I place the mask over my nose and mouth.
It doesn’t stop the gagging.
I swallow down the nausea. It’s time to be strong. Time to be a man, as my father would say.
Time to be a man, son.
How many times has he said those words to Brad and me over the years? He was a good father, but he was strict and hard on us.
“There’s no place for weakness on a ranch,” he used to say. “No place for weakness and no place for crybabies.”
He was speaking more to Brad than to me. Brad was the one who wore his emotions on his sleeve. Brad’s personality is more like Mom’s, where mine is more like Dad’s.
Which is both good and bad.
If my father were here, would he be gagging at the thought of what we were about to do?
I don’t know.
I’m wondering whether I know my father at all.
The three of us stand about fifteen feet away from the barn in question. Not one of us makes any attempt to move.
Finally, Dale takes a step forward. “We have to do this, guys. We don’t have a choice.”
I regard my cousin. His long blond hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, and a Colorado Rockies cap sits on his head. He’s dressed in old jeans and cowboy boots, same as Donny and me, but he has a different air about him.
He’s determined.
And I must get determined as well.
I take a step forward.
Then Donny does the same.
One by one, we each take one step, wait a few moments, and then take another.
The barn doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, until suddenly the door is right at my face. It’s cracked open.
“Watch out for dog shit,” Donny says.
“That’s why I wore these old shitty boots,” I reply.
One of my oldest pair of working boots, they’ve certainly seen their share of shit. Cow shit, mostly, but a little horse shit and dog shit as well.
I slide the door open.
We have flashlights, but the sun is high in the sky, and it shines through the cracks. Still, we need our lights.
Dale secures a lamp on his head. “Sorry,” he says. “I should’ve gotten one of these for the rest of you.”
“No worries,” Donny says. “Let’s just get this over with.”
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I suck in a gasp. The charcoal mask helps, though I can still smell the sweetness of human decay. I believe that odor will always be with me. Sometimes at night, when I’m alone in my bedroom, I can still smell it.
I look above me, scan my flashlight across the ceiling. Nothing. Nothing to indicate that there might be human bodies up there.
“Now or never,” Dale says, positioning a ladder. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
I force my feet to move. Go away from it in your head. Don’t think about what you’re looking for. This is a ceiling just like any other ceiling, and it needs to be removed.
“Be careful,” Donny says. “We don’t want any of the…you know, stuff…to fall on our heads.”
Great. Just great. I pick up a saw. I can use tools in my sleep. My father and my uncles taught me everything about running a ranch, including carpentry work where necessary. Sure, we hired most of the big jobs out, but all of us were taught how to handle tools, basic carpentry, basic veterinary care, basic care of the orchards.
Everything to run the ranch successfully.
We work hard. We all work damned hard, even though none of us has to.
And sometimes I wonder what it’s all for.
What secrets does this barn hold? And why… Why did our fathers keep it all from us?
I escape in my mind. I force myself to think that I’m just doing basic carpentry work around the ranch. Except most of our barns don’t have ceilings. Just joists and rafters.
Have I ever removed a ceiling before? No, I haven’t, but I know how to.
All this should come naturally to me.
I secure my protective eyewear, flip the switch on the battery-powered saw, and I cringe as the blade cuts through the wood above me.
Dale and I saw, while Donny stands below us, ready to catch anything that might fall.
In a few minutes, Dale and I are ready to remove the first square of boards.
“Do you feel any give?” Donny asks.
“I don’t. I don’t feel anything. Just the weight of the boards.”
Dale and I pull the cut board away carefully, and as we hand it down to Donny, nothing falls on our heads.
“One of us needs to go up,” Dale says.
I swallow against the gag in my throat. Steel. I need to have nerves of steel, like my name implies.
“I’ll go.”
“Here.” Dale strips off his headlight and hands it to me.
“Thanks.” I strap the light around my own ball cap and climb up.
“Careful,” Donny says. “Can it hold your weight?”
I hoist myself up. “So far so good.”
“What is it?” Dale asks. “What do you see?”
My jaw drops.
Chapter Nineteen
Rory
I’m home, and thankfully Callie is not. I have our bathroom to myself. I fumble with the ovulation kit, reading the directions quickly.
Luteinizing hormone, otherwise known as LH. Apparently that’s the hormone that signals my ovary to release an egg, so when the LH reaches a certain level, I can assume that ovulation will occur in the next twelve to thirty-six hours.
To determine this, I must pee on a stick, just like a pregnancy test.
I should pee between noon and eight p.m., because apparently some women have a surge of LH in the mornings, which can screw with the result.
Check. I’m within the time frame.
I also have to make sure my urine is concentrated, which means I have to avoid peeing for an hour or two before the test.
Check. I haven’t peed since before my appointment at the sperm bank.
Here goes nothing.
I’m about midway between cycles, so there’s a good chance my LH will be at the required level.
I sit down on the toilet to do my business.
Then I wait.
I wait…and I wonder what the hell I’m doing.
What exactly am I going to do if the test is positive? Force Brock to have sex with me tonight?
I can always go to a different sperm bank—one that’s content to just sell me sperm.
But there’s a reason I went to the clinic I did. I was familiar with their website, and I liked how they did things.
Maybe Davey’s right. Maybe I’m not quite ready.
I nearly fall off the toilet seat when the alarm on my phone goes off.
Time to read the test.
I take a look.
My heart races. I’ve reached the threshold. I will ovulate in the next twelve to thirty-six hours.
Which means I need to have sex tonight. Or tomorrow night.
Brock hasn’t called me. “I’ll call you,” he said.
No call.
But you know what? This is the freaking twenty-first century. Nothing is stopping me from calling him.
I laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all. I’m sitting on the toilet, my jeans around my ankles, testing for ovulation, only to find out I’m ripe.
Ripe for the picking.
With no one to pick me.