SILAS
Mom kissed my cheek before she let me go. “It’s a good thing you’re doing.” She smiled, but I wasn’t convinced it was sincere. “I’m already seeing why Sophie wanted this. You’ll be a great dad.”
Dad.That was a terrifying title. I had no idea how to be anything but an uncle. Uncles were all fun. Dads had so much responsibility on them. I didn’t know what Mom saw in me that made her think I could do this.
She patted my cheek like she could read my mind. “Parents don’t know what they’re doing. Just like anything else, fake it till you make it.”
I gave her a half-smile. That I could do. It was basically my mantra.
I squeezed her into a hug before I turned and walked to Dad's old ranch pickup. Thank goodness for this old beater. Paying for a rental all summer would’ve made a painful dent in my savings. I was still living on a teacher’s salary for a few more months.
I tossed my high school gym duffel onto the bench seat and revved the engine. A text appeared fromChristy.
Where are you? Is everything okay?
I never ignored her texts. But I’d been ignoring them all afternoon since the reading of the will. They’d gotten progressively more frequent. I’d missed fourteen since our last call this morning.
I hugged the steering wheel and rested my forehead against it. If my gut was right, and it usually was, this was not going to go over well. Me, living with a beautiful, single woman for three months? Yeah, right. I’d made the mistake of telling Christy about my childhood crush back on one of our first dates. At the time, I never thought she’d end up meeting Clem. Or that things would go this far with us. And I didn’t know back then that she had a memory like a steel trap.
I pulled out of the driveway and channeled my inner old-man farmer—taking the five miles of backroads between Dupree Ranch and Firefly Fields as slowly as I could get away with. Christy had insisted on coming with me when Sophie was passing. I’d tried to talk her out of it. Told her it wasn’t the right time to meet my family, but she’d been unrelenting. And last week at the viewing and funeral, I could feel the hairs on her arm raise whenever Clem was around. Thought she was going to lose her mind when I helped Clem get her cow back in. Thankfully, Christy only stayed two days after the funeral so she could get back to her fifth grade class. It felt like I was walking a tightrope the entire time she was here.
I dialed her number.
“Hey,” she answered on the second ring. Her voice was too cheery, and I could tell she was masking some worry.
“Hey. Sorry, it’s been kind of a crazy day.”
“That’s okay.” The tension in her voice lightened. If only it would stay that way. “How’d it go? Did your sister leave you something cool?”
I hesitated. “Cool? I don’t know if you’d call it that.”
She pushed. “She did leave you something, though?”
“Yeah,” was all I said.
“Well, aren’t you going to tell me what?” She sounded frustrated. It seemed that Christy was always frustrated with me.
“Anna,” I said quickly.
She sighed. “What about Anna?”
“Nothing about Anna. Sophieleft me Anna.” I put my blinker on to turn left.
There was a long pause.
“Seriously?” I couldn’t tell if she was mad or happy or what.
“Yeah.”
“Wow.” I could almost see her rubbing her neck the way she always did when she was thinking. “Well, I guess we’ll make it work. She seems like a really sweet kid. We’ll have to get her enrolled in school out here?—”
“Oh, no, sorry. Anna’s not moving to Wyoming.” I wasn’t doing this right. “At least…I don’t actually know how that’s going to work?—”
“How are you supposed to take care of her if she’s not in Wyoming? I don’t?—”
“Christy.” I stopped her.
Silence.
