Chapter Twenty-One
The Barns
Jordan
What. The heck?
I don’t do family gatherings. I don’t attend the family gatherings of my summer flings. That is technically a part of the definition of ‘fling’. So what in the world was I doing at a big Italian family dinner?
It took me about fifteen minutes longer than it should have to get out of Rebecca’s to commit to showing up at Rod’s, because I was literally at the doorstep, one foot in, one foot out, glancing back and forth, going in and out until I finally decided to bite the bullet and just do it. As a friend.
I’m weeding my lavender row, with a little too much aggression against said weeds as a result.
Weeding is a phenomenal way to get all your anger out on something that, in any gardener’s opinion, fundamentally deserves it.
I clamp my gloved hand around a really long one and tug with gritted teeth.
Unfortunately, ripping it out of the ground gives me no more clarity than I had before doing so.
It doesn’t make it any easier when my phone stops playing my music and begins blaring the default iPhone ringtone instead. I grumble to myself, shuck off my glove, and check to see who it is before I pick up.
‘?Que pasó?’
What happened? I get it. It’s a weird way to start a phone call.
But my mom never calls me first. Ever. She has this policy: ‘You call when you can.’ I think it’s dumb.
She should call me whenever she wants. Instead, she’s too busy falling on her sword and making sure she doesn’t bother me.
I tried telling her she could never bother me.
Being that she’s just as stubborn as myself, she didn’t listen.
‘Nada. I just want you to know before I do it, mija. We’re going to tear down the old cattle barns.’
I quite literally sputter for words like a broken sprinkler. No segue? Just that?
‘You’re going to what?’
‘It’s okay,’ she reassures me. I hear clanging and shouting behind her.
They’re already on it. The natural rasp in her voice crackles through the speaker.
‘We have the money. It’s time. They’ve needed renovation for years, you know that.
The whole ranch has. We can do this bit by bit, get the whole place good as new.
A barn here and there, and it’ll all be new by next year. ’
‘Ma …’ I could throw my phone in frustration. I squeeze my eyes shut and scream soundlessly, hand balled into a fist, before getting back to her. ‘Mom,’ I say slowly and deliberately, ‘that money was for you.’
‘What would I do with it other than this?’ she retorts.
Damn it, Mother. When I deposited a good chunk of my contract advance for the Rhode Island Reapers lacrosse team into her bank account, I wanted her to do some redesign work on her house. Go on a vacation. Fuck, get a pedicure. Not build new barns.
I massage my forehead as I clamber to my feet. ‘Mom. Please rethink this.’
‘Seeing as the main barn is basically wood planks right now, I think we may be past that, mija.’
I’m about to blow multiple fuses. Part of me gets it.
We have always had anywhere from one to two hundred head of dairy cattle.
I understand. It takes upkeep. It’s not an easy operation.
But the anger wins out, and I swoop in, looking for some problem I can solve here.
‘Listen, I’m coming home. I’ll take a few days. Just let me get my stuff together.’
‘Jordan,’ Mom says firmly. You know it’s bad when she throws ‘mija’ to the wolves and ropes in the legal name. I freeze in my place. ‘You will not be coming home. This time is for you, baby. I will handle this.’
‘Okay, but …’ I nearly laugh in disbelief. ‘Why can’t you save something for yourself, too, then? That money?’
‘Basta, Jordan,’ she finally snaps. ‘Enough. We are building the barns, and that’s it. You know this ranch is livelihood. Upkeep will pay off.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I mumble. Fully in my twenties, and that sharp tone she reserves for when I’m acting up still puts me in my place. ‘Love you, Mom.’
‘Love you more, mija.’
Totally in shock, I hang up. Is the appropriate reaction now the throwing of my phone against the brick exterior of Rebecca’s massive house? Maybe.
As if she senses my looming not-so-smart decision to start flinging technology, the sliding glass patio door opens, and Rebecca pokes her head through. ‘You good, dear?’
I look at her with an air of HELP.
She waves an inviting hand. ‘Come on, then.’
Rather than her usual pie, Rebecca has gotten something stronger for the both of us: whiskey, which she pours me in a very pretty, very expensive crystal glass. I handle it extra gingerly when I take my first sip.
‘It’s my mom,’ I tell her. ‘She sucks at putting herself first. And she’s stubborn about it.’
‘I can see where you get it from.’
Not wrong. I sigh exasperatedly. ‘Unfortunately.’
‘What’d she do?’ Rebecca asks with a sip of her own whiskey.
‘Remember I told you we live on the ranch?’ I smile wryly.
‘Doesn’t come without consequences. Like when shit needs fixing.
The barns definitely could have waited. I’d given her part of my check from my lacrosse contract so she could do something for herself, and instead, she used it on this barn thing. ’
‘Hmm.’ My landlord-slash-life-coach leans back in thought. ‘What else?’
‘What else?’ I repeat, dubious. What else?
Other than my mother making poor decisions at her own expense?
Maybe I’m pissed because those dairy barns are where I learned to milk my first cow, where I grew up working.
‘She said it’d be good for business. But the old one was perfectly serviceable.
I’m just worried. Like, I need her to take a personal day. A personal week.’
‘Why wouldn’t she?’
‘I don’t know.’ Cause this is all she knows?
The place wouldn’t be operational if she hadn’t busted ass after my dad upped and left.
’ I practically scoff, possibly even sneer.
I don’t bring him up if I can help it. Any asshole who leaves his wife and little kid with a tattered, dying ranch full of debt so he can go and start a new life with his mistress isn’t worth being brought up.
‘She loves it,’ says Rebecca matter-of-factly. ‘And she loves you. This must be all she knows. To do what she thinks is best for you. Even if you’re off on your own.’
It takes another swig of whiskey to get my next words out. ‘That’s what I’m scared of.’
‘That you’ll leave, and she’ll keep working?’
I nod.
I omit the awful other half to that statement.
Yeah, I’m scared of what’ll happen to her if I leave.
She deserves a break after the deal life’s cut her.
But I’m just as scared that no matter how far I go, even if I run to New England, I’ll do the same thing she did.
Find something that feels real, watch it all crumble before my eyes, and then get stuck in an endless cycle of pain and slog.
Like I said. I don’t do family gatherings. I refuse to let myself start now.