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“It wasn’t my fault,” I say, shaking with rage. “I told Renee in confidence. I didn’t mean for anyone else to find out. I was only venting.”
“Good, blame Renee, that’s easy, isn’t it? Convenient that you’re the real victim in all this. Why’d you come back, Melody? Was it really just to say goodbye to your daddy? Because if so, go back in that house and sit with him while you can, and get the hell out of here in the morning. We’re doing fine without you.”
“I don’t think you are,” I say, and my voice is an anger-fueled whisper. “I think the ranch is falling apart. I think you’re standing back and letting it happen because you’re old and tired and you can’t handle this place anymore.”
“And you’re some little lying bitch that doesn’t know when enough is enough,” he snaps, voice rising, and War steps forward, his hands curled into fists. Uncle Lovett laughs at him, his voice throaty and harsh. “What are you gonna do, boy? Beat up an old man?”
“I’ve done worse,” War says.
“Stop it,” I say, and War hesitates, glancing back at me. “Enough. That’s enough.”
War grunts in acknowledgment and steps aside, but I still feel his animosity, his rage, like a tiger prowling behind bars.
I stare at Uncle Lovett and try to order my thoughts, but the way he’s whiplashing around between hating me for what I said about Rosie and wondering if maybe I was telling the truth—it’s messing with my head. Even after all these years, even now that I see this man for who he is, some little pathetic part of me wants to make my uncle proud like I did back when I was a girl.
I need to take that part, carry her out to the river and drown her.
“Something is rotten here,” I say and keep my voice as steady as I can. “This used to be my home and I hate what happened to it since I left.”
“But there’s the problem, isn’t it? You left and you have no claim to the ranch anymore. Go back to Dallas, Melody. Go back and live your life and forget about this place. Your daddy’s not going to be around forever, and neither will the rest of us. Let Daisy and the cousins run the ranch the way they see fit. This isn’t your home anymore.”
Not my home. I stare at my hands. Not my home. He’s right and that’s the hardest part. The ranch hasn’t been my home for a long time, and even though it feels so familiar, there’s also so much that has changed. I don’t fit in here anymore, and I keenly miss Ford and Kat and Bomber and everyone else. I miss my life.
But this place, it’s too important and it’s too good, and it could be something better if it weren’t being mismanaged by a bunch of selfish assholes.
“When you’re ready to tell me what’s going on here, I want to talk,” I say and turn my back on Uncle Lovett. I put the unopened beer down on the work bench. “You know where to find me.”
“Hiding at the top of your momma’s tower like you always used to,” Uncle Lovett says as I walk away. “You don’t change, Melody, and that’s the problem.”
Once outside, War puts an arm over my shoulders. “Hey. You okay?”
I shrug away from him and keep walking. Past the driveway, the cars, the main house. Past the tower and toward the paddock. I reach the fence and stare at the moon and the stars. It’s past twilight and into the early night hours when the fireflies are active, their lights twinkling through the field, tiny lanterns dancing in the black. War stands next to me and we watch them buzz and flutter, and I even reach out and manage to catch one. It’s glowing tail brightens my fingers and fades, brightens my fingers and fades, pulsing like a slow heartbeat.
“I want you to listen,” I say without looking at War. “Can you do that?”
“I can,” he says.
“And don’t say anything until I’m done.”
“I won’t.”
I take a shuddering breath and let the firefly go. It takes off and flutters away, flashing as it rises. “Rosie liked to play a game with me. I was maybe ten or eleven, this was right after her dad left and her mom fell apart. She was older than me by a couple years, and I looked up to her even though she was always kind of mean. We weren’t really close, but the cousins all played together so we were friends the way young kids are friends, basically because of proximity. But things changed one night when she lured me into her room and told me we should play doctor.” I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears and feel disgusting all over again.
“I was old enough to know that it was wrong,” I say and try to control the tremble in my voice. “I knew I shouldn’t let my cousin touch me like that, but she said it was fine, we were just playing a game. She said we were exploring and fooling around, and it was no big deal. Looking back, the way it happened right after her dad left, I think something was going on with him. She never said it, nobody ever did, but I think her dad was doing something like that to her, and she acted out once he was gone. She did it to me, maybe thinking that’s what you were supposed to do. I don’t know. I’ve obsessed over it for years, trying to make sense of why she picked me and why she touched me like that and why I let her, but I still don’t understand it. We were stupid kids.”
“Melody,” War says quietly and I hold a hand up.
“Please,” I say. “Just let me get it all out. The doctor stuff, that lasted for a few months. It never went past touching. It was inappropriate touching, and it still makes me feel wrong, but eventually it stopped. But I wonder if that’s all it was, just some weird stupid crap with my cousin, maybe I could’ve put it behind me and moved on. But that’s when the bullying started.” I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “She was brutal. I mean, absolutely brutal. It was always couched in jokes and pranks but she was relentless, calling me fat, calling me stupid and worthless, basically going out of her way to make me as miserable as possible. One time she held me under water in the pool for over a minute until Daisy started crying and made Rosie let me go. I’m pretty sure Rosie would’ve drowned me, then and there. She turned my life into a living hell, and I still wonder why the sudden change, from the just-exploring doctor stuff to suddenly hating me so much it was like it ate up her entire world. Before her dad left, Rosie was pretty normal. A little harsh, a little mean, but not like she was after he was gone. It’s like something changed in her, and she turned all that rage and hate and dumped it on me, and the doctor stuff was only the beginning.
“When she died, I didn’t know how to feel. I was angry, and sad, and some sick part of me was relieved because the bullying would finally stop. Rosie made my life terrible, she made me think about killing myself when I was fifteen. She was always chewing that gum, always coming around to mock me and hit me and hurt me. And when she died, I was just so mad that everyone was sad, because Rosie as a monster. She was amonster, War. That’s what I told Renee back then.
“I told her about the bullying, about the pain and the torment, but I also told her about the earlier stuff. About the doctor stuff. I just, I couldn’t handle the way everyone acted like Rosie was a saint, when she was a fuckingpsychopathto me. I couldn’t stand everyone saying such nice things about poor dead Rosie, when Rosie had touched me in ways a cousin should never touch another cousin, and she’d tormented me to the point that I couldn’t leave the tower anymore without being terrified she’d find me. That’s why I was always locked up there. It was my only safe space.”
I lapse into silence. An odd weight feels like it lifts from my chest, like I can finally breathe now that I told someone about what happened to me back then. I haven’t gone into it all with anyone, not since I let it all out to Renee and that backfired on me so horribly, but I’m suddenly tingling and buzzing with the release of saying it all out loud. Those memories, what Rosie did to me, they’ve haunted me all my life, and when it all came out, I was called a liar, a faker, an attention whore. They mocked me, tore into me, and I couldn’t take it.
I ran away, and I haven’t properly dealt with any of that for years now.
War touches my arm. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “And if it means anything, I believe you.”
