Like the other guys, Jack worked and ate and slept without any regard to a clock. He didn’t think. The voices were silent, the pills no longer a magnetic threat on his bedside table.
Mia didn’t seem to sleep, or if she did he didn’t see it. Every time he turned around she was there with the tattoo pliers, or talking to Dr. Peuse about the three calves who had been weakened by diarrhea.
On the third day he walked into the tack room and found her snoring on a wooden upright chair.
“Don’t wake her,” Chris said over his shoulder.
“You’re kidding,” Jack said.
Chris shook his head. “You wake her and she’ll start working again. This way she’ll get a little sleep.”
“And a sore neck.”
Chris shrugged, but Jack saw the man’s concern in his blue eyes.
“This is crazy,” Jack said.
“This is the Rocky M.” Chris headed out through the barn toward the calving pasture.
Mia’s head bobbed forward onto her chest; she started, but didn’t wake.
And she calls me stubborn,
he thought.
He couldn’t leave her like that. But at the same time, Chris was right, which meant he just had to be sure Mia didn’t wake up. Jack bent beside her, sliding one hand behind her back, the other under her knees.
Close up, he realized she smelled as bad as the rest of them and for some reason, that was endearing. He wanted to peel off her filthy clothes and put her in a bath. Clean her. Feed her. Put her to bed for a week.
Want and regret clashed in his chest. He was sure no one had ever done that for her before. She was thirty years old and no man had ever taken care of her, pampered her. If he’d been a real husband, it would have been his right.
His privilege.
He stood, lifting her easily in his arms. His skin, his whole body woke up at the contact.
But then so did she.
He stopped, embarrassed and slightly angry that she was so stubborn he had to resort to these cheesy tactics just to get her to bed.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
“You fell asleep in the chair.” He sounded guilty to his own ears, like a teenager caught copping a feel. He quickly put her on her feet, trying not to notice the way her body leaned into his. Warm and lush, every curve a reminder that she was his wife and he’d been celibate a long, long time.
“And you couldn’t just wake me up?”
“I wanted you to sleep.”
“Then you should have left me alone,” she said. “I was sleeping fine.”
“That’s what Chris said.”
“What the hell, Jack? Did you bring everyone through to vote?”
“We’re just worried about you.”
“I’m fine!”
“Sure you are,” he snapped back. “Because everyone who’s fine falls asleep in a drafty barn in an upright chair. For crying out loud, Mia, go to bed before you fall over.”
“It’s none of your business, Jack.”
“I am still your husband—”
She stepped back, blinked and then howled with laughter. He burned at the sound. He was just trying to help. Just trying to make sure she didn’t collapse under the weight of this damn ranch.
“Oh, come on, Jack, don’t be mad. I’m fine. Honestly, I feel better.” She smiled. “We’ll all sleep when the week is out.”
She stepped away, heading for the stables, back to the endless work, but then she stopped. Paused in the doorway.
Hesitant. Careful. Shy, almost. He saw that shy girl she’d been in the woman of steel she’d become.
“Thanks,” she said.
And all he could do was nod.
“I’m outta jeans,” Billy said.
“You look like a cowboy surfer,” Jack said.
“You’re not much better, corporate cowboy,” Billy pointed out, flicking the hose at him.
Jack howled and leaped out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough to keep his last pair of pants—khaki chinos—dry. “Watch it, man. I’m out of jeans, too,” he said, laughing.
He could only avoid the camaraderie among men working too hard for so long. And after a while, he didn’t even want to. It felt good to have friends again. To laugh again.
“Well, bring me your pants and we’ll hose ’em off before throwing them in the machine.”
Jack shook his head. “What about the housekeeper?” he asked. It was a rare cowboy who did his own laundry.
“Gloria’ll be in tomorrow,” Billy said. “But I’m desperate now.”
Jack was, too, and he went off to gather up the stinky pile of denim in the corner of his room.
When the last cow had given birth and the last calf was tagged at twilight on the fourth day, everyone, Jack included, fell into bed and slept for twelve hours.
But at dawn, Jack woke with a start, staring up at the white ceiling from the sagging mattress on his single bed. He knew exactly what needed to be done. It was so obvious, he couldn’t believe that Mia hadn’t thought of it herself. Although, considering how tired she was, how the nonstop work must seem like a track she couldn’t get off, it wasn’t all that surprising.
He stepped into the kitchen just after sunrise, surprised to find both Mia and Walter already sitting at the table. A pot of coffee was set between them and, oddly, what looked like a bag of sliced ham.
“Morning,” he said. Both Walter and Mia spun to face him. He didn’t even glance at his father, refusing to see the hope on that face like an open wound.
That hope was ridiculous after all his father had done. Or not done, as was more often the case.
“Morning, Jack,” Mia said. “Ham?” She lifted the bag toward him.
He shook his head, a little grossed out.
“Suit yourself,” she said and tossed a piece in her mouth.
See, he thought, she didn’t have the energy or inclination to get herself a proper breakfast. Something needed to be done and if she couldn’t see to it to do it herself, he would help.
“You guys didn’t replace Sandra with a full-time housekeeper?” he asked. Having a cook and house keeper at the ranch was a pretty integral part of the life. Cowboys had been known to leave jobs on account of crappy food.
Walter’s expression turned defensive. “Gloria comes in—”
“Part-time, I know. You need someone more than that.”
“Gloria does all right by us.” His father’s familiar voice hit Jack’s body like a barrage of dirt and small stones. It stung and he wanted to walk away, but he’d spent enough time ignoring the tailspin the ranch was in.
“What about the men?” Jack asked. “Chris and Billy and Tim, who cooks for them?”
“They manage on their own for breakfast and lunch.
Dinner, Mia heats up something that Gloria puts in the freezer. We all eat in here, like we used to.” Dad was answering his questions like a star pupil. Was, in fact, talking to him more at this moment than he had for the last two years Jack had lived in this house.
It made Jack want to smash things.
“Why all the questions, Jack?” Mia asked, her eyes narrowed.
“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on around here.”
“Work,” she said. “Like always.”
“Right. Work with half the staff you need, and no housekeeper. No cook.” Jack pointed down at her breakfast. “After four eighteen-hour days, you’re eating ham out of a bag, Mia.”
Mia pushed the bag away. “What’s your point?”
Finally, he turned and faced his father. Walter’s face was covered with nicks and little bandages as if a raccoon had shaved his face for him. “Where’s the money?” he asked his dad. “Your savings, the emergency accounts?”
“It was a bad winter,” Mia interrupted as if trying to deflect his attention away from his dad.
“There have been other bad winters,” he said, not looking away from his father’s rheumy gray eyes.
“Jack—”
“I am talking to my father,” Jack snapped.
“What do you want me to say?” Walter asked. “We’re broke. Your mom took a chunk in the divorce.”
“Mom, of course,” he muttered.
“Your dad got sick,” Mia said. “The medication is expensive and a lot of it isn’t covered by insurance. There were some tax problems—”
“What kind of tax problems?” Jack asked.
“The kind that cost money,” Mia said wearily.
“How much?” Jack asked, through thin lips.
“Enough—”
“How much!”
“Fifty thousand dollars. But with the calves—”
“Holy shit, Dad. What happened?”
“I screwed up,” Walter said. “After you left and your mom and I divorced, I…screwed up.”
“Were you drinking again?” Jack asked, and Walter nodded, lifting his trembling hands toward the coffee cup in front of him. “Are you still?”
Walter said nothing and Mia’s sad sigh was all the answer Jack needed.
“All right,” he said. “That, in a way, makes things easier. Dad, I know you’re not going to agree with this, but you’ve pretty much screwed yourself out of the ability to make this decision.”
“What kind of decision?”
“I’m going to sell the ranch.”
“No, Mia, I’m not,” Jack said. She could tell by his face he wasn’t joking.
A thousand bees invaded Mia’s head, spread through out her body, making it impossible to think. To breathe.
This ranch was her home. Her life. Jack was talking about selling her life, as if it was nothing.
And he could do it.
She had no legal rights to any of what she’d built here. If he really wanted to do this, she had no say.
The injustice, the ridiculousness of it, burned through the numbness.
“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Jack,” Walter said, his voice laced with the old steel. “I’m not dead yet.”
“No,” Jack agreed, looking cold and removed. “But it won’t be too hard to prove that you’re unfit to make the decision. You’re drinking. You’re sick and my guess is you’re not taking your meds—”
“I am,” he insisted.
Mia started to shake her head. Were they nuts? Was Jack…nuts?
Anger churned in her belly. She would fight him. She would fight him with everything she had.
“In order to clear whatever debt you have and make sure that you’re cared for as you get sicker—and that Mia has a chance at a life she deserves—you need to get rid of this place.”
“A life I deserve?” Mia stood, the legs of the chair screeching against the floor as she backed up. “What the hell would you know about it, Jack?”
“I know this place is going to wear you down to nothing,” he said. “Between the work, paying off the debt and taking care of an old drunk—”
Walter flinched at the word; Jack saw it but didn’t say anything. Clearly he didn’t care.
“We’re not selling the ranch,” she said. “As your wife, I have some say in this.”
“We’re getting a divorce, remember? You don’t get a vote.”
She reeled back as if he’d slapped her. He wouldn’t sink so low. Or maybe he would. She didn’t know anymore.
“You can’t do this, Jack,” she snapped. “You can’t just swoop in here—”
“I’m not trying to be malicious,” he said.
“Let me finish my sentence!” she yelled, banging her hand on the table. That got his attention. “You’re not listening to us. You can’t swoop in here and sell this ranch. You don’t have the right to make that decision.”
She wanted to slap that baffled look right off his face.
“Someone has to, and you two sure as hell aren’t doing it.”
Mia shook her head, so angry and hurt she trembled. Every argument she needed to make sputtered and died under the weight of her anger.
Between the work and the lack of sleep, the past week had worn her out, and she couldn’t put together a string of coherent words. She needed a second to get her thoughts together, to be able to have a conversation that wouldn’t end with her smacking him.
Leaving her cup and the ham behind, she grabbed her hat and took off for the barn.