"Eight twenty-nine," Ford called out the number on the digital scale as Wes, Jace, and Maddox continued to push the steers through the line. "Eight eighty-one. That's a big'un," he commented to their buyer, but something was wrong. He could feel it. His gut twisted and cinched with every single number.
The buyer continued to scribble down the weights Ford called out. They were trying to get the trucks loaded before lunch. Gentry and Leigh were hosting the buyers for some food before they left with the trucks.
His phone buzzed in his pocket between two steers so he checked the name, worried about Callie. It was a Holder County number but not one he recognized. "Hey, Dad," he gestured to the scale. "Can you take over for a sec?"
Barrett stepped in as Ford exited the weigh station. He tried to block out the low bellows of cattle from one ear with his fingers and answered on the other. "Hello?"
"Ford, it's Delphia Simpkin. I need to talk to you." Every single thing about Callie’s grandmother sounded panicked.
"Just one sec," Ford signaled to his brothers who were working the line. "I gotta take this," he called. They nodded their agreement, so he climbed up in one of the horse trailers so he could hear. "Is Callie okay?"
"I don’t think so.”
“What’s wrong?” Ford demanded.
“I tried so hard to keep Willow from making my mistake and now Callie’s done it as well. We’ve been punished for generations.”
Rapidly losing his patience, Ford bit back the first dozen things he longed to say. “What are you talking about, Mrs. Simpkin? What mistake?”
“She's pregnant,” came out in a choked sob. “She took a test here this morning."
"I know she's pregnant," Ford assured her. “How on earth is that a punishment?”
"What? How do you know?" She sounded so much like Callie in that moment it made Ford smile.
"I could tell."
"Why didn't you say something to her?"
"Trust me, ma’am, the last thing you ever say to a woman you’re in love with is, 'hey honey, you look like you mighta put on a little weight.'"
"Willow told her she had to leave—that you wouldn't want the baby. She told her the whole town would hate her for ruining your image. And that your family would force her into marriage. I think Callie believed her. Willow told her to go back to LA and get her job back. She got in her car, and now she's not answering her phone."
"What?!" Ford flung open the trailer door and raced to his truck. "Why the hell would her mother say that to her?"
"Because...that’s...well that's what happened to Willow. I made so many mistakes, but you have to believe me, I was trying to save them. Willow won't let me go after her. I told myself that Willow would come back, that she’d bring Callie back to us if we let Abe live here. I had no idea that she’d stay away for so long."
"Jesus, it'll take me a half hour to get off this fucking ranch." Ford wanted to shake Callie's mother but not near as much as he wanted to find his baby and assure her that he was thrilled. "Before Willow got in her head, was Callie okay with it?"
"I don't really know."
"You listen to me, if you hear from her you tell her that I've never been so happy, that my family will be thrilled, and that I'd burn my godforsaken reputation to the ground before I'd let her go on for one minute thinking she's in this alone or that this is some kind of punishment. I don't give a shit what anyone in this town thinks of me. I love her, and I'm going to find her and we're going to have a baby and we'll figure everything else out. Every word. You say every word of that to her. And if I ever hear you refer to my kid as a mistake again, I assure you I’ll have plenty to say about it and none of it will be kind."
"I'll keep trying to call her."
"Good." Ford ended the call. Gravel and dirt launched in the air behind his tires as he took off towards the north gates of Holder Ranch.
Callie pulled up to the barn, only it looked different than the one she'd been at before. Great. They probably had a bunch of different barns, and she had no idea how to get to the one Ford said he'd be at. Wiping the crumbs from her second McGriddle off of her chin, she climbed out of the car. At least there were trucks up there. Someone must be here, and they would probably know how to get to Ford.
The food had done a decent job of restoring her. Now, she just needed to figure out how to tell Ford what was going on. Heading into the dusty barn, she batted away a few flies.
Ugh, she didn't remember any of the people standing in the barn's names. "Um, hey," she squeaked.
"Callie," one of them smiled at her. "What are you doing all the way out here, sweetheart?"
"I'm really sorry, but I don't remember your name."
"I'm Ford's Uncle Wyn, and this is my son, Beau." Beau tipped his hat to her. "And don't worry, even our own mother called us by our siblings' names more than she called us by our own."
Callie grinned at that. "Do you happen to know where Ford is? He told me to meet him at the barn when I got back, but I'm not sure which barn."
"He likely meant Barrett's barn out on the other side of the ranch. You just turned in the wrong entrance. Ford's not likely to be done with his buyers yet. He won't be back at the barn for a few more hours. I could take you to his house if you'd like, or I can take you out to the pens where they're loading the trucks."
Callie did not want to make her announcement with Ford's whole family there. With a few hours to think over everything that continued to swirl through her mind, suddenly Callie knew exactly what she wanted to do. "No, that's okay. If I wanted to go see the mustangs, which way are they?"
"You're not too far from them out here. In fact, you could walk if you want. We moved them to a parcel about a half mile that way. Just follow the dirt path."
"Thank you."
She wandered along the dirt path in the direction Wyn had sent her and let the serenity of the ranch embrace her. It extended its arms wide before her and soothed her soul. She wanted her child to have a life like this, somewhere where everyone looked after them and loved them. A place to always call home. Somewhere to always come back to when the world got to be too much.
A knot slowly formed in her throat. This wasn't at all how she'd imagined her life, but she had asked for a sign. This was a pretty huge one. She wished she knew what Ford would say. She prayed he wouldn't be upset, and that he'd believe that she hadn't missed a single pill. The package said they were ninety-nine percent effective. She'd never imagined she would fall into the one percent. Ford teasing her about her introducing herself as Callie the first whipped through her mind. Her laughter was hollow.
Half of her heart seemed to have joined that knot in her throat and the other half had slid slowly down to her womb. She'd never felt more divided or more frightened.
She didn't want to give up being a photographer. She didn't really want to give up any of her dreams, but if the baby needed her to she would.
"I'll never ever leave you," she spoke aloud and rubbed her hands over her still relatively flat stomach. "Never. Not even when you're eighteen and ready to move away. I'll never not call you or check on you. And neither will your daddy." She knew that. Ford was nothing like her father, and she would not become her own mother.