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Without a second glance at him, I pick up my bag and leave his room. I rush down the steep stairs of his town house and out the front door into the misty fog that’s rolling up from the bay. Closing the door behind me, it finally feels like I’m starting over.
Nothing holding me down. No strings. Nothing between me and the ranch in Montana. Smiling to myself, I walk toward the BART and say goodbye to this city.
The smellof coffee assaults my nose as I make my way into my parents’ house. Momma gets up every morning and makes sure there’s coffee ready to go for any of the guys who work on the ranch. Their home is the main hub for food and snacks, no matter how many times I tell her to stop letting these men take advantage of her kindness.
“Sun isn’t even up yet,” I say when I see my dad sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper. His grey hair is almost white now, and his glasses sit low on his nose as he looks up at me, his brown eyes matching the color of my own.
“Habit,” he tells me, setting the paper down on the old wooden table. It’s been in the family since I was a little kid. We’ve had countless meals on it, and my sister used to sit there to do her breathing treatments every morning. I blink the memory of Addie away.
“Yeah?” I ask as I take a cup of coffee out of Momma’s hands. They’re fragile, with crooked fingers from the arthritis that cropped up early in her life. “Must be important if it gets you down here and dressed before 6:00 a.m., Pops.”
Normally, he’s walking around in baggy boxers and a loose T-shirt, not caring that men are running in and out of here like it’s a soup kitchen. Guess he earned it after all those years of running the ranch.
“We hired a new ranch hand.”
I set my mug down and press my palms into the cool granite of the countertop. I hang my head.
“We don’t need a new ranch hand,” I bite out. “Nor can we afford one.”
“You’ve been running your brother ragged ever since Tommy left. That poor boy needs a helping hand with those rescues you insist on taking in.”
I swallow the retort I want to say because he’s right. I do insist on taking in these damn rescue animals, all for Addie. It was Addie’s dream to run a rescue, and this is the only way I know how to honor my sister’s life.
Cracking my neck, I turn around and face him. Momma takes a sip from her own mug and watches us with a little smile on her lips. She’s got that look on her face, like she knows something I don’t. I do not like that one bit.
“Okay, and why did this news need to be told face-to-face? Could’ve just told Wells to tell me.” I look back and forth between the two of them. “Something else you wanna tell me, Pops?”
“I want you to be nice to her,” he says, like I’m not a nice person. “Drop the asshole attitude so you don’t run her off.”
“This better not be another matchmaking attempt. I told you after Leah that I was done with that shit. I don’t need another woman to rip out my kids’ hearts—”
“Watch your mouth,” Momma chastises, shaking her head like she’s disappointed in me. Even though she was really the one that taught me the worst of the words I know.
“Yes, ma’am.” I wink at her, and it makes her smile even wider.
“Going over to watch my grandbabies,” she tells me as she kisses me on the cheek. “We’ll come see you for lunch.”
“Thanks, Momma.”
I’m going to have to figure out something else soon. I can’t keep having her watch my kids every day. She’s getting too old, and she deserves to enjoy her retirement, not work through it. And those kids are work.
Jolene is six, and Wade is five, and they both run around this damn ranch like they own the place.
“It’s not a setup.” Pops sighs once Momma has left the house. “She’s young. But she’s one of the very few applicants we got that had any experience with animals. I wanted someone who knew what the hell they were doin’.”
“She from around here?” I take another drink of coffee, letting the life-giving drug burn its way down my throat.
“She’s from San Francisco.”
I damn near spit this coffee all over Momma’s clean linoleum floor.
“And she’s moving to bumfuck nowhere, Montana? To work on a ranch?”
“She wanted something new — a change of pace, she said.”
“This’ll do it.”
“Be nice to her.”
