Two weeks? In calving season with at least one more snowstorm in the forecast? Grandma Dee always said that work was good for what ailed ya, and thoughts of the ranch clear my head. For a long time, I thought she just wanted to punish me when I complained about some aspect of my life. Now the prospect of work rises up like the evening star I can just see in the eastern sky. The ranch needs me. Dad needs me. I have to be at 100 percent if I’m going to keep up, and that means I don’t have time for this. Amy said it was stage one, low grade. That gives me a little time to make a plan. “I’m afraid I can’t do either appointment.”

  “Well, we have an open slot on Friday the fifth at eight a.m., but those are the only openings we have in the week.”

  I can’t do Wednesday or Thursday or Friday. Or any day in March. Or April. Or May either. The ranch needs me and I need some time to come to grips with this. “I’m going to have to look into a few things before I can schedule anything. Can I get your number so I can call you back when I have a better idea of what I can make work?”

  “Sure thing. The scheduling department for the Laramie Women’s Center is open from eight a.m. until eight p.m. Monday through Friday and nine until two on Saturdays. You can call us back at 307 . . .”

  I huddle in the corner of the porch, letting each number fall to the planks of wood beneath my feet. During the summer there are sometimes moths as big as hummingbirds out here. Dad hangs our big bug zappers on the porch, Sometimes the bigger moths get stuck in the grate, and the zapper just keeps buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. Then Dad has to turn off the zapper and use a stick to pry off the carcass.

  “Got it. Thank you,” I say when Amy finishes giving the number a second time.

  Amy repeats the mission of the Laramie Women’s Medical Center. I thank her and hang up. The wind catches my hair as I step forward on the porch to grip the rail, no longer feeling the cold. I clench the rail so tight that my knuckles hurt, and I imagine the grooves and bumps of the rough-hewn pine being pressed into my skin. I let the wind slap me around a little and get funky with my hair while I attempt to make eye contact with the shifty gaze of reality.

  Inside my body is a monster, tiny but fierce. Maybe my cancer is like a chicken trying to break out of its egg, or maybe it’s like a spider, one hairy leg and then another stretching out from a crevice and reaching for the next space it will overtake. Or maybe it’s all tied up in a box, safe and secure and willing to wait until I can take the time to confront it. I close my eyes and inhale some of that wind, wishing it could cleanse me even as I choose to believe the cancer is in a box—secure and patient.

  The wind is passing through.

  Who has seen the wind?

  Stage one is good. Curable 98 percent of the time, according to that billboard that’s become scripture. I’ve never been extraordinary at anything; certainly I wouldn’t be in that 2 percent now. How many of those 98 percent lost their mothers to the same disease?

  The questions Dr. Sheffield has asked loom even larger in my mind: What stage cancer had Mom’s been? Were there other relatives who had also had breast cancer? Did they die from it, as she did? I feel a pop of anger that Dad won’t help me find those answers, but I don’t want to waste energy on being mad at him.

  Invasive ductal carcinoma.

  Lumpectomy.

  Additional treatments.

  I hear a creak and turn to see Dad standing inside the screen door.

  “Everything okay, CC?”

  I pull my wild hair away from my face with one hand and smile to hide whatever else might show up in my expression right now. I had promised myself I would tell him once I knew what I was dealing with, but the fact that he’s blocked out so much of Mom’s cancer reflects how devastating mine will be once he knows. I’m all he has left, so I force a smile. “Yeah, Dad, everything’s fine.”

  “I took the fish off the stove, but I may have been too late.”

  6

  Sienna

  Rounding up more than one hundred head of cattle spread out over eighteen hundred acres is exactly what I need to keep the panic at bay on Saturday. I’m in the saddle for fourteen hours, then head out again Sunday afternoon and round up the last four that have wandered out of their hiding places overnight.

  Dr. Sheffield’s office calls Monday afternoon, but I’ve put the number into my phone now and I don’t answer. I spend Tuesday and Wednesday finalizing our schedules, assessing each heifer and taking daily trips to the calving pasture to make sure the fence repairs are holding now that there are occupants. We stay busy all year, but everything on the ranch centers on calving. The west pasture is a few hundred acres smaller than the eastern one they’ve been in all winter, and sometimes they test the fences a little more, so we make sure we don’t slack off with the inspections. The fizzy tension of impending calving is thick in the air, like gearing up for the first day of school or getting ready for an anticipated vacation. I think of a race, where the runners are in position, hands down and feet primed to push off at the first crack of the pistol. Tyson and I got into running for a while in Chicago. We’d run out to Navy Pier every morning. We ran a 10K race, and the energy of all those runners who had worked so hard to be there was intoxicating. I don’t know why we stopped running. Probably because I became obsessed with getting pregnant.

  Dr. Sheffield’s office calls again on Thursday afternoon, and again I ignore it; the yearlings had found a weak spot in the east fence line, and a neighbor called to tell me he’d had a couple of visitors. It took all day to get them back and fix the fence. By Friday, we’re officially ready to start welcoming the baby cows from the heifers, but the nice weather will make our mamas lazy. They are content to chew on the spring grasses, which means when tomorrow’s storm rolls in, they’ll likely all start dropping at once. Then the real work begins: night rounds, assessments, charts, schedules, teat checks, rejected calf care.

  I make biscuits and gravy for Dad and me for breakfast Friday morning. It might be the last cooked breakfast we have for a while once the whirlwind begins. My phone rings as I’m putting the leftovers into a Tupperware container. I glance at the clock—it’s not even eight a.m.—then I see that it’s Dr. Sheffield’s office and send it to voice mail, turning my phone over so that Dad can’t see the screen even though he’s still at the table. Her office has called every day this week, and it feels invasive.

  “Who’s calling so early?”

  “Some telemarketer,” I say, shaking my head as though I’m irritated. Which I am, but not for the reasons my lie implies. Dad accepts the answer, then checks his watch and quickly takes the last few bites while I put the leftover sausage gravy in the fridge. He pushes himself up from the table, already dressed in his nice Wranglers, the inky black ones, and his rattlesnake cowboy boots. He’s wearing a white shirt and a bolo tie as though he’s going on a date, not his six-month follow-up with his oncologist. I wonder with a start if Dr. Jefferies knows Dr. Sheffield. They’re both in Cheyenne, and they both deal with cancer patients. I imagine them having lunch in an employee break room and realizing they both have patients with the last name Chadwick. “Does your Chadwick live in Lusk?” Dr. Jefferies might say.

  “She does, with her father . . . who had prostate cancer last fall!”

  Privacy laws don’t allow for conversations like that, right?

  “I’ll be picking up the vaccines while I’m in the city,” Dad says, keeping me in the present. “Will you make sure the barn fridge is cleared out for ’em when I get back?”

  “Yep,” I say while running water over the dishes. I don’t have much to do today unless we start getting some baby cows, and the lack of work makes me anxious. Maybe I’ll run up to the calving pasture for another look around—I’m a little worried about the north water pipe. It’s a forty-five-minute drive each way, which means a trip will take half the day, but I need purpose. I need distraction. Clearing out the nasty fridge is something, at least.

  “See ya this afternoon, CC.” He gives me a sideways hug and kisses the side of my head.

  I take the four-wheeler around the perimeter to check on the heifers after he leaves. I feel my phone buzz in my pocket as I’m finishing up but don’t check it until I’m back inside and my boots are under the boot bench.

  Tyson: Can you give me a call?

  I stare at the message for a few seconds before putting my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. Tyson and I haven’t talked on the phone for a few months now, haven’t even texted since my birthday—I’ve been twenty-five for a full week now. His asking me to call feels like a stranger asking for a hug, but I feel a moment of vertigo as I remember running into the house on a Friday like this one during my senior year of high school—Tyson was coming to Lusk for the weekend, and I was over the moon. He’d said he was bringing my birthday present with him; I’d turned eighteen a few weeks before, but his semester had been a bear and he couldn’t get away. On that day—what, seven years ago now?—I’d taken off this same pair of work boots in this same spot so that I could hurry to shower, then put on mascara before he got here. Grandma Dee had been irritated, yelling at me to put my boots under the bench so no one tripped over them. It’s staggering to recognize how much things have changed. Back then I hadn’t been able to think about anything else but my boyfriend that whole weekend—Grandma Dee was ready to clobber me. Now Grandma Dee is dead, and I’m not up to talking to my husband on the phone. That eighteen-year-old girl would not have believed any of this possible. Tyson was my everything. What is he to me now? What am I to him? Who am I? How long will I be whoever I am?

  My wedding album is in our storage unit in Chicago, but there’s a picture of us on the wall above the couch in the living room where a hodgepodge of photos with varied frames tell the story of my family. My great-grandparents are unsmiling in their sepia-toned wedding picture—Grandma Dee said it was because back then it was seen as arrogant to smile in photographs, but I wonder if maybe they knew the truth about what life would really be like. Maybe people back then knew that life would mostly be work and disappointment and loss.

  If there had ever been a wedding picture of Grandma Dee and Dad’s dad—whom I’ve never met—it had been taken down at some point. Gregg Chadwick left them when Dad was young and pretty much disappeared from their lives after that, so a photo of him is not something to keep on a wall. There are black-and-white pictures of Grandma and her brothers, though—ice skating on the old mill pond, Grandma showing her first steer at the county fair. It took second place. There’s a color photo of Dad holding up the first buckle he won in saddle bronc riding—he was pro for almost a year before he blew out his knee and decided to go to college. There’s another photo of him actually in the saddle, competing in nationals down in Las Vegas—his feet are high, his hand in the air, and a fierce look of determination is on his face. He was handsome back then—still is—but it’s weird to see him in such a different world than I’ve ever known him. In my life he’s been quiet, hardworking, and . . . soft. The young man in that photo is determined and focused in ways I don’t see in my dad now.

  I’m moving toward my wedding photo on the far end of the collage when my eyes stop on that photo of my family from the day I was born—me, Mom, and Dad. I stare at my parents; happy idiots just like Tyson and I had once been, except they at least got a baby out of their delusion before it shattered to pieces. I just have the pieces and nothing to show for it. The photo is not great quality, too orange with none of the crisp lines of a professional photograph. I imagine Dad handing over his cheap camera and asking a nurse to snap the photo. It’s only a four by six, but with a thick matte it better matches the size of the other frames on the wall. Mom’s freckled face is red, and small sections of her hair are stuck to the sides with sweat. Her smile is so pure that it turns her undoneness into something beautiful. My pink face, the size of an orange, is scrunched up between the faces of my parents, a balled fist on either side of my head. The two of them radiate success. A job well done. You and me and baby makes three.

  Just over two years later, my mom was dead. Eight months ago, Dad was diagnosed with his cancer. Now me. Was the monster in all three of us even then? Waiting for some trigger that would start the process of individual decline? What are the odds? I don’t necessarily believe in curses, but how can so many good people end up with so much bad luck? It’s not fair that we didn’t get a chance. It’s not fair that I’ve believed I can make things up to all of us when I can’t. When I haven’t.

  I finally turn my attention to the wedding photo that brought me to the wall in the first place, framed in the best eleven-by-fourteen black frame you can buy from the Walmart in Casper. Tyson is cradling me in his arms, one arm around my back and the other under my knees—I had a knee-length dress in order to show off the Tony Lama boots Dad had bought me as a wedding gift. Black with red stitching and turquoise detail. They’re in the storage unit now—I haven’t worn them for years. In the photo I’m holding Ty’s black cowboy hat on my head with one hand while my other is wrapped around his neck. Tyson’s hair is tousled, and I’m kicking my feet coquettishly. We’re both laughing. So happy. So convinced that we had life figured out. I stare at my own face—freckles everywhere, bright red lipstick on my wide, openmouthed smile. Surely that isn’t really me. Tyson, well, our fall hasn’t bruised him as much, so he still looks like himself. Sometimes I’m grateful that he’s less damaged. Sometimes I resent it. My eyes move to the picture of me and my parents the day I was born, then to my wedding day, and back again. We’re all so young in these photos. I suppose it’s a blessing that none of us knew what was coming, but maybe I wouldn’t feel so supremely disappointed with life if I hadn’t once felt so very thrilled by it.

  Nostalgia’s grip on me continues, and I turn my attention to the bottom shelf of the bookshelves that flank the couch, where our haphazard collection of photo albums are lined up like good little soldiers. None of them are like the fancy scrapbooked things Aunt Lottie has in matching binders; ours consist of photos held behind antistatic plastic on thick pages. The cream-colored album with green leaves printed on the cover holds my childhood. Someone had tried to take off the big, round yellow sticker with blue numbers announcing the sale price of $6.99 but only tore one edge off. I pull the album from the shelf and sit on the couch. I haven’t looked through these photos in years, and I flip the antistatic pages slowly as I reacquaint myself with the life I’ve lived thus far, or at least through high school when the photos here end because I was a grown-up and capable of documenting my own life. It’s good to be reminded that my childhood was a happy one. I had Dad, who coddled me, and Grandma Dee, who set an intense pace to keep up with. I had horses and purpose and opportunity. I’d never claim it was perfect—Did Grandma Dee have to be so hard all the time?—but I know I was lucky. Luckier than some kids whose moms didn’t die when they were babies.

  When I finish the last page, I go back to the start and look specifically at the photos that have my mom in them. Without noticing at first, I realize I’m counting them.

  Sixteen.

  Is that really all there are?

  I go back to the beginning and look again. My first count was right—there are only sixteen photos of Mom in this book that chronicles my life. How have I not noticed that before?

  I flip the pages back and forth, further categorizing those sixteen photos. I am in nine of the pictures; the other ones in the album are from before I was born. I stare at a photo of Mom in a lawn chair wearing a bikini top and shorts, holding a root beer toward the camera—she’s not outside; rather, it’s like a summer party but in the house. Maybe New Year’s Eve? Her dark hair, almost black, is long and straight over freckled shoulders. Her round speckled belly jutting out over her shorts is full of me. I’ve imagined meeting people who knew Mom and having them blink at me and say, “You look so much like your mother.” The photos confirm how true that is. Except that I’ve never met anyone who knew Mom other than Dad and Grandma Dee.

  The plastic coverings pull back with a crackle as I take the photos of Mom out of the album. I lay them out on the couch cushion beside me, keeping them in the same order they had been in the album. Mom is noticeably pregnant in four of these photos, and I rearrange them by the length of her hair—below her shoulders and only varying an inch or so in length. In one of them her hair is up, but from the size of her belly I change the order. I do the same thing with the photos where she’s holding me, from newborn to about six months. There are three pictures that I can’t fit in based on the other markers I’ve used. One consists of a group sitting around a picnic table, smiling into the camera. Dad is one of those faces. Mom is another one. The others are strangers. Mom’s hair is up and her belly is blocked by the table, so I have nothing to go on by way of a time line. Who are these other people, I wonder. Friends of Mom? Would they remember anything about her cancer? Treatments, clinic, doctor’s name?

  The second photo I can’t line up is a close-up of Mom with her face pressed next to the face of a woman with bleached blond hair. Beck and I often do a similar pose when we take self-ies. Only this photo is pre-selfie. Someone else is snapping the picture, maybe Dad. The blonde has a pierced nose, a tiny stud in the crease of her nostril that I haven’t noticed before. She’s smiling wide, her shoulders bare save for black spaghetti straps. Her eyes are half closed as if she blinked just as the photo was taken. I look more closely at Mom, who’s also laughing but not looking into the camera. Mom’s hair is up, and she’s wearing a red tank top—maybe the top of a dress. I look at Mom’s face in the other photos, noting how round it is when she’s pregnant, and then how much it thins out after I’m born. Based on that, I put this photo second to last in my new chronology, because her face is pretty thin. I put the group around the picnic table photo before I’m born, though it’s hard to tell because the quality isn’t great. The last uncategorized photo, a close-up with her hair up, has a rounder face, so I put it with the pregnancy shots and look them over again, in better order this time.