Page 29 of Moon Blind Hearts
The first Ward grandchild. And another daughter at that.
A heavy sigh slips from my lips as I watch Genie tumble around in the grass, giggling at the feeling of it. To be a child and just enjoy the sensation of living. I don’t even remember what that feels like. I don’t even know if I had it when I was her age. My childhood was a series of nannies my father was caught sleeping with before mother fired them and events where I wasn’t allowed to do anything other than smile pleasantly and sit still. Genie won’t have that. I refuse.
“Cow!” Genie screeches, drawing me from my mind as one of the dairy cows come meandering up to the white picket fence in front of us. “Cow!”
“Very good, Genie,” I coo. “That is a cow.”
“Cow!” she screams again and starts toddling over toward it.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I say, reaching down and sweeping her into my arms before she can take off. I’m barefoot, the soft grass pleasant on the bottom of my feet. There’s a grass stain on the knees of my sweatpants where I’d tumbled around the grass with Genie only a few minutes before. And as I try to take her away from the cow that could step on her, she screeches, reaching toward the large animal. “Genie,” I groan. “Now isn’t the time.”
“Cow!” she shrieks. “Cow!”
To the cow’s credit, it doesn’t react to the banshee scream that Genie lets out. At least, not in fear. It just looks up at her, chewing the grass it had pulled from the ground, watching us curiously.
“Fine,” I grumble, moving over toward the fence and the very large black and white colored cow. “Hopefully you’re one of the nice ones.”
“She is,” a voice says from behind me.
I turn, catching sight of Oak as he trails past with a bucket of something. “Yeah?”
He nods. “Her name’s Desdemona. Sweetest cow you’ll ever meet. She enjoys pets and ear scratches.” He winks at Genie as if they’re sharing some sort of secret before he disappears into the barn like he was never there.
“Well . . . it’s nice to meet you, Desdemona,” I tell the cow before leaning forward and stroking her ear. She immediately leans against the fence, asking for more, so I smile and lean Genie closer to touch. “Nice and easy, Genie. We’re nice to animals.”
“Cow,” Genie coos, patting at Desdemona’s fur. “Pretty cow.”
I smile, running my fingers along the black spots. Desdemona feels as if she’s been freshly bathed and blow dried, her fur soft and clean. She gives no indication of discomfort as the two of us pet her.
“Very pretty cow,” I agree, smiling despite the worries I’d been thinking of earlier.
I look down at Genie as she pets Desdemona, at the way her eyes light up and how happy she looks. Here, with the sun beaming down on us, it feels almost . . . normal. We’re in the middle of nowhere, on a ranch in the mountains, and there’s no one looking for us in this moment. We can let our guard down a little, enjoy something so simple as petting a dairy cow. It’s the first time I’ve been able to take a deep breath in a very long time.
The situation spears into my chest, and tears bead in my eyes before I can stop them. I blink at the wetness, trying to clear it before I start crying over something so silly as petting a cow.
“Mommy. Cry,” Genie says, grabbing my face instead of petting the cow. “No cry.”
“They’re happy tears,” I tell her. “I’m okay.”
“Happy?” she asks, watching me carefully with those blue eyes that haunt our entire family.
“Happy,” I repeat, hugging her close. But part of it isn’t happiness at all. It’s fear. Fear that I’m not a good mother. Fear that I’ll make a mistake and he’ll find us. Fear that I’m ruining her life. “I promise.”
It’s not the first lie I’ve told her, and it won’t be the last.
Remaining anonymous comes with a series of lies, all in a row, over and over again, until the lie is the truth.
Until the lie is all you know.
Chapter 15
Sawyer
I’m in the milkhouse when I hear the door open behind me. I know it’s her after only three steps, her cadence softer and slower than those of Oak’s or Cash’s. She’s wearing shoes, the soft sound of rubber meeting concrete loud in my ears despite the machines. She prefers to be barefoot, the soft padding of her feet often a gentle shush-shush against the floor, but she’s respectfully worn shoes where we’re preparing food. She’s thoughtful, kind, sweet . . . and I want badly to make her forget any of that. I want her to be a leaking mess beneath me, to hear her choke on my name and . . .
“Good morning,” she says brightly as she comes closer. She stopped announcing who she was almost immediately when she realized I already knew. She’d been worried about startling me before. Now she knows that’s almost impossible.
“Morning,” I reply, turning my head toward the sound of her voice. I’m wearing my glasses today, but it does fuck all to see her beauty. It’s all blurry today, just as it is most days, so all I can see is the bright colored blurs of her hair and a fuzzy shape. The scent of her—vanilla and citrus—reaches my nostrils and I’ve never cursed my eyesight more than I do right now. I don’t want to just hear her. I don’t want to just smell her. I want to see her.
