Junie eyes me. No doubt she knows where my brain went.
All of it.
I catch myself before I sigh too.
I can still see the little girl who used to climb in my lap and ask me to help her with glitter crafts and tell her bedtime stories in this sullen teenager who’s furious with me for uprooting her whole life.
And despite what she might think, I’m not doing this to make her miserable.
I’m doing it because we both need a fresh start.
It’s not just the awkward situation with my mom. Or the way so many of my friends abandoned me because of what she did. Or how the rest of them took Dean’s side.
And I even think Junie could’ve weathered the drama with the few loyal besties she had left in her old high school.
Probably.
Maybe.
Last year was super rough on her, and those loyal-friend numbers dwindled hardcore by June, which I should’ve realized so much sooner than I did.
But when Dean told me he didn’t care if I took Junie and moved her a twelve-hour car ride away from home, it was the final slap in the face in our divorce and the final confirmation that we needed to leave Cedar Rapids.
I don’t want you, and I don’t want her either.
I watched my own father walk away when I was eleven. And he never came back.
He still sent child support. Sometimes. So we know nothing bad happened to him.
He just didn’t want us anymore.
Leaving Mom, I get. She had her issues.
But me?
I needed my dad, and he just left.
I couldn’t bear the thought of putting Junie through the pain of finding out her father doesn’t love her, too, on top of everything else. Far better to let her think that I’m having a midlife crisis and set her up for success here with new friends, who hopefully won’t care what her grandmother did or feel obligated to take sides like their parents did, than to let her think I’m all she has left in this world. Especially when I haven’t been there for her the way I should’ve the past few years.
I want her to know she’s strong enough to do hard things. But you have to do the hard things before you know you’re strong enough.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
But that’s a problem for the coming weeks.
Right now, we have a cow to bury.
The three of us stop at the edge of the tablecloth tarp covering the cow, right next to the giant hole where Flint and I will be dumping the carcass as soon as Junie goes back to the house.
“Are we supposed to sing or something?” she asks. “I haven’t been to that many funerals. Or, like, any.”
Flint makes a noise.
I know what that one is. It’s judgment.
Probably about missing Tony’s funeral.
I’d told the local reverend I was coming. The attorney who handled Uncle Tony’s estate. Probably Flint, too—I think I knew he was a tenant at the ranch at the time, and we’d been emailing.
But I hadn’t seen what was coming, and I still have my own regrets about not being here for the funeral.
Those regrets are none of anyone’s business.
So I ignore the jab, and I start singing.
I don’t know why “Free Fallin’” is the first song that comes to mind, but it is. And everywhere Tom Petty would’ve said girl, I substitute cow.
And I improvise what the good cow loves, getting through cheeses and her barley, too, before Junie claps a hand over my mouth.
She used to love it when I made up lyrics.
Back when she was six.
“Can you please be respectful?” she says again, this time with so much sadness in her voice that it’s not hard to bite my lip to keep myself from blurting that she never met this cow to try to take away some of her pain and remind her that she doesn’t have to mourn everything.
She’s right.
It’s a tragedy, and if we’d gotten here sooner—like when Uncle Tony died, so we could’ve avoided everything that went down back home and this last season of Dean’s show, which was awful—maybe we could’ve prevented it. And it sounds like this was Uncle Tony’s favorite cow.
She should be mourned.
I squint up at the sun.
Prevented the cow’s death? Uncle Tony’s favorite?
I’m relatively certain all these thoughts mean I’m dehydrated.
Or possibly I need to get in touch with a therapist.
“Gingersnap was a good cow,” Flint says, cutting me a look that says he, too, blames me for the cow being dead. Or at least that he agrees that I need to be more respectful. “She was the light of the pasture from the minute she was born, frolicking and bringing joy to everyone she met.”
“She was?” Junie whispers. “And we killed her?”
“You didn’t kill her.” He scratches his copper-brown beard, shoots a look at me from under the brim of his trucker cap—please note, he didn’t get chewed out for not being dressed appropriately—and then turns his focus completely onto Junie. “She was close to eighteen years old, which is pretty ancient in cow years. She loved to run. Wasn’t so easy the past few years, but she loved to run. If you could’ve asked her how she’d pick to spend her last day on this earth, I’d bet you every ounce of dirt on this ranch that she would’ve said she’d go out running for the sunset.”
Junie blinks quickly and tries to discreetly sniffle. “So she lived a good life?”
“Good, long life. Especially for a cow in these parts.”
“Good.”
I slip Junie a tissue.
“Once, Gingersnap got out of her pen and spent a whole night tipping other cows.”
“What?”
Flint nods solemnly. “She was a real prankster.”
Junie cracks up. “She did not go cow-tipping.”
“You know what cow-tipping is?”
“Duh. I grew up in Iowa. Even us city folk know what cow-tipping is.”
“So you know a cow’s gone rogue when she tips her own.”
My entire face flushes hot, and not from the heat.
Uncle Tony used to make the same joke.
Oh my God.
Did he tell me stories about this cow?
I think he did.
Was this the cow that got caught shopping inside the drugstore?
“What else did Gingersnap do? For real?”
Flint smiles at her.
My throat goes dry.
He is not the weather-beaten old man I thought I’d find here.
He’s infinitely worse.
“She did bust out of the pen pretty regularly,” he tells Junie. “Tony found her hip-deep in the creek, wailing and mooing because she was scared of the fish swimming around her.”
“No.”
“That one’s God’s honest truth. She was eyeballing those minnows swimming at her knees like they were gonna eat her. Tony took some video when it happened. Can probably find it for you back at the house later if you want to see.”
“You knew my great-uncle?”
“Really well.”
My daughter wrinkles her nose.
I can only imagine what she’s thinking. Probably I never even knew I had a great-uncle until Mom told me we were moving to this ranch that she inherited from him.
I talked about him to her, didn’t I? We’d email. Occasionally call. He was the funniest old guy, and I never knew if he was telling me true stories or if he was talking nonsense to make me laugh, but I always felt lighter after we talked.