Nowhere Ranch (24 page)
Chapter Thirteen
This time I was shearing. I had just got the wether wrestled where I wanted him when Travis appeared in the door.
“Haley's heading to the hospital.”
Both Tory and I stood up at the same time, and the wether, sensing his moment, bleated and scurried away. I didn't care. I dropped the shears, vaulted over the rail, and headed for the door, where Ez and Zeke met me and barked excitedly all the way back to the house.
“It's going to be hours,” Travis told me, but I just ignored him and bolted for the shower.
We got to the hospital just before noon. Haley was dilated five centimeters.
Her mom was her birthing coach, but she had asked me to be there too, and so there I was. I thought I might catch some hell or be told to scrub down, but nope, they let us all in. Travis tried to stay out because it was so crowded, but Haley shouted at him.
“No! I want you both here,” she said, and so we stayed.
We held her hands while she pushed, me on one side and Travis on the other. Travis looked fucking scared, and he didn't say much, so I did the talking this time, telling Haley she could do it, telling her she was beautiful, telling her she was strong and amazing, and that it was almost over, that it was going to be okay, that she was going to have a beautiful baby girl who was going to kick tail all over the state of Nebraska just like her mom. And then, all of a fucking sudden there was a head, and then, pop, it was a baby. At first, to be honest, she was gross and kind of scary. But then Haley's mom cut the cord, and they cleaned her up, and then they wrapped her up and brought her back to Haley, and my God, but she was the most beautiful baby in the world.
Haley cried. She kissed her baby, and she cried, and then she kissed me and kissed Travis, and she cried some more.
And then she said, “I want you to have her.”
At first I thought it must be the drugs. I glanced at Travis, a little worried, but he was looking at her with a strange expression, something between wonder and terror. And then Haley sat up a little straighter and said in an even stronger voice, “I want the two of you to have her. I want you to adopt her, and I want you to be her parents.”
I stared at her for a second. She stared back.
I sat down on the chair behind me and held on to the rail of her bed.
There had never been any decision about what she was going to do with the baby. I knew she hadn't been happy with any of the adoption agencies, and her mom had thrown her a shower, so I'd assumed, like everybody else, that Haley was keeping her. Never in a thousand years did I think she'd been planning all along to ask Travis and me.
But I knew that look in her eye, and I knew that tone in her voice. She'd been plotting this. And when I looked over Travis's shoulder and saw Haley's mom, I knew that we were some of the last people to know about Haley's little plan.
“If you don't want her, I'm going to keep her,” she said, matter-of-factly, but I could tell she was nervous. “I want to be able to see her grow up. I'd rather have her settled in a home with two parents, would rather give her up so I can go to school and become a teacher and meet somebody who's not a loser and have a kid when I'm married and established, but to do that I have to know she's with really good people, and you two are the best I know. But if you don't want a baby, if this is too much, you can just be her godfathers.” She shifted the baby in her arms and looked down. “I didn't want to ask until you saw her. I thought maybe if she was in front of you it would be different. But obviously, you'll want to think about it. To talk. That's what I want, though. I want to give my baby to you. To both of you.” She swallowed hard and gave a watery smile. “I'd rather you were married too, but you know. One step at a time.”
I stared at Travis, who was staring back at me.
We had never discussed this. Ever. And to be honest, I had never figured I would be a father, not after I knew I was never going to be able to be with a woman in the way nature required for that sort of thing. I was having a hard time even landing on the idea. A father? Me?
A father with Travis?
With Haley's baby.
A soft coo drew my attention, and I looked down at the bundle in Haley's arms. Her face was wrinkled, and in a way she looked like an old woman. But those eyes. They were dark, dark blue, and I know she couldn't really see, but she was looking up at me. Her nose was small and squished, her head was freakishly pointed, and her skin was blotchy, but those eyes cut into my soul. She looked up at me, not even fifteen minutes old, alive and here, Haley's baby nobody had planned for and yet was here all the same. Haley's baby, her little girl who, just like me, didn't have a daddy.
I reached out, tentatively, and I put my finger out toward her fist, nudging it against her fingers. They opened, then closed fast around me, those eyes still fixed on mine.
I looked up at Travis.
He was looking down at the baby, still terrified, but his terror was bleeding away, leaving behind mostly wonder and quiet surprise.
And, to my surprise, a little bit of longing.
I knew in that moment that we were going to say yes.
We would argue. We would worry if we had done the right thing. We would flail around trying to get ready and doubt ourselves a thousand times. We would be calling Haley's mom a lot, probably in the middle of the night. We would have a lot to learn.
But I knew, as Travis reached out and worked his finger inside the little girl's other hand, that we were going to keep her.
We named her Grace May Davis-Loving.
For the first three months, Haley lived with us. We threw together a quick nursery in the upstairs bedroom, and it was Haley's room too. She nursed the baby most of the time, but once she went back to school in the fall, she switched over to mostly formula, because she had a hard time keeping up with the milk. And once she got busy with classes, we decided it was best for everybody that we out-and-out switched over. That was when Haley moved back to her parents’ house, which was hard for everybody. She came over every day, but it wasn't the same.
I got a lot less sleep, I'll tell you that.
That summer I also finished my GED online. I passed on the first try, and it really wasn't so bad. They said my essays were some of the best they'd seen.
We had to hire more hands, because Travis expanded the operation that fall, and though I still was the go-to man for sheep, I had my hands full with Grace most of the time. Travis and I took turns, but it really isn't like he just sits in the office all day and plays solitaire. So we had to get more hands. I oversaw the shearing with Grace strapped in a sling in front of me, but other than that, I was out of ranching for a while.
There were days it was really hard, having a baby. At least once a week I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into. But I loved her. I loved her heart and soul, and I would never give her up. Sometimes I just stood at the side of her crib and watched her sleep, still amazed that she was even there. I would stand there and think of what I had been doing a year ago at that time, and I just couldn't believe it. She was real. It was real. All this, all that my life had become was real.
And then came Thanksgiving.
Haley had been acting funny for a while. I thought it was because she was nervous about switching over to UNL in January, about leaving Grace behind, but no, it was more than that. Haley had been up to her tricks again. Because when I heard the front door open as Grace screamed in her bouncy seat and the dogs barked as I wrangled the turkey onto the plate, I shouted for Travis to get in here and help me, and I heard Haley call back, “It's not Travis.”
“Well, you get in here then,” I said.
She came around the corner, and I looked at her, impatient. Then I saw her face, and I stilled.
“It's not just me,” she said, and stepped aside.
And there was my brother. And my sister-in-law.
And my mom.
She was bent even more than she'd been when I'd seen her in April, and she looked like she'd aged seven years, not seven months. But then Grace screamed again, and my mom's eyes lit up, and the years fell away. She scurried forward like an arthritic spider, dodging the dogs, and she bent down, undid the strap to the bouncy seat, and she took my daughter in her arms.
“Haley has been sending us photos,” Bill said, sidling up beside me. He tucked his hands into his jean pockets. “Mom gets a letter about once a week, full of pictures of her granddaughter.” He glanced nervously at me. “I hope it's okay that we came. Haley said it was fine, but I can tell from your face you weren't expecting us.”
No, I fucking wasn't. Not in a million years.
I watched my mom nuzzle Grace's nose, and I heard my daughter laugh and reach for her grandmother's face. I thought of that collection of pink hats and knew she had a bag full of them in the car. My throat closed a little bit, and I cleared it. “It's not a problem at all. God knows we have more than enough food.” I cleared my throat and turned around to fuss with the turkey, even though for a few seconds I honestly couldn't see it very clearly. “You got somewhere to stay?”
“We have a hotel,” Bill said.
“Got plenty of room here,” I said. “But whatever you like.”
They did end up staying. They brought in their things, and I set them up in the spare bedrooms, and I gave Mom Grace's bottle to feed her. She had one of the pink hats on already. When Travis came in, he looked surprised, but as soon as he saw I was okay, he just kissed me, greeted his guests, and asked what everybody wanted to drink.
We ate Thanksgiving dinner in the dining room around the big dining room table that had just been delivered the week before, with my mom and brother and his wife and Haley and her parents and brother and my fiance and my daughter, with the dogs sitting in the doorway hoping Travis would let them in the room after all, which he was not going to do. The cardboard palm tree and battery lights were still on the walls.
We got married the next March, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, so it would be legal and give us more protection for Grace. It was just a civil ceremony at the courthouse. We had the reception and the big party back at Nowhere. Mom and Bill and Sarah came out for that too.
They're still not always okay with it. They still think it's a little weird, I know. But they get better all the time. This summer, in fact, Mom is coming out for two months. Bill and I are trying to sort out where she's going to live, because she can't be on her own at all now. I would keep her here, but probably she is going to have to go into a home. Bill and I both agreed, though, that it'd be best for her to be in Nebraska, because nothing makes her happy quite like seeing Grace.
Grace is three now. I swear it was just yesterday I was sitting in the apartment above the barn while her mom told me she was pregnant, but it's been three years. We're looking at preschool for the fall. Haley has a list of places she says are okay academically and from a standpoint of not telling our daughter that her dads are going to hell. I actually wish I could keep her home longer. It all went by so fast.
The sex room, just so you know, is in storage. We still play, but not as much because honestly I'm tired most of the time. My daughter keeps me busy. And even with a lock on the door, that's not something I think it's right for her to see. I'm not embarrassed about the way I like my sex, but I also know that there is no way in hell I am explaining that sex bench to my kid until she's fifteen. Or eighteen. Maybe twenty-five.
She is in the other room right now, calling to me. I can hear Ez and Zeke outside going crazy over a rabbit they have cornered behind a shed, but Grace is louder. She wants to show me a picture, she says, of her home. She's been into this lately. She doesn't say her house. She says her “home.” And when she draws the picture, it's always the same. She draws a big box house with a triangle roof, and she puts some brown and white squiggles off to the side which, she has told me, are the sheeps and the horsies and the cows. In the sky above the animals, she draws another box with a flag on top of it, with a person who is a head, four legs, and lots of blond hair floating above that. This is Mommy, who is off at school to teach people.
On the other side of the house there are three other people: two more blobs, one with brown hair and one with yellow and gray. The blobs have four legs too, but the inside top ones reach over to hold up the round little egg with black hair and a wide red smile. In front of them are two black circles.
“This is my home, Daddy Roe,” she says to me, and starts to point. “This is my house and my cows and my horsies. This is my sheeps. This is my mommy and her school. And this is me, and this is my daddies. My Daddy Roe and my Daddy Travis, and my doggies, and this is my home.”
I crouch in front of her and I nod, and I say, because this is the way the game goes, “Where's my home, Gracie?”
And she opens her arms and smiles like the sun and says, “Right here, Daddy!” as she pulls me in close, tight, tight against her heart.
THE END
Loose Id Titles by Heidi Cullinan
Nowhere Ranch
Heidi Cullinan
Heidi grew up in love with story. She fell asleep listening to Disney long-playing records and read her
Little House On The Prairie
books until they fell apart. She invented stories of witches and fairies and enchanted trees and spent hours imagining the lives of the settlers who had inhabited the homestead log cabin and two-story late 1800s home on her family farm. She created epic storylines for her Barbies until age ten and then started writing them down. Her first novel,
The Life and Times of Michelle Matthews
, was published when she was twelve in the school anthology and took up nearly half of it.
Though Heidi continued to write novels through high school, she stopped in college, deciding it was time to grow up and do something meaningful with her life. When Heidi ended up in grad school to become a teacher, she rediscovered her love of romance novels. She began to write again on the side, and when she quit teaching to have her daughter, she took up writing with more seriousness.
