The next day, I had some errands to run in town with my dad. When I walked through the back door of the Big House, he was waiting for me in the kitchen.
Apparently, one of the hay balers was still acting up. We were already behind on baling, and because of that, Gus’s forehead vein was about thirty seconds from bursting. Not Amos, though. The man was still as steady as ever.
He greeted me with a hug. I loved my dad’s hugs. He didn’t half-ass them. Every time he hugged us, he did it like it was the last time.
“Hey, Spud. Are you ready?”
“Morning. Yeah, let’s roll.” We walked out to his truck. My dad was a Ford man. Personally, I had my own issues with the guy who created the forty-hour work week, but that was neither here nor there.
It was cooler this morning, a sure sign that fall was on its way. Willie Nelson was playing softly through the truck speakers. I looked out the front windshield. It was all green trees and a painted-blue sky. Within a month or two, the leaves on the trees would change, turning this green and blue landscape into fire.
“How are things going? Are you settling in okay?” my dad asked.
“Yeah, I am.”
“It’s been how long? A little over a month?” With that simple question, I now knew why we were going to town by ourselves. Yeah, my dad wanted to spend time with me, but he also wanted to know what my plans were.
“About that long, yes.”
“I’m assuming you know what I’m going to ask next, Spud.”
I let out a sigh. “I don’t know, Dad.”
“That’s unusual for you.” It was. I was always thinking about what was next. “What’s going on?” I was honestly surprised it had taken him this long to ask, but to be fair, I hadn’t really given him the chance. “You know, when I came home and you were here, I was so happy to see you, and I knew you were happy to be home, but the moment I saw you, I knew my baby girl was sad.”
My dad rubbed at his chin with the hand that wasn’t on the wheel. His eyes were on the road, and mine were on him. I took in his hair, which was so much more gray than I remembered, and his wrinkles were set more deeply. Worry was etched into them.
When I looked at my dad, who wasn’t as young as he was in my head, the realization that time at Rebel Blue had kept moving even when I was gone hit me like a freight train.
I wondered what was worse for him; worrying about me when I wasn’t here, or worrying about me when I was right in front of him, but out of reach.
Of course he knew I was going through something. He was my dad. As far as parents went, he was the only one I’d ever known. And instead of coming home and letting him in, letting him do what he did best—be a dad—I had shut myself in my cabin and put on a face around my family.
“It broke my heart, but I let you work through it by yourself because I know that’s how you like to do things. Over the past few weeks, you haven’t seemed so sad, so I figured you’d been able to work some things out in that messy head of yours. Have you?”
“Not really,” I answered honestly. If anything, my head was more of a mess now that I was all tangled up in Luke Brooks, but my dad definitely didn’t need to know that. “I don’t think I want to go back to Denver, but I also don’t really know what I’d do here long term. I can’t run things like Gus, and I don’t have a project like Wes.”
My dad kept one hand draped over the steering wheel, while the other continued to rub at his short beard. “So no racing?” he asked.
“No racing. I’m going to race in divisionals,” I said, unsure when I had made a decision. Now, apparently. “And then I’m done. I’m already one of the older riders on the circuit.”
My dad stayed quiet. I don’t think it surprised him. It was annoying, but my dad and my brothers knew me well. I’m sure they figured I was done with racing the second I came home. Gus was the only one so far who had tried to get me to admit it, but even he didn’t have it in him to keep pushing me.
“Do you still want to be around this life?” he finally asked. By “this life,” he meant the ranch. “Or do you see yourself doing something else?”
It was a good question, and I didn’t even have to think about my answer. “I want to be around the ranch.” I saw light flicker in my dad’s emerald eyes.
I’d been thinking about it over the past few weeks, and I just couldn’t see myself anywhere else but Meadowlark or Rebel Blue. For someone who worked so hard to get out of here, it was weird to feel like it was where I belonged.
“I could use a riding instructor,” my dad said. His voice was kind of strained. The emotional kind.
“Dad, are you okay?”
“Yeah, Spud. More than okay. I’d be happy for you wherever you went, but I’m happy you want to be here.” My dad had never tried to keep me in Meadowlark. When I told him about my plans, he went along with them and supported me wherever he could.
I wondered how hard it had been for him to watch me go.
“So, what do you say about being a riding instructor through the winter season? And I could use some help with horse training. Then we’ll see where we’re at.”
“Luke teaches lessons.”
“Luke, eh?” My dad raised one of his eyebrows at me. Shit. I never called Luke by his first name. He must’ve caught that. “He does, and he does a good job. But that boy is stretching himself pretty thin. I don’t know how he does it all.”
“Me neither,” I said truthfully. He taught lessons on Saturdays, worked on the ranch most days, and literally owned his own business. I didn’t know if I’d ever get over how different he was in reality than in my head.
“Plus, Ronald and his wife want to go to Yuma. Live out their golden years in warm weather. So if anything, you could take the teenagers and the adults. Luke could keep the kids if he wanted to, but something tells me he’d let you have them.”
My heart picked up speed. “What makes you say that?” I tried to be nonchalant. It took a few beats for my dad to answer, and when he did, I wasn’t quite sure what to think about it.
“Nothing goes on at Rebel Blue that I don’t know about, Spud.”
My dad and I rolled into downtown Meadowlark fifteen minutes later. After his comment about being the all-seeing eye at Rebel Blue, “Mama’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” started playing, and it was impossible for Amos and I not to sing along when it came to Waylon and Willie.
After that, my dad pulled out an aux cord. It would never not be funny to me that he had the nicest, most modern truck out of all of us. He handed it to me, and I quickly found my Highwaymen playlist. We sang our hearts out the rest of the way.
We pulled up to the tractor supply right as “Big River” came to an end. I’d only been to downtown Meadowlark a few times since I’d been home, all of them to see Teddy at the boutique, which was probably a five minute walk from the tractor supply.
Inside the store, my dad went to the counter. He’d pick up his part, but he’d also shoot the shit with Don Wyatt, the owner, for at least twenty minutes, so I started browsing.
When something was literally called the tractor supply store, people would assume it only carried tractor supplies. Those people would be wrong.
The tractor supply sold almost everything, and both Teddy and I had been known to buy heaps of Wranglers from here because they were cheaper than anywhere else.
While I was perusing, I saw a muscle tee and thought of Luke. This one was made that way, unlike his t-shirts that he just took a pair of scissors to and hoped for the best.
I snapped a quick picture and sent it to him.
Emmy: How much did you have to pay Don to get him to stock these?
I slid my phone in my back pocket and kept poking around. Grabbing one of those dinosaur grabber things along the way to entertain me. A few minutes later, my phone buzzed with a reply from Luke.
Luke: The ones that are intentionally made like that aren’t for me.
Emmy: Why? Not enough chance of a nip slip?
Luke: What do you have against my nipples?
I smiled at my phone. Considering I was the muscle tee’s biggest hater, it was shocking they’d started to grow on me. Even though, in the back of my head, I knew it wasn’t the muscle tee that was growing on me, but the man wearing it.
And his arms. Good god, those arms.
“Emmy, hey.” I heard a man call my name. I looked around until I saw Kenny. Of course he was here. I forgot his dad owned the goddamn tractor supply.
“Hey,” I said. “Fancy seeing you here.”
He smiled at me. That was good. Maybe he wasn’t upset I wasn’t answering his texts.
“Are you doing okay? I haven’t heard from you since I saw you at the bar last month.” Poor Kenny. He’d lost a race to a man he didn’t even know was running.
“Oh yeah, I’m good. Just busy!”
“I’m sure. I didn’t know you were staying in town this long,” he said. He sounded hopeful, which made me feel like an asshole.
“Yeah, I’m enjoying being home.”
“That’s good.” He paused for a second and ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit he’d had for as long as I’d known him. “So, do you think you’d want to get dinner sometime?”
God, he was so nice, but I couldn’t agree to dinner with him. Kenny was a good guy, but he didn’t want to be just my friend, and I only wanted Luke.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m seeing someone,” I said, in disbelief that I’d just told someone else that.
“Oh. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t apologize. Thank you for the offer.” I gave Kenny the friendliest smile I could muster.
“Spud,” my dad called from the other end of the store. “You ready to go?”
My savior.
“Yeah!” I responded. I put my dinosaur back and found my dad near the counter. “I’ll see you around,” I shouted back to Kenny. He just nodded.
Out the front store window, I could see the part my dad needed being loaded into the back of his truck by Don’s guys.
“Hey, Emmy. Welcome home.” Don nodded at me. “Kenny told me he’d seen you around.”
“Thanks, Don. Good to see you,” I said politely, hoping Don wouldn’t push me on the Kenny thing. Before he had a chance to, my dad stepped in.
“Thanks, Don. Take care.” He gave the counter a little tap before turning around and gesturing for me to follow. Once we were out of the store, he asked, “Want to grab a coffee before we head home?”
I nodded.
We walked across the street to The Bean. The inside was just as I remembered it. It was so cozy. Nothing matched. The tables, chairs, couches–they were all mismatched. Not in a chic Teddy way, but in a chaotic flea market way. I didn’t know if it made my ADHD better or worse.
Teddy and I used to do homework here, but I never got anything done. Now I knew why.
My dad walked up to the counter and ordered two drip coffees, his black and mine with lots of cream, no sugar. As far as I knew, he was the only other man in my life who knew my coffee order.
We chose a table by the window to sit for a few.
“I’ll take your deal, Dad,” I said, unprompted.
“You’ll teach?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it. I don’t want Luke’s classes unless he doesn’t want them, but I’ll take Ronald’s.”
“That’s fine with me. You’ll earn the starting wage for the first season, and we’ll reevaluate from there.”
“Done.”
My dad reached his hand over the table so we could shake on it. We sat there for a while, looking out the window and just existing. It was nice.
After a while, he looked at me and said, “You look so much like your mom, Emmy.” I knew my dad loved my mom, and he missed her every day, but he didn’t talk about her unprovoked. I always had to ask. “You know, she’s the one who wanted to name you Clementine.”
I nodded. He’d told me that before.
“She used to sing the song to the boys when they were fussy or couldn’t sleep. It always worked. We thought we were having another boy, but when you came out, I couldn’t even get a word out before she named you. You rarely cried as a baby. I like to think it’s because your name held part of your mom, even though she wasn’t there.”
That I didn’t know.
“The older you get, the more of her I see in you. She was quiet, like you. She preferred to work things out in her own head, and she kept her cards close to her chest.”
“Are those bad things?” I asked quietly.
“No. They made her fiercely independent and determined. I loved that about her. When I met her, I’d never met anyone like her. I love those things about you, too.”
My dad never talked like this. “Why don’t you talk about her more?”
It took him a second to answer. “When she’s in my head, I can keep her safe.”
My dad’s eyes were sad. Keep her safe. Hearing him say that broke my heart. My dad was with her when she died. She got bucked off a horse and hit her head on a rock just right. It was a freak accident.
The parallel between my mother and me wasn’t lost on me. I think that was part of the reason I didn’t tell him what happened to me. “I’m sorry for not telling you more about her,” my dad said.
“It’s okay,” I said. And it was. I loved my mom, and I wished I had known her, but I didn’t miss her–not like Gus or Wes did. It was hard to miss someone you never knew, but I still missed the idea of her.
Sometimes, it felt like there was a hole in my heart where she should be.
“Why are you talking about her now?” I asked, genuinely curious on what sparked this conversation.
“This place is the first place I saw her. It wasn’t a coffee shop then, just a diner. When I looked up at you just now, it reminded me of that day. Her car broke down outside of town. She’d walked a few miles to get here. She planned on staying one night, but she never left.” My dad was like a river, steady and strong. I could see how my mom got swept away in him.
“Is it hard? To love someone even though they’re gone?” I felt like I needed to take advantage of this time with my dad when he was freely talking about my mom.
“No, loving Stella is the easiest thing I’ll ever do, whether she’s here or not.” Who knew Amos Ryder was such a romantic? My heart grew heavy in my chest. I was afraid it would drop.
“Did she ever regret it? Staying here?” I asked, voicing my biggest fear to my father: that I would regret staying here. My dad looked at me thoughtfully, like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“You know, I don’t think she did. When she left her hometown, she was searching for something. I think she found it here.”
“What was she looking for?”
“The things we’re all searching for: love, support, purpose.”
“And she found that in you?”
“And in the mountains. And in August. And in Weston. And in you.” I felt tears prick at my eyes. Who was cutting onions in this fucking coffee shop? I’d never really cried for my mom, but today I cried for the man who’d lost her. Leave it to my dad to make me nice and misty-eyed in a public place.
He looked at me, and love was written all over his face when he said, “I hope you find that, too, Clementine. Whether it’s in Meadowlark or somewhere else later down the line.”
I understood my mom’s decision to leave her hometown, but I also understood her decision to stay in this little town more than I would have a few months ago.
When I was younger, all I could think about was leaving. Every goal I’d ever had was somehow related to leaving Meadowlark: college, racing, everything.
But now, I wanted to stay.
I felt safe here.
Maybe I just needed to leave for a while to realize this place was special, that I was proud to be from here, and because I was from here, I had a different experience from any other person out there.
I used to think Meadowlark made me feel small, but in reality, I think I made myself feel that way by always chasing the next thing to mark it off my list. It was hard to feel good enough when you never celebrated what you’d achieved.
But now, I was proud of myself and my accomplishments. I was also content. And no, it had nothing to do with Brooks. He was just a bonus.
There was something about Meadowlark.
“You know, Dad, I think I already have.”
