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“Jesus fucking Christ, do I have to do everything myself? You,” he pointed a finger at Reece. “Clear this up before I get back.” Then he stormed past Buck right out into what was now a deluge.
“Jeez, what crawled up his ass and took a shit?”
“Not now, Buck,” Reece said, sounding exactly like his brother as he turned his glare on Buck. “I need to have a private conversation with Charlie.”
“Damn.” Buck held up his hands. “Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
When Reece just kept staring at him, Buck shook his head, muttered something under his breath, and then turned and headed back out into the rain.
Leaving just me and Reece in the barn, a dull roar on the tin roof as the rain blew sideways in a torrent.
Reece took a step toward me but I held up a hand. “Don’t.”
“Charlie—”
“Have I just been some substitute all along? For Peg, whoever she is?”
“God, I’m gonna kill my brother. No. No.” Again he tried to take a step forward and I took a step back, a warning look on my face that had him stopping in his tracks.
“Peg was a woman I knew when I was barely grown myself. Jer and I were nineteen, we’d just left California. It was the first time we’d worked a ranch. Wayne took us on because we’d accept almost no pay, just eager to learn a trade of any kind and frankly glad to have a roof over our heads. For a while it was great.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Then I’d hear Wayne and his wife fighting. No, I’d just hear Wayne yelling at his wife though the windows of the ranch house. I didn’t know he beat her, not at first.”
I swallowed, but too many emotions were bubbling up so I swallowed again.
“And you fell in love with her?” I managed to get out.
For a moment, Reece looked lost. “I just—” his voice trailed off. “One day after her husband was yelling at her, I heard a crash. Wayne stormed out of the house and drove off. Jer told me not to get involved, that it wasn’t my business. But after all the ranch hands went off to our duties for the day, I doubled back to check on her. Which was when I found her on the floor in the kitchen. There were a couple of shattered plates on the floor beside her and her face—”
Reece sucked in a breath and shut his eyes hard, like he was either reliving it or trying to get himself under control.
“I told her she should leave him, but she just said I was a sweet kid. She was fifteen years older than me, and said I didn’t understand how the world worked. But we started up a… a friendship, I guess. I was the only person she could talk to who was safe.”
I swallowed again, hugging my arms around myself. “And it turned into more?”
Reece hesitated, then nodded. “She liked to have a companion when she rode her horse, so sometimes I’d go with her. We got closer and closer…”
Reece’s brow bunched as he looked to the floor. “I loved her and yes, I thought I could save her. She never said she loved me back, but she said her time with me made the rest of her life possible. That she’d thought about slitting her wrists plenty of times until I showed up.”
Uneasily, I rubbed my left wrist. I’d kept them perpetually covered here with long sleeved flannels. When it got warmer, I used a thick-banded waterproof watch on my left wrist and a scrunchie on my right, no matter that I had short hair and no use of one. I’d found both in Ruth’s bathroom drawers.
I took a step towards Reece, feeling my nose sting with emotion both for him and for the woman. Peg. To have dared to grab at what joy she could in the midst of her own suffering… I couldn’t imagine.
But I could totally see how Reece, kind, gentle Reece showing up, an even more earnest and boyish version than the man in front of me, just having survived the streets of San Francisco… I could see how he would have seemed like a miracle. Enough to make a woman reckless.
And I could also see how he could have fallen into the situation, wanting to help her, then developing a close bond with the woman. The intimacy of a secret shared. How that could turn into long afternoons that felt like an escape and also salvation, to both of them after all they’d been through. And how natural feelings would follow, and desperate bodies would meet—
“So what happened?” I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.
“Her husband caught us.”
I gasped and took another small step forward.
“It was fucking awful.” Reece turned away from me. “Jeremiah’s right. I should have tried to get her help earlier. Not—” He shook his head vehemently. “Not… do what I did.
“You were barely just more than a kid yourself. You said you were just what, nineteen? God knows how stupid I was at nineteen. I didn’t do anything right.” As soon as I said it, I realized just how true it was. And yet it was so much easier to cut Reece the slack I could never seem to give to myself.
But Reece was still just shaking his head. “No, I should have done anything else. Tried to protect her better. Wayne came in and he just started whaling on her. I fought him and told her to run, but I only slowed him down. Like you said, I was nineteen, skinny as a bean pole, barely fed enough after years on the street. He was a full-grown man and more than a match for the both of us.”
