Jackson #2
Then Denny breaks it like he always does. “Hey…not to get all serious or anything, but it’s good to have you back, man.”
I squint at a dragonfly flitting an inch above the water. “It’s good to be back.”
Dad glances over. “You doing okay with everything?”
“Yeah…kind of…getting there,” I say. “Kate and I are…well, I’m trying to figure it out. She’s holding everything together, which is more than I deserve. I keep waiting for her to get tired of being patient with me.”
“She won’t.” Austin stares out at the water. His typically deep voice somehow finds an even lower pitch. “She’s always the one holding it together. The ranch would’ve been fucked after Mom died if Kate wasn’t there.”
“If she loved you enough to stick around during that, she’s not leaving now.” Denny’s toe repeatedly taps the edge of the dock.
“Yeah…I said some stuff last night that I shouldn’t have, so I don’t know if that’s true anymore.”
“That was a stupid choice.” Dad calls it like it is. I can’t disagree. He’s right. So damn right. “But marriage is a lot of messing up, saying you’re sorry, and showing up the next day anyway. Sounds like you got some apologizing to do now.”
The red bobber attached to my lure spins and dips below a small wave created by a family of ducks swimming past. My guts twist. Dad’s right. I need to make this up to Kate.
“If I wanted to take Kate somewhere, do you guys have any suggestions?”
“Like for the night?” Austin asks.
“Not necessarily, just…somewhere that’s more than a quick dinner date, y’know?”
Denny taps the soles of his boots against the boards underneath him. “You’re probably not cleared to go riding yet, hey? I’d say the weather’s only getting warmer, you could pack a picnic and go out for the day.”
I shake my head. “Horseback riding is out.”
I don’t tell them I doubt I’ll remember how to ride, if and when I climb into the saddle again.
Given what a burden I feel like while still in recovery, I’ve been actively avoiding thinking about what my life will look like once my head has fully healed.
My role on the ranch has long been training horses, and I don’t imagine I’ll relearn decades of horsemanship quick enough to be useful to the ranch in the way I was.
“Cecily and I spent a few days at some hot springs a few hours from here for our honeymoon,” Austin says. “They have these fancy-ass rental cabins. I tried telling her we could sleep in one of the cabins at the ranch instead, but she wasn’t having it.”
“You cheap bastard.” Denny shakes his head.
“Hot springs would be good,” I agree.
My bobber bobs once more, barely tugging the line. I don’t move. Instead I watch it float steady again on a lake surface the sun’s stitched in gold.
I want to fall in love with my wife again.
And a single weekend might not be enough, but maybe finding our footing again starts with a cabin, some quiet relaxation, an opportunity to forge the connection we’re both longing for, and a view of her in a bikini—
Shit. I’m definitely not going to be able to keep my hands off my wife if I see her in a bikini.
Dad casts his line out again, then shifts his attention to me. “I can stay in the house with the kids. It’s, uh, getting a bit less hard to spend time there, and Beryl stayed with them the entire time you were in the hospital. She deserves a break, too.”
In my excitement over seeing Kate in a bathing suit, I momentarily forgot about Odessa and Rhett, and the fact that they’d need a babysitter.
“Thanks, Dad. That would be great.”
He nods. No problem.
Austin shifts in his seat to slowly bring his line in, keeping the rod held tight between his knees so he can spin the reel with one hand and sip coffee from a beat-up old travel mug with the other.
Such a big guy looks goofy in a tiny little folding chair, even goofier all hunched over the way he is now.
The air’s quiet, save for the gentle whir of Austin’s reel and the zipping sound of a plastic baggy filled with beef jerky. Denny shoves a chunk of thin, brown jerky into his mouth and awkwardly crouches—not wanting to fully lift his ass from the chair—to offer it around.
The final stretch to give a piece to Austin is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The wood dock’s a little slippery with morning dew and lake condensation, and the feet of Denny’s chair slip out from underneath him.
In a kerfuffle that surely scares away what few fish were anywhere close by, my brother goes down, nearly taking out Dad in the process.
The sight of Denny and every last one of his belongings spread across the dock is impossible not to laugh at. And boy, do Austin, Dad, and I laugh. Our howls carry clear across the lake, bouncing off trees and echoing far up the valley.
Groaning about the pain in his knees—and making a that’s what she said joke at his own expense—Denny crawls across the slick wood surface to fish his now-empty plastic bag from the lake.
He pouts, staring longingly at the beef jerky sinking to the lake bottom. “That was the good kind.”
“Hopefully the fish agree,” Dad says, reaching to wipe tears away with the back of his hand. “Should’ve held on tighter.”
“Should’ve kept it all for myself instead of offering it around. No good deed goes unpunished.”
The dock creaks as Denny collects his stuff, then ensures his chair is perfectly stable before sitting back down. A loon calls somewhere along the far shore of the lake, and I relax into my chair, face tilted toward the sun.
Here with them, I like this life. I’m more Jackson Wells than ever before.