Chapter 6
SIX
WINNIE
He’s the One Who Knows
“You have oboe lessons in half an hour. Then volleyball. And I have to leave for work!” I yell to my missing offspring.
“Sally. Five minutes! So you’re okay?” I throw to Lanie on the phone, double-teaming a conversation between my best friend and my daughter, because why would I do one thing at a time when I can do five?
“You said that fifteen minutes ago!” My ten-year-old, who I swear is going on twenty-three, pokes her head out of the bathroom door and dashes along the hall, her towel flailing behind her like a spinnaker sail tangled in itself.
“I’m fine. Stop worrying about me.” Lanie’s voice strains only a little. “The ranch is fine. Cord looks after me very well.” She sounds like a prerecorded message, not my best friend.
“You’re fine? That sounds sweet and like utter bullshit.
” I smile at my phone even though she can’t hear me and cover the receiver.
“I have standards!” I yell back to Sally.
My landlord will evict us, if he ever actually turns up to collect rent.
Which, thank God, he does not, seeing as he’s my ex-husband.
I pay it into his bank account monthly anyway just like a good little ex-wife.
“Doesn’t sound like it!” Sally shouts from the other end of the short hallway from the mess that represents my life.
“Sally is energetic. I’m looking forward to seeing her. Cord should be there soon,” Lanie muses.
“She’ll have a ball. How’s planning for the Invitational going?” I search through my laundry pile for uniforms.
Lanie laughs, her voice still thin and straining like she has a cold. “She will. Okay, Levi needs me for catering, and… something something.”
“Something something? Seriously?”
“Yep. Gotta go. Tell Sally I’ll see her soon!”
“Bye,” I say to an ended call. Silence reigns, and it’s disturbing.
My best friend’s new life at Coyote Falls is even stranger than her old one.
Did I love nomadic Lanie? Yes. Is this version weirder?
Also yes. Shaking my head I kick a squishy toy out of my way for the third time this morning.
The stuffed capybara in its pink axolotl suit is haunting me.
The fluffy critter hits a doorframe and bounces back, punching me squarely in the stomach.
“Oof,” I groan, not so theatrically. Carrying the offensive thing by one of its feathery fluffy gills, I deposit it on the sofa, where it can do the least damage for the rest of the morning.
“Score one for the stuffed toy,” a dry, deep voice commentates from my front door.
I don’t turn to glare at my brother, who is late for what I swear is the first time in his perfect, prescheduled life.
“Half of this stuff wouldn’t be overpopulating my living space if it weren’t for you,” I grump, contemplating retrieving the toy to see how well he likes being hit with the hybrid stuffed capy-lotl thing.
“Or you could move up to Coyote with me and have a whole lot more space to fill,” Cord says easily. His boot taps the wide-open door. “You’re still not shutting this thing, huh?”
I hear the judgment in his voice about my security habits, and as always, his concern annoys me.
I spin about, my hand hovering over the stuffie, ready to hurl it.
“Not when I’m trying to get both us and all this crap out the door for lessons that I didn’t have on my schedule three months ago.
” I gesture to the musical instruments and sports equipment gathered around my feet like a whole new family on its own and sigh.
“Cord, you come here with great intentions and spoil her. I know that. But what’s actually happening is—”
“Ready!” Sally bursts into my cramped living space, dressed ready for volleyball in her brand-spanking-new uniform with the club colors all over her, her ribbons in her hair and RAND written across the back of her shirt.
Not because she chose my maiden name as hers, but because my billionaire brother sponsored the team’s clubhouse rebuild a month ago.
I close my eyes, wanting to jam my hands onto Cord’s chest and push him so far that he’ll fall out of my sight and out of our lives. Just out, out, out.
Out, out, darn spot (or something like that).
I mangle the quote in my head that I last read in eighth grade.
Not that I paid much attention then because I was too engrossed in trying to get geeky Millie Barlow and jock Brad Hamilton together for the end-of-year dance to memorize lines I’d never use in the future.
Instead of gorging on Shakespeare, I ended up dating Brad for that coveted dance spot by accident, while Millie roamed free.
In return, I got an early marriage fresh out of high school, a daughter I love several years later, a divorce, and a temporary restraining order against my now ex-husband and current landlord because I’m broke and stubborn to boot.
I stare at the unholy union of my offspring and my brother’s name in branded colors bouncing on the spot before me with an excess of energy that usually matches mine.
The last time I saw his name emblazoned anywhere like that was the night before Cordell’s second accident when he came off the fucking bull.
The vision of him with Lanie under the lights at last year’s Valiant Peak Invitational is overlaid with him lying prone in the dust, still.
For the second time I had to wait to see if my brother would breathe. If he would walk.
The memory clears and my chaotic life resumes. It’s more than I can handle. So right now… I’m out.
“Lanie misses her. So do I,” Cord says softly, motioning to Sally. A fact, not blackmail. The gesture is sweet and meant to give me space.
I grit my teeth, focusing on the real version of my brother, not the fading one from last year that still freaks me out because my brother is never still.
Forcing a smile through the pain of memories still deluging me, I nod.
“Yep. I know you do.” Take time for yourself.
Relax. Yeah, because that works out for me.
So I’m a helicopter parent. In my situation, find me one who isn’t.
I hate that I’m supposed to understand this need to part with my child because they miss her.
That I’m supposed to feel good about letting others spend time with Sally. I don’t.
And I hate that I feel guilty about this. Do I come with baggage? Damn right. A shit ton.
My overwhelm boils to the forefront as I grab the capy-lotl and poke Cord in the chest with it. “I hate that you gave us all this. I can barely keep up.”
Cord’s “gifts” to my daughter—because he knows I’ll just throw anything he gives to me straight out—are what clutters my house. Not that I’m ungrateful, I’m just… Okay, yeah. Ungrateful covers it. And overloaded by his excessive generosity.
“You don’t have to go it alone all the time. You know that, right?” His eyes tell me a story I refuse to acknowledge.
Yes, I do.
I don’t care what my brother has been through. That’s his story, and his problem. If he’s made too much money to spend on his own, then he can go and inflict that curse on someone else. Not me and my daughter. We’re fine, thank you very freaking much. Just the way we are.
Were.
Whatever.
“Sweetie, enjoy your time with Uncle Cord, ’kay?” I force a saccharine note into my voice that I’d rather shove where no sun has ever gone before. “He’ll bring you back in time for school.”
“Yes!” Sally punches the air and darts away.
“Dammit, I just got her here and ready to go,” I mutter. This was meant to be my time with Sally originally. Not his. Yet again, Cordell busts into my life and gets his way, even if we did arrange the visit earlier. Sigh. But I can’t deny Sally anything, and she does deserve time with him… right?
And… cue guilt.
“I’m going to get extra things to stay longer at Uncle Cord’s,” Sally yells from the depths of her room.
“We’re gonna get evicted for noise complaints!” I yell back, demonstrating those double standards firsthand.
“Offer’s still open to move up.” Cord leans against my doorframe. Not that he slouches—I don’t think he can with his back-injury history.
“I don’t want to—” I cut myself off as Sally reappears. I smile for her and send Cord the stank eye over her head.
He shrugs, reaching out an arm to his niece. “Girl, you have grown. What, three inches since I saw you last?” He laughs as Sally wiggles under his arm. “You’re gonna give my foreman a run for his money, you know that?”
I jolt. “Is West back at Coyote? I thought he—” I bite my lip on what I figure is his secret since neither of them has mentioned it to me and I was too vague to freaking notice.
Cord eyes me with that too-sharp gaze of his. “I meant Billy. He’s taken the job. She’s had a growth spurt, huh?” The hard lines around his mouth soften a fraction, though his voice maintains its easy lilt.
But I know my brother, even if we’ve spent a lot of years apart. His stance tells me that he’s not any happier with West being off the land than I am with his best friend crawling about town near me.
Liar, liar, Hottie McNurse crush on fire.
Or cowboy crush on fire… The one I was never supposed to have.
Cord has his reasons. Mine are different. And they might involve me throwing my fresh coffee at my brother’s best friend earlier in the day. But we aren’t talking about my poor taste, either in coffee shops or in men.
“Yeah, she’s had a growth spurt. Don’t you go crushing on a cowboy,” I warn my daughter when her eyes light up at Billy’s name. “He might look closer to your age than most of the boys at Coyote Falls but that still makes it a twenty-something-year age gap. That’s a big no, progeny.”
Sally rolls her eyes and tosses Cord her volleyball kit. “Mom’s no fun. Can I ride a bull?” she asks brightly.
“NO,” we both shout her down at the same time.