Gone (Michael Bennett 6)

As it turned out, I wasn’t done being shocked that morning. Back at the milking barn, Mary Catherine blew me away as she guided the bawling cows into the separate stalls like a farm-girl traffic cop. Then she put on a smock and gloves and hopped down into the sunken gutter between the stalls and started hooking up the cows to the milking equipment. She worked the octopuslike snarl of tubes and pumps like a pro, attaching things to their proper … attachments. It was beyond incredible.

“Hey, Mike,” Mary Catherine said, stepping up into the stall, holding a bucket. “Thirsty?” she asked, showing me some milk fresh from the cow.

I leaped back as I almost blew chow. Unlike the cold, white stuff we picked up in cartons from the cooler at the 7-Eleven, this had steam coming off it and was yellow and chunky.

“Come on, Mike. I know you’re thirsty,” Mary Catherine said, smiling, as she sensed my discomfort. She waved the bucket menacingly at me. “Straight up or on the rocks?”

“How about pasteurized and homogenized?” I said, backing away.

“EAT LESS CHICKEN!” Chrissy suddenly yelled to everyone as a clucking chicken landed on the windowsill of the barn.

“And drink less milk,” I said to Mary Catherine.

CHAPTER 5

AFTER THE MILKING WAS done and the cows were put back to pasture, the older girls went with Shawna and Chrissy to the henhouse to collect eggs.

The girls returned shortly, and Cody insisted that everyone have breakfast at his house.

“You want to keep the hands happy, you got to keep their bellies full,” he said.

We filled our bellies, all right. After we hosed off the wellies, we were greeted by Cody’s short and stout sweetheart of a housekeeper, Rosa, who cooked us up a feast of steak and biscuits and scrambled-egg tortillas with lots of homemade salsa. As Rosa busted out the churros, I even put a drop of the superorganic milk Mary Catherine had brought in from the barn into my coffee.

“Who says country living is boring?” I said to Mary Catherine, with a wink. “My horizons are expanding at warp speed.”

It really was a great morning. Looking at my kids, hunched around the two tables Rosa had pushed together, eating and talking and laughing, I couldn’t stop smiling. We may have been dislodged from our lives back in New York, but they were actually making the best of it. We were together and safe, and that was all that really mattered when it came down to it. Team Bennett had gotten knocked down, but we were getting back up again.

As the kids went outside to kick a soccer ball around the dusty yard with the dogs, I sat with Cody and Seamus, sipping a second cup of coffee.

“You got things pretty good out here, Aaron. The view is amazing, you grow all your own food, have fresh water. I mean, you pay for—what? Electricity? You could probably get along without that.”

“And have,” Cody said.

“You love this life, don’t you?” I said.

“Love’s a strong word,” the weather-beaten farmer said. “I don’t love when the cattle get themselves stuck in a ditch at three a.m., or when feed prices skyrocket, as they do from time to time, but it’s a life, Mike. Don’t suit everyone. Y

ou have to like being alone a lot. All in all, there’s something to be said for it. It’s simple enough, I guess.”

“I like simple,” I said, clinking coffee cups with the farmer.

“You are simple,” Seamus said.

CHAPTER 6

CREEL, MEXICO

IT WAS THE BEST moment of Teodoro Salinas’s life.

His daughter, Magdalena, had been a preemie when she was born. As if it were yesterday, he could remember her impossibly tiny hand clutching his finger for dear life among the cords in the hospital ICU. But now, suddenly, magically, her cool hand was resting in his sweating palm and the guitars and horns were playing and all the people were clapping as they danced the first dance of her quinceañera.

The whole event was like a dream. From the solemn Mass they had attended this morning, to the formal entry, to the first toast, and, now, to the first dance. His wife had told him he was crazy to hold the celebration up here at their remote vacation ranch, but Salinas had put his foot down. For his beautiful daughter’s coming-of-age, they would fly everyone in and put them up, no matter what the expense.

Teodoro reluctantly released his daughter’s hand as the waltz ended. She was crying. He was crying. His wife was crying. It had been worth every penny.

Salinas hugged his daughter, careful not to wrinkle the beautiful pale-pink tulle of her dress. He could feel the eyes of all the guests upon them, feel their tender emotions, their envy. Salinas was a tall man, a dapper dresser, and, even at fifty-five, still quite handsome. But he couldn’t hold a candle to his daughter, Magdalena, who was model thin and statuesque and exceedingly beautiful.

“I love you, Daddy,” his angel whispered in his ear.