“Fine.” Eli had been put in her place. Had her own father been there, he would have either joined in the conversation with Bill or he would have laughed at Bill’s attempts to lecture before telling Eli to shut up and listen. She leaned against the tailgate but refused to sit on it like him, wanting to make sure he knew she still needed to get the tagging done that day.
Bill pulled out a can of chew from his back pocket and slipped some tobacco under his lower lip. No other sound greeted her but the brush of the wind and occasionally the keening of a cow far off in the pasture. When he was done, he pressed a hand to hers and then patted the top of it before letting go.
“You and Bridget had a couple fights the other week.”
“So.”
“So the whole town is talking after the last one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Meaning, Bridget called in she was pulled over to check the truck because of certain activity before she got out to see who was in the truck. Also meaning Kitty drove by while you two were standing outside arguing.”
“Damn it.”
“Yep. So the two of you had an argument last week, and you know, it took me longer than I would like to admit to figure out why Bridget and you would be fighting again after two years of being off.”
Eli pressed her lips tightly together. She wasn’t going to admit it if she didn’t have to, but she was pretty sure everything was about to come tumbling out.
“You haven’t been to town in two weeks, Eli.”
“What’s your point?” Eli dug the toe of her boot into the hard topsoil while she clenched her jaw and stared out at the horizon.
Bill spit at the ground and let the silence sit a moment. “You know you can talk to me, kid, right? You’ve never had a problem talking to me before. Remember when you and Ava went out and got drunk at the bonfire and came home sick beyond words?”
“Yeah, I remember that.” Once again Eli was lost on where he was going with the story, but that was often how Bill talked. Winding his way through different stories to prove his point.
He knocked his shoulder into hers. “I never told your dad.”
“Ever? How did he find out then?”
“Eli, you were three sheets to the wind. He’s not stupid. Even sober you’re a bad liar.”
Rolling her eyes, Eli waited for him to continue.
“You can trust me. You can talk to me, and God knows, sometimes you need to talk to someone other than Cassie.”
Laughing, Eli rolled her shoulders and pulled herself up to sit next to him. Neither said anything for quite some time, and when she put her head on his shoulder, he wrapped his arm around her in a side hug, and Eli melted. She’d almost forgotten how much like a second father he was to her.
“We did fight, Bridget and me. At bingo the other week, she kissed me—very unwanted. Anyway, I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t, and when she pulled up on me that day, I realized how bad it was. So yeah, we fought, but I think we worked it out. Finally. Nothing like two years too late, huh?”
“It’s never too late. Was she right?”
“Right about what?”
“What she saw between you and that girl.”
Eli rubbed her hand over her forehead as she focused in on Sarah, who would probably take offense to being called a girl by a guy who was no more than ten or fifteen years older than her, but that was neither here nor there. She wasn’t sure how she wanted to answer him. She wouldn’t lie, of course, but she hadn’t fully sorted through everything herself. She’d mostly just avoided it. When she turned to him, he stared directly into her eyes, his balding head reflecting the sun from the middle of the day.
“Shouldn’t you be wearing a hat? Your bald spot is shiny. Don’t need cancer.”
“Eli.”
“Sorry, yes, Bridget was right.”
He nodded. “I thought as much when I saw you at the sausage supper. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.” Eli shoved off the truck and stepped away from him, grabbing her bucket of tagging tools and lifting it up. “I’m gonna go tag me some cows. You coming?”