Chapter 14 #2
"He said she's spent nineteen years being seen through his name," I say. "That this is the first place that's hers. That I need to be worth it."
Kade rides for a minute without answering.
"He's not wrong," he says.
"I know he's not wrong."
"Does that bother you?"
"That he's right? Yeah."
Kade looks at the trail ahead of us. "A man who knows his kid knows what she needs, and says it plain to the person who matters to her. That's not an enemy."
"I'm not treating him like an enemy."
"I know you're not." He shifts in the saddle. "I'm saying it counts for something that he said it to you and not to her. He's not trying to run you off. He's telling you the standard."
The meadow opens up on the left, and the horses both lift their heads, looking out at it. The grass is long and green. The mountains sit big at the far end of the field. Copper tosses his head, and I let him have a minute.
"She's nineteen," I say. It comes out flat. Just the fact sitting there.
"She is," Kade says. "She knows what she's doing, and she knows what she wants. That counts for something."
"That's not what I'm worried about. The problem is that I left the last place that mattered when things got hard. She hasn't flinched once since she got here."
Kade’s quiet for a moment. The horses move through the meadow, and the grass brushes their legs.
"That's not the same thing as being less than her," he says. "That's you knowing what you should've done differently. Those aren't the same."
"Feels like it from where I'm standing."
"Yeah, well." He turns Jax toward the trail where it drops toward the creek.
"From where I'm sitting, you've been right here for nine years.
Nobody made you stay. You stayed because it meant something.
Give yourself credit for the thing you're actually doing instead of spending all your time on the thing you did before. "
The creek comes up through the trees, the sound of it first, then the water through the gap in the timber. We bring the horses down to the bank and let them drink, their noses dipping into the current while the afternoon light comes through the pines in long stripes across the water.
"You're going to have to deal with Garrett," Kade says.
"I know."
"Not sometime. Before it gets worse."
I watch Copper drink. "I know, Kade."
He looks over at me. "I'm not saying it again after this."
"Good."
I mean it. Not because I don't want to hear it, but because I already know he's right, and having him say it again won't change anything. I need to decide, not be convinced. That's a different thing.
He picks up his reins and sends Jax into the creek. After a second, I follow.
We ride the last stretch, check the corridor through the second timber stand, and come back out above the property in the late afternoon light.
The ranch spreads out below us, the arena, the barn, the dining hall, and the cabins in the trees.
From up here, it looks like what it is. A working place. A place worth staying for.
I look at it for a second before we ride down.
***
The evening has gone quiet by the time I walk past Cass's cabin.
I round the corner of the path, and there she is on her porch, feet tucked up in the rocker, a glass in her hand.
The kittens are in the grass off the bottom step.
All four of them in the last of the evening light.
The black one bats at a moth. The gray one sits watching with her ears going in two different directions.
The little tabby is wrestling with the orange one, both of them tumbling over each other in the dirt.
The mamma cat is on the porch step, patient and unimpressed, watching the kittens.
Cass looks up when I stop at the foot of her steps. She doesn't look surprised to see me.
"Come sit with me," she says. "You're making me tired standing there."
I drop into the rocker next to her. The evening air smells like pine and warm grass.
Darla had stew and cornbread on the stove for dinner, and it's still drifting across the property.
The black kitten bats at the moth again, missing.
Cass watches him with a completely fond look, and she's not doing anything to hide it.
"Did you name them yet?" I ask.
She looks at the kittens. "The mama's Mae. I named her." She nods at the gray one. "That one's Lightning. The black one's Tornado." She pauses. "Sutton named them."
"Of course he did."
"The tabby's Steve."
I look at her. "Steve."
"I know."
"Sutton named a kitten Steve."
"He was very confident about it."
I look at the tabby. "Honestly, yeah. He looks like a Steve."
She smiles. "The orange one's Biscuit."
I nod. "Kid's got range."
"He really does."
After a moment, she says, "He called me kid the whole visit."
I look at her. "What?"
"Dad called me kid the whole visit," she says. "Every single time." She takes a drink of her coffee. "I'm nineteen years old. I'm not a kid."
"He knows that."
"Then he can stop saying it."
"He's saying it because he's trying not to say the other things."
She's quiet for a second. "What other things?"
I look at the kittens. Steve has fallen asleep. Lightning has decided to walk directly across Biscuit, who takes offense to that and is now wrestling with him.
"He came to the barn this morning," I say. "Before he left. We talked."
I feel her go still in the rocker.
"It was fine," I say. "Better than fine. I shook his hand."
She looks at me for a second like she's deciding whether to push. She doesn't. Tornado finally catches the moth, loses it immediately, and sits down to wash his face. Cass watches him.
"How are you feeling about Garrett?" she says.
I rest my arms on my knees. "Like it's been put off long enough that the putting-off is starting to cost me more than dealing with it would."
"That's about right."
"He's not a bad guy," I say. "He was fourteen when I left. He didn't have a choice about staying. He just watched it fall apart without me there and never got the apology he was owed. I'm the one who owes it."
She rocks in the chair. "So owe it."
"He called you kid," I say.
"He did."
"That probably drove you crazy."
"It really did."
I look at her. She's looking at the kittens. There's a small smile she's not doing anything to hide, which is rare.
"For what it's worth," I say, "you're the least kid-like person on this property."
She glances at me. "You're including Sutton in that?"
"I said what I said."
She laughs and goes back to her drink.
I sit in the rocker beside her until the light goes all the way out and Mae drops off the rail and goes under the porch, and the kittens follow her in one by one.
Neither of us talks much after that. The ranch goes quiet around us, crickets starting up in the grass, the birds falling silent in the timber, the fire pit crowd thinning out across the way.
When I finally get up to go, she looks up at me. "See you in the morning," she says.
"See you in the morning."
I walk back to my cabin in the dark and think about Reid's hand in mine, and Kade's voice at the creek, and the way she said, “so owe it,” like it was the simplest thing in the world.
The simplest thing and the hardest one are often the same.
Reid said it, plain, and drove out. Kade said it and promised not to repeat himself.
Cass said it in four words and meant every one of them.
I've had three people today point me at the same thing from three different directions.
At some point, a man has to stop doing the math and start doing the work.
Reid said it and left it alone. I'm the one who can't put it down.