I climb up onto the excavator where Sev is and lean into the window with my burrito. “Where ya headin’, darlin’?”
“Kansas,” she says, intent on the shop doors, both hands on the controls. “Wanna go wit me?”
“I’d go anywhere with you, sweetheart.” Holding onto the machine with one hand, I balance the paper plate on my knee and kiss her cheek. “What’s in Kansas?”
“A secret spell I needs.”
I laugh. Last week she tried to tell me she needed a lock of my hair and my left eyeball so she could make me a wife. I kindly told her that’s not how they’re made. My kid is fucking bizarre, and I keep thinking she’s going to put a spell on me someday or turn her sister into a frog. “Ready to go pick up sissy?”
“I miss her.” Remember when I said they didn’t get along? They don’t. But they’re also inseparable at times. She drops her hands from the controls and reaches for the burrito, and knocks the plate away once she steals my lunch. “Yuck. It cold.”
“Well, then stop stealing my lunch.” I take it from her. “Get down from here. We gotta go get sissy and stop by the ranch.”
She’s down before I am and grabs her coat. “Can we get lunch?”
Shaking my head, I reach for my keys and finish my burrito. “You ate waffles, a donut, a sandwich, and half a bag of chips. How are you still hungry?”
Walking beside me, she slips her hand into mine. “I not know. I like to eat.”
Ain’t that the truth.
I tell Lillian I’ll be back later this afternoon and avoid any conversation with her.
“I don’t like Tanner. He’s mean to me.”
“Who’s Tanner?” Turning down the radio warning us about the storm, I eye Camdyn in the rearview mirror, pulling down the long dirt road that leads to our family’s ranch.
“This boy at school.” She has her dirt-covered bear in her hands now and not hanging the damn thing out the window. “He pulled my hair today.”
“I hate boys,” Sev adds. I doubt Sev will date, and if she does, he’ll have piercings everywhere, blue hair, and I guarantee you I won’t approve of him.
My jaw tightens. “Did you punch him in the face and tell him to keep his hands to himself?”
“Daddy, no.” Camdyn smirks, her eyes lighting up when she sees where we’re heading. “I can’t hit boys.”
She’s right. She can’t. And I’m glad she understands hitting another person doesn’t solve anything, but then again, if a little boy is laying his hands on my daughter, he’s going to meet her fucking dad real soon. “If he pulls your hair again, tell him imma have some words with that boy.”
“I’ll tell how mean you are,” Camdyn says, snorting in a fit of giggles with Sev, who laughs too, despite probably having no clue what we’re talking about.
I reach back, tickling Camdyn’s knee. “Nobody messes with my girls.”
To say I’m a protective dad is an understatement.
Pulling up to the front entrance of the Grady Ranch, you notice the big G on the gate first, and then the No Soliciting sign. Underneath the bold black letters?
We are too broke to buy your shit.
We already voted.
We know God.
Go away.
A smile cracks my tough exterior. Morgan and I made that sign out of steel, and for the last ten years, it's greeted about a thousand cowboys through these gates and a few bible sales men who met the end of a shot gun and turned around just as quickly.
My dad lives in the main house on the thirteen-hundred-acre ranch. From the outside, his home looks like a lodge, but I assure you, Bishop Grady is a simple man and lives his life the same. Material possessions are not something he needs. You’re not going to find extravagant Italian imported wood floors or exotic custom wood finishes. What you will find is a home built by a man who worked hard for every penny earned—a wraparound porch he spends his evenings on and a massive stone fireplace my brother and I hand built with him.
The entire Grady family lives on the ranch. I live on the south side of it near the property line and the repair shop. Morgan lives on the east side near the ranchers. And Aunt Tilly, she lives on the west side near the shooting range.
“Nana Lee!” Camdyn yells, rushing toward my dad’s house, the wind whipping around even more than earlier. It blows so hard Camdyn stumbles and falls into the dirt.
Without a second thought, she picks herself up, dusts off her knees, and keeps running.
Lara Lynn, or Nana Lee as the girls call her, is my dad’s wife. Not my mother though. I love her as though she is, but still, not my biological mother.
My mom? Shit. That’s a story for you, but not one that’s told around here. In fact, she’s never mentioned by my dad, and Morgan, he acts as if she didn’t exist at all.
Do I remember her?
Probably more than my girls will remember Tara.
My first memory of her is on the bathroom floor, naked, surrounded by her own blood and vomit. She’d been drunk and fell through the shower door. I remember freaking out thinking she was dead, but at the time, I had no idea how deep her vice with alcohol really was. And though I’ve struggled with it myself at times, as has Morgan, she had an attachment to it I never understood.
My second memory of my mother? My dad sending his fist through the dining room wall and telling her to leave. She’d drove Morgan and me around all day, blitzed out of her mind, and then to a bar where he found us sitting alone. She’d left and gone to a different bar and forgotten we were with her.
She left that night, and two days later, a police officer showed up at the door to say she’d died in a car accident. I don’t remember ever asking about her, and I know Morgan hasn’t. Dad raised us on his own, and he did a damn good job.
I think we turned about pretty good, but you’re about to meet Morgan, so I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Sev runs after the chickens and around the side of the house. “Don’t pick that chicken up!” I yell after her. I don’t want her covered in chicken shit if she’s riding in my truck.
“I won’t!” she yells over her shoulder, probably lying.
My kids are like the animals around here once you let them outside. Free-range. Chickens, goats, cows, cats, dogs, you name it, they’re on the ranch and roam as they please. If you see a pigmy goat ramming its head into your tires, you know you’re at the Grady Ranch. Don’t believe me?
Take a look at my truck. One’s already ramming the shit out of it like it’s his job to fuck shit up.
I step toward Lara Lynn and zip my jacket, the wind hitting my face with an icy slap. “You seen Morgan around?”
She picks up Camdyn, brushing the red dirt off her jeans. “He’s in the back field bringing the herd in. Storm’s coming tonight.”
I heard about the storm. It’s been all over the radio. Blizzard conditions. Winds. Typical shit here for winter.
Remember when I said I don’t like riding horses? I might not have said it, but it’s the truth. Don’t care for them.
I had this horse growing up. Crank. He was a little motherfucker. Any time you entered his stall, he’d try to kick you, and he loved to run and buck with you on him. Try getting a saddle on him, and he’d try to bite you, and when you tried to herd cows with him, he’d cut the opposite direction and send you sailing through the air if you weren’t paying attention.