2. Money Bags #2
She does it immediately, no hesitation, palm out and steady.
Biscuit stretches his nose toward her and she goes very still in the way that kids do when they're trying so hard to be good that it's almost painful to watch.
He bumps her hand once. She exhales like she's been holding her breath for an hour.
"He's so soft," she whispers.
"That's Biscuit. He's about as gentle as they come."
"Does he have a favorite food?"
"Apples. Cut them in quarters first or he gets greedy."
She files that away with the focused intensity of someone taking notes on something important. Then she looks at me sideways, still keeping her hand near Biscuit's nose. "Are you mad at my dad?"
The question lands without warning, the way questions from eight-year-olds tend to do. Clean and direct and completely without malice.
"No," I say carefully. "We're still figuring each other out."
She considers that. "He's not mean," she says. "He just talks about things like they're problems to solve. My grandma says it's how he shows he cares." She scratches Biscuit lightly between the eyes.
"He drove all night to get here. He thought I was asleep but I wasn't."
I don't say anything to that.
"He kept looking out the window," she adds quietly. "Like he was looking for something."
Then, because apparently emotional devastation has a strict eight-second limit with children, she wrinkles her nose.
"He also spilled coffee on himself in Amarillo because he tried driving and opening creamer at the same time."
I blink.
"Dad said the steering wheel overreacted."
Biscuit blows a soft breath against her palm and she smiles, wide and unguarded, and something in my chest shifts in a way I immediately decide not to examine.
Rowdy chooses that moment to barrel into the barn, skid on the loose hay, and crash directly into a feed bucket with a noise like a small explosion.
Maisie immediately giggles.
I go back to work and tell myself that's the only reason I'm smiling.
By mid-morning the ranch is running the way it always runs, which is to say with controlled chaos and a soundtrack of Remy's commentary that nobody asked for and nobody can seem to stop.
I'm helping Silas with a section of fence line near the east pasture when Beckett appears on the four-wheeler, which he is driving with the careful, slightly rigid posture of a man who has read about four-wheelers but clearly hasn't spent much time on one.
He pulls up alongside us, cuts the engine, and climbs off with the studied casualness of someone pretending they weren't gripping the handlebars too hard the whole way out.
"Thought I'd see what you were working on," he says.
Silas glances at me. I look at the fence.
"Post needs resetting," I say. "Ground shifted after the last rain."
Beckett looks at the fence post, then at the tools, then at Silas, who is already back to work with the quiet efficiency of a man who has decided this situation is not his problem. "What can I do?"
I hand him the post driver without breaking stride.
He takes it, looks at it, and to his credit does not ask what it is.
We work in relative silence for a stretch, which is not something I expected from him. I had him pegged as a talker, the kind of man who fills quiet with words because quiet makes him uncomfortable. Instead he follows Silas's lead without being told to.
He holds the post steady when Silas needs it held, and doesn't complain when the post driver comes down wrong and rattles up his arms hard enough that I see him wince.
He doesn't mention it.
I'm resetting the wire tension on the far side of the post when the sun moves past the tree line and hits the pasture full on, and the temperature reminds me cheerfully that it is Texas.
It is summer and it has no interest in being reasonable about either of those things. I pull my hat down and keep working.
Beckett, I notice, did not bring a hat.
He also did not bring water, sunscreen, or any apparent awareness that standing in direct Texas sun in a light gray shirt is going to become a problem inside of twenty minutes.
The shirt is already starting to show it.
He's pushed the sleeves up to his elbows, which does something to the lines of his forearms that I notice purely as an involuntary biological observation and immediately file away under things I am not thinking about.
I am not thinking about it.
"There's a water jug on the back of the four-wheeler," I say, without looking up from the wire.
"I'm fine."
"I didn't ask if you were fine. Drink water."
A pause. Then the sound of him walking back to the four-wheeler.
Silas appears at my elbow, quiet as always, and says at a volume only I can hear, "He's not bad with his hands."
"He held a fence post, Silas."
"He held it right." Silas picks up the wire cutters. "Some people don't."
I don't answer that.
Beckett comes back, water jug in hand, and goes back to work without comment.
I watch him out of the corner of my eye for approximately three seconds longer than is strictly necessary, cataloguing the way the effort settles into his shoulders, the way he adjusts his grip without being shown twice.
Then I look back at the fence because that is what I am here for.
The fence. Not the forearms. The fence.
Then my mind drifts to other problems.
The broken irrigation line was nobody's fault that suddenly flooded the field.
That is the official position I am taking and I will not be accepting questions at this time.
What happened, technically speaking, is that Beckett decided to "take a look" at the east field irrigation system after lunch. Not fix it. Not adjust it. Just look.
He was very clear about that distinction when he explained it to me afterward, standing in approximately four inches of muddy water with his second pair of ruined khakis plastered to his legs and an expression of controlled devastation on his face that almost made me feel bad for him.
Almost.
I'm in the equipment shed when Remy finds me, and I know it's bad before he even opens his mouth because he's doing the thing where he's trying not to smile and failing completely and overcompensating by looking at the ceiling.
"So," he says.
"How bad?"
"The east field is currently a swamp."
I set down what I'm holding. "Define swamp."
"I would say approximately forty yards of unplanned water feature." He pauses. "Rowdy is in it. He appears to be having the time of his life."
I walk out of the equipment shed and across the yard and stop at the edge of the east field where the irrigation line has, by the look of it, separated cleanly from the main coupling and is currently pumping water enthusiastically into the dirt at a rate that has turned the entire low end of the field into something that resembles a Louisiana bayou.
Rowdy is indeed in it. He is absolutely filthy and completely ecstatic and when he sees me he barks once and spins in a circle, splashing mud in a six foot radius.
Beckett is standing at the edge of the water looking at the coupling in his hand with the expression of a man whose spreadsheet did not account for this outcome.
"I just looked at it," he says.
"Uh huh."
"The coupling was already loose. I barely touched it."
"Uh huh."
"In my defense, the online tutorial I watched made this look extremely straightforward."
"YouTube claims another victim," Remy mutters under his breath.
I have to bite the inside of my cheek not to laugh.
I turn to look at him slowly. "You watched a tutorial."
"Several, actually. There was a very comprehensive YouTube channel—"
"Beckett."
"Yes."
"Stop talking."
He stops talking.
Remy appears at my shoulder making a noise that is technically a cough but is not even slightly a cough.
Silas materializes from somewhere behind us, surveys the situation in silence for a long moment, and then says with complete calm, "I'll get the pump."
"I'll pay for the repairs," Beckett says immediately. "Whatever it costs, I'll cover it."
"You own the ranch," I say. "You're already paying for it."
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "That's a fair point."
"Get some boots from the equipment shed. The ones by the door, second shelf." I'm already rolling up my sleeves. "You broke it, you're helping fix it."
"I didn't break it, I merely—"
The look I give him finishes that sentence for him.
I actually watch the survival instinct kick in behind his eyes when he decides whatever argument he was about to make is probably not worth dying in a muddy field over.
He goes and gets the boots.
Remy leans close as Beckett walks away and says quietly, "Ten bucks says he watches another tutorial tonight to figure out what went wrong."
From across the field, Rowdy barks and executes another joyful muddy spin.
I watch Beckett disappear toward the equipment shed in borrowed boots that are definitely too big for him. He walks with the stiff irritation of a man who looks personally offended by every step they force him to take.
He's covered in mud, sunburned across the bridge of his nose, and somehow still trying to hold onto whatever dignity he has left.
This man should be impossible not to dislike.
The problem is, I'm starting to think he might also be impossible not to root for.
"Don't," I tell Remy.
But I'm already smiling and we both know it.