• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Grace is grateful for beingbusy with various tasks around the pasture. She takes Waylon with her, though he’s less than ecstatic to chauffeur her around to do menial chores like weeding and hacking at thickets of sticker burrs that can get wedged like tiny knives into skin and leather alike. It’s all easy, repetitive work, and it leaves her little room to think about Crew—how much she misses him despite his only being gone for a handful of hours. How excited she is to venture off to this mysterioussomewhereonce the storm has passed. It’s a strange, foreign feeling, one Grace has never really experienced before. She’d had crushes in school before dropping out, but nothing like what she saw in movies—nothing like what she saw when Clint and Renata looked at each other. Nothing so warm and wild and wholly consuming.
He’s still away when lunch comes around, but it’s of little concern to the group, who assures her he probably brought along something to eat for himself, Duke, and Boone. She takes their word for it and eats her turkey sandwich, piled with tomatoes and slathered in mayonnaise and mustard until the meat is practically an afterthought between two pieces of Wonder Bread. They snack on Doritos and bread-and-butter pickles and slurp down cans of Dr Pepper; they tell their usual stories full of chaos and debauchery through full, impolite mouths, and all the while, Grace keeps her eyes steadily on the horizon.
She thinks she’s being subtle about it, but concern must be written all over her face, because Forty eventually lowers himself into the chair next to her with a grunt and knocks her knee with his own.
“You look like a wartime wife waiting for her soldier to come home,” he chides, and Grace’s cheeks immediately bloom with heat. He smiles at the flush that spreads over her face like a wildfire, knowing full well that he’s embarrassed her, and then knocks her again playfully. Apologetically. “It’s all right, kiddo. We’ve all been there at some point.”
Grace’s voice is low and quiet when she responds. “Does everyone know now?”
He chuckles, and it brings out the creases near his eyes, accentuates the way his patchy, wiry beard moves with his wide smile. Grace can’t help but feel a surge of affection for him despite the ribbing—this silvery, solitary guardian to a gaggle of adopted children. “With these idjits, who can say. But to anyone who actuallylooks, yes. I didn’t tell anyone about the watering hole of it all, though,” he says, eyebrows raised.
Mortification rings through her entire body at his words, and Grace wants nothing more than to curl into a ball and be buried beneath the thirsty dirt. “Forty,” she manages, grimacing, “I’m sorry about that. It was dumb and it justhappened—”
He laughs for real now, a belly-deep, jovial sound. “Stop, darlin’,” he says once he’s gotten the barking laughter out of his system. “Your apologies aren’t needed here. You know I’m rooting for y’all—always have been.”
Grace’s mouth hangs open as a million questions clog her throat.Always have been? What does that even mean? How long has he—
A loud, heavy crack of thunder interrupts her spiraling, and it startles everyone with its abruptness. Evidently, they’d all been distracted with time-old tales and cold cuts, because upon looking up, they find the clouds have swelled to the point ofbursting. They have an hour, probably less, before the sky opens up and swallows them whole.
Grace turns her attention back to the expanse of the property, squinting in the direction Crew went this morning, but finds nothing. Only sparse trees and unwalked plains. Murmurs begin to sound among the group, and there’s an edge of concern in everyone’s questions, but no one is panicked. They’re all confident Crew will come back before the storm; it’s far too dangerous for him to stay and ride it out in the open.
But he doesn’t.
When the storm begins half an hour later, it’s as though a knife has slashed through the blanket of clouds, releasing all the rain at once. It’s unrelenting and deafening, and they crowd under a large tree near the campsite to discuss what—if anything—they should do. It’s difficult to see through the sheet of water that surrounds them on all sides, but Grace tries anyway. She keeps her eyes peeled in every direction, waiting with her heart beating as loud as the thunder to see Crew’s blurry figure in the distance, riding in on Duke, weighed down by his sopping wet clothes.
“He’s probably holed up somewhere, waiting it out,” Cooper reasons. His arms are folded tightly over his chest as he looks out through the rain alongside Grace.
“Probably,” Grace says, but there’s no conviction in her agreement. It’s a distracted, halfhearted sentiment that neither of them actually believes.
Forty, having overheard them, chimes in. “Of course he is. He probably found a tree or something just like this before it started to get bad. He’d have felt it coming on.” Grace saysnothing, does nothing to concur. She just watches the panorama of precipitation surrounding them, hoping to see something—anything—beyond the endless streaks of rain.
When another hour passes by with no emergence and little reprieve from the storm, anxiety in its purest form settles deep in her belly. It becomes difficult to stand still, to think rationally, and alongside that blooming sense of dread, that cruel inner voice returns. It’s singing a different song now, tinged with tragedy and self-pity, but carries the same level of vitriol.
He’s dead,it murmurs.He’s gone, just like Mom. He’s not coming back. Nothing good in your life ever comes back.
If she lets herself catastrophize, things could get ugly. She can’t let that happen right now, not when Crew could be in danger. So, Grace shuts the voice down—stomps on it with stubbornness until it’s barely a whisper.
They’ve hatched a tentative plan to go look for him on foot, but in the climax of this downpour, it would be a fool’s errand. The visibility is too low; they wouldn’t see him in this until they practically stepped on him. The only option is to wait for it to die down, and then launch into action as soon as they’re able.
But all of that goes to shit when a small figure comes racing in from the east.
Though they can’t quite make it out, Grace knows in her bones exactly what—who—it is.
Boone. Alone. Running toward them faster than she’s ever seen a heeler run.
“Oh shit,” Forty grunts, stepping into the rain to meet Boone as he approaches the campsite. Grace can hear his high-pitched whine even over the roar of the rain, and as soon as he knows hehas Forty’s attention, he’s already making to run back in the direction from which he came. To lead them away, toward something.
Someone.
“He’s hurt,” Grace shouts, and Forty looks at her with a furrowed brow, barely able to keep his eyes open amid the storm.
He hesitates, looking at the dog growing more and more impatient, and then out into the soaked plain ahead.
Grace looks in Boone’s direction and yells, “He wouldn’t have come back without him unless there was a reason. You know he wouldn’t, Forty. We have to go.”
“We’re coming with you,” a voice says from behind her, and soon, she’s flanked by Cooper, Caleb, and Pierce. They begin jogging, trailing behind Boone, who has already taken off. “The others will stay with the herd,” Caleb yells back to Grace. “Come on.”
