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Extended Epilogue
One Year Later
Natasha
The radio crackles to life and I check the clock, wondering where the time goes some days.
Instead of letting Benjamin kick and scoot around in his walker, I lift him out and carry him with me to answer Michael.
“You’re getting more and more like your dad every day,” I tell him, hitching him onto my hip, used to his little feet nudging my already huge pregnant-again belly.
I lift the receiver of the CB radio, pressing the button to talk, knowing exactly who it is.
Who it always is when I’m home alone at this time of day.
“Do I have to say it?” I ask before I say anything else.
Breaking the rules of citizen band radio 101 every time I use it.
“Yeah, you gotta say it,” Michael drawls, scolding me for not using our call signs properly.
I sigh but have to laugh to myself.
Benji’s tiny hand reaches up, his eyes focused on the red button on the receiver, but is ultimately distracted by a wisp of my hair in the light.
“Ten-four big daddy, this is Montana momma,” I hear myself saying before letting the button go.
I feel stupid every time I say it, but I know how much of a kick Michael gets out of it.
How horny it makes him for some reason right before he gets home from picking up our monthly supplies from town.
“That’s better,” he says, a little growl in his voice.
“And how’s Benji?” he asks, always wanting an update, even though he’s only been gone for two hours.
“We’re fine, big daddy,” I assure him, asking how close he is.
“Be about another twenty minutes. Just checking in to let you know. To tell you I love you both,” he says, making my heart kick in my chest.
It seemed silly at first, the radio. The hundred other things the man does in a day to make sure he tells us all how much he loves us.
How much he cares.
What we mean to him as a family.
“I’ll get lunch on then,” I chime back, knowing he doesn’t mean to make me cry when he says nice things, so I usually make out like it's business as usual on the radio.
Barefoot and pregnant ranch-wife doin’ her chores and makin’ sure big daddy has a hot meal waitin’.
Once he gets home though. Once Benji’s down in his cot it’s a different story.
I look forward to showing my man just how much he means to me, to all of us every chance I get.
In between trips to town, which I sometimes take with him if Benji’s up for it, we spend most of our days hanging out and watching each other do our part to make home what it is.
Michael traded his cost more than two and a half weddings of a car for a beat-up truck which is the new family car.
He’s taught himself fencing, planting and harvesting, and a ton of other rancher type things that all I can vouch for make him sweatier and sexier every time I see him coming inside.
Me? I’m working on putting that college education to some good use. Tutoring young single moms who are in college or trying to get into one online.
Then there’s running around after Benjamin, and somehow managing to find time to make or mend my own clothes. Something my online students taught me from another online group we’re in.
All this in-between growing two more babies inside me, we got an ultrasound once I started to grow bigger than my first pregnancy.
I was worried I’d never lose my first pregnancy weight, but Michael only rolls his eyes every time I mention it, using his own massive body or other parts of his anatomy for scale.
“See?” he’ll exclaim late some nights, making me laugh until I cry. “You’re tiny compared to me.”
I fix us our lunch.
Just some sandwiches, but it’s bread we baked, with the wheat we grew. And everything in it has one of our fingerprints on it or has passed through our hands at some point.
The taste and feeling of home.
Our place.
Benjamin lets me know he’s due for a feed himself, so setting our lunch aside, I make my way out onto the vast front porch and take a seat to wait for his daddy as I unbutton my blouse so he can help himself.
It’s a magical time of the day when the sun’s just right as it hovers above the mountains, the closest thing we get to a sunset on the plains even though it’s still only afternoon.
The heady scent of the sunbaked yard, the fields, and seemingly endless land beyond make me sleepy.
I ease back, rocking in the chair Michael restored himself, finding it in the loft of the old barn he restored.
Benji feeds quietly, and I eventually make out the rising trail of dust as Michaels’ truck swings into view.
