Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 115683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
“Hey, Dean? Where’s your work folder?”
He lifts a shoulder. “I dunno.”
“You need to find it, buddy. Then you need to get dressed and brush your teeth and put your shoes on. I’ve already asked you multiple times—”
“I’m going. Just give me a minute to draw, God!”
I close my eyes. My therapist told me to count backward from ten when I feel like I’m about to lose my shit. Funny enough, Dean said his therapist gave him the same tool to deal with his big feelings.
I get to eight when I hear Elvis growling.
Elvis never growls.
Also, why do I smell poop?
I open the door to see the dog standing there with…Lord, is that another snake in his mouth? It looks like it’s dead, but you never know. Please, God, don’t let it have bit him. It’s still mostly dark outside, so I can’t tell what kind of snake it is.
We see a lot—a lot—of rattlers in these parts.
“Elvis, drop it!” I hurtle down the back steps.
My son follows me to the door. “Daddy.”
“Hang on, Dean.”
“Daddy.”
“I’ll be right there—”
“Daddy!”
I whirl around. “What?”
“I think I had an accident.”
I close my eyes. Wish that a lightning bolt would come down and take me out right here, right now. End it all, because it’s not even seven a.m. and already the level of suck I’ve experienced today is extreme.
And just think, after I drop Dean off, I get to work a whole day.
Parenthood is just as rewarding and empowering as they said it would be. Ha.
“Did you poop your pants?” I manage around the burn in my throat.
“Yup.”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I bound up the steps and grab my work gloves. I dash back outside and carefully remove the snake from Elvis’s jaws.
Lucky for us, it’s a black snake. Unlucky for the snake, Elvis killed it.
I usher the dog inside. Dean’s in the bathroom, whining about how much his bottom hurts. His lunch box on the counter is still empty. Folder is still missing. A pair of stained underwear is on the kitchen floor.
My third cup of coffee has gone cold on the table beside my laptop. My reflection stares back at me from the computer’s blank screen. Even from several feet away, I can make out the lines around my eyes and mouth that have deepened over the past few years.
I look tired. And old.
Honestly, I look like my dad.
To be fair, Dale Wallace is a handsome man. But he’s spent a lifetime working in the Texas sun, and he looks it.
I’m beat by the time Dean and I load up in my Silverado. I crack the windows and drive slow over the dirt road that connects our little A-frame house to the rest of the ranch.
The familiar smell of newly cut hay fills my head and eases the tightness in my chest.
Dad and my brothers and I actually built my new house. There’s six of us Wallace kids, five boys and a girl. Always thought I’d have a big family like that, but…
Yeah, not gonna go there.
After Abby passed, I felt like Dean and I needed a fresh start. One day—Dean was three at the time—Dad showed up at the foreman’s cottage where we were living, a wad of permits tucked underneath his arm.
Next thing I knew, my brothers and I were learning how to pour a foundation. Billie, my younger sister, crunched the numbers so we didn’t go over budget by a single cent.
Dean and I moved in a little less than a year after construction began. Been living happily in our thousand-square-foot new build ever since. I figured we didn’t need a ton of space because it’s only the two of us.
As far as I’m concerned, it will always be just the two of us. Stability is my number one priority. The last thing my son needs is more upheaval. More change. He’s had enough of that to last a lifetime, and the kid’s only six.
So we stick to routine—to tradition—come hell or high water, and that’s how we survive from one day to the next.
CHAPTER 3
Tough Shit
COLT
The sun is rising through the juniper trees that line the road leading to Highway 67. Glancing up at the rearview mirror, I catch Dean watching the sunrise with wide eyes.
“Dad, is that God?”
I chuckle. My son has a tendency to get existential on the ride to school. Quite the one-eighty from the whiny mess he was twenty minutes ago at home. “God is everywhere, buddy.”
“Did he paint the sky blue? Like with a big paintbrush?”
“Maybe.”
Dean is quiet for a minute. “Mommy’s up there with him. I know it, because her favorite color was blue.”
An arrow through the heart. Damn.
I often wish my grief were as straightforward as my son’s. He loves Abby with his whole heart.
Me? I’ll always protect her memory for Dean’s sake, but my memory of her is a more complicated thing. I fell hard for Abby in high school. But by the time she got her diagnosis ten years later, we’d become little more than roommates.