"I'll be back."
He walks out.
I sit on the couch in his cabin in his shirt with a coffee I'm not drinking, listening to his Ford fire up and pull out onto the gravel.
I sit there for another five minutes after the engine fades, and then I get up.
I'm not waiting in this cabin.
Pops is my father. Spur has known him for years, sure, and he's right that the conversation is theirs first, but my father has known me my whole life, and the woman in question doesn't sit in a cabin while two men decide things about her.
My mother taught me that, even if she taught me by example I'm not supposed to imitate.
I pull on my boots from his front porch.
Don't put a bra on because mine is still in his living room and I don't care.
His shirt is long enough on me to hide what needs hiding.
I shake my hair out of the wet rope it dried into, finger-comb it back behind my ears, and walk across the compound.
The mustang at the round pen rail watches me cross.
He doesn't move from the rail—he just watches, ears soft, eyes following the way he watches everything now.
Two prospects on the bunkhouse porch see me coming, both of them quiet ones I don't know by name, and they clock the shirt, the wet hair, and the boots, then look down at the porch boards.
I don't slow down.
I walk to the main house. I don't knock. I open the damn door.
Spur is across the kitchen table from Pops with his hat in his hand, and Marlena is at the counter with Cal on her hip while the baby gnaws on a teething biscuit.
All three of them look up when I come in.
Pops takes in the shirt and the wet hair and my bare-faced morning. His face does nothing. "Baby girl."
"Pops."
"I told Spur this was between him and me."
"He told me. I came anyway."
"I can see that."
A long quiet.
Marlena speaks up lowly, "Cal needs a nap."
She walks out of the kitchen with the baby on her hip and doesn't look back.
She knows when to leave a room. It's just the three of us now.
Pops looks at Spur. "You know, all those years ago you gave me your word."
"Yes, Prez. I broke it. But to be fair, you did remind me she was a grown woman not too long ago."
Pops looks between me and Spur. "Ah. So, when did all this happen?"
