I became aware I was in the clothes I wore yesterday. They still reeked of all the fun we’d had on Saturday, and I could feel myself starting to tear up again. Rather than give into my feelings, I went inside and took a shower. I finally ate the sandwich Chloe brought me, watched a western, and fell asleep on the couch.
Around midnight, I got a text from Jodie.
I need some time. Please don’t come to the library until we talk, okay?
Not wanting to pressure her, I agreed. I so wanted to throw my phone and break it, but I laid it on the coffee table, face side up in case she had more to say. She didn’t, and I realized that no matter how long I stared at the damn thing, she wasn’t going to. I thought about calling Liv or Mom, but I had no idea what to say. I decided to read a couple of pages of Dad’s diary and call it a night, even if I wasn’t going to sleep. When my phone buzzed around 1:00 a.m., I had a fleeting hope that Jodie had changed her mind, but it was Chloe letting me know they made it to her house. Well, at least that means no more tragedies from this weekend.
This morning I got up early and found Elliot out with the goats. He had already moved the irrigation wheels.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.” He paused, looked me over, and set to filing a goat hoof down. He knows.
“We’re all okay.”
“That’s good.”
“What are they saying?”
“That you had a wreck. And that you all had been drinking.”
“I wasn’t drunk or even buzzed, Elliot. If I had been, I’d be in jail right now. And everybody’s okay.” I could feel my face burning red.
“Hey, you asked me what they are saying. Well, that’s what they’re saying.” He put the goat’s fourth leg down and slid the file into his back pocket.
“Sorry.” I took my hands off my hips and pointed towards a goat. “Can you show me how to do that?”
He gave me the file and had me pull the goat’s leg into position, dig out the mud and manure between the two hooves, then file in the direction of the hooves with long downward strokes. I think he took care of the one goat in the time it took me to do one leg, and, even though the goat began to resist by the last leg, I got it done. I wiped the file on my pant leg, straightened up, and gave it back to him.
“You’re gettin’ it.”
“Sorry I got all defensive. Jodie won’t talk to me right now, and Russ is pissed.”
“Well, I don’t care what happened since nobody’s hurt. Your friends get off okay?”
“They did. I don’t think Chloe will be back this way anytime soon.”
“I kinda liked that Benj. Crazy as hell, but he’s a hard worker.”
“Yeah, I like him, too.”
Elliot told me that Frankie had managed to tie everything up early at the vet clinic, so they are leaving in the morning. He doesn’t know when they will get back, maybe a week or more. It could be a week or more. She needs to work with the horse there, and they will do some sightseeing, too. They are getting pretty serious. I don’t know if they’ve talked about moving in together, but that could really change things around the farm. I am making a conscious choice to not think about that.
We went over to the brooder pen and packed the final group of adult meat chickens into the truck. Elliot explained the watering schedule to me. I let him know I would clean the pen tomorrow, so the baby chicks would have to wait a little longer to stretch their legs.
Once we were all caught up I drove over to the butcher, checked in, and left the birds at the back door with Bud’s help. I did my little ritual and drove to a convenient store to get some nacho chips and cheese. I found a shady spot to park, ate, and flipped through the messages on my phone. I didn’t want to bug Mom at work, so I texted back and forth with Liv even though she was at work. (She took a job at BSU for the summer.) I took a short nap and woke up at 1:30.
I raced over to the poultry place and picked up the dead birds. Back at the house, I had four customers waiting on me. Three of them bought a few birds each and were on their way. Of course, Dillon Contreras was there. Rather than run her mouth the entire time, she just said, “Took you long enough” and stared intently at me. “I’ll take ten birds for me and ten birds for somebody else on a separate ticket. Make theirs the bigger birds.”
I split the birds between two coolers, and tallied up her set, and called the amount out to her. Then I tallied the other set and walked over to her car and told her that total.
She started to hand me the check for the first order but snapped it back when she heard the second amount. “That does include my discount, right?”
“Well, we round down on everything, so there is a discount.” I was getting tired of her crap.
“No, I mean Dan always gives me a discount on the other order. A dollar per bird.”
I couldn’t imagine why my dad would do that. He’d be, or rather I would be, losing money on that big of an order. “This is the first I’ve heard of it, Mrs. Contreras.”
“Well, you’re going to take that off, right?” she huffed.
I stared at her, trying to decide if she was giving me a hard time or if she was
