One
He should’ve left it at home, along with the Ray Bans, the starched flannel button up, and the foolish, foolish Lucchese he bought for the trip.
He’d wanted Illeana to see how far he’d come from rolling in the mud all those years ago—to know at first glance that he hadn’t wasted her support, her efforts, her time.
Now he just felt like a pig in lipstick.
Eric twisted the rearview mirror away, nervously checking his own reflection as he had before entering so many board rooms and high-roller lounges.
He was Piedmontese on his father’s side, which accounted for his impressively muscular form and fawn-red hair he kept tidy and short.
His mother had been a local Hereford Heffer touched by the gods for reasons only they understood, resulting in his white and chestnut patterned hide stretched over his upright humanoid body.
In some places, he was a monster. But here, maybe he could go back to just being Eric.
The familiar cracked screen door swung wide, the smack of it against the shutters sending a Pavlovian response down his spine.
Joy bloomed wide in his chest at the sight of the old white woman, still standing ram-rod straight, house apron tied over her tidy blue jeans and denim blouse, sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
Flower dusted her chest and cheeks, just like he remembered.
A soft smile cracked her weathered face into a spiderweb of wrinkles, relaxing the stern mouth that had chastised him so many times.
“Well, get in here,” she called across the drive as if she’d been waiting for him to start dinner and not wondering about his decade-long absence. Maybe that was the truth—that Illeana never doubted his intention to return and knew the trick to bringing a calf home was patience.
He tried to ignore the groaning metal as he stepped from the truck; tried to welcome the drifting dust beneath his polished black boots, already marring the pristine leather. He tried, and failed, not to twist the Rolex around his wrist.
But Illeana’s gaze never moved from his face, her smile never faltered.
In fact, as he crossed the drive and carefully took the weathered steps up the porch, her grin spread even wider.
Eric couldn’t shake that there was something beneath her cheer—something that hadn’t been there in all the time she’d tutored him in her kitchen, pushing him to run his multiplication tables until they were perfect.
Something unexpected lurked between them, and as he bent to embrace her, he could feel it like a tangible chill.
“You shrinking?” he asked, booming voice rolling over the creaking porch like an afternoon thunder.
“Every year.” Illeana thumped his back heartily. “I’m firmly a little old lady now, comes with the territory.”
“Don’t get any smaller, you’ll slip through the floorboards.” He grinned, dodging her swatting hands.
“You have time for coffee? I’ve got a pie going depending on how long you plan on staying.”
Eric didn’t miss the distracted twist of her hands in her apron, deciding for him that he’d stay as long as she needed to unburden whatever had her in its grip.
“I’m in no rush,” he said, leaving one meaty hand on her frail shoulder. “And I’ve missed your coffee.”
Illeana beamed, turning back inside. “I told you city folk make it weak,” she called over her shoulder, her voice guiding Eric along.
He still had to duck at an angle to guide his horns and bulky frame cautiously through the door.
He’d forgotten how narrow the mudroom felt compared to the open-concept boardrooms he now dominated, back straight, chin high, horns wide.
With a familiar twisting motion, Eric freed himself from the tangle of coats on the wall and the stacked chicken feed pails lined next to several pairs of familiar muddy boots.
The kitchen was airy despite the heavy press of the late afternoon humidity; Illeana’s many fans working hard to flutter the lace curtains in the windows.
It smelled of thick coffee, hot pie, and the kind of comfort that transmutes into scent after so many years settling into the walls—something earthy and familiar, yet unnameable.
Eric was sure that if they tore up the floor or gave the walls fresh paint, the smell would remain—not unpleasant like cigarette smoke or mildew, but persistent in the way a woman’s love could be.
At least, the way it could for a woman like Illeana.
To his left, the living room remained as unchanged as the rest of the house, an ancient TV crouched in the far corner as if wrangled there by the straight-backed presence of the single recliner.
Overstuffed bookshelves lined the free walls, paperbacks of every genre and taste yellowing with age between framed photos of hundreds of smiling faces.
Illeana only had one child herself, but former students still mailed her proud baby photos as their own families grew and their lives changed forever.
It had always given Eric the impression that she was a far-reaching matriarch of some hidden kingdom, flourishing out of sight of the spangled democracy she had framed in the stairwell.
Eric perched lightly on a creaking wooden chair at the kitchen table, somehow just as peeling and sun-bleached as it had been ten years ago—no more, no less. Memories flashed over him as he watched Illeana fuss over the pot on the stove:
Illeana bringing him in from the cold that winter, stuffing him into her late husband’s clothes despite the shoulders sagging and the pants being cuffed four times.
Eric stuttering over newspaper headlines, sticky porridge rapidly cooling in the bowl at his elbow as Illeana rolled biscuits on the counter.
Illeana marking his math with a swift hand before handing it back and barking for corrections.
Eric standing from the table that final night, taking her silence as the only “goodbye” she’d ever give.
“So.” Illeana fixed him with a look as she slid the steaming mug across the table, settling into a seat opposite with a groan. “What drags you back?”
He dreaded this question, cursing himself for not guessing it would be her first. How could he tell her he already knew? That fate brought the foreclosure deed across his desk above anyone else’s? That he just so happened to serve a client with a ravenous appetite for farmland?
“I figured it was time,” he said, sipping the coffee with a satisfied hum. She was right—the stiffest Styrofoam bodega cup in the city didn’t compare to the cowboy coffee Illeana thrived on.
“Horseshit.”
Eric sighed and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course it would be the straight-forward route. No saving an ego that begged to be bruised—or so Illeana had told him hundreds of times prior.
“Were you going to tell me?” he asked, meeting her flinty stare with all the courage he’d cut on more powerful players. Still, his stomach flipped and a tremor threatened to send his left hoof kicking in an old nervous habit.
“Were you going to ask?” She threw her hands up, pushing herself from the table with a screech of wood on linoleum.
The pie wouldn’t be done for some minutes, Eric could tell from the timer on the oven, but still she slammed around pans, fussing over the flour and sugar containers.
“I mean, hells bells, Eric, it’s been how many years without so much as a ‘How’dya do? ’”
“I text you every—”
“Telegrams for lazy people.” Illeana spit the words that Eric could’ve recited along with her. Of course he knew that his weekly check-ins went unanswered because they were sitting on the dead cell phone she refused to use.
“If you’d join us in the current century, then maybe—”
“Don’t you dare put this on me.”
He met her refusal with a bovine snort, practically stomping his booted hoof into the floor.
The two stared at each other in a silent showdown, but unlike all their battles in that same kitchen during Eric’s teen years, it was Illeana who waved the white flag first.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she sighed, slamming a hand on the buzzing timer.
“Doesn’t matter?” Eric spluttered at her back. “Doesn’t matter? What about you dying do you think ‘doesn’t matter?’”
“I’m old, Eric. It happens.”
“Not to you!” He slammed his hands on the table, rattling it hard enough he wondered if it might finally snap.
“Why?” She crossed her arms and leaned a hip against the oven railing. Steam rose from the pie, filling the room with the sticky sweet smell of apples and sugar. “What about my existence—other than your own miracle—makes me immortal?”
Eric thought again of the photos crammed on every surface in the living room, of the award-winning cows in the pastures outside, of the love and persistence he’d been gifted in this kitchen.
Surely those things would always remain, whether Eric visited or not.
They were baked into his very being like the butter folded into the crust of her pies.
“You just let the farm go.” His voice softened, unshed tears tightening his throat. “You didn’t even try to fight for it.”
“It’s a burden for my remaining kin,” she said, matter-of-fact. “I’d rather keep what little money I have to set my granddaughter free—the way I did for you.”
Illeana had never given Eric any money, although he knew with a gut punch what she meant. But something tripped him in the moment, cooling the flames of his indignation and heartache.
“Granddaughter?”
She rolled her eyes, impatient—just as she’d done when Eric asked a question he doubted his own answer to. “Rachel. She came every summer, so don’t play dumb, you’ve met.”
“Does she know?”
“Unfortunately.” Illeana sighed as if the loving concern of a family member were a bill collector on her porch.
“She showed up last year as planned, but refused to leave. I’ve tried telling her to mind her own business, but she insists this place is her business.
Has some hare-brained scheme to win the backpay to the bank in the bull-riding competition next week. ”
Eric couldn’t help the half-smile that cracked his heavy cheeks. “Sounds familiar.”
Illeana wagged a finger at him before turning to cut the pie, dishing up two massive slices and piling each high with fresh whipped cream from the fridge. He didn’t imagine the table shaking beneath the weight of the desert as she thunked it down.
“Why not let her? I’m sure she’s a talented cowgirl, having grown up with you.”
Illeana rolled her eyes again, huffing out a breath. “And watch my granddaughter die before I reach the end of my own short rope? Absolutely not. You and I both know what goes on in that ring.”
His pie steamed, beckoning, but he couldn’t dig in. Not yet.
“How long?” he asked, fixating on the unfixable part of what she’d just said.
“No one ever wants the answer to that question, Eric.” Illeana swooped a finger through the cream, sucking it with the pleasure of a job well done. “I don’t know why folk keep asking.”
So, not long at all.
“And Rachel wants to keep the place? After…” He wouldn’t finish the thought, nudging a fork into the sugary apple sludge, making his mouth water despite the tasteless conversation in the air.
“She wants to inherit it, yes. But I already told her—and you, now—that this place is going away when I do. No one should be burdened by my old dreams.” Illeana leveled her fork at Eric across the table like a gladiator with a spear. “Young people should carve their own path.”
“Even if she wants this path?”
“Rachel needs to learn how to worry about herself.” She cut into her pie as if it were the only pressing business weighing down the table.
“Or you could learn to let someone worry about you.”
“The farm goes to the bank when I die. That’s final.”
“Don’t say that.” Eric huffed through his nose, trying to quell the frustration bubbling in his chest.
“Why not? It’s my death. I’ll face it how I like,” Illeana said around a mouthful of pie.
“Stop saying that.” His septum ring shook as his whole body trembled—a full-out explosion imminent in a way it hadn’t been since he was a young bull. He’d forgotten how this woman pushed his buttons so expertly, like no other advisor or investor or cocky lawyer ever could.
Illeana fixed him with a scathing look. “I’m going to die, Eric. The sooner everyone else accepts that, the sooner I can get on with it.”
“Stop it, stop it, stop it.” Eric slammed up from the table, wood splintering under his trembling hands. “You selfish old cow! How can you not see that people want to help you!”
Her face dropped, icing into the same silence she’d offered when he left. He knew now it was too late—there would be no midnight negotiation or six a.m. stock miracle. This deal was closed and the client wouldn’t return his calls.
Before he could say anything else—stupid or otherwise—Eric stormed from the kitchen, not bothering to stop the slice of his horns in the walls.