Chapter 4 #2
It's the briefest exchange and it tells me three things.
They've spoken to each other this morning. Thunder knows about whatever they spoke about. Neither of them's gonna tell me.
Rogue takes his seat at the head of the long table by the window.
I bring out the platter of sandwiches, the bowl of pickles, and the pitcher of sweet tea.
I bring out the plate of sliced tomatoes from Mama Lou's garden—the beefsteak kind with the green shoulders and the deep red middles—and the brothers serve themselves the way they always do.
I bring Rogue his plate last.
Chicken salad on a homemade roll, a pickle from my jar, three thick slices of tomato, a glass of iced tea sweetened the way he takes it.
When I set the plate down, he says, "Thank you, Hadley."
Then, lower, just for me—"You doin' all right?"
It's the first time in two months he's ever asked me that.
I say, "I'm doin' all right, Rogue."
He looks up at me from his plate.
Pale blue-green eyes, the kind that have already finished thinking about a thing before they look at you.
Sun-flushed across the cheekbones from being outside this morning.
The white hat's on the back of his chair.
"Good," he says quietly.
That one word lands in my chest like a hand pressed against my sternum.
I go back to the kitchen and I don't look at the head of the table for the rest of lunch.
As everyone finishes up, I clean up lunch and the brothers disappear and head back to whatever jobs they have around the ranch today.
Thunder went home with a basket of peaches under his arm for Mama Lou.
The bunkhouse is quiet and the afternoon heat has settled in for real.
I'm wiping down the kitchen island when I glance through the window over the sink.
A black sedan has stopped on the county road just outside the ranch gate.
The driver doesn't get out. The sedan sits there for about three minutes, then it pulls back onto the road and drives away.
I wouldn't have noticed it, normally.
People stop at the gate all the time to take pictures of the cattle skull sign or to read the lettering, or to ask one of the brothers for directions to the Buc-ee's outside Sharp.
I've seen four of those people this week alone.
This one is different. This one didn't slow down to look. The driver sits there with his window cracked an inch, head tilted toward the bunkhouse, like the man inside was watching, not sightseeing.
I set the dishrag down on the counter.
I think about last night—about Banshee taking an envelope from somebody at the clubhouse porch in the dark, about the way I told myself I was tired and reading into things—and I think about Rogue not telling me what he wasn't telling me on his porch steps yesterday.
I'm not reading into things.
The cold feeling in my chest is the same one I had the day Garrett's doctor called to say the lump on his lung was malignant.
I untie my apron and hang it on the hook, then head out the screen door and across the gravel toward Rogue's cabin.
I've never walked to his cabin before.
In two months I've crossed this gravel a hundred times to bring him things, to clean things, to fetch Nash from somewhere on the property, and I've never once knocked on his door.
I don't know what his front room looks like. I know about the monitors only because Nash told me there are three of them, and that one of them showed him a satellite picture of our cabin from space, which is a sentence I've thought about for a while.
I'm halfway across the gravel when his front door opens.
Rogue steps out. He's not wearing the white hat. His phone is in his hand. He looks like a man who was about to call somebody and just got interrupted by movement out his window.
He sees me crossing the yard and stops on his porch. I stop at the bottom of his porch steps.
"Hadley."
"There was a black car at the gate."
His face doesn't change. It's what tells me everything I need to know, how there’s no reaction. "When?"
"About forty minutes ago."
"Did the driver get out?"
"No. Just sat there for a few minutes, then drove off."
He nods once. "Have you seen it before?"
I shake my head.
He doesn't tell me he has. He doesn't say much of anything for a second.
He stands there on his porch, his auburn hair a little mussed like he's been running his fingers through it, and his eyes don't leave my face.
I want to ask him is if he’s in trouble, if we’re the reason he’s in trouble.
I want to know if he's scared, because if a man like Rogue is scared then I should be terrified, and I'm not terrified, and I want to know why.
"I got chicken salad leftovers at the bunkhouse. You want me to fix you somethin' for later?"
He goes still on the porch. Just for half a second. Like the offer caught him somewhere he wasn't expecting to be caught.
"You bringin' me leftovers, Hadley?"
"I'm offering you some before Thunder and Blaze eat them all."
He looks at me for a long second. "I'd appreciate that, Hadley."
I should turn and go. I know I should. The bunkhouse is fifty yards behind me and there's a plate that's not gonna fix itself.
I don't move.
"You came all the way over here to tell me about a car and feed me dinner?" he says.
His voice is dry. Not quite a smile. Not quite not one, either.
"I came to tell you about the car. The dinner is a courtesy."
The corner of his mouth moves. Just a quarter inch. The closest thing I've seen to a smile on his face in a while.
"Courtesy."
"That's what I said."
"You bring everybody on this ranch a courtesy dinner when you got somethin' to tell 'em?"
"Only the ones I'd hate to see go hungry."
He looks at me.
The way he looked at me across the kitchen this morning.
Direct. Unhurried. Like he's filing the words I just said somewhere he can pull them up again later.
"Okay, Hadley."
"Okay, Rogue."
I turn and walk back across the gravel toward the bunkhouse.
I don't turn around to see if he's watching me. I already know he is.
Nash comes home at six, dirt on his face and grass in his hair and a grin so wide it makes my chest hurt.
He's been with Spur at the round pen all afternoon because Spur has decided this is good for the boy's character.
Spur thinks every problem in the world can be solved by handing a child a horse and seeing what happens.
Nash kicks off his boots at the door the way I taught him, and climbs onto the chair at the kitchen table. "Mama."
"Mmhm?"
"Can I have a friend over sometime?"
I look up from the pot of spaghetti sauce. "What friend?"
"Raine."
I set the spoon down. "When did you meet Raine?"
"This mornin'. While you were doing laundry.
She was on a four-wheeler with her grandma, riding by the kennel, and she stopped to say hi to Diesel because Diesel is her favorite of all the dogs.
She told me her grandma is teaching her how to bake pies and I could come over whenever I want to learn 'em too. "
"Where does her grandma live?"
"In town. But she comes out to the ranch a lot. Raine lives here, Mama. Like us. She lives with her daddy at the back of the property in the second house past the barn. Did you know?"
"I knew somebody lived there."
"It's Thunder. Thunder's her daddy."
"I know that, baby."
Nash nods, satisfied, like he's imparted a great piece of information. "She's nine. She said nine is old enough to teach a six-year-old how to bake. She said I was a beginner but she could work with me."
I smile. "She sounds like a piece of work."
"She is, Mama. I really like her."
I stir the sauce.
I think about the fact that my son is six years old, has watched his daddy die, has slept in three motels and the back of a truck in the last year, and hasn't made a single real friend since before Garrett got sick.
And tonight at my kitchen table he's telling me about a nine-year-old girl who's gonna teach him how to bake pies.
I tell him I'll talk to Thunder. We'll figure out a time.
"Tomorrow?"
"Maybe not tomorrow."
"Day after?"
"We'll see."
He accepts my answer with the certainty the answer's gonna be yes eventually and the patience to wait it out.
He hops down off the chair and goes to wash his hands without being told.
I stand at the stove stirring spaghetti sauce and listen to my son sing in the bathroom—some made-up song about pies and dogs and a four-wheeler—and I look out the kitchen window at Rogue's cabin across the yard.
His front room light is on. The window with the monitors.
* * *
After Nash is asleep with Stitch under his chin, I take a glass of water to the porch.
The yard is quiet. The bunkhouse windows are gold. Somebody's playin' a guitar low.
Banshee, probably, who I've learned plays when he can't sleep. The frogs are loud, and a coyote yips once out past the western fence.
I sit on the porch swing.
Across the yard, Rogue's cabin light is on.
My hand goes to the chain at my neck.
Garrett's ring is warm against my breastbone the way it always is.
I haven't taken it off since he died. Hell, I haven't decided whether I'm gonna take it off any time soon, either.
But I touched it less today than I have in two months. Am I ready to move on?
I lift my eyes to the yard.
The gold light is gone. The dark is deep and the stars are starting to come out, and across the yard the man with three monitors is still awake.
I think I'm building a life here, and I don’t think I noticed until tonight.
I’m really building something for us here.