I didn’t expect to feel so much emotion being home again.
I thought I was over everything that happened in this house. Every convoluted tie I had to it.
But it’s all rushing back much harder than I expected.
In a way, I’m glad Riona is here with me. It gives me something to focus on, and it keeps the conversation with family from getting too personal. I know they want to demand why I haven’t come back to visit more often. But they can’t attack me with that in front of Riona.
I am glad to see them.
My brother Grady never hides anything he’s thinking or feeling. And my sister Bo thinks she keeps it all bottled in, but I can always read her face. And Mom. I know she missed me most of all.
Lawson and Tucker look like two completely different kids from the ones I met last time. Lawson was only a toddler, barely speaking, and Tucker was shy and sweet. Now they’re both talking away a mile a minute to each other, and fiercely fighting over the last roll, until Shelby separates them and makes them sit on either side of her.
Riona is sitting stiffly upright in her chair next to mine, obviously feeling like a fish out of water. Southern hospitality can be a lot. It’s warm and welcoming, but also overwhelming and smothering when you’re not used to it.
She’s a city girl through and through. I’m sure the endless green hills and the wooden furniture and the smell of horses and the massive platters of ribs, biscuits, and corn on the cob are all as bizarre and exotic to her as if I’d taken her to Shanghai and fed her fermented fish.
I like that, though. I like seeing Riona out of her element. Not in control of the situation. I like seeing her sharp green eyes examining everyone at the table, so she can adapt and overcome. Riona has a certain relentless drive to excel in any circumstance that I relate to. I’m the same.
At first she’s trying to eat her ribs tidily, using her knife and fork, but soon she realizes that’s impossible. She sees the rest of us—especially my brother—attacking the ribs like wild animals, and she eventually picks one up with both hands and takes a big bite.
“This is really good,” she tells my mom. “I can see where Raylan learned to cook.”
“He always picked it up the best.” My mom nods. “He makes apple pie better than I do. While poor Grady could burn water.”
“Bo is the worst cook,” Grady says. He’s just stating a fact, not deliberately trying to piss her off, but my sister shoots him a venomous look all the same.
“I don’t like cooking,” she says.
“Neither do I,” Riona says.
Bo looks slightly mollified to have someone agree with her for once.
“What do you like doing?” she asks Riona.
“Working,” Riona says promptly. Then she seems to realize that you’re supposed to have hobbies as well, so she adds, “Running and swimming, too. And traveling.”
I think she tacked that last one on just because it’s a good safe answer.
“I was on the swim team at school,” Bo says.
“I find it very calming,” Riona says. “The same with running.”
“You ever ride a horse?” Bo asks.
“I’ve never sat on a horse,” Riona admits. “Never even touched one.”
We all can’t help smiling at that, because around here, that would be like saying you’ve never ridden in a car in your life.
“Well,” Bo says, “it’s a lot like swimming in the way it clears your head and washes your stress away. So, you might like it.”
“That does sound nice,” Riona says, as if she’s actually considering it.
That would be brave of her. Most adults who have never ridden a horse aren’t keen to try it out all of a sudden.
Maybe she’s just being polite.
To test her, I say, “Let’s go for a ride in the morning.”
Riona fixes me with her stubborn stare. She knows I’m challenging her. And I know she hates to back down from a challenge.
“I would love that,” she says, without a flicker of anxiety.
It’s so hard not to grin. I fucking love provoking Riona, and I love making her do things just to spite me.
“Put her on Penny or Clover,” my mom says in a warning tone. She’s naming two of our sweetest and most gentle horses.
“Of course,” I say.
“So tell us about your job!” Shelby cheerfully says to Riona. “Raylan says you’re a lawyer?”
“Yes.” Riona nods.
“That must be so interesting! Making dramatic speeches and arguing in court . . . ”
I chuckle a little at the idea of Riona making a dramatic speech. Riona lifts her chin haughtily and says, without looking at me, “It’s very interesting.”
“What was your best case ever?” Shelby asks, in much the same way you’d ask about someone’s favorite movie or TV show.
“Well . . . ” Riona says, really considering the question. “This isn’t the sort of work I usually do. But my paralegal was having trouble with an ex-boyfriend. He was stalking her. It was difficult to get the police to do anything about it, because what he was doing wasn’t explicitly threatening. He was leaving flowers for her everywhere she went. A rose on her car, another on the bench at her yoga studio, roses outside the door of her apartment, even sometimes at her mom’s house. She’d be shopping at the grocery store and turn down the aisle and see a rose laying there. It scared her, obviously, because it showed he was following her everywhere she went. But when she called the cops, the responding officer told her she should be glad her boyfriend wanted to give her flowers.
“He’d do other things, too—calling her phone and our office dozens of times a day from different numbers. But he wasn’t leaving messages, so again, hard to prove.
“Eventually, we got security footage from the grocery store and yoga studio, to show that he was following her around. And Lucy knew his Reddit username, so we took screenshots of some very . . . graphic . . . posts he had made about her. The posts were violent and threatening. That was enough to get a restraining order.
“He violated it twice. Spent sixty days in jail. And finally he moved to Florida. So, Lucy’s been a lot more relaxed since then. And I’ve been happy about that.”
Riona’s cheeks flush pink. She’s pleased by the memory of the win, and the weight lifted off of Lucy.
I would have expected her favorite case to be one where she accomplished something important for her family or earned a promotion.
Riona surprises me often. Like when she was singing in the car. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so uninhibited, and simply . . . happy. She has such a tough personality that it’s easy to believe the impression she gives off deliberately: that she isn’t vulnerable or emotional. That she can’t be hurt. That she isn’t human enough to take joy in simple, silly pleasures, like singing along to an old song on the radio.
I like both sides of her. I like her grit and her drive. And I like that she does feel things, underneath. I think she feels them intensely, actually.
Riona and I are both exhausted, so I get her set up in one of the guest rooms right after dinner.
I can see my sister glancing curiously down the hall from her room—checking to see if Riona and I are staying in the same guest room together. We’re not—I’ll be sleeping in my old room on the other end of the house, like I always do.
My room is tiny, and almost exactly the same as I left it when I joined the army at eighteen. Movie posters all over the walls, and a tiny bed that I know my mother makes up fresh every couple of months, even though nobody’s sleeping in it.
Riona gets the nicest guest room. It has a pretty view down to the paddocks behind the house, and to the garden. It’s got a queen-size bed and an en suite bathroom.
I’ll be sharing the bathroom in the hall with Bo. It’s packed with her stuff scattered all over the countertops and overflowing the drawers. That’s fine with me—means I can steal her shampoo.
Bo just had her birthday, too. She’s eighteen now. Same age I left. I wonder if she’ll run off for a while, like I did. She’s always been the wildest one of all of us.
Grady never left, and he never would. He met Shelby in his tenth grade English class. She’s the only girl he was ever interested in. She wouldn’t marry him until she came home from college, but he waited here patiently, driving up to visit her at the University of Tennessee every weekend. Now they live in the little house Grady built a mile south on the property. You could see it from the front porch, if not for all the trees in the way. It’s close enough that they can drive over for dinner in two minutes, but far enough to give them a little privacy.
Shelby’s an equine veterinarian, so she works with our stock and the animals on neighboring farms. She’s incredible at helping with difficult births—almost never loses a foal.
Grady handles most of the care of the animals and the land itself. He has ranch hands that he brings on a few months at a time, but he’s so industrious that he doesn’t need them often. He told me he’s been making hand-made saddles in his spare time, though I don’t know when that spare time might possibly take place.
Bo is good at training. Even though she’s impatient with people, she never loses her temper with the horses.
My mother is the same way. She may be small, but there isn’t a job she can’t do on the ranch. We were all taught to do every part of the work. She taught us, and so did my father.
Looking out my bedroom window, I’m thinking of him most of all. I can see the cherry trees he planted all along the side of the house, because he knew how much mom loved the blossoms. The cherries were sour. He made them into tarts.
I can almost see him sitting on the wooden fence around the paddock: long black hair. Sun-faded shirt. Jeans loose on his hips.
But I can only picture him from behind. I can’t see his face.
