16. Lo
— ? —
Lo
The yearling picks the worst possible moment to make a break for it.
I’m standing on Bree’s porch with a cup of decaf that tastes like disappointment, watching the Tuesday morning routine unfold. Rafael leading horses to the training pen, Molly hauling feed bags, Jesse doing something with a fence post that involves a lot of hammering. Normal stuff. Calm stuff.
Then the gate on the east paddock swings open because someone didn’t latch it properly, and a bay yearling named Chaos lives up to his name.
He’s gone before anyone can react. Through the gate, across the yard, past the barn, heading for the open pasture like his tail’s on fire.
“Rosie!” Molly shouts. “Did you leave that gate open?”
“I closed it!” Rosie’s voice carries from somewhere near the chicken coop. “I definitely closed it!”
“You definitely didn’t!”
Jesse’s already moving. He grabs a rope from the fence post and he’s on the buckskin mare before I can process what’s happening. He didn’t even saddle her. Just grabbed a handful of mane and swung up like gravity doesn’t apply to him.
The mare takes off after Chaos. Jesse sits her like he was born there, moving with her stride, the rope building a loop in his hand. He’s had this horse four days. Four days, and he’s riding her at a dead gallop across unfamiliar terrain like they’ve been partners for years.
I hate that I notice how good he looks doing it. His shoulders moving with the horse. The flex of his forearms as he works the rope. Somewhere along the way he’s lost his sleeves, rolled up or torn off, I can’t tell, and there’s sweat running down his back in a line that catches the morning light.
He throws. The loop sails out, clean and true, and settles around Chaos’s neck. The yearling hits the end of the rope and stops, surprised, and Jesse’s already sliding off the mare, already walking down the line, voice low and steady, words I can’t hear from here but can feel in my chest.
The church ladies are here for Bree’s self-defense class. They’re clustered near the community building, and every single one of them is making a sound I’ve never heard from a church lady.
“Well,” Wanda says, fanning herself with her hand. “That was something.”
“Mmhmm,” says Carmen from Dot’s. “That was definitely something.”
“Is he available?” asks a woman I don’t recognize, must be new to the class. “Because I’ve got a fence that needs fixing.”
“He’s married,” Wanda says, pointing at me. “To that one.”
Every head turns in my direction.
“We’re separated,” I say.
“Separated how?” Carmen asks, still watching Jesse lead the yearling back toward the barn. “Like, legally separated? Emotionally separated? Separated but sleeping in the same building separated?”
“The kind where I live in a cabin and he lives at the inn and we’re figuring things out.”
“Figuring things out.” Wanda shakes her head. “Girl, if I was figuring things out with a man who looked like that and roped like that, I’d have figured it out by now.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Honey, at my age, nothing’s complicated. Either you want him or you don’t.”
I want him. That’s the problem. I want him the same way I’ve always wanted him, with my whole body, with every stupid cell that responds to the way he moves and the way he smells and the particular timbre of his voice when he’s being gentle with something scared.
I’m furious about wanting him.
“Class is starting,” Bree calls from the community building door. “Unless you all want to stand there cataloging his physical attributes.”
“I was not cataloging,” Carmen says.
“You were all cataloging. I saw you. Come on.”
I follow them inside. I do not look back at the barn. I do not think about Jesse’s forearms.
I definitely do not think about Jesse’s forearms.
***
The OB’s office is in Bell Creek, the county seat, forty minutes east. Jesse’s in the passenger seat because I invited him, and I don’t entirely know why.
He’s got a book in his lap. A parenting book, thick and dog-eared, with about forty Post-it tabs sticking out of the pages.
“You keep looking at my book,” he says.
“I’m glancing. There’s a difference.”
“You’ve glanced at this book six times since we left Marigold.”
“I’m surprised you own a book, that’s all. I didn’t know you could read words that weren’t song lyrics.”
He laughs. It’s a good sound. I’ve missed that sound more than I want to admit.
“Rafael recommended it. Said it helped when his daughter was born.” He flips it over, shows me the cover. “This chapter’s about the third trimester. Did you know the baby can hear us now? Like, actually hear. Voices and music and everything.”
“I know. I’ve been talking to her for weeks.”
“You have? What do you say?”
“I tell her about the hay business. The farms that buy from us. The weather patterns and what they mean for the alfalfa.” I shrug. “Riveting stuff.”
“She’s going to come out knowing more about agriculture than most adults.”
“She’s going to come out knowing her mother has a boring life and talks to herself a lot.”
“Your life isn’t boring.”
“Jesse, I spent three hours yesterday arguing with a goat about whether she was allowed to eat my clipboard. That’s the most exciting thing that happened all week.”
“Who won?”
“The goat. She always wins. She’s got a look.”
He’s smiling. That crooked smile that used to make my stomach flip, that still makes my stomach flip even though I don’t want it to.
“Have you been talking to her?” I ask. “The baby, I mean. Since you found out.”
“I’ve been practicing reading to her. Recording messages on my phone, with your permission, for when I’m at the inn and can’t be here.
” He looks slightly embarrassed. “I sit there with the book and I read out loud about infant sleep patterns and developmental milestones, and I feel ridiculous, but the book says they can hear now, so I figured - when you play them for her-”
“You record parenting book chapters for our unborn child.”
“It sounds weird when you say it like that.”
“It sounds weird because it is weird.” I’m fighting a smile and losing.
“Is it? The book says-”
“The book has turned you into a crazy person.”
“The book has turned me into a prepared person. There’s a difference.” He says it with total conviction.
“Is there?”
“There’s a whole chapter on the difference. Chapter seven. I tabbed it.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He looks so earnest, so genuinely invested in this ridiculous book with its forty Post-it flags, and it’s such a far cry from the man who used to forget to buy groceries because he was too busy with tour prep.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing. You’re just - different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. More present. More…” I search for the word. “Here.”
“I’m trying to be.”
“I noticed.”
We drive in silence for a while. The landscape rolls past, flat and brown and endless.
“The tech might confirm the sex today,” I say. “If you want to know.”
“Do you want to know?”
“I already know. They told me last time.”
He goes still. “You already know?”
“I found out last appointment. I didn’t - I wasn’t sure how to tell you. We weren’t exactly speaking then.”
“But you knew. This whole time, you knew, and you didn’t-”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Lo-”
“It’s a girl.”
He doesn’t say anything for a second. Just nods, slow, eyes on the road, one hand pressed flat against his thigh like he’s holding something down.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “A girl. Okay.”
“That’s it? Okay?”
“That’s all I’ve got right now that won’t embarrass me.” He clears his throat. “Give me a minute. I’m just going to sit with it.”
“Sit quietly. You’re distracting.”
“She’s going to grow up and have opinions and probably hate my music, and I’m going to have to pretend I’m okay with that.”
“Bold of you to assume she’ll know your music exists.”
“You’re going to hide my career from our daughter?”
“I’m going to let her form her own opinions without the burden of knowing her father peaked at thirty-three.”
“I did not peak at thirty-three.”
“The numbers suggest otherwise.”
“The numbers are-” He stops, catches my smirk. “You’re messing with me.”
“I’m messing with you.”
“That’s mean.”
“You walked into it.”
“I was having a vulnerable moment about impending fatherhood and you exploited it for humor.”
“Consider it practice. Daughters are ruthless.”
He laughs, surprised, genuine, and something in the truck shifts. The air gets a little lighter. The distance between us gets a little smaller.
The ultrasound room is small and cold. I’m on the table with my shirt pulled up, Jesse in the chair beside me, both of us staring at the screen.
“There she is,” the technician says. “Looking good. Strong heartbeat. Measuring right on track for twenty-four weeks.”
The image is grainy, black and white, but I can see her. The curve of her spine. The round of her head. The feet that keep kicking me awake at three in the morning.
“Those are her feet?” Jesse asks.
“Those are her feet,” the tech confirms. “And they’re measuring in the ninety-fifth percentile. Dad must have big feet.”
“Size fourteen,” I say. “She’s doomed to a life of special-ordering shoes online.”
“She has my feet.” Jesse’s voice is strange. Hollow. “She has my feet.”
“She has your feet,” I confirm. “Congratulations on passing down your most inconvenient genetic trait.”
He doesn’t laugh. He’s staring at the screen with an expression I can’t read, wonder, maybe, or fear, or some complicated combination of both.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. This is - this is great. She’s great.” His hand is gripping the arm of the chair so hard his knuckles are white. “Can we get pictures?”
“Absolutely,” the tech says. “I’ll print a few copies.”
She does something with the machine, and Jesse watches every movement like it’s the most important thing that’s ever happened. When she hands him the printouts, he holds them like they’re made of glass.
“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you so much.”
“Of course. First baby?”
“First baby.”
“It gets easier. The overwhelming part, I mean. Eventually you stop feeling like you’re going to pass out every time you see their face.”
“When does that happen?”