After the door closes behind Robbie, Lance tries not to panic.
What just happened is eerily similar to a thousand dreams he had as a kid—Robbie gazing at him, touching him, wanting him, and then the dazzling, perfect fantasy was twisted suddenly into a nightmare where Megan, always Megan, descended from nowhere to come between them.
Lance hasn’t needed a therapist to interpret those dreams for the childish and unfair flights of fancy they were. But still, standing in the hayloft alone in his too-big, borrowed clothes, looking down at the blankets where minutes ago he was lying naked in Robbie’s arms, he has a hard time transcending the angry teenager who wants to smite Megan from the Earth for being the one Robbie touches and looks at and wants.
Rationally, he knows better. But his rational mind isn’t functioning at the moment.
The bathroom would be the only place he could shut himself away and avoid them when they come back inside, except that Robbie said Megan, a veterinarian, is here to check out the calf. The calf that happens to be in the bathroom. He’d checked on her before and after his shower, but she just looked up at him, blinking those liquid eyes, and appearing not to have stirred from her towel nest the entire time they were gone.
But even if Lance could hide, he doesn’t want to convince Robbie that he’s just as immature now as he’s ever been. He can face Megan—a perfectly nice woman who has never objectively wronged Lance or anyone else that he knows of—like an adult.
Through a monumental effort, he arranges himself into a casual lean against the kitchen counter facing the door, and waits.
When the door opens again, Megan smiles at him, calm and friendly. “Hi, Lance.” She steps clear of the doorway so Robbie can enter behind her, and they both shed their coats. “I didn’t recognize you at first. It’s nice to see you.”
Everything she says sounds perfectly sincere. Behind her, Robbie is looking at Lance with a careful expression. Lance wants desperately to know what was said while they were outside together, but at the same time, there’s something in Robbie’s expression that gives Lance comfort. He doesn’t seem panicked or anxious or guilty.
Lance can even relax enough to smile back at Megan. “You, too. It’s been a long time. How are you?” He doesn’t look away from their eye contact, and yet he can clearly see Robbie, behind her, break into a small smile.
“Cold,” she says with a wink. “And this weather is keeping me busy.” She takes a bag off her shoulder that’s lined with pockets and zippered compartments, presumably stuffed with her supplies. “So, I hear we have a little miracle on her hands?”
Robbie points to the bathroom, and Megan leads the way. Triplicats Two and Three are lurking in the doorway, peering at the calf in apparent fascination. Megan steps over Two, and Three hisses and tries to catch her with his claws as she passes. Robbie gently and carefully shoos them back toward their sofa.
Megan kneels on the floor by the calf. It’s still warm and steamy in the room from the shower. She rakes her hand through the fur on the calf’s hip. “What a pretty little girl,” she croons to the calf, and then she takes a stethoscope from under her sweatshirt and listens at the calf’s ribcage, belly, and chest. Lance crouches beside her. In the quiet, Robbie comes and stands over them.
After a minute or so, Megan leans back, sees their worried expressions, and smiles reassuringly. “So far, so good. No irregularities.” She fills a needle and syringe with the contents of a tiny bottle and gives the calf a stick that makes Lance jump, but which the calf doesn’t seem to notice. “Steroid,” Megan explains as she preps a second syringe, this one without a needle. She puts it in the corner of the calf’s mouth and tilts the animal’s head back, emptying the contents more or less straight down her throat. “And a little extra colostrum.”
“Colostrum?” The word is only vaguely familiar to Lance.
“First milk,” Megan explains. “It’s how newborn mammals get some important antibodies. Robbie says he milked the cow, which is good, but the colostrum isn’t always there in the very beginning.” She checks the calf’s joints one at a time, pulls up her eyelids, and then smiles with a nod.
“I think she’s in good shape. They’re vulnerable at this age, and she definitely has had some stress, so we’ll have to watch her closely for signs of virus or infection, but for now, the most important thing is to keep her fed. Isn’t that right, baby?” She digs in her bag and produces a giant bottle, a plastic tube, and a sealed plastic bag of white powder. “If you’ll let me mess up your kitchen, we can probably take care of that, at least. Hopefully, she’s a quick study and will nurse the bottle, but if not, I’ll show you what to do.”
Half an hour later, the calf—who, thankfully, was a quick study, because just the thought of pushing a tube down her throat made Lance queasy—has sucked down the contents of a bottle like a vacuum and then immediately fallen asleep, the dampness of her bottle lingering on her upper lip like a mustache. Lance pats her mouth dry with the end of the towel.
“She should be up and moving around in the next eight hours. If she isn’t, call me. Also, you’re going to need milk replacer. I brought you everything I had, unfortunately.”
“I can run into the farm store and get some,” Robbie says. “I’ve got to get a few things at the grocery store, anyway.” He slants a smile at Lance. “Considering we’re down to one egg.”
Lance hasn’t even thought of food, for various reasons, but the cinnamon toast breakfast was a long time ago. Robbie’s glance and offhand comment make Lance warm on the inside. He smiles back.
Megan looks between them and then quickly away. Lance’s old fears rear up in his head, but then he sees the mystified little smile she can’t quite hide and they vanish again.
Then, his whole mind blanks when she steps forward, slides her arms around him, and squeezes his waist. She’s almost as tall as he is, maybe a half inch shy of his six feet. She smells like antiseptic and the calf’s bottle, which isn’t very pleasant, along with a whiff of the alcohol she used to clean the calf’s neck before she poked her with the needle.
“Don’t be a stranger,” she tells Lance firmly, and then she lets him go, holding his eye a moment. “Not anymore.”
He doesn’t really know what to say, so he just smiles awkwardly and puts his hands in the pockets of the baggy jeans he wears.
Robbie follows Megan outside, and this time, Lance doesn’t feel quite so agonized by what they might or might not be saying. He goes into the kitchen and washes the bottle that Megan left in the sink. When he’s done, Robbie’s walking back in.
“So, I’ll run into town, then.” He’s still wearing his coat. The door is only cracked open behind him, but that’s enough to let in a little thread of cold air that seems to snake around him and straight to Lance, where it nips at the back of his neck and his still-cold feet.
Lance shivers and nods. “Okay.”
“You need anything?”
Lance’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “Well, I have a Ziploc bag and a manila folder, so no, I’m all set.” He wipes the dishwater off his hands and onto Johnny’s jeans, then winks as Robbie laughs. “Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, one more egg. And a tablespoon of butter. Maybe a single water bottle?”
Robbie grins, rolling his eyes. And still he hesitates another moment, though there’s nothing else to ask. It’s more like he just doesn’t want to go—or leave Lance.
Lance’s chest feels warm again.
Robbie clears his throat. “I’d ask if you wanted to ride along, but you should stay here. Stay warm.”
Lance would absolutely ride along. He was never that worried about how cold he got, frankly, though he took shameless pleasure in being fussed over. His body has always run warm, and though the cold had been horrible, he thinks he’s shaken it off. But he doesn’t really want to go into town, either, to see familiar faces, and think about what’s waiting for him in a couple of days—that is, a return to the courthouse and the next step in the process of explaining why he was driving a car that Niall had reported stolen.
He grits his teeth just at the thought.
Better to stay cocooned here for as long as he can and pretend like it’s not just a happy interlude, and rather that he’ll never have to leave.
“Yeah, okay,” he tells Robbie.
Robbie nods. “I’ll be back in an hour and a half. Maybe less. Meg says the roads have been dozed, so the snow shouldn’t slow me down much.”
“Sounds good. Be safe.”
There’s another long hesitation that makes Lance want to laugh aloud in pure delight. Then, with a quick parting smile, Robbie finally goes.
Lance does remember the shock of the cold water, and the way it seemed to leach through his skin and muscle to fill his bones. He looks out the window at the snow-covered landscape and the memory makes him shudder. But he can’t bring himself to just wander the hayloft, either.
He makes sure the calf is still asleep in the bathroom and the door is closed, warding off any triplicat attacks. He’s already thinking of getting dressed and going outside when he sees a curl of smoke over the trees, coming from the direction of his old house.
Just like that, he’s moving without having made up his mind to go. He’s got his gear on in under a minute, and then he’s walking fast through the snow toward his childhood home.
Unlike on his last trek, he doesn’t wander aimlessly before he commits to crossing the creek and seeing his father’s place. He takes the most direct route, which is as familiar to him as breathing even though he hasn’t followed it in six years. Nonetheless, so many of the small landmarks are still in place. There’s the barbed wire fence remnant, which is only a single old hedge-post, linked to the tree that grew over its wires and now wears it like an appendage. Then there are the three bulbous rocks in the rockshelf by the crossing—one yellow, one white, one brown. There are differences, too. Someone cut out hedge trees recently; their stumps are still sharp and ragged from the strokes of the saw, not yet softened and weathered by seasons of exposure. More, Lance sees it all from a shift in perspective. He’s higher above the roots and underbrush, and he can close the distance in fewer strides.
As he begins to climb up the bank on the Taylor side, he sees a flash of lavender…an unnatural color amongst the dark foliage and silver snow. He pauses as a face swathed in the hood of a light purple snowsuit appears over the edge of the bank, looking at him sternly.
“Are you a trespasser?”
Her voice is surprisingly deep for someone of her size and apparent age. She has brown curls escaping from the confines of her hood, which is cinched tight around her face. Her cheeks are as red as apples in the light amber complexion of her face. She wears mittens with a rainbow pattern; they appear as she reaches for the edge of the bank and pulls herself forward. She’s lying on her stomach in the snow.
“Mama doesn’t like trespassers,” she warns him when Lance doesn’t answer her.
“Um,” he says, too startled to think quickly, “I don’t think I am? This is my father’s property.”
Her eyes widen. “The old son of a bitch is your dad?”
Lance doesn’t know whether to laugh at her very accurate description or gape at the words coming out of the mouth of someone who looks to be about seven years old. “I don’t know for sure that we’re talking about the same person,” he hedges, “but, probably, yes.”
She wrinkles her nose. “My mama says we aren’t trespassers, either. She says we’re debt collecting.”
“I don’t mind that you’re here. I just thought the house was empty, so I wondered who you were, that’s all.”
The little girl crosses her arms, stiff in the puffy sleeves of her snowsuit, her hands frozen into mitten-shapes. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” Then she pauses. “Well, I guess what mama said is not to talk to strangers in town, but she never said anything about strangers in the woods.”
“Oh.” Lance winces. “Um, yeah. I’m sure the same rules apply to strangers in the woods.” They probably ought to apply especially to strangers in the woods.
She scowls at him. “That’s a stupid thing to say when you’re the stranger and you’re the one talking to me. Are you a kidnapper?”
“No.”
“So, what’s even your point?”
“I’m not a kidnapper.” He pauses, considering that’s probably what a kidnapper would say, if asked. “But you shouldn’t take my word for it.”
She grumbles something that sounds like “Grown-ups,” obviously aggrieved.
There’s a shout behind her. The girl turns that way. “That’s Mama.”
“You’d better go, then. And remember, don’t talk to strangers in the woods.”
She gives him a completely unimpressed look, then turns and runs, snow boots thumping.
When he imagines the little girl reporting a stranger in the woods to her mother, he supposes the adult thing to do would be to walk out to the house and introduce himself. Lance can see the old house in snatches through the trees. In the yard, the source of the smoke reveals itself: a metal barrel, the contents of which are burning. A young woman, maybe no older than Lance, stands beside it, dropping an armload of something into the climbing flames. The child in her purple snowsuit runs up to the figure of the woman, and as Lance watches, the woman’s head jerks up and she stares toward the trees.
He should walk over and explain himself, but instead he hastens to hop back down the bank and walks fast toward the Chase side.
For some reason, the image of the little girl’s face is lodged in his mind. There was something familiar about her, even though he also knows for certain that he’s never seen her before.