My phone rang as I was bringing the last bite of biscuit to my mouth, but on seeing my father’s name on the screen, my appetite disappeared. Dread took its place in my gut.
“Checking up on me?” I asked.
“I drew the short straw. What’s taking so long?”
“The bee farm. They’re going to take some work to flip.”
“And the others?”
“The right number of zeros on the check should do it. Just not the bee farm.”
He scoffed. “Hippies. What’s your plan?”
I sat back in the chair to a creak. “The youngest sister is the way in. Just need to get past her, and I’m in.”
“I need to know how much time it’s going to take.”
“Sorry, I left my crystal ball in my other pants.”
“Smartass,” he spat. “They’re impatient to get moving, and this is on your shoulders. I’m not going to save you.”
“When have you ever saved me?”
“Only every day of your miserable life, Grant. Just get it done for once, on time.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, the words flat, dry.
Which pissed him off, as intended. “I don’t know why I ever agreed to groom you for this.”
“Because you only had one kid to abuse.”
“Didn’t get a chance for more, did I?”
Because you killed her, was the subtext. And there was never a time it didn’t hurt. Not once.
“Well, it’s been great catching up,” I said, outwardly unfazed.
“Don’t call me if you need help.”
Before I could respond, he hung up.
I slid my phone across the table and picked up the last of my biscuit, but rage had boiled my guts and dried my mouth, the environment inhospitable for food.
So I pushed back from the table, storming to my suitcase for running shorts and a shirt. It was a thousand degrees outside, but if I didn’t run, I was going to damage Salma’s property. She didn’t deserve a fist-sized hole in the wall just because my dad was an asshole.
Shoes on, I took off. I’d left everything but what I was wearing in the house, needing one stretch of time when I was untethered. Within the span of a minute, sweat was sliding down my body. I turned up a gravel road framed by barbed wire split rail fencing, focusing on the rhythm of my breath and the crunch of my shoes against rock.
You killed her.
He’d done this since I was a child, using her death as leverage on my sense of self and purpose. Maybe it was a means to control me. I could never be sure.
An embolism killed her within minutes of my first breath, leaving my father alone in the world with me.
I had few childhood memories of him—my happiest memories involved either the troop of nannies who raised me or my friends at boarding school and college. I’d spent holidays with friends or at school alone until I was eighteen, and ever after, I traveled with those same friends, most who had parents like mine. Absent at best.
All the closest of those friends had gotten married and moved away, too busy with their new families to go to Italy for a month during the holidays. And the people I was left with were proximity friends—they were nearby and single. The women in my life fell into the same pool of convenience. I was too busy to form real, lasting relationships and out of town too often to try to date. I’d never found anyone I cared about enough to drag through long distance even though a few wanted to. Which was a sign on its own to bail.
I’d mostly been alone, but I’d never felt lonely, at least not since I moved out of the house I shared with him to go to college.
When I graduated, my father sat me down and offered to teach me, mentor me in his career.
I was stunned to silence.
It was my only use to him, I figured. If by some chance he did love me, this would be the only way he knew to show it. He never remarried, never so much as dated that I knew, which admittedly wasn’t much. But I’d caught little glimpses into who he was before she died. A box in the back of his closet full of photos of them, of movie stubs and birthday cards, of concert flyers and little notes for mundane things like dinner reminders and simple I love yous. Once, I’d caught him in the living room on his side of the house late one night. I’d come in from a party to find the flicker and noise and floated in its direction, pausing in the doorway, instantly sobered at the sight of my parents on their wedding day, the picture of hope and bright futures. And my father silently sipped his scotch, wrinkled and worn, from a leather couch.
In that moment, I understood.
So when he offered to teach me, I said yes.
It had been much of the same for the last five years, with glimmers of respect amidst a sea of disappointment.
You’d think I’d get used to it.
But somehow, I never did.
7
Elephant Parade
JO
Sweat rolled down every inch of me as I trotted to a stop at the foot of our driveway, panting.
It was too late for a run in this heat, but I loved the people in my life—none of them deserved to get their neck snapped just because I didn’t let off my daily steam. Hands on my hips, I paced in front of the mailbox, catching my breath, going through the checklist for today. The biggest item on the list was a bee relocation I had out on Wyatt Schumaker’s ranch, which was why I got to sleep in. It was the grand trade-off—I wrangled bees so they didn’t have to, and in exchange, I didn’t have to do my chores.
Truth was, I loved bee relocations. Mama said it was because I was a wild animal, which was largely true. But I think the trick was that I understood them, somehow. They lived their whole lives to build a home and care for their queen. To make and to work and to give to their family. Honey was the product of all that love they gave, and honey was the product of mine.
The thought of them building that home, protecting their queen, and being exterminated made me sick to my stomach. So whenever anyone in town found a hive where one shouldn’t be, they called us, and I’d go down and move them into brood boxes where they’d live out their days here on the farm. They’d be safe here. They’d have a home here.
Nothing was more important than that.
Sweat somehow trickled into my ear despite my earbud, and I pulled the device out to rub the itch away. Which was when I heard the crunch of sneakers on gravel just down the road a ways.
Frowning, I turned my head to the sound, immediately sweating what was left of me into a puddle around a pair of empty sneakers. And not for the heat.
The unrecognizable man running my direction was shaped like a god, bare chested and tan and shining, with muscles I could count and name from fifty feet. Rolling shoulders. Pumping arms. Abs contracting and easing with the rhythm of his feet. Narrow waist, black running shorts slung low on his hips, shirt swinging from where it was tucked in the back. Rectangular thighs, thick as tree trunks, dusted with dark hair, driving him in my direction like a freight train. His jaw, sharp and tight and bunched at the joints. Lips an unyielding line, eyes tight, black hair lank with sweat, pasted to his forehead and unruly everywhere else.
I know him. How do I know him?
I scanned his body again, pausing when I reached his hips as if I could use what was there to identify him. How I’d not noticed his substantial swinging dick on the first scan was beyond me. It was like watching a baby elephant caught in a stampede. I stared much longer than I should have before remembering myself, my gaze jumping back to his face now that I really needed to know who that belonged to.