A Man Who Rides

❂

  I pulled into my parents’ driveway and parked, flipping off my headlights and sitting in the dim interior of my car. I resisted the urge to check my phone. I had put it on silent the night before, as soon as I’d left Ben’s subdivision, and was now avoiding looking at it because I was equally afraid he had contacted me and he had not contacted me.

  It was only 4:30 in the morning, and I hadn’t slept a wink.

  After Kim had closed the door in my face, I’d walked back to my car, expecting to hear the door open behind me, expecting to hear Ben call my name, expecting him to run after me and beg forgiveness.

  He hadn’t. I’d driven home through the fading evening, nursing my wounds.

  When I’d gotten home, my apartment had never seemed so empty and quiet, my life never so devoid of people I could talk to. In spite of her promises, Trace had let me down again. I’d left her house feeling worse, not better.

  I’d consoled myself with the knowledge that I’d found out, that I’d stopped the sordid situation before it had progressed any further. But it was cold comfort. I’d poured myself a glass of wine and watched Pride and Prejudice which, unsurprisingly, did little to lift my spirits. I’d gotten into bed and tossed and turned until I’d realized my room was incrementally brighter than it had been an hour before.

  And now, here I was, sitting in my parents’ driveway even though I knew they’d be asleep.

  If Boswell and Norman had still been at large, approaching the house this early without waking my parents would have been a tricky business. As it was, I let myself in through the gate without difficulty, and walked around to the back patio. I settled onto one of the benches, and sipped the coffee I’d bought on the way over. I watched the sky grow pale along its rim, my mind mercifully still for the first time since walking out of Western Warehouse the day before.

  That’s how my dad found me half an hour later. He came shuffling out the side door looking unshaven and rumpled, the skin beneath his eyes a little puffy. “You’re up early,” I said, rising to give him a hug.

  He hugged me back, put his hands on my shoulders, and held me at arm’s length, no doubt reading the tear tracks on my face like a fortune teller reads lines in a palm. “Jet lag,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

  “I think it’s time for me to retire,” my dad said. We’d made more coffee but were still in the yard. I’d just finished telling him about Ben. Unlike Trace, he’d listened attentively, and when I was done he didn’t try to make me feel better about it. “One quick trip overseas, and I come home to two lost dogs and a broken-hearted daughter.”

  His tone was light. He meant it as a joke. I forced a wan smile. “We do miss you when you’re gone.”

  The side door opened, and Mom walked out. Unlike Dad, she always ran a brush through her hair and put on jeans and a t-shirt before leaving the bedroom. She looked better than the last time I’d seen her. She gave me a long, measuring look, poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down next to my dad, and asked if everything was alright.

  Dad told her, which was nice. I’d had enough of explaining about Ben for a lifetime. Though they were trying to hide it, I could see they were disappointed. My chances of finding a spouse before I turned fifty had just plummeted from decent to nil. Still, Mom had the good form to call Ben a cad and to say the flowers he’d brought had made her sneeze. Then my father offered to challenge Ben to a duel, which actually made me laugh.

  And that’s when we heard the hoof-beats.

  I picked up on it before anyone else. As soon as I finished laughing over the duel comment, it drew my attention: the clip-clop of a horse trotting out, moving at good pace and covering country. It was a sound that reminded me of the day I’d ‘helped’ Clint and Nora move cattle.

  I was certain my sleepless night had me hallucinating, but I turned towards the sound anyway. I stared down past our dog-secure fence and the sandy wash that ran behind.

  Dad heard it next. “What’s that?” He also turned to look.

  The hoof-beats were closer now, and I could hear the jingle of spurs.

  Then there was a bark. My mom stood up so fast she almost knocked the coffee over. A white streak blasted out of the wash, running for the back gate, tail a furious blur in the morning light. Mom was running down the slope of the back yard, unlatching the gate, and Norman was collapsing against her legs, pink tongue lolling, black triangular eyes nearly squinted shut with the force of his canine grin.

  Dad and I were hot on Mom’s heels. But as fantastic as it was to see Norman, I was looking towards the sound of the approaching horse.

  I had reached the fence-line when I saw a blur behind some mesquite trees. A black leg appeared, then three more. Penny trotted through the wash, dark-rimmed ears pricked as she took us all in.

  Clint was on her back.

  He looked like he had the first day I’d seen him. He was wearing his flat brimmed hat. His face was in shadow in the weak morning light. He was riding Penny’s big trot without rising, and as he came through the wash I saw why. A white, dog-shaped form was draped across his lap, held in place by the saddle horn, Clint’s hips, and a hand resting on its ribcage.

  Penny dropped to a walk, and picked her way up the other side of the wash as everyone but Norman stared at Clint in stunned silence. My mother had stooped down to pet her prodigal terrier, but now she straightened. Everything was quiet except for Norman’s happy whining, as if a spell had been cast over the desert.

  Clint rode up to the gate and stopped, his hand leaving Boswell’s side to tip the brim of his hat. “Erin,” he said.

  At the sound of his voice, the spell was broken. “Hi,” I said, stepping forward to put myself between him and my parents. I didn’t want Mom rushing forward and spooking Penny. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, though. Later, I would make a list: I could have thanked him for finding my mom’s dogs, introduced him to my parents, asked him how he’d done it, offered him water or coffee or my immortal soul. Instead I gaped at him like a simpleton.

  My mother’s eyes had gone wide, her face pale as she stared at the white shape in Clint’s lap. “Is he?” Her voice came out in a thin quaver. She tried to take a step forward, but was hampered by Norman’s presence at her feet. Her face was stricken. That’s when it registered in my addled brain that Boswell wasn’t moving.

  Nora had told me they trained the Tipped Z’s wire-haired dogs to jump up and ride in the front of the saddle. They taught them this because it was useful for the dogs to be able to go horseback when they have to cover long distances to get to the cattle.

  This was different, though. Boswell was not a passenger, he was baggage. His front feet hung on one side of the horse, hind legs on the other, and his head lolled in a way that did not suggest good health.

  Instead of answering, Clint swung down from the saddle. His movement was fluid, and he somehow continued to support Boswell as he stepped down. Once on the ground, he tied up his get-down and lifted the dog off Penny before any of us could offer to help. Leaving Penny standing at the gate, he stepped through. I stepped out of his way, wondering if I should go hold his horse so she didn’t wander off.

  Once inside the fence, Clint lowered Boswell to the sandy ground. The rest of us were still staring, still struck dumb by the surprise of seeing him. He knelt, producing a small knife from a pocket in his chinks. Boswell was tied at the ankles, trussed like a roast pig.

  Clint cut the ties in two efficient strokes, and rubbed his hands over the furrowed fur until the grooves were gone. As Boswell gave a low groan, a palpable tension left the air.

  Clint stood. My mom rushed to kneel in his place, and Norman began a fierce campaign of face-licking to assist in reviving his partner in crime. Boswell gave another groan and shifted so he was lying on his stomach instead of his side.

  The sight of the obviously not dead Boswell seemed to inject new life into all of us. My father stepped forward and offered Clint his hand. “We can’t thank you enough,” he sai
d. “I’m Carter.”

  “Clint,” Clint said. They shook. Clint looked back down at Boswell. “The one’s snake bit,” he said. “I got him the antivenin. Had to dope him to get him on the horse. I’d have brought them in the truck but that one,” he nodded towards Norman and gave a small shake of his head. “Couldn’t even get near enough to toss a rope. Didn’t want to save one just to lose track of the other.”

  “What’s your last name?” my Dad said. “I’ll run inside and get the checkbook so we can get you the reward.”

  Clint looked at my father, then at me. I realized I had so far failed so say anything beyond ‘hi.’ Now Clint seemed to expect me to explain something, clear up a misunderstanding I didn’t know was taking place. Or say his last name?

  But the sleepless night coupled with the dream-like experience of having Clint materialize out of the desert at sunrise with my mom’s lost dogs proved too much for me. My brain was on overload. I couldn’t speak.

  Clint waited a second or two before looking back at my dad. “No reward,” he said. His tone was both friendly and firm, leaving no room for argument.

  Then he was leaving. He walked back through the gate and swung onto Penny’s back. My mind was screaming at me, Say something say something say something. But my lips were still.

  Clint paused for one more moment as he slipped his get-down back through his belt and collected his reins. He looked down at the two white dogs. “Shouldn’t wonder if they’re both a fair bit dehydrated.”

  He turned Penny on her haunches and trotted back the way he’d come.

  ❂

  “Hey there sweetie,” Nora said, looking up from snugging Duke’s cinch down when I walked into the barn. Her tone was expansive, as if she hadn’t seen me for a year rather than a week. I did a quick scan of the barn. No Clint.

  I carried a warm, lumpy package containing a thank you card from my mother and a batch of my father’s chocolate chip pistachio cookies. My father had also insisted I bring a blank check with me, in case Clint changed his mind about the reward thing.

  It was Sunday morning, and I was reporting in for my second day of ‘helping’ at the Tipped Z.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to match her bright tone but failing. I held up the package. “My parents sent these for your brother.”

  Nora straightened and turned to look at me, her expression curious. “He told me, under no circumstances am I to accept a reward.” She was smiling.

  “It’s a card and some cookies. He’s my parents’ new hero.”

  “Dots found them,” Nora said, nodding down at one of the little wire-haired dogs that was sprawled in the barn aisle. “We were out repairing a fence and when we were done we couldn’t see her. That’s unusual, you know. These dogs have a work ethic. We were looking around, puzzled, and the wind died a bit. We could hear this faint barking in the distance. Our other dogs started whining so we mounted up and went to look for her. We found her standing on top of a big rock. One of your mom’s dogs was standing a few feet away, growling. The other one was lying in the sand beneath a saguaro. The one lying there looked dead. The other one ran off when we tried to get close, but it followed us when we rode off with the other one. So I guess it’s Dots who deserves the cookies, not us.”

  Hearing her name, Dots got up and walked over. She was a strange white and gray brindle shade, with three brown splotches on her otherwise gray face. I guessed those markings were her namesake.

  I knelt down and rubbed the dog’s ears. She endured the contact with a patient air, not moving away, but not exactly loving it like Boswell and Norman would have. “Thank you, Dots,” I said. I looked up at Nora. “Should I really give her a cookie?”

  My parents and I had spent the bulk of the day before spinning stories, trying to figure out what had happened to Boswell and Norman between the morning they were released from their Florence prison and the moment Clint brought them home. We had a lot of time to sit around talking that day. We took the dogs to a clinic that saw animals without appointments. They’d required quite a bit of attention.

  Both the dogs were appallingly thin and, as Clint had suggested, dehydrated. After the initial excitement at seeing my mother had worn off, Norman had turned out to be limping badly on two legs. He’d had cactus spines embedded in every paw, a large, thin scrape along his ribs that required stitches, foxtails in his ears, and the pads of his feet were tender – abraded and burned.

  Boswell was in even worse shape. The snake bite was just below where his front right leg connected to his chest. The area was large and swollen, the punctures standing out like angry quotation marks. Even when coaxed into walking, he would not bear weight on one of his hind legs.

  The vet, much to everyone’s relief, had returned the verdict they would both be fine given a month or two to recover. She’d said it had been a near thing with Boswell, and guessed he wouldn’t have made it through another day without antivenin.

  Now I knew how they’d been found, but the space between Dots staking them out and their captors releasing them into the desert outside of Florence would remain forever a mystery.

  “Don’t you dare,” Nora said, her tone appalled but still friendly. “My dad would never forgive you. Those are working dogs,” she added in a deep, husky voice that suggested she was impersonating someone.

  I smiled. “Is there something else I could do for you guys? Some other way of saying thank you? Those dogs mean the world to my mom. She’s really grateful.” I stood up, still holding the awkward package of cookies.

  “Actually, Clint did ask me to see to something. Come on.”

  Mystified, I followed Nora into the tack room. She flipped on the light. At the sight of the hanging bridles, my favorite Clint fantasy filled my head – the one where he came in after me and swept me up in a kiss, taking the bridle from my hand, pushing me up against the wall, and returning the bridle to its proper hook. I felt my heart begin to beat harder.

  Nora took the cookies, setting the package on a small countertop near the fridge. I relinquished them with mixed relief and reluctance. I wanted to be sure Clint got them, but I was glad not to have to hand them over myself.

  “Clint said you need some better boots,” she said. “Seemed to think you’d do a lot better keeping your toes pointed the right way if you had a leather sole.” She smiled at me, and just as my heart started to fall at the thought of how horrible my riding must have been for Clint to ask his sister to upgrade my footwear, she added, “Said you’re a fast learner, too, and you ‘showed an interest in riding with quality.’ Just in case you can’t tell, that’s about the highest compliment my brother is capable of dishing out to someone who’s not actually Ray Hunt or Richard Caldwell.”

  My heart did something in my chest that felt like a pre-death spasm. I thought back to our lesson: the long, painful silences, the distressed winces. Was Nora making this up?

  If she was, she wasn’t done. She leaned her head a bit closer to mine and said, “If you want the truth, I think my brother might have a bit of a thing for you.” She leaned back and winked broadly.

  I felt dizzy. Were we talking about the same person? How could Clint have a thing for me? He didn’t even speak to me, other than to note the many millions of ways in which I could not operate my body properly while on horseback. And besides, didn’t he have a girlfriend? The poor woman who wasn’t ‘long-term material’ but he was keeping around just because?

  It struck me that this was a perfect opportunity to dig a little, to ask Nora some questions about what Clint liked in a woman, how long he’d been with his girlfriend, or if perhaps they had broken up.

  But my mouth betrayed me again. All I managed was a strangled, “He sure doesn’t seem like he likes me.”

  This set Nora laughing. She turned away from me and directed my attention to a row of boots set along the far wall. “No, I don’t guess you’re wrong about that. Anywho, I dug around in my closet and Mom’s and Grandma’s, and I’ve got five pairs for y
ou to try. Hopefully one of them will do the trick.”

  I stared at the boots. They ranged in size and style, but they all shared the same basic characteristics: solid construction, good heal, leather sole. “Nora,” I protested. “I couldn’t possibly take a pair of boots from you. I went shopping on Friday. I couldn’t find anything, but I haven’t given up.”

  Nora was eyeing my feet with a calculating expression. “Oh don’t worry,” she said, picking up a pair of tall boots with a worn teal upper and brown toe. “These will be on loan for when you’re here. Part two of Clint’s request is I’m to take you shopping. We all know you won’t find anything worth spending money on at these western stores.” She waved a dismissive hand in the general direction of Western Warehouse. “Now come on,” she says. “It’s heating up out there. Best try these on.”

  ❂

  I parked my Hyundai in my spot, got out, fished the boot box out of my back seat, and locked the car. Stepping onto the sidewalk, the sun was a riot of orange and pink in the sky behind the complex. I smiled to myself.

  I should be feeling guilty that I’d wasted an entire Sunday – hadn’t written a word. As it was, it was hard to regret the day.

  Nora had given me a lesson. I’d tried to keep everything Clint had said the week before in mind. That, combined with Nora’s constant stream of feedback, had resulted in the best ride yet. There were times I had actually wished Clint would walk by so he could see me.

  We’d been untacking our horses when Nora had said in a deceptively casual tone of voice, “So what are you doing with the rest of your day?”

  I’d been preoccupied with wondering if Clint was going to put in an appearance before I had to leave, so I’d said, “Oh, nothing. I have Sundays off.” Of course, this wasn’t true. I intended to go home and write three thousand words of quality fiction, but I didn’t generally sat that to people.

  Nora had said, “Good. You can come down south with me. There’s a boot shop between here and Benson. They’re the real deal. I have to pick up some repairs. They keep a small number of quality pairs in stock. I’m sure they’ll have something that will work for you.”

  And so, I’d spent the day with Nora. It had been a fun day. So fun, in fact, I’d forgotten to think about Ben. That lasted until I rounded the corner of my building to see him sitting on my stoop.

  My heart gave a heavy thud, as if it had dropped dead out of sheer horror. I stopped in my tracks.

  Ben was one second behind me. He looked up as I saw him, and I saw his posture shift from the pose of someone who has been waiting a long time to someone who is very nervous. He stood, standing between me and my front door.

  I considered turning on my heel and walking away. But I was tired. As much as it had been a fun day, it had also been a hot and dusty day. I wanted a shower and some reheated leftovers. I wanted to crawl into bed knowing my new boots were waiting for me to slip on again on Tuesday.

  Seeing Ben, and having him standing between me and what I wanted, filled me with a remarkable jolt of anger. I took a step forward. “You.” I said. “Why are you here?” My voice was filled with venom to an extent that surprised even me.

  “Erin,” Ben said. He quivered in place, as if he wanted to take a step forward but knew better. “You haven’t answered my messages. But please, let me explain.”

  It was true I had been studiously avoiding him, deleting any message he sent me. I was done being a cheatee.

  I took another step forward, and spoke again. I was aware my volume was too loud for the quiet evening, but I didn’t care. “Explain? Explain? You can explain the fact that you are married to a woman named Kim? That you live with her? There’s an explanation for that?”

  He started to speak, but I didn’t let him. I was riding a wave of anger and indignation and self-righteousness. “No,” I said. “No, Ben. I don’t think there is anything you can say that will make it any less sordid than it is. I am done. I’m done with you. I don’t want to see you again. Ever. Please go, now, or I will call security.”

  I stepped off the sidewalk and made a point of gesturing, directing him past me like a crosswalk guard.

  He was silent, staring at me. His blonde hair was tinted orange in the sunset, and his face looked nothing but sad. He waited like that for a moment, his lips still but his eyes asking me a question. I thought about all the times I’d lied to him, by kissing him as if he were Clint. That made me feel worse.

  I knew this was the moment I was supposed to relent, to give him a chance to clear his name. But I didn’t. After a few seconds had ticked past, I repeated my, ‘It’s safe to cross’ gesture, encouraging him to go.

  His head and shoulders drooped, and he began to walk, which was when I noticed the box sitting on my steps. I didn’t want to stop him, to tell him he’d forgotten something, but he seemed to read the expression in my eyes. “Those are for you,” he said. The words were no more than a whisper as he walked by.

  I poured the last of the wine from the bottle into my glass and flopped back onto my couch. I had intended to be in bed by now, immersed in blameless dreams. It had been such a good day, and Ben had ruined it. Utterly.

  The boot shop outside of Benson had turned out to be the front room of an old stucco-covered adobe house, and the couple that ran it had turned out to be sweet and eccentric. The man had crouched over my foot like a fortune teller, commenting on the relative proportions of my heel and toe-box, the state of my arches. He’d thumbed the callous that always seems to build up on the outside of my right foot and nodded sagely, as if its presence there confirmed a deep secret he’d always suspected the truth of but had never been able to confirm until now. He’d gotten up, pulled a pair of boots down from the overcrowded shelving that lined the walls, slipped them on my feet, and told me to walk.

  They’d been tight going on, but after I’d clomped around the store for a few minutes, I could tell the fit was good. Really good. But he’d shaken his head, asked me to remove the left one, disappeared into the back of the shop with it for a moment, and returned. “It was a little tight over the outside here,” he’d said, handing it back to me and running a thumb over where my pinkie toe would reside when the boot was on. “Try it now.”

  When I’d put the boot back on, it had fit like a glove.

  The boots had cost considerably less than the Western Warehouse ones had, and the kindly couple had given me a discount. Nora had picked up her repairs, and we’d left.

  We’d driven through a monsoon on the ride home. After the rain had stopped, we’d rolled the windows down, enjoying the cool air and singing along to twangy country songs. I’d been feeling full to bursting with some happy emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on when we’d pulled up next to my car in the Tipped Z parking area. As she’d killed the rumbling truck engine, Nora had said, “We’d better get some dust on those boots before you go home.”

  She’d taken me riding again. Really riding. She’d put me on the bay horse named Paul she’d ridden the day we rode out to move the cattle, and we’d headed out in the late afternoon. The ground had been damp after the rainfall, the harsh edge taken off the desert for a short while. We’d clattered up a trail that wound up the side of a ridge, moving between the trot and the lope. Nora had whooped and laughed and I’d done the same, remembering what it was like to be a girl on a horse, listening to the sand flinging up from under hooves and pinging off the mesquite trees next to the trail.

  I hadn’t wanted to come home to find Ben on my stoop. I’d wanted to ride that high. And I certainly hadn’t wanted to spend the evening staring at four cowboy boots lined up in a row on my coffee table, wondering if Trace was right, if I did owe Ben a chance to explain himself.

  There couldn’t be a bigger contrast between the boots I’d purchased with Nora and the ones Ben had gone back to Western Warehouse to buy. My boots, the ones I picked out with Nora, were a soft brown leather with a darker brown top. There was an extra strip of leather across the arch which I’d l
earned was called a saddle vamp, and the leather of the sole protruded past the leather of the heel, creating a deep notch for a spur to rest on.

  The boots from Western Warehouse were nice boots, I was sure, but the leather was finished in some kind of varnish. They were all shine and paisley/lace decoration. They were stiff and straight and hard. They were the product of a factory. Mine had been made by hand.

  But that didn’t change the fact that Ben had gone back and gotten them for me, then sat on my stoop for who knows how long, waiting to deliver them.

  I took another sip of wine. My head was spinning. I thought back to Nora’s comment in the barn that morning, her little quip about Clint liking me. Had she been joking? Was there any possible way it could be true? In spite of spending all day with Nora, I hadn’t seen Clint. He’d never appeared. It was as if he’d vanished after finding my mother’s dogs and bringing them home.

  I groaned and slumped on the couch so I was lying on my stomach, adjusting one of the end pillows so it was underneath my chin. I’d wanted to fall asleep thinking of chasing the red haunches of Nora’s horse up the edge of a ridge, laughing. Instead I kept seeing the sadness in Ben’s eyes as he’d walked away, leaving a boot box on my doorstep.

  ❂

  “I tried to come in yesterday,” the woman on the other side of the counter said, her tone accusing, glaring down at her work order with a sour expression.

  “We’re closed on Sunday,” I said. My mouth had a cottony quality, and my eyes were sensitive to the light. It wasn’t quite as bad as the morning after the night I’d had the grapefruit drinks with Ben. Not quite.

  “I’m saying, I tried,” the woman said. She was short and round, with a pinched mouth that was especially pinched right now. “I don’t think I should have to pay a storage fee for late pickup.” She pointed at a line on the work order.

  I took the slip of paper back from her. The date at the top read ‘May 8.’ It was currently well into August. It might even be September. I wasn’t honestly sure at that moment. I handed the paper back to her, pointing at the date as she’d pointed at the line. “The storage fee is added after you haven’t picked your framing up after three weeks. If you’d come in yesterday, even if we’d been open, you still would have been late by at least two months.” I was aware I could have been more polite about this, but this was a huge problem Anne struggled with. People dropped off their artwork, ordering expensive moldings and archival materials which Anne had to buy, then disappeared for half a year sometimes, leaving her having to keep their art stored safely and also out the money and labor of the frame job. And I had headache. And Ben had given me a pair of $500 boots I didn’t need anymore.

  The woman’s mouth got even tighter. “I didn’t know about that policy. You can’t charge me for something I didn’t know about.”

  I tapped the bottom of the work order, which was a carbon copy of one that had been handed to her when she’d left her artwork. “It’s outlined right here at the bottom, right above your signature agreeing to our policies.”

  Her mouth could apparently not tighten any more, but her nostrils flared. She handed me her credit card and stared at me with an accusing expression the whole time I rang up the transaction. I found myself growing angrier the longer she glared. It was a $15 storage fee on a frame job that had cost $438. She’d left her art here for three months. I was of the opinion the fee should go up each week a piece was left, but Anne disagreed, and she was the boss.

  I handed the woman her receipt and card. She grabbed her neatly wrapped package and stormed out. I sighed as the bell on the front door jingled, my anger souring into remorse. If Anne had been there, she’d have mollified the woman without waiving the fee. I’d let a customer leave angry, which was the number one thing you’re not supposed to do.

  I wandered back into the frame room, and resumed work on the four little canvases I’d been framing before the woman with the pinched mouth had walked in. Which meant I also resumed my brooding over Ben and Clint and the four boots that were still on my coffee table at home.

  The boots from Ben had at first seemed like such a tender gesture, but the more I thought about it, the less I was sure. I was aware that many men had illicit relationships with women they weren’t married to, and most of these operated around the man providing a certain amount of monetary assistance to the woman, apparently to compensate for the fact that he could not acknowledge her in public.

  Thinking of the boots that way made me want to rush home and shred them to pieces with a utility knife.

  But the thing was, Ben had been seen with me in public. A lot. He’d gone out with me all the time, hitting places near his house. He’d wanted to meet my parents. How does that jive with ‘adulterer?’

  My head ached and the sour taste in my mouth clung despite me downing an entire glass of water. I decided I needed something stronger.

  I was in the kitchenette, making a cup of coffee, when Anne arrived. She swept in as usual, energetic and perky, dressed well, her shoulders square, her air confident.

  Anne was one of those women who seemed to have no interest in marriage. It wasn’t that she couldn’t get guys. It was quite the opposite. She had a robust social life, and I’d seen her out on dates with more than one eligible bachelor. I also had had enough frank discussions with her to know she was not shy in bed. She knew what she liked and how to make it happen.

  She stopped in the doorway of the kitchenette when she saw me at the coffee maker, taking in my haggard expression at a glance. Her eyes flicked over me from head to toe, registering my soft-toed clogs, nearly worn out jeans, and soft, distressed t-shirt. Anne had never once talked to me about what to wear to work, but I guessed this outfit was pushing it. Still, it had been the kind of morning where I’d wanted to wear all my old, favorite, nearly worn out clothes.

  “Bad night?” Her tone was sympathetic, underpinned with a hint of amusement, but before she could respond, the bell on the door jingled and she hurried out to see to her customer.

  ❂

  My phone buzzed. It was on the table next to me because Trace was 20 minutes late, as usual. I was sipping my beer and trying to contain my rage. Trace knew what had happened with Ben. She knew it. And still, she wasn’t here.

  I was in our normal booth at Julio’s, gazing out past the young tree between me and the parking lot. I put off looking at my phone for a moment because I knew what it would be. Outside, a little boy helped his toddling sister step down the curb while their mother watched with a smile. The boy, to my eye, didn’t look like he’d be much help if the sister made a misstep. But the mom didn’t intervene. She let him help, and although the girl rocked back drunkenly on one heel when she stepped down. She didn’t fall. When she regained her balance, she clapped her hands and ran to her mother, who picked her up and put her in a car seat.

  That was how parenting was supposed to work. You’re supposed to mostly watch, letting your kid explore, experiment, and develop confidence. You’re supposed to make sure they don’t stick their fingers in an electrical socket or fall into a pool. You’re not supposed to monitor every breath from the moment of their birth until they move out.

  I looked down at the text Trace had sent. “So sry. New sitter. Didn’t like her sent her home. Sry sry! CU next week.”

  For some reason, the fact she hadn’t even bothered to type out the word ‘sorry’ is what put me over the edge. I stared at the text, seeing sparks at the edges of my visions. I swallowed and tapped out my reply. “Next week is off. You can get in touch with me in 18 years or so, when you’re ready to be a friend again.”

  My finger hovered over the send button. I was aware that part of the anger I felt pulsing in my skull should rightfully be directed at Ben, not Trace. But in some ways, Trace’s betrayal seemed worse. The whole point of having a best friend was so she could scrape you off the floor when a guy smeared you. Guys usually ended up smearing you. That was life.

  “Hey girl!” an enthusiastic voi
ce said. Startled, I punched send and looked up.

  Nora was beaming down at me.

  “Hey,” I said. Then it sank in what I’d done. I turned back to my phone, the consternation written all over my face.

  Nora said, “Uh oh. Bad news?”

  I released a sound that was midway between a moan and a death-rattle. “I just sent my best friend a really, really mean text. I was just going to type it, then erase it, you know? It’s kind of the way I vent sometimes. But then….” Unable to go on, I handed her my phone.

  Nora took it. She was wearing low-rise jeans and a button-down shirt tied in a little twist at her waist. On anyone else it would have looked contrived and/or ridiculous, but on her it looked good. Her eyes widened as she read what I’d sent Trace. “Oh, yeah. Ouch.”

  My phone buzzed again. I jumped like someone had kicked me under the table. “Was that her?”

  Nora tapped my phone. “Nope,” she said. “Someone named Ben. He says, ‘I hope you read this. I’m going to give you some time and space, but I will still be thinking of you every day. And please, when you’re ready, let me explain.’”

  I looked back out the window. Traffic was whizzing by in the street, and I had the mad urge to walk out to the sidewalk, stick my thumb out, get in the car with the first person who stopped, and tell them to take me anywhere that wasn’t here.

  Nora watched me a minute, then set my phone on the table with a slow, careful movement, like I was a rattled horse who might be startled at the slightest thing. I put my head in my hands.

  I was aware that I was making this awkward for Nora, that I should rally and say something light-hearted and stoic, give her leave to laugh and walk off to meet her friends. Instead, I stayed silent.

  She watched for a moment. Her air was more curious than put off. Finally, she slid into the booth opposite me and set down her purse.

  I was in some sort of Ben/Trace induced daze of self-pity. I said nothing as Nora pulled out her own phone and sent a message. Then the server came over and she ordered a Modelo Especial, like I was drinking. She saw my bottle was low and added before the server had left, “She’ll have another one, too.”

  My phone was still sitting on the table, dark and silent. No response from Trace. Nora saw me looking. With one deft swipe, she scooped it up with her own and shoved them both into her purse. “Ok,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

  “I love beer,” Nora said. “But this is going to have to be my last one. I’ve got to give a riding lesson in the morning. A student who shows some real promise, too.”

  I laughed. We were nursing our third beers, and my mood was a good deal improved. Nora had stopped into Julio’s to grab a taco-bowl to go, on her way to meet a group of friends elsewhere. The text she’d sent was to let them know she wouldn’t be coming. When she’d told me this later, she’d read the look of horror on my face and waved a hand. “Oh don’t worry. It’s nothing like your besty standing you up. It’s a big old troop from high school. They go out all the time and it’s real casual, you know? They go to Maloney’s. No one cares who shows and who doesn’t. To be honest, I’m pretty over that scene. I was only going tonight because I hadn’t in so long. I’m relieved to have an excuse to miss it.” She’d grinned, sipping her beer.

  I had told her everything – the hopeful start of my relationship with Ben, my foundering friendship with Trace, my independent parents, my empty apartment, my budding collection of cowboy boots. The only thing I’d left out was my massive infatuation with her brother. Even three beers in, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to direct the conversation to Clint.

  She’d listened, taking it all in, her eyes keen and interested. It had all poured out of me, a flash flood forming out of nothing but one quick rainfall.

  When I’d gotten it all out, she’d been quiet a moment. She’d said, “You know what I think?”

  “What?” I’d said, suddenly nervous for some unknown reason.

  “I think you need a fresh start, a clean slate. Forget about Ben and Trace. You can take the boots back to Western Warehouse, you know. They’d give you in-store credit. Or, if you know Ben’s last name and he paid with a card, they might be able to credit them back. That would be a pretty sweet punch in the guts, wouldn’t it?”

  Our food had arrived then, and over the course of the next hour, I’d loosened up considerably. It wasn’t that Nora made light of my struggles, or tried to diminish them or solve them. She acknowledged them and we talked about them a while, then there was a logical point at which the conversation moved on.

  We’d eaten and chatted about horses and ranch stuff, boots and saddles, leg position while asking for the canter, dog training, and all sorts of other things. By the time we were sipping our third beers, I was almost glad Trace hadn’t come.

  “Well, hopefully your student isn’t too hung over to ride,” I said, squeezing my lime so it fit down the neck of my bottle. “She’s shown some poor decision-making skills these last two nights.”

  Nora grinned and picked at the gold foil on the neck of her bottle. “There’s nothing wrong with a little liquid self-medicating,” she said. “As long as it doesn’t go too far.”

  We were quiet for a minute, and I felt a sudden warmth towards Nora. She was so relaxed and self-assured, and so generous. She could have spent the night out dancing. Instead, she’d stayed here with me. “Thanks for hanging out.”

  She waved the comment by as if it were a persistent fly. “You’re better company than the crowd at Maloney’s, anyway.”

  There was a buzzing sound in her purse, and we both looked at it like it might contain a snake. Nora reached over, fished both phones out and looked at their screens. “It’s mine,” she said. “I think you might be ready to regain possession rights to your own device, don’t you?”

  She slid my phone across the table as she checked hers. I unlocked the screen to see nothing. No response from Trace, nothing more from Ben. I put it in my purse.

  Nora was reading her text. “It’s from my brother.”

  Startled, I tried to imagine where Clint might be right now. “He’s up late,” she added. “He’s usually down for the count by 8:30.” Before I could say anything, Nora’s eyes went wide and she looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Gleeful? But sly? Some cross between amazed and utterly smug?

  “Nora,” I said, my curiosity rising from ‘dying to know’ to ‘on the verge of rupturing.’

  She texted back before she answered me. Then she gave a theatrical sigh. “This is the problem with brothers,” she said. “They’re always asking for favors.”

  I waited. I could feel my heart pounding in my palms where I had them clasped around my cool beer.

  She seemed to enjoy drawing out the tension. She picked her own beer up and tipped it back, taking a long swallow. “But at least I don’t have to worry about getting out of bed tomorrow anymore.”

  My head was about to explode. I was sure. Any second now, there would be a massive detonation, Julio’s would go silent, and everyone would stare at the mess I’d left in the booth. “Nora.” My voice came out in a desperate whine.

  She fixed me with a smug, direct gaze. Her face could barely contain her smile. “Clint asked if he could teach your lesson tomorrow.”

  ❂

  When I’d had lessons as a kid, all my teachers had told me horses could sense your emotions. You can’t be scared of a horse because they’ll pick up on your fear and get nervous. You can’t get angry at a horse because they’ll get defensive. Not expressing your fear or anger is not enough. You can’t even feel it.

  Knowing this left me in an impossible situation. Clint had asked to teach my lesson. Clint had asked. He’d texted Nora and asked. He’d done this at 9pm, later than he was usually up. Had he been lying in bed thinking about me? Was that even possible?

  Nora had been singularly unenlightening as to the question of why. Why did Clint want to teach me? When I’d asked her, she had put her phone away, st
ill looking smug, and said she didn’t know – he hadn’t said.

  So I was left to ride my bike home, tumble into bed and wake up to the chiming of my alarm to realize I needed to get out the door and over to the Tipped Z and that Clint would be the one there to greet me.

  Too nervous to eat anything and disinclined to drink coffee due to the impact this would have on my bladder, I downed a glass of water and pulled on my boots. Ben’s boots I had put away at Nora’s suggestion. I’d placed them back in their box and shoved the box to the back of my closet, where they could wait until I was ready to deal with them.

  I arrived at the Tipped Z early. So early, in fact, I considered driving around the block a few times. But I didn’t. I parked my car in front of the barn structure, glancing around at the empty yard. Nora’s truck wasn’t there, of course, and the dogs didn’t greet me when I stepped my new boots into the dust of the parking area.

  I walked into the large room with the hay where I’d seen Clint hoisting bales and overheard him talking about his girl dilemma. Today the space was quiet and empty, the large bay door across the way standing open, sunbeams lighting dancing dust motes on the cool morning air. The nerves that had been churning in my stomach since Nora had gotten the text last night began to settle.

  I took a few steps in, tentative in my solitude. The aisle of empty stalls was deserted. No horses, no dogs, no Clint. The tack room door was closed.

  I walked to the open bay door and looked out over the landscape. The Tipped Z was an old ranch. Many of the fences had the look of having been there quite a long time. Against the back wall of the barn stood a long, worn hitching post made of smoothed tree trunks bigger around than my thigh.

  A movement in my peripheral vision caught my eye. I turned my head, and there was Clint. He was still a good distance away, leading Duke and Penny, his hat brim tilted to block the rising sun. Three wire-haired dogs were with him, flanking the horses like an honor guard.

  I didn’t have long to stand and watch him unobserved. Any moment one of the dogs would run forward, announcing my presence. But I had a small space of time where I could watch Clint thinking he was alone.

  He reached a gate and flipped it open. He pointed a hand and Duke went through first, walking in a little arc around the gate and stepping under to face the way he’d come. He waited quietly while Clint sent Penny after. For some reason, as Penny passed between the upright post and the gate, she got a little agitated. She tried to bolt ahead, her body stiff, head high.

  Clint didn’t even look at her. He gave the rope a calculated pull which somehow stole all her momentum, bringing her head around, disengaging her hind and parking her right next to Duke as if nothing at all had happened. Clint came through the gate, latched it, and set a brief hand on Penny’s neck. Then he started walking again. The two horses followed.

  One of the dogs saw me then. It snapped to attention, and all three ran across the yard. I was almost used to the stiff way they greeted people, but it still alarmed me a little when they all came up at once, hair along their backs bristling, ears held high. I knew these were cattle dogs, but it didn’t take a great leap of imagination to believe they were trained to attack the unwanted visitor on cue.

  There was a low whistle from Clint, and the dogs dispersed, disappearing into the interior of the barn. I looked back to Clint, watching as he strode easily through the dust, the fringe on his chinks swinging.

  When he was within earshot, I expected him to say something. Some greeting or explanation, some preamble about why he’d asked to give my lesson. Instead he gave me a brief nod, led the horses up to the hitching post and tied them, then disappeared into the barn without uttering so much as a syllable.

  I was determined not to be bothered. Clint was a man of few words. I could be ok with that. I could get used to it. I wasn’t a huge talker myself. I could appreciate both silence and solitude.

  Clint came back with a wooden box with a handle, filled with grooming supplies. He set it on the ground between the two horses. It appeared he was not going to be the first one to speak. I said, “I guess I’m a little early. Can I help tack up?”

  He looked at me. His eyes were bright shards in the tan of his face. I met his gaze, trying to appear relaxed and confident, trying not to let on that it felt like he was looking past my eyes at something deeper.

  There was a long silence. It began to feel like I had asked to ride Penny in the Fourth of July parade. I had to resist the urge to stammer a retraction, to say something like, “Or I can stand here and watch you. That’d be fine too.”

  Finally, Clint looked away from me, reached into the box, and picked out a soft curry. It was pink, with glitter embedded in the semi-transparent rubbery plastic. It looked totally out of place in his hand. He handed it to me. As I took it he said, “Tacking the horse sets the tone for the ride that follows.”

  I remembered the way he’d handled Penny’s scare at the gate – the one quick pull on the rope to keep her from crashing off, the one gentle stroke down her neck.

  I accepted the curry and walked up to Duke, giving him a pat on the shoulder, acutely aware that Clint’s eyes were on me. I began to rub the curry in gentle circles, fluffing the coat enough to work the dust out but not applying enough pressure to irritate. Clint watched for a moment, then returned to the box. He picked out a similar curry, this one green but still sparkly, and began to work it over Penny’s creamy coat.

  Silence fell, and while it was less awkward now that we had something to do, I felt the need to fill it in spite of myself. I progressed from Duke’s shoulder up his neck and said, “What happened at the gate there?”

  Clint was rubbing Penny under the neck. She lifted her head and tipped it to one side, eyes half closed, helping him reach the right spot. “She’s green. She can still get troubled in confined spaces.”

  I waited, but it appeared this was all the answer I was going to get. I tried to think of another question, a way to prompt him to go on.

  Clint glanced over at me, and his hand stopped rubbing Penny’s neck. His face took on the pained expression I’d first seen when I’d asked Duke to stop by pulling on the bit out of nowhere. “Now, see,” he said. “You got to keep your mind on the horse.”

  At first I didn’t know what he meant, but then I realized he was looking at Duke. I had not been looking at Duke, I had been looking at Clint. When I did look at Duke, I realized I had worked the curry up his neck and had probably been rubbing the same place for a while, bumping the base of his ear in clumsy manner. Duke was a horse with impeccable manners. He wasn’t pulling away or pinning his ears, but he had gone stiff. His body was leaning a little away from me.

  My hand went still. I felt like I’d failed some kind of important test. I took a step back, like a kid who’s knocked over a small, fragile trinket after being told not to touch anything. I felt my heart sink down to reside in one of my new leather-soled boots.

  “So,” Clint said, and I jumped because I hadn’t heard him walk around Penny. He was right next to me. I could smell the scent of dust and leather. How could someone in spurs walk without jingling? “Can you see where he’s tense?”

  I looked at Duke. Three weeks ago, I’d have seen an utterly relaxed horse. He stood with a hind end cocked, his head down. But his ears were tipped a teeny bit back instead of drooping out to the sides, and the long muscle that ran down his neck seemed stiff.

  Not giving myself time to second-guess anything, I took a step forward, shoving the curry in my back pocket. “Here?” I said. A set my hand on the muscle in the horse’s neck and gave it a gentle rub, working my hand like I’d massage my leg if I had a cramp.

  Duke stood in the same pose for a moment longer, then he sighed. His head dropped an inch, his ears relaxed, and he licked his lips.

  Clint walked around to Duke’s face and ran a hand down the horse’s head, smoothing his forelock and watching me work on his neck. “That’s right,” he said. “But too much of a good thing can
grow stale.”

  My hands flew away from Duke’s neck as if I’d received an electrical shock. Silence fell again, punctuated by the cries of the morning birds. I looked at Clint to see he was looking at me. His eyes had settled on my face. His expression was speculative. “Most people,” he said, and stopped. The silence stretched for so long I had to resist the urge to shift my weight or look away. “Most people wouldn’t see that little bit of stress, even if you pointed it out to them.”

  With that, he walked back to Penny, leaving me feeling some mix of exhilaration and relief.

  ❂

  “So how did it go?” Nora said as soon as I answered my phone, not bothering with customary conversation-starters and jumping straight to the subject I most wanted to talk about while simultaneously most wanted to not talk about.

  “Ok, I think.” I was in my apartment, showered, seated at my desk. I had been staring at a blank computer screen for about 45 minutes before Nora had called. “He let me groom and tack this time.”

  There was a long silence, so long I thought the call had dropped. I held my phone away from my ear to look, but the screen still showed the photo of Nora I had snapped in Julio’s the night before, holding her bottle of Modelo Especial and grinning.

  She said, “This is my brother we’re talking about? The one who never goes out without his chinks, and is conversationally impaired?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I only got in trouble once.”

  Nora laughed then, a long, full peal that had me smiling too. “He really must like you.”

  The comment hung there, buzzing on the line between us. I bit back my reservations, forcing my tongue into action before I could miss another perfect opportunity to ask the critical question. “Nora,” I said. “Does Clint,” my voice failed as I spoke his name. I had to stop and regroup. Nora waited. I managed to go on, to ask the question that had been burning my mind for weeks. “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  I didn’t know what to expect. I tried to prepare myself for anything from, “Yes, but he doesn’t like her,” to “Um, he’s gay.” Instead, Nora said, “No. Not that I’m aware of. But he’s not the biggest sharer on the planet.”

  I gathered my courage and pressed ahead. “It’s just I overheard him one day. He was on the phone talking to a friend, and he was talking about a girl. It sounded like he was thinking about breaking up with her because he couldn’t see the relationship turning into a life-long commitment.”

  I left my desk chair and walked to my office window. It looked out on an indifferent view of the sidewalk that ran between my building and the next. A skinny, pale guy in baggy sweatpants was walking his black pug, squinting into the light as if it hurt him.

  “What?” Nora said. She sounded incredulous. “When was this?”

  I told her, recounting the way I’d been coming in for the lesson and he’d been leaning on the hay.

  There was a silence. I could almost feel her thinking. “Wait,” she said. “Tell me what he said. Verbatim, if you can.”

  As it so happened, I had a transcript of the conversation. I still had the file saved on my computer. Feeling ridiculous, I walked over to my desk and pulled it up. I read it to Nora, trying to make it sound like I was struggling to remember rather than reading off a screen.

  When I got the part where Clint said something about ‘long-term potential,’ I thought I heard her stifle a laugh.

  I finished reading, and there was a pause. “That’s all.” I said. “That’s what I heard.”

  Nora did burst into laughter then. She’d clearly been holding it in. Released, it went on for a while. She was gasping by the end. I was trying not to be annoyed. I left my screen and returned to my window. The guy and the pug had disappeared.

  Finally, Nora got herself under control. “I’m sorry, Erin. It’s just, it’s just so funny. Clint would never talk about a woman that way. Mom would gut him.”

  “What was he talking about then?” I tried to keep the irritation out my voice, but didn’t entirely succeed.

  “Penny, for God’s sake. He was talking about Penny. His horse. Clint starts a few young ones each year, but he’s real picky. He only finishes out the ones he clicks with, that take to their job and love it. Penny’s defensive about some things. She’ll fly apart over next to nothing, but then when you want her to put some effort in she’s kind of lazy. Not a winning combo.”

  Beyond the first part, I was having trouble following what Nora meant. But the overall message was clear. Clint was single. Clint was not a chauvinist. Clint did not keep enthralled women waiting at his beck and call so he could have casual sex with them.

  Nora was still talking. “To make one into a bridle horse takes about six years, you know. So it’s a big deal. Clint likes to be able to finish what he starts.”

  I was so overwhelmed with relief, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I stared at the manicured gravel and gray-green shrubs that lined the sidewalk outside.

  Nora piped up again, her tone playful now. “You sure do sound interested in the state of my brother’s romantic attachments.”

  She had me there. I decided to take a page from Clint’s book. I didn’t answer.

  Nora laughed again. “Well, that’s fine,” she said, sounding as pleased as if she’d won the lottery. “You don’t have to come right out and say it. Tell me about the rest of the lesson.”

  I told her about most of it. I told her about how Duke and I had managed a serviceable circle from the start. I told her about how Clint had me and Duke face him and Penny, and mirror him as he stepped Penny’s front feet one way and then the other. I told her about the trotting to the fenceline and softening Duke to a stop, then hurrying him into a canter departure going the opposite direction. I told her all the plain facts.

  I didn’t tell her about the moment I had looked up from one of my canter departures to see Clint with a tiny smile on his lips, or how that smile had converted my entire bloodstream into something sweet and hot. I hadn’t told her how every time I got something right and he said, “There,” it sent a shiver down my spine.

  And I didn’t tell her how at one point I was having trouble getting Duke to step his front over and, frustrated, I’d given him a kick in the shoulder. Clint’s mouth had hardened when he’d seen that, and he’d been off Penny and walking towards me in a heartbeat. I’d gone still in the saddle as he’d walked up. Without preamble, Clint had reached up and set two fingertips, lightly, against the bare skin of my lower arm.

  I’d been too confused to say anything. He’d been so close I could have poked him in the ribs with my boot toe.

  He’d said, “Can you feel that?”

  My mouth had gone dry. “Yes.”

  Clint’s hand had left my arm and he’d put the same two fingers, applying the same amount of pressure to Duke’s shoulder. “So can he.”

  On cue, Duke had stepped over.

  Clint had turned back and looked up at me, his eyes shaded by his hat brim. “You’re weight is on the shoulder you’re asking him to move, and you’ve got too much pressure on his mouth. You’re physically inhibiting his ability to do what you’re asking. I’m not saying to never kick a horse, because sometimes you have to. But before you kick one, make sure it’s him who is making the mistake.”

  Then he’d been walking away from me and climbing back onto Penny.

  I didn’t tell Nora about that part.

  She listened, asking questions, genuinely interested in the details of my ride. As we spoke, I realized how pleasant it was to have a conversation with someone that wasn’t about babies or dogs, or filled entirely with vapid small talk.

  Then, abruptly, Nora said, “Oh shoot. Boss is here. Gotta go.”

  The phone clicked and went silent. I stood a moment longer, still staring out the window, realizing it was only Tuesday and I’d have to wait until Sunday before I could return to the ranch.

  ❂

  “How you doing, kiddo?” my dad said. “Is everything alright
in the world of Erin?”

  It was Saturday morning. We were in the kitchen at my parent’s house. The counters were covered in bags and boxes and bundles, and my dad was up to his forearms in flour. We were busy making the hors d’oeuvres for the party my parents were throwing in honor of Boswell and Norman’s safe return, to thank everyone who had brought casseroles and forwarded emails.

  “Oh yeah. Everything’s good.” I was at the sink, scrubbing and rinsing fruits and vegetables and starting the chopping.

  My father was a huge fan of all things pastry. Puffs and wraps and flaky treats were his ultimate specialty. Most of his creations were elaborate and original. I swear my parents only entertained at all to give him an excuse to go nuts in the kitchen.

  Dad paused in the middle of rolling out a sheet of soft dough. He looked at me, eyes narrowed. I did my best to keep my squirming internal.

  The truth was, I was feeling remarkably all right. Sure, Ben had turned out to have a wife, and even after I’d personally spoken with that wife, he’d bought me an expensive pair of boots and brought them to my apartment and waited all day to give them to me, and he’d left and said he’d give me time and space and he had given me time and space, and at least a million times a day I found myself wondering what he would say if I did give him the chance. And each time I realized I was wondering this, I forced my mind to consider another subject.

  But the other truth was, Clint had asked to teach my lesson. And the lesson had been good, and although Clint’s longest speech to date had been reprimanding me for kicking his horse, I still felt there had been a shift between us: a subtle but critical difference in the way he looked at me.

  “Come on, now,” Dad said. “I know you liked Ben. But we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “I didn’t actually like Ben,” I said. The words came out in a tumble. Dad cocked an eyebrow at me. He’d turned away from the counter and was standing facing me, flour-covered arms held away from his body so he wouldn’t get his clothing dirty. It was a lost cause. He was dusted with white all over. Within the hour my mother would come into the kitchen and ask him why he hadn’t worn an apron.

  “I mean,” I struggled to explain. “I did and I didn’t. There was always this feeling he was holding back, like I didn’t really know him. So it was hard to be truly excited about the relationship since there was a wedge between us. I thought he was just reserved, but it turns out the wedge was named Kim.”

  Dad, satisfied, turned back to rolling out his dough. “Well, I’m glad he didn’t break your heart.”

  Dad (for no earthly reason I could discern) liked to listen to ethnic Greek music while he baked. I listened to the wailing vocals and fast-paced plucking overlaid by the rocking clunks of the rolling pin. I prodded around my heart a bit. The Ben thing had not been pleasant, but I was confident my father was right. My heart was not broken at all. In fact, any time Clint came near it did it’s best to make sure it throbbed so hard as to be audible.

  A moment later, Dad asked the inevitable question, his voice casual but sly. “Any other interests?”

  “Dad,” I said. “Give me some time here. It’s been a week.”

  “Your mother can’t stop talking about that cowboy who brought Boswell and Norman back. Maybe you should ask him out?”

  I felt my body stiffen. I tried to keep scrubbing with the same rhythm as before, trying not to give away the fact my veins seemed to light on fire at the very mention of Clint. I scrambled around, trying to find a response that was both neutral and believable.

  Fortunately, my mom’s two terriers swept into the room as if summoned by their names. Although a week had done a remarkable amount to restore them to their usual exuberant selves, they were still thin, and they tired easily. But now they scuttled into the kitchen like sharks with wagging tails, black noses raised to sample the air.

  “Boswell, Norman, out,” my mother said as she came walking in their wake.

  The two dogs ignored her. Norman came up next to me. I could hear him whuffing next to my hip. I was glad my mom had her dogs back, but there were a few things I hadn’t missed. I raised one bare foot and set it on Norman’s broad chest, pushing him slowly but firmly away.

  “Erin,” my mom said, “be gentle.”

  I did not dignify this comment with a response, and Mom was in too good a mood to be perturbed. She perched on one of the stools at the counter and moved a pair of reading glasses from the top of her head, settling them over her eyes and looking down at the notepad she was carrying. A drawing pen was in her other hand. “We’ve heard back from almost everyone,” she said. “Erin, your friends the Crosses replied with a yes for three.”

  I felt myself freeze up. Norman, undeterred, pressed close again. “Three?”

  My mother had insisted on inviting Clint and his family. Insisted. I had tried to stall, to divert, to fudge, to put her off with, ‘I’ll text Nora in a minute.’ When I had failed to produce their mailing address within 12 hours, she had forced me to give her Nora’s cell number. So they’d been invited. I had been certain they wouldn’t come, or Nora would come alone.

  But the RSVP said three.

  Mom tapped the line on her notepad with her capped pen. “Yep, three. You two better make double batches. There are going to be a lot of people here.”

  Several hours later, I was in a state of near panic. This morning, I had dressed in a pair of old capris and a stained shirt. Without putting much thought into it, I’d thrown my favorite jeans and a top into my bag to wear for the party. At that point in time, I had envisioned helping my dad with the baking for most of the day, staying at the party long enough to say hi to everyone and circulate for a while, then heading home. This morning, I had assumed Nora might put in an appearance, but considering I hadn’t heard from her since Tuesday, I had doubted it. I had never dreamed Clint would come.

  The prospect of Clint showing up was terrifying. It was one thing to be a scrubby mess when I arrived at his barn for riding lessons, but quite another to see him out of that setting, to see him socially. And at my parents’ house, no less.

  I stared at the mirror in my old bedroom. It was full length, and had a wobble towards the top that made my neck look twice as long as it really was. I was used to this oddity. Normally, I didn’t even notice. Today, it was all I could do not to put a foot through the offending glass. Trying to decide how I looked by staring into a funhouse mirror seemed to sum up more things about my life than I cared to admit.

  Fortunately, the lower portion of the mirror was normal. My favorite jeans were not my favorite jeans for naught. They were the perfect fit, snug but not tight, flattering but not revealing. The top I had grabbed was essentially an embellished tank. It fit me well, and it was blue. Blue, Trace had told me more than once, was my best color. I had my hair done in a loose twist at the nape of my neck, and had left a few shorter strands out to frame my face.

  I looked fine. I knew that.

  The problem was, I wanted to look more than fine. I wanted to look stunning. I wanted to transform like the main character in the ever-popular makeover movie: turn from something unremarkable into something that would make Clint’s jaw hit the floor.

  I stared at myself in the distorted mirror for another moment, then flipped off my bedroom light with a sigh. There wasn’t time to run home for a change, and even if there had been, I had nothing better to wear.

  I tried for an air of nonchalance as I walked back into the kitchen. My dad had been chased out by my mother. I could hear the shower running. Mom was arranging the platters of finished flaky treats far enough back from the edges of the counters so Boswell and Norman couldn’t reach them. They weren’t ill behaved enough to actually jump and grab things, but anything they could get their lips on while their paws were on the floor was a different story.

  Mom barely glanced at me as I walked in. “You look nice.”

  I sat at the counter and picked up a spinach puff. The pastry outside
was still warm. “So do you.”

  Mom was wearing a pair of flowing linen pants and a black sleeveless top, her hair twisted into a disarrayed bun. She did look nice. More than nice. My mom was, in fact, a beauty. Even now that age had crept into her face and softened some of the lines that had once been firm, she was still stunning.

  I did not take after my mother. I was like my father: good-looking enough. Normally I was fine with that. Normally I was able to look around and recognize that I should count my blessings.

  But some days, I looked at my mom’s flawless profile and wondered why I couldn’t have favored her a bit more.

  My mom waved a hand at my compliment, as if to indicate she knew I was lying for her benefit and wouldn’t dignify the comment with a response. She glanced around the house, scanning for last-minute things to adjust or tidy. She fussed with a flower arrangement, gave the counter a final wipe and said, “Those are for the party, you know,” as I started in on a second spinach puff. But she was teasing. I made no reply. I was trying not to wonder when Clint would arrive.

  “Your friend Nora called,” my mom said then, putting away the towel she’d used to wipe the counter and going to the kitchen window to look out towards our driveway.

  “What?” Adrenaline shot through my body as if my mother had injected me. “Did she say who the three guests are?”

  “Yes, she told me about the special guest she wanted to bring. She wanted to ask my permission first. She’s a very polite young woman. Of course, I said it was ok.”

  The pastry had turned to ash in my mouth. I swallowed. “Said what was ok?”

  “Oh,” Mom said, turning away from the window. “The Jones’ are here. You can always count on them to arrive right on time.”

  I glanced at the clock on the stove. It said 5:00. I glared at the glowing green numbers as my mother swept from the room to greet her first guests.

  ❂

  The invitation had identified this event as an open house. Normally, I liked open house style parties. They meant people would drift in and out in waves. You had more time to talk to people, it was less crowded and noisy at any given moment, and people with kids came early and left early.

  In this case, however, it was agony.

  By 5:45 I had been certain at least five times I heard Nora’s truck rumbling into the driveway. Every time this happened I ended up gawking over my shoulder at the gate, heart going into spasms in my chest. Eventually, the party got loud enough I couldn’t hear cars arriving at all. And that helped.

  So when I glanced around and saw Clint striding through the front gate, it surprised me so much that I stopped in the middle of my sentence.

  I was talking to a woman named Sue, who was a friend of my mother’s from art school. Sue was the sort of artist I found unrelentingly tiresome. She liked to talk about her art. A lot. And she liked to talk about public response to her art and the hidden meaning in her art and the reason why her art didn’t get into more galleries. I typically dealt with Sue by nodding and smiling a lot, and escaping the conversation at the first viable opportunity. Today, she was proving extra difficult to get rid of. She kept asking for more details about the theft of Boswell and Norman, the conditions the stolen dogs had been kept in, the distance between Florence and Tucson, and all sorts of other things. I had been explaining we didn’t know the exact setup of the warehouse because we hadn’t seen it.

  Sue didn’t seem to notice that I trailed off without finishing my thought. She said, “It does inspire a surprising degree of pathos, doesn’t it? I have often used the symbolism of cages in my work, but always with regard to the human psyche. I wonder….”

  I hardly heard her. In a shocking act of rudeness my mother would have scolded me for if she’d been there to overhear, I cut Sue off. “I’m so sorry, but I need to greet someone.” Before she could segue around my leave-taking and back into conversation (Sue was adept at this), I scurried off, making my way around the small clusters of chatting people to where I’d seen Clint.

  He’d stopped inside the gate and was now looking back out. Dots appeared then, poking her small gray face around the leg of his jeans. Nora came a moment after, letting the gate swing shut behind them.

  Of the three, only Nora looked happy.

  “Erin!” Nora said, hurrying towards me with her arms open. She gave me a hug and looked around. “Wow. What a crowd.”

  Clint and Dots drifted after Nora, as if tethered to her by an invisible elastic cord. Dots was rigid, staring around the yard, her ruff a little raised. She was so close to Clint’s leg she sometimes bumped into him while they walked.

  “Hi Clint,” I said.

  Clint, too, had been looking at the crowd, but now he shifted his gaze to me and managed a quick smile. He started to raise his hand, as if to tip his hat, except he wasn’t wearing one.

  He was dressed in the closest I’d ever seen to normal clothes. His jeans were still Wranglers, but they were one of the more stylish varieties, with a little wear that looked factory installed. He was wearing boots, but they were clean boots, and they were under his jeans so they didn’t stand out. His shirt was a plain short-sleeved button-up, and his hair was clean and combed. His face was freshly shaved and free of dust smudges. He was still stunningly handsome, of course, but his outfit screamed ‘Nora.’ I kind of liked him better in his native state.

  “Erin,” Clint said to cover his confusion over not having a hat on.

  “Your mom wanted us to be guests of honor,” Nora said, either unaware of or uninterested in her brother’s evident discomfort. “But I said it wasn’t us, it was Dots. Dots is the one who deserves the recognition.”

  “That’s a great idea.” I tried not to sound as doubtful as I felt. Dots looked about as comfortable as if she’d been thrown into a pen of lions.

  “And of course, Dots won’t get in a car if Clint isn’t in it, and would probably rupture herself if she had to be around this many people without Clint nearby too, so that sealed it. I had to drag them both along.”

  Nora said this casually, her voice light and quick, but she caught my eye when she said the last sentence, and I understood. Nora hadn’t done this because she thought Dots deserved special attention. She’d done it to get Clint here, to hang out with me.

  The nerves I’d felt earlier seemed suddenly insignificant, like being annoyed by one bee only to discover what a swarm is like. If Dots had been a more normal dog, I’d have squatted down to rub her ears. As it was, she looked like she might take my hand off if I tried that. There was a silence that was one beat too long, and I said, “Thank you for coming.” This was meant to be directed at Dots, as a joke, but Nora said, “Oh, we wouldn’t have missed it.”

  Then there was a bark, and Boswell and Norman were there, surging forward to investigate this strange dog in their domain. Bull terriers are not known for being especially friendly to other dogs, and I had a terrible vision of Boswell and Norman, now restored to better health and vitality, descending on Dots and ripping her to pieces. All three dogs were stiff, hackles raised, when my mother’s voice rose over the din. “Oh good,” she said. “Our guests of honor have arrived.”

  It turned out Nora was right. Dots would not leave Clint’s side. Boswell and Norman determined quickly she was not nearly as interesting as all the people who might be setting plates down within their reach. After a moment of tense sniffing, they wandered off. Dots showed no interest in following them. She stayed so near Clint as to seem tethered to his calf.

  My mother did not seem to pick up on the evident discomfort of 2/3 of the honored guests. She took Nora by the arm, and set out to introduce the three of them to every person at the party.

  Before I could follow, I was waylaid by one of my parent’s neighbors, Walter, who was at least 500 years old and hard of hearing. He asked me what kind of dog Dots was, and I spent the next ten minutes trying to indicate I didn’t know, all the while surreptitiously watching the progress of Clint’s smooth head. He was taller
than most of the people in my parent’s yard, so it was easy to keep an eye on him.

  “Strange coat,” Walter said.

  “They’re cattle dogs,” I supplied. Clint had just been introduced to Sue. He shook her hand but didn’t smile.

  “They like cats?”

  “Cattle. Cattle. Cows.” I dragged the ‘o’ out as I said the last word.

  I didn’t mind Walter. He was a sweet man, and a good neighbor: the sort of person who would loan you a stick of butter for your cookies, or come barging over with a shotgun when you’re house was being robbed. I also had sympathy for his deafness. I knew he’d lost his hearing flying planes in Vietnam, knew it frustrated him to always be one step removed from the conversation.

  “They like cows?” He looked, if anything, more confused.

  “For herding.” I made a gesture with my hands that was meant to indicate grouping something up. Walter’s gray eyes followed the movement of my hands, and he blinked a few times. I despaired of ever getting the message across. Then his face cleared.

  “Oh, she’s a cow dog,” he said. He rocked back on his heels, face breaking into a smile. “When I was a kid, my neighbors had cattle.” And from there he was off, telling me a long, elaborate story while I only half-listened: an arrangement more comfortable for both of us.

  The major downside of attending parties at my parents’ house was that all their friends had known me all my life. This lead to them feeling they had a vested interest in my success, or lack thereof. By 8:00, I was exhausted. I had escaped from Walter to be waylaid by Kris, a colleague of my father’s, who was the sort of brittle, forceful person whose well-meaning questions left you feeling interrogated. The night had gone on from there. I’d had to explain over and over that yes, I was still single. No, the guy I had been dating wasn’t here; that hadn’t worked out. Yes, I was still working at the gallery. No, I had no intention of going back to school.

  I hadn’t told anyone I was writing a book. I felt that was best kept to myself until it was done. The upside of this was I didn’t have to field inane questions such as, ‘What is your book about?’ or ‘When do you think it will be published?’ The downside was it made it seem like all I was doing was working part time at an art gallery. No one came right out and said it, but almost everyone I spoke to tried their best to encourage me to do something more worthwhile with my life.

  Finally, the crowd had started to thin a little. I had long since lost track of Nora and Clint and Dots. I was, in fact, convinced they had slipped out at some point. When the family I had been saying goodbye to walked out the gate, I found my way to a bench that was tucked into a corner made by the house and the patio wall. It was an out-of-the-way nook I favored for escape when parties got later. It wasn’t as obvious as going to my room, but it got me out of the thick of things. I collapsed onto the wooden seat, noticing the throb in my feet and the dryness of my lips.

  It was a cool night, and a breeze stirred my hair as I sat. I closed my eyes, and lifted my face. I could smell the sweet tang of fallen mesquite beans and the fading heat of the day.

  When I opened my eyes, Clint was there, his appearance as sudden as if he’d materialized out of a puff of dust. Dots was still at his side, but she was more relaxed now. She stood with her head turned towards the open desert, ears up, tracking the sounds made by some small animal in the underbrush.

  I found I didn’t have the energy to scramble to my feet, to say something clever, or worry if my hair twist had gotten messy. I gave Clint a small smile.

  He smiled back. It was that small, sweet smile that made fine wrinkles at the edges of his lips. “Nora said you like beer.”

  That’s when I noticed he was carrying two sweating bottles, limes perched in their necks. I accepted one and, with a sigh, Clint lowered himself onto the bench next to me. Dots followed suit, collapsing into a heap next to his feet and settling her head onto her paws.

  And then, suddenly, I was alone with Clint, sitting in the fair desert evening, and gazing out into the black night. I didn’t say anything at first. I squeezed my lime down into my beer, licking the tangy juice off my fingers and smelling the smooth, sharp scent that drifted over from Clint.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. The party was still going on a little distance away. We could hear voices and laughter and the low throb of the music pouring out of the porch speakers. I wondered where Nora was.

  At first, Clint’s only answer was to reach down and smooth the ruff on Dots’ neck. After several minutes, he said, “People think there’s no more need for working animals. Working dogs, working horses. They think you can do it all with an SUV and a GPS unit. But with an animal that is trained the right way, you leave them their self, their independent mind. They can fill in for you, pick up on something you might have missed.”

  I understood he was attempting to explain why he had come, and it hadn’t been to socialize. I waited, but he stopped there.

  It was enough. He’d come for Dots. Not for me, not for Nora.

  I sipped my beer and wondered at the puzzle that was Clint. “Parties probably aren’t your thing.”

  His head turned towards me. He seemed to be examining my profile in the low light spilling out the kitchen windows. “Yours either.” It wasn’t a question.

  “The joys of filial duty.” I looked down to pick at the label on my beer bottle, then stopped when I realized I was fidgeting. Fidgeting, my mother had told me often, was not an attractive habit.

  Clint leaned back into his seat, extending one hand along the back of the bench so it was reaching in my direction. It was nowhere near me, really, but I could feel it there, like a magnet, sending out a pulse that made the hairs on my arm stand up.

  “You’re an only child?”

  I felt a shiver run up my arm, as if Clint had actually touched me. As far as I could remember, this was the first thing Clint had ever asked me about myself.

  “I am,” I said. “And I was a mistake. My mom didn’t want kids, although she’ll happily tell you now that she no longer regrets the decision to keep me.”

  I realized as soon as I stopped talking that this was not the sort of information one should be volunteering during one’s first ever real conversation with the subject of one’s wildest fantasies.

  Clint didn’t seem put off. He had turned back to face the desert, but his gaze was soft, unfocused. “Motherhood,” he said. He stopped. I waited for so long, I thought maybe he wouldn’t go on. He shifted, sitting up straighter and bringing his arm down off the back of the bench. “I think we don’t give it enough weight.” He dropped his eyes to the bricks of the patio and gave his head a little shake. “What it does, physically and emotionally. It’s a total coup.” He reached down to smooth Dots’ ruff again.

  I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever responded to the ‘my mother didn’t want me’ anecdote this way before. Most people gasped as if I’d repeated the trashy headline from a tabloid, and supplied some response like, ‘That’s horrible,’ or ‘I can’t believe she told you that,’ as if it wasn’t more of an accomplishment to be loved in spite of not being wanted than to be adored unconditionally from day one.

  I thought of Trace. She hadn’t responded to the nasty text I’d sent from Julio’s, and I had suffered nagging regrets all week. Still, it was undeniable. Before Olivia, I’d had a best friend. After Olivia, not so much.

  I resisted the urge to say something inane like, ‘yeah,’ or ‘totally.’ I tried to come up with something weightier, more philosophical.

  Then there was the scrambling of toenails on brick, and Boswell and Norman churned around the side of the house. They ran up to the bench, shoving their white faces towards our beers. Dots sat up quickly, her expression offended, while Clint gently but firmly took Boswell by the collar and set him back about two feet. Confused, the dog surged forward again. Clint did the same thing. There was no anger in his correction. He used precisely the same amount of force as he had the first time.

&nbs
p; By the third time, Boswell hung back instead of barging into Clint’s space. Clint ran a gentle hand along his head and back.

  Meanwhile, Norman was slobbering all over my favorite jeans. Clint turned to look at me. “They’d respect boundaries if they had any.” His voice was quiet, just audible over the breeze rattling the mesquites.

  Before I could try to prove myself talented with animals by giving Norman a new way of looking at the world, my mom appeared, strolling with Nora around the patio. “Here you two are,” she said, smiling. Clint rose to offer her his seat.

  ❂

  “I may need a favor today, Erin.” Anne spoke as she strode into the gallery, heels ringing on the tile. I looked up from my phone, which I’d been staring at while I sat behind the front counter.

  It was Monday morning, and I’d still heard nothing from Trace. As much as I hated going to Julio’s and waiting 20 minutes for her to show up, as much as it had been so long since our nights out had consisted of anything more than her obsessively checking her phone and rattling on about her kid, I felt dull today, weighed down by the knowledge that I had scuttled over a decade of friendship with one nasty text.

  “Oh?” I set my phone down and looked up. Anne was wearing a slim pair of flared black slacks and a deep red top. She looked tall and well-formed, like a fashion designer’s sketch of a casual Parisian.

  “We got a huge order from Southwest One Bank. They called it in on Friday, and they want it done today. It’s all stock frames, but it’s 40 pieces, and they won’t be able to bring the certificates until this afternoon. I hate to ask because I know it’s your night out with your friend, but is there any chance you could stay late and help me finish?”

  I glanced again at my dark phone. “I’m not hanging out with Trace tonight,” I said, not entirely succeeding in keeping my tone neutral. “So that’ll be fine.”

  Anne stood a moment, her sharp eyes interested. “I have to make a few phone calls, but as soon as we’re in the frame room, you’re going to have to explain.”

  She strode off, and I resumed my blank staring.

  After the party, I had been so high on my Clint experience I’d been unable to sleep for half the night. This had left me foggy the next day when I scrambled into my car to get over to the Tipped Z. Nora had met me in the barn, triumphant and unapologetic, laughingly explaining the lengths she’d had to go to, the arguments she’d made, to get Clint to agree to take Dots to the party. “When I first brought it up you’d have thought I’d asked him to donate her to charity,” she’d said, her laugh ringing around the barn.

  I’d glanced over my shoulder nervously, and she’d patted my arm. “Sorry, darling. He’s not here today. He and my dad headed up to Cave Creek this morning. Somebody’s fancy show horse has developed a nasty habit of kicking out during the lope, and they called in the cavalry. So you’re stuck with me today.”

  It had been a fun day anyway. We’d gone out on the trails again. Nora had told me a bit about leaving the reins slack and steering the horse from behind, using the hindquarters like a rudder to keep the horse balanced through the twists and turns of the trail. We’d galloped around the hills like a couple of teenagers until the sun had been so high we could feel the sweat baking off our skin. We’d headed back happy.

  But today, my budding friendship with Nora seemed like less of an accomplishment in the face of my massive fallout with Trace. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt about the whole thing. Sure she’d been a lousy friend from approximately the moment she got pregnant, but what was a year in a half compared to such a long history? Like Clint had said, motherhood was a coup. Trace was having to reimagine herself, and I wasn’t giving her any slack at all.

  I picked up my phone, half resolved to text an apology. Then the gallery phone rang. Anne called from her office, “Will you grab that Erin?”

  “I’ll cut the glass, you do the flats,” Anne said. “We won’t know how big the windows will need to be until they bring the certificates, so we’ll have to do those at the last minute.

  It was 3:00. The gallery had been busy for a Monday, and this was the first chance Anne and I had had to start on the job for the bank. As we set up our respective tools on opposite sides of the work table, Anne glanced at the clock. “It’s going to be a late one,” she said with a grim twist of her mouth. “Thank you for agreeing to stay, Erin.”

  I gave a little nod and positioned a piece of mat board, lining it up for the first cut. Anne thumbed a glass cutter, her expression skeptical, and judiciously pulled a new one out of the supply cabinet against the far wall. “Now,” she said, bending over a piece of glass, “what’s up with Trace?”

  I considered lying. It would be easy enough to say Olivia had a cold. “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I’m a lousy friend and I’ll probably never speak to her again.” I was aware I was dramatizing things, but this had been eating at me all day. I wanted to give it the proper conversational weight.

  Anne scored the glass and popped the sheet apart with a deft knock of the heel of her hand. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened? Start from the beginning.” She glanced at the stack of glass next to her and said, “No shortcuts. Goodness knows, we have the time.”

  So I told her, starting with what had driven me to my annoyed moment in Julio’s: Trace’s paranoia during pregnancy progressing into the ever-increasing helicopter mothering, and finally her total failure to be there for me through my breakup with Ben. When I got to that part, Anne looked up in the middle of a cut as if I’d hit the pause button. “Wait, what? You broke up with Ben?”

  “I found out he was married.” I set another squared off mat in my pile of finished flats.

  Anne let out a low whistle. “Ok, we’ll get to that next. Let’s stick with Trace for now.”

  So I went on, and when we’d finished with Trace we segued into the entire Ben story, and the thing with the boots, which required me to mention my elevated status as ‘sort of part time ranch helper’ at the Tipped Z, and Clint’s appearance at my parent’s party.

  By the time I finished, it was 3:45. We had most of the cutting done. Anne, while listening, was increasingly distracted by the obvious fact that the certificate delivery had not happened at 3:30 as promised. She straightened, setting her glass cutter down and placing her hands on her lower back to stretch. “That’s quite a lot to process, Erin.”

  I nodded unhappily, flipping my second to last mat onto the finished pile. “At first I felt proud of myself for telling Trace off, but now I feel miserable.”

  Anne leaned one hip against the work table, regarding me with her direct gaze. “Well,” she said, “sometimes things need to be addressed, and cool-headed discussion doesn’t do them justice. You tried to talk to Trace, and she didn’t step up. Now you’ve made a more dramatic statement, to which she’s responded with exactly nothing?”

  I gave a little nod, feeding my last board into the cutter.

  “So I think you should consider writing her a letter or email, apologizing for the nasty text but spelling out your feelings, explaining how you’ve rarely felt so much in need of a friend and how it’s a big deal she hasn’t been there for you. Then leave it with her. Some people emerge from the daze of early parenthood and turn back into people who can have social lives. Some don’t. It’s the reality of family dynamics.”

  I nodded again, feeling like a bobble-head doll but also surprised to find my eyes stinging with the threat of tears. I didn’t want to cry in the work room with Anne, so I took a few deep breaths and said, “What if they don’t bring the certificates today?” just as the bell on the front door jingled.

  ❂

  Several hours later, Anne and I were in a booth at a sushi restaurant, sitting underneath a massive painting of a Japanese character in a frame that was coming apart at the corners. I had seen Anne notice this, but she’d made no comment. She’d ordered edamame and a drink almost before settling into her seat as I’d groped for the beer list and picked f
rom the unfamiliar names at random.

  It was quiet in the sushi restaurant. An older couple sat at a table across from the door, and four men in suits were tucked into the opposite corner.

  Once we’d gotten going on the framing, Anne and I had functioned like a well-oiled machine, flying through the 40 certificates in less than two hours. After talking about Trace and Ben, our conversation had moved to less charged topics. For the last hour, I’d even forgotten to feel awful about the fact that I wasn’t going to Julio’s. Then, towards the end of the pile of certificates, the prospect of reheated leftovers in my empty apartment had loomed. Fortunately, Anne had offered to buy me dinner to thank me for late night.

  Now, with the server departed, Anne released a small sigh and looked around, rubbing her thumbs. If they were anything like mine, they were raw with shallow glass and paper cuts. We’d framed more in a day than we usually did in a month.

  It was strange to be out in public with Anne. I was used to her presence in the gallery, where she was the head honcho, the one in charge. Here, we sat across from each other. People looking at us might think we were friends, or sisters.

  When I’d been younger, I had wished for an older sister. And now I suppose I did think of Anne in a similar capacity. I admired her. She did everything with an air of relaxed confidence. In her car on the way over, she’d driven with one hand on the steering wheel, the other near the gearshift, as if she was used to driving a stick but found herself unexpectedly in an automatic. But in spite of having known her for years, I knew very little about her interior life. I knew she wasn’t married, never had been. I knew she didn’t have kids. And given how she went after the things she wanted in life, I doubted she’d wanted either.

  “Did you ever want to be a mom?” I said this without thinking. I froze as soon as the question left my mouth, as if some exterior force had taken over my brain and forced the words out without my permission. I was not in the habit of asking people personal questions. It always felt like prying. But, on the other hand, Anne and I had spent the last many hours discussing the state of my relationships and friendships. It seemed only fair I show some interest in her world.

  Anne’s mouth tightened in a strange way I hadn’t seen before. She removed her straw from her water, setting it down on the table. “No,” she said. “I never did. And because of that, two relationships that would have progressed into marriage,” she paused, eyes on the little puddle of water her straw had made, “didn’t.”

  “Oh.” This, I reflected, was why I did not ask personal questions. Some people, like Ben and Anne and Nora, knew the right thing to say in any awkward conversational outcome. I tended to end up blinking and staring like an owl woken from sleep at high noon.

  Anne’s eyes were distant as she stared off over my shoulder. “When you’re young, they tell you it’s the women who can’t live without having kids.” Her voice reverted back to her normal tone as she went on. “But you know, in my experience it’s usually that men want to be fathers.”

  I wondered if that had been the case with Andrew and Trace. Trace had never been one to gush over babies before she had her own.

  Anne continued, seeming not in the least shy to share the details of her life, now that I had asked. She sipped her water. “But I think it’s for the best, anyway. Without kids, marriage is an institution of questionable value, particularly for the woman. I have learned to appreciate my autonomy.”

  Our drinks came, and Anne placed a rapid-fire sushi order I couldn’t follow in the slightest. When she finished she added, “That should be enough for both us of, Erin, but order anything else you’d like.”

  I hadn’t even looked at the sushi menu. Neither had Anne, that I had seen. I hoped I didn’t look as awkward as I felt as I said, “Oh, no. That all sounds great.”

  When the sushi came, it was great, which surprised me. My prior experience with sushi had been limited to California rolls and other tame selections deemed ‘friendly for beginners.’ Anne was no sushi beginner. As two large platters were set down before us, I stared at the array of colorful, sauce-covered presentations with surprise. Some were coated in avocado, some were deep fried, some had tiny, crunchy eggs clinging to their outer layer. I wondered if my dad had ever had sushi like this.

  We spent most of the dinner in companionable conversation, chatting about work. We made our way through our beers and the elaborate rolls, decimating the artistic tableau but enjoying ourselves enough to make up for the destruction.

  We were near the end of our second beer, and we’d both slowed down on eating, when Anne said, “Your friend, Trace. Have you tried to get to know her kid?”

  I looked at Anne, confused, setting the beer I’d been sipping back down onto the table. “Get to know her? She’s nine months old.”

  Anne began to consolidate the remaining sushi pieces on a plate so the server could carry away the empty platters. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “Kids are never too young to get to know. They don’t have speech yet, and they can’t do much by way of physically controlling themselves, but they’re people from the moment they’re born.”

  I decided I wanted another sliver of the fried roll. I moved one from the platter onto my own plate before Anne got around to moving it. “Trace always wants to go out, to get a babysitter.”

  Anne finished operation move-the-sushi, and set down her chopsticks, gazing off across the restaurant again, watching as the older couple left their table and made their slow way towards the exit. “Does she? Is that what she wants, or what she thinks you want?”

  I hadn’t thought of this. I recalled the brief time I’d spent at Trace’s a few days ago, and felt guilty. I had kept a good five feet away from the playpen at all times.

  Anne continued. “It could be that she’s over-parenting because she feels so overwhelmed and alone. You say the father doesn’t seem to be much use. So perhaps you could offer to come over once a week and spend an hour with the kid. At first, Trace will hover, and maybe it won’t amount to anything, but eventually she might be able to relax and trust you. Then she could do things like keep the laundry going or take a shower while you’re keeping an eye on the little one. From what I hear, that’s the kind of relief new mothers need.”

  I considered this. It seemed like good advice. I poked at the pile of ginger left on my plate with my chopsticks. “There’s one problem,” I said. “Trace isn’t talking to me.

  Anne waved a hand. “Oh, come on. Friends fight, friends get over it. All she needs is an apology.”

  My phone let out a tone in my purse.

  Anne gave me a little grin. “Maybe that’s her now.”

  I fished out my phone and looked at the screen. The text wasn’t from Trace. It was from Nora. It said, “Guess who asked to teach your lesson again tomorrow?”

  ❂

  “We’re going to try something a little different today.”

  Clint said this from his position next to the shoulder of a lean black horse that was tied in the aisle next to one of the empty stalls. Clint was snugging up the cinch as I watched the slow, smooth movements of his hands.

  The horse was the only horse in the barn. It stood quietly, one hip cocked, ears drooping.

  I had just walked in, and now came to a stop near the tack room door. Dots walked over to sniff my leg. She looked up at me, and her tail wagged once. Surprised, I almost crouched to rub her ears. Then I remembered how Clint had touched her at the party. I stooped instead, running one hand down her back, trying to imitate Clint’s gentle but solid kind of touch. I stopped after one stroke, and straightened. Dots gave another single wag of her tail, and trotted off to investigate something near the hay.

  I looked back at Clint and felt my face heat up. He had just finished adjusting a stirrup and was watching me, his expression intent. He’d clearly observed my interaction with Dots. I thought he was going to say something. But he didn’t. He kept his eyes on me a moment longer, then walked around to the other side of the horse.
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  “Something different?” I tried to make my tone both confident and casual. It came out wobbly and unsure.

  “This is one of my bridle horses.” Clint said this without looking at me, occupied with the other stirrup.

  I understood the term. Nora had explained on one of our longs rides that her family followed a training tradition that had developed in another part of the country, and had its roots in classical Spanish horsemanship. She’d explained that their horses went through a particular set of phases that took six or seven years to complete, and when the horses were ‘finished’ they were called ‘bridle horses,’ because they wore an elaborate sort of bit that allowed the rider to communicate complex movements with only the tiniest adjustments of hand and seat position.

  I had gotten the impression that bridle horses were a rare thing in today’s world. They took a real investment of time and skill to create, and were a sort of work of art in and of themselves. I knew, of course, that there were bridle horses around the Tipped Z. But they were a bit hard to tell from normal horses when no one was riding them.

  I looked at the tied gelding with more interest now. He was almost solid black, with one narrow ring of white around a hind ankle.

  “His name is Rascal,” Clint added, coming back around the horse’s rump and looking at me as if he expected a response.

  I looked at the horse’s profile. “Hi Rascal.”

  Clint was looking at me again. The briefest of smiles lit his face before it vanished so quickly I wasn’t sure I had even seen it.

  “You’re going to ride him.”

  “Try crossing your arms. That will help you keep them a little quieter.”

  It was ten minutes later, and we were in the round pen. I was on Rascal’s back, and although Rascal was supposedly a bridle horse, he had nothing on his head whatsoever.

  The round pen at the Tipped Z was the largest round pen I had ever seen. The sides were high, and made of solid wood: impossible to see over unless you were on a horse. The gate was shut. Clint was standing in the center, hands resting on the top of a flag, its handle set in the dirt.

  My task had seemed deceptively simple at first. I was to ride Rascal at a walk around the edge of a pen. When I was ready, I was to turn him around and walk the other way.

  But there were no reins. I had no reins in my hands. I was to accomplish this using legs and seat alone.

  “The horses you’ve been riding are safe,” Clint had said by way of explanation when I’d gone all quiet and goggle-eyed at the news I’d be riding Rascal.

  He had not elaborated further until I’d said, “He’s not safe?” nodding towards the dozing black horse.

  Clint had waited a moment before answering, as if weighing possible responses. He’d settled on, “He’s light as a feather.”

  This had not done much to clear the question up for me, but Clint had said no more. He’d untied the rope and led the horse out of the barn.

  Now, on Rascal’s back, I crossed my arms. I tried to relax, tried to feel the horse’s steps as Clint had instructed. I was supposed to time up with the inside front foot and feel for when it left the ground, then tip that foot in with my outside leg while I pushed the haunches under with my inside leg.

  I did all this. Or tried. Rascal, instead of turning off the fence, began to trot.

  Alarmed, I uncrossed my arms and clung to the horn. Despairingly, I looked at Clint. He was smiling. “That’s ok,” he said. “You forgot to shift your weight, and your timing was wrong. Just tell him you want to walk.”

  I was feeling flustered and powerless, and I was riding a bridle horse with no bridle on, and he was trotting. Just how I was supposed to tell him to walk was beyond me. “Rascal,” I said, “please walk.”

  “Hips, Erin.” Clint’s tone was amused. “Ask him with your hips.”

  It was possibly the most distracting thing he might have said. I immediately thought of some questions I might ask Clint with my hips.

  Annoyed with myself, I pushed those thoughts out of my mind. I focused on Rascal’s trot. To my surprise, the longer he trucked along, the less need I felt to cling. His gait was smooth and rhythmic. I rose into a shallow post, and I found it no trouble to time up with him.

  I went for about half the circumference of the round pen, then took a deep breath and stopped posting, slowing my hips to a walk.

  Rascal dropped the trot, downshifting more smoothly than Anne’s Lexus.

  “There,” Clint said.

  Gooseflesh rose on my arms. I had to resist the urge to flop forward and throw my arms around Rascal’s neck.

  Clint gave me a moment to revel in my success. Then he said, “Now let’s try for the turn again.”

  An hour later, I was feeling like the champion of the world. We’d progressed from turning to the inside of the pen to turning to the outside. From there we’d gone on walk-trot and trot-walk transitions, leaving the fence and trotting across the center of the arena, rollbacks at the fence, and trot-halt transitions. With some of the faster maneuvers, Clint came over and used the flag to drive Rascal’s front or hind until I got the hang of asking with my weight and legs, but after a while I didn’t need his help anymore.

  The longer I rode without reins, the more comfortable I felt. Rascal was smooth with everything he did, and all it took was a little shift of my weight to influence his direction or speed. It was an incredible feeling, as if we’d forged a telepathic link.

  It was a warm morning, and we had to be close to the end of the lesson. The heat was rising, and my shirt was soaked in sweat. We’d finished a rollback and I was walking along the rail again, waiting for instructions.

  Clint was in position at the center of the arena, hat casting a shadow over his face. As I looked at him inquiringly, he glanced at his watch. “I guess we’re about out of time, but why don’t you go ahead and lope him before you step down.”

  My newfound relaxation vanished faster than the sweat was evaporating off my skin. I wanted to turn and gape at Clint, but I had learned to keep my eyes on where I wanted to go. “Lope?” My voice came out in a squeak.

  “It’s a three beat gait, canted, with one front and one hind leg reaching further forward each stride.”

  Forgetting about keeping my eyes looking ahead, I turned to Clint, dumbfounded. That little smile was playing around his lips again.

  He was teasing me. This was Clint being playful. I blinked and looked away, unsure what to say.

  There was a beat of awkward silence that made me realize I should have laughed. Clint went on. “Ask him to pick it up nice and easy whenever you’re ready. Go into the trot first, if that’s more comfortable for you.”

  My hand gave a spasm, wanting to cling to the horn again. I resisted the urge to fling myself out of the saddle to save myself the embarrassment of falling.

  I wasn’t sure how to ask a horse for the canter without reins. I asked for the trot, and started posting.

  We trotted. I licked my lips. Sweat was running down the back of my neck, collecting in my already soaked collar.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Clint said again. “Keep your eyes looking ahead.”

  I looked up at the landscape visible past the round pen walls. I sat down, and squeezed.

  Rascal rocketed into the canter with so much force I was thrown backwards as he nearly shot out from under me. I choked down a small scream. For one horrible moment, I thought I was going to fall.

  But I didn’t. The saddle’s cantle caught me and scooped me forward. Rascal’s pace was fast but fluid, and as I relaxed into riding, he slowed down. Soon we were loping an even (if fast) pace around the outside of the round pen.

  “Good,” Clint said. “Now stop, and go the other way. And ask him with about 90% less energy than you used last time.”

  I called everything Clint had said about stopping into my mind. I picked a stride, and sat, hard, crunching my abs and saying, “Woah,” even though Clint and Nora had both told me their horses weren’t
trained to respond to verbal cues.

  Rascal stopped. He stopped hard, slamming to a halt from the lope so quickly, I bounced forward and hit the pommel.

  Working hard to stay calm and centered, I used my outside leg to step Rascal’s front around, then asked him to walk in the other direction.

  “Good,” Clint said.

  I asked for the trot. A few strides in, I tried for the canter again. This time I just thought about the gait, imagining lifting the horse into it with my hips.

  Rascal picked up the smoothest, most balanced canter I had ever felt.

  We went three laps. By the time Clint said I could stop, I was grinning from ear to ear.

  ❂

  “Boswell, Norman. Here.”

  I was pushing through the front gate, my arms full of two bags of laundry and my overnight bag. Surprised, I peered around my load to see the two Bull Terriers halt their mad dash to oversee my entrance into their domain. They looked over their shoulders at my mother, as if to assess whether or not they’d heard what they thought they’d heard.

  My mother did not repeat her command. She stared at them with as fierce an expression as I’d ever seen on her face.

  The two dogs turned as one and walked over to her, stopping to flank her like a pair of breathing bookends.

  I pushed the gate closed behind me, astounded. My mother must have read my expression. She said, “The party was embarrassing. Dots was the picture of good manners while these two,” she gave her two darlings a look full of daggers, “were roving around like lawless bandits. Nora gave me some training pointers.”

  Boswell sighed and glanced again in my direction, his expression pleading.

  “Don’t look at me,” I told him. “You made your own bed.”

  “What’s all that?” my mother said as I started across the patio, seeming to register the load in my arms for the first time.

  “The laundry room at my complex hasn’t had water for a week. I’m on my last clean bra.”

  My mom took one of the bags of laundry, and we went together into the house. It was Thursday afternoon. Something remarkable about Thursday that I had somehow failed to notice in my life up to this point is how far away it is from both Tuesday and Sunday.

  The week had been a struggle. The phrase ‘driven to distraction’ had taken on a whole new meaning for me lately. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything.

  After speaking with Anne, I had decided to write a letter to Trace, but so far all I’d managed to do was sit down at my desk and write her name on the top of a piece of paper.

  It was Clint. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. My ride on Rascal had escalated things to a whole new level of infatuation. I was even prepared to try to convince myself I was not infatuated, that I knew Clint well enough to like him, and that I liked him quite a lot.

  Everything I saw, everything anyone said, everything I heard, reminded me of him.

  I was turning into a head-case.

  “Your dad is picking up a frozen lasagna for dinner. I hope that sounds alright?” Mom had followed me into the laundry room and watched as I dumped my first load into the washer.

  “Sounds great.” I folded up my empty hamper bag and reached for the detergent.

  “Have you told the management there’s no water in the laundry room?”

  “It’s the talk of the complex.” I set the cycle and dropped the metal lid closed, then turned. My mother was blocking my way out of the room.

  “But does the manager know?”

  I looked at my mom. There was something a little strained about her expression. “Is everything alright, Mom?” I mentally double-checked that I had seen both Boswell and Norman on my way in.

  She turned then, walking back towards the kitchen with a wave of her hand. “Oh, they’re sending your father to Iraq again. He has to leave in the morning.”

  I listened to the water fill in the machine behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Should I go back to my place?”

  The front door opened as if on cue, and Dad walked in, grocery bags dangling from his hands. “Erin!” he said. “I hope you’re staying for dinner.”

  I looked at my mom. Her expression was unreadable. She walked around me and went outside to help unload the groceries.

  “But you just got back.” I poked at the remaining lasagna on my plate, separating the noodles from the cheese and the cheese from the meat.

  It had been a tense evening. Two things had emerged after my dad had gotten home. One, my mom was angry to have my dad leaving again so soon. Two, my dad had no desire to engage with her on the subject. To him, my presence was a godsend, a great excuse not to have to get into it. To her, it was a hindrance, something preventing her from airing her uninhibited views.

  It had seemed like they were sending my dad abroad more often. For many years he’d gone once every six months, as promised, but lately it seemed a lot more like once every two or three months. And this time he’d barely been home two weeks.

  The worst part of all of it was he couldn’t talk about why. He couldn’t explain what he was working on, couldn’t inform us about the great work he was doing and why it was indispensable to national security or the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people. He just had to go and come back, leaving us with only the vaguest idea of what he did while he was away.

  “Maybe I should ask that cowboy to stay with me while you’re gone.” My mother said this apropos of nothing, as far as I could tell. She was looking at my father with a hard expression. “He could protect Boswell and Norman from thieves, no doubt, and help me train them at the same time.”

  “You mean Clint?” I couldn’t imagine my mother was serious, but when she was in this sort of mood you never quite knew what she’d set her mind on. I thought she was trying to get a rise out of my father, get him to show some flicker of jealousy or discomfort at the thought of her living with an attractive young ranch hand.

  Instead, my dad looked up from his plate. “If you think that would make you feel better. It wouldn’t have to be him though, if he has better things to do. Maybe Erin could stay with you while I’m away.”

  They both looked at me. Dad’s expression was inquiring, Mom’s was unreadable. I felt that my response was central to some larger question I wasn’t aware they’d been arguing over. “Of course I could stay here.” My tone was uncertain.

  “Oh don’t be ridiculous, Carter,” Mom said, standing up and picking up her plate. “Erin is a grown woman. She has better things to do than keep her lonely mother company.” With that, she went to the kitchen. She wasn’t exactly storming out, but a moment later we heard her go into her workshop and close the door.

  Dad gave me a guilty look. “She’s unhappy I’ve been called on to go again so soon.” He said this as if it wasn’t obvious.

  “I suppose you can’t blame her.” I kept my tone neutral. Behind me, Boswell or Norman whined at the workshop door. It was opened to admit the two dogs, then closed again.

  Dad set down his fork and scooped more lasagna onto his plate. “It’s something I have no control over,” he said. “Hopefully she doesn’t fillet me before I can reach retirement age.” Before I could respond, he shifted gears. “So what about that cowboy then?”

  I tried to keep an impassive exterior as the blood in the veins lit like napalm. “What about him?”

  My dad gave me a sly look. “Oh come on, Erin. He’s attractive, reserved, good with animals, of suitable age, has a fun, friendly sister. You can’t tell me you’re not at least a little bit interested.”

  I could try to deny it, but it would be no good. I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks. “He’s been asking Nora to teach my Tuesday lessons instead of her. Today he let me ride his bridle horse. That’s a big deal.” I added the last part when my dad’s expression revealed he had no idea what a bridle horse was.

  Dad let out a low whistle. “That sounds promising.” He reached across the table and tipped more wine into my glass. “And how d
id it go?”

  ❂

  I pulled up next to the mailbox and rolled down my car window, hesitating a moment before reaching out with the envelope and dropping it into the slot. I rolled my window up again and drove away a little faster than necessary, as if resisting the impulse to go back, feed my arm through the narrow box mouth and fish the letter I’d just sent Trace out from among all the other mail.

  It was sent now, and there was no un-sending it. I felt as if a small weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I turned onto the main road and punched the radio on, hoping to lose myself in some music. I turned if off again a moment later after flipping through eight channels and finding nothing but obnoxious morning shows.

  It was Monday, and the morning was cool. The summer heat had broken, and it looked like we were in for some pleasant weather. Yesterday, I’d ridden with Nora again. It had been cool all day, and we’d ridden for hours. She’d taken me out to one of the far pastures. Our job had been to check the cattle and the fence. Everything had been in order, so it had amounted to just a long, long day of riding. I’d been on Paul, who liked to get out and explore. He was an unremarkable-looking bay horse, with good gaits and a willing disposition. I had enjoyed riding him, but found myself wishing to be astride Rascal more than once that day. It wasn’t that I could find any fault with Paul. He was well mannered and polite. But he wasn’t Rascal. There was something missing. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  I pulled into the gallery parking lot, stopping in an empty spot on the far side. I gathered up my purse and left my car, heading for the entrance to the central patio. As I walked, I noticed a black truck zip out of a parking place near the exit and pull onto the main road. Some little intuition caused my skin to prickle.

  Sure enough, as I stepped through the little archway and wound my way through the lush arbor the owner of the strip mall cultivated, I saw them. What started as a bright splash of color among all the green soon revealed itself to be a huge bouquet of yellow and orange and pink roses, set right on the mat in front of the gallery.

  Grumbling under my breath, I stepped around the blooms to unlock the door. Not knowing what else to do, I took the vase inside.

  I set the massive bunch of flowers on the floor inside the door and did my normal morning circuit. I turned on the lights and the air compressor, sorted the mail, picked the spammy faxes up off the office floor and put them in the recycling bin, and checked the answering machine. All of this took approximately five minutes, and all that time the knowledge of the flowers loomed larger and larger in my mind.

  Finally, there was nothing for it. I made my way back across the quiet gallery. Our current featured artist was a metal-smith who made tiny tableaus of people in ridiculously small, dreamlike settings, crafting alloys and patinas and enamels to make vivid, detailed scenes. These were set on slim, upright pedestals dotted throughout the gallery floor. I had to wend my way around them to get back to the flowers.

  I passed the last sculpture and looked down, glaring at the blameless roses as if they had chosen to disrupt my morning of their own volition. With even more reluctance than I’d dropped Trace’s letter into the mailbox, I stooped and fished the little card from where it was tucked between two stiff stems.

  They were from Ben, of course. The message was brief, but he’d written it himself. “Please let me explain. Then I will respect your decision.”

  I resisted the urge to kick the flowers over. I stared at the note for several minutes, reading the two sentences over and over. Feeling defeated, I picked up the flowers and carried them to Anne’s office, setting them on her desk. I considered making a counterfeit note and leaving it to replace the one Ben had left me. Something like, “To Anne, for being such a fabulous boss.”

  But it seemed too disingenuous. I left them there, devoid of note, and retreated to the frame room in search of something to calm the frantic scrambling of my mind.

  “Erin?” Anne’s voice sounded from her office. I looked up from the mat I was cutting, no doubt wearing the expression of Rapunzel’s father caught in the garden.

  I waited. I had heard Anne come in a few moments before, heard her go into her office. Now I heard her footsteps draw near the frame room. A moment later, she appeared in the doorway, her upper body obscured by the bright array of roses. She gave me a look, and said in a mock serious tone, “These seem to be missing a card.”

  I looked at the flowers. I still couldn’t get over the sheer size of the cluster. Ben must have spent a fortune on them. I dropped my gaze back to the work bench. “Ben left them for me.”

  Anne walked through the doorway, and set the flowers on the side table. “But you thought he meant to leave them for me?”

  I pointed at the card, which I’d left sitting on the edge of the work table. She picked it up and read, eyebrows knitting as she absorbed the two lines. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “Talked?” I said. “Let’s see, that would be when he was leaving a pair of expensive cowboy boots on my doorstep.”

  Anne leaned against the doorframe. She was wearing all black again – black slacks, black top, black boots. “But you didn’t talk to him, right? He gave you the boots and left?”

  I thought back, nodding.

  “And you didn’t talk to him when you went to his house to return the letter?”

  “I talked to his wife, Anne. His wife.” I found myself starting to feel defensive and frantic for some reason. I set down the straight razor I’d been using to scape some tape residue off a piece of glass.

  Anne held up a hand as if to defend herself from my accusing expression. “I’m not trying to persuade you of anything, but look at the facts. First, you date this guy for a several months. He never mentions his wife. He takes you out in public a lot. He makes a point to show his face at your place of work. He meets your family. At no point does he hesitate to be seen with you in any capacity. Then you discover he has a wife, and instead of slinking away, he keeps trying to reach out to you, saying he can explain. Who knows? Maybe his explanation is something that doesn’t sound good to you, like he has an open marriage. But maybe, just maybe, there is something he could say that makes the circumstances better than they appear.”

  I glared at her across the table. “You think I should forgive him.”

  Anne shook her head. “I think nothing of the sort. I want to know what his story is. Don’t you?” She grinned at me as she said this. “And plus, right now he has power over you. He feels you owe him a chance to tell you the truth. That leaves you in a defensive position. If you let him say his piece and then reject him, he has no ground left to stand on.” She nodded at the roses. “And he’ll have less incentive to keep leaving you these reminders of his existence.”

  I stared at the bright flowers. They were arranged to perfection, every single bloom in that not-quite-open state that would make it last the longest.

  “And at the very least,” she said, turning to go back to her office, “it’ll make for a better story if you know the real facts.”

  ❂

  I punched in the gate code and sat as the mechanical arm rotated, taking the gate with it and opening my path onto the Tipped Z. I waited until there was space for my Hyundai, and eased my booted foot off the brake.

  It was Tuesday morning, and I was a nervous wreck.

  The night before, I’d gone home after work and created another high-school worthy diary entry, pouring my heart out onto the page. I had written about Ben and Clint and my father going back to Iraq, and ended up falling asleep across my notebook like I used to collapse into slumber when I was a little kid who didn’t know when to stop reading.

  I had decided Anne was right. I had to talk to Ben, if only to give myself closure. I’d promised myself I’d text him today, after my riding lesson, and see when he wanted to get together.

  So that was one thing to be nervous about. The other thing was I hadn’t heard from Nora on the subject of who was going to b
e teaching my lesson this morning. This fact made me approximately a million times more nervous than the prospect of seeing Ben again.

  The thing was, I was aware of what a big deal it had been for Clint to put me on his bridle horse. I was aware that trainers like Clint did not usually suffer amateurs around their mounts. For some reason, he’d gone off the beaten path with me, decided to let me feel something special.

  The question was why? I didn’t get the feeling that Clint had many (or any) students. I didn’t get the feeling that, in general, he sought the role of teacher. But he was going out of his way to teach me. That had to be a good thing?

  But I hadn’t heard from Nora about today’s lesson, hadn’t gotten a text saying Clint would be teaching me again today. Which meant one of three things. 1) Clint was busy with something else. 2) Clint was teaching me but Nora hadn’t felt the need to mention it. 3) I had done something horrible during my last lesson and Clint would never teach me again.

  I was aware that number one was by far the most likely option, but still, my mouth was as dry as if I’d been sucking cotton balls when I came around the bend and saw an empty parking area before me.

  The notable absence of Nora’s truck sent my heartbeat ratcheting up a few more notches.

  I parked my car. Pulse racing, I sat behind the steering wheel and took a few deep breaths. It was ridiculous, really, that I was this wound up over the simple question of who would be watching me make a fool of myself on horseback today.

  I stepped out of my car and looked towards the barn. Three wire-haired dogs stood in the doorway, their half-perked ears at attention. Dots was among them. I had learned to associate Dots with Clint’s presence. As I walked towards the dark doorway, I tried to remember if she’d ever been in the barn when he had not.

  I felt faint. I squared my shoulders, and stepped inside.

  The hay room was empty except for the hay. The large bay doors were open, letting in the weak morning light. I walked around the corner and looked into the aisle between the stalls. That space was empty as well.

  My heart sank a little, like a hot air balloon allowed to release some heat. Nora must be running late.

  Then I noticed the dogs. All three of them had trotted over to the bay doors. I turned in that direction and heard it: the unmistakable thud of a horse stamping its foot.

  I followed the dogs, and when I stepped out of the barn and looked to my right, I saw Clint at the hitching post, adjusting Paul’s bridle while Rascal stood quietly behind him, hip cocked.

  Clint looked up when he saw me, and his face broke into a smile. “It’s such a beautiful morning,” he said. “I thought we might ride out, if that’s ok with you.”

  “When they get out of balance it’s usually because they aren’t using their hindquarters properly,” Clint said. “It makes them heavy on the forehand, which means they are tripping a little and falling forward with every step.”

  I looked down at Paul’s head. Clint and I were trotting side by side along the bottom of a wide, smooth wash, flinging sand up behind us. The bay gelding was distracted, his head pointing off towards the east as we walked.

  “When that’s happening,” Clint continued, “they try to compensate by going faster and faster. That’s why they can feel like they’re running away from you even when you’re at a low pace.”

  Paul was in a bit of a mood this morning. On all our previous rides he’d been willing enough to go, but docile and even lazy at times. This morning it was cool, the night’s chill still clinging in the low places and the shadows. The temperature appeared to have a stimulating effect on Paul. Every gait I put him in, he wanted to go faster.

  “So instead of pulling back on two reins,” Clint said, “make him think a little. Tip his nose one way and push his haunches back underneath you with your foot. No, just one rein. Loosen up on the other. Don’t forget your foot. Push his haunch under you, harder, harder. A little more with the nose. There. Release. Release.”

  I let the reins out, feeling a softening in Paul’s body. For about three strides, he felt like the horse I was used to, soft and balanced and smooth. Then he began to pick up the pace again.

  “Alright,” Clint said, “now do it again. Use the other rein and other heel this time. You can’t do this too much. It’ll make him soft to your hand and your leg, and keep him from getting ahead of you all the time.”

  We had ridden away from the Tipped Z on a trail I’d never taken before, heading south and passing through a series of gates. Now we’d dropped into a wash that ran between two ridges with large cottonwood trees lining the edges.

  It was beautiful country. I wished for one sour moment that Paul would calm down a little so I could enjoy the scenery. I pushed this thought out of my mind, and tried again to do what Clint was asking. It was easier the second time. Paul’s nose tipped to the right, and I felt his hindquarters step up beneath me. “There,” Clint said. “That one was nice.”

  I felt a thrill run up my spine, and had to consciously prevent the muscles in my face from breaking into a dopey grin. Clint seemed to catch my sentiment anyway. He looked across at me from Rascal’s back, holding my eye for a second and smiling. I felt fire shoot through my veins again. “And make sure he’s trotting at the speed you’re riding him, not vice versa.”

  We kept going, trotting around a series of large boulders scattered in the wash-bed. Clint pushed Rascal ahead to lead us through a section where a cottonwood had dropped a great branch in among the rocks. Then, just as I was clear of the obstacles, he pointed Rascal at the bank and pushed him into a lope. They surged up the sandy incline with me hot on their heels.

  At the top, Clint slowed to a walk. We continued deep into a thicket of cottonwood trees. The air was cool and sweet, the ground littered with yellow leaves. The trunks were pale and smooth. There was no sound but the thud of hooves and the rustling of the branches above.

  We wound our way into the grove and up to a series of tumbled rocks. Here, Clint swung down, let Rascal’s cinch out a couple of holes, unhooked a set of hobbles from the back of his saddle, and buckled them around his horse’s front ankles. He accomplished all this in the time it took me to realize we were taking a break. I scrambled off of Paul’s back. As I imitated Clint by letting the cinch out, he came up behind me, leaving Rascal standing in the shade. He unhooked another pair of hobbles that had been hanging on the back of my saddle. He was so close for a moment I could feel the fringe of his chinks brushing my pant leg. Then he drew away again, and knelt to buckle Paul’s hobbles in place.

  We stepped away from the horses, and walked towards the pile of rubble. I noticed the stones were laid out in a rectangular formation. As we drew near, this emerged as the leftover footprint of a one-room house. A fireplace and doorway were visible along one wall.

  Clint stopped, propping his boot up on a stray stone. “This is the original Tipped Z.”

  I halted next to him, looking down at the outline of the structure. It would have had an interior about the size of my parent’s kitchen. “Really?”

  “Ranch headquarters.” Clint kicked the rock as if it could somehow corroborate his story. “Back when everything came and went via horseback or mule train. They moved to where we are now when there came a need for a real road.”

  I looked around the cottonwood grove. A ridge reared up on one side, the wash ran on the other. It would have been a sheltered place. It was quiet now, even though the hum and rumble of modern life couldn’t be more than ten miles away. I glanced at the horses. They stood in their hobbles, side by side, relaxed, and happy for the breather.

  Clint shifted, moving his boot off the rock and somehow ending up a lot closer to me. I felt the hairs on my arms rise, scoping towards him as if pulled by an electrical current. “I used to ride out here all the time when I was a kid,” he said. “I tried to rebuild that corner over there. Had a tarp stretched over the top for a while. It was my hideout.”

  His voice was a low rumble beneath the
sigh of the cottonwood leaves. My eyes followed his gesture. I could see now that the far corner had been shored up a little with smaller stones of the type a boy could lift and carry without help.

  Clint was close, and he was looking at me. His eyes were soft, his expression open, as if he was waiting for something. My heart gave a little thrill, a sort of clenching that sent a delicious tremor of anticipation through my body. I said, “Seems like a pretty good place to get away to.”

  Clint took another step, closing the last gap between us. I felt him take my hand in one of his, felt his rough fingers on my palm. His voice was right next to my ear when he said, “I thought you might like it here.”

  I turned my head, and for a second our faces were separated by only a breath.

  Then he kissed me.

  I had thought I knew what kissing Clint would be like. I’d thought about him so often while kissing Ben, and while not kissing Ben, that the reality of his mouth and his hands and his scent took me by surprise.

  It was not what I had imagined, but something even better.

  It was the sweetest, most perfect kiss: firm enough I didn’t have to reach for him, but smooth and slow and gentle. It was a kiss of exploration, of seeing how we fit together.

  Time seemed to slow down. Somewhere in the distance, a woodpecker rattled against a tree trunk. One of the horses sighed. The breeze stirred our hair and the place seemed to wrap us up in its quiet, in its waiting. I wondered how many kisses these trees had seen, how many triumphs and tragedies had played out around this little stone house.

  Clint drew back, letting the kiss end and looking me in the eye. He held my gaze for a second, his expression quiet, centered, certain. His smile flicked into brief existence. He ran a thumb along my jaw, turned away from me and, still holding my hand, said, “The well was over here.”

  ❂

  My phone rang, making me jump. I’d been sitting at my kitchen table for at least fifteen minutes since I’d finished my sandwich, gazing out the window in a rose-colored haze. I blinked a few times, my mind returning to reality.

  It was Trace’s ringtone. I scrambled out of my chair, following the sound towards my bedroom. I had all but forgotten about my letter to Trace in all the insanity with Ben’s roses and Clint’s kiss. Now my heart gave a jerk – half guilt, half nerves.

  My knees felt a little wobbly as I walked. I was still giddy with the events of the morning. Clint and I had spent about half an hour exploring the old cottonwood grove, then we’d ridden back to the ranch. He’d kissed me again, briefly, when he’d walked me to my car. That was all, but it was enough to make me feel like a schoolgirl with my first reciprocated crush.

  My cell phone was plugged in on my bedside table, charging. I sat down on my bed and picked it up. It said, “Trace,” across the screen, overlaid on a photo I had taken of her at Disney Land when we’d driven to California on a lark, to celebrate her breakup with the terrible guy she’d dated before Andrew. She looked young in the photo. Thunder Mountain was in the background, and she was holding a Mickey Mouse shaped chocolate pop.

  I swiped the green phone icon. “Hi Trace.”

  There was a long silence on the other end, and for a minute I thought she’d pocket dialed me. Then I heard a long, shuddering sigh. “I got your letter,” she said. “And you’re right about everything. What are you doing? Could you come over?”

  I decided to ride my bike to Trace’s. It was far enough that it would be murder in the summer, but today a low bank of clouds had settled around the mountains, and the air was almost cool as the day progressed to afternoon. Plus, it would give me time to think, to get my mind out of giddy post-first-kiss territory and into the zone where I repaired things with Trace and learned to be interested in Olivia.

  The first part of my route wound along the bike path, going past Julio’s and continuing along the wash. I remembered my ride home, weeks ago now, when I’d fantasized about Clint riding his horse up the bank and leaping into the path to accost me. Shivers ran up my arms as the reality of the kiss in the cottonwood grove sank in further.

  Clint had kissed me. Clint. He’d taken me to his childhood hideout, his most secret place in the world, and he’d kissed me.

  I wondered, suddenly, why Clint was single. He wasn’t lacking in the looks department, and hadn’t proven to be shy in terms of moving things with me forward. I realized I didn’t know a thing about his relationship history, or even where he lived for that matter. I thought he lived on the ranch. Did that mean he lived with his parents?

  I reached the end of the bike path and had to navigate my wending way through an older neighborhood, coasting over speed humps and being barked at by bored dogs in fenced yards. I made a few twists and turns, crossed a large, humming street, and was back on another bike path. This one wound around the perimeter of Trace’s subdivision and would take me (albeit indirectly) to her street.

  I was only lightly sweat-slicked by the time I stepped off my bike and pushed it to her front door, leaving it leaning against the wall that encircled the back yard. I spent a moment smoothing my hair before I rang the bell.

  Trace answered quickly, opening the door and stepping back to let me in. She looked disheveled, her normally perfect hair a bit rumpled. “Olivia’s napping,” she said. “Let’s go sit in the back.”

  We walked through the house. I had to resist the urge to tip-toe like a cartoon character. In the past, such antics would have made Trace laugh, but now more than ever I was aware we were entering new territory. Our friendship was going to have to evolve if we wanted it to last.

  Trace eased open the sliding glass door, and we went out back. Their yard was mostly dirt, with a few small shrubs that would eventually grow into something resembling landscaping placed strategically along the perimeter. The yard was walled, with six feet of stucco cutting us off from the neighbors. It gave me a claustrophobic feeling. I situated myself so I had a view of the mountains as Trace set her ipad down on the little table between us. On it was a black and white image of Olivia sleeping in a crib. I pointed, amazed. “Is that live?”

  Trace nodded, but she seemed distracted. She was picking at her cuticles, something she hadn’t done since we were sophomores in high school and she’d been going through her parents’ divorce. I got a prickly sensation on my neck of a very different sort than the one I’d felt before Clint had kissed me. I tried to look her in the eye, but she kept her eyes down. “Trace,” I said. “Are you alright?”

  “I think I need to divorce Andrew.” It came out in the barest hint of a whisper.

  I leaned forward, not sure I’d heard her correctly. “Say that again?”

  She shook her head, as if once had been all she could manage. It hung there in the air for a moment. I felt tired. Here I’d had hopes of telling Trace about my day with Clint.

  I felt guilty for even thinking such a thing. I kept my eyes on Trace’s downcast profile, intent on rising to the occasion. “What makes you say that?”

  Trace contorted herself so she could fish a tissue out of her jeans pocket. She dabbed at her eyes. “He just.” She stopped, chin trembling.

  I waited for her to go. She did not. “But you love Andrew,” I said. I could well remember their giddy courtship, how happy he’d made her.

  She shook her head. “I loved the Andrew I married. Now….” She broke off again.

  I waited. I could hear the sound of young voices calling, and the happy cries of playing children far enough away to not be irritating. Trace took another shuddering breath. “What you said in the letter, about not making an effort to get to know Olivia, about thinking of her only in terms of how she changed things between us,” she paused, dabbing at her eyes again. “That’s exactly how Andrew seems to think of her, too. It’s like he resents her because she takes so much of my time.”

  I reflected that letters are not an ideal means of communication. It is so easy to sit alone at one’s desk and examine one’s soul, to reflect honestly and ope
nly on your relationship with a person and write it all down. It’s quite different to realize the person you were thinking of in the abstract has actually read what you wrote, absorbed it, and can now repeat it back to you.

  “That doesn’t sound like a great quality in a father.” I noticed a black smudge of chain grease on my calf, and tried to rub it off without success. “But does that mean you need a divorce? Wouldn’t it make sense to at least try to fix things first?”

  “I have been trying to fix things,” Trace said, her voice gaining some volume. “He’s never home. And when he is, he won’t talk to me. I think he might be having an affair.”

  I sat back, stunned. Trace and Andrew were a good couple: one of those rare pairs that everyone agrees is a perfect match. They had been one of my bastions of hope, one example that kept me believing people could find a suitable partners in real life. I didn’t want this to be true.

  “Ok,” I said, trying to regain some control of the situation. “It seems to me we have two distinct problems here. First, Andrew’s relationship with Olivia. Second, his relationship with you. Granted,” I said as I saw Trace preparing to argue, “they are connected, but I think it’s worth thinking of them separately.”

  Trace rubbed her eyes in a weary way that made me think the ‘logical discussion’ approach was not what she needed right now. “I was actually wondering if you could talk to him for me.”

  I stared at her. “Talk to him? Me?”

  “Yeah.” Trace looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and tired. “You both like beer. He has that microbrewery where he hangs out practically every night after work. Maybe you could meet him there, try to get some idea of what’s up with him. Would you do that for me, Erin?”

  I looked away, gazing blankly at one of the stunted shrubs in the corner of the yard. I felt increasingly that in spite of the fact that I was ostensibly an adult, my life felt less and less under my own control. “Of course, Trace. I’ll go today.”

  ❂

  “Hi Erin.”

  I looked up from the Kindle app on my phone to see Andrew standing next to my table, a pint in one hand and a pained expression on his face. I made a gesture to indicate he should sit down, and put my phone away.

  I’d been sitting alone, nursing a pint for about half an hour. Being alone hadn’t bothered me for once. It was preferable to the alternative in this particular circumstance.

  I was not thrilled at the prospect of talking to Andrew about his relationship with Trace, and he looked about as happy as I felt. Behind him I could see a table full of other guys about Andrew’s age, some of whom were craning their necks in my direction, as if trying to catch a glimpse of an elusive animal through the bars at the zoo.

  Andrew sat and took a sip of his beer. It was something dark and malty. He seemed to look at everything in the room but me. I could hardly blame him.

  I had always liked Andrew. He was pale skinned, with reddish hair and a slight build, but he spent enough time in the gym to have broad shoulders and contoured forearms. Usually he was quick to smile, friendly, and engaging. I’d heard from Trace that he was good at his job, managing to motivate and inspire the team of designers and programmers whose work he oversaw.

  Today, he looked at a loss for words for the first time I could recall. That was bad, because I was not known for my skills navigating awkward conversations. He cleared his throat, and for a moment I thought he would say something, but he took another sip of beer and lapsed back into silence.

  “How’s it going?” I managed, realizing even a difficult conversation can start with pleasantries.

  “Fine,” Andrew said, grasping at my lame attempt at conversation like a drowning man clings to a water-soaked log. “How’ve you been? Seems like I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Seems like you haven’t seen much of anyone outside of work in a while.” This answer shot back before I could consider the pros and cons of straying from niceties to the actual meat of the issue.

  Andrew looked startled. He rotated his pint glass between his palms. “The workload at a startup can be overwhelming.”

  “But you have a lot of time to hang out here.” Even as I spoke, I realized I was likely approaching this from the wrong angle. Getting people defensive was rarely a good way to encourage them to spill their guts.

  Sure enough, Andrew’s face hardened. He looked directly at me for the first time all day. “What is it, precisely, that you’re here to say, Erin?”

  I realized Trace must have phrased her texts to make him think this was my idea. I was willing to do a lot for a friend, but letting her husband think I was proactively interfering in her marriage was not on that list.

  I backpedaled, trying to rewind, to start this the right way. “Look, Andrew. I’m sorry. Trace asked me to talk to you. She….” I paused. Andrew’s friends had stopped looking over at us and the place was quiet otherwise. I leaned forward and said in a low voice, “She thinks you’re having an affair and she might need to divorce you.”

  Andrew rocked back in his chair as if I’d dropped a pipe bomb in his lap. His blue eyes were wide and bright and startled. “What?” His voice came out in a desperate hiss. “What? How could she?” He made a desperate gesture with his hand as if to somehow summarize everything he couldn’t put into words. He swallowed and rubbed his forehead, keeping his eyes closed for a moment.

  “She says you’re not the man she married.” I decided since I was dropping bombs, I might as well empty my arsenal and get it over with.

  He said something from behind his hands, too muffled to make out.

  “Sorry?” I said.

  He sat up a little straighter and let his hands fall to the table. “I said, she’s not the woman I married either.”

  I looked at Andrew. He seemed to be vacillating between annoyance and exhaustion. I wondered how good an actor he was. I’d never pegged him as someone practiced in deceit, but you never knew with people. Still, if he was having an affair, he was handling my accusations like a pro.

  “Trace says you don’t show any interest in Olivia, that you….”

  The look on Andrew’s face stopped me in midsentence. He had leaned forward, and for the first time all day, he looked furious. “Don’t show any interest? Don’t show any interest?” His voice had risen a notch and he made a visible effort to bring it back down. “Erin, you’ve seen her. She’s insane. If I even try to hold my own kid, she’s standing there right over my shoulder, hovering like I’m going to just forget that a baby is a living creature and set her down on the table and walk away. I can’t get near Olivia without being spied on and micromanaged. I tried to change her diaper once, and Trace redid the entire thing because I did up the little sticky tab thingies in the wrong order. The wrong order!” He let out a sort of groan and dropped his face into his hands again. I sat in silence, too surprised to talk, processing this new information. “Do you know,” Andrew said after a minute, “she sets an alarm to wake her up every hour, all night, so she can go check on Olivia? And usually Olivia is sleeping fine. And half an hour later, Olivia does wake up and starts to cry and Trace goes to her, of course. I don’t know if she’s gotten more than an hour of consecutive sleep since Olivia was born.”

  “Wow.” I took a sip of my beer. It was cold, the flavor sharp.

  Andrew was rolling now. He also sipped his beer, and continued. “You know why I’ve been working so late? It’s because I stay after to nap. I’m so exhausted, and I know I won’t get any sleep at home. I literally have a sleeping bag in my office. I go in early and sleep for an hour, then stay late and try for another nap. Then I come here because I know as soon as I go home, Trace is going to be watching me like a hawk, waiting for me to go near Olivia so she can criticize the expression on my face when I look at her.”

  A couple walked into the bar, the man setting his hand on the small of the woman’s back as he followed her between the tables. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a quick smile. I could remember when
Trace and Andrew had been that happy.

  “Andrew,” I said, thinking. “Everything you’ve said, that’s all pretty weird? Extreme behavior, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”

  Andrew shrugged. His anger had faded and I could see the fatigue lines etched around his eyes and mouth. “I’ve never been around a mom with a newborn before. I don’t really know what’s normal.”

  I reached back into my purse for my phone. “No,” I said. “This isn’t normal. I think something is wrong.”

  ❂

  “Have you ever heard of postpartum depression?”

  I was in the kitchen at my parents’ house. It was Wednesday night, and I had invited myself over to cook for my mom. She was sitting at the kitchen counter, flipping through a book on dog training.

  She looked up when I asked this question, peering at me over her reading glasses. “Of course I’ve heard of it. I had it.”

  “Oh.” I paused in the act of chopping an onion. Given that my mother had only had one child, there was no mystery as to who had been the cause of her downswing. “Sorry about that.”

  My mom made a little scoffing sound. “It wasn’t your fault. You were just a baby.”

  I set the chopped onion aside and started on the red pepper, enjoying the sharp edge on my dad’s good chef’s knife. I knew I’d been an unwanted child, and on my new quest to educate myself about postpartum depression, I had read that unplanned pregnancies were more likely to trigger the disorder, which made sense for all sorts of reasons. “Well, I think Trace has it.”

  My mother marked her page and let the book close, but made no comment.

  I went on. “Andrew and I had a long talk the other day. Trace is overprotective and paranoid and has hardly left the house since Olivia was born. She’s fired dozens of babysitters, sets an alarm at night to wake up every hour to check on Olivia, won’t let Andrew do anything to help, and then gets mad at him for not helping.”

  “Sounds like an extreme case. How old is Olivia now?” My mom picked a few pistachios from the mixed nuts, eating them one by one. My father hated it when she did this. He was a ‘eat a whole handful’ kind of guy. But he wasn’t there to chide her.

  “Nine months.” I dropped the onions and peppers into a skillet and began slivering mushrooms.

  Mom looked up, startled. “That’s old. My depression only lasted a few weeks. Trace needs to get some treatment.”

  I paused as a piece of mushroom escaped the cutting board and fell to the floor. A month ago, it would have been immediately devoured by a white, four-legged garbage disposal. But Boswell and Norman had lost kitchen privileges. They no longer walked past the stools where my mom sat. They were currently curled up by her legs, not showing any interest in what I might be doing in the kitchen. I stooped to retrieve the errant fungi and tossed it into the sink.

  “I know,” I said. “Tomorrow, Andrew and I are going to talk to her, stage an intervention, try to convince her she needs help. The problem is, she thinks it’s everyone else who has the problem.”

  My mom ate another pistachio. “Most depressed people do.” She was quiet for a moment, and the kitchen was still except for the clicking of the oven heating up. “Maybe we should have them over for dinner,” she said. “All three of them. I haven’t seen Trace in a while, and I think one of the biggest helps with postpartum depression is just getting out of the house.”

  I looked over at my mom. Usually, she was the one who preferred to stay in, to slip off to her studio, to avoid people and social situations. She really must be missing my dad.

  “Sounds great,” I said.

  ❂

  I ducked my way past a couple waiting by the server’s podium and peered into the dining room, moving forward with some trepidation when I saw Ben seated at a small table by the window. He saw me coming, and stood to wait for me. When I was only a few steps away, he said, “Erin.” His face was grave, and I had the idea he was thinking about a hug. I must have stiffened visibly, because he settled for pulling out my chair.

  I sat down, trying not to process the fact that Ben looked good. His golden hair was mussed to perfection. He was dressed a notch up from usual, his striped shirt tucked into a pair of slacks that showed off his hips and had the look of having been custom tailored.

  Ben had suggested a five star restaurant for our conversation. I had countered with Julio’s. We’d compromised on a little bistro called ‘The Stone Table.’ It was Friday night, and it was busy enough that most tables were full. I had arrived right on time, but there was already a bread basket and an open bottle of wine on the table.

  Ben stood one moment longer, gazing at me like a marooned sailor catching his first sight of land. “It’s good to see you. Thank you for letting me talk to you.”

  I felt a strange twinge of guilt, as if I’d drawn this out on purpose to make him suffer. The truth was, I’d had a lot going on, and not dealing with Ben had been easier than dealing with him. The boots he’d given me were still shoved in the back of my closet. The flowers I’d left in the gallery, where they were growing less perfect by the day.

  I unfolded my napkin and set it in my lap as Ben sat down, reaching across the table to pour me a glass of wine. “I hope everything is ok with you? With your family?” His cufflink glittered in the light from a candle set above us in a sconce on the wall. I was wearing a somewhat worn pair of chinos and a plain top, and now felt underdressed.

  “Look, Ben, I appreciate all this,” I waved a hand to indicate the environment as a whole, “but I’m having trouble understanding how a charming dinner conversation can do anything to ameliorate the fact that you’re married and you didn’t feel the need to mention this to me before we started doing things like going out on dates and sleeping together.”

  Ben’s smile faded. He set the bottle back on the table. The server appeared then, and asked if we would like an appetizer. I shook my head, but Ben ordered the baked brie. I consoled myself with the knowledge that I had the right to be unimpressed with his explanation, and could storm out at any time.

  “Ok,” Ben said when the server left. “I’m so sorry, Erin. You’re right. I should have told you. But I didn’t at first because,” he paused and took a small, shapely roll from the basket, setting it down on his bread plate. He swallowed, then stalled. “I want to say something up front here. I know I haven’t been honest with you, and that’s caused problems. So today I’m going to be honest, even if it means I don’t come off sounding great all the time.”

  He looked at me, as if waiting for permission to continue. I gave a small nod and took a sip of wine. It was dark and spicy. I resisted the urge to rotate the bottle around so I could read the label.

  Ben gave a short sigh and tore his bread into bite-sized pieces, leaving them on his plate. Steam from the still-warm interior drifted up, scenting the air with a sweet, crisp smell. “Ok,” he said. “I didn’t tell you about Kim at first because it seemed like too much information. I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I wanted to get out a little, get my head around the idea of being single again.”

  “Single?” I paused in the act of reaching for my own loaf.

  Ben looked across the table more intently. “Yes, single. You didn’t think we’re still together, did you? We filed for divorce months ago.”

  I felt as if someone had placed a cold, heavy stone in my stomach. I picked up a piece of bread and broke it open with my knife. I reminded myself that people can lie, that Ben had possibly lied to me before, and that he could be lying to me again right now. “But you’re still living with her?”

  Ben’s expression was somewhere between defeated and pleading. “It’s the house. We’re underwater, and Kim is,” he stopped, his poise leaving him for a moment. He rubbed his forehead with his hands. “She’s unemployed.”

  “Uh huh.” I did my best to inject these two syllables with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

  Without a word, Ben leaned down and reached into a slim briefcase I hadn’t noticed sitting by
the foot of his chair. He pulled out two official-looking documents. They both bore seals and an array of signatures. He set these on the table, scooting the butter dish and wine bottle to one side to make room. With some reluctance, I looked down. One paper said, ‘Application for Divorce.’ The date on that was from late June. The other said, ‘Divorce Decree’ at the top, and printed on the lines underneath their signatures were Ben and Kim’s names. The date was from Monday, the day he’d dropped off the flowers.

  I licked my lips, my feeling of having the higher moral ground fading.

  Ben picked the papers up again, tucked them back into his briefcase, and moved the butter dish and wine back into the gap. He went on. “After what happened with you, I realized we’d both been dragging our heels on hammering out the particulars of our separation. She’s moved out. The divorce is finalized. We still have to sell the house, but we agreed we can’t wait any longer in terms of moving forward with our lives.”

  He said these last two sentences softly, and I remembered what Anne had said a few days ago, about how there could be an explanation that would make it all alright. I felt myself slipping dangerously off my conviction that Ben was a total sleaze-ball. I ate a piece of my bread. The butter was sweet and creamy and the bread was warm, but I hardly tasted it.

  “We’d agreed to see other people. She knew about you.” He gave a big sigh, running his hands through his hair. “I didn’t know how to tell you about her. Every time I saw you, I told myself I would. But I was so afraid....”

  He broke off as the server appeared with the baked brie and more bread, setting the steaming wheel of cheese in the center of the table. He asked about entrees and I said I would be sticking with wine and appetizers. A little grimace crossed Ben’s face, but he didn’t protest. The server withdrew.

  Ben sat up straighter, gazing at me until I grudgingly met his eyes. He picking up where he’d left off. “I was so afraid this would happen.”

  I ducked my head and attacked the cheese, less out of desire to eat it than a need to look at something other than Ben. Disjointed thoughts were chasing each other around my head like hamsters on a sugar rush. I smeared brie on a baked sliver of bread, then set it on my plate.

  “Erin.” Ben’s voice had a plaintive quality. “Say something.”

  I realized I’d uttered less than three complete sentences since I’d arrived. I nearly apologized, but stopped myself. I was not the one with things to apologize for. I reminded myself of this while trying to think of some response that wouldn’t absolve him. I settled on, “It’s a lot to take in.”

  Ben made no reply. We were silent for a minute or two, sipping wine and eating cheese. The brie was excellent, as was the wine. I felt myself relaxing by degrees in spite of myself.

  “You know,” Ben said, sitting back in his chair and swirling his wine in his glass, looking off across the restaurant. “When I met you I thought you were cute and fun – someone who would be really great to hang out with for a while.” He shook his head as if to indicate the unmeasurable folly of this previous version of himself. “But the more I got to know you, the more I,” he broke off and looked up at me. His bright eyes held mine for a moment and I felt a little rush of something—surprise and discomfort—force heat to my cheeks. “I fell for you, Erin. I never felt that with Kim. We,” he dropped his eyes to the table, and fiddled with the brie knife. “We had a scare, early on. We’d only been seeing each other a short while, and she thought there was going to be a baby. She wanted to keep it. I didn’t want to try to change her mind. So, I proposed. We went down to the courthouse the next day.”

  There was a long silence. I felt I had reached some sort of capacity and had stalled, that my processor was overloaded, and I would not be able to respond to anything more Ben said tonight. Around us, the room was filled with the quiet murmur of conversation overlaid by the clinking of silverware and a tasteful light-jazzy Parisian soundtrack low enough to soften the other sounds without interfering with intimate conversation.

  Ben continued. “The pregnancy ended itself naturally in the first trimester.” He was quiet for a moment, still staring at the table. His voice was low when he added, “I’m told that’s common.”

  It was once again my turn to say something, and I knew there were all sorts of sensitive, appropriate ways to acknowledge the fact Ben had just told me about a life-changing series of tragic events. “I’m sorry,” I managed. “How did you and Kim meet?”

  “That’s how this gets even worse.” He took in a deep, slow breath, as if preparing to dive down and pick something heavy up off the bottom of a pool. “We were coworkers. We’d been friends for years. We both went through bad breakups at the same time. We thought we’d have a casual fling, that it would be fun. But then there was the baby thing, and suddenly we were married. It seemed we should at least try to make it work. We bought a house and moved in together and, you know, it was ok for a while. Good, even.”

  The server came by and refilled our wine glasses. The wine was starting to win out over the circumstances, and I was finding my mindset shifting from ‘defensive and righteous’ to ‘sympathetic and interested.’

  “So then something happened at work. Something bad, and it was my fault. We were in different departments, but I was the senior of the two of us and had a much better salary, not to mention opportunity for advancement. Before I could do or say anything, Kim fudged the records and took the blame. She made it look like it had been her fault, and she resigned as a result of the mistake. She did this so I could keep my job. I love my work, but she’d never been all that happy at our company. So it made sense to her.” Ben pushed his cheese plate away, as if its contents had become too rich for him. “I never would have let her do that for me if she’d have asked. Ever since, it’s left me feeling responsible.”

  I thought of the Kim I had met – the electric blue nails, the top-heavy, tanned figure. She hadn’t struck me as the sort of person capable of that kind of selflessness. I nodded to show Ben I was following his story.

  “That was three years ago. She’s been unemployed ever since. At first she job-hunted a little, but the economy is bad. She took a break, which turned into a really long break. Our relationship went from fine to kind-of-bad by degrees. I wanted out, but, well, how could I kick her to the curb? She was married to someone she didn’t love, she’d had a shot-gun wedding, and she’d lost her job, all because of me.” Ben kept his eyes downcast as he delivered this list of his sins, like I was a holy person capable of handing out absolutions.

  I was experiencing an unpleasant sense of vertigo, a shifting of the foundations upon which I had built several assumptions that had been shaping my recent life. If Ben’s story was true, he was not only a decent guy, but an extra decent guy. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to agree to start seeing him again. But that couldn’t happen because of Clint. Clint had taken me out to his childhood hangout. We’d ridden there on horseback, and he’d kissed me. It had been an amazing kiss, a kiss of the kind that can send sparks shooting down your spine just remembering it three days later.

  But Clint hadn’t said anything. I didn’t know why he’d kissed me. Maybe Clint was a casual kisser? Maybe it meant nothing at all? And here was Ben, pouring his heart out to me, telling me he’d made all these changes in his life, just so he could be eligible. For me.

  “I need to go.” This burst out of me of its own accord as my thoughts wound themselves around each other, colliding and ricocheting until I felt a sudden, intense need to no longer be in this cozy restaurant. I rose, pushing back my chair so quickly it scraped and wobbled.

  Ben sat up straight, looking alarmed. “Are you ok?”

  “It’s just… I need some time to think about this, to take it all in.”

  Ben rose too, signaling the server. “Let me walk you to your car.”

  We stepped out the front doors of ‘The Stone Table’ a few minutes later. The cool, dark night was a relief. The breeze stirred the hair at the nape of
my neck. Downtown was alive. Trucks cruised by with their windows down, country music blaring, then fading, as they moved on.

  I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself down. Ben didn’t know about Clint, I reminded myself. He wasn’t trying to be impossible. He was doing what any reasonable person would do in the same circumstances. “Where did you park?” Ben was glancing around the small wedge of a parking lot for my Hyundai.

  I felt a twinge of embarrassment as I remembered I’d parked several blocks away because I’d been early and I hadn’t wanted to be the one to get there first. “Um, over near Maloney’s.”

  Ben gave a sad little smile, as if he’d been reminded of some dear friend from his childhood. “Because you were early?”

  I nodded, and for a second he looked like he was going to do something like lean forward and kiss me. I turned and started walking. He fell in step beside me, closer than I would have liked.

  We walked in silence for a while. The doors of restaurants and bars opened as we passed, spilling light and noise outside for a moment, then falling closed, leaving the street seeming darker and emptier.

  We reached the end of the block, and turned left. Up the street I could see my car, tucked in against the curb. The sight of it relieved me somehow. Almost there.

  I stopped as soon as I reached the trunk, turning to look at Ben. “Thank you for your honesty,” I said, trying to sound sincere. And suddenly, I realized it would be cruel to leave him hanging any longer, to do anything other than cut him loose now. I had to tell him about Clint. “There are some things I need to tell you, too.”

  Ben reached down and took one of my hands in both of his. I had to resist the urge to snatch it from him. “It’s ok, Erin,” he said. “I understand how overwhelming this must be. I can look back and see how it must have felt to you, like you never really knew me. It seemed to me that if I didn’t tell you anything about my life, I wouldn’t be lying.”

  I struggled not to be diverted. I had to tell him about Clint. Now. “Yes but….”

  Ben leaned forward and gave me one slow, tender kiss on the lips, withdrawing before I could pull away or protest. He shook his head and gave my hand a squeeze. “Let’s leave things where they are. You think about everything. Take your time. I understand that if you give me another chance, it will be a step backwards.” He stopped, eyes leaving my face and shifting to the street behind me. His eyebrows creased.

  “What,” I said, trying to turn. But he was still holding my hand.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It looked like one of those girls was going to call to you. But she must have thought you were someone else. They’re moving on.”

  I tugged on my hand and Ben released it with obvious reluctance. I turned around. The opposite sidewalk was full of groups heading to Maloney’s. One was a cluster of six or seven girls, all dressed in tight jeans or short skirts, clutching tiny purses and looking precarious on their tall heels. They were a little distance away, bathed in the garish red light from the Maloney’s sign. From the jumble of their backs, I couldn’t pick out anyone familiar. I turned back around.

  Ben said, “I appreciate that you gave me this chance, that you heard me out. I know I may have done something irreparable.”

  As he said this, it struck me as the sort of thing someone says when they’re certain you’ll forgive them. I looked up at him. I was going to say something perhaps a little cutting, but his expression was so tender, so hopeful, the sharp words died on my lips.

  “You know when I really fell for you?” His voice was tender and smooth, and I could smell his aftershave. He was standing very close again.

  I shook my head, feeling claustrophobic. I took a tiny step back. My calves bumped into my Hyundai.

  “It was the night by the bike rack,” he said. “When you kissed me that night, it was something else. Something special. No one, ever, in my whole life, made me feel the way you did that night.”

  I felt sick. Physically ill.

  Ben misread my expression. He took a step back, giving a short nod as if making an agreement with himself. “Ok, I’ll give you some time and space. I promise. I’ll wait to hear from you.” He hovered there for a moment, his hair extra golden in the yellow glow of the streetlights. He looked like he wanted to touch me again, but thought better of it. “See you soon, I hope.” Then he turned and walked away, his excellent figure a strong silhouette against the street.

  ❂

  “Post-partum depression?” Trace said the words in a dull tone, as if reading a particularly uninteresting headline in the paper. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I love Olivia.” She reached out to give her daughter a little pat on the back.

  It was Saturday afternoon, and I was at Trace and Andrew’s house. Trace was on the floor, sitting next to the colorful blanket laid out for Olivia, who was sitting there in a pink onesie, flinging her toys off the blanket and watching her mother retrieve them.

  Andrew was seated on the couch behind them, looking tired. I was in the armchair on the other side of the room.

  I waited to see if Andrew would say something. He did not. Apparently, I was going to have to do the majority of the intervening. “Post-partum depression doesn’t always have as much to do with how you feel about your baby as how you feel about the rest of your life.”

  This seemed to penetrate a little. Trace cast a guilty look in Andrew’s direction.

  Olivia flung a toy that rattled when it hit the ground. She released a sharp, high sound that I recognized a moment later as laugher.

  Trace looked back at Olivia, retrieved the toy, and we all sat in awkward silence for a moment.

  This was stage two of the intervention. Stage one had happened this morning. I had come by before work and told Trace that I’d spoken to Andrew, he was most definitely not having an affair, and that the two of us wanted to talk to her together that afternoon. Then I’d gone and done my Saturday half-shift at the gallery. Now I was back, this time with Andrew in attendance, and we were trying to convince Trace she needed help.

  After my night with Ben, I’d driven home in a sort of numb state, crashed into bed and slept until my alarm had pulled me out of the sheets. Since then it had been Trace and work and Trace again. My head was starting to feel like some sort of compression chamber, filled way past capacity with things that needed my time and attention. But instead of taking them out and airing them, I kept pushing more in on top.

  I kept talking. “The more I’ve read about it, the more I think you’re manifesting a lot of the symptoms. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to recognize and cope with alone, but it’s treatable. All you need is a little help.”

  I said this last bit delicately. Trace had always prided herself on her strength of character. I was afraid she was going to react to this nudge with a violent denial that she had any kind of problem.

  Instead, she said nothing. Olivia threw the toy again, laughing as it rattled. Trace retrieved it and dropped it back into her daughter’s lap.

  Andrew spoke. His tone was halting, as if he was picking every word off an approved list before incorporating it into his sentence. “I searched for someone who specializes in mental health for families. I made us an appointment for this afternoon.”

  “Us?” Trace turned to look at Andrew, her face going a little hard.

  “All three of us,” Andrew said. “If you’ll go with me, that is. If not, Olivia and I can go without you.”

  I sat forward, alarmed. This was not a tactic we’d discussed.

  Trace stiffened too, her spine going poker rigid. “You can’t just take her.” Her tone had gone from disinterested to combative in half a heartbeat. I resisted the urge to groan and drop my head into my hands.

  But Andrew responded in a tone that was both gentle and firm. “She’s my daughter too, Trace.”

  That was all he said, but the statement seemed to fill the room with a tense sort of expectant energy.

  Olivia threw her toy. It rattled across the
floor, and lay still.

  Trace was staring at Andrew as if he’d sprouted cloven hooves and horns. “But you don’t….” she broke off, glancing at the toy, her voice seeming to fail her.

  Olivia laughed, and clapped her hands.

  “I don’t what?” Andrew said. His tone was still gentle. “Don’t know how to put a child in a car seat? Don’t know how to change a diaper? You didn’t know any of those things nine months ago, either, remember? There are men a lot less competent than me taking care of their own children.”

  Trace slumped, her body language defeated. “Ok,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “We’ll all go.”

  As Trace leaned forward and reached for the rattling toy, Andrew caught my eye and gave me grim smile.

  ❂

  I inhaled the smell of hay, smiling at the sound of Nora’s voice drifting in from the aisle between the stalls. She had a tendency to chat with the horses she was tacking and grooming when no one else was around.

  It was a fine, cool morning. The sun had yet to spill over the mountains, and the Tipped Z was quiet. Only one dog had appeared to watch me as I stepped out of my car. Dots was not in evidence. While this was disappointing, at least it made me a lot less jittery as I walked past the hay and into the aisle, stopping next to Paul to pat him on the shoulder.

  “Hey girl.” Nora was just straightening from picking Sally’s feet, her face flushed from bending over. “How was your week?”

  I thought back over the recent insanity that had been my life. “Weird.” I rubbed at a little patch of dried sweat behind Paul’s ear with my thumb. “Weird and busy.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nora stopped to look at me, and there was something in her tone and expression that was a little bit hard. Coming from the sunny, relaxed Nora, this was a definite departure from normal.

  Before I could ask her if something was up, there was the clatter of hoofbeats in the yard, and a man’s voice gave a shout. Startled, both Nora and I looked towards the bay doors. Two mounted men rode into the hay room at the trot, stirring up a lot of dust before coming to a stop at the mouth of the stall aisle. Though they were backlit, I recognized Clint and his father.

  “Nora, we need you.” Hank’s voice was all business as he stepped down from the back of his horse and tossed his get-down over his horn. “The north bull got himself caught in the fence. We’re going to need to get him cut out and doctored.” He stopped at the door of the tack room, taking me and the two almost tacked horses in with a sharp glance. “Bring Paul, and reschedule your lesson. This isn’t a job for green horses, or people either.”

  With that, he disappeared into the tack room.

  Clint had been riding Rascal. He dismounted as well, walked up to me, and took one of my hands in his. His hand was warm and rough as he looked down at my face. “I’m sorry, Erin,” he said. “This wouldn’t be safe for you.”

  “It’s ok.” I gave a glance over my shoulder at Nora, who was oddly still, looking at me and Clint, her expression even flintier than it had been a moment before. I hesitated, feeling there was something happening here that I was missing. “I can put Sally up, if that would help.”

  Their father reemerged from the tack room, carrying a set of long-handled clippers and a red clinking bag with a white cross screened onto the site. He thrust the bag at Clint, who had to drop my hand to take it. “Let’s go, Nora,” Hank barked.

  Nora unfroze. She hurried to Paul and slipped his bridle on while Clint said, “Sally goes in the south pasture, the one with the blue gate. Thank you, Erin.”

  He stepped away from me, affixing the red bag to the back of Rascal’s saddle. Nora finished with Paul’s bridle, moved the coiled rope from Sally’s saddle to Paul’s, and swung on board. “Sorry,” she said in a low voice, then trotted Paul out after Clint and her father, who had already disappeared back into the bright day.

  I stood there a moment, alone with Sally, feeling dazed. Even the dogs were gone. The dust the horses had kicked up hung in the air around the hay, and I thought of that day I’d watched Clint stacking the bales. It seemed like a long time ago.

  I took my time untacking Sally, making sure I got everything tidied the right way and stowed in the right place. Nora’s mare led quietly back to the pasture, and followed me through the blue gate without protest. After I turned her around and took her halter off, she ambled towards the water trough.

  I picked my way back through yard, scanning the horizon for signs of the three riders as the sun came up to spill down over the broad, scrubby pastures. But all I could see were the blank yellow hills and the blue mountains.

  ❂

  “I thought we could go for a walk.” Trace said this brightly, shortly after letting me into her house. I had followed her from the entryway into the living room, where Olivia was in her playpen, chewing on a plastic cow. It was 5:15 on Monday. I’d just gotten off work. We’d had another big job from the bank, and so I’d been standing all day, framing. My feet were a bit sore, and I thought wistfully of Julio’s and a cold beer.

  “A walk sounds great.”

  Trace gave me a small, hesitant smile, as if she was relearning how that expression fit on her face. She scooped Olivia up and carried her to the garage while I trailed after. I watched as Trace secured Olivia into her stroller with an elaborate belt-harness mechanism that looked modeled after those used for holding astronauts into their seats through the rocky departure from the earth’s atmosphere. Olivia didn’t seem to mind the precautions, though, so I made no comment.

  Trace packed some things into the zipping pouches on the back of the stroller, and finally began to push the weighted-down thing towards the open garage door. I fell in step next to her as she rolled Olivia out into the sunlight.

  It was a fair evening, if a little warm for late September. Trace punched a code into a keypad next to the garage, and the large, beige door slid closed behind us with a dull rumble that ended in a click.

  “How was Saturday?” I asked this in a casual tone, half feeling I shouldn’t pry but also aware that I had staged an intervention, and along with that came the responsibility to follow up.

  We reached the sidewalk, and turned left. Olivia giggled and flapped her hands at a cluster of colorful rings that were attached to the upright post of the stroller. The top was foldable and could be pushed forward to provide more or less sun protection. Right now it was pulled as far forward as possible, so Olivia was entirely in the shade, even though the sun was well advanced in its descent towards the horizon, and weak.

  Trace looked at me, and her eyes were misty. I felt suddenly afraid she was going to tell me she’d given Andrew the boot, after all. “Erin.” Her voice was trembly. “I can’t thank you enough. You were exactly right. I had no idea….” She stopped, reaching into one of the zipping compartments at the back of the stroller to pull out a tissue. “Saturday was amazing. It was like Dr. Dresden could read my mind. She knew all these things I’d been thinking, all the inadequacy and fear.” Trace drew in a long, shuddering breath. “She helped me talk to Andrew, helped us both understand what I’m feeling and why.”

  In front of us, two boys on bikes were pedaling up the sidewalk, their knees sticking up comically as they sat on seats far too low for them. As the space between us closed, they left the sidewalk for the road, one of them hopping down the curb, then up again, then back down, standing on his bike and balancing on his two tires without going forward for a moment. The other boy said something, and the two of them pedaled off, laughing.

  Trace had been watching this with wide eyes. “I’m so glad I had a girl.”

  We walked a moment longer, and Trace’s voice had gained some strength when she continued. “Anyway, I know these things don’t change overnight. I know I have a lot of work to do, to repair things with Andrew and learn to relax about Olivia, but knowing that what I’m going through isn’t uncommon, that’s it a medical condition and it’s treatable.” She stopped talking again, looking over at me with shining
eyes. “It’s huge. It makes all the difference, really.”

  We walked a while longer. For the first time in what felt like ages, it felt comfortable to be with Trace. Olivia was cooing happily in her cushioned seat. Trace’s phone was nowhere in evidence. The light was growing richer on the fronts of the houses we passed, the shadows long. We’d have to turn back soon, but for now it felt good to be out walking with a friend. My feet had even stopped hurting.

  “So what’s new with you?” Trace said.

  My phone beeped. Feeling a little sheepish, I pulled it out of my pocket and checked the screen. My heart gave a little lurch when I saw it was from Nora. The first part set my heart to thumping with anticipation, while the second part crushed my hopes flat. “Gotta cover a shift for a friend. Can’t make lesson tomorrow. See you Sunday?”

  ❂

  I pulled up to Ben’s house, letting my car coast to a stop next to the curb and inevitably thinking of the last time I had been here. The front of the house looked no different. The garage door was closed and impassive, the gravel of the front neat and freshly raked, free of weeds or the drift of fallen mesquite leaves. I allowed myself a moment to sit in the car and take deep breaths.

  Ben had invited me over for dinner, wanting, perhaps, to prove that he now lived alone. I had accepted because I was determined to end things, determined to find a gentle but firm way to explain that I was no longer available and never would be again. The boots were in their box on the back seat of my car, waiting to be returned to their rightful owner.

  I sat, listening to the clicking of my car’s engine as it started to cool. The street was empty, the sun sliding out of sight behind a house in front of me.

  Finally, I could put it off no longer. I opened my car door and stepped into the street.

  I had made a deliberate effort to dress casually while also doing my best not to look like a slob. The result was a pair of white capris and a green tank top. I’d left my hair back in a ponytail, and as I made my way up Ben’s walk I entertained the conviction that he’d be wearing a suit and tie.

  As it turned out, he answered the door in only jeans and a t-shirt. His feet were bare, and he held a glass of white wine in one hand. The smell of simmering garlic wafted out of the house behind him, and a light indie soundtrack was playing inside.

  Ben grinned, looking magazine-model casual. He stepped aside to gesture me into the house. “Hi Erin.” His tone was relaxed. I realized with a little stutter-skip of my heart that he thought we were all better, that things were repaired between us.

  “Come on in.” Ben led the way across the tile floor of the entryway back towards the kitchen. I took in the granite counter-tops and the high-ceilings, the well-stocked bar along the far wall. Ben’s house was massive and well turned-out, easily larger than my parents’.

  I drifted after him. The music moved with me as I walked, pouring out of invisible speakers that must dot the whole house. It was a band I recognized but couldn’t place, and the lead singer’s familiar voice teased the edges of my memory.

  Ben went into the kitchen and took a second wine glass down from a cupboard above the stove, holding it up to the light to inspect the shining crystal for dots left by drying water. He polished one spot with a white dish cloth he had draped over his shoulder, poured some wine, quickly stirred a sauce that was bubbling on the stove, and came back to me to hand me my drink. “Make yourself at home,” he said, noting my rigid, uncertain posture with a look of concern. “Do you want the grand tour?”

  Two glasses of wine later, we were installed at a cozy table set into a sort of nook at the edge of the kitchen. Through the windows, we had a view of a lighted pool, glowing a pale, bright blue in the dark outside.

  We’d had the grand tour of the house and yard, then we’d returned to the kitchen while Ben had put the final touches on the meal. It had turned out to be a seafood dish over delicate pasta, topped in a light home-made sauce that would have impressed my father. Now our plates were empty, and we were sipping the crisp wine.

  I was managing to sit quietly at the table while Ben carried the conversation. Now that the cat was out of the bag, he appeared to want to compensate for never having told me much about his life by telling me everything. He detailed the divorce agreement and the awkwardness of it all, and explained how it felt so horrible because he and Kim had been good friends before they’d started sleeping together. Now with the divorce, things had gone a little sour. He felt bad about how it had ended, even though he was happy to be able to move on.

  When he delivered this last statement, he looked at me, eyes shining under his shock of blond hair. I couldn’t help but think again how incredibly good looking he was, even as a voice in my head said, Do it. Do it now.

  Ben seemed to realize he’d been doing most of the talking. He cleared our plates off the table and took them to the kitchen, returning with the wine bottle. He topped up our glasses, sat back down and affixed me with his most earnest look. “You’ve been quiet this evening.” His tone was kind and interested.

  I looked down at my fingernails. There was a hangnail developing on my ring finger. I resisted the urge to pick. Numerous ways to tell Ben about Clint fluttered around in my mind, bumping into each other like a cluster of awkward moths flapping around a lamp.

  “Ben.” I paused, half hoping for a phone to beep, the doorbell to ring: anything to save me from having to do this. I looked up and saw him leaning forward, face open and eager. My courage failed. “Thank you for dinner.” Now why had I said that? It implied the exact opposite of what I wanted to communicate.

  Ben’s perfect smile lit his face. “You’re welcome.” He reached across the table and took one of my hands. Unlike Clint’s, his palm was smooth “Thank you for coming.”

  I felt too warm. I felt I was in an impossible situation. I wanted to run away, but at the same time, I didn’t want that. The wine and dinner and music and sumptuous surroundings had dulled my conviction, leaving me uncertain.

  After all, Clint had kissed me. He’d kissed me once on the lips, once on the cheek, and he’d taken my hand in his. That was all. That was all I had from him. What if it meant nothing?

  I thought back to that conversation I’d overheard so long ago, the one I’d typed out on my computer and later read to Nora. She’d told me Clint had been talking about his horse.

  But what if Nora was wrong? What if there was a side to Clint his sister didn’t know about? Clint, as far as I knew, didn’t even have my phone number. He’d never asked me out, certainly never cooked for me.

  I thought back on the kiss in the cottonwood grove. It had seemed so magical then, but now it felt surreal, impossible even.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Ben was still looking at me, his expression soft. I had to hand it to him, he’d been more than patient with me.

  For one wild moment, I almost told him. The phrase ‘I kissed someone’ hovered on my lips. But then I thought how his face would change if I said that. I thought about how cruel life was. Wouldn’t breaking things off with Ben be the best possible way to ensure Clint never kissed me again?

  “I’m just,” I stopped, fiddling with the base of my wine glass. The top of Ben’s table was a deep polished tone, made of small, interlocking pieces of triangular wood that varied slightly in hue. “It’s so strange to be in your house, finally.”

  Ben ducked his head, like a schoolboy reprimanded for squirming. “It’s great to have you here.”

  ❂

  “So what do you think about this crazy forecast?” Anne wandered into the workroom, cup of coffee in one hand, newspaper in the other. Although she had a smartphone, Anne picked up the paper on her way to work at least twice a week. Now, she set Friday’s weather page on the work table, tapping the headline that said, STORM SYSTEM TO CAUSE SEVERE FLOODING.

  I looked up from a French mat, to which I was applying a wash, long enough to shrug. “If it’s anything like hurricane Nora, we should plan a BBQ.”

  Hur
ricane Nora was something I vividly remembered from my childhood. The entire population of southern Arizona had been in a state of near panic for days over a hurricane coupled with an El Nino year. Schools had shut down, flood warnings had been issued. The forecast had included a 100% chance of rain.

  Not a drop had fallen.

  Anne gave a little laugh, and leaned against the table. She was wearing linen pants and a dark brown jacket with half sleeves and a big collar. She looked bright and perky this morning. I wondered what she did most nights. Cook dinner for herself? Go out on hot dates? Read books in the bathtub?

  A smile still hovering on her lips, Anne looked at me with a curious expression. “So how are things with you? Have you talked to Ben yet?”

  Inking French mats was by far the most technically demanding part of my job. It was an intricate process, done using loose ink and a ruling pen. My first attempts had been so embarrassing I’d destroyed them before Anne could see. But now I was a passable hand at the process.

  Still, I felt the need to finish the final line on the mat and set down the ruling pen before answering Anne’s question.

  Because the trouble was, I had left Ben’s house without breaking up with him. I had, in fact, let myself kiss him for a little while.

  At the time, it had seemed like the rational thing to do.

  It had happened one slow step at a time. After Ben and I had finished another glass of wine and I’d said I really needed to go, he’d leaned in for a kiss by the door. With my wits softened by the wine, I’d made a split-second decision. I’d decided to kiss Ben without pretending he was Clint, and see how that felt.

  It had been purely an act of research: a means of collecting evidence the better to make my final decision.

  In truth, the kiss had been very good. But even ‘very good’ had turned out not to hold a candle to kissing Clint. (Or even kissing Ben whilst pretending he was, in fact, Clint.)

  Still, it had been nice, and I had let it go on for a bit longer than strictly necessary for scientific purposes alone. Finally, I had extricated myself and said goodbye. As soon as I’d gotten into my car and turned on the engine, I had begun berating myself for my utter failure to do what I had planned.

  “I um, I actually went over to Ben’s last night.” I said this in a low voice, squinting down and watching the ink on the mat seep in and stop glistening.

  “Did you?” Anne was all interest now.

  I summarized what had happened since I’d last filled her in, from Ben’s story about his wife, to his bringing his divorce papers to dinner, to me going over to break up with him only to end out in a brief but undeniable make-out session.

  By the time I was done, I felt even more horrible than I had when I’d started. Anne, however, was looking nothing if not amused. “I don’t know why you look so horrified,” she said, picking up my mat and examining the corners where the lines joined. “It sounds like the ideal outcome. Nice job on this, by the way.”

  I put the lid back on the ink and cleaned the ruling pen, my ears so hot they felt like they were going to start smoking. “Except I kissed Clint too.”

  Anne set the mat down again, looking shocked. “Last night?”

  I placed the French mat tools back inside the old shoebox where they lived, and stowed this on the shelf behind me. “What? No! Of course not. A week ago Tuesday.”

  “And?” Anne brushed a few dried clumps of ink off the work table, swiping them into her hand and carrying them to the trash can.

  “And what?”

  Anne stopped in front of the window, her expression exasperated. “And then what happened?”

  So I told Anne all about Clint, too, and added almost in spite of myself that last Tuesday was the first time he hadn’t taught my lesson in over a month. As I said this, I felt my stomach sink at the thought that since the kiss, I’d hardly seen or spoken to him.

  Anne was quiet a moment when I finished, her expression thoughtful. She’d walked to the wooden chair in the corner and was leaning against the back, gaze directed at the window. “So to sum up,” she said. “Ben is an attractive, decent guy who makes good money and is really into you. He’d commit in a heartbeat if you let him. Clint is an unknown quantity with communication issues. He lives with his parents, and he may or may not have any intention of getting serious.”

  My skin prickled as the truth of this summary impressed itself upon me. I felt restless. I pulled a piece of tape off the roll we kept affixed to the table, and taped over a small tear in the brown paper covering my work area. “I guess that about sums it up.” I was able to keep my voice from wavering.

  “My advice,” Anne said, leaving the chair to step towards the door, “don’t cut Ben loose until you’re sure of Clint. Be sure he wants you, and be sure you want him. And take this from an old pro: wanting him to want you only goes so far.”

  With that, she strolled out, leaving me to chew on my problems and wait for my mat to dry.

  ❂

  I looked at the clock on my dashboard before killing the engine. 6:30, on the dot. We had moved my lesson start time back an hour, due to the sunrise getting later.

  I had parked next to Nora’s truck, and I now stepped out of my car. It was a cloudy morning, and dim, the first of the forecasted storm clouds beginning to pile up on the horizon. It was Sunday, and I didn’t know what Nora had in mind for my lesson.

  I had spent Friday evening and Saturday studiously trying not to think about Ben. I’d decided, more than anything, I needed to see Clint again. Ben’s position was clear.

  I looked around the quiet barnyard as I moved away from my car. When I was still a few steps from the barn, Dots appeared, her brindled face and shoulders just visible inside the open door. She looked out at me with interest, ears perked.

  The mere sight of her sent a searing stab of anticipation through my nervous system. My heart clenched, then started beating at twice its usual rate.

  Dots meant Clint.

  I stepped into the barn, and knelt next to the small dog to run my hand down her back. She gave me a wag of her tail, and looked over her shoulder as if to indicate I should follow her gaze.

  I straightened, and saw him.

  Clint was standing in the middle of the hay room, utterly still, and looking in my direction. He was carrying a bridle in one hand, and his aspect was startled, as if my appearance had taken him by surprise.

  I was about to say hi, to walk up to him, maybe even do something incredibly bold like kiss him on the cheek.

  Then I noticed his face, and his expression stopped me cold.

  His eyes had a stony look to them, overlaid with something close to pain.

  I took a step in his direction. Something hung on the air between us, something bad. I scrambled to understand this change. The last time I’d seen Clint he’d been holding my hand and smiling.

  Could he possibly know what had happened with Ben? Could he be so perceptive that he’d picked up on it like a mind reader?

  No, that was impossible. I tried to reassure myself I was imagining things. I took another step forward and said, “Hi Clint.” My voice sounded small in the huge room.

  Clint turned away from me, rotating on one heel like a cutting horse. He gave a short whistle. Dots sprang after him with one backwards glance in my direction, her expression almost apologetic.

  Shaken, I stared at Clint’s receding back until he’d disappeared. A moment later, I saw him pass by in front of the open bay doors, riding off towards the hills on Rascal. A moment after that, Nora appeared, leading Paul and Sally. She saw me and grinned, and launching into a the tale of the work drama that had had her working more hours than usual lately.

  I drifted after as she walked into the stall aisle, glad her exuberance made any response from my unnecessary. Only half listening, I watched as she tied a deft release knot to secure each horse. Sally and Paul stood side by side, ears drooping, giving off no indication they would be inclined to go anywhere, even if they hadn?
??t been tied.

  Nora went into the tack room, and came back with the grooming tote. She handed me a curry. “We’ve got a special job to do today.”

  I moved to Paul’s shoulder. I worked the brush over his short coat in smooth arcs. I thought of the day Clint had watched me tack Duke, and felt another surge of hot confusion over the scene that had just played out. I had never seen Clint be rude to anyone. There was no way he could have overlooked me, or not heard when I’d said hello. I tried to tell myself there could be an explanation. Maybe he’d been in a really big hurry?

  But even as I tried to convince myself this was the case, I knew it wasn’t true. Clint was a man of few words, but his body language was anything but opaque. Something had changed between us. Something fundamental in the way he thought about me had undergone a shift, and not in a direction that made me happy.

  Nora gave me a quizzical look from her position at Sally’s flank. I made an effort to uphold my end of the conversation. “What’s that?”

  “We need to bring in the team.”

  “The team?” I said this with a great deal of uncertainty. For some reason, all I could picture was a squad of cheerleaders in frilled skirts and sleeveless tops with the Tipped Z brand emblazoned across their chests.

  “Yep. It’s this doozy of a storm system. When things get flooded, the four-wheelers turn useless. If a fence goes down, or you got to haul hay, or do anything else that amounts to moving heavy stuff over a long distance in a raging monsoon, no machine we have is going to cut it. So we’ve got a couple harness broke Shire crosses that were bred to be bucking horses but didn’t have the temperament. Mostly they hang out with the east herd, but Dad wants them up here closer tonight in case he needs them. You ever ponied one before?”

  I had, in fact, never ponied before, and although Nora assured me there was nothing to it, I spent most of the long ride out to the east pasture worrying about what was going to happen on the way back. For one thing, I didn’t know what a Shire cross would look like, and for another I had not realized people bred horses just to be buckers. In my hazy approximation of how things went at rodeos, I’d assumed the horses in the bronc riding displays were rogue creatures that, having proven themselves unwilling to carry a rider, were induced to buck through goads and pinching straps. I hadn’t put much thought into how they were moved around or maneuvered into the chute in the first place, but I figured if they did it with bulls, a half-wild horse couldn’t be much harder to handle.

  But as we rode out into the desert under the threatening sky, I learned this was not the case. Nora told me that bucking horse lines were bred and nurtured as carefully as racehorse stock, trained to buck from a young age, and guided through their careers by owners who had every reason to want them to live long, useful lives. As we trotted out through the pasture, she told me all about the ranch where they’d gotten their team, and how the stud there had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars and won title after title in his prime. Now he was retired and, as Nora put it, ‘docile as a kitten unless you got on his back.’

  Initially, Nora’s tale had been little more than a welcome distraction from the sting of Clint’s brush-off, but by the time we topped a low ridge and looked down to see a small cluster of horses below, I was curious to meet the team.

  The east herd was a small group of horses that were in various states of retirement or recovery. A handful were bridle horses too old to continue to work. A few were mares who’d had complications during their last pregnancies and were getting a year or two away from the stud.

  As the sound of our horses’ footfalls reached the herd, a number of heads popped up, one of which had massive, fuzzy ears. I stared for a moment. “Is that a donkey?”

  “That’s Zeke.” Nora seemed utterly nonplussed. “He’s a guard donkey.”

  Before if I could figure out whether or not she was joking, she moved Sally down to a walk and said, “Now don’t stare too hard. These guys kind of do their own thing out here. We’ll circle around the side and try not to get them to feel like we want them to go anywhere. But if they do move, we want them to move towards the ranch, not away. We’ll see how they’re all feeling. If they’re too fresh we might have to bring the herd in, but a lot of times they’re in a friendly state of mind and you can just ride in and halter whoever you want.”

  I dropped my eyes from the spectacle of the shaggy-headed donkey among the sleek, round contours of the Quarter Horses. We circled the herd, and while a couple of them kept their eyes on us with evident uncertainty, most of them went back to nibbling at the brush and undergrowth.

  “Ok,” Nora said. “Untie your halter and we’ll ride into the herd and fetch the two we want. These guys are easy to halter from horseback because they’re so tall.” She gave a quick laugh.

  My mouth was strangely dry as I did what I was told. I fumbled with the rope halter Nora had secured behind my cantle. I eyed Nora, at an utter loss for understanding how she intended to ride one horse while haltering another. She caught my look, then looked judiciously back at the watchful herd. “Actually,” she said, “It’ll be simpler if just one of us goes in. Will you pass me that halter?”

  I passed over the halter and watched as Nora rode off on Sally. Feeling a mix of relief and embarrassment, I gave Paul a pat on the shoulder.

  There was no question as to which two horses Nora was after. The bulk of the herd was made of typical Quarter Horses in their standard array of browns and reds. Then there was the donkey, who watched Nora with his massive ears held straight and stiff. And then there were the bucking horses.

  They were both black, with broad white faces and tall socks and a small number of random white markings on haunch and belly. One of them had a single blue eye and a bit of white in his tail. They were impressive physical specimens, both easily a hand taller than the average of the rest of the herd, with well-muscled chests, large feet, and long, shaggy manes.

  Nora and Sally slipped into the herd like a hot knife into butter, moving as fluidly as if they were one animal. The way Nora rode made me think disjointedly of the way Clint had crossed the space between us before he’d kissed me. I shut the thought down as soon as it popped up, and squinted at Nora as if the day was too bright.

  It was only a few minutes before she had both of the large horses haltered. I admired her technique. She rode up to each horse in turn, side-passing Sally close enough so she could rub an itchy forehead or scratch a jaw, then easing a halter into place. She left the herd moments later, two ropes dallied around her horn, the massive team shambling along beside Sally’s smooth haunch.

  ❂

  I dropped my purse by the door and wrapped both hands around the door-knob, engaging in a brief wrestling match. I nearly fell onto my tush when the wind gusted, changed direction, and the door slammed shut with a bang that reverberated through the entire house.

  “Is that you, Erin?” My mom’s voice sounded from a distance room as I picked up my purse. Boswell and Norman were watching me from the entrance to the den, trying to decide whether or not the pets they would receive were worth the bother of coming over to say hello.

  “Yep.” I hung my purse on the coat rack and kicked my flip-flops off as the already dark air gave a flicker. A roll of thunder rumbled and boomed.

  It was Sunday evening. Nora and I had gotten the team back to the ranch without incident. With a little coaching, I had indeed found ponying to be no problem. Paul and the bucking horse, whose named was Chip, were both old pros. Neither one gave me any trouble as we trotted along behind Nora on Sally, leading Dale.

  Back at the barn, we’d had our work cut out for us. Chip and Dale’s heavy, wavy manes and tails had been full of pigweed burrs and foxtails. We’d spent over an hour grooming them. They’d proven to be sweet, docile animals with gentle expressions and a slow way of bending their heads around to sniff at your back while you worked a comb through their manes.

  After the horses were restored to some semblance of tidiness, I’
d helped Nora unpack the harness and hook the two team to a flatbed cart. We’d driven them around the barnyard long enough to determine horses and cart were in working order. Then we’d unharnessed and turned the team out in the closer pasture where Sally and Paul and the horses in regular work spent most of their time.

  The entire undertaking had consumed the vast majority of the day. Fortunately, the tasks had been engaging enough and Nora’s constant stream of information had been interesting enough that I’d had only a few scattered moments to gaze at the horizon and wonder where Clint was, and what was going through his head at that moment. These lapses were always brief, because there was always some change in task or conversation topic, and my attention would return to where it belonged.

  This had held true until I’d left the Tipped Z. But almost immediately upon getting into my car, my brain had gone into Clint-fueled overdrive. The scene from that morning set itself to play on repeat in my mind. I groped for something I had missed, some detail I had overlooked that would explain the whole thing, get me and Clint back onto the giddy plane of hand-holding and kissing we’d inhabited so briefly.

  I’d gone to my apartment, but it had only taken a shower and half an hour of restless pacing before I’d fled my solitude and headed for my parents’.

  My mom appeared in the open doorway that led to her workroom, holding a pen in one hand and looking at me over the top of her glasses. “Is it raining out there?” She took the cap off the end of her pen and clipped it into place over the felt tip. She looked at the clock and stretched in a way that indicated she’d been sitting for quite a long time.

  “Not yet, but wow there’s some wind.” I redid my ponytail, smoothing the fly-away strands back into order.

  “Your dad’s supposed to fly in tonight.” Mom’s tone was distant. I was used to this. It always took her a while to fully return to the world the rest of us inhabited from whatever mental space she occupied when working.

  “Oh, that’s good.” I walked into the kitchen and peered into the fridge, suddenly aware that I was ravenous.

  “Unless the storm shuts down the runways.”

  As if to punctuate my mother’s point, another roll of thunder sounded. We heard the light patter of rain on the roof. I closed the refrigerator door and looked out the window. I could see an approaching sheet of darkness, a line of heavy water-filled air advancing towards the house. The term ‘storm front’ took on new meaning for me.

  “They say there’s going to be major flooding,” I said. The weather warnings I had dismissed so flippantly when I saw them in the paper seemed a good deal more likely to be apt now that I could see the shifting sheets of heavy rain bearing down on the vegetation across the yard.

  My mother came to join me in staring out the window. “Let’s just hope the bridge doesn’t go out.”

  The bridge my mother was referring to crossed a wash that lay between the new subdivisions and the older, less dense neighborhood where my parents lived. It was a two-lane affair, with a sign on either end that said, ‘Narrow Bridge.’ The wash it crossed wasn’t much of anything, usually, but in extreme weather it could come to life. Once every five to ten years, the storm waters rose with unusual force, sweeping the bridge away. And with the bridge out, there was no way into or out of my parents’ neighborhood unless one had a kayak and a sense of adventure.

  I could remember the last time this had happened. I’d been in high school and had missed several days of classes. The event had causing a flurry of local rallies for more robust infrastructure in the area, but the bridge had been replaced with one everyone agreed was no improvement. In the words of my parents’ partially deaf neighbor, Walter, it was ‘only a matter of time before the whole scenario repeated itself.’

  The storm reached the house, and there was a sudden increase in the sound of the rain on the roof. The noise matured from a patter to a roar, intermixed with occasional thunks. “Is that hail?” I looked up at the roof as if I could see through the ceiling and the shingles and assess the relative density of the water falling from the sky.

  My mother didn’t answer. She was staring out the dark window. I took in her tight jaw, the tense way she fiddled with the clip on her pen. She didn’t like it when my father had to fly, and she liked it even less when he was in the air in bad weather. I concluded a distraction was in order. “Have you eaten?” I moved towards the refrigerator again, this time with purpose. “If you’re going to be driving through a storm in the middle of the night, you’ll need some sustenance.”

  The thing about life is you can never anticipate the turning points. That evening, as I whipped up the fanciest dinner I could manage with the ingredients on hand, I didn’t seriously believe anything untoward would happen. I didn’t guess the downpour that had just reached our house would turn out to be the most violent storm to strike Southwestern Arizona in decades: that it would not only wash away the little bridge leading into my parents’ neighborhood with as little effort as a stream carrying away a twig, but it would take down power lines and burst damns, that water would overrun the greater Tucson area like a wet, liquid plague. I never guessed my mother would be one of the last people to cross that old bridge, that the tires of my dad’s Ford Explorer would trundle across that trembling concrete probably less than an hour before it gave way. I would be in bed by that time, having found sleep and escape from worries about Clint via mothering my mother and the medicinal qualities of several glasses of wine.

  When I woke, it was still dark. I couldn’t at first figure out what had lifted me from sleep. My room was preternaturally still. The air was heavy with humidity, and the storm had passed. I thought at first I was only noticing the absence of the roaring rain, but it dawned on me as I rolled over in bed that this was a deeper silence.

  The house had gone still. It was warm in my room, but there was no drone of the swamp cooler. The fan on my dresser had stopped with its oscillating and humming. I rolled back over and glanced at the clock I kept on my desk across the room. The green digits that usually glowed in the darkness were notably absent.

  It was not unusual for the power to go out in my parents’ neighborhood. They were one of only a dozen or so homes back in a valley that had once belonged to a single ranch, and even a mid-level monsoon often disrupted things for an hour or two. So, I was not unduly alarmed. I sat up and punched my pillow a few times, staring around at the darkness and trying to guess what time it was. I had drawn my blinds, so even if dawn was starting to break, I wouldn’t know.

  My phone beeped. I had left it on the bedside table next to the lamp. I picked it up, remembering my father’s midnight flight.

  The text was from my mom, and it was one of several I had missed. The first, she had sent quite soon after leaving the house. I had gone to bed around eleven and must have fallen right to sleep. The timestamp on her message was 11:12. “Pulled over storm is crazy.”

  I felt a twinge of guilt. It was not unlikely my phone’s modest beeping had been all but inaudible over the sound of the rain and hail, but still it seemed to reflect poorly on my competence as a daughter that I’d not woken up when this had come in. Why didn’t phone carriers have a way to weight the importance of any given message? One like that should automatically be deemed critical, and therefore trigger the kind of persistent, penetrating chime that would interrupt even the most intense of slumbers.

  The next message had come half an hour later. “Flight diverted to Dallas everything flooded - at the Comfort Inn on Houghton.”

  The final two messages were from this morning. The first had come three minutes ago, at 5:49am. “Bridge is out.” The last had just arrived, and it said, “Do you have hidden apt key?”

  I sat up, staring at my phone with bleary eyes, trying to piece together the series of events laid out by my mother’s brief messages. I knew the Comfort Inn on Houghton. My apartment manager had put me up there once, when I’d had to leave for a night due to a gas leak in my kitchen. It was less than ten minutes away
from my parents’ house.

  My mother had left the house, driven a few miles and pulled over because of the weather, heard my father wouldn’t be coming in after all, and gone to a hotel rather than drive home through the storm.

  My mother was not a timid driver.

  I texted back. “Sorry I don’t but the office opens a 7. They should be able to let you in.”

  I left my bed and walked to the window, pulling open the shades. I half expected to look out in a scene from a sci-fi movie: a water-world of muddy desert floodwaters, the bushy crowns of the mesquite trees just protruding above the surface.

  Instead, I saw a normal view. The landscape was dim with the pale pre-sunrise dawn. I could make out the small wash that skirted my parents’ property-line. It was full and raging, the strange phenomenon my father referred to as ‘sandfish’ humping the middle, and clumps of white foam accumulating in the eddies.

  My phone beeped again. This message contained a rather long and detailed set of instructions for feeding Boswell and Norman. Resigning myself to the reality that I would not be climbing back into bed, I went to my dresser and surveyed my meager array of clothing options. I selected an old pair of U of A sweatpants that had a wildcat on the butt, and a plain red tank-top.

  As I dressed, I heard a quiet snuffling noise – the sound of a dog trying to get a whiff of something through the crack at the bottom of a door. This was further evidence that not all was as it should be. Boswell and Norman were independent animals, and I was not their Person. My mother was their Person, and my relationship with them had always been a bit cool on both sides. They were not at all in the habit of caring whether or not I was behind any given closed door.

  The dogs were waiting in the hallway outside my room. Boswell was sitting, his dark eyes intent. Norman had been the one doing the sniffing. They both began wagging and grinning when they saw me, and were eager to follow me across the house and escape into the yard.

  I followed them out onto the patio. The desert had that scoured feeling that comes after a heavy rain. The sky was clear, growing brighter with every minute. The sand between the mesquites was smoothed and sculpted into little layer-lines where water had run. Boswell and Norman raced around wildly, noses to the ground, ecstatic over the feast of new scents brought down by the storm.

  ❂

  “I’m afraid the helicopters can only accommodate people. We don’t have the capacity to deal with pets.”

  I gave a small, thoughtful nod, as if to indicate I agreed this was an utterly reasonable way of structuring an evacuation. I glanced at Boswell and Norman, who were now crashed out on the patio in the afternoon sun. Their white coats were stiff and discolored with drying sand and mud. They had spent all morning romping in the storm-ravaged yard, showing particular interest in the low corner where the wash had overflowed and formed a shallow pool.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to stay here then. Thank you for stopping by.”

  I was speaking to a young man wearing a dark uniform and a serious expression. His hair had the look of having recently been under a helmet, and his face bore the expression of one who takes himself rather too seriously. He had come in through the front gate a few minutes before, introduced himself as James, and told me I needed to prepare for evacuation.

  “We can’t guarantee we’ll be able to make it back before your food and water supplies run out.” He said this in a frustrated tone. I guessed some other neighbors were showing reluctance to abandon pets and homes to an uncertain fate.

  According to James, the storm had brought down something close to the apocalypse. Roads and bridges were out all over town, and rescue crews were short-staffed trying to move the stranded to safety.

  “Look, I’m fine here. I’ll be fine for a while.” I said this with more conviction than I felt. In truth, I was not sure how long I’d be fine. I had plenty of food. My parents had their regular refrigerator, plus an old freezer out back that was stocked with frozen meals and meats. My father also kept a full ten gallon water cooler stashed in the back utility area because the well that supplied my parents and their neighborhood required electricity to run. No power meant no water. Which meant I had the water in the pipes and however long ten gallons would last a person and two dogs. And then I would be in trouble.

  But this guy’s manner had irritated me, and it seemed premature to abandon ship. I had texted Anne to let her know I wouldn’t make it to work, and she had texted back to say of course that was fine. Then I’d turned my phone off to conserve batteries.

  James looked at me, perhaps guessing he had come at this from the wrong angle. He made an attempt to smooth his rumpled hair. “Look, I understand you don’t want to go without your dogs, but I’m not sure when we’re going to be able to get back here. It could be days.”

  “I’m sure the power will come back on before then.” I said this in as optimistic a tone as I could manage, which only made me sound vapid and complacent.

  James’ mouth tightened around the edges, and he snapped back to all-business mode. “Ok, if you refuse assistance, I’ll need you to sign here.” He produced a metal-reinforced clipboard and extracted a form from its interior compartment, clipped it into place, and circled an x next to a line. He offered me the clipboard and pen.

  I felt suddenly uncertain. Without power, I had no television, no internet. My phone had been off for hours. I didn’t know the extent of the damage, or even the forecast. The article Anne had shown me had predicted a series of violent storms, not just one.

  I wanted to ask him to wait, so I could call my mother. Better yet, I wished my mother was there, so we could either sign together, our righteous indignation making our upwards strokes crisp and decisive, or agree to go, leaving Boswell and Norman with enough food and water to hopefully get them through their newest ordeal.

  Still, while it was easy to think about going inside, grabbing my purse, and returning with James to his helicopter, it was harder to think of facing my mother, of having to tell her I had abandoned the two dogs who had so recently returned to her against all odds and left them in another high-stakes situation.

  I accepted the pen, and signed. James gave a quick, irritated sigh, extracted the form from beneath its clip, and handed me the yellow carbon copy. “Good luck.” He said this without venom, only a certain weariness. He strode to the gate on the hunt for more willing cargo, leaving me to my folly.

  I turned to look at the dogs. They were still sprawled in positions of utter contentment. “You guys don’t even appreciate what everyone does for you.”

  There is something slightly romantic about being stranded, about refusing rescue for selfless reasons, about holding to family loyalty in the face of extreme weather events. I enjoyed this sensation for nearly three hours.

  But as the sun began to fall, the house remained encased in its eerie stillness. I set out on a search for candles and flashlights, my attitude shifting in the direction of self-pity.

  In normal circumstances, there would be all sorts of ways to distract myself from the reality of my situation. I’d be able to watch TV, or a movie. I’d waste time on the internet or work on my novel. But none of these options were open to me, because I had no electricity. I had plenty of books to read, but I was having trouble concentrating. It was maddening. I found myself quashing the urge to turn my phone on approximately every fifteen seconds.

  But by 6:00 in the evening, I felt it was time. I set the last group of candles I’d unearthed from a storage closed on the kitchen counter, and reached into my pocket. I had kept my phone near me throughout the day, despite the fact of its offness. I walked into the living room and flopped onto my parents’ leather couch, pressing and holding the power key. I waited for the opening ditty to play, for my phone to latch onto the cell signal and give me one, tenuous connection to the world beyond the wash.

  My message notification sounded. There were two texts from my mother, relaying a brief but colorful story of the lengths to which she’d had to g
o to convince my apartment manager to let her into my apartment. There was one from Ben asking if I was ok, one from Trace asking the same thing, and one from my father, saying he hoped I was ok, and that if I was offered the chance to evacuate, I should take it.

  That last one made my stomach sink. I had spent part of the late afternoon removing the ravages of the wet morning from Boswell and Norman’s coats and feet, and the two dogs were now lying on the living room rug, sleeping as if they had not spent the vast majority of the day doing just that.

  I sent Ben and Trace the same message. “I’m fine. Stuck at mom and dad’s.” There was no need to burden either of them with the pesky reality that I could die of dehydration by the end of the week if the city didn’t get the power back on.

  I wrote my mom back and said I was glad she had gotten in, then stared at my dad’s message for a minute or two, all the while feeling the remaining seconds my phone had of life tick by at an alarming rate.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t want to lie, but I also didn’t want to tell him I’d already sent the helicopter man packing.

  I closed the message from my dad and opened a new text to Nora.

  I had been hoping there would be a text from her, saying Clint had asked to teach my lesson tomorrow. But there was no such reprieve. Whatever had happened to make Clint turn his back on me was still real. I sighed and tapped out a brief message. “Stranded at parents’. Just me and the dogs. No electricity. Won’t let dogs on helicopter. The point: I won’t make lesson tomorrow. ”

  I reread the message a few times before hitting send, hoping it didn’t seem too whiney.

  I waited for another minute or two. No one got back to me. I wrote my dad, two words: “Thanks. Ok.”

  I waited another moment, hoping for some reply. I was about to power down my phone when my father wrote. “Hang in there. Expect another storm tomorrow. Love you.”

  ❂

  “They haven’t come back.” I sent this message and waited impatiently, staring at the battery indicator in the upper corner of my phone’s screen. Over the course of the day, it had progressed from green to yellow to red. I was down to 8% battery life.

  It was midday on Tuesday, and the reality of my situation was starting to sink in. I had woken up that morning with hope, but a quick glance at my dead clock had revealed that nothing had changed. There was still no power.

  I had passed the day in restless agitation, trying to ration my phone’s batteries but still turning it on more often than was strictly necessary. Just now I was on the back patio, pacing around like a caged tiger.

  My dad got back to me right away. He had made it to Tucson, and he and my mom were both now installed at my apartment, which was strange for all sorts of reasons. As the day had passed and he’d gotten increasingly mystified as to why no helicopter had come to our neighborhood, I had confessed I’d declined to evacuate. But he was convinced I’d get a second chance. His reply was practical. “When you go, leave the dogs outside. Put the closed food bag on the porch and dump the open one out. They’ll rip the closed one open if they get hungry enough. Put water in the shade, in deepest container they can reach the bottom off, to minimize evaporation.”

  I read these instructions with a sinking heart. I wrote back. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

  I looked at the dogs. In spite having a reputation for being keen animals, supposedly in tune with the subtlest emotional nuances of their human masters, Boswell and Norman had not picked up on my anxiety. They were currently engaged in their favorite pastime of basking in the warm sun. They had enjoyed another fantastic morning romp in the still-damp yard, and were now sleeping off their excesses.

  In the short time of our internment, they had started to warm to me. They now frequently came over for a pat on the head or a scratch on the shoulder. They looked up and wagged their tails whenever they heard my voice.

  The battery indicator on my phone dropped to 7%. Reluctantly, I shut it down. Then I stared angrily down at the fence-line. The small wash that skirted my parent’s property had stopped running, but the ground was so waterlogged it would only take a minor rainfall to set it going again.

  I found myself blinking around tears of frustration. It seemed so unfair. What kind of civilized society were we, that we would save people from natural disasters only if they agreed to abandon their animals to an uncertain fate? I knew my father was doing everything he could, pulling every string he had access to, attempting to call in outstanding favors. But there was too much damage, not enough resources, and more storms on the horizon. One girl stranded with two dogs was not enough of an issue to get anyone’s attention.

  I was still staring off into the distance, wondering if I could hike out and swim across the wash, when I heard it: the snort of a horse.

  I stood up straighter, looking down past the fence. I thought I saw a flicker of movement behind the mesquites. Then there was the thud of a hoof, and the soft clink of metal on metal.

  Boswell and Norman sat up in unison, bullet-shaped heads oriented towards noise.

  And then I saw him.

  Clint emerged around a clump of Palo Verde scrub, riding Rascal. Paul was following along behind. A rope ran from Paul’s halter to Clint’s horn. The two horses crossed the smoothed sand of the small wash, picking their way around debris and leaving furrowed hoof prints in their wake.

  Clint rode up to the gate and stopped, looking towards the house. He saw me staring, and held up one hand in a silent greeting.

  I stood, frozen in place, my heart pounding as I wondered if isolation and stress could cause vivid hallucinations. Clint’s hand dropped, and I waved mine in a quick, spastic response.

  I shoved my phone into my pocket as the dogs surged to their feet, bounding down the yard, tails wagging. I called their names. They stopped and looked back over their shoulders with evident reluctance. I took a page from my mother’s book and glared at them. They came skulking back while I found my flip-flops by the door and slipped them on.

  I was still wearing the horrible sweat pants, though I was in a different tank-top, this one blue instead of red. I, of course, hadn’t showered since the power had gone out, and I was not at my most alluring. But I hurried forward anyway, unable to contain the utter joy I felt, not only at seeing Clint but at the hope of rescue. The Tipped Z was most definitely on the other side of the raging Rio Oro, which meant he had crossed with horses and could cross back to the other side.

  By the time I made my way off the patio and started down the slope, Clint had dismounted, opened the gate, and led the horses through. I was close enough now that I could see the sweat in their coats. It was a warm, humid day, the air already heavy with the threat of the coming storm. The horses both came to a grateful stop as Clint closed the gate behind them.

  He was wearing his chinks and his hat, and he looked so good I felt a brief spasm of irritation at his perfection. I tamped this down and approached him at what I hoped was a brisk but relaxed walk, trying to think of something to say.

  I was only a few feet off when he glanced over at me. He’d been untying some bags that were strapped to Paul’s saddle. “I heard you were stuck.” He said this the way another person might say, “I heard you were having a party,” or “I heard you’d be in town tonight.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Stuck, stuck, stuck.” I winced internally as I said this. What was it about Clint that reduced me to the conversation capacity of a two year old?

  To distract myself from feeling ridiculous, I examined the horses. Their feet and legs were mud spattered and soaked. I wondered how they’d gotten here. I’d driven out to the wash that morning, to marvel at the presence of so much seething, filthy brown water occupying a place where usually there was no water at all. The flood was so high you couldn’t drive a hummer across. There was no sign of the bridge that used to span the Rio Oro at all. Had the horses been able to swim that?

  Sensing my mystification, Clint explained. “You go
up high enough and the wash splits. It runs over rock, gets wide and shallow. I found a place even a dog could cross safely.” He was busy pulling a canvas sack from the saddle as he spoke, and from that he produced a bag of grain. He tipped his head back to glance at the sky. “There’s another storm coming, so we can’t waste time. It’s a roundabout trail, so its hours to get back. I need to get these two fed and watered, and if you have some jeans maybe you could put those on. Then we need to get moving.”

  ❂

  Paul picked his way around a pile of mesquite branches and beans that had piled into a drift across the trail. He was compliant today, content to follow Rascal at a polite distance, never offering more speed than I asked for.

  I shifted in the saddle. We were an hour into our journey. The jeans I had on were not ideal for riding. They had bling on the pockets and were of a cut more suited to shaking your booty on a dance floor than sitting in a saddle. They lived at my parents’ because they had never fit me well.

  I glanced down past Paul’s shoulder. Boswell and Norman had started our excursion in high spirits. They’d been in awe of the horses, ecstatic about the adventure, and overwhelmed with the treat of going past the fence without leashes. They’d raced around, sniffing one new object after another, lagging behind, then sprinting to catch up. Clint had watched them with a slight frown. “It would be better if they would conserve their energy,” had been his only comment.

  Now I understood what he meant.

  We were still going up.

  For the first fifteen minutes of our ride, we hadn’t been on a trail. I’d followed Clint as he’d chosen a path through the desert, going in what I knew to be the exact opposite direction of the Tipped Z. He’d routed around clumps of cacti and bulges of rock. Finally, we’d encountered the trail we were on now. It had skirted the base of the ridge that humped up behind my parents’ house and had delivered us around the other side of a peak we’d used to hike when I was younger, that I knew got steep and rocky at the top and was impassable on horseback.

  Since reaching the trail, we’d been trotting, heading ever upwards and towards the mountains.

  The terrain got more rocky and less vegetated as we rode, and the trail hardened from sand to clay. The dogs were beginning to be less thrilled with the adventure, but they kept up, only stopping every now and then to sniff something particularly fascinating.

  Clint was not talking. He hadn’t said anything at all for at least 45 minutes. Right when he’d arrived, he’d said quite a few things. He’d asked for water and some kind of bucket to put the grain in. We’d emptied my dad’s emergency cooler, letting the horses and dogs drink their fill after we filled the canteens that were strapped to the saddles of both horses. While the horses had eaten their grain, Clint had handed me the pair of boots I’d worn that day at the Tipped Z, before I’d gone with Nora and gotten my own.

  I had hurried inside to change, my heart a drumbeat in my chest. I’d texted my parents to let them know what was happening and turned my phone off before they’d had time to reply.

  Now that we were moving, Clint seemed disinclined to say anything more. I could feel the strain between us, that block that had made him turn away from me without saying hello in the hay room. I wondered dismally if we would go the rest of the way without exchanging another word.

  I was ricocheting between relief and agony: relief that I had been rescued, agony that Clint was proving to be as frosty as the last time we’d seen each other. It was as if the kiss in the cottonwood grove had never happened. Or worse, that it had happened and Clint was dead set on never repeating the experience.

  The trail grew steep for a short section, with the rounded edges of rock protruding out of the clay. I felt Paul’s large haunches working beneath me as he hauled himself up the slope. Then the terrain flattened, and his stride smoothed out again.

  I gave him a pat on the neck, and he stopped suddenly. I looked forward, startled, to see Clint and Rascal had come to a halt, and Clint was dismounting. I looked around in confusion. We were not at the Tipped Z, nor anywhere near it.

  Clint went to the pack tied behind Rascal’s saddle and pulled out something that looked like a plastic disc. He did something with his hands and it flipped open, turning it into a shallow bowl. He poured water from the canteen into the bowl and carried it to Rascal’s nose.

  I took the opportunity to dismount as well, opening my own canteen and taking a drink. I could feel some tender places on my inner thighs where the ultra-low-rise jeans were starting to chafe. I tried to ignore this and watched as Rascal and Paul both refused the water.

  Clint knelt, and gave a whistle. Boswell and Norman ran to him. He let them drink while he ran his hands over their broad, white backs. It occurred to me that Dots was not along for the ride. Somehow, this made the situation a little more serious and even more real.

  I took another drink and tied my canteen back onto Paul’s saddle. “How much longer do we have to go?” Part of me was loathe to be the one to break the silence, but a larger part of me needed to know.

  Clint looked up at the sky when I asked, as if the question had descended from on high, not come from my mouth. But I knew what he was looking at. Dark clouds were building along the horizon. The sunlight was growing wan. “At least two more hours,” he said. “Assuming the dogs can keep up the pace.”

  I nodded, trying not to let trepidation show on my face. I’d been caught in storms on horseback before, but never out so far into the unpopulated foothills, and never in an already waterlogged desert.

  Clint, unlike Boswell and Norman, seemed to pick up on my anxiety. When the dogs were finished drinking, he collapsed the water dish and stowed it once again in the saddle pack. Then he walked over, pausing to adjust the brow-band on Paul’s headstall. His eyes scanned Paul, taking in the saddle placement, the cinch, the bags tied behind the cantle. Finally, they came to rest on me.

  I felt a little shock as our eyes met, as if the alignment of our pupils allowed a subtle electrical current to pass from his body to mine. I felt the pull of that current and had to resist the urge to step forward.

  It seemed we stood that way, looking at each other, for a long time. A cactus wren cried from a clump of cholla next to the trail, and one of the dogs gave a sigh, the tags on his collar rattling as he scratched an itch on his neck. “You holding up alright?” Clint said this in a gentle tone, as if he really cared, as if he hadn’t turned his back on me just a few days ago, walked out the door and ridden away when I’d said hello.

  I felt the thrill in my veins shift to a sort of frustrated throbbing, which changed unexpectedly into a flash of irritation. Who was this guy, to think he could toy with me like this? What kind of person kissed a girl one day and shunned her the next? I dropped my eyes and looked at the worn toe of the borrowed boot on my foot. “I’m fine.” I realized I sounded sulky, like a child denied their first choice of dinner options refusing all reasonable alternatives just to be difficult.

  Clint drew back, stepped away from Paul and swung onto Rascal’s back without another word. Taking care to keep my wincing internal, I too hauled myself back into the saddle.

  Forty minutes later, I was beginning to entertain the idea that Clint was a psychopath. He’d lured me out into the desert in the guise of a rescuer to make me trot until I literally expired.

  It seemed we had been trotting for approximately a week, and the trot kept getting faster. The longer we rode, the more often Clint glanced up at the sky, and every time he did this, he and Rascal accelerated.

  Rascal, it turned out, could trot at a pace I had never before experienced on horseback. I had to work to get Paul to keep up. Once I’d urged him ahead too strongly, and he’d broken into a canter. Clint had slowed down and turned in his saddle. “Try not to let him lope,” he’d said. “We need to conserve their energy.”

  So Paul and I were exploring the limits of the long trot, and neither of us was enjoying it.

  Nevertheless, I could und
erstand Clint’s urgency. The sky was growing darker by the moment, and we had not yet crossed the Rio Oro wash. You didn’t have to be a seasoned desert survivalist to know crossing a flooding waterway in a monsoon was a good way to end up dead.

  We were racing the storm. I understood that. But that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable.

  The dogs were flagging as well. Boswell had taken to running ahead and lying down in the trail, sprawling in the damp areas under the brushy mesquites and trying to cool himself by coating his belly with mud. Norman was proving more dogged. He had installed himself at Paul’s flank. Eyes blank, tongue lolling, he was going whatever pace Paul went.

  I could see the wash on our left now. It would emerge between the trees and rocks, sometimes a raging flood of clear water over rock, sometimes a dark band of slower-moving seepage over sand. I had seen several places that seemed crossable, places where the floodplain grew wide and the flow branched into channels of forked waterways. But we passed all of them, following the trail higher and higher until I was sure we were going to crest the mountain at any moment. I was perplexed about this until we passed a particularly clear expanse of wash and I could look across to see the barbed wire fence that ran along the opposite bank, the bottoms of the posts submerged in some places. Then I understood. Man and nature were conspiring to make this as difficult as possible.

  An unmeasurable amount of time after my revelation on this topic, the sound of Rascal’s footfalls changed. He walked for a moment, then stopped. Clint swung down from his saddle and looked back at me, his body-language tense. Paul and I had come to a grateful, sweat-sodden stop as soon as Rascal had slowed down. He said, “We’ll want to lead them across.”

  I gazed at Clint, my discomfort once again coalescing into irritation. He looked like he always did. Sure, there was a stressed air about him, deeper creases at the corners of his mouth, the distracted way he kept glancing at the sky. But all in all, he looked fine. He didn’t appear fatigued. He was sweaty, sure, but his legs weren’t shaking beneath him, as it turned out mine did as soon as I stepped off Paul’s back.

  Clint went to Rascal’s head and led his horse forward, leaving the trail and disappearing around the back of a huge boulder. Paul and I followed, the dogs at our heels, and I saw where we were going to cross.

  It was a large expanse of smooth rock, interspersed with deeper grooves and areas of sand. It was wide and the slope was slight, so the water ran in a shallow sheet over the rock. Clint stepped into the flow without hesitation, glancing back and saying, “Take your time. Give Paul plenty of space, and let him choose his own way.”

  I let Clint get a horse-length ahead, then stepped into the water. My boot grew cold, but my foot stayed dry.

  Most of the rock was coarse, evidently not usually under water. The areas around the deeper grooves were more slick, and I worried Paul would put a foot into one of these.

  I took my time. I gave Paul plenty of space and let him choose his way. For his part, the horse took his job seriously. He picked his path with care, never refusing to cross anything, but not hurrying either.

  I managed to stay reasonably relaxed about the situation until we were about halfway across. That’s when the dim air flickered with lightning, and a thunderclap came hard on its heels. The crash was loud enough to make Norman yip.

  I froze in my tracks, reviewing what I knew about lightning. Lightning tended to strike the highest organic object in any given area. It was attracted to water and metal and living beings. Which meant, in theory, it would be particularly enticed by two large living creatures standing in shallow water and wearing various pieces of metal.

  I started to feel truly panicky for the first time all day.

  Clint was still ahead of me. He looked back again, as if he could hear my internal dialogue. We were more than halfway across the water-slicked rock, so turning around was no safer than going on. “Don’t rush now,” he said. “Take your time.”

  More thunder rumbled. I wanted to close my eyes, open them again, and wake up in my apartment, slicked in nightmare-induced sweat but otherwise unharmed.

  I closed my eyes and opened them to no effect. I could still feel the current tugging at the cuffs of my jeans, still feel the course horsehair reins in my hand. I kept walking, Paul following along behind.

  The dogs didn’t appear to mind the water at all. Both of them had waded in with enthusiasm, sides heaving, pink skin visible where their haunches met their torsos. They lapped the water and stood in the deepest areas they could find, the current washing some of the grime from their legs and chests.

  I kept my eyes on the rock in front of me, close enough to Rascal’s hind legs to be sure I took the same route he did. Behind me, Paul slipped. There was a heart-stopping clatter of horseshoes on rock as he scrambled to keep his feet beneath him. I turned and watched, powerless to help. But he recovered, and kept on walking as if nothing had happened.

  “Almost there now.” This came from up ahead. Clint and Rascal had crossed the final deep rivulet and were walking a bit faster across the last stretch of coarse rock. I had to resist the urge to hurry, to encourage Paul to go faster.

  Then Clint was out the other side, stepping up onto a higher slope of rock that led down to the most welcome expanse of dirt I’d ever laid eyes on in my life. Boswell and Norman scrambled up behind him, and a moment later Paul and I followed. The damp soil clung to the bottoms of my soaked jeans, but I didn’t care. My fatigue lifted, my sore muscles eased.

  I was across the Rio Oro! I was no longer the prisoner of insufficient infrastructure funding. And I’d escaped without abandoning my mother’s dogs. I wanted to fling my arms around Clint’s neck and kiss him. But he was still looking at the sky, his face grim. “I’m sorry Erin,” he said as he led Rascal forward enough to give me room to mount. “There’s no time for a rest.”

  Ignoring the fact that just hearing Clint speak my name sent a little surge of adrenaline through my veins, I settled for giving Paul a quick hug around the neck and climbing back into the saddle.

  ❂

  Riding after the crossing was easier for a time. Although the sky continued to darken, the rain held off for another fifteen minutes. We trotted down a gentle sandy slope that led away from the mountains and angled towards the scrub-brush plains I knew made up portions of the Tipped Z’s pastures.

  Only a few minutes after crossing the wash, we came to an intersection of fences. One was the barbed wire fence I’d seen across the wash. The other was smooth wire. Where they met there was a gate and a sign about the permit you needed to enter State Trust land. A trail was visible on both sides. On ours it went straight up towards the mountains at a steeper angle than how we’d come down. On the other it headed down and away on a similar trajectory to the one we’d been following.

  Clint trotted up to the gate and worked the latch from horseback. At the gate’s bottom was a solid metal bar about a foot off the ground: a technique for keeping ATVs out of the mountains. Paul stepped over the bar without protest, Boswell and Norman close behind. Clint closed the gate, then unrolled a pair of waxed canvas slickers from behind his cantle. He passed one to me and waited to see that I put it on. He donned his, and we set off again at the trot.

  My newfound optimism and energy at surviving the crossing lasted for approximately five more minutes. Then the realities of my aching legs and chafed tush began to intrude again. We were trotting a little more slowly now, but the gait was not different enough to provide riders, horses or dogs any measurable relief. Still, I kept on, trying to ride well, taking care to steer Paul around fallen cactus pads and branches that had made their way into the trail. I had even gotten back into a sort of dull rhythm.

  Then the rain hit.

  It came at us from the side, sweeping over a ridge to our left with gale-force winds, flinging cold pellets of hard water over our faces. I blinked, and Paul tried to turn. I heard Clint call, “He’s going to want to put his back to the wind. Don’t let him.??
?

  Therein followed a brief battle of wills with Paul. I asked him to straighten out and follow Rascal. He refused.

  In Paul’s defense, he was tired. I could feel it in his body, in the lack of elasticity in his trot. Nevertheless, throwing a tantrum now wasn’t going to help anyone. I tried to remember everything Clint had ever said about being firm, but fair. I pointed Paul’s nose towards Clint and Rascal and gave him a solid thump with the leg he was trying to turn into.

  He stayed stiff for one more second. I applied one more thump, and he gave in. Ears tipped back against the blowing rain, he dropped his head. We went on.

  I could sympathize. The rain blew against the side of my face, flinging itself into my eyes and making me blink. My hair, face, and jeans below the slicker were soaked through in exactly 1.5 seconds. As I felt a trickle of water run down my back, I flipped the slicker’s collar up and eyed Clint’s flat-brimmed hat with new comprehension and envy. He seemed to feel my eyes on him. He turned. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sounds of the storm. “I’d give you my hat,” he said. “But it’s too big. It’d blow off your head.”

  I felt suddenly horrible, like the worst sort of dependent greenhorn. “That’s ok,” I called back, annunciating my words as if we were shouting from the deck of one ship to another. “I’m fine.”

  We trotted on. The slicker was roomy on me, its interior rough against the bare skin of my arms, but I was more grateful for that flapping canvas than I’d ever been for any article of clothing in my entire previous life. The horses were rain-slicked within a few minutes. The dogs were drenched as well. They had both fallen in behind Paul now, squinting against the water-filled air, lacking the energy to even cast reproachful glances up at me.

  We trotted and trotted. Thunder crashed and rumbled around us, and the dim air flickered and flashed. My focus narrowed to two things: keeping Paul’s nose aligned with Rascal’s rump, and making sure Boswell and Norman were still behind me.

  The trail twisted as it went. When the wind was at our backs, things weren’t so bad. The horses perked up, and we all got a brief reprieve. But when the trail bent back or the wind shifted and flung water into our faces again, we all suffered.

  I lost track of time. I kept shifting my attention forward, back, forward, back. Rascal, dogs, Rascal, dogs, Rascal… no dogs.

  I sat down, asking Paul to stop. He’d apparently entered the same sort of mental tunnel I’d been occupying. He ignored me. I had to give a little tug on the reins to get his attention, but as soon as I did he sagged gratefully to a stop.

  I turned around in my saddle, blinking the water out of my eyes. Norman was standing a ways back up the trail, tail between his legs, ears flattened. He was halfway between me and the small white smudge in the distance that was Boswell.

  I looked forward, ready to call out to Clint, but saw he was already stopped and turned around, guiding Rascal back in my direction.

  Boswell was walking, but at a slow pace. His sides were heaving beneath his rain-slicked coat. He was all but tottering on his feet. I wondered for the first time if I had made the right decision, subjecting them to this adventure.

  Clint rode Rascal up next to the dog, and swung out of the saddle. With a sort of gentle scooping gesture, he laid the dog on his side. Boswell appeared surprised to be off his feet and tried to scramble up again, but Clint held him down, hands gentle but firm. After a few seconds of being pinned to the ground, the dog relaxed. In a series of quick, deft movements I couldn’t follow, Clint produced a set of leather thongs and bound Boswell’s feet in front and behind, then turned and heaved him onto Rascal’s saddle. He did the same thing to Norman, startling me when he stood and swung the dog up to hang as a warm, soaked presence between my hips and the saddle horn. I expected him to squirm or protest in some way. But he just hung there, panting. I realized Clint had had to let them get this tired so they would hold still on horseback.

  Clint mounted up again as a swaying mesquite branch sent a spray of wet beans clattering down over the top of us. He turned Rascal, and started back along the trail, but he did not pick up the trot again.

  ❂

  I finished wiping the sand off Paul’s bridle and hung it where Clint had shown me, not in the tack room but next to Rascal’s headgear and the two soaked saddles in one of the empty stalls that was outfitted with a selection of saddle horses and hooks. Here, I gathered, the soaked gear would be able to dry without infecting the entire tack room with dampness.

  I slid the stall door closed behind me and walked over to another stall, peering down at the two pale shapes just visible in the gloom. Boswell and Norman were installed with enough food and water and wool blankets to last them a week. My mother’s bull terriers were already dead to the world, collapsed into sodden, exhausted heaps.

  I resisted the urge to open the door and collapse next to them. I could not remember a time I had ever been so tired. My legs felt like putty, and I was certain the removal of my jeans would reveal life-threatening chafeage. The slicker I was still wearing had protected the bulk of my body from the wet, but my head and hands felt water-logged and chilled.

  Clint had gone back out into the storm to return the horses to their herd. He had been gone a bit longer than seemed necessary to complete that task. But then, I was willing to admit my sense of time had abandoned me.

  I left the aisle between the stalls and headed for the hay room, approaching the large bay doors to stand just beyond where the rain blew in and fell on the packed dirt floor.

  The storm was still storming. Lightning crashed and flickered, and the sky was dark with clouds. It could be high noon for all you could see of the sky. I squinted towards the gates that led to the pastures but could only make out the dim outlines of the water tanks and one or two shapes that may or may not have been horses.

  There was a tread behind me, and I spun around. Clint was entering through the small door that led in from the parking area, water streaming off his hat and the ends of his slicker. He saw me by the bay doors and stopped walking.

  And there we were, standing in the same places we’d been the last time we’d seen each other, our positions switched. For a moment, I felt certain he was going to turn around and leave, abandoning me to a night sleeping on the hay or in with the dogs.

  This was an uncharitable thought, and I felt bad for even thinking it. This man had just spent six hours riding through extreme conditions to save me from a situation I had signed myself into.

  Still, that thing was in the air between us again, that block, that obstruction I’d felt for the first time on Sunday. We stood for a long time, looking at each other as the rain pounded on the metal roof of the barn.

  Finally, Clint took a little step forward. “Nora can’t get in. The ditch on Ray Ranch Road is flooding, and there’s a truck stuck.”

  I processed this. If Nora couldn’t get in, that meant Clint and I couldn’t get out.

  “Should clear up as soon as the storm lifts, though.” Clint added this in a reassuring tone, as if afraid I would conclude I’d been rescued from one trap only to find myself in another.

  I sensed it was my turn to say something. “Good,” I managed. “And thank you, Clint, really I ….” He turned away from me before I could finish my sentence, and for a moment I thought I’d been wrong, that he was going to leave me out here.

  But he said as he headed for the door, “You best come on up to the house.”

  ❂

  I scrubbed at my wet hair with a towel and stared bleakly into the mirror, wishing for a make-up kit, or at least a comb. With a sense of resignation, I turned the light off and ducked out of the bathroom to scurry across the hall, back into ‘my’ room. There was no way I was going to look like anything other than the victim of a shipwreck, so there was little point trying.

  I was wearing a pair of black sweatpants that were rather too large and a t-shirt that was a little too tight. It had seemed the best compromise I had available. Clint ha
d provided me with a selection of clothing options, some pulled from his own closet, some brought down from the room at the ranch house Nora still stayed in with some regularity. All the bottoms from the Nora pile had turned out to be tight in areas that made them both uncomfortable and revealing, and all the tops from the Clint pile made me feel like a bag lady. So I’d rolled the waistband of Clint’s sweatpants over itself a few times to make them shorter, slipped into the largest shirt from the pile, and resigned myself to my fate.

  Back in the room, I looked at the clock on the dresser and realized with a sinking feeling that there was no way I could hide from Clint for the rest of the evening.

  It was 5:30. It felt like it should be midnight. It felt like we had ridden through the dark stormy desert for at least eight hours. In reality, it had been a little over three. The chafing that had felt life-threatening while I was still riding turned out to be two modest streaks of red skin, utterly disappointing in how mild they looked.

  I paced around the bedroom a few times, stopping to stare out the window. The storm was beginning to let up, and the sky was getting brighter in a sort of faux dawn. But the sun was beginning to drop in the west. We were likely in for the sort of spectacular sunset that populates the sorts of calendars they sell in the airport.

  Clint, I had learned, did not live with his parents. He had his own house, tucked on the other side of a little hill that rose behind the Tipped Z proper. His driveway left the Tipped Z parking area and wrapped down and around and back towards the pastures, so his location was invisible from the barn but not actually far away.

  The little house was a splendid adobe structure with a covered front porch and a yard encircled by a low wall. The floors were all tile, and the walls were dominated by large windows. The living room featured a massive fireplace and opened into a kitchen with copper countertops and an island with a built-in cutting board.

  We’d trooped in together, dripping and sand-covered, and he’d directed me to the guest bedroom and bathroom, then disappeared towards the opposite end of the house.

  I’d taken my time with the shower and the changing, but I was running out of delay tactics. I took one final look at my reflection in the mirror, went to the dresser where I’d set my purse (which Clint had brought in from the saddle bags), fished out my phone, and ventured forth with the mission of asking for a charger.

  My phone had proven unwilling or unable to turn on, which meant my parents still thought I was riding a horse through a monsoon with Boswell and Norman in tow. I felt a bit bad about that. As I padded my way down the short hallway and peered into the main living area, I reflected I maybe should have tried to get in touch with them before the shower.

  The house seemed empty. The hallways connected to the living room with the fireplace, and past that I could see into the gleaming kitchen and the entryway. It wasn’t a large house, but the open architecture made it feel spacious and also a little intimidating. I crept in, keeping close to the wall like a mouse venturing into the cat’s domain. I headed for a little nook in the entryway that seemed to house a phone and answering machine. Once there, a quick scan of the plugs and wires revealed a cell phone charger. I plugged my phone in, heard it beep, and felt a little bit better.

  I gave the phone a moment to charge, peering around the dim house. The wall space that wasn’t occupied by fireplace or windows held black and white photos of horses and cattle, most of them abstract in some way.

  I stepped away from the phone nook to examine the nearest one. It was a study in contrast. The bottom of the photo was an unbroken billow of white dust. The top was a black sky. In the middle appeared the shapes of horses and riders, rising from the dust like mythical creatures riding the crest of a wave.

  “My late wife took that photo.”

  Clint’s voice made me jump, and I spun around to see him standing in the doorway on the opposite side of the living area, the one I assumed led to the master bedroom. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants a good deal like mine, but his t-shirt fit him a lot better. It was strange to see him in anything other than his ranching get-up. His hair was wet and stuck up in all directions, as if he hadn’t thought to look in a mirror before coming out into the house.

  “Easy,” he said when he saw me twitch in place. “Storm’s outside, not in here.” He cracked that little smile, but then he looked away from me, his eyebrows knitting as if he’d remembered something painful. His face lapsed back into the mask it had been since the day he’d walked away from me in the hay room.

  I tried to steady myself, taking a few deep breaths to calm my racing nerves. Why did this man have this effect on me? I was a grown woman, for crying out loud. I should not go all to pieces just because I was alone in a house with the sexiest cowboy who had ever walked the earth.

  “I borrowed your charger.” I blurted this out like a child confessing a raid on the cookie jar. He gave a little nod, as if to suggest he was not surprised but wasn’t going to hold it over my head.

  Then I realized what he’d said.

  He’d said wife. And he’d said late.

  Wife meant wedding ring.

  Late meant dead.

  I turned back towards the photo, searching the silhouettes of the riders. Now that I was looking, I could recognize them. There was Clint, his flat-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. There was Nora, a partial profile, laughing at something. And there was their father, throwing a perfect loop towards a plunging calf.

  I turned back to Clint. He was staring at the floor, his mouth a tight knot. For once, the correct thing to say rose to my lips unbidden. “It’s a beautiful shot. I’m sorry for your loss.” I felt proud of myself after I said this, as if I’d passed some sort of test.

  “She was a photographer.” He said this in a wistful tone that was hard to hear. My newfound conversational alacrity abandoned me. I could think of nothing more to say. He went on after a moment’s silence. “I got a phone call to make as well. You have everything you need?”

  I nodded, and he turned around, disappearing back the way he’d come.

  Heart pounding, I returned to the desk, where I felt a disproportionate surge of relief when my phone powered on without a hitch. I waited as it searched for a signal, managed to register one tiny bar, and downloaded a deluge of messages from my mother, and one or two from my dad. Instead of reading them all, I texted them back. “Safe at the Tipped Z, but stuck for the night. Boswell and Norman are fine.”

  I hit send, and went back to my list of messages, noticing one from Nora mixed in with all the ones from my mother. I opened it. “Feel free to borrow any of my clothes,” it said.

  I stared at my screen for a moment, and it occurred to me Nora had not been entirely on the up and up in her matchmaker role. Why hadn’t she told me Clint had been married: that he’d suffered such a loss?

  I wrote her back. “Thanks. Currently inhabiting one of your old t-shirts.”

  I sent this, and continued to think. Nora had seemed like the sort of person who told everybody everything, but clearly her propensity for chatter didn’t mean an indiscriminate spewing of information.

  On impulse, I composed another text. “Can you think of any reason Clint might have been cool towards me since Sunday?”

  I sent this, and waited, glancing behind me at the door to Clint’s room as if it might disgorge an angry bull at any moment. I wanted to take the phone charger with me to my bedroom, so I could text behind a closed door, but that seemed both rude and forward.

  I waited for what seemed like an eternity but was really less than one minute. My phone beeped. The text was from my mom. “Finally!”

  The next one was from my dad. “So glad to hear it honey. Rest well tonight. Love you.”

  Before I could start a reply, Nora wrote back. “Sorry. Probably shouldn’t have interfered, but I told him about your other guy. He’s kind of fragile. He seemed so into you. Didn’t want him getting hurt.”

  I texted back, righteous indignation flooding my
veins. “My other guy???” Then I waited, heart pounding, staring at the screen until it lit with Nora’s reply.

  “I saw you downtown last week, kissing by your car.”

  A crushing wave of realization swept over me. I knew what she was talking about. That night Ben had taken me to dinner, he’d walked me back to my car, and stolen that kiss. He’d looked behind me at a group of girls. He’d said it had seemed like one of them was going to call out to me, but then had moved on.

  I wanted to bang my head against the wall. I wanted to text Nora back and tell her Ben was nothing, he was no one, things were over between us.

  But then I remembered how I’d made out with him just a few days ago. In reality, I’d had ample opportunity to end that relationship. And I hadn’t.

  I had nothing to say in my own defense. Clint had kissed me, and a few days later Nora had seen me out on the town with another guy.

  Nora texted again. “You’re the first girl he’s shown any interest in since his wife died four years ago. I thought he should know. Didn’t think he’d take it quite so bad.”

  I wrote back, feeling shaky and ashamed. “Thanks for telling me.”

  ❂

  “Erin!” My dad said my name with a huge smile, pushing open the low gate in Clint’s patio wall to step up onto the porch and wrap me in a warm, enthusiastic hug. It took me a moment to hug him back, mostly because I was having trouble processing his presence.

  Sensing my confusion, he released me and stepped back, holding me at arm’s length to survey my face, still beaming. “Your mom’s up at the barn with the dogs. Clint sent me down here to find you.”

  Indeed, my father’s mud-spattered Ford Explorer was parked a short distance off, the driver’s side door hanging open.

  “How did you get in?” It had been only an hour since I’d texted them. Clint had reappeared from his room a few minutes after my exchange with Nora and said he was going back out to check on the herds and the fences now that the rain had stopped.

  I had spent the last hour giving myself a pep-talk. I had an opportunity here, I’d decided. An opportunity to spend an evening with Clint and repair the damage that had been done the night Nora had seen me with Ben.

  Except here was my dad, standing in the failing light in Clint’s puddle-spotted driveway, ready to be my latest rescuer.

  And it was good to see my dad. He looked a bit thinner than when he’d left, his hair perhaps a little more gray. But he was beaming at me with such happiness, my answering smile soon shifted from forced to genuine.

  “It was a bit of a maze, let me tell you,” my dad said in response to my question. “We had to string together a bunch of neighborhood streets and cross one or two pieces of terrain that aren’t precisely meant to be driven on. But your mother wasn’t happy about the dogs spending the night in a horse stall, and we both couldn’t wait to see you.”

  “Thanks for coming.” I managed to get the sentence out without giving away my dismay. “Let me go grab my stuff.”

  My mother was waiting in front of the barn when my dad and I followed Clint’s looping driveway up past the ranch house and stopped in the parking area. Boswell and Norman were with her, sitting on either side and blinking around at the twilight with bleary eyes. She came over to give me a hug when I stepped out of the car, and when she released me she said, “Thank you for getting them out, Erin. Clint said it was a hard ride but you did really well, and he couldn’t have gotten them both back without your help.”

  Surprised, I glanced around the parking area. Now that the storm had blown over, the evening was still and quiet, the normal activity of birds, small animals, and insects on pause as the desert’s inhabitants began a waterlogged recovery. It occurred to me for the first time that I could have declined to go with Clint, or sent the dogs with him and staked my hopes on the return of the helicopter.

  “Where is Clint?” I was adjusting to the idea that I wasn’t going to get to spend the evening in Clint’s house after all, and I couldn’t decide if this was a relief or a disappointment. Still, I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.

  “He rode off somewhere.” My mother made a vague gesture with her hand. “He said he wouldn’t be back until after dark.” She moved to the back of the Explorer as she spoke and opened the rear hatch so Boswell and Norman could hop up.

  A wave of weariness washed over me. After it had seemed the entire universe had conspired to get me and Clint alone together, cut off from the outside world, thrown into an intimate situation, it had changed the set-up at the last minute. I spent one more moment staring out towards the darkening pastures, as if Clint might materialize, riding out of the twilight to… do what? Ask me to stay anyway? Ask for my hand in marriage? Maybe my problem with relationships was I didn’t even know how to fantasize about impossible but romantic outcomes.

  My mom shut the tailgate and climbed into the front seat. On horseback, up in the mountains, I’d been scared but intrepid. I’d risen to the occasion, walking through a rushing sheet of water in a lightning storm, handling Paul’s tantrum when he didn’t want to walk into the wind, steadying Norman in front of me in the saddle as we endured a deluge. Now I was relegated to the back seat, just like when I’d been a kid, to stare out the side windows and watch the moon rise as my father patched together a winding route back to my apartment complex.

  ❂

  “She lives!”

  I looked up from the mat I was cutting to see Anne standing in the workroom doorway, wearing a flowing linen suit and a delighted smile. One thing about getting stranded by a natural disaster for a few days is it sure makes everyone happy to see you.

  I smiled back, finished my cut, and set the mat aside.

  It had been a busy couple of days. When I’d arrived with my parents back at my apartment complex, I’d learned my father had had the brilliant idea of asking at the office if there was an unoccupied apartment they could rent for a week or two. Before they’d come to get me, my parents had moved my father’s suitcase and my mother’s meagre array of possessions out of my domain and into their temporary accommodations. Which meant I did not have to share my one-room apartment with my parents and two dogs. This had been more of a relief than I would ever admit to anyone.

  It was now Thursday morning. Anne had insisted I take Wednesday off, to ‘get reoriented,’ which had turned out to mean alternately pacing around my apartment and walking over to check on my parents.

  Anne was grinning at me, one shapely eyebrow cocked, her face amused. “And you got rescued on horseback? By a cowboy?”

  I felt myself begin to blush. To cover this, I cut a fresh piece of brown paper off the roll and taped it down over my work area, saying, “Clint rode in with a horse for me.”

  Anne was still beaming. “That is the best story I’ve ever heard. I hope you gave him an appropriate thank you.”

  I had to admit it did make a good story, as long as you omitted the part where I’d blown my opportunity to express my gratitude via overwhelmed kisses or amorous, lingering, embraces.

  Ever since my parents had driven me back to my apartment, I had been busy imagining all the ways in which I could have used my time with Clint to advantage. I could have, say, flung my arms around him when he’d first arrived at my parents’ house. I could have orchestrated a sodden but romantic make-out session once we’d made it back to the ranch. I could have boldly invaded his bedroom after I’d showered, or at least smoothed down his spiked hair and thanked him for saving me.

  I’d done none of these things. As far as I could recall, I hadn’t even said ‘thank you.’ I certainly hadn’t delivered the obligatory kiss required from any rescued damsel in distress.

  I flicked a piece of lint off the surface of the clean paper. “Yeah, I’m afraid I blew it in that regard.”

  “Blew it?” Anne said, coming into the room and leaning against the other side of the table. “What do you mean?”

  “I found out Nora saw me downtown with Ben and told
Clint, and now Clint thinks I’m with Ben, and was with Ben the whole time he and I sort of had a bit of thing. So even though we were together for hours he has basically stopped talking to me. I think he’s not interested after all.” It was painful to sum things up so succinctly, but as the words flowed from my mouth, they had the ring of truth.

  Anne looked skeptical. “But he’ll still ride through a monsoon to rescue you from a flooded neighborhood.”

  I reached for the artwork for the frame. It was a small lithograph of a single rose in a vase standing in front of a window. I flipped it over and lined it up on the backing board. “His sister obviously made him do it. She’d probably have come for me herself, but she couldn’t get to the ranch.” The more I thought about the rescue in this light, the more it made sense. Clint had been holding back the whole time, keeping as much distance between us as possible.

  But then I remembered what he’d said to my mom, about me doing well on the ride, about how I’d been helpful.

  Anne was watching me, her eyes growing narrow a she seemed to pick up on my inner turmoil. “Erin,” she said in a tone that would have been stern if her eyes hadn’t been so playful. “What are you not telling me?”

  “He had a wife.” I said it fast, staring at the back of the artwork. “She died.”

  This surprised even Anne. She was quiet for a while, fiddling with a stray piece of backing paper, folding it into halves, quarters, eights, then flattening it out again and repeating the process. I thought about how still Clint was in comparison to Anne. Clint never fidgeted. Every time he moved it was deliberate and calculated, efficient and smooth.

  “What do you want in a relationship?” Anne said this in a firm tone, and the question surprised me so much I didn’t have an answer. She waited a moment while I scrambled around internally, coming up with nothing.

  When I failed to answer, Anne strode across the room impatiently, tossing her scrap of paper in the trash can. “I mean,” she said, coming back to the other side of the table, “does the damsel in distress role appeal to you? Is that how you want the balance of power to play out? Are you the helpless girl who needs rescuing? Or are you a partner who can tow the line: help him when he needs it?”

  It seemed like a no-brainer to me, but as I prepared to answer I could see Anne wasn’t done. She went on. “In spite of supposedly being liberated, so many woman still act helpless. They refuse to take initiative, they wait for the man to make a move. But what it seems like here is that Clint needs help. He expressed an interest in you. It sounds like he’s not much of a talker, but he’s gone out of his way to show you he cares. He rescued your mom’s dogs once, then he rescued you and the dogs a second time. He’s holding himself back because he’s been through a lot and he doesn’t know how you feel. For all he knows, you’re in love with Ben.”

  I looked at Anne in some surprise. She seemed angry all of a sudden, like I’d done something to personally offend her. My tone was uncertain when I said, “So what do I do?”

  Anne looked at me, her expression shifting back towards her more typical look. “You either let him go, or you make a move. I’d say it’s your choice.”

  She left then, her heels ringing on the tile floor as she strode towards her office. I stood, staring down at the back of the lithograph for a long time. Penciled on the back, it said, “Rives BFK, University of Arizona print shop, limestone, traditional etching.” The words seemed to swim in front of my eyes. I moved away from the table so I wouldn’t cry on the artwork.

  Anne was right. I was behaving like the heroine in a bad piece of historical romance. Clint had made his moves, several of them.

  It was my turn to act.

  ❂

  I watched with some dismay as Olivia swiped at the plastic tray in front of her, sending a spray of cheerios flying in every direction while she laughed and followed up with a hand gesture I had recently learned meant ‘more’ in sign-language.

  I looked across the table at Trace. She gave a little shrug as she poured a few more cheerios from the box. She said, “Sometimes I wish we had a dog.”

  “I should have brought Boswell and Norman. They are not loving apartment life.” I took a sip of my beer and tried to ignore the butterflies in my stomach.

  It was Friday night. I was at Trace’s house, attempting to get my courage up. I was determined to end things with Ben, now, tonight. Ben had wanted to take me out to dinner. I’d said I had plans, but wanted to drop by for a few minutes around 6:30.

  It was a tricky business, planning to break up with someone. I hadn’t wanted to say anything too foreboding and then leave him worrying all day. But, on the other hand, it had seemed equally cruel to let him think we were going to have a fabulous evening that would result in more of the making out that had occurred the last time we’d seen each other.

  So I had a plan. I was going to drive over to his house, give the boots back, and explain we were through.

  I’d invited myself over to Trace’s first, partially to save myself from my parents (who were almost as restless as Boswell and Norman in their temporary accommodations), and partially because I hadn’t seen Trace all week, and I was curious to see how she was doing.

  “Are you sure though?” Trace said, picking up the thread of the conversation we’d been having before Olivia scattered her food. I’d been busy pouring my heart out, explaining my situation in detail. “You could go to Clint first, before you end things with Ben? That way if he’s not into you, you have a fallback plan.”

  I shook my head as Trace shifted in her chair and picked a cheerio out from underneath one of her legs. “I need to end things with Ben, one way or another. I really like him, just not in the right way.”

  Trace gave a sympathetic nod. Before Andrew, she’d been the queen of brief, flamboyant relationships. She’d broken a lot of hearts, sometimes dumping guys I thought she was into.

  “Plus,” I went on, corralling the stray cheerios on the table-top into a little pile with my hands, “I need to be able to tell Clint it’s over. He can see through a lie like I can see through a window.”

  Olivia gave a shriek and picked up her sippy cup to bang it several times on the tray in front of her. Trace gave her daughter an absent smile.

  The change in Trace since the last time I’d seen her was nothing short of remarkable. She hadn’t turned into a lax parent, by any means, but she had gained a sort of equilibrium that had been lacking before. She was seated in the chair across from me with a glass of wine, leaning against the back with her legs crossed. Gone was that poised look she’d had for so long, the sense that she was ready to spring to action at any moment, to wage war on any stuffed animal large enough to smother, or plastic toy piece small enough to choke.

  The house was looking more normal too. There was a bag of groceries on the counter. I could see a bag of tortilla chips protruding out the top, and the outline of a jar of salsa next to it. It wasn’t that the place was a dump, but it had lost the over-polished, pristine look that had suggested a certain over-amplified attention to cleanliness.

  Trace looked better, too. The lines of strain around her eyes and mouth were diminished. She’d even laughed several times since I’d been here.

  “What are you going to tell Ben?” Trace asked as Olivia scattered cheerios again, laughing like a maniac. According to Trace, Olivia had just been introduced to cheerios, and to me it appeared she was getting a lot more mileage out of launching them than putting them in her mouth.

  I rubbed at my forehead with one hand. As much as I recognized the necessity of what I had to do, the actual doing it part was not something I was looking forward to. “Just that I’m not into him, I guess.”

  Trace looked up, a look of horror on her face. “You can’t tell him that.” She sounded as if I’d said I intended to bash his knees in with a length of pipe.

  I began to add the latest scattering of cheerios to my pile. “Why not? It’s the truth.”

  Trace was shaking her head. ??
?You have to be nicer about it: pad reality for him. Getting dumped is hard on the male ego.”

  “So what would you say?”

  Trace looked thoughtful for a moment, leaning forward to flick a stray cheerio into my pile. “Say you met someone right after you found out about Kim, and things are going well with the guy.”

  I shifted in my chair, giving Trace my most skeptical look. I tried to imagine saying this to Ben. It was not difficult to envision the crestfallen expression on his face, the hurt look in his eyes. “You think I should tell him there’s someone else?” To me, that seemed unnecessarily cruel.

  “It closes the door.” Trace said this in a tone of authority, rotating the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. “It destroys his ability to keep hoping you’ll change your mind. That, my friend, may seem mean, but it’s the kindest thing you can do when you’re dumping someone who doesn’t want to be dumped.” Trace rose as she finished her speech. “Will you keep an eye on her for a second?”

  She left the kitchen, and I heard the bathroom door close a moment later.

  I looked over at Olivia, who was busy trying to pick a single cheerio up between one thumb and forefinger. She moved like a lobster who had only recently been converted to human form, pinching at the cheerio with a look of extreme concentration on her face.

  I leaned forward, picked up the cheerio, and tried to hand it to her. Her fingers were soft and sticky with a mix of cheerio dust and baby saliva. Three cheerios were stuck to the bare skin of her forearm. She kept up with the pinching motion, and I couldn’t help but laugh as the hand-off failed several times in quick succession.

  I had finally gotten the cheerio transferred from my hand to Olivia’s when Trace returned, walking back into the kitchen just in time to see her daughter laugh, hold the cheerio up in front of her face, and shove it into her mouth.

  ❂

  I left my apartment, turned to lock the door, and headed towards the parking area. Instead of going down to my car, I turned left and continued halfway around the arc of the lot, turning up the walkway that had the offices and the pool on one side and apartments on the other. It was dark out. The solar lights threw their pale, mild light around them in pools.

  I knocked on the door of Unit 1. It was only a moment before I heard the clicking of toenails on the other side of the door and the snuffling sounds of dogs. But there was no immediate response that sounded human.

  As I waited for the door to open, I realized I never knocked when I went to my parents’ house. I always walked right in and said hello.

  The night was cool, and a breeze stirred the decorative shrubbery around the paths. I crossed my arms. A dove was calling somewhere nearby. I wondered what about birds allowed them to be so satisfied with making one noise indefinitely.

  I was beginning to worry my parents had decided to go out to dinner when I heard the sound of the dead bolt turning, and my father opened the door. He was wearing a bath robe, and his hair was dripping wet. Boswell and Norman crowded around his legs. Their tails began to wag when they saw me.

  “Sorry, hon,” my Dad said. “I was in the shower.”

  He walked away from the door so I could come inside. I stepped around the dogs, pausing long enough to pat their backs.

  The apartment my parents now occupied was one the complex kept vacant but furnished for two reasons: they used it to show off their fanciest model to interested parties, and to house other occupants in the event of broken water pipes, malfunctioning stove tops, backed up plumping, or any of the other eventualities that could render a small space temporarily uninhabitable. I had not stayed here during my gas leak adventure because two apartments had been impacted by that problem, and the other one had housed a family with two young kids and a dog.

  The floor-plan was much larger than mine. The kitchen was its own independent space, with a dedicated dining area. There was a good-sized living room, three bedrooms, and a small patio out back. It was populated with the kind of furniture that looks nice from a distance but upon closer inspection turns out to be both cheap and worn.

  “Where’s Mom?” I followed my dad inside and shut the door behind me. I had not yet gotten over the strangeness of seeing my parents in this place. My dad’s phone sat on the kitchen counter. Boswell and Norman’s shiny new food and water bowls stood on the tile near the patio entrance.

  My dad was rubbing his hair dry with a towel. “She’s out shopping. She’s been putting off buying any real clothes, but she’s meeting a potential client tomorrow, so she needs something reputable.”

  I would have thought this was strange, except it was classic Mom. She always made a point of shopping at off hours, darting into places before they closed, knowing she’d be one of the only people in the store. My mother disliked crowds of strangers, most particularly when she was trying on clothing.

  My dad disappeared into the bedroom and came back a moment later wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He looked at me, still hovering in the entryway, and said, “Is everything alright?”

  “I broke up with Ben.” This had been on the tip of my tongue since I’d arrived. It was strange to say it out loud, to tell someone else about the scene that had just finished playing out.

  My father looked confused. “Come on in and sit down,” he said. As we adjourned to the living room, he added, “Forgive me for being out of the loop, but I thought you broke up with Ben some time ago?”

  I collapsed onto the couch. Norman came over to set his heavy, bullet-shaped head on the cushion beside me. I ran my thumb along the ridge in the center of his skull as he gave a happy sigh.

  Dad settled into the chair opposite me, and I filled him in on all that had transpired in my recent romantic history, adding the part where I had gone over to Ben’s house with the box of still unworn boots, given them back, thanked him for trying so hard, and told him it wasn’t going to work out.

  I almost hadn’t taken Trace’s advice. On the way over to Ben’s, I’d decided not to. But Ben had tried to refuse the boots, tried to tell me it was fine, we didn’t have to hurry, he understood it might take a while to get back where we’d been before the Kim misunderstanding.

  Then I’d seen what she’d meant. As long as it was just me not caring enough, Ben would think there was hope, some chance he could find the right switch to flip, and get us back on the course we’d been on before.

  So, I had told him about Clint after all. Not everything about Clint, of course, or even Clint’s name. I’d explained I’d met someone, fallen hard for him, and that was that.

  And as Trace had predicted, Ben had changed. He’d closed up, his face going a little hard. I’d set the boots on his coffee table and said I was sorry again, and he’d walked me to the door.

  I’d come home, spent five minutes in my empty apartment, and come in search of parental support.

  My father took my story quietly, absorbing every detail. When I was finished, he leaned forward and squeezed my knee. “You did the right thing, honey.” He said this in his warmest, most paternal tone.

  I was surprised to feel the sting of tears behind my eyes. I nodded, looking away from him at the dark window. “Thanks Dad. Now can we talk about something else?”

  My dad sat back in his chair, eyes twinkling a little. “I have some news, too,” he said.

  Norman gave a little groan and slid from his half-propped pose to lie next to me on the floor, setting his warm jaw on top of my foot. For some reason, this little act of fidelity caused one of my not-quite shed tears to escape from my eye. I wiped at it discreetly while I waited for my father to go on.

  He straightened in his chair, assumed his, ‘I’m going to tell you a long story’ expression, and began.

  “Six months ago, I agreed to take on a higher-risk, higher intensity series of jobs. I can’t tell you much about them, but they meant more travel, more responsibly, and more time spent in less stable areas. It was one of these if/then/maybe sorts of deals that pop up in the military from time to ti
me. Basically, if I agreed to do this work, my supervisors would recommend me for early retirement, and maybe I would get to leave five years early.”

  I looked up from the baseboard I’d been squinting at, my urge to cry passing.

  My dad went on. “I didn’t tell you and your mother because I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. But….” He paused, grinning. “I heard today. No more trips overseas. My last day will be December 31st.”

  I stood up, thoughts of Ben banished to the backburner. Dad stood too, and I gently dislodged Norman’s head so I could walk around the table and give him a huge hug. “Does Mom know?”

  We stepped back from the embrace, beaming at each other. He shook his head. “I got the final word on all this today. She was mad at me this afternoon, because I’ve had to stay late at work all week. She left to go shopping almost the moment I got home.” He winked at me. “I figured I’d tell her when she got back.”

  I glanced towards the door, as if I could summon her by pure force of will. The clock on the microwave said 8:41. “Stores will be closing,” I said. “I bet she’ll be home soon.”

  ❂

  I shifted in my chair, scooching more to one side so the encroaching shadow of the mesquite tree did not fall across my page. Not that I was getting a whole lot of reading done. I seemed to be averaging about one page every ten minutes.

  I was sitting on the little patio in front of Clint’s house, occupying one of his deck chairs. His truck was parked in front of the house, so I knew he was around, but there had been no response to my knocking. I assumed he was out on horseback. Which was what I’d expected. I’d settled in to wait.

  It was a beautiful, soft desert evening with a smattering of clouds across the sky. The breeze had a cool underbelly, and I’d thrown my most stylish woolen pull-over in my car in case I got cold waiting.

  As much as I wasn’t making much progress with my book, I was also surprisingly not nervous. After my mother had gotten home the night before and we’d celebrated my dad’s retirement with a toast, I’d headed back to my place in a kind of happy fog. Today, I had planned my next move, and while I should have been riddled with anxiety over what I was about to do, instead I felt calm, centered, and confident.

  I was taking Anne’s advice. I was going to make a move. And I comforted myself with the knowledge that things with Clint could not possibly get any worse. A little initiation on my part might even make them a whole lot better.

  Of course, there was also the other possibility: that after today I might never want to show my face on the Tipped Z again. But I tried not to dwell on that outcome.

  Clint’s house was a peaceful place. With the hill at its back, it managed to attain the feeling of being totally isolated, of having its own little bubble of spacious solitude. The sagebrush plains fell away in every direction, now blurring pink at the horizon. I could make out the dotted shapes of cattle in the far distance, and the distant lowing of a herd making their evening migration.

  But so far, no Clint.

  I sat up straighter, shifting around and closing my book. My stomach gave a grumble, and I shushed it. Today was about the plane of emotion, the higher matters of heart and spirit, not the base needs of the body.

  My stomach was not swayed by this logic. It growled again. I wondered if I had a granola bar in my car.

  I was about to go check, when I heard the jingle of a spur.

  I went still, staring through the fading light at where Clint’s driveway wrapped and descended around the side of the hill. A cottontail rabbit made its lazy, hop-wise way across the packed dirt, but I could see no other sign of life.

  I heard the jingle again and turned in my chair in time to see Clint strolling around the other side of the hill. Belatedly, I realized there was a narrow path there, a more direct route between his house and the barn. It led to a side door I’d not noticed before. With a stab of consternation, I realized he was going to go straight inside without seeing me.

  I stood, thinking I should call out, do something to get his attention, but my previous calm had vanished like mist in the desert sunrise. My heart was hammering out a frantic baseline in my chest, but I stayed silent.

  Dots saved me. She was walking at Clint’s side, her small, pale form a bright, delicate outline in the failing light. When I stood up, she went stiff, the wiry hair all along her back rising. She stopped walking and growled.

  Clint had been gazing off at the cattle, but Dots’ alarm brought him back to the present. He stopped walking instantly, and he looked down, checking the terrain around his feet for snakes.

  I took one little step closer, and Dots gave a single bark, hopping on her front paws as she did so, as if the force of her warning was so great it caused a brief lift-off.

  Clint looked up, and he saw me. He set a reassuring hand on Dots’ head, and she went still. We all went still. The desert seemed to suspend its normal activity in anticipation, as if it had been waiting for the finale and was watching how this scene would turn out with great interest.

  I made no other move. All the pretty phrases I’d practiced on my drive over vanished from my brain. I had promised myself I wouldn’t be tongue-tied and awkward. I would be firm, eloquent, persuasive, and collected.

  Clint changed course. As he set his hand on the side gate that led onto the patio, I was none of those things. I was as still as the wall behind me. I was a life-sized cardboard cutout. I was sure I had even stopped breathing.

  The latch on the gate gave a click, and a hinge squeaked as it swung open. Clint came through, waited for Dots, and closed the gate behind them.

  We were now separated by only a small expanse of flagstone.

  Dots trotted up to me, sniffed my pant leg, gave a little wag of her tail, and went to lie on the welcome mat.

  Clint waited a moment, staring at me with a face I couldn’t read. He walked forward until he was only a few feet away. Then he stopped. He was wearing his hat. It cast a long shadow over his face, but I knew him well enough now to see the tension in his stance. Was it possible he was as nervous as I was? That he was so quiet and closed and still because he felt as shaky as I did?

  I’d been determined to speak first, but I failed at that. He said my name, setting it free in the blushing night like a toy boat pushed onto a lake. “Erin.”

  There was a pause as my heart attempted to batter its way free of my rib cage.

  Clint spoke again. “Did you forget something?”

  I glanced towards Dots, who had set her head on her paws with the patient air of one accustomed to waiting. At first I didn’t know what he meant, then realized he must think I’d come back for some stray item, some small but vital object that had escaped my purse and fallen behind the dresser or been kicked under the bed in the guest room.

  “No,” I said, managing my first word of the evening.

  The outline of Clint’s hat gave a small, uncertain nod.

  I tried to rally. I had come here to make my position and my feelings clear, not to gape at him like a schoolgirl. The light was weaker with every moment, and Clint had his back to the bright sky. He was becoming an extremely sexy outline of a cowboy, like one of those decorative metal yard ornaments shaped as silhouettes.

  I took a step closer, and the movement seemed to clear the cobwebs from my brain. I was suddenly glad I couldn’t see much of Clint’s face. It made talking easier. I said, “I broke up with Ben.”

  It was Clint’s turn to be silent. He made no reaction. He stood as still as an actual yard statue. Ridiculously, I wondered if he’d heard me.

  I fumbled on. “I actually was never with Ben, really. The whole thing was kind of a mistake. We’d been dating for a little while and it wasn’t going anywhere. It was clear we weren’t clicking.” Now that I’d gotten going, I couldn’t seem to stop. The words came with a reckless, headlong momentum, not stopping at checkpoints to make sure they were authorized. “It probably would have fizzled into nothing, but then I met you one night af
ter a date with Ben I….” I stopped, a need to preserve my own dignity stilling my tongue.

  But it was too late. Clint took a single step forward, all his focus locked on me. “You what?” The question was quiet, but compelling.

  Resigned now to spilling the whole truth, I went on. “I kissed Ben. But I pretended to be kissing you.”

  Clint came forward another step. He was close enough now that I could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. “And?”

  I looked away, my eyes seeking Dots again as if she could help. She returned my gaze with an unsympathetic, matter-of-fact air that seemed to imply she was the sort of dog who believed in personal responsibility. I’d dug myself into this hole. I could find my own way out.

  I fumbled on. “Well, it changed everything. He got really interested in me, and I thought I could never have you anyway, so I kept pretending. The next thing I knew, he was buying me boots and changing his life around so I could fit into it. But I never wanted that.”

  Another step. Clint was close enough I could have raised my hand and set it on his forearm. His voice was a thrumming rumble in the half-dark. “What did you want?”

  I looked up, into the shadowed space under Clint’s hat-brim. I could see his eyes, even in the dim light. There was a little spark in them. Humor? Hope? I couldn’t tell.

  “You.” The word caught in my throat, and came out as nothing more than a whisper. But it was loud enough.

  Clint heard, and took that last step forward.

  Suddenly, he was all around me, one of his warm, gentle hands on my back, the other tipping my jaw up a little. His mouth was on my mouth, and we were kissing.

  If I’d thought the kiss in the cottonwood grove had been electric, this was a firestorm. It was as if Clint had been holding himself in check by pure force of will, and now that I’d given him permission, he’d pulled out all the stops. His lips were warm and firm against mine. I felt the scratch of the stubble on his jaw and tasted the tang of salt on his lips. I ran my hands down his back and encountered the belt of his chinks. I ran them up his neck and they bumped the brim of his hat.

  We kissed for a long time. I got lost in the depths of Clint. It felt like he was telling me a secret he’d been keeping half his life, a secret he’d never trusted to anyone.

  Finally, the kiss slowed, and cooled. Our lips parted.

  It was full dark now. Dots had put her head on her paws and gone to sleep, lit by a little solar lamp that glowed next to the door.

  Clint ran a hand through my hair, pushing a few stray strands back from my face. “So what now, Erin?” His voice was soft, calculated to carry only to my ears, as if we were in a crowded room and he wanted not to be overheard. I could see that little smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

  I had foreseen this moment. I remembered the rest of my plan. “I brought a frozen pizza and a bottle of wine. All I need is an oven, a bottle opener, and some company.”

  Clint ran a gentle thumb over the soft spot between my eyebrow and hairline. His voice was low and smooth when he said, “I like a woman with a plan. Let’s go on inside and see if I can provide those three things.”

  coming in 2015

  A Man Who Starts

  by Stefani Wilder

  Life on the Tipped Z ranch isn’t easy. Nora knows this, having grown up starting colts and working cattle. She’s always struggled between supporting the ranch and pursuing her own hopes and dreams. Now in her 20s, Nora has a decent job and a good relationship. She thinks she’s on the right track.

  The Tipped Z, however, isn’t ready to let her go. Nora’s brother is getting married, which means his oldest friend, Wyatt, is coming back to town. What happens next is going to surprise them both.

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  Excerpt

  ❂

  We walked the short distance from my brother’s house to the barn. Erin followed me without protest, too polite to mention that I was obviously the one with the jitters. As we walked together through the warm evening, I wondered why. I wasn’t worried about losing my brother to Erin. If anything, he’d been far more present since her arrival on the scene. He smiled more these days, laughed more, and sometimes even willingly entered into a conversation without being prodding a million times.

  No, that wasn’t the problem at all.

  “Is Wyatt in yet?” The question popped out without my permission. It was what I’d been struggling not to ask, or even think about, since the moment Erin had opened the door for me.

  It was a stupid question. If Wyatt had arrived, his battered Dodge would have been parked outside the barn. The Dodge wasn’t there, so Wyatt wasn’t here. It was simple. And yet, I hadn’t been able to hold the question in.

  Erin answered as she kept pace with my unnecessarily fast walk. “Clint said he was driving in from somewhere in Colorado. I don’t know if he’s hauling a trailer or not. But, either way, he might show up pretty late.”

  I nodded, feigning disinterest. Wyatt was my brother’s best friend. And by best friend, I mean only friend. He was the only male member of the human species my brother seemed able to exchange more than three consecutive words with at a time.

  I’d also been in love with him since approximately the age of zero.

  Not that Wyatt knew that, or cared. Not that I cared either. I had been determined not to care about Wyatt for almost as long as I’d been lovesick over him.

  We reached the end of the narrow path that led from Clint’s house to the back of the barn. Fuzzface and Chet looked up at us as we walked into the hay room through the open bay doors, but we were old news around here. The two dogs wagged their tails, but neither one deigned to rise. “What about Ted?” Erin said. “Is he back yet?”

  Erin didn’t mean the question as a rebuke, I was sure, but it felt like one anyway. Ted was my almost-certainly-on-the-verge-of-proposing boyfriend, but due to his job, he spent a lot of time on the road.

  “He flies in tomorrow morning,” I said, walking past the massive stack of hay bales that hulked in the corner and heading for the dark aisle that opened off the hay room. “I told him I’ll be busy with the rehearsal, so he needs to get his own ride out here.” I laughed, but it came out sounding forced.

  The aisle led to the lower-ceiling portion of the barn, which was lined in stalls. The tack room opened off one side, and there was another horse-sized door at the far end that hadn’t been opened since I’d been alive. We almost never kept horses in stalls. The large double stall had been given over for use as a kennel. Erin and I peered over the half door. Peach looked up at us with a plaintive expression. Her four puppies were sleeping. I could practically read the plea in her eyes. Don’t wake them up. Please, please don’t wake them up.

  I glanced at the food and water dishes in the corner. Both full. As I was deliberating whether Erin needed puppy love more urgently than Peach needed a break from the demands of motherhood, the rumble of an engine dawned in the quiet evening. As we stood and listened, the sound of tires crunched across the hard dirt of the driveway and stopped next to the barn.

  “Oh,” Erin said, glancing behind as if she could see through the wall to figure out who’d pulled up. “Maybe that’s Wyatt now.”

  I hadn’t turned on a light. It was dim in the stall barn. I turned around as I felt my heart begin to dance some sort of spasmodic cancan in my chest. It was so stupid, I told myself, for this guy to have such an effect on me. It was beyond stupid. It was pathetic. I had a life. I had a man. I had a good man. And if Wyatt had demonstrated one thing quite clearly over the years we’d known each other, it was that he had a list of things he wanted out of life, and I was not on it.

  We started back the way we’d come. The two lazy dogs were on their feet now, curious about this new arrival. Erin and I were just re-entering the hay room when Wyatt strode through the door that led in from the parking area.

  He looked like he always looked – lean, a little scruffy, a little tired, and so handsome he near
ly seared your eyes out.

  He cast a quick glance around the room. “Oh, hey Nora,” he said as if I was the one who’d showed up at his ranch. His tone was casual, as if we’d last seen each other a few days ago at the local gas station, not over a year ago when he’d climbed into his truck, said, “See you,” and driven off. I’d been thinking I’d see him again the next day. It wasn’t until later I learned he’d once more declined my brother’s offer to take a more full-time position at the Tipped Z, and hit the road again on his colt-starting circuit.

  Now, Wyatt walked into the hay room, taking off his hat to hold it in both hands. He walked with just the faintest hint of a limp. He had for years. But I could remember when he hadn’t. I could also remember when he’d been too young to grow the stubble that now peppered his cheeks. “Clint still out?” he said, jabbing his chin at the open bay door at the other end of the hay room, indicating the horizon and the sunset.

  “Yep,” I said, trying to match his blasé tone. “And Wyatt, this is brother’s fiancé, Erin. Erin, this is my brother’s best man, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt turned then, looking fully at us for the first time. “Erin,” he said, taking one long step forward to shake her hand. She smiled, and he smiled back. And when he smiled I felt the same swooning infatuation I always felt when he smiled. Even when he wasn’t smiling at me.

  He removed his hand from Erin’s and returned it to grip the brim of his hat. He glanced again towards the empty door, as if he could summon Clint through sheer force of will. “Guess I’ll just take my bag on up to the main house and get a shower, then,” he said.

  Before I could say anything more, he turned and left, disappearing as suddenly as he’d arrived.

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  About the Author

  Stefani Wilder grew up in Arizona, riding horses around the rural area where her parents lived. When she was a kid, she wanted to marry a cowboy. She did not, (though fortunately her husband became a cowboy due to marrying her). Stefani and her husband now live happily in Iowa with their small herd of horses.

  stefaniwilder.com

  Stefani Wilder is a pen name for Robin Stephen. See more of her work at robinstephen.com

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