Chapter 19
Molly
I'm twenty-two years old, and I don't understand rodeo.
The grandstand smells like dust and kettle corn and manure underneath, and I'm surrounded by people who seem to know exactly what they're watching while I try to figure out which end of the calf they're supposed to be roping.
My grandmother brought me here and immediately abandoned me for the concession stand.
But then Taz rides out, and I stop trying to understand the rules.
He's twenty-five and moves like he was born in that saddle, all easy confidence and controlled power.
I know him from the bees on his truck and the picnic he tricked me into, but I've never seen him ride.
His horse is copper-red and almost too beautiful to be real, and when the calf bursts from the chute, he's after it like gravity itself is helping.
He wins. Of course he wins.
And then, instead of accepting his buckle with the other cowboys, he dismounts. Walks across the arena, dust coating his boots, sweat darkening his shirt collar. Climbs the grandstand steps two at a time while everyone stares, while it dawns on me, with horror, that he's walking toward me.
"This belongs to you," he says, holding out the buckle. Up close his eyes are impossibly green, and there's a dimple in his left cheek I hadn't noticed before.
"You won it," I tell him.
He grins, and the dimple digs in deeper. "Molly Edward, I'm going to marry you someday."
"That's insane," I tell him. "You're insane. We've barely started dating."
He presses the buckle into my hands. "Keep it for me?"
I still have it in my jewelry box.
The Ojai Valley Ranch Rodeo looks smaller than I remember, the grandstands older, the banners more faded.
But the smell is exactly the same: dust and kettle corn and that animal musk underneath, and when I climb into the stands with Clem held against my chest, I feel twenty-two again for one vertiginous moment.
"Daddy's getting ready," I tell Clem. "He'll be out soon."
Maggie saved us seats near the top, where we can see everything, and she takes Clem from me with practiced ease. "He's nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs," she confides. "Hasn't competed in years. Kept pacing the kitchen this morning asking if he should scratch."
"What did you tell him?" I ask.
"That his wife was coming to watch," Maggie says serenely, "and he'd better not embarrass himself."
I feel my face flush. "Maggie—"
"Oh, hush. I'm old. I get to say what I see." She settles Clem against her chest, supporting her head. "Look, baby girl, there's the horses. Hear them?"
The team roping event is third on the program, which means I have to sit through barrel racing and junior bull riding first, my stomach doing slow somersaults the whole time.
I keep scanning the holding area behind the chutes, trying to catch a glimpse of Taz, but there are too many cowboys in hats and I can't pick him out.
"He's on Dusty," Maggie says, reading my mind. "The bay gelding. Good steady horse for a man who's rusty."
"Is he really that rusty?" I ask.
"He was roping before he could read, honey," Maggie says. "It's in his bones. But the nerves are about you, not the competition."
The announcer's voice crackles over the speakers, calling the first team for roping, and my heart kicks into overdrive. Two more teams before Taz. I watch without really seeing, registering times and cheers through a haze of anticipation.
Then: "Next up, we've got a hometown favorite returning to the arena after a long hiatus. Tazio Williams on heading, Bobby Reyes on heeling. Let's give 'em a warm welcome back!"
The crowd cheers, warm and genuine, the sound of a community that watched him grow up, and Taz rides out on a dark bay horse that moves like water.
He looks good. Better than good. He looks like the man I fell in love with, all easy confidence in the saddle, that particular way he holds his shoulders. He turns to wave at the stands, scanning the crowd, and I know the exact moment he spots me because his whole face changes.
He grins.
He waves bigger.
And then, in possibly the most spectacular failure I've ever witnessed, he loses a stirrup.
It happens in slow motion. The wave throws off his balance, he shifts to compensate, his foot slips, and suddenly he's tipping sideways like a tree being felled. He grabs for the saddle horn but he's already too far gone, momentum doing its terrible work.
Tazio Williams, champion roper, son of a ranching dynasty, goes ass-first into the water trough beside the chute.
The splash is magnificent. Water goes everywhere: on the fence, on the nearest cowboys, on a very startled rodeo clown.
For one horrible second I think he's hurt, think he's broken a leg, but then he surges up out of the water like some kind of swamp creature, soaking wet, hatless, dignity completely destroyed.
The crowd goes silent.
Taz looks down at himself. Looks at his horse, who has wandered away with an expression of profound equine judgment. Looks up at the grandstand, directly at me.
And he bows. A deep theatrical bow, water streaming off his shirt, one arm swept out like a Renaissance courtier.
The crowd absolutely loses it. Laughter, cheers, someone whistling, and I'm laughing so hard I actually can't breathe. I have to sit down, have to grab Maggie's arm, tears streaming down my face while Maggie holds Clem securely against her chest.
"Jesus Christ," Maggie wheezes. "That boy."
"Did he ever do that when you were watching?" I gasp.
"Fall off? Plenty," she says. "Bow afterward? That's your contribution to his education."
I press a hand to my mouth. "I shouldn't encourage him."
"Too late," Maggie says. "He saw you laughing. We'll never get a sensible entrance out of him again."
She checks Clem's hat while I wipe my eyes. Our daughter has slept through her father's public drowning. One of us ought to have standards.
Taz retrieves his hat from the water, pours about a gallon out of it, and puts it back on his head with great dignity. Bobby Reyes is doubled over his saddle, shoulders shaking, and even the announcer is struggling to maintain composure.
"Well, folks," the announcer says, "that's... that's certainly one way to make an entrance. Williams, you, uh, you want a minute?"
Taz waves him off, catches his horse, and, soaking wet, boots squelching, mounts up again. They actually complete the run. It's not their best time, but it's not terrible either, and the crowd cheers like he just won the whole damn event.
When he rides out, he tips his soggy hat in my direction. I blow him a kiss before I can think better of it.
"You're still laughing," Az observes when I find her at the concession stand twenty minutes later. She's got baby June strapped to her chest and a corn dog in each hand, because Az has never believed in doing anything halfway.
"I can't stop." I accept the corn dog she offers me. "Did you see—"
"Everyone saw," Az says. "Eli's already composing a ballad about it. He's calling it 'The Ballad of the Sodden Cowboy.'"
"Oh my God," I moan.
"I tried to stop him," Az says. "I did not try very hard."
We're still giggling when I turn to grab napkins and come face to face with Jolene Pike.
She looks the same as she did in high school: bleached blonde hair, too much eyeliner, that perpetual expression of sour disappointment she's been wearing since she didn't make homecoming court.
Behind her are two women I vaguely recognize from town, their faces set in that particular smug anticipation that means nothing good is coming.
"Look who it is." Jolene's voice carries. She means it to carry. "Molly Edward. Still showing your face, I see. Figured you'd have learned some embarrassment by now."
Az steps closer to me. "Jolene. Still haven't found anything better to do with your time, I see."
"Oh, I'm not talking to you, Az." Jolene's eyes don't leave mine. "I'm talking to the woman who broke Boone's nose in a parking lot and then sicced her rich husband on him outside the diner."
"Boone grabbed me," I say, keeping my voice level. "I defended myself."
"That's not what I heard. I heard you've been causing trouble all over town. Throwing accusations around, trying to ruin people's lives." She takes a step closer. "Boone was good enough for you once, wasn't he? Before you decided to climb into the Williams family bed."
"Walk away, Jolene," I tell her.
"Why, so you can play the lady? You'll have your husband buy me off too?" She laughs, ugly and loud. "Everyone knows the Williams family thinks they're better than the rest of us. Everyone knows you married him for his money and now that the going's tough, you're looking for someone to blame."
I feel it building, that old familiar rage. The one I've spent my whole life trying to control. But I also feel clarity. This woman has nothing I need. Nothing I want. She's just noise.
"Are you done?" I ask.
"I'm just getting started." Jolene pulls out her phone, angles it at my face. "Let's see how high and mighty you look when everyone sees—"
She throws her lemonade at me.
It catches me full in the face, cold and sticky and sour, and I hear the gasps around us, hear Az curse, hear Jolene's laugh and the click of her phone camera.
Time slows down.
Jolene keeps the camera aimed at me, waiting for tears or shouting. A public meltdown would give her a video to post online, proof that Molly Edward is just as trashy as everyone always suspected.
Instead I wipe my eyes, reach out, and pluck the phone from Jolene's surprised hand.
"Hey—!" Jolene yelps.
I walk to the water trough. The one Taz fell into twenty minutes ago, still full of muddy, horse-flavored water. I hold the phone over it.
"You wouldn't," Jolene breathes.
I drop it.
The splash is deeply satisfying. The phone sinks to the bottom, screen flickering, and I turn back to face Jolene with lemonade still dripping down my chin.
"Oops," I say.
Her face goes purple with rage. She's winding up to say more, or do worse, when a big body steps up behind her.
Boone.
He looks rough. Thinner than the last time I saw him, a haunted quality around his eyes. He opens his mouth, and I brace myself for whatever's coming.
But then Taz is there.
He's still wet from his earlier performance, shirt clinging to his chest, and he doesn't say a word to Jolene. Doesn't even look at her. He just puts a hand on Boone's shoulder and steers him away, out toward the stock pens, and Boone goes without protest.
They disappear around the corner.
Jolene rounds on me. "You're paying for that phone. Do you have any idea—"
"I watched you throw a drink at her while you were filming," Az says. "So did the people behind you. Take it to the sheriff if you want. I'll tell him exactly what I saw."
"Stay out of it," Jolene snaps at her.
"You brought it to the middle of a rodeo, Jolene," Az says. "You don't get to pick who noticed."
A woman passes me a fistful of napkins. "Here, honey. Your eyes."
"Thank you," I tell her.
"There's water at the stand," Az tells me. "I'll get a cup. Don't rub with that sticky part."
Jolene looks from us to the people still watching. She stays by the trough, muttering at the sunken phone as though it might swim back out in sympathy.
Az returns with water. I dab at my cheeks while she steadies June against her chest.
"Where's Clem?" I ask.
"With Maggie," Az says. "I can see her from here. There, by the rail."
I look until I find the little sunhat. "Okay."
"Want to leave?" Az asks.
"I want to know what they're doing back there," I say.
"So do I," Az says. "But you don't have to wait beside her. Come stand over here."
I move with her. A patch of shade, a cup of water, somebody who doesn't make me defend my own reaction. My hands slowly stop shaking.
Then Taz and Boone come back.
Boone looks different, smaller somehow. He walks up to me, eyes on his boots, and mumbles words I don't quite catch.
"What?" I say.
"I said I'm sorry." He still won't look at me. "For grabbing you at the store. For all of it. I shouldn't have—it was wrong. I'm sorry."
He turns and walks away before I can respond, and Jolene scrambles after him, shooting me a look of pure hatred over her shoulder.
Taz watches them go, then turns to me. He's soaking wet and muddy and there's hay in his hair and he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"What on earth did you say to him?" I ask.
He reaches out, brushes a drop of lemonade from my cheek. His fingers are warm. "Every word of it's yours in the truck. I promised you: nothing behind your back." A corner of his mouth lifts. "Short version? We came to an understanding."
We're halfway home before I break the silence.
"You said you'd repeat every word."
Taz keeps his eyes on the road. "I told him I witnessed his threat to you. Told him you filed a complaint with the deputy, there's a record now. Told him to stay away from you and the baby."
"What did he say?"
"That I should mind my own business. Then he agreed to apologize to you."
He glances at me. "And I'll be honest—my first impulse was to handle it privately. But I didn't. I'm forwarding the whole conversation to the deputy tonight. Everything I said, everything he said."
"You're not paying him off."
"No. I can't guarantee he's gone, Molly. I'm not pretending I fixed it."
I watch the fields pass in the dark. He didn't lie about what happened. Didn't clean it up to sound better. Didn't promise more than he could deliver.
It's not nothing.