He did not relent his position. “Of course you did. You succeed at whatever you put your mind to, Caroline, but you are a surgeon, one of the most talented pediatric orthopedic specialists in the country, not a rodeo ring leader. Don’t forget that.”
Just when I was ready to scream, Wyatt appeared at my side. He put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a very platonic squeeze as he said, “Mighty fine work your girl has done here, Sheriff. Can’t tell you how impressed we all are.” He tipped his head in the direction of all the people milling about the loft. He was talking to my father, and I could tell from the tension in his jaw that he didn’t like how my father was talking to me, but he was also reminding me not to lose my cool in front of the crowd of volunteers.
My father’s eyes narrowed a bit, focused on Wyatt’s hand resting on my shoulder. Noticing his gaze, Wyatt quickly released his grasp. Approving of this response to his silent threat, and never one to miss a moment to gloat over my success, even if he didn’t approve of it, my father replied, “Well, she’s the best.”
“Smartest girl in town,” Wyatt said seriously.
I glanced up at him, ready to be annoyed, but quickly caught wind of the tiny smirk he was working hard to contain. He was goading me. I wanted to sock him in the arm, but I didn’t, trying to keep a lid on the closeness that had grown between us. And then it dawned on me that I wasn’t angry or annoyed with my father anymore. Wyatt had rescued me from that moment, swooping in like a superhero of misdirection.
Turning back to the bustling loft, my father asked, “Well, what can I do next?”
Feeling irrationally happy, I answered, “Well, I guess you could paint something else?”
He glanced at me and rolled his eyes. “Don’t get smart with me, missy. Give me an assignment.”
“Okay, you can go help Maddie and Kat paint the artificial cows.”
Still grumpy but also strategic to a fault, my father marched in their direction, determined to execute a herd of perfect fake cattle for the kids to lasso.
Watching him walk away, Wyatt said, “There goes the new master of fauxvines.”
I giggled, fauxvines, like bovines, he was so punny. He had one of the fastest minds I’d ever encountered. Sighing but not unhappy, I quipped, “He’s the master of something all right.”
Wyatt let the comment lie. From his expression, I wasn’t sure if he was refraining from saying what he thought of my dad’s opinions or if in some way he agreed with them. But I was sure that when my dad had me cornered, Wyatt came to my rescue, so I held on to that.
Shifting the conversation, Wyatt said, “Man, Bev is doing such great work today. All that experience painting sets has made her quite the artist.”
Brightly, I said, “I know, right?”
Wyatt joked, “So lucky she wasn’t abducted by aliens or trapped by a herd of bloodthirsty sheep on her way here.”
Holding in a laugh, I said, “She does seem slightly accident prone.”
“It’s downright uncanny, the girl had never made it to one rodeo meeting.”
“Terrible to have bad luck like that.” I moved back to my spot on the hay bale behind my computer.
“What are you working on?” Wyatt asked
“Just crunching numbers. Actually, could you help me for a sec?”
He sat down across from me. “Sure.”
I handed him a piece of paper and a pen and then turning back to my screen, I said, “I’m trying to make some notes from this spreadsheet, but I keep losing my place and getting weird formatting when I try to copy and paste. Just jot down whatever I say.”
Completely focused on my work, I listed out a series of vendors and expenses that I needed to transfer to a new file. It was part of my personality that if I was focused, I was not aware of anything but what I was working on, so I didn’t notice that Wyatt had grown peaked until I finished rattling off my list and looked up. Unsure why he was unsettled, I tentatively said, “Got it?”
Smiling weakly, he nodded and handed me the paper. I didn’t look at it right away. I kept my eyes on him, searching his face, hoping for an explanation for his sudden mood change.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded again. Then he swallowed and said, “Yep.” He used his thumb to point behind him. “I’m just gonna get back to it.”
An icy scared feeling pooled just beneath my sternum. I was desperate to jump up and throw my arms around him. “Wait!” I said and there was too much fear in my voice.
He stilled, his eyes locked on mine. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. We were in a room full of people and the rules of our agreement kept me from wrapping myself around him or showering him with all the feelings I felt. So I said what I could. “Thank you, Wyatt. I don’t know where I’d be without you to help me.”
He smiled and then sadly said, “You would have figured it out, Caro. You’re the brains, I’m just the brawn.”
I shook my head and joked, “Oh yeah, I’m so knowledgeable about cattle, saddles, and lassos.”
He didn’t say anything else. But he smiled as he walked away.
Once he was gone, I looked down at the paper in my lap. Within seconds, I realized something about Wyatt that I didn’t think anyone else knew. He was dyslexic. No question.
13
Wyatt
I backed my truck up to the barn and both Bill and my father helped me carry anything that wasn’t covered in wet paint down from the loft. Most of the others had gone home about an hour ago and my other siblings were too busy picking paint out from under their fingernails and lying around on hay bales to help. Miriam took the kids back to Kat and Bill’s house to eat. Caroline was still crunching numbers, holed up in the corner on a hay bale like a kid with Halloween candy, giddy and anxious all at the same time. I hadn’t said more than two words to her since she'd asked me to jot down those notes for her.
I wasn’t intentionally being obtuse, but I knew what it looked like when I wrote something down, and it didn’t look right. By the time I was in middle school, I never turned anything in that I’d handwritten. I typed everything. I just wasn’t good at reading and writing like everyone else. I was slow and the process was exhausting.
My mama always used to say that it was the same for her, and you just had to push on through. She got me my first laptop, so I could take it to school and take notes in class. Before she passed, she made our dad promise to make sure that I always had a working laptop. I remember her standing in the kitchen; Bill and Luke had taken Cody and Sarah out to the barn and I couldn’t go with them because I was still doing my homework. Our mama looked at our daddy and said, “If this takes me, Duke, I need you to remember that Wyatt may not be book smart but he’s quick as lightning. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Our dad got stuck on the ‘if this takes me’ part. “Mol, we’re gonna fight like hell and win,” he said.
Since my mama never pulled any punches, she said, “We’re gonna fight, Duke. But people die. Those are just facts, and the truth is if it’s my time, I'm going, whether we like it or not. So, when I tell you something about one of our children, you better listen.” It was the first time I realized that my mom was sick enough that she might die. I was eleven. The twins were only five.