Jackson
Kate’s voice is strung so tight, it’s liable to snap, turn into a scream. “Has anybody seen her?”
A collective murmur of no vibrates through the kitchen, and Beryl calmly suggests, “Maybe she got up early and went to feed the barn cats?”
I think Kate and I are the only ones who know Odessa’s been mostly avoiding the barn. She’s willing to go down and see the barn cats in the middle of the day, when there are cowboys milling about, but it’s pretty unlikely she’d be there by herself so early in the morning.
Even still, I say, “I’ll walk down there and look.”
Kate’s eyes lock on mine, and she hastily works down a swallow. “Her bed doesn’t even look slept in, and she’s not in Rhett’s room.”
Austin pushes back from his spot at the table and tosses open the back door. “I’ll head over to my place and see if she’s there.”
Kate nods, but her eyes are wide, glassy. There’s a steady tick in her jaw as she glances around, clearly trying to think of where an eight-year-old might’ve gone.
“She’s probably causing some trouble outside.
We’ve got enough of us…. We’ll find her quickly,” Denny says, tossing back the rest of the coffee in his cup.
His voice is casual, but there’s an edge under it.
I feel the same sharp squeeze in my own chest—something’s off and none of us want to say it out loud.
“It rained last night—could be she’s looking for tadpoles again,” Beryl says.
“Yeah. I’ll walk down to the cattle guard.” Kate clings to that, wrapping her arms around herself, and looks at the other men in the room. “Can you guys…I don’t know…”
“We’ll scour the place,” Red says, gesturing for the ranch hands to follow him outside.
Denny plunks his mug into the sink and gives Kate’s shoulder a firm squeeze. “Five bucks says she’s outside digging in your flower beds or some shit.”
“Yeah, she’ll be so grounded, if that’s the case.” Kate’s voice breaks a little at the end, and it cracks something in my chest.
Kate and I follow behind the guys, silently and hurriedly slipping into big rubber boots and grabbing coats from a row of metal hooks by the front door. I wait, holding the door open, as her trembling fingers struggle with the zipper.
“She knows not to go outside without telling anyone,” Kate says under her breath.
“Kids make silly mistakes all the time,” I reply. “She’s okay, Kate. Promise.”
“It’s just…” She aggressively rubs a fist over her sternum, and I watch her try to breathe through it. “I’m trying not to panic, but this feels so much like that day.”
“This isn’t like that.” I pull her in for a brief hug and a firm kiss planted on top of her head. “Let’s go find our girl.”
I head out toward the barn.
It’s quiet. Too quiet. No off-key singing to her barn cats, no sound of disturbed animals.
The door creaks when I slide it open, and light streams in from behind me to illuminate the dusty alley.
I look around for a moment to find the light switch, and the overhead barn lights slowly hum to life, flooding the space with a warm glow.
A horse blinks over at me. Somewhere farther down, another scuffs its hooves across the concrete floor. But otherwise, silence.
Fuck.
While I assumed she wouldn’t be here, it would’ve been a damn good surprise to find her casually sitting on a hay bale, playing with a kitten. All the worry in the kitchen would be for nothing, and we could carry on with our day.
I check a wood shed next, then an old tractor shed, and the chicken coop. Her name echoes through the valley, carried by the spring breeze across the tall grasses. Various tones and volumes from the dozen or more voices yelling out for her.
I lean against a wooden fence post, scrubbing my hand over my face, as the silence presses in, collapsing around my rib cage like a vise.
It’s not panic yet, but it’s close. Because if she was anywhere on this ranch, she’d be easy to spot.
Singing to the animals, lying stomach-down in a mud puddle playing with a toad, armpit deep in the garden soil, laughing hysterically as she splashes through water pooled in drainage ditches.
I’ve wanted to connect with my kids, and remember the kind of dad I was, since the day Kate showed me photo after photo of them in the hospital. Today there’s utter desperation ransacking my entire body. I can’t help but think Old Jackson would know exactly where to find Odessa.
Kate yells my name, grabbing my attention, and a shallow, hopeful breath inflates my lungs, only for her words to knock it out of me. “She’s not by the cattle guard,” she shouts.
Turning on her heel, she says something about going to check the river. I should follow. I should do something. But my feet feel heavy, rooted to the ground by the pressure building behind my ribs.
Kate’s voice cuts through the air as she disappears around the side of our house, fraying more every time she calls Odessa’s name.
The early morning sun crests the hill, tossing a warm blanket of dense fog over the ranch the way one throws a blanket over a horse’s back.
That’s what my brain feels like, too—airy thoughts swirling in my head, dissipating between my fingers anytime I reach for them.
I crane my neck to feel the heat of the sun on my face, and a memory floats in like dust glimmering in a sunbeam. I remember the sound of Odessa’s small boots stomping through the quiet barn. She was mad, though I don’t remember why, and I don’t think she knew then that I was standing there.
No ladder. No fear. She’d climbed up into the rafters with ease.
And I remember craning my neck to look up there. Finding her dirt-smudged legs dangling down from one of the wooden beams, tear tracks down her cheeks, cat held close to her chest.
Without hesitation, I start walking.
I know my daughter.
The barn door rollers grate, the harsh sound of metal on metal, when I yank it open.
My heart pounds, ricocheting everywhere inside, quickening with each step through the dimly lit barn.
It’s humid from the rainy night and, though there are no signs of her, I can’t ignore the feeling deep in my bones.
The protective fire in my veins where there’s meant to be blood.
She’s here.
“Odessa,” I say softly, careful not to spook her.
It’s silent, and that doesn’t slow me down for even a second.
I stride the length of the barn, to the stall where Kate said I got hurt.
I don’t know what happened that day, but being here makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Odessa was here then. She was here, saw everything, and that fucking guts me.
Stepping into the confined space, I tilt my head and squint up at the ceiling.
And there she is.
Perched on one of the thick crossbeams exactly like in my memory. One knee’s hugged to her chest, the other leg dangling off the edge, pink cowboy boot swishing through the still air. Banana, that damn cat, is curled beside her like it’s a regular Saturday morning.
Something wells up from the depths of my lungs.
“We’ve been looking all over for you,” I say softly.
Her raspy, tear-filled voice topples down from the high ceiling. “I didn’t think you’d look here.”
“You told me this is your favorite hiding spot once.” I pause. “You were mad at Mom that time. Remember?”
She sniffles. “You remember that?”
My ribs constrict at the way hope shapes her tone.
“I do…. So why are you up there this time, Princess?”
She’s quiet for a moment. And it doesn’t matter that I get a little dizzy standing here for so long with my head tilted back, I continue staring up at my daughter. The stubborn, brave-as-hell, spitfire girl with more heart than she knows what to do with.
“I heard you talking in the kitchen last night.”
It’s the Sahara desert in the back of my throat, and I swallow, swallow, swallow despite the burning sensation and gritty pain. A distorted version of every word I might’ve said plays on repeat. I’m not sure how much of it she heard, but anything is too much.
“I’m sorry…. Have you been up there since then?” I swallow hard. Thank God she didn’t fall, especially if she climbed into the rafters in the dark.
“No,” she says quietly. “I was too scared. I waited until the morning.”
“Okay, good. Do you…would you like to come down? Talk about what you heard?” With held breath, I wait patiently for a response that doesn’t come.
In the distance, Denny’s voice yells for Odessa, and I glance over at the open barn door briefly, then back to her.
“I don’t remember everything, Odessa. And I hate that, because I know we had a lot of fun together, didn’t we?
And…and I miss all those times I don’t remember.
But I know one thing for sure—I love you with my entire heart.
You and your brother are the reason I keep fighting to get better. ”
More quiet.
Then, “I think I’m ready to come down now.”
My guts twist as she swings her other leg down and shimmies along the beam.
Then slowly lowers herself, long, skinny body outstretched until her toes brush the top of the fence rail.
When they catch, she balances there like an expert gymnast. I close the space, arms open, poised to catch her.
Though I’m not sure why I had doubts, because she only wobbles the tiniest bit as she lets go of the wooden beam and crouches down to grab the metal rail next to her feet.
When her cowboy boots hit the cement floor, I drop to my knees and let her collapse into me. I press kisses into her wild hair, holding her tight, rubbing a hand up and down her back.
“Wanna tell me what you overheard last night?” I ask once both of our heart rates have returned to normal.
She tips her head up to look at me with too much worry creased in her cute, freckled face. Her cheeks are streaked with tears and dust, and she looks so much older than eight. “You said…you don’t feel like our dad. I thought maybe…”
“I’m so sorry….” My voice cracks.
I squeeze her tighter, as if it’ll somehow stop the pain in my chest from consuming me. My nose burns, my eyes burn, and no matter how aggressively I tell my tear ducts to get their shit together, I end up crying in front of my little girl.
My little girl.
For the first time, I hold her and it feels exactly like she’s mine.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I thought if I left…maybe you’d remember me.”
Fuck. That lands like a punch to the gut. I squeeze my eyes shut for half a second, holding it in, then open them again and meet hers. “I don’t need you to disappear to remember you, or to remember how to be your dad. I just need time. And you. And maybe a few more bedtime stories.”
That earns a small smile.
“Can I tell you something?” I wait for her subtle nod. “I’ve been trying so hard to do all the things I used to do. I want to be your dad so badly, but I don’t remember how…and I’m scared of getting it wrong, because you and Rhett deserve the best.”
She gives me a side-eye. “You always say dads aren’t scared of anything.”
“Well, that was before I learned what it felt like to lose you guys. And that scared the hell out of me.”
“Swear jar.”
I crinkle my nose, sniffing back the tears with a hollow chuckle. “I’ll pay up as soon as we get back to the house.”
“Can we make a trade instead?” she hesitantly asks. “Like the five seconds of honesty your mommy used to do when you were a kid and did something naughty. You don’t have to pay for the bad word if I can tell you a secret and not get in trouble.”
Maybe a better parent would insist on consequences for whatever it is she’s about to tell me, but every memory I have of my mom is filled with nothing but light, love, and acceptance. I think she knew what she was doing.
“Okay…deal.”
Odessa taps the toes of her boots together a few times, stalling like this whole thing wasn’t her idea.
“Well so…I’m not supposed to climb up to see Banana.”
“Right.” I can assume the reason for that rule, based on how quickly my heart raced watching her gingerly climb down. One slip and…she could be like me, or worse. “Because you could fall.”
“I know-uh,” she whines, rolling her eyes. “You always tell me that.”
“If your secret is that you climbed up there today, I already know about that.”
“It’s my fault you broke your brain.”
I blink at her, swallowing hard, and swipe the pads of my fingers over the dampness on my cheeks. “Odessa, that’s not…it’s not your fault.”
Her eyes drop to the floor, where her boots are shuffling a piece of hay around. “It was. You always told me not to climb up there, but you didn’t get mad at me…so I thought—you said the horse in here wasn’t nice, but I wanted to say goodbye to Banana before we left, and I slipped.”
“No.” I grab either side of her face, squishing her cheeks between the heels of my hands, and pull her to look me in the eye. “It was an accident. Nobody is to blame, least of all you.”
She shrugs, and her wet brown eyes are impossibly wide and so damn heartbreaking staring up at me. I wish I knew what to say to make her realize none of this is her fault.
“And it doesn’t matter, anyway. We still have each other, and we have plenty of time to make new memories.”
She looks up at me again, eyes searching, like she’s trying to figure out if she can believe that. “I don’t want you to forget me again.”
Fuck. That does it. That’s the sentence that splits my heart clean down the middle.
I wrap her up in my arms, resting my chin on her head, and smooth a rough hand over her curly, tangled hair.
Maybe if I hold her tight enough, love her hard enough, the world won’t take anything else from us. Maybe my kids will turn out okay in spite of everything. Maybe I won’t completely fail them, or Kate, or myself.
“Even if I forget everything else, I’ll always come back to you, okay? That’s what hearts do when they love someone—they remember.”
She presses her cheek into my shoulder, small arms winding around my neck in a hug that nearly suffocates. But I’m loving every second of it too much to tell her to stop, even if my ability to breathe is severely limited.
We stay like that for a while, in the quiet hum of the barn, the only sound the soft exhale of horses and the occasional meow from Banana, still perched in the rafters.
Then I hear somebody yelling Odessa’s name, and I’m reminded of the fact that everyone else on the ranch still thinks she’s missing. Kate’s probably worrying herself sick, while doing her best to keep a straight face and calm demeanor.
Before I can tell her we need to let the search party know she’s okay, Odessa blurts, “Can we go tell Mom I’m not dead now?”
That pulls a laugh straight from my gut, rough and surprised and desperately needed. I stand and take her hand, holding it tight, not ready to let go quite yet.
“Yeah, Princess,” I say. “Let’s go give your mom her heart back.”