Epilogue
Beau
I notice the tits first. Not in a bad way.
There’s no bad way to notice my wife’s tits.
But they’re different. Fuller. Heavier. Straining against her tops in a way that’s new.
Her nipples are darker. More sensitive. She hissed when I sucked them last night.
Not the good hiss. The too-much hiss. And Ina’s never too-much about anything I do with my mouth.
Then the coffee.
My wife drinks coffee like it’s a religion. Two cups minimum. Black, no sugar. Don’t talk to her before the first one. Tuesday morning she poured a cup, brought it to her lips, and set it back down. Untouched. Reached for the orange juice instead.
I didn’t say anything. Just watched.
On wednesday she fell asleep on the couch at eight.
My woman, who stays up past midnight arguing with reality TV like the contestants can hear her, out cold before the sun finished setting.
I carried her to bed. She mumbled something about being tired from the heifers.
The heifers were fine. Miguel told me so.
Thursday she skipped breakfast. Stood in front of the fridge for two minutes, closed it, and ate three saltine crackers standing at the counter. Then she went outside, took a deep breath of hay-scented air, and looked vaguely green.
I know bodies. Spent my entire career reading the signs…the subtle shifts in behavior, the physical changes, the things an animal can’t tell you with words but tells you with everything else. Watched a hundred cows carry. I know what it looks like before anyone confirms it.
My wife is pregnant.
I don’t say anything. Not yet. Because I want her to have this. The discovery. The moment it becomes real for her. I’m not going to take that away by being a know-it-all with a behavioral genetics degree and an obsessive fixation on her body.
But God, it’s hard to keep my mouth shut.
Friday night. Our bed. She’s lying on her stomach in one of my T-shirts…
stretched across her tits, riding up over her ass, her braids fanned on the pillow.
I’m on my side, my hand tracing slow lines up her bare thigh.
Her skin is warm. Smooth. She smells like her lotion and my soap and something new under. Something softer. Richer.
I slide my hand up. Over the curve of her hip. Across her belly. And I rest it there. Palm flat. Fingers spread. The way I’ve done a hundred times since that first night in the bullpen.
But this time something’s different. Nothing I can see. Nothing I can measure. Just a fullness under my hand. A warmth. A quiet, steady hum of something that wasn’t there before.
My chest cracks open so wide I can barely breathe.
“Ina.”
“Mmm?” She’s half asleep. Her eyes closed. Her lips parted.
“How long have you known?”
Silence. Her breathing stops. Then starts again. Faster.
She rolls onto her back. Looks up at me. Her dark eyes, wide. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth. And I see it…the fear and the joy and the disbelief all fighting for space on her beautiful face.
“How did you…”
“Baby.” I press my hand firmer against her belly. Feel the warmth. The life. “I read bodies for a living.”
Her eyes fill. Her chin trembles. She presses her lips together hard, trying to hold it in, but it breaks through anyway. A sob. Then a laugh. Then both at the same time.
“Four days,” she whispers. “I took the test on Monday. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you and you just…” She gestures at me, tears streaming. “You just KNEW? Like a fucking sorcerer?”
I grin. “Your bull always knows.”
She smacks my chest. Then grabs my face with both hands and kisses me. Hard. Wet. Salty with tears. Her small fingers digging into my jaw. Her mouth desperate and laughing against mine.
When she pulls back, her mascara is everywhere, and she’s grinning so wide her cheeks must hurt.
“We did it,” she says. “We actually did it.”
I lean down and press my lips to her belly. Right where my hand was. Feel the warmth of her skin. The softness. The impossible, terrifying, perfect fact of what’s growing under my mouth.
“Yeah, baby,” I murmur against her stomach. “We did.”
First, Ina calls Tanya. I hear the scream through the phone from across the room.
“I KNEW IT. I TOLD BOBBY. I SAID SHE’S GLOWING AGAIN. THAT MAN OWES ME.”
“You BET on me?!”
“It was a loving bet!”
Lilah finds out via FaceTime. She cries. Full, heaving, ugly sobs that turn into hysterical laughter that turn back into sobs. “I’m gonna be a big sister. Oh my God… Oh, my GOD! Mom, I’m gonna spoil this baby so bad.” I laugh. “We’re having a BABY!”
Miles texts back: ??
Then, ten minutes later: Is it a boy? Can he play ball?
That boy…
My woman reads that text and cries for twenty minutes.
Mama cries. No surprise there. But when she grabs my face with both hands and says, “My baby’s having a baby,” I have to look at the ceiling for a second.
Dad shakes my hand. Firm. Long. His dark eyes bright.
“That’s my boy,” he says.
Mack asks if he can name it. I tell him absolutely not. He suggests “Mack Junior” anyway. Levi offers to babysit. Colt nods from across the room, which coming from him is basically a tearful embrace.
Ina’s parents drive down the next day. Marie walks through the door, already crying. James shakes my hand, pulls me in for a hug, and whispers in my ear: “You’re a good man, Beau. Take care of my girls.”
I will, sir. Both of them. All of them. For the rest of my life.
Sunday evening on our porch where my woman brought her lemonade recipe, her laugh, her body and her heart, and turned my quiet house into the loudest, warmest, most alive place I’ve ever lived.
She’s sitting on the swing. Bare feet. My shirt. Lemonade sweating in her hand. The evening light catching her dark skin, her gold earrings, the yellow diamond on her finger. Her other hand resting on her belly. Not showing yet. But there. Already there.
I come up the steps. The same ones I climbed that first night when I showed up on her parents’ porch and kissed her without asking. Same slow stride. Same certainty.
She looks up at me. Her dark brown eyes. That wide smile. The woman who walked into a cattle fair and knocked my entire world sideways.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I’m always staring.”
“Sit down. You’re making me nervous standing there looking at me like that.”
I sit. Pull her into my side. Her head drops to my shoulder. My arm wraps around her. My hand finds her belly …slides under the shirt, presses flat against her warm skin. She covers my hand with hers. Small over big. Soft over rough.
The swing creaks, the crickets chirp. The sky turns pink and gold over our land.
“Beau?” she says after a while.
“Yeah, baby?”
“You think you’ll enjoy being a dad?”
I think about my own father. His steady hands. His quiet patience. The way he let me be different without ever making me feel wrong for it.
“I’m gonna love the hell out of being a dad,” I reply.
She turns her face into my neck. I feel her smile against my skin.
“You’re gonna be amazing,” she whispers. “Our baby’s so lucky.”
I kiss the top of her head. Breathe her in. Sugar and lemonade and home.
My wife. My baby. My land. My life.
THE END.