“Didn’t bring one.”
“Shocking.”
“Holding out for the right woman.” His eyes don’t leave her face. “It’s a long game.”
“Players do love to play their little games.” She sets the plate down and turns to Sadie. “Let’s go. I want to meet your new sister-in-law.”
Tanner watches her walk away, jaw clenched.
Walker takes a sip of his beer. “Struck out,” he observes.
“I did not strike out,” Tanner snaps.
“Looked like a strike out. And hitting on a married woman? Low, even for you.”
Tanner glares. “She’s not married, she’s engaged. To a douchebag.” His eyes track Cassidy. “Engaged’s not married. “
Walker and I look at each other. Tanner’s on a hopeless quest here. Maybe he just likes a challenge. After all, women have been falling all over themselves over him his whole life. I guess it’s fitting he’d set his sights on the one woman who wants nothing to do with him.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Walker tells him. “You’re delusional.”
Tanner grins. “That’s what they say about all the greats.”
I can tell he’s already revving up for the argument. Walker and Tanner butt heads constantly, but I try to stay out of it. Everyone has always said the two of them are hotheaded and I’m cold-hearted. That might be true, but it’s more than that. I get enough confrontation in my professional life. I don’t need that shit at home too. It stresses me out.
I sense my exit opportunity as soon I see Dad outside, offloading hay bales from the back of his truck. I make a beeline for outside and step in to help him finish the task.
When we’re done, my father eyes me, an affectionate smirk coming to his face as he takes in my costume.
“Are you gonna tell me I look ridiculous?” I ask.
“Nah. I’m just thinking you look the happiest I’ve ever seenyou. And it ain’t because you caught and skinned the Abominable Snowman and made a coat out of him.”
“Yeah, well. It makes my wife happy.”
He chuckles. “If you only knew how many times I said the very same thing when it came to your mother.”
As we survey the house, filled with people and music, I think about how my childhood home looks most days, these days: empty. Quiet. I think about Dad all alone in his big house, all that unfamiliar silence. The loneliness he must feel.
Not for the first time, I’m in awe of his strength. To survive the loss of the only woman he ever loved, to hold it together for our family and our ranch, all the while trying to keep himself going too.
“I don’t know how you did it,” I say suddenly. “I don’t know how you went on after Mom died.”
He glances sharply at me, like I’ve surprised him. I guess I have. I don’t bring Mom up. I don’t talk about her unless I have to. But talking about her to Lila seems to have opened up some tightly-closed floodgates.
“I understand it even less over time,” I say. “How you just... kept going. Kept showing up for all of us. How you didn’t just fall apart.”
Dad doesn’t answer right away. He looks out at the valley, the last of the light dying behind the mountains. When he speaks his voice is slightly hoarse.
“Who says I didn’t?” he says quietly. “Your mother and I had twenty five years together. Twenty five years of this land, this house, raising you kids, building something. And I won’t lie to you, when I lost her, it felt like the ground went out from under me. Still does sometimes.” He pauses. “But you know what I’d never trade? A single day of it. Not one. Every laugh, every fight, every ordinary Sunday morning with all of us around the kitchen table. I’d take all the grief in the world tohave had every bit of it. Every moment of happiness was worth every moment of pain. That’s just the truth of it. That’s what love is.”
We stand there in the cold for a moment, just the two of us.
I never understood until right now what it must have taken my father to show us how much he loved us every single day. To not close himself off. To stay open to all of it, the joy and the devastation both.
“I couldn’t do it,” I say. “I’m not capable of it. Loving someone like that. I couldn’t bring myself to even if I wanted to.”
He looks at me kindly, eyes resting on my wedding ring for a moment. “You’re capable of more than you think.”
