Page 17 of Thunder

"Careful, careful, you're gonna squish Biscuit."

"His name is Biscuit!"

She pulls back, delighted, holding the gray kitten up like evidence.

"You were right, you were so right, he looks exactly like a biscuit, and everybody says so. Mama Lou says so, and Daddy says so, and even Nash says so and Nash doesn't even like cats."

"I told you." I scratch the kitten's chin and he forgives all of us instantly, the way kittens do. "Biscuit's a perfect name for a gray cat. What's he doing all the way out here at my pens, though? Kittens belong in the barn."

"I brought him to show you."

She says it like it's obvious, like of course you'd haul a kitten across a ranch to show a person, and something in my chest goes soft and terrible all at once. "'Cause you named him and you never got to see him get big. He's getting so big! And I wanted to show you my loose tooth, but it came out already at Mama Lou's, so I can't. But I saved it, it's in a baggie."

"You saved your tooth in a baggie."

"For the tooth fairy. Obviously." She rolls her eyes at my ignorance, nine years old and running the whole world. "Are you working? What's wrong with that cow? She looks sad."

"She's a little sick. My sister's coming to make her feel better." The word sister catches on the way out and I cover it. "You want to help me keep her calm till the vet gets here? You've got to be real quiet and gentle."

"I'm the best at quiet and gentle."

Raine is many things, but one thing she isn’t is quiet. But I love her for thinking it.

She helps me the way a nine-year-old helps, which is to say she talks the entire time and pets the heifer's nose with two fingers so soft it wouldn't wake a fly.

Number 68 settles a little with the small warm chatter of her, the way animals do around kids who mean them no harm.

And I let myself have it.

Ten minutes of this kid.

I know I shouldn't, I know every minute I spend with Raine is a minute closer to something I can't have.

But she's here and she's mine to borrow for a little while.

I've been so starved for somebody on this ranch to look at me like I'm not made of lies that I take it and don't feel bad about taking it.

"Miss Presley?" She's gone quieter now, petting the heifer, not looking at me. "How come you don't come to supper anymore?"

There it is.

Out of nowhere, the way the real questions always come from kids, sideways and sudden while they're looking at something else.

"I've been awful busy, baby." It's the same lie I've been telling myself. "Startin' up this cattle program is a big job."

"That's what Daddy said." She keeps petting. "I wanted to invite you to dinner. I asked him if you could come. But he said you were probably busy." A pause, her small hand smoothing down the heifer's nose. "Were you? Busy?"

And I don't know what to say to that, because the honest answer is no, baby, I wasn't busy, I've never once been too busy for you, and I can't say it, because saying it opens a door I've spent weeks nailing shut.

He said I was probably busy.

I turn that over while Raine pets the heifer, and it hits somewhere cold in me.

He didn't say he’d ask me.

He didn't say maybe.

He told his daughter I was busy, which is a way of telling her no without telling her no, and I don't know what to do with the fact that it stings.