Considering how much he hosted for the town out here and how much he let the school use the land, it was honestly shocking that he hadn’t left it to us.
Too late to know now.
“What’s your plan?” I ask her with a nod at Gingersnap.
Maisey straightens and looks around, tucking her tape measure in her back pocket before she squints up at me. “Not sure yet. It was such an impulsive decision to move out here, I haven’t had a chance to really think about what I want to do with the ranch yet. I’m sure I’ll figure it out in time. Or the universe will give me a little nudge in the right direction.”
I make a noise, startle Parsnip, and have to remind myself to breathe as I calm the horse again. Jesus Christ. “The universe gonna tell you how to prepare for a hard Wyoming winter too?”
She blinks.
And my brain goes blank.
Completely, totally blank in the face of that very wounded, very taken aback blink.
“I know it’s a little different from city living in Iowa, but I have faith we can figure it out,” she says, not nearly as confident as she was a minute ago.
Good.
Underestimating life out here is a good recipe for trouble.
But that waver in her voice?
It’s doing something to me that I do not like.
I grit my teeth. Last thing I need is the world’s most unknown and inept reality TV star getting under my skin with wounded blue eyes and a waver in her voice.
Parsnip whinnies, and I get a grip on her again. “I meant, what’s your plan with the cow?” I say.
“Oh.” She swipes her forehead and looks down at the animal baking in the sun amid the scraggly brown grass.
Need rain.
Probably won’t get it.
She shifts a glance at me like she’s judging my mood—fuck, I hate being the asshole—and then returns her attention to the carcass. “Once Junie got over the bear, she got upset that we weren’t here in time to save the cow from his—her—its fate. So we’re having a cow funeral this afternoon.”
“A . . . cow . . . funeral.”
“Have you ever ruined a teenager’s life, Flint?”
The question would amuse me if it came from any other person. “Few dozen times every school year.”
The woman does not hide her feelings. I see it the minute everything clicks into place. “You’re still a high school teacher. When Uncle Tony would talk about you—”
I interrupt her with a low grunt. If she’s about to call me old again, I have a name or two I can call her as well.
Also—when the hell did she talk to him?
About me?
“Never mind,” she says. “Right. So you’re familiar with teenagers. Are you familiar with teenagers whose mothers ruin their lives by moving them seven universes away from all that they love and hold dear, permanently scarring them for the rest of their lives, since they definitely don’t have access to telephones and email and forty-seven varieties of social media to keep in touch with said friends until they all live out their dream of reuniting and sharing a house when they go to the same college in two whole horrible, terrible, awful, never-ending years?”
Don’t wobble, I order my lips. She’s not funny. She’s not amusing. She’s going to ruin the ranch with her ignorance about what it needs and cause a lot of trouble for you in the meantime, and you should take a hell of a lot of pleasure in knowing that she has someone in her life making her suffer the way she’s about to make you suffer.
If she were anyone else delivering that line, I’d let myself chuckle. Because, yes, I know a little something about ruining teenagers’ lives.
Do it daily.
And I go back every fall because I get it. I vividly remember being a teenager. I relate to what they’re going through, no matter what some teenagers seem to believe. I can especially relate to what June’s going through. I moved in with my aunt here in Hell’s Bells at the start of my own junior year and never felt like I found my place in high school.
Being a safe place for teenagers to be who they are and feel what they’re feeling gives me a purpose in life, and I wouldn’t want any other job.
Or any other home now that I’ve resettled here.
And I don’t love it solely for the view of the butte at sunrise and the bluffs along the creek at sunset that I can get from the gatehouse I’ve rented from Tony since I came back to Hell’s Bells. Or for taking a dip in the creek on a hot summer day after working with the animals at Kory’s place, or on a roofing project with a friend, or doing any of the dozens of other big and small tasks that I help out with around town most days in the summer and most of my free time on weekends through the school year.
I love Hell’s Bells because it’s home now. More, I love the ranch because Tony always welcomed me to bring groups of students out here when they needed to blow off steam or learn to ride a horse, or what it’s like to herd cattle, or just to run free and blow off steam in a place with the occasional building to hide in when they needed some space to be alone.
The school has unofficially used Wit’s End, which sits about a mile outside of town limits, as a teaching ground for the next generation to learn about being stewards of the land.
Might inspire a new generation of ranchers.
Or it might inspire someone who can figure out how to save the earth.
And while I’m worried about the future of Hell’s Bells and the kids, she’s traipsing in here and announcing we’re having a cow funeral because that’s what her teenager needs.
The very worst part of all this, though?
Hell if I’m not on board.
It’s what the teenager needs.
“You know where to find the shovel?” I ask.
She wrinkles her nose at me. “Shovel? Oh no. This is a job for the tractor. Ground’s hard here when it’s this dry. Plus, tractor. Hello, fun. That was always my favorite part of visiting here.”
“You’ve driven Tony’s tractor?” I don’t know if I’m surprised that she’s driven it—she drove nothing on her TV show, not even a regular pickup truck—or that she’s comfortable casually dropping Oh yes, I used to visit here and liked it.
Every now and again, when he was watching her show, Tony would talk about the times she visited as a kid, but I always got the impression he was willfully remembering it better than it had been.
Glad to see she grew up happy, even if she doesn’t stop by as much anymore, he’d say when he’d stop himself midstory, getting a far-off look on his face like he didn’t want to think about how long it had been since she was last here.
And damn if Maisey’s expression doesn’t go the exact same kind of wistful as she shields her eyes from the sun and squints up at me again. “Not since I was about Junie’s age. Maybe a year older. Tony was that uncle everyone should have, and he was everything I needed when I was younger. Once I left for college . . . well. Anyway. If I’d known his time was short, which clearly, none of us did, but—the tractor. Right. I drove the whole thing into the creek the second time I tried it, and after he finished laughing, Uncle Tony took away the tractor license he made for me.”
I grunt in what I hope is a normal ole that’s interesting kind of way.
I have heard about her and the tractor.