Chapter 15 #2
He climbed up into the back of the truck with her, and they both settled back against the back of the cab, legs straight out in front of them, holding their coffee.
“I didn’t because I wanted the ranch. That’s part of being the oldest. You do whatever the hell you have to do to smooth things over, to get what you need, even if you don’t feel like it. ”
“That must’ve felt… really unsatisfying.”
“Maybe. I could’ve been awful to him. I could have told him everything I thought, but the thing is, he would never have believed it.
Like I said, narcissist. He was always going to believe that he was in the right.
The one thing I could do was just not engage him.
Not ask him why he did anything. I never asked for his side of the story, because I didn’t want it to matter.
Whatever he says, it’s all lies. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.
All I wanted was this place. I didn’t want him to be in my life, I didn’t want him to try and give himself some kind of redemption arc at the end.
A reunification with his son, or whatever shit he might’ve tried if I hadn’t just been… Neutral.”
Just thinking about that made her stomach feel sour.
“I don’t know if I could’ve done that.”
“Did you see your dad when he was dying?”
She shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears.
Completely unexpected tears. “No. I didn’t.
He was in a nursing home. He had liver failure.
He was only fifty-eight. I didn’t go see him.
Because I couldn’t bear it. Because I only had angry things to say to him about how he killed himself with his drinking.
About my childhood. And I just… I didn’t want to.
” She hadn’t expected guilt. Not ever. But right then, she felt overwhelmed by it.
At least her dad had raised her. Maybe that was the bare minimum. A very low bar. But her mom hadn’t even stuck around for that.
“Maybe I should have. Instead. He died alone.”
“A man dies how he lives, Marlowe, you don’t have to feel guilty.”
“But I do. My dad wasn’t like yours. My mom was. Or… I don’t know. I don’t know. My mom just left. Maybe it was because she didn’t want me, maybe it was because she couldn’t handle my dad.”
“You said he was a drunk. Was he a danger to her?”
She shook her head. “No. She was more volatile than he was. My dad… He would just get drunk and check out. She would get all angry and punch holes in the wall, trying to get attention and things like that. I don’t know.
Maybe she was drowning. Maybe she couldn’t stand it.
But I’m not sure why she thought her nine-year-old daughter ought to be able to endure what she couldn’t.
I try, now that I am an adult, I try to see it her way.
I tried to see what she might’ve been struggling with that I couldn’t see at the time.
Because I do know that generally speaking, a woman isn’t going to leave her child unless the circumstances are really, really grim, but I just… can’t.”
“You don’t have to be endlessly understanding, you know.”
“What’s the alternative? Being bottomlessly angry?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. That’s about right.”
“Well, what’s the point of that?”
“There is no point. There’s no point to either thing.
You’re going to be carrying your baggage with you either way.
You can either waste a bunch of emotional energy trying to understand people who never bothered to explain themselves, or you can just be angry.
Both are probably a waste, but if you can figure out how to feel nothing, let me know.
I haven’t even gotten close to that one. ”
She took a sip of the scalding coffee, and it was so strong it might as well have punched her in the face.
“This is cowboy coffee for sure,” she said. “And I am not a cowboy.”
“Well, we can’t all be cowboys.”
She sighed and leaned her head back against the window.
Pink was bleeding up through the sky now, the sun beginning to rise over the mountains to the east. Turning all that dusky gray brilliant gold.
And as it spread over the view, her breath caught.
The ridge they were sitting on was all fine red sand, with dark black brush strokes of soil along the sides.
Painted Ridge. She could see it now. “Look,” he said, pointing off to the right.
She followed the direction that he was pointing in and covered her mouth. The mustang herd was running down below, moving in formation, brilliant and wild.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“I can’t imagine rounding them up,” Cody said. “They deserve to be free.”
“They do,” she said. “Have they always come past here?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been coming out here to watch them for a long time.”
Ever since he was a boy, so angry, looking at this ranch that should’ve been his, and he’d seen those horses, who were unwanted just like he was.
He had chosen to share this with her, even though it was casual.
And that made her feel something. Because it was casual. In the way that it wasn’t forever, but not in the way that it meant nothing.
She knew that for sure.
“I can see why this place means so much to you,” she said. “I can see why you needed to do this.”
It was the thing he hadn’t told her before. The why of it all.
It was in his blood in such a particular way. The longing for his land was a part of him, baked deep into his bones.
She didn’t know what it was like to long for a place in this way.
She had always been looking for a home, any home, but she hadn’t had one that was right there, being denied her.
She wanted to know more about him. Wanted to understand deeper what it had been like for him to grow up here, knowing his dad was only forty minutes away, but never actually seeing him.
“I legitimately have no idea where my mom went,” she said. “If I had known where she was, I think I would’ve gone over to her place and vandalized it.” Even as she said that, though, she doubted it.
She’d never been that brave, or that foolish. She’d never wanted to be that out of control.
He chuckled. “Oh, don’t think I never considered it. But my mom loved him so much and…” His mouth firmed into a grim line. “I never wanted to do anything to cause trouble for her. She still saw him sometimes. Obviously. I mean, Lila is quite a bit younger than me.”
“And they’re all his kids?”
“Probably not. Lila probably is. I think she and I look a lot alike.”
Walker. She would never have said that Cody and Walker were brothers, except that Walker was exceptionally handsome, just in a different way than Cody.
“But she was with him,” she said. “Off and on?”
“Yes. Off and on. And cleaning up after that was always a whole thing. I mean, she would go spend the night with him, and he would send her away, and she would be bedbound for weeks afterward. Couldn’t work, couldn’t take care of us, couldn’t…
She really loved him. And she was so young when she first got together with him.
You know, she got kicked out of her house when she got pregnant with me. ”
“Her parents kicked her out?”
“They were furious that she got pregnant when she wasn’t married. She was only nineteen. My father was thirty-three.”
“Oh shit,” Marlowe said.
“Shit indeed,” Cody responded. “He was a shit.”
“Her parents weren’t a whole lot better. Can you imagine abandoning a nineteen-year-old who was obviously taken advantage of by a man who was way older…”
“Well, yeah, I can imagine it because it’s what my grandparents did. And they never had anything to do with us either.”
“How did your mom… Sorry. I shouldn’t ask that.”
“Car accident,” he said. “She drove her car off an embankment into the river.” He was quiet for a long moment. “It was probably an accident. Probably.”
“Oh, Cody…”
“She might’ve done it on purpose. She’d been really depressed. But I just… I don’t want to believe that, so I don’t.” He looked at her, the pink morning light shining on his face, making it look like his eyes were just a little brighter than normal. Or maybe they were tears. Just possibly.
“I guess it’s like choosing to carry anger or trying to understand. Nobody gets to decide what we choose to do with the pain they give to us. We get to decide, because we’re the ones that have to cope with it.”
“That’s what I figure. So, I prefer to think that she had an accident, driving home too late. I don’t want to think that she left us behind on purpose. I just don’t.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-five. I was grown. Lila… Lila was only seventeen. Such a shitty thing for her to go through.”
“Not just her.”
He stared out at the view, and the corner of his mouth turned upward. “But now this is ours.”
She reached out and put her hand on his thigh. “You did it.”
He took a long sip of his coffee, and for the rest of the time they sat up there, neither of them said another word.