“Well, anyway, I’ll be back this afternoon to pet chickens and scoop poop or anything else you need me to do. I’m serious about that. Make a list. You take on too much by yourself.” He pets Little Missy one more time and casually walks out of the feeding room.
I grasp the bag of oats like it’s my life preserver after being pitched into the middle of a boiling sea full of Krakens. If that ever happened, by the way, I’d see if I could bribe my way out of it with said oats, although I’m not sure what good it would do. If the sea monster didn’t eat me, then I’d still probably be SOL without a life preserver.
Little Missy whines at me plaintively now that Finn’s gone.
“I know, I know,” I say mournfully. I set the bag of oats down and walk over to pet the dog. Man, he’s really just a big sucker. He loves being pet. I run my fingers through his fur, which I realize needs a good combing. Well, I can add that to Finn’s tasks. Little Missy seems to really like him. Unfortunately, that makes two of us. “I know, boy, I know.” I brush my hand over the soft muzzle and receive warm, sticky kisses in response. I like dog kisses. I know lots of people don’t, but I never met a kiss from any animal out there that I didn’t like.
All of a sudden, I feel like my bag of oats totally just sank, and now the sea monster is coming back for me, which just makes me really, really sad. That, by the way, is a great metaphor for my life, in case you didn’t catch it.
CHAPTER 17
Finn
Becki comes into the house around eleven, but instead of making lunch, she calls upstairs to tell me she’s going to Topeka for supplies. She walks right out the door before I can even get my butt out of the chair, and I can only watch, quite helplessly, as she hurtles into the truck and flies down the driveway, dust billowing after her like great big clouds of regret.
Or maybe that’s just how I feel.
Like there are great big clouds of regret billowing in my chest too. And in my brain. Also, in just about every bit of my body. I know we took a risk doing what we did. I don’t regret it, but I do regret that Becki is now pulling away. She’s running away, literally. She won’t even really talk to me about what happened, and she’s doing it in a straight-up Becki fashion—being way too nice about it. I can’t tell how seriously she’s hurting, if she’s even hurting, or if she’s just coming up against a great big internal wall of fear that’s telling her we can’t even attempt to make this happen.
I get where she’s coming from, on the let’s not rush into anything because this is a big deal, and it does need to be carefully considered front, but I wanted to reassure her that we didn’t have to rush into anything at all, and we could still make it work.
Maybe that’s some straight-up wishful thinking in a world where wishes don’t often come true. And maybe it’s for the best that she’s slamming on the brakes where I couldn’t. I just don’t like her reasons for it, sanctuary aside. The whole ‘your money and where you’re from would only get in the way’ bit of that argument.
When I head down to the kitchen for lunch, hoping some calories will improve my brainpower and I can come up with a solution to the mucky mess I can’t stop mulling over—turns out I’m just about always knee-deep shoveling poop, even if it’s not literal poop—I find a short list of chores laid out on the counter.
I pick up the paper and start to read through the list. Of course, the top of the list is about poop because it’s a chore that needs to be done every day—take the dung out of the barn, spread the dung out on the compost, spread the compost out in the field—dung, dung, dung. Dung is fun, fun, fun. But seriously, though, not so much. I’m just not sure why it’s playing out in my brain like a peppy country song at the moment.
I keep reading and taking in the other points. They’re tasks I’ve already done, so Becki knows I can handle them. Things like cut the grass behind the house, trim up the edges of the garden with the weed whacker, trim along the fence behind the garden and any other areas that are bad, and pull weeds.
I set the list aside and vow to tackle it to the best of my ability. But I’m not sure how I can show Becki any other way I’m serious about this—about her and about us.