Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Both Lila and Nolan took the next day off. They were still exhausted from the ride, and also, it was going to be weird not to have the trail as a big project.
They ate breakfast together in her house, and she sat at the little table with him, with a notebook between them, as they thought of more ideas to pitch to Cody.
Now that they had his backing, they might be able to pitch some really wild plans.
She knew that he would always be cautious, because he was Cody, but she had proven that she had an aptitude for this.
They finished up with their plotting session, and then ended up driving to town to get groceries for Nolan’s house, and to grab some lunch.
Then she rode back to his place with him, and it felt a little bit like coming home. She loved her little house, and if she were actually ever going to live with Nolan, the place would need a little bit of a makeover.
No. She didn’t need to go thinking things like that.
“Have you emailed your sisters yet?” she asked as she started to put groceries away in the kitchen.
He sighed, and picked his laptop up off the counter, taking it over to the table, where he sat down and opened it up.
“I’ll do it now,” he said.
Christy had responded to his email, and she was going to come and stay in the next couple of weeks. It was obvious that he was a lot less nervous about how that interaction was going to go than he was about this one with his maternal side.
“Just tell them that you’re their brother. You don’t need to give a lot of details or anything. Tell them that you want to meet.”
“And what if they—what if they reject me?” He winced after he said that.
“It’s okay that you feel that way,” she said. “I mean, that you feel worried about it. You don’t need to feel bad about it. If I actually gave a shit about any of my family I didn’t know, then I think I would feel the same way.”
“Yeah, but you hated your dad.”
“That I did. I am a certified hater of that man. He can get fucked for all eternity for all I care. And I sincerely hope that he is.”
“Ruthless.”
“Forgiveness is all well and good,” Lila said, “but some people have done so much harm that there’s no amount of forgiveness that will make it all go away.
I can do my part to not carry around any burning anger toward him, but that’s more about letting him sink into oblivion where he belongs.
It’s not really me being benevolent. He did too much damage. ”
“Fair enough.”
“Is that how you feel about your mom?” he asked.
“I don’t know how I feel about my mom, because I feel sorry for her on the one hand.
Genuinely. I think that she had it difficult.
I think that getting her life sorted out was probably really difficult.
But, yeah, I don’t necessarily feel great about the fact that she sorted it all out, but didn’t manage to sort out a way to be with me. ”
“Fair.”
He ended up writing a two-line email:
We matched on a DNA site, and I’d like to get to know you. I’m your half-brother.
He left it at that, no grand explanations.
And she thought that was probably better.
“Are you going to start working on your sculpture again?” she asked later.
“You’re very concerned with my productivity,” he said.
“No. I’m just curious about your life. In a way that I haven’t been, embarrassingly enough.”
“Yeah, I’m going to get into some work on that. I really enjoy working on art in the fall. And the winter. When it’s cold and miserable outside, I like to go into the workshop and do all that.”
“That’s really interesting.”
“It’s kind of hibernation for me, I suppose.”
“Do you think you could get to where... you make a living on that?”
“I mean, combined with what I make from the ranch as part owner, and what I made in the rodeo, sure. I don’t think that I would ever want to count on it all by itself. But, I have backup income.”
“Do you think that you’ll end up doing more of it?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“I’d like to see it.”
“Sure. I’ll take you out there sometime.”
What Lila didn’t anticipate was the reaction he had when his sister finally emailed him back.
She gave him a date and a time that she wanted him to come out to their house.
The family house.
They were in bed together, and he didn’t say a word. Instead, he got up, shrugged his jeans on and walked out the door.
Lila lay there for a long moment and tried to decide if she should insert herself into this.
She gave him about ten minutes, and then she decided she needed to.
He wasn’t anywhere in the house. She walked a full circuit of the inside before she gave up and went outside.
And then she saw a light coming out from his studio. He hadn’t taken her there yet. And he hadn’t invited her in. The idea of going in there when she wasn’t expressly told that she could... That seemed like it was probably a bad idea, but she was worried about him.
Wearing nothing but his shirt, she crept across the dark expanse of his property, grateful for feet that had grown thick calluses a long time ago so she didn’t have to throw shoes on every time she wanted to go outside.
She crept up to the door, and opened it slowly.
Nolan was inside, up on a ladder, sanding a broad expanse of wood.
The salmon that he had been telling her about.
It was glorious. And it was huge.
It had to be eight feet tall, a curved fish with its mouth open, and a wave of water supporting it, all carved from wood.
It had movement, and it was just so beautifully done.
The whole studio was in perfect order. All of his tools were lined up on his workbench, and there were more on the walls, hanging from pegs, in some kind of organizational order that she knew he understood, but since she didn’t know what they were all for, it wasn’t apparently obvious to her.
There was a seating area in the room, and a mini fridge that was glowing with a bright light, along with a door that she thought probably led to a bathroom.
It was set up for him to spend long days in here.
And suddenly, she was curious. Because she knew Nolan to disappear for chunks of time. It must be when he was really working on a project like this.
When he did endurance sessions.
And she could see all that, how this place was laid out to be suitable for it.
How had she known him all this time, and also not known him? She hadn’t been in here. She hadn’t known what his tattoo meant. He was…sensitive and deep and she’d never imagined him to be either thing. Which was her own foolishness, and she could admit that now.
But like he’d said to her a while ago, sex was cheap and he was hot so when he was younger he’d taken advantage of that. She’d let that form her opinion of him. That he was easy and took those things lightly – and she supposed he had, but also it just wasn’t that simple.
He wasn’t that simple. And now he was clearly upset, dealing with whatever was going on with his family and she just wanted to know what she could do. Just wanted to feel closer to him. Wanted him to feel closer to her.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Sorry. I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“You don’t have to go.”
She nodded, and walked over to a clear space of counter, pulling herself up onto the surface, hands folded in her lap as she continued to watch him work. “Are you okay?” she asked again, because she just didn’t believe his first answer.
“I mean, as okay as I ever am.”
So no.
“Do you not want to meet them? I don’t know that I want to go to my mother’s house. I don’t know that I want to step into the life that I was excluded from, meet her kids that were so much better than me. It all made sense before, and now I’m not sure if it does. Now I’m not sure what I want.”
“It’s weird to have a choice, isn’t it?”
Nolan paused for a second, looked at her in a quizzical way, tilting his head to the side like a dog who wasn’t sure what he was looking at.
“I only mean that most of our family stuff, we didn’t have a choice.
So all of this, the decision to build a bridge between you and your sisters...
It’s a choice. And I guess it feels weird when that choice is finally in your hands.
It’s like me and my dad. I couldn’t have chosen to have a real relationship with him, but I could have chosen to see him.
More than I did. I could have chosen to vent at him, I could have chosen a lot of things, and instead, I kept the distance.
I don’t regret it.” She sat with that for a second, tried to check herself and see if that was really true.
She nodded slowly. “I don’t regret it. There are times when I’m angry, that’s just true, but I also think there was nothing to fix, and anything else would have just been me smashing broken pieces because maybe it would make me feel something.
Your situation is different, I think there’s something you might be able to build there, but it is up to you.
And I think... It’s valid that it freaks you out a little bit. ”
“I didn’t say I was freaked out.”
“No, but I think you are.”
“Maybe. Alright. Maybe. Because what if I’m just introducing a whole lot of work into my life? A whole lot of drama. I’m going to have to care about more people, and that’s if things go well.”
“Legitimate concern.”
“What if they need me and I can’t give them anything in return?
I was just thinking... I wanted to control something, you’re right.
I wanted to decide about those relationships, but now I don’t know.
Now I don’t know if what I’m doing is sensible, I don’t know if it’s going to add something to my life or if it’s going to make me feel exponentially crazier.
I don’t know, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to figure all that out.
I feel like I have to do a complex math equation without all the information. ”