Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Hadley
"And his ears, Mama. His ears go straight up when Rogue makes a clicking sound with his teeth, like this—"
Nash clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth from where he's sitting on my kitchen counter, swinging his legs and missing the floor by about six inches.
"—and Diesel comes running. From all the way across the pasture. Like a soldier."
"That's the third time you've told me about Diesel, baby."
"Because he's the best dog I ever met."
"He's also the only dog you ever met, besides Bella and Jagger."
Nash thinks about that for a second and then shrugs because six-year-olds don't have time for technicalities. "Still the best."
I'm wiping my hands on the green dishtowel, untying my house apron, and reaching for the cleaner one I keep on the hook by the door, the one that doesn't have biscuit flour ground into the front of it.
The bunkhouse dinner bell's gonna ring in fifteen minutes whether I'm ready or not, and the brisket I've had on low and slow since lunch is gonna come out of that smoker in the next ten.
I can guarantee Nash is still on the counter telling me about Jagger, Bella, and Diesel for what is now the fourth time, not the third.
I let him.
He's only been this animated about a thing twice in his life.
The first time was the day Garrett brought home a kitten in the pocket of his work jacket when Nash was four.
The second time was last Christmas when his mamaw gave him a remote control monster truck that lasted six days before he ran it into a curb.
He hasn't talked like this about anything since his daddy died.
I keep my back to him for a second so he can't see my face.
"Boots, baby."
"I'm wearing 'em."
"Then hop down. We gotta go feed the boys."
Nash hops down off the counter, drags Stitch with him by one ear, and runs out the screen door ahead of me without waiting.
I stand in my kitchen with the cleaner apron in my hand and I listen to the sound of my son's voice yelling something across the yard at someone—I can't tell who from in here, probably Thunder, who's become more like the big brother I never had—and I think about the fact that my boy is yelling.
Yelling.
About something that isn't a nightmare.
I tie the apron, kill the kitchen light, and follow him out.
The walk from my cabin to the bunkhouse is about eighty yards across gravel and packed dirt, and the gold light is doing that thing it does where everything goes warm and sideways, and the cedar smells stronger this time of evening than any other time of day.
Nash is already on the bunkhouse porch when I get there.
So is Thunder.
He's got my son in a headlock, the kind big men give little boys to make them squeal, and Nash is laughing the way only Thunder can make him laugh, and Stitch is on the porch rail looking very judgmental about the whole situation.
"Look what I found wanderin' the property," Thunder calls when he sees me. "You lose somethin', Cross?"
"I'm missing a son, last I checked."
"Found him."
"I see that."
Thunder lets Nash go and Nash collapses dramatically against the porch rail like he's been mortally wounded.
Thunder picks up Stitch and hands him back to Nash with the seriousness of a man returning a treasured artifact, and Nash sits down cross-legged on the porch floor and starts telling Stitch about Diesel.
Thunder follows me into the bunkhouse kitchen. "Smells like trouble in here, Cross."
"Don't touch a damn thing."
"I never touch anything."
"You touched a biscuit on Tuesday."
"Tuesday was a special occasion."
"Tuesday was Tuesday."
He laughs, and I laugh, and I open the smoker. The smell of brisket and mesquite hits both of us, and Thunder makes a noise low in his throat that men only make about meat and women, which is a comparison I'm not gonna say out loud.
He's already pulled the kitchen towels off the rack and he's holding them out to me without being asked.
He's been here every evening I've cooked since the second week.
He carries the heavy stuff. He pulls the brisket out of the smoker for me because the pan is too heavy for one person to lift down by herself.
He's the only one who ever bothered to learn that I'm five-foot-six and the smoker is set at five-foot-nine.
He takes one end of the pan. I take the other. We carry it together to the kitchen island.
"How's Nash been sleepin'?" he asks while I pull the foil off the top.
"Through the night the last three days running."
"That a record?"
"For us? Yeah."
"Ranch agrees with the boy."
"Ranch agrees with both of us, Thunder."
He cuts his eyes at me sideways. Doesn't say anything for a second.
He's got those gray eyes that have seen a lot more than a man his age ought to have seen and he uses them sparingly.
"Yeah," he says finally. "I noticed."
* * *
The brothers come in at six o'clock the way they always do.
Banshee first. Then Spur, who's already washed up but still smells like horse.
Blaze, then Blight, dragging his feet like always.
Then the prospects in the order they came up—Miller, then Ford, then the new one whose name I can't for the life of me remember.
Phantom's not here tonight. He's out on a run. I don't know where and I don't ask.
Rogue's not here yet either. That's not normal.
He's always at the head of the table when the brothers sit down. Always.
Same seat, same time, two months running.
It's the first thing I notice when I bring out the brisket on the big wooden cutting board and there's an empty chair where his white hat ought to be.
Thunder catches me looking. Thunder catches everything.
"He's at his cabin," he says, low, so only I can hear it. "He'll be along shortly."
I don't ask how he knows that.
I don't even ask why he thought I was wondering.
I just slide the cutting board onto the table, reach for the carving knife, and start slicing brisket the way Hank Williams used to write songs—slow, careful, with my whole body in it.
The brothers serve themselves the way they always do. Family-style. Loud, talking over each other, somebody making a joke at Banshee's expense that I don't catch and don't want to.
Nash climbs onto the bench between Thunder and Spur because Thunder dragged him down there before they sat down, and Nash is sitting on a phone book Thunder produced from God knows where because the boy can't see over the table otherwise.
I'm at the kitchen island slicing brisket and watching all of this from the side when the screen door opens behind me.
I don't turn around. I know the sound of his boots on the porch. I know the way the door catches when he opens it slowly.
He walks across the bunkhouse without saying anything to anyone. Past the prospects. Past Blight.
He stops at the kitchen island where I'm slicing the brisket, and he stands beside me close enough that the heat off his arm finds the side of mine even though we're not touching.
"Evenin', Hadley."
"Evenin'."
I don't look up. To be honest, I don't trust my face.
He stands there for a second longer than a man would stand there if he was just saying hello. Then he walks to the table.
I watch his back.
The white hat. The cut of his shoulders. The Shotgun Saints patch on the back of his cut.
He takes his seat.
He looks across the table at Thunder and at my son sitting between his brothers.
He doesn't look at me once.
I bring his plate over.
I do it because I bring everybody's plate over. That's the job. That's what they pay me for.
Two eggs scrambled in the morning, sandwich at noon, whatever I make for supper at six. I don't make a thing of it.
But tonight I'm making a thing of it.
I set the plate down in front of him.
Brisket, beans, cornbread, a small dish of pickled jalapenos because he eats them with everything I serve and I figured out his habit the first week.
He says, "Thank you, Hadley."
Not sweetheart this time.
He doesn't look up at me when he says it.
I stand there for half a second longer than I should and then I walk back to the kitchen.
I refill the iced tea pitcher and the cornbread basket.
Anything so I don't look at the head of the table.
Thunder is making Nash laugh.
Whatever he's telling him, my boy is howling—the open-mouthed belly laugh I haven't heard out of him in years, the kind that used to come out of him every night at the dinner table when Garrett was alive, the kind I had given up on hearing again.
Thunder is telling some story about a horse he tried to ride when he was twelve.
The horse is named Lucifer. The horse wins.
By the end of the story, Nash is laughing so hard he's wheezing, and Spur is laughing too.
Even Blight is laughing through his hangover, and Thunder is grinning and shaking his head and pretending to be wounded by the memory.
I'm leaning against the door frame between the kitchen and the dining room with a dishrag over my shoulder.
I'm laughing too.
I catch myself laughing and I don't stop. I let it go. It feels good. It feels like something I forgot how to do, then I look up.
Rogue is watching me.
He's at the head of the table. His brisket is half-eaten. His coffee cup is between his hands. His face is doing the thing where it doesn't move, but also somehow looks like every thought he has is happening behind it at once.
He's not laughing. He's looking at me.
For a second neither of us moves.
His eyes drop to Thunder. Drop back to me. Drop to Nash on Thunder's lap. Back to me.
I see it land.
It's not anger. It's not jealousy in the cheap way men get jealous.
It's something quieter and harder to name, the way a dog's ears go back without him growling—a warning that's not for me but is about me.
I look away first.
I've got to.
I push off the door frame and go back to the kitchen and I start scrubbing a pan that doesn't need to be scrubbed because I need to be focusing my energy on something.
Behind me, Thunder ribs him across the table. "Brother, you barely touched the second helping. Cross is gonna think you don't love her cookin' anymore."