While she was pregnant, she’d been good about taking her meds. After the baby was born, not so much. She was afraid they’d affect her breast milk, and she was determined to breastfeed. Grey wasn’t ten days old when she had her first fit. That’s what Bullet started calling them—fits. He had no idea what started it, but suddenly she was screaming at him. Then she pummeled him with her fists. It took him a minute to react, that first time, and when he did, it’d been to hold her at arm’s length. When she couldn’t reach him to hit him, she’d turned her head and bit his arm.
He’d almost backhanded her that day, out of instinct, but stopped himself. Before it could get worse, he left. He was less than a mile away when he turned the truck around. What was he thinking? He couldn’t leave their baby alone with her.
When he got back to the house, she was on the bed, sobbing into a pillow. The baby was in the bassinet next to the bed, also sobbing. Screaming was more like it. He called her name, but she didn’t appear to hear him. Was this what it was like when she was home alone with Grey? Did she just leave him in his bassinet, screaming?
He picked the baby up, that day, and drove to his in-laws’ house. Later that night, he moved Callie, the baby, and himself in with them. He hadn’t wanted to, but he didn’t see he had any choice. They’d agreed it wasn’t a good idea to leave her alone with the baby.
Callie’s dad stood when Bullet got off the elevator and approached the ICU waiting area.
“Hello, son,” his voice broke, and he turned away from Bullet.
“What’s goin’ on?”
“It’s Callie.”
“Is she…oh, God,” he couldn’t continue.
“No, but she’s unresponsive.” When he saw tears ran down his father-in-law’s cheeks, Bullet felt as though he might cry, too.
The door opened, and Callie’s mom joined them in the waiting room.
“Where…in…the…hell…have…you…been?” she spat at him.
“Now, Mama,” his father-in-law began. “This isn’t Bullet’s fault.”
“Isn’t his fault? Did I hear you right? Did you just say this isn’t his fault?” She turned and jabbed Bullet in the chest with her finger. “Why did you leave last night? Why? Answer me. What was so damn important that you left our little girl all alone?”
Bullet backed away from her, but she kept coming at him. Callie’s father put his arms around his wife’s waist and stopped her. When he did, she broke down in tears.
“She tried to kill herself last night, Bullet,” she sobbed. “And where were you? Where were you?”
Bullet felt the air leave his lungs. She’d been asleep. He doubted she or Grey would wake up before her parents got back, which he figured would be any minute. They never stayed out past seven-thirty or eight. He hadn’t left much before then. What the hell had happened?
1961
Bill kicked at the dry dirt under his feet as he walked down the driveway. He turned, when he reached the road, and looked back at the house. He’d probably never see it again. When he came home, his mama and baby sister wouldn’t be living in it anymore. It no longer belonged to them.
It’d been a long three years since his daddy first got sick. Bill was only eight when it started. Life was good back then. In the summer, folks would come to their ranch for a week or two at a time. In the fall, the dude ranch part of their business shut down, and hunters would come.
That’s how his daddy got sick. They still couldn’t say what it was, but his mama remembered seeing a bite after he spent a day guiding hunters. He wasn’t the same after that.
At first he got real weak. Bill had to pick up more of the chores when that happened. As his daddy’s health got worse, they had to cancel the rest of the hunting trips, and then in the spring, he didn’t have enough strength to get the dude ranch operational again.
His mama started selling off cattle to pay the bills. Next went the bulls, and finally, the horses.
When his daddy died, last week, his mama told him two things. The first was they had to sell the land and their house to pay off the medical bills. The second thing she told him was that, as the man of the house, even though they wouldn’t have an actual house for a while, it was his responsibility to find work and help support the family.
His eyes filled with tears he quickly brushed away with the back of his hand. Flynn men didn’t cry. That’s what his daddy told him. And since he was a man now, he was done with crying.
All that mattered, at this point was finding work. There were three other dude ranches within a hundred mile radius; one of them had to be hiring. He might be young, and he might be little, but there wasn’t a harder working cowboy in the State of Colorado. He’d prove himself so.