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“Maybe. You don’t know. Fia is a spitfire. Believe me. She gave my brother hell for years. And rightfully. We all found out eventually.”

“What do you mean?”

It wasn’t really his story to tell. But it was public lore of Four Corners at this point. “When they were in high school, Landry and Fia had a baby. They didn’t tell anybody, though. Fia put the little girl up for adoption, and Landry spent the years after that pissed about it. As if they could have parented a baby when they were sixteen.”

“That sounds horrible. And you know, I can tell you in that situation what you’d get is my life.”

“Not always,” said Daughtry. “But given the state of the ranch at the time, I don’t blame Fia at all.” The truth was, he was damned empathetic to his sister-in-law. Because he knew how it had been. The adults around them had been nonfunctional. He understood not being able to imagine a scenario in which bringing a baby into that with a couple of toxic teenagers would be anything but a disaster. “But the point is, things changed for them. Their daughter’s adoptive parents died. They ended up taking her in, and they found a way to rebuild all the bridges between them. But when I tell you Fia can certainly handle your brand of being a sticky wicket, I mean it.”

“What is asticky wicket?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s something my mom said sometimes.” He didn’t know where it had come from. Why it had come forward from the recesses of his memory.

“It’s weird,” she said.

At that moment, they were pulling up to Sullivan’s Point. The farmhouse was as bright and cheerful as ever. Lila was running around in the front yard with a couple of other kids from the schoolhouse, and her dog, Sunday, was leaping about with them. He watched Bix’s expression as she looked at the children. At the dog.

“You like dogs?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I think so anyway. Never had one. If you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t go dragging another creature into your problems.”

“Fair enough.”

But that was another thing that made him feel regret for her. Not that he had any pets. Other than all the cows that lived on the ranch.

They went around the back of the farmhouse, and pulled up where there was a line of other trucks in front of the large barn where they held their meeting every month. There was already a big bonfire going, and there were tables laden with food. Pies and cakes, steak and potato salad. Sides provided by the ranch hands. A whole spread of great food. He saw Bix’s eyes get bright.

She did still get very excited at the sight of food. Every time. It was almost charming.

Hell.That’s your problem. You’re charmed by her. In spite of yourself.

They got out of the truck, and she moved closer to him, which he thought was interesting. But then, she hadn’t spent much time away from the ranch since she had showed up. In fact...

“Until earlier today had you actually left King’s Crest since you got there?”

“Unless it counts that we went to the van to get my stuff, no.”

“Oh. I don’t think I realized.”

“Well, we’re hardly in each other’s pockets. You go to work every day in a different place than I do.”

That was true. He realized he hadn’t asked her. It made him feel guilty. The same kind of guilt he’d felt when he’d realized she only had the same clothes that she’d come with. That her room still didn’t have furniture. He had been waiting for her to leave; that was the thing. He hadn’t gone out of his way to make things permanent, because he’d kept expecting to wake up and find her gone. But she was still here. And when he had invited her to the town hall meeting, he’d realized that that was a step toward things feeling more official. Really involving her in ranch business like this. It was common for the employees to come to the town hall meetings. Expected, even. But she had held herself at a distance, and acted like she was going to walk out at any moment, so he hadn’t really considered her part of the regular employee base.

He did now. But also, she was something different. Because every ranch hand didn’t eat dinner at their house most nights. And she did. Every ranch hand didn’t get along with his brothers like a house on fire. And she did.

“Well, I’ll introduce you to everybody.”

“Oh,” she said.

That, he realized, was also a little bit out of the ordinary. She occupied a strange place. But... she was singular. He had never met anybody quite like her, and maybe that was at the heart of the issue. People just didn’t surprise him very often. But Bix surprised him daily.

He had seen her rap sheet now, of course. He had done a background check before putting her on payroll. Shoplifting, that was the big one. But always under a certain dollar amount. Always food. Basic necessities. One time she had stolen a tube of Neosporin and a box of Band-Aids. He had gone digging for the different reports so that he could see the details. To him, her rap sheet didn’t paint a picture of a hardened criminal. It painted a picture of a life that was just regretfully sad.

Of a person trying her best to be resilient in the face of a whole lot of obstacles.

They walked past the tables of food, and into the barn. His siblings were already there, the large space jam-packed. Each family had their own section, and the hands that worked their particular ranch usually sat in the chairs behind them.

Like a very strange wedding.