Burn It Up(95)

The one you loved just turned out to be more crooked than you’d let yourself guess, is all. He’d still been good to her, for all his now-glaring faults. He’d seen something in her worth treating well, so maybe another guy would see the same, one day.

Would Casey have forgiven all the ugly things I’ve done? She might never know. But maybe some other man, some other time in her life, would be able to.

Just now, it was impossible to imagine anyone lighting her up the way Casey had.

Outside her room, the old stairs creaked. Her heart was thumping in an instant—as hard as it ever had back when she’d feared James’s intrusion—this time imagining it might be Casey. Come back to—what? Beg for a second chance, and a prescription for penance? For forgiveness? For—

“Knock-knock,” came Christine’s voice, and Abilene deflated like a pricked balloon.

“Come in.”

She poked her head and shoulders in and spoke quietly. “Is she asleep?”

Mercy had gone down for a nap more than an hour ago. “Not for long. She’ll be hungry soon. You don’t need to whisper.”

“It’s nearly one. I was going to see if you wanted to come out and watch the eclipse with me.”

“Oh yes. I would. Let me just get her bundled up and a bottle ready. Ten minutes?”

Christine nodded. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

She’d miss this family when she moved out, she realized as she roused Mercy and maneuvered her into her little fleece hooded getup. Abilene’s own family had looked picture-perfect growing up, but fractured and broken behind closed doors. The Churches came off as harried and a touch short sometimes, thanks to how hard they worked, but on the inside they were the nicest people you’d want to meet.

She found Christine in the kitchen, dropping sandwiches into a canvas lunch bag. “Couldn’t remember if you like mayo or mustard,” she said, grabbing a thermos, “so I made one of each.”

“More of a mayo girl. Texan, after all. We smother everything.”

Christine laughed. “Suits me fine. I can go either way.”

And as they locked up and strolled from the farmhouse out toward the bunks and stables and barns, they chatted about the various merits of condiments—such a simple, mundane topic that it felt quenching, comforting, on the heels of the recent drama.

“Where are all the ranch hands?” she asked. “Miah said they were throwing a picnic.”

“In the western eight,” Christine said, though Abilene didn’t know what this meant. The westernmost eight acres, maybe? Not far, she imagined, as Three C’s range stretched miles and miles and miles out to the east.

“We’ll find them, no doubt,” Christine added. “By the rabble, if nothing else.”

And they did. It looked as though just about everyone had taken their lunch break in accordance with nature—everyone except Don, that was—and at least two dozen workers and half as many horses were scattered around a greenish brown expanse just past the outbuildings, its scrub grass mowed short. Miah’s dog came trotting up to them as they neared, pausing for ear scratches and sniffing opportunities. She was slender, with pointed ears like a German shepherd, but far smaller, with a grayish, mottled coat, and a black patch over one eye.

“I’ve never seen her so friendly before,” Abilene said. “Usually she’s more robot than dog.”

“When she’s on duty, yeah,” came a voice behind them—Miah. He was lugging a huge plastic jug with a spigot at the bottom, like sports teams kept their Gatorade in. “But she gets an hour off today, like everybody else.”

“I’ve never met a dog so well-behaved. The ones I grew up with jumped on people and barked at the littlest things.” Her mom had had two yappy little terriers, and she’d never been real fond of either of them. She’d resented them, in fact. They were annoying and poorly behaved, yet somehow they’d been exempt from all of her father’s militaristic rules regarding manners. Her mom had shielded them from his perfectionism, somehow, in a way she’d never shielded her daughter.

“Takes a lot of work,” Christine said, patting the dog’s side. “And a good set of genes—heelers are bred to herd sheep and cattle. Miah trained this one, and his dad trained her father and grandfather. It’s in her blood.”

“Must be in yours, too,” she said to the both of them, and Miah nodded.

“I was always more of a horse girl,” Christine said. “But you fall in love with a rancher, you’d better fall in love with the ranch.”

They reached the edge of the gregarious crowd, and Miah wended his way through to heft the jug onto a folding table covered in bags of chips and six-packs of soda cans. Christine had brought a blanket, and she spread it out on the crisp, dry grass. Despite the winter chill, Abilene felt a wash of nostalgia as she lowered her butt to the ground, remembering a hundred family picnics in Lindsay Park in Bloomville. Those summer memories came with clouds attached, but she reminded herself that she’d forge new ones, this time as a mother, not a child. A different landscape, different faces, different smells on the breeze, but the same sun overhead, the same wide blue sky. She unstrapped Mercy and propped her between her crossed legs. She was still waking, gawking wide-eyed at all the activity.

A few of the female hands came by to gawk right back. Though they were Abilene’s age, they were probably years from motherhood themselves, and she registered a jab of jealousy. In another life—one she hadn’t screwed up so badly—she might’ve found herself a passion, a trade, a career. A purpose. The pang was brief, though, and shallow. She had her purpose now, she thought, bouncing Mercy by her armpits. Not glamorous, but important. And she was good at it. Far from perfect, but pretty damn good, considering. She sat up a little straighter, proud for a change.