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I’m about to tell her no, but then it occurs to me that with Callie taking care of Scout most afternoons these days, I don’t know everything about his days anymore. “I, um, I’m not sure.”
She puts a hand on my arm, that same warmth she shares with the kids. “It’s hard watching them grow up, but I don’t think you need to worry, Dad.”
I nod, noting how I feel when she uses that title. Coming from her, “dad” sounds like a job title. A cold, hard fact. There’s nothing suggestive about it or even playful, which is how it should be.
Yet it only highlights how different it feels when Callie calls me “Daddy,” one of her various nicknames. That word on her tongue does something else entirely. I’m struck by a sudden desire to hear her say it. And so many other inappropriate urges, standing here watching my kid play in the sand.
Shannon reassures me once more that all the playacting the kids do at school is harmless. “They live in a different world at their age, without the weight of the world on their shoulders. I think we should let them stay there as long as possible.”
“Couldn’t agree more.” I can’t recall ever feeling as carefree as Scout. I’m sure there were days when I was little, but all of my childhood memories are tinged with my parents’ struggles to hold on to their jobs and put food on the table. I don’t blame them for not hiding reality from me, but I do want to shield Scout from real-world worries for as long as I can.
After I leave the school, I race back to the ranch for the normal day’s work, aiming to get everything done in record time. It’s the only way I’ll be able to drive to Santa Barbara and shop for rings. The thought triggers a burst of panic that I try to push down with a large gulp of coffee.
Two of my fences need repair, so I bring tools out to get that done, along with Jimmy, one of my produce pickers who’s handy with small construction projects. He hops in my truck, and we scan all the fences while we’re out here, making sure the two we know about are the only ones that are down. Can’t have any of the animals getting loose at night, and even a leaning fence post that isn’t fully broken can go down with one nudge from a thousand-pound horse.
“I checked the irrigation this morning, and it’s still leaking,” Jimmy says, pointing in the direction of the pipe that has been causing problems.
We drive over there and go out to inspect the pipe. Sure enough, there’s a puddle beneath the pipe, which means it’s been leaking steadily for hours, if not days. Jimmy sets a red picnic cooler down on the dirt.
“This seems like a good time for a lunch break?” I’m crabby watching the water being wasted and thinking about the bill I’ll get at the end of the month.
He pats the cooler. “These are tools, asshole. If you relax and tell me what’s wrong, maybe I can fix it.”
“It’s the joint,” I grumble, looking down at the pipe that’s still seeping water despite the repair I made two days ago. “In this heat, we’re already watering more than I want to, so losing even a gallon to a leak is a problem.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. Everyone here knows how precious water is in a drought zone, not to mention water rights I’ve worked hard to secure.
Jimmy does what I haven’t been willing to try. He takes a hammer from his tool belt and hits the joint so hard that it cracks right off the pipe. Water shoots into the air, dousing him and raining down on us both.
I move aside and out of the spray, which only makes the sight of him under a storm of water look that much worse.
“Hold on, boss. Don’t panic,” he says, watching my face. He knows me well enough to understand that I’m about one second away from blowing my top at the waste of water and the bigger problem he’s just created.
“Are you fucking kidding—?”
He holds up a hand to shut me up temporarily and rummages in his cooler, moving a handsaw aside to extract a large piece of PVC pipe. Then he crouches in the mud, still pelted by water raining hard, and saws away at the rusted joint of the pipe. He digs in the wet soil and finds where the pipe takes a turn from a deeper spot and points to it. “Here’s the bigger issue. Someone tried to fix this before, and they fucked it up. It’s too shallow here. Made it easier to fix, but it increased the pressure so much that it was just an accident waiting to happen. And here we are.”
“Can you fix it?”
“On it, boss.”
He starts banging on a different section of pipe, which he removes and tosses away like it’s a pesky insect. Within minutes, he’s attaching more PVC, connecting joints with fasteners, and burying the whole business back under the soil. A minute after that, it feels like the calm after a storm. Sunny skies, the wet smell of minerals in the soil, and a system that will hold for the foreseeable future.
“This is why you pay me the medium-sized bucks,” Jimmy says, walking back to the truck and pulling a dry towel from the bed to dry his face.
“You earned yourself a raise. Let’s go fix some fences, see if you can make it a hat trick.”
“Deal.”
A few hours later, I’m pushing the speed limit on the drive to Santa Barbara, my thoughts returning to the day I met Callie, coming to fight the speeding ticket she got on this same drive. Not like there was a chance I’d think about anyone but her as I drove to a jewelry shop on State Street.
The whole idea of a fake proposal has me coiled up and ready to spring. I wasn’t this stressed when I went to pick out a ring for Elizabeth. Well, that was different. Her mother kept a collection of family heirloom rings in a box, and Elizabeth brought them to my house and told me which one she wanted for our engagement.
The one with the largest diamond, of course.
Somehow, I don’t think Callie would even care about the size of the diamond. She’d be more caught up in the meaning behind the gesture, the forever of it all. An uncomfortable chill runs down my spine at how wrong this all is.
Once the winding road opens up to the coast highway, I catch a whiff of ocean air, and it calms the raging asshole in me. At least a little bit. I crack the window and take the biggest breath I’ve allowed myself in a while.
Thirty minutes later, my truck snakes through Santa Barbara as I look for a parking spot. I end up parked under a tree near a city park with an enormous dinosaur-shaped play structure. Making a mental note to bring Scout here sometime, I walk toward the jewelry shop. Ironic that the only reason I know about this place is that Elizabeth introduced me to it and told me I should “feel free” to shop for her here. She’d already let the salespeople know what she liked so I’d be sure not to get it wrong.
