Epilogue
Dakota
The east pasture is silver with frost when I pull the gauze curtain back at six o'clock in the morning on the day I'm supposed to get married.
Earl's oak is bare and black against the gray country sky.
The white chairs Banshee set up yesterday afternoon are dark with overnight dew.
The string lights in the oak's branches are off, but I know they'll come on at sundown.
The grass between here and the oak is gold and dry the way it goes in January, and I can see my breath against the cold of the windowpane when I lean against the glass.
I'm in Spur's flannel and a pair of his thick wool socks because the floor of my father's house is cold the way it's only cold this time of year.
I'm getting married in eleven hours.
I should be sleeping. I'm not. I can’t fucking sleep, no matter what I do. I guess it’s my nerves.
I walk back to the bed and pick my phone up off the nightstand.
The thread hasn't been touched in a while now.
The last message I sent was at Christmas that never got a response, but it’s because her phone was shut off.
Still, it’s the only thread I have that makes me feel connected to her.
My mother's name is above it. A photo for her contact card I took at my high school graduation and never updated—I'm seventeen in the picture, smiling at something off-camera that I don't remember now.
I sit on the edge of the bed and type into the silence.
Mom. I'm getting married today. He's a good man.
The wedding's at sundown under Earl's oak in the east pasture.
Pops is officiating. Shiver's walking me down the aisle.
I'm wearing your mother's dress, the one Marlena had altered.
I wish you were here. Just for a few hours.
Just to see me in the dress. I love you, Mom. Please come. Please.
I read it twice and add the please at the end the second time.
I press send.
The text delivers, but I know three dots won't appear. There won’t be a read receipt.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.
The cold of the floor comes up through the wool socks. Down the gravel drive, Banshee's diesel turns over—he's been at the clubhouse since five, hanging more lights and warming up the brisket pit. The dogs at the kennel bark once and quiet. A horse blows out down by the round pen.
The property is coming to life.
There’s no way in Hell I'm getting back into that bed.
By eight, the main house is full, warm, and up to no damn good.
Marlena is making biscuits at the big stove. Grace is at the kitchen table with Waylon in his highchair, working a spoonful of scrambled eggs into him one mouthful at a time.
Bex is at the coffee urn in flannel pajamas with her hair in a long sleep-braid down her back. Cal's on the rug in his playpen working on a teething ring with the focus of a man who has work to do.
Presley pulled in late from College Station and slept on the couch in the living room. She's at the kitchen island in one of Pops's old t-shirts and yesterday's jeans, half-asleep over coffee, hair in a loose knot.
Pops at the head of the table with the morning paper. Holt across from him eating biscuits with his coffee.
"Morning, kiddo," Pops says, not looking up from the paper.
"Morning, Pops."
"You sleep?"
"A little bit."
"Liar. I heard you up at six."
"Sorry."
"Didn't say I minded. Just wanted to know."
He turns a page of the paper. Marlena turns from the stove and looks at me.
Her face goes careful around the eyes the way it does when she's reading me, and I know I look a little raw. I haven't told anyone about the text I sent at six. I'm not going to.
"Eat something, kiddo," Marlena says.
"Yes, ma'am."
She sets a plate in front of me at the island next to Presley—biscuit, butter, a piece of bacon, a spoonful of strawberry jam she put up last summer.
Presley smiles at me sideways with her mouth full of toast. "You look pretty already," Presley says.
"Liar."
"I never lie before noon."
Bex laughs from the urn. Marlena laughs from the stove. Grace—who is pregnant with her and Shadow’s second little boy that they’ve already named Braxton—laughs too.
Pops peers up from behind the paper. "You all gonna be eating biscuits or talking about looking pretty?"
"Both, Phantom," Bex says, her hand on her stomach.
Grace isn’t the only pregnant one around. Bex and Banshee are expecting a little girl. A girl they’re naming Rose, after the one person they lost and loved dearly. It’s morbid, but beautiful if you ask me.
"That's what I figured."
He turns another page of the paper. The whole kitchen is warm with the stove, the people in it, and the smell of biscuits and bacon and coffee. For a minute, I forget the silent text on my phone upstairs and just eat the breakfast Marlena put in front of me.
Marlena, behind me, low, in a voice the rest of the kitchen doesn't catch. "Whatever's sitting on you, kiddo, you tell me if you need to set it down."
She kisses the top of my head and goes back to her biscuits.
The day moves the way wedding days move—fast in patches and slow in patches.
Uncle Cash pulls in at eleven with his ol’ lady and two of his San Antonio brothers.
Uncle Roan comes up from Lubbock around noon with Coyote and one of his other men.
Uncle Holt's already here.
Three of the four Lyle brothers in the kitchen of the main house by lunchtime, drinking coffee and ribbing each other the way they ribbed each other in May.
Mr. Whitley pulls into the gravel drive at two in his old Ford pickup with his Sunday hat on the seat beside him.
Spur spoke to him a week ago about driving up from Llano.
He's eighty-three and the trip was an hour each way, and he wouldn't have missed it.
At four, Marlena, Bex, Grace, Presley, and I take over the back bedroom and the upstairs bathroom.
Grace does my hair. Bex does Presley's makeup. Presley does Grace's. Marlena moves between us with a curling iron in one hand and a mimosa in the other and that look on her face that says she's been crying alone in the kitchen for ten minutes already.
The dress on the back of the door. The pearls in their velvet box on the dresser. My man’s grandmother's turquoise on my left hand catching the afternoon light through the window.
At four-thirty Marlena pins the last of my hair up.
Then she steps back and looks at me in the mirror.
She doesn't speak for a long second.
She puts both her hands on my shoulders from behind.
The room is full but I'm only looking at her in the mirror—Grace has stepped to the side, Bex is at the doorway with another mimosa, Presley is sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands folded.
"Kiddo," Marlena says. "You look beautiful."
"Thank you, Mar." The words come out of me before I know they're going to. "I wish my mom could see this."
The room goes still.
Marlena's hand stops on my shoulder. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror. "She would be proud of who you became, baby."
"Would she?"
"Yes, Dakota."
"You sure?"
"I'm so sure."
She holds my eyes in the mirror.
There's something underneath her look I have never been able to read—the same thing I see in Pops's face when I bring my mother up.
The same thing I saw in Uncle Cash's face on the porch when he asked me if I'd heard from her.
I look at it a half-second longer than I usually do, then I look away.
Marlena kisses the top of my head. Squeezes my shoulders. "Time to go marry your man, kiddo."
* * *
Pops comes to the bedroom door at five.
He's in a clean cut, dark jeans, and the boots he wore to his own wedding to Marlena. He's combed his hair back, with his cowboy hat on, of course.
He looks at his daughter in the doorway and his eyes go wet and he doesn't fight it. "Baby girl."
"Pops."
"Come on. Spur's been at the oak with Banshee for an hour. The boy's about to come out of his skin."
I laugh, and he takes my arm.
We walk down the stairs together, out the back door, onto the porch.
The January afternoon is colder than it was this morning but the wind's died down a bit, and the sky's that pale winter blue Texas does sometimes.
The sun is most of the way down already.
The path from the back porch to the east pasture is lit with strings of bulbs. Pops stops at the edge of the porch. Turns me to face him. "Gotta tell you somethin', kiddo."
"Yeah?"
"That man you're about to marry is the best man I know. He's loved you longer than he's loved anything in this world except his own grandmother. He'll take care of you. And if he ever doesn't, you’d better count on the fact I’ll deal with him."
Tears spill over my lashes. I'm trying not to ruin the makeup Bex took forever putting on.
"Yes, Pops."
"You walk now with your brother. He's been waiting on you ten minutes."
"Okay, but… Pops?"
"Yeah, baby."
"Thank you for raising me right."
He kisses my forehead and doesn't trust his voice for a second. "Go get married, kiddo. I'll see you at the oak."
He walks down off the porch and across the gravel toward the pasture. I'm alone on the porch a half-second. But Shiver comes around the corner of the house in his cut.
He's taller than I remember. He's been gone too long. His hair's longer than Pops likes. His beard's thicker. Reapers Rejects rocker on his cut and the Shotgun Saints don't quite know what to do with him at family gatherings, but he's mine.
He's the only other sibling of Pops's first marriage besides me and Grace. "Damn, sis."
"Shiv."
"You look like Mom."
"Don't say that."
"Sorry, Dak. You do though. The dress doesn't help."
"It's her mom's dress."
"I know. I remember you at six years old digging in the cedar chest at Grandma's looking at it."
He climbs the porch steps, stops in front of me, and looks at me for a long moment.
Then pulls me into his chest.
Quick, hard, both arms.
He smells like the cigarettes he doesn't quite hide, the leather of his cut, and the soap he's used since we were kids.
"I'm proud of you, Dak."
"Thank you, Shiv."
He pulls back and looks toward the pasture.