Tyler is one of the most respectful kids you’ll ever meet, but he doesn’t fuck around when it comes to my youngest sister, which I appreciate. Right after Dad died, Tyler asked me for a job on the ranch. He was only fifteen. I figured he just wanted a few hours on the weekend, so he’d have spending money to go on dates or something, but he’d been serious about working hard and had proven himself ever since.
He stands, looking more dead on his feet than I feel, which is saying something since I didn’t get any sleep at all. “No point going back to bed. I’m not gonna be able to fall back asleep.”
Meandering his way into the kitchen, he grabs two thermoses out of the cabinet like he lives here and pours coffee into each of them while I finish up the fire.
“I don’t pay you enough to get new boots?” I ask when I take a thermos from him. “Those things look like shit, man.”
“You do. I just got better shit to spend my money on.”
“Like what?”
“Cricket’s truck needed snow tires, for one. I’m also trying to save as much as I can.”
I snort. I don’t know why I thought he might’ve said some normal answer for a twenty-year-old, like a tattoo or something.
“I can pay you back for the tires if it means I don’t have to pay your hospital bill later when your toes fall off from hypothermia cause you didn’t get new boots when you needed to.”
He looks at me, unamused.
“Don’t look at me like that. She’s not even your girl yet. I’m her brother. I can buy her shit, just like I buy Bailey’s and Kenny’s.”
Tyler heads to the front door. “She’s been my girl since we were kids, Maddie,” he says back. He’s the only one that can get away with calling me that other than people who share my last name. “She’s just taking a while to catch up. You’ve got the other two and your mama to worry about. I’ve got Cricket.”
He grabs his cap off a hook on the wall, pushing his hair back and putting it on even though the sun’s not out yet. I reach for the girls’ keys, but Bailey’s aren’t hanging where they’re supposed to be. Tyler beats me to grabbing Tate’s and I appreciate that he doesn’t make a big deal about my morning ritual.
I’m well aware it’s overkill. My sisters are all grown and can take care of their vehicles themselves, but it gives me peace of mind to look at them myself, so I can be reassured that they’ll be safe wherever they’re heading today.
Grief lands in mysterious ways and this is the way it landed for me.
“What’re you saving for?” I ask. “A ring? You're a little young to be thinking about all that, aren’t you? She’s only nineteen.”
Tyler shoves his hands in his pockets as we step out onto the porch, shoulders hunching in the cold. The sky’s turned from ink to navy since I’ve been inside.
“Nah. I already have a ring for her. I asked your mama if she’d let me buy a bit of land on the southeast corner to build a house on eventually. Probably gonna have to take out a loan for most of the shit to build the house, but I wanna be able to buy the land outright,” he says like it’s nothing.
I head over to Bailey’s Jeep and knock the ice off the handle so I can pull open the door. It immediately starts dinging, keys in the ignition even though I’m constantly telling her not to leave them there. I check the fuel level and turn on the heater, hoping to get the cab warmed up enough that her drive to classisn’t unbearable considering the hell I put her through last night.
It doesn’t surprise me that Tyler’s already gotten Tate a ring, but I’d bet it’s his mama’s. She passed when he was about eight. He’s been uniquely helpful in getting Tate through the loss of our father.
It does surprise me, however, that he asked Mama for land—and that she’s apparently willing to sell him some when he and Tatum aren’t even together yet. Who really knows if they ever will be?
Grabbing Bailey’s ice scraper, I close the door to trap the heat inside and get to work on her windshield. The sound of Tatum’s pickup failing to crank draws my attention to where Tyler’s sitting behind the wheel. He curses under his breath at the dash and I have to hide my grin, knowing exactly what my sister’s done.
“Where’s she going today?”
“Nowhere if she doesn't stop letting the goddamn gas tank get down so low,” he says, voice fading a bit as he leans over to open the glove compartment. “When I tried to set aside a few of the six million stuffed animals she keeps on her bed so I’d have a place to sleep, she cried because she thought their feelings would be hurt,” he explains as he rifles through the hundreds of fast food napkins she keeps in there.
What the fuck does that have to do with my question?
“So if I had to guess,” he continues, slamming the glove compartment shut and opening the center console, “she’ll head down to the corner store to buy a pregnancy test when she wakes up.”
“Shit!” My hands slip, making me lose my balance and fall forward against the Jeep, the scraper making a god-awful noise against the windshield. I slip again on the ice as I try to stand up. “You’re sleeping with my fucking sister and you’re not?—”
He cuts me off, huffing as he ends his search empty-handed. “I’m not sleeping with anybody and neither is she. She’s got it inher head she can get pregnant from a toilet seat, so she takes a test any time she thinks she’s having symptoms. In reality, it’s her period coming, just like it does every month. You got an extra bottle of HEET?”
My head spins from the absolute clusterfuck of information he just threw at me. “She thinks she can get pregnant from a toilet seat?” I know the education system in Cedar Creek isn’t incredible, but I didn’t think it wasthatbad.
Tyler sighs as though it annoys him to have to explain this, opening Bailey’s passenger door to rifle through her glove compartment himself. “Not really, no. She’s aware it’s an irrational thing to worry about, but her mind spirals with intrusive thoughts sometimes.”
