…Malcolm’s stomachgave an angry gurgle. It was midafternoon, and the dry bagel he’d scarfed down for breakfast had been a lifetime ago, according to his moaning belly. Even though Howie had told Malcolm he didn’t need to hang around when surely there was work to be done, Malcolm still felt shitty about leaving the man. He had no idea if Howie had other living family members besides Iggy, and it had taken a full day just to get Iggy to answer Malcolm’s call. And while Howie had a lot of friends in and around Chance, some of whom had already sent cards and flowers via the hospital’s gift shop, everyone also had lives and jobs.
While Howie loved to complain about the ugly fancy houses being built across Snow Creek from the saloon, most of the folks in Chance were working class and blue collar. Every paycheck counted.
“Why didn’t you tell him I live here now?” Malcolm whispered to the sleeping man who couldn’t hear him. It wasn’t as if knowing would have kept Iggy away from Chance; Iggy hadn’t known and he still stayed away. But Iggy’s heart had beenbroken, his trust shattered, and both things were Malcolm’s fault.
An emergency sink leak at the urgent care clinic stole Malcolm away for the rest of the afternoon, and when he called the hospital, they told him that Mr. Donohue had two signed-in visitors. Good, he wasn’t alone.
Malcolm went home and helped Amy get dinner on the table for everyone by five-thirty. Amy was fourteen going on thirty, the older half-sister of her three younger siblings. Her own useless sperm donor had sent a condolence card when Amy’s stepfather Tomás died, and Amy had made a point of lighting it on fire in the backyard.
Malcolm had initially been worried, but he’d rather her burn greeting cards on an old barbecue grill than do some of the rebellious, angry teenage stuff her own mother had done.
Melissa and Malcolm’s parents’ final two years of marriage and eventual divorce had beenugly.
Later that evening, he was in his camper tinkering with a vintage pot metal clock he was trying to fix, when a series of texts came through. All from Iggy.
Got a red-eye, lands in FNL 5:45 am.
No hotels check in that early.
Do you have a key to Uncle Howie’s house?
Sorry to bother you.
The stream-of-consciousness texts made Malcolm smile. Iggy used to blow up his phone with line-by-line texts, instead of focusing and sending one long coherent thought. It was likepersonal Iggy poetry, and he’d loved it, like he’d loved so many quirky things about teenage Iggy.
Focus, ding-dong.
He read each text again. Yes, he currently had a key to Howie’s place, because early this morning he’d gone over to fix the door he’d broken, which had meant replacing the busted lock. New key. Easy. Airplane arriving before dawn and no hotel check-in meant Iggy would need someplace to chill until hospital visiting hours—oh. Duh.
Duh.
Malcolm voiced the text and hit send before he could think twice.
I’ll pick you up and drive you back to Howie’s house. I’ve got a key. See you at 5:45.
Almost an hour passed before Iggy replied:
Acceptable. See you then.
“Acceptable,” Malcolm repeated, rolling his eyes at nothing in particular. Sometimes he wished he had a pet to talk to, but he was allergic to cats, too busy for a dog (Melissa had banned four-legged animals that required walks anyway), and he wasn’t fond of rabbits or rodents. Fish tanks were expensive and difficult to maintain, and the only time in his life Malcolm had owned a beta fish, his father had flushed the thing down the toilet as punishment for ten-year-old Malcolm getting a D on a history quiz.
No fish, no pets, he’d just talk to the walls like usual. Sometimes, he’d pick up his phone and yack into his best friend Jake Colter’s ear about stuff and nonsense, but he’d never told Jake about Iggy. Broad strokes, sure, about the boy he’d loved and lost in high school, but not the particulars. Not thebetrayals. Not being forced to leave his broken heart behind when he moved away with his mother the summer after senior year.
Nope, he wasn’t ready to tell his closest friend about this. Not yet.
He called Melissa to let her know he wouldn’t be around for the breakfast frenzy tomorrow, because he had a super early errand to run. Bless her, she didn’t press. She had her life and he had his, and “As long as you aren’t out there committing crimes,” she’d told him when he decided to stick around on a permanent basis, “you don’t have to check in with me about everything you do. Just try to be home for a meal once a day, if you can.”
He’d done his best. Mealtimes with those kids, while hectic and messy, were his favorite times of day.
Naturally, he slept for shit that night, tossing and turning on the camper’s thin mattress. Constantly tempted to search Iggy’s name on his phone, to find all his social media accounts and see what he’d been up to these last seventeen years. It would be so easy. Too freaking easy. And creepy. He was a terrible actor, and he wanted to be genuinely surprised when Iggy told him stuff tomorrow—if Iggy told him stuff—and not pretend he didn’t already know.
He wouldnotcyber stalk his ex.
He might be lonely and bad at relationships, but Malcolm wasn’t completely pathetic.
A million stars in the sky kept him company on the drive south to the airport. The quiet beauty around the highway gave way to billboards and the light pollution of Fort Collins. One of the things that always drew him back to places like Chance was the stars and heavens above. Sometimes, he was jealous of the cowboys who worked the surrounding ranches, especially the boys up at Snow Creek Ranch, because they lived with thisbeauty every single day. Camped out beneath it, traveled over her lovely terrain. So jealous.
But whenever he contemplated changing careers, Malcolm remembered why he couldn’t fathom spending his days in a saddle, moving cattle. He needed to work with his hands, to build things, to see progress being made. To work out a puzzle in his head, sometimes sketched on paper.
