“Me too,” Jesse says.
“Same,” I agree. “What about you, Callie?”
She’s quiet, looking up at the stars.
“Ask me again tomorrow,” she says finally.
“Will you give us a different answer tomorrow?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll give you the same answer.”
“Which is?”
“Yes. Against all logic and reason and common sense, yes. I wanna do this again.”
A shooting star chooses that moment to return, or maybe it’s a different one. Either way, it streaks across the sky like an exclamation point.
“Make another wish,” I tell her.
“I don’t need to,” she says. “I think the first one just came true.”
7
Callie
I wakeup to the sound of Dad slamming cabinets in the kitchen, which is never a good sign. When Hank Thompson starts his day by attacking the breakfast dishes, someone’s about to get a lecture.
That someone is probably me since lecturing Rita has never led to anything constructive.
I pad downstairs in my pajamas and bare feet, hoping maybe he’s just in a bad mood about work or the weather or the fact that our coffee maker is on the verge of crapping out. The kitchen smells like burnt toast and Dad’s shitty mood, which doesn’t bode well for my morning.
He’s standing at the kitchen table with a yellowed newspaper clipping spread out. The headline reads “Local Woman Hospitalized After Church Potluck Food Poisoning” and it’s dated July 15, 1998. He’s also got whatappears to be a hand-drawn map of our property, complete with arrows and annotations in red ink.
“Morning, Dad,” I say carefully, heading for the coffee maker.
“Could you please take a seat, Callie?” he says without looking up from his evidence.
“I haven’t had coffee yet.”
“Please.”
The tone of his voice tells me he’s really got something on his mind. So, I sit, watching him arrange his papers.
Dad picks up the newspaper clipping and waves it at me like it’s the Constitution. “Do you know what this is?”
“A twenty-seven-year-old newspaper article about food poisoning?”
“This is proof,” he says, his voice rising with each word, “that the McCoys have been trying to destroy out family for decades.”
“Dad, the mayo went bad. It happens. Especially in July.”
“The mayo went bad because someone,” he stabs the paper with his finger, “left it out of the cooler for six hours during the hottest day of the summer.”
“Accidents happen.”
“This was no accident. This was sabotage.” He pulls out another piece of paper, this one covered in his cramped handwriting. “I’ve documented seventeen separate incidents over the past thirty years where the McCoys have tried to undermine us.”
I lean forward to read his list. “Dad, half of these are about cattle getting loose. Cows wander. It’s what they do.”
