Page 44

I pull my jeans on and sit on the edge of the mattress to lace my boots.

"Where's my other shoe?"

"It slipped under the bed." I tilt my chin to indicate where.

I didn't fly here to sleep with her. The condoms she gave me are fifteen hundred miles away on my dresser in Wyoming, because I came to sit in a doctor's exam room and watch a screen. That was the plan.

I couldn't stay home knowing she'd be sitting in there alone.

My father never showed up for anything that mattered. That much I know about him, and I won't be that man.

In the exam room, two heartbeats came through the speaker, and I didn't have a damn thing to say. Then Mackie crossed this carpet and put her hand on me, and that was the one thing all day I knew what to do with.

I pull the laces tight.

The ultrasound picture with the raw edge is propped against the base of the television. I take it and slide it into my wallet behind Dutch's receipt. The folded sheet of numbers goes in my shirt pocket. The first light flakes of snow start ticking against the window.

Mackie checks her hair in the dresser mirror and picks up her purse. "We should go."

I hold the door for her, and we take the elevator down without talking. By the time we cross the parking lot, the snow is coming down harder, catching in her hair and melting on the shoulders of my coat.

Flakes turn to water as they hit the windshield. I rest one wrist on the wheel and let the wipers run on their own timer. Mackie sits with the after-visit summary folded in her lap.

On a straight stretch, I pull my sheet from my pocket and hand it to her.

“I know you don’t want to figure this out today, but we need to at some point."

She smooths it over her thigh and reads it this time.

"Something came up at home before you called. My neighbor's retiring, and offering me his property. It's a hundred and fifty acres that butts up against mine."

"Offering, like giving it to you?"

"No. He's financing it himself. I'll make payments to him, and in good years, he'll get a small cut of the calves."

She turns toward me. "For how long?"

"Twenty years."

"And you can afford that?"

"He set it up so I can. I wouldn't qualify for a bank loan at this point. The extra land lets me run more cattle, so it'll grow what the ranch brings in. Not overnight, but it will."

I glance at her before looking back at the road.

"That's why I need real numbers from you. Doctor bills, hospital costs, whatever you need while you're pregnant. Then what two babies cost once they're here."

"Carson, I⁠—"

"You're carrying my children," I say, interrupting her. "I'm not leaving all of it on you."

"Nobody asked you to."

"Nobody should have to."

The wipers pass twice before I say anything else.

"I can't move here. Calving runs through April. Hay takes most of the summer, and I ship at the end of September."