“So, how are the cows today?”she asked.
“Doing good,” he said.“Why do you ask?”
“I realize that I don’t ask what you do out there all day.”
“Well.There are always fences to fix.There’s always some disaster or another around the fence.Flood, or sometimes the dumb animals just run through the thing.Tree limbs, shifting ground, genuinely, it’s always something.I’m constantly checking to make sure the cows don’t decide to rehome themselves.”
“Well, could you really blame them?”
“I guess not.After all, this is their fate,” he said, gesturing to the hamburger on her plate.
She looked down at it, suddenly feeling slightly guilty.
“Oh no,” he said.“You don’t have a sense of humor about your food having feelings?”
“Not really,” she said.Though she ended up taking another bite, because it was really good.
“Sometimes I’m moving the cows from one pasture to another, sometimes mowing the fields.There are all kinds of things to do.”
“I’d love to see it.”
“Sure.Why don’t you come out tomorrow at lunchtime?I’ll swing by and pick you up if you’ll make us a picnic lunch.”
“Okay,” she said.“That sounds pretty fair.”
“Well, I’m deeply concerned with fairness.”
He grinned at her, and it made her heart race.
What was it about a big strong man and a tiny baby?The wayhe held her, so gentle, when she knew he was strong enough to lift boulders.He was just so big, so solid, and yet the tenderness he exhibited with Marjorie was …
It made her breath catch.The way he held her now, eating dinner with one hand …
She needed to get it together.
She did not need to be indulging in lustful thoughts.
“All right.I’ll make the sandwiches.And I’m sure Marjorie will love seeing the ranch too.”
He looked down at the baby.“Everything the light touches is your kingdom,” he said.
She laughed.“Oh, little Simba.”
And at the same time, she felt overjoyed that he had this legacy for Marjorie.
That she was his to protect.
“My own dad is just so uninterested in us.I never felt that he wanted to show us anything.Protect us.Pass anything on to us.He’s just so disconnected.It’s easy to be angry at my mother.Really easy, because she’s difficult.But I’m sure that having a husband who just didn’t engage wasn’t easy for her.And I don’t know if she wanted more from him, if that dynamic suited them or … I don’t know.What I do know is that it was never like this.Marjorie is so …” She realized that she was almost saying it: that Marjorie was lucky.But she didn’t mean it in the way a couple of other people had said it.She didn’t mean it in the sense that Clark was saintly to have agreed to take her on.She meant it in the sense that a dad like him was a singular, special thing.
How had she never realized, watching Clark take care of his brother over the years, show up endlessly, love unconditionally, that Clark was more than a good man?
He was exactly the kind of good man who would make a wonderful father, who was being a wonderful father, in action, right in front of her, even though he hadn’t been prepared for it.She thought that men often got too much credit for doing the bare minimum, but that wasn’t Clark.
Not at all.
And it was a funny thing, because when she had been rooming with Angelica, sometimes they had eaten dinner together, but sometimes not.Living here with Clark felt much more like being a family.
Not roommates.Not even simply coparents.
