Maybe.
Last year wassuperrough on her, and those loyal-friend numbers dwindled hardcore by June, which I should’ve realized so much sooner than I did.
But when Dean told me he didn’t care if I took Junie and moved her a twelve-hour car ride away from home, it was the final slap in the face in our divorce and the final confirmation that we needed to leave Cedar Rapids.
I don’t want you, and I don’t want her either.
I watched my own father walk away when I was eleven. And he never came back.
He still sent child support. Sometimes. So we know nothing bad happened to him.
He just didn’t want us anymore.
Leaving Mom, I get. She had her issues.
But me?
I needed my dad, and he justleft.
I couldn’t bear the thought of putting Junie through the pain of finding out her father doesn’t love her, too, on top of everything else. Far better to let her think that I’m having a midlife crisis and set her up for success here with new friends, who hopefully won’t care what her grandmother did or feel obligated to take sides like their parents did, than to let her think I’m all she has left in this world. Especially when I haven’t been there for her the way I should’ve the past few years.
I want her to know she’s strong enough to do hard things. But you have to do the hard things before you know you’re strong enough.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
But that’s a problem for the coming weeks.
Right now, we have a cow to bury.
The three of us stop at the edge of the tablecloth tarp covering the cow, right next to the giant hole where Flint and I will be dumping the carcass as soon as Junie goes back to the house.
“Are we supposed to sing or something?” she asks. “I haven’t been to that many funerals. Or, like, any.”
Flint makes a noise.
I know what that one is. It’s judgment.
Probably about missing Tony’s funeral.
I’d told the local reverend I was coming. The attorney who handled Uncle Tony’s estate. Probably Flint, too—I think I knew he was a tenant at the ranch at the time, and we’d been emailing.
But I hadn’t seen what was coming, and I still have my own regrets about not being here for the funeral.
Those regrets are none of anyone’s business.
So I ignore the jab, and I start singing.
I don’t knowwhy“Free Fallin’” is the first song that comes to mind, but it is. And everywhere Tom Petty would’ve saidgirl, I substitutecow.
And I improvise what the good cow loves, getting throughcheeses and her barley, too, before Junie claps a hand over my mouth.
She used to love it when I made up lyrics.
Back when she was six.
“Can you please be respectful?” she says again, this time with so much sadness in her voice that it’s not hard to bite my lip to keep myself from blurting that she never met this cow to try to take away some of her pain and remind her that she doesn’t have to mourn everything.
She’s right.
