“Of course.” Her tone softened in that practiced way. “I'm not trying to disrupt anything, Jace. I just miss her.”
I didn't say what I was thinking. Instead, I hung up and went to find my daughter.
Rory sat on her bed, her long hair wrapped in a towel, wearing her favorite Luke Bryan t-shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts. When I told her about her mom being in town, she went quiet in the careful way she did when she was deciding how much she wanted something.
“She actually called?” Rory asked.
“She did.”
Rory looked at her hands. Then out the window. A long stretch of silence meant she was weighing hope against experience. I knew what I wanted her to decide, and I knew exactly how wrong it was for me to want it.
“Can I go?”
Every part of me wanted to list the history. October. The spring before that. The birthday she'd sent a card for two weeks late with a gift card inside that had already been partially used. I’d memorized the list. Rory knew the list better than I did.
“If you want to go, I can take you out there Saturday afternoon after I check the rodeo grounds,” I said.
She looked up.
“And if she doesn't get you back by one on Sunday, I’ll drive out there myself.”
“She'll get me back.” Rory got up and walked over to where I stood by the door. She didn't hug me, but she put her hand on my shoulder briefly, just for a second, before she left the room.
Looked like things were settled, even if nothing about it felt settled to me.
Saturday came too fast. I dropped Rory at the lodge at five. She had her overnight bag and her phone, and she'd changed her shirt twice before we left. Dana came out to the truck looking the way she always looked — good, put together, like life was going better than it probably was — and she hugged Rory and waved at me with the pleasant neutrality of someone who'd filed everything difficult away in a drawer.
The drive back took forty minutes, and I spent most of it trying not to think about the last time I'd had a completely quiet house. I couldn't remember when.
Slade had someone else covering the final night checks out at the grounds, so I had nothing to do but feed the horses then feed myself. I made something I didn't taste. I checked the hinges on the gate I'd been meaning to replace for a month, and after that I ran out of tasks that needed doing, so I stood in the barn in the early evening light with nothing to do and no one to do it for. The silence settled into my bones the way it did when I stopped moving long enough to feel it.
Then Bella's footsteps sounded on the loft stairs. She came down slowly, like she wasn't sure if she’d be welcome. She had on a pair of faded jeans, a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a worn tank and held her boots in her hand.
“I saw you drive back alone,” she said.
“She went to her mother's for the night.”
Bella nodded. She set her boots down near the stairs and came to stand near the open barn door, looking out at the paddock the way I'd been looking at it for the last half hour.
“You didn't want to let her go.” It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
“But you did.”
The paddock was empty in the long evening light. Cutter stood motionless at the far fence. The whole ranch felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for something.
“Saying no would've just told her I don't trust her to handle disappointment,” I said. “And she can handle it.” I paused. “Better than I can, probably.”
Bella turned to look at me. “You've built everything around being the one she can count on. That’s a big commitment, Jace.”
“It's just?—”
“Don't say it's just parenting.”
I didn't. She was close enough that I could see the faint freckles along her shoulder where the flannel had slipped. The light was going gold and low and I was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. And she stood there, looking at me like I was someone worth looking at.
I'd been holding myself at a very specific distance from Bella Robbins for three weeks. Now, I closed it.
