The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

There had been a lot of details about ranch life in Northern California she’d forgotten. The dust wasn’t one of them.

The bus arrived with a squeal of brakes and the creak of the doors opening.

Lucy’s heart hammered into her throat.

What makes you think you can do this? she thought, panicked and full of doubt. What do you know about any of this?

But there he was, stepping out of the bus, his face blank, his eyes angry.

“Hey Ben,” she said.

He stared at some spot over her shoulder.

“It’s normal, when someone says hello to you, to say hello back. Or nod. Or grunt. Whatever.”

“Whatever.”

“Oh-ho! He jokes.”

There was no smile, but that cold blue anger in his eyes was a degree warmer.

Progress, she thought, like a kid who’d somehow managed to blow a giant bubble and was afraid to pop it. She turned toward the ranch and after a moment, she heard Ben’s feet follow.

“How was school?”

“Boring.”

“All of it or just some of it?”

He was quiet and her little bubble of satisfaction was in danger of being popped. “Some of it,” he said. “Math was boring.”

“Ugh. Tell me about it.”

“Division.”

“The worst.”

“We had art today.”

Oh, the satisfaction bubble was soaring to new heights. She suddenly imagined healing his wounds with sketchbooks and charcoal pencils.

“That’s good?”

He grunted, and she wasn’t entirely sure if that was a yes or no, or if it mattered. He was responding. Maybe that career in child psychology wasn’t a total loss.

“I’m an artist,” she said.

“Uncle J said you stopped.”

She waved her hand as if that little matter was inconsequential. “Once an artist, always an artist. What do you like about art?”

He started talking about the papier-mâché sculpture he was working on. “I’m not sure what it’s going to be,” he said, “but when I’m working on it, no one bothers me.”

“That’s true.” She nodded, all too familiar with the loneliness of art. “You like to be alone?”

“I don’t like talking.”

Well, she thought, at least he knows it.

They came up to the barn and Lucy ducked inside to grab the gardening things, and when she came back out, Ben’s eyes were frigid.

“I’m not gardening.”

She blinked, stunned by the sudden change in him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m not gardening. And I’m not watching you do it.”

“Ben—”

“I’m. Not. Doing. It.”

“Ben. Is it because of your mom?”

That chill in his eyes, that cold…it got angry. Mean.

“Shut up about my mom.”

The bucket made a heavy thunk against the ground. “You should talk about your feelings, Ben.”

He stepped away, all that anger and meanness flaring like a lit match. “I’m not talking to you about anything.”

“I know you must miss her—”

His eyes went dead and she felt it all slipping away. Again. But worse, because she’d been closer to him. A sudden painful empathy for Jeremiah welled up in her, a terrible understanding of how hard it must be to try and love this boy.

“If you don’t want to be in the garden, then we’ll work somewhere else.” He wasn’t responding and she got desperate. “I know I have some sketchbooks around here somewhere. We could sit—”

“This is bullshit.”

Oh. Oh, it was so ugly coming out of a nine-year-old’s mouth.

“Ben,” she said trying to be implacable. Trying to have limits without losing her temper. “You can’t talk to me that way.”

“Why?” he snarled. “You’re just some woman Uncle J is having sex with. Aaron told us he caught you two kissing—”

“Ben!”

“Screw you,” he yelled and ran into the shadowed barn.

For a long, terrible moment she was rooted to the spot. Her stomach was in her heels, that big bubble in sticky pink ruins all over her face.

What? Just? Happened?

Obviously, she couldn’t chase after him quite yet. There’d be no point in that. Jeremiah had been right that day at his ranch; she had to just give Ben and herself a chance to cool down. And then she’d try again.

Carefully, as if walking away from a ticking bomb, she backed away from the barn and headed into the house, where she could watch the barn and see him if he tried to leave.

She’d sit and try to come up with a new fresh start.

Walter had to find a different place to sit. The back patio was too close to the house. Too close to Sandra. She’d started leaving the sliding glass door open during the heat of the day and he could hear her in the house. Humming.

A special kind of hell for sure.

And after breakfast Mia had ambushed him with another one of her babysitter candidates.

“You don’t want this job,” he’d told the woman’s stunned round face. “I’ll make your life hell.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. She was up and gone in five minutes.

Mia had torn a strip off him, which he’d sort of liked. He rarely saw her anymore. Having Mia lay into him reminded him of the good old days.