I’ll just stay for a minute, I tell myself.
Just until the wind dies down a little.
Just until I stop worrying.
I’m not going to fall asleep.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as my eyes drift shut, and my mind finally quiets as I drift off, wrapped in my husband’s scent and the memory of his warmth.
Iwake to a wet tongue on my cheek.
I blink my eyes open and find Lucky’s happy, liquid brown eyes staring back at me. Another lick, this one up my nose.
“Hi sweet girl,” I sigh.
I lie there for a moment in that warm, half-conscious state where nothing has caught up with you yet. The duvet is a soft fluffy cloud around me. The light coming through the windows is golden and low. Something smells like cedar and I feel completely, inexplicably at peace.
Then it catches up with me.
I’m in Slade’s bed.
I slept in my husband’s bed like it was mine.
Lucky licks my cheek again, unbothered.
“Is Daddy home?” I whisper to Lucky.
She whines in a way that tells me the answer is no.
I’m caught between relief that he didn’t catch me in his bed and worry for him. Swinging my legs out of bed, I go to my room and reach for my phone to text him, only to find he texted me an hour ago. Three images.
The first: the south barn in the grey pre-dawn light, the felled cottonwood sprawled across the roof like a giant fallen in battle. The mountains rise up behind it sublime and unchanged, like commentary on the frailty of humanity against nature.
The second picture: the horses in the north pasture, steam rising from their backs in the cold air, backlit by the rising sun. It almost looks sepia-toned, like something from a history book.
The third: a panorama of the ranch at dawn, the meadow grass still flattened and silver with frost, the sky just beginning to go pale at the edges.
I scroll through them twice.
Slade Rhodes, who claims to be oblivious to anything thatisn’t strictly functional, took three photographs that could hang in a gallery. They could have been taken this morning or two hundred years ago. They’re the kind of images you see in coffee table books about the American West, the harsh, unforgiving, earthly beauty rendered so plainly it becomes transcendent. I wonder if he knows he did that. I wonder if he realizes what an incredible eye for beauty he has.
Slade
We’re handling it. All the animals are safe.
He knows me well enough to know I’d be worried about the animals. But apparently he doesn’t know me well enough to realize that it’shimI’m worried about too.
I text him:
Lila
Are you okay? How’s your shoulder?
While I get coffee going, he texts me back.
Slade
Been better. Ibuprofen didn’t cut it. Had to take some of the prescription meds. They always knock me out.
