Chapter Five
My mom always says clearing the air before you go to bed is best.
So, I knocked on Baker’s bedroom door at eleven o’clock that night.
I could hear soft rumblings from behind the door as I waited in the quiet hallway.
Even Bella was in bed, no sewing on this night, so the old farmhouse was soundless.
It still creaked in the wind as old houses did, but I’d grown used to the sounds of a home settling in for the night.
It was a lot quieter here than back in Brooklyn.
The door opened softly. Baker, clad in fleece pants and a heavily washed Pawnee Nation College tee, stared at me with sleepy confusion.
“Something wrong with the goats?” His voice was craggy with sleep. I could hear Hanley’s soft snores floating out of their shared room.
“No, they’re fine. I just checked on them.”
“Okay.” He propped a shoulder against the doorframe as he scratched at his backside. “Is the house on fire?”
“No.” Ugh, this was harder than I thought it would be.
Still, I had to make peace so I could bring up Lady, who was resting nicely.
I knew because I’d texted Aiden three times since I left the veterinary clinic.
He was nice about my texts. Even showed me a picture of her outside making a piddle after having some water and a light dinner of boiled chicken and white rice dog food.
“I know you didn’t really mean to say you thought I was a dim bulb. ”
“I never said you were a dim anything. I just…” He exhaled and stepped out into the hall, making sure to get his bare feet on the worn runner.
After closing the door, he ran a hand through his already messy hair then caught my gaze.
“Ford, I didn’t mean to insinuate that I thought you weren’t able to make your own decisions.
I know you’re a man fully grown and don’t need the advice of some washed-up, ex-drunk, half-brother rained down on you.
I only wanted to make sure you knew Aiden is a player.
He’s not the kind of guy who will settle down with one man. ”
“People said that about you,” I pointed out.
At least two dozen Bastian Grange natives, who had known Baker his whole life, had said they never thought they would see the day that someone would put up with Studebaker Bastian’s horseshit.
Which was the same thing as saying they didn’t think he would ever be monogamous.
Sort of. “I’m not marrying him. I’m just working at his office to help him out. ”
He gave me a long, studious look. “Right. Okay. Forewarned is forearmed, as Granny likes to say. Just be aware he has a list of one-night stands that reaches from the Grange all the way to San Francisco. I don’t want to see you get hurt. You and Bella have kind of grown on me.”
I nodded. Message received. “Bella grows on good people really fast.”
“That she does.” This is awkward. “You do too.”
Incredibly awkward now. “So yeah, we’re good now then?” I asked.
“We’re good.”
“Cool. Night.” I gave him a thump on the shoulder. I wanted to ask about Lady so badly, but it was late. We’d just made up. Kind of. I’d ask about the dog over breakfast, where I would hopefully have some backup.
“Night.” There we stood. “Did you want to talk about something else?”
I rolled my lips over my teeth, shook my head, and then headed off to bed.
I’d barely gotten the bedroom door shut when I exhaled a long-held breath.
I had a moment of pride over how well I’d kept things to myself.
Dog things. Aiden things. And Bella said I was the worst secret keeper in the world.
Not true! I was keeping all kinds of secrets—some were just darker than others.
***
I was awake before Granny the next morning.
Lady was on my mind. I needed to make a compelling argument for her coming to the ranch to heal and then stay.
Lying in bed as a tangerine rose pink—the same colors as one of Bella’s summer dresses—slowly crept over the sky, I couldn’t say why I was so driven to take in Lady.
My mom used to say I got easily fixated on things, to the point I drove her a little loopy.
She never said it in a mean way, just a tired, loving way because I could be persistent.
Why? I didn’t know. My brain was different from most other people’s.
That I did know. There had been tests in school, different diagnoses, and lots of recommendations for meds that had made my heart race so badly I thought I was having a cardiac arrest at the age of twelve.
Afterward, we stopped all the meds, and life was just different for me. Not bad. Just different.
But I could tell this dog, who had been through so much, needed me.
And I needed her. There was something special about Lady.
When I thought of her, I felt the same as I did when I thought of Aiden, minus the stiff dick obviously.
Both of them were important. I just didn’t know why yet but being around them was crucial to my well-being.
Kicking off the bedding, I crept into the bathroom to wash my face, comb my shaggy hair, and pull on some clean clothes.
Then I snuck downstairs to make coffee and open three tubes of those popping can cinnamon buns.
I was laying them out on a cookie sheet when Granny appeared in the doorway, dressed and ready to go plink some cans.
“Well, look at you,” she said with a smile that eased my nerves a little. “This is really nice. Is it someone’s birthday? I thought I had them all wrote down in my little calendar on the fridge, but if I missed one…”
“No, no birthdays.” She pattered over in purple woolen socks that matched her hair.
Every two months or so, she and Bella dyed her silver hair a different rainbow color.
To show the uptight asses in Bastian Grange she was an ally without having to say a word.
I really did love Granny. “I have something special I wanted to talk to the family about.”
“Ah, well, making sweet buns for the men will certainly gain you a few brownie points. I’m off to fire off a few. Stick your fingers in your ears.”
I did just that after making sure the dough rounds were the required two inches apart.
No sooner had I jammed my fingers into my ears did I hear the shotgun blast. I startled, even knowing it was coming, and squeezed my eyes tightly closed.
A flashback of that night appeared unbidden, the bright muzzle flash, the squeal of Bella as we ran even faster down a dark—
“Hey, you sleeping standing up like a horse?”
Baker’s gruff voice broke into the memory. I spun, eyes wide, to find him waiting for a reply of some sort.
“No, just making sure the buns are right on the sheets.”
Another blast fired off, followed by cussing and the back door coming open with a sharp slap of wood to siding. I winced internally.
“I swear those cans are being wind-fiddled,” Granny grumbled, stalking past in her damp rubber boots, a thick coat, and her shotgun in her hand.
“They’re not wind-fiddled. Your sight is that bad. If you’d stop rescheduling your cataract surgery, you’d be able to see better,” Baker fired back.
“I need to recuperate in the winter,” she muttered as she entered the mudroom.
“You said you needed to recuperate in the fall, which is why you backed out in July,” Baker argued then followed her into the mudroom to discuss her eye surgery yet again.
Leaving them to it, as Baker knew her best and I didn’t want to upset anyone, I heard doors closing overhead.
Linc and Bella were up. It was hard to sleep too late, what with the morning shooting gallery followed by two stubborn Bastians battling in the mudroom.
I watched the clock on the wall until the oven chime pinged.
As I removed the first pan of sweet, sticky buns, Linc and Bella entered the kitchen.
Bella wore a pretty fall outfit of plum pants and a thin gray sweater, her blond hair pulled back and her makeup light.
Linc was dressed for work. Jeans, flannel, and an adoring gaze for Bella in front of him.
“I made breakfast,” I announced as everyone gathered at the table, Baker and Granny looking vexed with each other.
Hanley arrived as we all sat down, still in his pajamas, his hair a rumpled mess.
Baker ran a hand over his boyfriend’s shoulder as he sat down beside him.
Hanley moaned softly as he reached for the pot of coffee resting on a red rooster trivet next to the buns.
“This getting up with the chickens stuff takes some getting used to,” Hanley said around a yawn while filling his mug.
“If you’d turn off those old Marty Stouffer shows before two a.m., you’d be able to roll out at a decent time,” Baker said while plucking a roll from the cookie sheet.
Linc had four on his plate already. I’d put another pan in, knowing that feeding our burly bear of a brother would take many cinnamon rolls.
“I’m addicted. I need a Marty intervention,” Hanley countered with a sassy but sleepy wink for his man.
Granny began talking about an old nature show she used to watch as a kid, something from Disney none of us had ever heard of.
Bella said something about watching PBS as a kid and the Kratt Brothers while cutting her roll into tiny bits.
Linc was inhaling his buns just like Baker, so I stood up and tapped the table with my knife.
They all fell silent before looking up at me, Linc with a whole bun in his mouth that made him look like a chipmunk.
“I wish to address the family with an important matter to discuss,” I announced and got a funny look from my brothers.
“You don’t got to call the family to order, Ford. This ain’t the monthly Bastian Grange town council meeting,” Baker scoffed.
I gave him a firm look as I rapped the table again. “Comments from the peanuts gallery will be heard after the important matter,” I responded curtly.
“Peanut,” Bella softly corrected, her bright green gaze on me. “The saying is peanut gallery, not peanuts.” My eyes rolled so hard it was a wonder they weren’t sprained. “Just saying, sweetie.”
“Peanuts is Charlie Brown, right?” Linc asked around another mouthful of buns. I may need to pop another can if he kept going.
“Yeah, well, I think it’s all the gang,” Baker chimed in. “Interesting thing. The name was inspired by the peanut gallery on the old Howdy Doody show.”
“I used to watch that!” Granny hooted, leaning over the table to top off her coffee.
“That puppet was a real card, let me tell you. Used to be scared of Clarabell the Clown. Something creepy about clowns, ain’t there?
Like the one that lives in the sewers in some town in Maine.
Seems they’d clean their drains a little better in Maine if that’s what’s lurking around in—”
“Excuse me, this is an important meeting!” I barked, all eyes flaring wide at my volume. I felt my face grow hot. “Sorry, but this is really important, and I made buns.”
“Floor is yours,” Baker said, sitting back in his chair, arms folded over his chest, his lips tweaked up at the corners.
“Thank you.” I took a deep breath. “I want to bring Lady home.”
A moment of quietude settled over the kitchen. Then Baker spoke up.
“You want to bring a lady home?” the eldest Bastian asked.
“I thought you were gay,” Linc, the second eldest Bastian, commented.
“Sexuality is very fluid,” Bella remarked and gave me a loving look. “You just be you.”
My brain was very itchy right now. “No, no, ladies. I mean, yes, a Lady, but she’s a dog.”
“That’s not a nice way to speak about a gal, Ford,” Granny said in her no-nonsense tone.
“No, I…” I picked at the tines of my fork, plucking each one. “Lady is a dog. A real dog. That Rip Leary shot in the butt yesterday. She’s at Aiden’s office resting from surgery. She’s a good dog. Very good.”
“Why did Rip shoot at her?” Baker asked as Hanley muttered bad things about Rip Leary shooting at a creature.
Bella looked ready to cry. She was super sensitive when it came to dogs.
Linc handed her a paper napkin to dab at her watery eyes.
“He said she was attacking his sheep, but—”
“And you want to bring her to this ranch to go after your goats?” Baker seemed pretty incredulous. Even to myself, it sounded dumb.
“I don’t think she did it,” I countered. “She’s got a good temper. She never once even tried to bite anyone, even when she was in pain. I think Rip Leary is a lying bastard who’s mean and cruel.”
“No denying that the Learys are shitful ranchers. I don’t know how many times Ollie has been out there for calls about animal neglect,” Baker mumbled. I nodded enthusiastically. “But, that being said, if the dog was going after his sheep, she don’t belong on a ranch with livestock she can kill.”
“She won’t. I know it. She’s a good dog. I’ll keep an eye on her. Twenty-four seven. I’ll teach her not to hurt anything. Not cows, sheep, horses, chickens, or even gophers. She’s a good dog.”
“You don’t know that,” Baker argued as the others had gone still as church mice.
“I do. I know it.”
“Don’t she have any tags?” Granny asked.
I shook my head. “No collar, no tags, no chips. She’s been abandoned.”
“You don’t know that,” Baker said, again, this time a little more firmly.
“I do know it! She needs me.” I was not backing down. Baker drew in a long breath then glanced at the others at the table.
“Let me think on it, okay?” I bobbed my head. “Good, now sit down and eat. We have barns to clean today.”
I sat, exhausted but hopeful. Bella gave my hand a squeeze and turned her attention to Baker.
“It would be nice to have a dog around,” she said before taking a sip of her coffee.
“Dahn would like it,” Granny interjected and got a sharp nod from Hanley.
“I agree with Bella,” Linc added.
“Of course you do.” Baker sighed. Linc’s ears grew red as did Bella’s cheeks. “Let me think on it. A dog is a lot of work, and if this one is mean—”
“She’s not,” I hurried to say.
“So you say, but we have to be sure. Dahn will be here every weekend and most days after school. What do you think Dodge would do if Lady turned on his son?” Oh.
Shit. I’d not thought of that. I was sure she wouldn’t, but if she did, it would be so very bad…
“Let me think on it. I see it’s a big thing for you, so just let me talk to Aiden then have a long think. That sound fair?”
“Yeah, it’s fair. If you think hard and decide to let her come here, I’ll be responsible for her.”
“Oh, I know you will be. Now eat. We have a long morning ahead of us.”
Forking cow shit into a manure spreader didn’t seem quite so bad now that there was a glimmer of hope.