Page 14 of Deacon

She must be special. Tracy’s territorial about her café.

“I won’t fuck around with her,” I say. “I just want to talk.”

“Deacon…” Tracy says, voice lowering. “She’s twenty-two. Maybe stay away from this one.”

I have all the excuses in the world about that. I could bring up how Andy and his wife have twelve years between them, but I don’t.

“Just one thing,” I say.

Her jaw works. “Fine, I’ll tell you something that scares you right off,” she says. “She goes to the Methodist church on the state route.”

My interest is piqued. “So she’s religious?”

Tracy gives a heavy sigh, like she’s giving up. “Not so much. She’s more of a social religious person. She told me she went growing up because she could walk there and it was a way to get out of the house.”

I open my mouth to ask another question, but she frowns.

“You stop wheedling away at me,” she says. “I’ve told you too much already. That coffee is free if you take yourself out of my shop and stop trying to sleep with my employees.”

I set four dollars on the counter. “I won’t hurt her, I promise. Whose ribbon is that?”

She frowns, following where I point. “Freya’s. She left it here.”

“Mine now.” I shove it in my pocket and grab the coffee. “Thanks.”

Tracy watches, jaw slack, as I leave the shop. I’m quiet all the way back to Ryder Ranch. The ribbon burns a hole in my pocket. Andy sits in the passenger side, leafing through the Farmer’s Almanac and rambling about the weather. It feels like all everybody is talking about today is the weather. It bothers me because I want to discuss what happened to me when I laid eyes on that girl.

I’m all shaken up, down in my bones.

That night, I don’t sleep. After a while, I get up and pull my sweats on and go downstairs. The gas fireplace in the living room glows orange, and I pour a little whiskey in the bottom of a glass and sink down before it.

My house is big and empty, a lonely fortress on a lonely hill.

The firelight glimmers.

Maybe I could do it right this time. I know I’m rough, too old for her. But maybe if I do it right this time and don’t come on too strong, I could have a possibility of a relationship. I’ve always been headstrong and brash. It’s how I survived years of being on my own as a child. Those walls keep me safe.

But they’ve also kept people out.

I don’t want that anymore. I have a dark empty house. I want a wife, I want kids.

I think I want her specifically.

The next morning, I peel myself off the couch where I fell asleep and go out to get my chores done. Andy is already up, breaking the ice in the paddock. I go into the barn, where Bones And All, my stallion, waits.

I run my hand over his nose, and he bops my palm. Andy’s boots crunch on the gravel as he enters the barn.

“Do you know about the family from Kentucky?” I ask.

“What’s that?”

I turn, leaning on the stall door. “Do you know about the family who moved here from Kentucky?”

Andy takes off his hat and sinks onto a straw bale. “The Hatfields. They’re the ones who bought the land to the west of you. Not the southern strip you’re having problems with, the one up above the main road, closest to our western side.”

It’s been a year of fighting back encroachments on my land. A few years ago, the man who owned the enormous ranch to the south-west of Ryder Ranch parceled it up and sold it off. It’s caused me thousands in lawyer fees and surveyors to keep developers from moving up from the south and putting houses between me and thehighway. The last thing I want is to drive through a subdivision to get into town.

Makes me sick to my stomach.

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