“Have you named it, then?”
“Nope, not yet. You wanna?” I asked.
“Boy or a girl?” she asked, and I grinned.
“Girl.”
She smiled and asked, “Can I think on it?”
“Sure can,” I said and told her, “You can get in there and say ‘hi.’ They’re still curious this young and could use the human interaction.”
I watched her as she went over to the newish baby who wasn’t more than a month old, her little tail set to wagging as she soaked up the pets Aspen gave her.
I couldn’t help but find myself thinking that that was one of the things this place lacked – a woman’s touch. Watching her unfurl, open up and flower with joy at the sight of the goats made putting up with the storm inside earlier worth it. It was like watching a damn rainbow arch across the sky real-time, watching her smile and laugh with the baby and I was almost sad to break it up, but I had to finish feeding the meat stock and get her home at some point today.
“So, what’s your story?” I asked as we made our way to the second, larger pasture across the property.
“Oh, um, geez… where do I even start?” she asked.
“The beginning is as good as place as any innit?” I shot back.
“Um, well, my mom died about a month and a half or so ago,” she said quietly. “Cancer, a long battle with it.”
“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Oh, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, I’m afraid,” she said with a bitter chuckle.
“My brother died exactly a month after she did, a freak thing – car accident.”
“Fuck, you kidding me?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder at her as I set down the buckets of grain just the other side of the fence.
Feeding these guys was easier, just had to dump it in the trough over the fence line. Didn’t actually have to go in.
“It gets better,” she said with a dubious tone. “The day after my brother’s funeral, I caught my husband cheating… with other men… I’m going through a divorce right now.” She sniffed and stared off over the rolling green grass and into the tree line of the woods that edged our property.
“The day after?” I asked, stopping and setting the first empty orange bucket down on the ground so I could pick up the other, full one.
“Yep,” she said with a heavy and exhausted sigh.
“What the fuck?” I asked, looking her over. She was fucking gorgeous – why any guy on the planet would pass that shit up for a fuckin’ sausage party was beyond me. He had to be crazy. “He bi and just didn’t want to tell you or something?” I asked.
She pursed her lips and shrugged miserably.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know if anything about our relationship is—” She stopped herself, stumbling over her words. “Or was true anymore.”
“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You know, I didn’t even want to go out last night,” she confessed, covering her face with her hands. Her next words were half muffled when she said, dragging her hands off her face, “Lindsay practically dragged me out.”
I gave a sardonic half-smile. “And ditched you like that?” I grunted. “You need new friends, baby girl.”
She smiled slightly and bemused asked, “What did you call me?”
I chuckled. “Sorry, force of habit.”
“It’s alright,” she said dismissively, and it was in that way that told me she’d sort of liked it – at least judging by the slight smile on her lips.
“Where you live?” I asked. “I’ll run you home after I’m done here.”
“Oh, I’m all the way over in Tacoma’s north end,” she said. “Um, you don’t have to go to all of that trouble. You’ve already done so much.”
“It’s no trouble.”
She gazed off into the distance again, her green eyes vacant as she thought about it. Finally, she gave me a wan smile and nodded, looking like she was on the verge of tears all over again.
“Okay, then,” I said and gave a quick nod.
I took her home. The neighborhood was a shitty one; Hilltop. I didn’t like a lot of what I was seeing, but I kept it to myself. This was the type of hood me and the boys belonged in, not someone sweet like Aspen.
“You got a way into the house?” I asked her when we pulled up to the curb out front. She stared at the dilapidated thing and gave a brittle nod.
“It’s not even my house,” she said softly. “It’s my mom’s.”
“She leave it to you?” I asked and immediately wished I could take it back as I shifted my dad’s truck into park. “You don’t have to answer that,” I said quickly. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s alright,” she said. “She left it to me and Copper – um, that’s my brother. I mean, was my brother. God, everything’s so complicated!”
“Hey, breathe, one thing at a time, okay? Let’s get you in the house.”
She nodded and pulled on the door handle, sliding around in her seat so she could hop down. I picked up my cut off the seat in between us and shrugged into it as soon as my boots were firmly on the ground.
I hated driving cages of any variety, but it was too cold and too wet to expect Aspen to get on the back of my bike to get her here. She would have frozen her ass off.
She went to the rose bed in front of the house and looked around flipping over random rocks until she found what she was looking for with an ‘ah ha!’ She jerked her head for me to follow and I went up the path as she slid open the false bottom of the clever hidden key rock and retrieved the key.
“If you give me just a minute, I’ll find my phone book, call Lindsay, and give you your shirt back.”
“Sounds good,” I said with a nod. I was in no hurry. She could call her friend first if she liked.
“Home sweet home,” she said and followed it up before I could get through the door with a gusty sigh and a “Sorry, it’s such a mess.”
“Mess isn’t the word I’d use to describe it,” I said, stepping through the door and laying eyes on the scattered packing materials and piles of boxes.
“Oh, yeah?” she asked, rooting through one before shifting it to the floor and opening the one beneath. “What would you call it?”
I shrugged. “A state of transition, a moment of flux, you got a lot going on.” I put my hands into my back pockets for a lack of anything else to do with them and to resist the urge I had to start going through shit. I found myself wanting to learn more about her.
She was on her knees going through a third box when she suddenly let out another triumphant, “Ah ha!” and held up a little black address book.
“Nice,” I said.
“Let’s hear it for being paranoid,” she said, clambering back up onto her feet. “I hate to ask, but can I borrow your phone?”
“Paranoid?” I asked, digging in my inside pocket for my cell. I was having an ‘oh, duh,’ moment realizing she needed my phone to call her friend. The paranoid comment still threw me, though.