Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 48446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48446 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
I cleared my throat. “It’ll be me. I’m fixin’ to leave in a couple weeks, right after New Year’s.”
“Must you?”
“Pardon?”
“Is it absolutely necessary that you go?”
“Ma’am, if you knew what I normally do for a living, you’d get it.”
“Lyn said you’re a ranch hand. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I raised a brow and gestured around.
“But could you not do something different?”
“I love how everyone thinks I can just change my whole life and who I am on a dime.”
She shrugged. “Change is like a giant hole we can’t see out of.”
I scowled at her.
“The fact is, Micah has bonded with you, Weber Yates. He might even talk, to you or about you, fairly soon. It’s in his eyes—the excitement, the expectation. He so wanted to tell me about you today. He couldn’t draw fast enough. He wanted to express things, and when I was deliberately obtuse, he was very irritated with me.” Her smile was wicked.
“You tricked him.”
She shrugged. “I have a small window to bring him back from this before he closes off completely. Shocking him, putting him in a situation where someone else could be hurt if he didn’t use his voice, that’s all shit, you understand?”
I laughed. “I can’t believe you said shit.”
“Well, this is not a movie on the Lifetime Channel. We have to actually deal with this in real time and with real therapy. He had his voice shocked out of him. It won’t be shocked back. It doesn’t work like that. It will come when it’s ready. But if he can deal with the world without it, what’s to make him want it back?”
“That makes sense.”
“But you, my dear man, you he wants to talk about and to talk to. You’re the anomaly, the new piece. He was abandoned, and you appeared. Tristan has the same eyes for you, full of want and hope. Whatever you do, don’t kill it, because I’ll have to kill you.” She was tiny but apparently could be quite scary.
“That’s bullshit,” I growled at her. “You don’t get to lay that crap at my door. I ain’t responsible for the psyche—didn’t think I knew that word, didja?—of them three boys.”
She started giggling.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Oh my God.” She was laughing, loudly, and I really liked the sound. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”
“Before this?” I was confused.
And that was it: she was gone. She was a puddle of tears and snorts and raucous, howling laughter.
“Ma’am, you have lost your mind.”
It was like throwing gasoline on a fire.
I had no idea what set her off, but as she didn’t seem to be returning from the edge of sanity, I called the boys to me so we could go. This woman was insane. Why she had to hug me goodbye, and why I let her, I had no idea.
The kids’ daily schedule was a blur of activity. Taking all three kids to karate, home for a snack, then Tristan to soccer practice, Pip to music, and Micah to art. I was exhausted just from the driving, but fortunately for me, it was all programmed into the GPS of Lyn’s SUV. She had taken Cy’s second car, his normal, everyday Lexus, and he had taken the BMW.
“Do you have a license, Weber?” she had asked me tentatively, and I had pulled it from my wallet and passed it to her. “Arizona?”
I nodded.
“Wait, are you kidding me?” she asked when she noticed the expiration date.
“Yep, good for twenty-eight years, you’re readin’ that right.” I waggled my eyebrows. “And the address is the PO box of a friend of mine, so I’m good.”
“How?” She could not get over it.
I pointed at the issue date. “See that? I was thirty-two when I got that.”
“Ohmygod.” She was indignant. “You don’t look like this picture at all!”
“Nope,” I agreed. “Hard livin’ ages you up a bit.”
“Yes, but this won’t expire—I’m stunned. What the hell is the DMV there thinking?”
“That they are a highly transient state, and they don’t want fifty million people in line at the damn DMV on a daily basis.”
Her face had transformed into a huge smile as she’d passed me her keys. “Here you go, cowboy. Drive safely, and take care of my boys and the Enterprise, all right?”
Why she’d named her car after Captain Kirk’s starship, I had no idea—until I had to park it.
“Mom says she docks it,” Tristan informed me.
And I looked like every other asshole in the parking lot doing the eleven-point turn to try to get out of the parking stall without totaling the Honda Civic beside me. The boys were highly amused, cheered me on, and did the wave when I was done. I told them to shut their pieholes. They all dissolved into throaty kid laughter that it was impossible not to join in on. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to fall as much in love with them as I already was with their uncle.