The Cowboy's Wife For One Night

Leaving her cup and the ham behind, she grabbed her hat and took off for the barn.

Walter stared at his son, wondering what kind of devil lived in that boy’s head.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Walter asked.

“I’m just trying to do what’s right,” Jack whispered.

“I don’t think she’s going to see it that way,” Walter said.

Jack turned to face Walter and Walter tried not to shrink under the boy’s damning gaze. He’d done wrong by his son, a thousand times, and it wasn’t anything he was proud of.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Jack said.

“I am,” Walter said, and that seemed to bring Jack up short. The apologies Walter’d saved up over the years, the regrets he’d carried in his open palms like river stones, were burdens he rushed to unload. He reached out for his son. “I should have protected you. I should have seen—”

“Not me,” Jack snapped. “Her!” He pointed out the window where they could see Mia making her way across the grass toward the barn, one of the dogs circling her, no doubt smelling the ham on her fingers.

“If you want to help me,” Jack said. “If you want to make things right between us, then help me convince her to sell this ranch. Help me get her free of this place.”

Free of this place? Walter shook his head, so sad that his only son, his flesh and blood, saw this ranch that way.

Walter had been blindsided when Jack and Mia got married five years ago. He’d always known they were close…but marriage? But Walter had stopped making sense of his son by the time Jack had become a teenager.

As the years went by and Walter finally caught on that Jack and Mia’s relationship was just a marriage in name only, Walter had kept his mouth shut.

He’d watched Mia walk out that door a few times a year to meet Jack someplace, with her eyes alight like a girl on a first date.

And she came back hollowed out.

As hollowed as Jack was now, watching Mia cross the long yard to the barn.

Stupid kids, Walter thought, wasting so much time. They didn’t know how precious time was, how it could run in the other direction, a river they had no chance of catching.

Two weeks ago, Walter had believed that Jack being back at the ranch was a chance for Walter to make the mistakes of his past right.

But now, standing in the wreckage of his son’s marriage, Walter wondered if it was a chance for Jack to make the mistakes of his own past right.

Walter hoped so. For the girl out in that barn who worked so hard and loved so much, and for Jack…who deserved a shot at being happy. At being loved.

Walter stood, arranging his weak, shaky limbs underneath his weight. He’d gotten smaller since getting sick, but he was still a big man and when he stood all the way up, Jack blinked.

“You got it wrong, boy,” he said. “You want to help her, drop this idea of selling the ranch.”

“That’s you talking,” Jack said, and Walter shook his head.

“Go out there and talk to her,” he said. “Listen to her. She’ll tell you.”

Walter was glad he’d gotten rid of the walker in favor of the cane. It made for a better exit.

Jack found her out in the barn, the remaining supplies spread out across the tack room table.

Good God, the woman was doing inventory.

“Mia,” he said.

Mia’s back stiffened and her anger was so palpable, the dog at her feet whined.

“Mia,” Jack said to the back of her head. “Can I talk to you?”

“I’m busy,” she snapped.

“Mia—”

“Fine.” She turned, her face so composed she looked like someone else. Someone older and colder. He was off balance around this version of her. Sun hit dust motes in the air, turning them to glitter that matched the gold in her eyes.

“I’m not trying to piss you off,” he said.

“Let me guess, you’re trying to help.”

“Yes,” he said. “Why is that a bad thing?”

“Because selling the ranch isn’t going to help, Jack.” She was looking at him like he was the fool for not seeing this. And he honestly didn’t understand how she couldn’t see it his way.

“You’re bleeding money.”

“Not anymore. We had a good calving season and once we go to market, I can pay off the taxes.”

“But you’re short-handed. You need at least three more guys in the barn, not to mention a live-in housekeeper. Dad is drinking—”

”Your dad always drank.”

“Yeah, but now he’s sick. And Parkinson’s, no matter what, gets worse, Mia. Not better.”

“But if he keeps taking his meds he could have years before I need to worry about what to do with him.”

“And then what?”

“And then I’ll think of something. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll step up and do something. As his son.”