16. Bree
— ? —
Bree
Rafael Grant’s agricultural career started with a goat.
Specifically, it started with a goat named Hector, who had opinions about strangers and chose to express them by kicking Rafael square in the chest.
“Oof.”
Rafael hit the ground. The dust rose around him in a cloud. The women working the fence line stopped what they were doing. Molly made a sound that was either concern or delight.
“You okay there, city boy?” That was Ruth, leaning on her post with undisguised amusement. Her gray hair was tucked under a straw hat, and she hadn’t stopped grinning since Rafael had arrived.
“Fine.” Rafael climbed to his feet, brushing dirt from his borrowed work clothes.
He’d shown up at dawn in jeans and a flannel shirt that didn’t quite fit, looking ridiculous and determined.
The jeans were too short by two inches. The shirt pulled across his shoulders in a way that suggested it had been designed for a much smaller man. “The goat is hostile.”
“Hector doesn’t like being rushed.” I walked over, keeping my voice neutral. “Slow approaches. No sudden movements. Like dealing with a skittish investor.”
“Investors don’t kick.”
“Depends on the investor.”
Martha snorted. She was mending a section of fence that had come loose in last week’s storm, her weathered hands moving with practiced efficiency. “Give him another shot, Bree. Man’s got to learn somehow.”
He tried again. This time he moved slower, hands out, voice low. Hector watched him with the flat stare of an animal calculating trajectory. The goat’s ears twitched. His hooves shifted in the dirt.
The kick caught him in the thigh.
“Goddammit.”
The women were openly laughing now. Molly was bent double, tears streaming down her face. Even Martha, who’d initially been skeptical about letting “that man” anywhere near the property, was grinning.
“Maybe try the gate latch,” I suggested. “Less hostile.”
The gate latch was simple. A standard metal mechanism that any reasonably intelligent person could operate in under three seconds. Rafael stood in front of it for a full minute, tried four different configurations, and somehow managed to get his sleeve caught in the hinge.
“This latch is broken.”
“That latch has worked fine for six years.”
“Then it’s deliberately malfunctioning to spite me.”
He stood glaring at the latch. I’d watched this man read hostile takeovers without blinking, and now a bent hook and a length of chain had him beat.
“Gates don’t have spite, Rafael.”
“This one does.”
I freed his sleeve. The fabric was already torn from his earlier encounters with the goats, and this new injury didn’t help. He immediately tried the latch again and caught his other sleeve.
“Son of a-”
“Lift, then push,” I said. “Not push, then lift.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Clearly.”
He tried again. Lift, then push. The latch opened with a click.
“That makes no mechanical sense,” he muttered.
“Welcome to farming. Nothing makes sense. You just learn what works.”
By midmorning, we’d moved on to the milking machine.
This, at least, should’ve been straightforward. Modern equipment, clear instructions, minimal animal involvement. Bessie, our most docile cow, was already in position, looking bored. She’d been through this process thousands of times with dozens of different hands. She was unflappable.
Or so I’d thought.
“Hook up the apparatus,” I instructed. “Make sure the seals are tight. Turn the pressure dial to three. Press the green button.”
Rafael nodded. He approached the machine with the focus of a man defusing a bomb. His brow furrowed and his jaw set. He examined every component with the intensity he probably reserved for merger documents.
He hooked up the apparatus.
He checked the seals.
He turned the pressure dial.
He pressed the green button.
The machine exploded.
Not literally, but the effect was similar.
Milk sprayed everywhere, covering Rafael from head to boots in a white shower that seemed to go on forever.
The pressure had been wrong, or the seal had been wrong, or the whole apparatus had been catastrophically wrong, and now my ex-husband was drowning in dairy.
By the time he found the off switch, he was dripping, gasping, and making sounds that weren’t quite words.
Bessie turned her head and gave him a look of profound personal offense. She mooed once, low and disgusted, then turned away.
“The seal wasn’t tight,” I observed.
“I CHECKED THE SEAL.”
“Not well enough, apparently.” I didn’t bother hiding the smile.
“I checked it three times. I pressed on every connection. I verified the integrity of-”
“And yet.”
He stood there, milk running down his face, pooling in his boots. His borrowed clothes were soaked through, his hair plastered to his forehead.
The women had abandoned all pretense of work. They were clustered near the barn doors, watching the show. Molly had her phone out, filming. I’d deal with that later.
“How the hell does anyone make a living at this?” Rafael wiped milk from his eyes. “Everything here wants to kill me.”
“It’s not personal.”
“The goat kicked me twice. The gate attacked me. The cow just weaponized dairy products. How is this not personal?”
“It’s farming. Everything here has been trying to kill somebody since before you were born.”
He stood there, dripping, covered in milk and dirt and his own wounded dignity. He looked miserable and furious and nothing like the polished CEO I’d married, the man in the ten-thousand-dollar suits.
Good.
“Same time tomorrow?” I asked.
His head snapped up. “What?”
“If you want to keep working here. Same time tomorrow.”
He stared at me. I could see the calculations happening behind those pale eyes. The weighing of pride against purpose. The question of whether this was worth it.
In Manhattan, he’d never had to ask that question. Everything had been worth it because everything had been easy. Money solved problems. Power opened doors. Success was measured in quarterly reports and stock prices, not in whether you could open a gate latch without injuring yourself.
“Same time tomorrow,” he said.
I nodded. Walked away.
Behind me, I heard Molly offering him a towel. And maybe some advice about not pissing off the livestock.
He came back the next morning. And the one after that.
He was still bad at it, but he was less bad every day, in the specific, grinding way of a man who had never once been allowed to be bad at anything and had decided to survive the experience through repetition alone.
He showed up at dawn in the same borrowed clothes, freshly laundered and pressed, because Rafael Grant had never touched an iron in his life.
The goats stopped kicking him, mostly. Hector still watched him with open suspicion, but he stopped drawing blood.
The gate latch started surrendering on the third try instead of the tenth.
He learned to check the milking seals four times before he went anywhere near the button, and Bessie stopped bracing every time he walked into the barn.
And somewhere in there, without being asked, he started taking the heavy, mindless jobs off my hands.
The water troughs topped off, the feed hauled out, the wheelbarrow emptied - the chores that ate my mornings, quietly done before I made it out to the barn.
I’d never asked him to. He was simply paying attention, the way he paid attention to everything, and closing the gap fast. I let him do it and pretended it meant nothing, which was fast becoming my full-time occupation.
By the end of that first week he could run the milking rig without flooding the barn, and he wore the pride of it openly.
“You operated a machine a twelve-year-old can run,” I told him.
“Still counts.”
I found him at the stables one evening, when the sun was starting to sink.
The horses were different. They required patience, gentleness, a kind of quiet that didn’t come naturally to most people. I hadn’t expected Rafael to have it.
I’d been wrong.
He was standing in Maggie’s stall, running a brush over her flank with slow, even strokes. Maggie was our oldest mare, a rescue who’d come to us half-starved and terrified of humans. She’d taken three months to let me touch her without flinching.
She was leaning into Rafael’s hands.
I watched from the doorway. He hadn’t noticed me. His focus was entirely on the horse, murmuring too low for me to hear, his movements careful and certain. The brush moved in long, smooth strokes. His free hand rested on her neck, steadying her, letting her know he was there.
“Her name’s Magnolia,” I said. “Maggie, mostly.”
He startled. Turned. Saw me and visibly relaxed.
“She’s beautiful.”
“She was abused by her previous owner. When I got her, she wouldn’t let anyone near her. Took months before she’d eat from my hand.”
“She seems calm now.”
He stood with one hand out flat, letting Maggie lip at his palm, and she wasn’t spooking. She spooked at everyone. It had taken me months to earn what he’d gotten in an afternoon.
“She likes you.”
“Is that surprising?”
“Yes.”
He accepted that without argument. Turned back to the horse, resumed brushing. The late afternoon light came through the stable windows, catching the dust motes floating in the air.
“The bay in the next stall is Chester. He’s stubborn but sweet. The gray is Penny. She’s Rosie’s favorite, even though she’s too big for her to ride yet.” I stepped into the stall. “You’re good with them.”
“I like them.”
“You seem to like them very much.” It was out before I could stop it. “For the person who made fun of my farm life on national TV.”
Rafael’s hand stilled. Maggie snorted.
“I did everything wrong in our marriage, Bree.” His voice was quiet.
He didn’t turn around. “I let other people’s opinions sway mine.
I let myself believe I had you even when you weren’t mine.
I laughed at jokes I shouldn’t have laughed at because it was easier than defending the things I actually cared about. ”
“And what did you actually care about?”
“You.” Now he turned. Those pale eyes met mine, and they were raw. Broken. “I cared about you. I just didn’t know how to show it without feeling like I was giving ground. And I’m not proud of myself for that. I’m not proud of anything I did during those two and a half years.”
“Pretty words.”
“I know.” He set the brush down on the stall rail. “I know they don’t mean anything yet. I know I have to earn the right for them to mean anything. But I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. Really sorry. For everything.”
I had no answer for that.
He looked tortured. Standing there in my stable, in borrowed clothes that didn’t fit, with dirt on his face and horse hair on his sleeve, he looked nothing like the man I’d married and everything like someone I might’ve wanted to know.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
I shrugged. “Pretty words.”
Then I turned and walked away.
I made it halfway across the yard before I stopped.
The sun was setting behind the barn, turning the sky orange and pink. The goats were settling in their pasture. Butterbean was somewhere on the porch, probably plotting his next assault on Rafael’s ankles.
He was still standing where I’d left him. Watching me. Not following, not pressing, just waiting. Patient. The way he’d been with the horses.
I turned back.
“Come inside,” I said. “Rosie will be home in ten minutes. You can shower.”
His face transformed. The hope that broke across his features was almost painful to watch.
He ran behind me.