“But you miss her.”
“I miss…” She exhaled and the words died. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to change her mom, or her family dynamics. You couldn’t make people want you. You couldn’t make people love you. They either did, or they didn’t. Better to come to terms with reality, better to have acceptance. “Actually, I don’t miss her. I don’t miss the family I was raised with. It wasn’t ideal.”
“You fight with yourself all the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you want acceptance, but don’t have it. And I think you want a family, but you’re not sure you’ll get it… or you deserve it. Which I think is crazy because you’re one of the most together women I’ve ever met—”
“Not saying a lot, based on the women you meet.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m too invested in my degree.”
“Just because you’re studying, doesn’t mean you can’t date, or have someone serious in your life.”
“Maybe I haven’t met anyone that I liked enough to include in my life.”
“That’s fair,” he replied.
There was something about the conversation that made her breath catch, and her heart ache. He made her feel so much. She didn’t know how he did it.
Erika turned away and gazed out, focusing on the horizon. The sun was beginning to set, long golden rays of light outlining the hills, dappling the field below the cabin with shadows. A deer grazed in the shadowed pasture, and then a fawn, carefully picking its way through the grass to join its mother.
“Do you see?” Billy asked, pointing to the pasture.
She nodded. “Love it. You’re lucky to have a little slice of paradise. No traffic, no noise, no neighbors. Just deer.”
“And coyotes, raccoons, skunks, birds.” He opened the lid on the grill and turned the potatoes over before adding the steaks. “I’ve never been here for this long at one time. It’s been good.” He closed the lid. “The steaks won’t take long. Want to check on Beck? Maybe finish up the salad? I’ll be inside in just a bit.”
Erika returned to the kitchen, made the salad and lifted Beck from his bouncy seat, carrying him on her hip as she lifted down the dishes, and brought the butter and sour cream from the refrigerator. She could hear Billy’s voice from outside. Glancing out the French doors, she could see he was on the phone talking to someone.
She couldn’t hear very much, just a few words here and there. Trip. Mother’s Day. And then something about a rodeo.
Erika strained to hear more, but Billy wasn’t saying much, just answering with one-word replies now and then.
She looked down at Beck who was doing his best to worm his hand into her mouth and she kissed it instead. “Everything is good,” she said to him. “Everything is great.”
Chapter Ten
The next morning, Erika struggled to get real work done. She’d been sitting on her bed for a couple hours but was stuck on the same sentence.
Frustrated, she climbed off the bed and headed for the kitchen to refresh her water glass. The living room was empty. No Beck and no Billy.
On her way back to her room she checked the two other bedrooms. They were both empty as well. Where were the boys? What were they doing?
She left the house, her gaze sweeping the corral, seeing just the horses outside grazing. As she entered the barn she could hear Billy’s voice.
“You’re not going to start roping from the saddle. That’s not how we’re going to do it. We’ll just start with a rope just like this, and the dummy head. We’re going to do lots and lots of drills, building muscle memory, so your body remembers what it’s doing, no matter what the horse does.”
She peeked around the stable to an open area of the barn where Billy had spread a blanket on the ground and propped Beck up against a saddle. Billy was practicing roping the dummy head positioned on a hay bale. “Nice and easy,” he said, throwing the rope and catching the dummy’s horns perfectly. “Always both horns. You need the tip of the rope to go over the horns smoothly. It’s going to take a lot of practice, but you’ll get it. I used to do this a hundred times a day or more when I was a boy. You’ll need to wear a glove or you’ll tear up your hand, but even then you’re going to get calluses. You want calluses. Otherwise your hands will always be a mess.”
“Getting him ready for the rodeo circuit?” she said, stepping around the door, and into view.
“He’s a Wyatt. He’s going to need to know how to rope.”
She didn’t contradict him, she simply smiled and returned to the house, and her room, and the computer.
She felt angry, though, as she closed the door of the bedroom and then sat back down on her bed with the computer.
She didn’t want to be in here, not while they were out there. She wanted to be with them. She liked being with them, and in their company, she relaxed, something she’d always found it hard to do. The more time she spent here at the cabin, the more relaxed she felt. She’d never been someone who just hung out. She was always doing something, reading something, trying to accomplish more things, but in the past few weeks she’d wanted to read less and accomplish less, and just… be.
Just breathe.
She picked up her laptop but her heart wasn’t in it. She thought of all the things she’d rather be doing.
Going for a drive.
Doing another hike.
Stopping somewhere for lunch and homemade pie.
She wanted more of the life she’d experienced lately, more companionship, more fun, more happiness. The life she wanted was here, but it wasn’t hers, not forever. If only it could be. If only the dream could be a reality.
*
The week passed slowly, with Erika more anxious by the day about her dissertation. She wasn’t getting it done. She wasn’t making sufficient progress. The guilt and worry filled her. She was in trouble, but she struggled with the isolation in her room.
While she battled, Billy was healing, becoming more mobile by the day. He’d stopped wearing his sling as consistently as he had in the beginning. She tried to caution him against doing too much but she noticed he ignored her feedback and did what he wanted.
He was trying hard to keep Beck busy, too, taking him from her for big chunks of the day so she could work, and Erika appreciated it, but since she wasn’t making significant progress, she just felt bad that Billy was trying so hard to help her and she couldn’t even help herself.
Today was one of the worst days in a long time, too. Erika couldn’t even focus enough to write a sentence. A sentence! She’d draft one sentence, then delete it. Then rewrite it. Then delete it.
Erika felt like hurling her computer across the room. This wasn’t working. She wasn’t working. Was it bad to just want to enjoy herself?
Erika had never cared much for TV—she didn’t even own one at the moment—but in the past couple of weeks her favorite thing to do was watch the nightly news with Billy, and then every evening after Beck was put to bed, they’d watch a program, and talk. They talked about everything and even though they frequently had different viewpoints, Billy always listened to her thoughts, just as she listened to his. She even liked his TV programs which were different from anything she’d ever watched—Gold Rush and Building Off the Grid.