There’s something innately therapeutic about talking to animals. For starters, they’re great listeners, they don’t ever judge, and their capacity to forgive brings tears to my eyes.
Mona and I have seen cases of neglect and abuse so horrid it makes you despair at the human race. And yet those same animals have become loving and sweet when they’re shown a little kindness, patience, and consistency. They never stopped wanting to trust. They never stopped giving humans the opportunity to not fail them.
In the back pocket of my jeans, my phone rings. Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin plays.
Talk about failure.
I silence the call and wait to see if she leaves a message. As soon as it finishes recording, I hit the speaker button.
“Hello, Miss Blue Baldwin. It’s Athena Baldwin, calling to see how you are. Did you try the caffeine enema I told you about? I sent you the link on your gmail account”––I hear unintelligible voices in the background––“Dammit, they ran over the sump pump again. I gotta go. I’ll call you when I get to Port-au-Prince. We really need to connect. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
I immediately hit erase on the voicemail and stuff the phone back in my pocket.
Show me a parent who addresses their daughter by her full name and I’ll show you a parent who doesn’t know their child.
My parents separated when I was six. One random Saturday in August, my mother packed two suitcases and took off to the outer reaches of who-the-hell-knows-where in her attempt to save the world. She joined an NGO and my father became a single parent overnight with no warning.
These are two people who should’ve never been married in the first place, let alone breed. Athena is a flighty quitter masquerading as an activist and my father’s a cop, as strait-laced and set in his ways as you can get. It’s like a rabbit trying to mate with a turtle. Forget polar opposites, they’re practically a different species.
Anyway, they never divorced. To this day, and for reasons no one can figure out, she still proudly brandishes the Baldwin family name even though they haven’t been in the same room more than three times in the last twenty-two years.
Obviously, my mother and I are not close, but after the incident, she started calling more, which is just her style. Swooping in when there’s a crisis and expecting credit for the most superficial of efforts is right on brand for her. Behaving as if she hasn’t been missing in action for the last twenty-plus years is a textbook Athena Baldwin move. My mother has always played the upper hand like a fiddle in a Grand Ole Opry performance. It was hard to complain about her missing my fifth-grade flute recital when she explained that she had to miss it because she was saving starving children in Sudan. Especially when she then went ahead and showed me pictures of those children.
I used to harbor a lot of resentment about this. And for the most part, I’ve let it go. She doesn’t get to rock my world (in a bad way) because I won’t allow her to have any power over me. That doesn’t mean I’m rolling out the red carpet for her to waltz back into my life only to ghost me when she gets bored, and saying no doesn’t make me a bad person.
The deep-throated rumble of tail pipes cuts into my musings. I scramble out of the paddock to investigate what the ruckus is about and hit the brakes the second I round the corner of the barn.
The sound belongs to a vintage bike. Motorcycle not Schwinn. The rider, a tall man with broad shoulders, gets off with his back to me, removes his black helmet and runs his fingers through his thick, dark hair. A strange, speeding sensation comes over me as I watch him take the aviator sunglasses hanging on his black t-shirt and put them on.
It’s Hughes. It has to be Hughes. He’s got that snappy, overpriced look about him that seems to be standard issue for celebrities. Distressed jeans. Distressed black t-shirt. Distressed attitude judging by a fleeting glance I get of his profile.
But what’s he doing here?
He and his minions are supposed to arrive tomorrow per the countless emails and phone calls I’ve received since we agreed on terms. I scan the horizon and can’t locate anyone else.
Regardless, it’s go-time. I can’t hide—which, frankly, I do contemplate for a split second—and I can’t have him wandering the property. So, taking a deep breath, I muster the will to put one foot in front of the other and meet this problem head on.
This is where things get funky. And what I mean by funky is worse. Because the closer I get to him, the larger he becomes. And the larger he becomes, the more unsettled I start to feel.
In my defense, this Aidan Hughes, the one in real life, is a lot more than the one on screen. Bigger. More rugged. More intense. Where’s the dude who posted a video of himself getting a pedicure with black polish on Instagram? Because this is not it.
“Hi there. Can I help you?” I call out from a few feet away, my voice hitting a strange high note.
Lord have mercy, I need to get ahold of myself with both hands.
He’s in the process of climbing the steps to the farmhouse and turns, finding me what feels like a thousand miles below him. He looks older in person. Salt peppers his short, rich brown hair along his ears. Laugh lines are conspicuously absent even though suntan lines crisscross his forehead.
“Blue Baldwin?” he says, stepping back down.
No proffered hand. No smile. We’re dispensing with all the good stuff I guess. The next three months are gonna be lit.
I nod, my smile stiff. “Hi. Aidan Hughes, right? I wasn’t expecting you todaaay––”
He removes his aviators and hits me with a set of dark brown eyes, not the bright baby blues he gets paid millions to narrow at villains and hot chicks alike on screen.
“Wrong Hughes. I’m Shane. Aidan’s brother.”
“Oh,” is the best I can do because I’m being held hostage by a very intense stare down. And when I say intense, I mean his thousand-yard stare has mass and intent.
I suddenly feel seen and that’s the last thing I want to be. I’m not typically a shy or nervous person. In fact, I haven’t been that person since turning fourteen. And yet I somehow find myself regressing by the second into the person I was in junior high. I’m living a scene out of 13 Going On 30. Only in reverse.
“I wanted to make sure everything’s ready before Aidan arrives tomorrow,” he explains. At least I think that’s what he said. I’m currently experiencing a crisis of confidence, and nobody is more surprised by this than myself.
“I’m sorry?” I mumble. My skin keeps flashing hot and cold. What the actual fornicating heck is happening?
“The alcohol…” he annunciates as if speaking to a child. “Has it been removed from the property?”
“Oh, there’s no alcohol here. It’s just me and Mona and we don’t drink.” As I’m speaking, it dawns on me that I just told this large and rather imposing person who I do not know whatsoever that there are only two women living on the property.
I just exposed us to stranger danger.
“What about the handyman?”
He’s got me on my heels again. I told the lawyers a little white lie about Dexter living on the property. Dex is the handyman who comes to help me with chores that require two people. Like repairing and replacing the fence, among other things. The Dexter lie was my lame attempt at a human shield. And now, I’ve gone and cocked that up.