Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Bax
Sundays, according to Merv, were for prayer and rest.
She’d shown up like she did most Sundays, hoping to get Athena and me to accompany her to church, but as usual, trying to convince her there was no rest on a cattle farm and with new businesses to navigate proved to be an exercise in futility.
But there really was no rest for the wicked, the weak, the strong, or the mired.
Not for anybody around here, so Merv headed to Sunday services alone and disappointed, and I felt a pang of sadness for my mama.
She’d spent her whole life trying to find God’s love, but didn’t she know she’d just driven away from it?
It was right here, in Athena and in me. In the land she’d raised us on, in the sky, and the wind. A lot of bad things happened, sure, but so many good things had happened to us here too.
Finally, I could see it, could see past all the pain.
I wished Merv could see it too. I hoped someday she would.
Maybe when her house was finished and she lived on the property again instead of in the run-down trailer she’d insisted on buying after my dad passed.
I still had no clue why she’d punished herself like that.
And when Candy and the baby died, she became almost a recluse.
I had the feeling she was in the same fight with God I had been in the last three years, and if that was the case, she’d need to figure out how to let the Almighty off the hook when she found him.
I’d come around to it, and if I could forgive, then so could she.
The ranch was the only place I wanted to be.
This land was slowly bringing me back to life.
Rye and his crazy ideas had lit a fire under my ass again.
Last year, after I’d made the decision to let go of the sheep farm that had been a burden my whole life, I got lost again, just like I’d been when Candy and Duo died.
And then I broke my leg and the world had become a shitstorm once more.
But now, the wavy, nauseating heat lifted from the road in front of me, and I could see the many paths just waiting for me to stand up and choose one.
Rye, my brother and sister, and Athena hadn’t let me get truly lost. They pulled me off the pavement and gave me reasons to look for the sunrises and sunsets again every day.
And Bea, she’d shown me that those sunsets could light my world on fire again.
Plus, there really was a fuck-ton to do.
Sitting on a folding chair in the shade at the mouth of the barn, I used two small, stacked hay bales as a desk, logging expenses into a spreadsheet on Rye’s laptop.
But really, what I’d been doing the last hour was watch my little girl learn to command Tulsa, wishing I could be out there in the ring with her.
Rye and Presley had the physical tasks covered while I recovered, but I was itching to feel dirt under my fingernails again.
I missed my nightly showers when I could feel the strength in my mind and my body after a hard day’s work.
There was a certain euphoria after a shower like that, when I’d sit on the porch, watching the sky darken and feeling accomplished.
Even if I’d failed at the larger task of life, I still felt proud of the work I’d done with my hands.
It was when I drew the best. I had clarity then, could see what I wanted to bring to life in my sketchbook easily.
I set down the computer and picked up my sketchpad to start on a drawing of my brave daughter as she listened to the guys while they instructed her and taught her how to be a rider.
She had no fear, and she looked so confident that I thought the pride inside me might break open my chest to get out of my body.
Seeing her like that reassured me that she could handle some teenage boy.
If he put the moves on her on their date, I hoped she’d use the same confidence to punch?—
“Whatcha drawin’?”
Bea’s quiet voice behind me nearly caused a heart attack.
“Jesus! Warn a guy before you sneak up on him like that.” I couldn’t put my finger on why, but all day, it felt like I’d been being watched. How ridiculous was that though? No one cared about my mundane, disabled activities.
Bea laughed softly. “Then what would be the point of sneakin’?”
“S’pose you’re right,” I said. “but if I’d been standin’, you would’ve brought me to my knees just then.” I looked up at her, and she stroked two fingers over the brim of my hat. “I thought you had work to finish.”
“I do, but I was gettin’ kinda lonely over by the cabins all by myself.
Plus, it’s not safe for me to do any hard labor without at least a buddy.
Wanna be my buddy?” She smiled as she collected her long hair in one hand, then twisted it into a bun and secured it on her head with a band she wore around her wrist. “I have to tell you, this hat is really doin’ it for me. ”
Was I blushing? I totally was, and her smile grew naughtier.
“There’s no one at the cabins today. Mine, for example, is empty.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
Reaching out, I tugged her closer by the belt loop on her jeans.
“I’ve got a better idea. Pull up a chair.
There’s a show for you right here. Look.
” I waved my arm out toward Athena as she led her mare into a controlled canter around the edge of the ring.
Rye and Presley watched from the middle, turning in circles, looking for any sign that the horse might buck or spook.
“The guys have been workin’ with both of them separately for several weeks, but this is their first ride together. ”
“Really?” Bea squinted beneath the shade of her hand. “She looks so good.”
“She really does,” I said as Bea snagged an old feed bucket from the side of the barn. She flipped it upside down next to my chair and sat on it.
Crossing one leg over the other, she propped her elbow on her knee and leaned forward to watch. “Athena’s so beautiful up there. She looks like a proper cowgirl.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, but I was watching Bea as she watched my little girl. She was proud of Athena too. I saw it all over her face. “What about you?”
She didn’t take her eyes away from Athena and Tulsa. “What about me?”
“Ever ride?”
“Oh God, no. I’d fall off.”
I shook my head. “No you wouldn’t.”
Athena slowed Tulsa to a walk to cool down, and I turned toward Bea. Presley stayed in the ring with the new dynamic duo, but I saw Rye out of the corner of my eye, walking over to the fence to grab his water bottle.
“Oh, young squire?” I called to him.
He stopped in his tracks with the water bottle almost to his lips. “Uh, yes, my liege ?”
“Saddle my horse.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. “My liege, if I may be so bold, are you out of your fuckin’ mind? You ain’t gettin’ on your horse with a broken femur.”
I waved my hand toward Bea. “Not for me, but for the princess.”
“No way in hell am I gettin’ on a horse!” She stood and backed away, shaking her head. “Nuh-uh. No dice.”
“Scared?” I taunted.
Her beautiful smile wilted into a grimace. “Terrified.”
“It smells like cow shit in here.”
“It’s a cattle farm,” Presley said, holding Bea’s hips to keep her steady when she climbed onto her feed bucket next to Purdy, my eleven-year-old sorrel gelding.
There was no other word for it; my horse was lazy, which was how I knew he’d be the perfect first ride for Bea.
Purdy wouldn’t buck her because it would take entirely too much energy on his part.
He’d gotten far too comfortable standing around munching hay since I’d closed down Lee Family Fleece and then broken my leg.
“I know that,” Bea argued, “but is the smell s’posed to be this strong? I feel like it’s burnin’ the inside of my nostrils.”
Presley rolled his eyes, and Athena and Rye snickered like two old ladies as they watched from the other side of the barn aisle.
“Get down,” Presley grunted, his gruff demeanor made clear in the rough sound of his voice.
Bea wasn’t deterred. “What? Why? I was just jokin’,” she said. “I promise to stop complainin’ about the putrid smell of bovine feces.”
“C’mon, Pres,” Rye said. “Where’s your sense of humor?”
“Don’t have one, but that’s not why she needs to get down. This ain’t the right horse for her. Their energies don’t match. Get Blue. He’s the one for miss Bea.”
Athena winced, Rye’s eyebrows rose in tandem, and I crutched closer.
“Uh, Pres,” I hedged, “you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He nodded toward Blue’s stall, his eyes on Rye’s. “Get him.”
“Wait a minute,” Bea said, stepping down from the bucket and backing toward me. Anxiety radiated out around her like a force field. “Why do you all look like this man just signed my death warrant?”
“It’ll be fine, right, Rye?” I said. I needed his reassurance that his horse would not, in fact, kill Bea or put her in the hospital. If we both had broken legs, we’d be doomed.
Rye pursed his lips for a few seconds. He studied Blue and then Bea, and back to Blue again, but then he nodded. “I trust Pres’s judgment. If he says Blue’s the horse for Bea, it must be true.” He turned and opened his horse’s stall.
Presley led Purdy back to his stall across the way, and Bea turned to look at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, ’course,” were the words that came out of my mouth, but my head moved side to side as I said it.
“Thanks,” she griped. “Thanks for that vote of confidence.” But when she heard Blue’s hooves on the barn floor as Rye led him into the aisle, she turned and gasped in awe. “He’s beautiful.”
“That he is,” Rye said proudly. “Don’t you break him. Now c’mon. Come closer. Talk to him. Introduce yourself. Let him smell you and feel your heartbeat.”
Athena moved next to me, and we held our breath as Bea approached Blue with her hand out, like he was a snarling dog instead of a rowdy horse. Sitting next to my broken leg on the dusty barn floor, even Fig was nervous. He yelped softly and ran out the open door.