Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
It looks like Shane has set up an outdoor shower and is, in fact, showering outdoors… outdoors where no one ought to be able to see him in his naked glory. And yet here I am, seeing him. All of him. Every muscle. There are too many to count. Every dent in his butt. Exactly two. Every hanging dick surrounded by dark hair. One, thank God.
Lord, why do you test me so?
My conscience debates this for all of a second. I grab the binoculars and, in Mona’s exact words, spy on the man. Unfortunately, by the time I focus, he’s wrapped a towel around his waist and is heading inside. Major missed opportunity. Damn you, conscience.
I’m downstairs walking into the kitchen twenty minutes later. After my mother’s cryptic and rather unsettling phone call, I know it’s time to pay my father a visit.
“Go, sweetie. Go see your father. Darby and I will look after the animals today,” Mona tells me after I explain what happened. Not the part about me spying on Shane. The part about me not knowing what to do about my mother and asking my father for advice.
I don’t doubt the animals will get looked after; Mona is nothing short of brilliant in that regard. She taught me everything I know, and she learned everything she knows from her father, a storied horseman, who owned and operated a working cattle ranch for five decades. Mona’s the one who decided to stop breeding red Angus for human consumption.
The issue, as I sit at the kitchen counter and stare at the two of them over the rim of my coffee cup like a suspicious parent at a couple of errant teenagers, Mona with a silly smile on her face and her I-just-got-nailed-to-the-wall hair and Darby looking like he could take a ten-hour nap, is that I’m afraid they won’t make it outside, let alone to the barn.
“You know how they get if lunch hay is late.”
Mona throws Darby a conspiratorial smile before her attention returns to me. “We’ll be fine. Don’t you fret.”
I pull into the parking lot of my father’s station house a little before noon. Black and whites are parked side by side, next to unmarked sedans. A man, tall and lanky, with the same shoulders I see every time I look in the mirror, exits the glass double doors. His silverish blond head tipped down. His hands stuffed into the front pockets of his dark navy suit pants. His full mouth set in a grim, straight line.
It’s an expression I know all too well, the same one I would see across the small round kitchen table on the rare occasion we had dinner together when I was growing up. He’s in deep thought over a case, unavailable to anything or anyone else.
I don’t speak to my father often. If you have a parent obsessed with their career, you understand why. Because even when we speak, he’s not really present. His mind is held hostage by whatever case he’s working on. It gets tiresome having to keep repeating the last sentence because he isn’t really paying attention.
Then again, do I have a right to complain? Not really. He was warm and affectionate when he was around and always gave me anything in his power to give.
He gave me my first car, a used Jetta I drove until the wheels fell off. He paid for my education so I could become a paramedic. We didn’t have a house; we lived in a two bedroom apartment. But I didn’t have any financial debt coming out of school. That’s a lot more than most people have.
“Dad,” I say before he runs me over.
I used to joke that he’d walk into oncoming traffic one day. I never realized how much truth to it there was.
His head snaps up, and when his warm green eyes meet mine, he smiles.
“You’re here already?” he says clearly surprised to find me standing before him.
“We said noon.”
Expression confused, he takes his phone out of the inside pocket of his jacket and checks the time. Five to twelve. “Wow. Where does the time go?”
My back stiffens. It’s the same uncomfortable feeling I always get when he acts forgetful. Like I’m imposing. Taking up too much of his time. “Can you still do lunch or––”
“Of course,” he says, jumping in before he sees the disappointed look on my face, the same one I used to wear on the regular when I was a kid. “C’mon. I haven’t seen you in weeks––”
“Months,” I’m quick to correct him.
“Months,” an embarrassed smile lifts his lips but not his eyes, “Give your old man a hug.” He opens his arms and I walk straight into them.
Standing on my toes, I wrap my arms around him and can’t help but notice that he’s thinner than last time I saw him. “You lost weight.”