step closer to her, but she curls into herself, and I watch in agony as her bottom lip trembles.
“I have to find the deed to the house and Mama’s will, her health records, and there’s a book here with all her notes for what she wants her funeral to be.
” Maggie’s words string together in a sobbed, slurry mess.
“I have to find it all…” she mumbles, and it’s like that’s enough to restart the panic in her chest because she starts moving again before I have the chance to stop her.
“Let me do it.” I reach out, stopping her from chucking the box in her arms but she pulls away from me and throws it down to the floor anyway.
“I can do it myself!” she snaps and moves on to the next one.
The way she’s searching through everything…
she’s not going to find anything. It’s chaotic and useless.
I try again with the next shoe box she’s rifling through, but her mind is heavy with grief, and her actions are meaningless.
“Go away, Bode,” she huffs, and I know she doesn’t mean it, but it hurts all the same.
“No, you should have called me,” I say, my voice is more stern than before, and it’s a mistake because Maggie turns her head to look at me. I inhale a harsh breath, and the sight of those usually bright green eyes now so dark and lifeless, churns my stomach.
“Oh, yeah?” She chuckles, it’s empty of anything that makes Maggie who she is.
Like all, the will to live has been sucked from her.
“That’s how this works, you call, I come,” I tell her.
It’s the first time I’m saying it out loud, but it means all the same.
It took me a second to realize it, but I’ve been doing it since the very first day she looked at me.
I’d been wandering around in circles picking up the mess she’s been making in my heart with reckless abandon just to get a glimpse of that smile.
And I’m silently begging her right here, right now, not to lose that in all the grief.
I don’t think I could survive without seeing it.
“I don’t need you here.” She responds without a lick of emotion, and I clench my jaw, knowing that it’s not her talking.
“That’s crap, Magnolia, and you know it. Let me help,” I plead with her, reaching out and praying that she takes my hand… that she lets me back in. She’s been an open door the entire time I’ve known her, and the feeling of her slamming it closed in my face stings. “Let me fix it.”
The ice in her expression is colder than any Montana winter I’ve ever felt.
“You can’t fix this, Bode,” she practically snarls. The emotions bubbling up from her are confusing and turning resentful right before my eyes. “Just get out!”
“No.” I shake my head and pull off my hat, throwing it onto the messy bed. “I ain’t going nowhere,” I argue, and she scoffs because she’s got nothing left for me.
“I don’t want you here. I don’t want anyone here.
I just want to be alone. Why don’t you understand that?
” she snaps. “I didn’t call because I knew you’d show up on your stupid high horse and try to make it all better.
But you can’t! She’s dead, Bode! Are you going to bring my mama back?
Are you going to fist fight death itself and bring her back to me?
” She slams her hands against my chest. I’ve never seen such anger, and especially not from her.
She rolls her eyes over me, and I don’t recognize the woman that glares up at me.
“Get your wet cowboy boots out of my house and leave me alone!”
I stare at her for a second, searching for Maggie-Mae beneath the grief as the silence eats us alive. All I want to do is wrap her up until she doesn’t feel like this anymore, but I reach out and she flinches away from me for a second time.
“Go!” she screams, and I can feel the way her heart crumbles as the emotions explode from her.
“Okay,” I say softly and back up from her, holding my hands up in defeat before grabbing my hat from the bed and leaving her to her storm. I take the stairs slowly and find Jolene standing in the entrance to the kitchen, drying a plate.
“If she-” I stop, clearing my throat free of the cotton that’s stuck there. “If she gets worse, you call me. I’ll come over and try to help.”
“Will do,” Jolene gives me a warm smile, but I don’t miss the sadness and worry in her eyes. “She’ll be alright, Bode,” she offers, “Just give her some time to wade through this, she’ll find her way back to you.”
“I sure hope so, Ma’am.” I nod and wander out onto the ramp.
It’s another half an hour of listening to Maggie tear apart the house through the open upstairs window, but I never move, afraid I won’t be here if something else happens.
Not until I hear Jolene’s soft voice convincing her into the shower, not until Dot pulls up in her car and finds me frozen to death under the awning.
“Go back to the ranch, Bode. Busy yourself,” I hear Dot say, but every step is agony. The truth is, walking away from her is torture, and for the first time in my entire life, I don’t know what to do or where to go.