Dad bites off one end of his sausage. I suspect that he’s upset with me for making all these plans without him. I’m going over his head. It’s emasculating and inconsiderate, as he’s the official owner of the ranch and my father. But working as hard as I have for all these months has earned me a weekend off when my husband comes from the UK to see me, and we both know Dad won’t argue. I see the change when he pushes aside his frustration and accepts things as they are.

  “So, you’ll leave Thursday, then?” Dad asks when he finishes chewing.

  “Yeah, Tyson flies into Cheyenne that afternoon. I’ll have the cabin ready for the hands by tomorrow and all the schedules up-to-date before I go.”

  Dad reaches his hand across the table, palm up. I hesitate a minute before I put my hand on his. He wraps his big, strong fingers around my smaller but just as strong ones. He has hands like Great-Grandpa—Grandma Dee always said so—while my hands are more like Grandma Dee’s. Delicate, almost, but strong. I wonder what my mom’s hands were like.

  I try to absorb Dad’s strength and optimism and goodness, and I hope he can’t feel my fear and guilt and weakness. “If you need to go, CC, then go. We’ll make it work here. I . . . I just don’t want you to be more hurt than you already have been. That’s my concern, not the ranch.”

  “Tyson didn’t hurt me, Dad.” Truth.

  He gives my hand a squeeze and lets go so both of us can finish eating. When we’re done, he takes the plates to the sink. “Sorry I questioned you, sweetie. This weekend must be pretty important for you to have gone to all the trouble of making the arrangements. You’ve also been working like two men these last months. I wish I could pay for you and Tyson to go to the Bahamas for a week to show my thanks.”

  “I don’t want to go to the Bahamas.” I don’t want to go to Cheyenne, either. “I’ll be working with the guys until I leave, but they know what they’re doing, and when I get back we can talk about how we’ll figure out the new budget to work in paying them a few extra weeks—I’m really sorry about that part.”

  “Don’t be,” Dad says while he rinses off his plate. “We’ll figure it out. If the guys are doing the heavy stuff, I can at the very least bark out some instructions. It’ll be good for me to dig in a little. I’ve left way too much of the work up to you.”

  Dad still naps most days and takes the side-by-side when he has to get around the ranch—he only managed an hour on horseback during roundup. When he was receiving his treatments, he picked up some bug every other week, and it sent him flat to bed every time. Even after the treatments were over and his hair grew back steely gray instead of the salt-and-pepper it had been before, he never seemed fully recovered. He doesn’t know that I know about the adult diapers he’s bought online and hides in his room. Dad refuses to admit he’s ever been sweet on the choir director at church, but I suspect the reason he hasn’t pursued a romantic relationship isn’t the kind of thing he’d talk to his daughter about. It’s one more thing I’ll never ask.

  “Just promise me you won’t overdo it,” I say.

  “I’ll mostly just drive out with them so I stay in the know and can update the schedule,” Dad says, then raises his hand as though he’s in a court of law. “I promise I won’t overdo it.”

  “Cross your heart?” I run my fingers through hair still wet from the shower I took before we sat down to eat.

  “And eat your pie,” Dad finishes for me with an added wink at the end.

  I hadn’t known until I was nine that the real idiom ended with “hope to die.” I like our version better. Especially now.

  I braid my hair to keep it out of my face and secure it with the hairband I have on my wrist. Grandma Dee would tell me I’d catch cold going outside with my hair wet, but there isn’t time to pull out a hair dryer. “All right, I’m out to play with the baby cows for a little while.” Thank goodness I have things to keep me busy for the next couple of days. The ranch. The calves. Purpose and responsibility.

  Invasive ductal carcinoma.

  Meeting Tyson to start divorce proceedings as though we’re just selling a car together.

  Lumpectomy.

  Breathe.

  12

  Sienna

  The Cheyenne Regional Airport is located in central Cheyenne—an example of the many frontier towns that grew out from a central point. First there’s a store. Then a bank next to it. Then a blacksmith. Eventually there’s a Chili’s and a bus depot, and by then the airport, which used to be on the edge of town, is now in the middle. It’s a single terminal airport with free parking and a coffee shop inside. I don’t think they have more than a dozen passenger flights in and out a day. O’Hare has something like twelve hundred. The only time I’ve ever flown through Cheyenne was when Grandma Dee had her stroke and I had to get here fast.

  Today I’m waiting in the front parking lot for Tyson, whose plane I watched land about ten minutes ago. My palms are sweaty on the steering wheel of my faithful Prius when I see him. My stomach flips, and I feel a little betrayed by the reaction. He’s wearing charcoal slacks and a white button-down shirt, rolled up to the elbows. His hair is short, his jaw square, and he’s wearing leather shoes I suspect are Italian and not for sale anywhere in the state of Wyoming. He looks like a model—London has been good for him.

  He spots me and smiles like a guy in a rental car commercial. I smile back, but my anxiety is popping like corn in a kettle. I get out to open the hatchback so he can put his carry-on inside. He pulls the hatch down and turns to me. I wonder if he’s going to kiss me hello and then he does it before I can prepare myself. I’m stiff, and he doesn’t let the kiss linger, then pulls back and smiles at me. “You’re looking really good, Sienna,” he says, making me wonder what he expected me to look like.

  “My hair won’t fall out until chemo.”

  His smile falls. I turn away, saving him from a response, and head to the driver’s side door I’d left open. He goes to the passenger side. Among some older couples in Lusk, the woman never drives if her husband is in the car—I think Uncle Rich and Aunt Lottie are one of those couples. I’ve wondered if it’s because he likes to be in charge or she likes to feel taken care of. Tyson and I have never been like that, and pretty soon we won’t know if we ever would have. We put on our seat belts, and I wind our way out of the airport parking area toward the attorney’s office he still doesn’t know about.

  I ask him about his flight, and he answers me, direct to Salt Lake, then the commuter flight to Cheyenne. He slept on the first flight and feels pretty good, though he expects the jet lag will set in around four o’clock mountain time. This is the kind of talk that would be shared between strangers at one of the cocktail parties in Chicago that he liked and I tolerated. I stopped participating in that part of his life after the first couple of years. I was uncomfortable, and he was uncomfortable with my discomfort. “How are you feeling about tomorrow,” he asks me. “Nervous?”

  “A little.” I’ve worked really hard not to think about tomorrow; there’s nothing my worry can improve about it, so I’ve kept myself busy with other stuff. I put on my blinker and turn left into an office building parking lot.

  “What’s this?” he says, looking over the sign that gives the different names of the companies located in the building. Nothing about the all-glass building says doctor’s office, which is what he’s expecting.

  “I made an appointment with a divorce attorney, Roland K. Johnson—he had a good website.” I turn off the car, grab my purse from the middle console as though we’re running into a fast-food place to grab a couple hamburgers, and get out before Tyson formulates an argument. He has no choice but to get out of his side, but he keeps his door open and looks at me across the top of the car while I adjust my purse strap on my shoulder. My purse is turquoise suede, with six-inch tassels that hang from the bottom. I’ve owned it since I got my Justin Boots with the turquoise trim—pair these accessories with a black sheath dress and a denim jacket and you’re killin’ it at the local bar. Not that I ever did that scene; I knew I was going to marry Tyson before I graduated from high school and then all we had to do was wait the year that Grandma Dee insisted we needed to be sure. Maybe we should have waited two. I started using the purse a couple of months ago when the strap broke on the crossbody bag I bought in Chicago. I could fix the crossbody, but there’s nothing special about it except that it prevents a girl from getting mugged quite so easily.

  “I said I didn’t want to work on divorce stuff,” he says in an even tone.

  “Who knows when you’ll be back here, Tyson.” I lift my hands in a gesture of futility and let them fall to my sides. “We’ll just talk to him about the best way to go about a noncontentious divorce. I don’t think it will be too complicated since we don’t have a lot of assets to split and no . . . kids.” I almost keep the bitterness out of my voice when I say this. Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I compared my situation to my mom’s. She had a child and knew she was going to die. Did that make her fight harder? Did she take advantage of every possible treatment she could because she had someone to live for and every day counted? Was there anyone alive who knows those kinds of details? It should be Dad, but he isn’t talking.

  Who do I have to live for other than Dad? Would I have approached this differently if I had a child? I think I’d have made the appointment as soon as I found the lump instead of waiting two weeks to find a doctor in Cheyenne. I wouldn’t be hiding it from anyone either.

  I go back to the topic at hand before I get too lost in these thoughts, which, really, are a waste of time. Fact is, I don’t have kids to live for and soon I won’t have a husband to worry about anymore. “We were married in Wyoming, which makes the divorce simpler in that way too.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” he says, shaking his head.

  “You said you were tired of living this way,” I remind him, looping my hand through the air as though I’m casting a net over the two of us. “When will we have a better opportunity? Besides, I already made the appointment and we can’t just not show up.”

  Tyson steps forward and rests his arms on the top of the Prius, not looking away from my face, which does nothing for my rising anxiety. The sun that was just enough to take the edge off the cold goes behind the clouds, and a breeze whips my ponytail. His hair barely moves. His voice is harder when he speaks next. “You’ve got a pre-op appointment for surgery in, what, an hour? This is crazy, Sienna.”

  “This is efficient,” I clarify. “You’re ready to move on, and it will be way more convenient to take care of it here than it will when you’re halfway around the world.”

  “I think we should wait until we get you through the treatments.”

  “We?” I say, lifting my hands and shrugging my shoulders. “By next week you’ll be back in London and I will be dealing with whatever comes next. I appreciate your being here—I still can’t believe you came—but the cancer really has nothing to do with us, Tyson.”

  He furrows his brow, and the tension is growing. Emotion is rising in my chest due to the power of speaking the truth out loud after having told so many lies these last few weeks. I have no reason not to say everything, because I do not think I will ever see him again after these next few days.

  I take a breath meant to infuse me with determination to see this through. “When you said on that phone call that you were fed up, I felt the most hope I’ve felt in a really long time.”

  “Hope?” he asks in confusion.

  “Yeah, hope, because if we go our separate ways, I don’t have to feel guilty for failing you anymore.”

  His expression turns sympathetic, and I hurry to speak again—sympathy hadn’t been what I was going for. “I’ve failed you and Dad and Grandma Dee and those three embryos that couldn’t plant themselves inside me despite all the work to create the perfect environment for them to do what millions of embryos do without the coaching. Everything I’ve ever wanted is so much more out of reach than it’s been before, and I can’t stand seeing that reflected in the people around me.” My voice cracks, and I try to swallow the emotion because I don’t want to seem as though I’m pulling it out to manipulate him. “Yeah, I have cancer, but it’s my thing, okay? And I’ll be able to better focus on it and what it means for me if I don’t feel as if I’m dragging you down with me. We’ve both moved on with our lives; why should we pretend that we haven’t?”

  He stares at me, and although part of me wishes I knew what was going on behind those deep brown eyes, part of me is terrified he’ll say it out loud, because then I’m responsible again. A car pulls into the space one place away from Tyson’s side of the Prius. He closes the door before coming around to my side and stops about a yard away. He shoves his hands into his pockets.

  “We’ll go to the appointment and find out what we need to do, but we don’t file yet, okay? We wait until you’re through this surgery and whatever follows, until your head is clear and this stuff with your dad is worked out. Then we decide how we want to move forward.”

  I don’t hate it.

  “Deal,” I say.

  We hold each other’s stare. If I thought we could go back to who we were in that wedding photo on the living room wall of the ranch house, I think I would do whatever it took to get there, but I feel silly for ever thinking that kind of happiness was real.

  Tyson puts out his hand, and I think he wants us to shake on our agreement, so I put mine forward too. Instead he takes hold of my hand, turns toward the building, and leads me toward the entrance. We’re holding hands as we walk into the divorce lawyer’s office. How sick is that?

  3

  14

  Sienna

  “There have been nine calves born since I left,” I say out loud while I text Dad back with only my left hand. I’ve managed to prop my right arm up in such a way that it’s not aching at the moment. “One of the heifers had some trouble.” I make a face, not needing to explain that Dad had to put her down—Tyson knows how this stuff works. I’ve never had to be the one to take down a distressed animal, though I would if faced with the decision. It’s mercy; I know that.

  Tyson looks up from his laptop, set on the little round table by the window of the motel where we’ve been for two nights now. “Did the calf make it?”

  “Yeah, one of the cows took it in. That’s lucky.” The dressings on my right armpit and breast incision are held in place by an Ace bandage that wraps all the way around my chest like a bulky halter top. I’m lucky that I didn’t need a drain. In a few days I’ll be able to trade the Ace bandage for a sports bra; I found two that fasten in the front for $9.99 at Walmart after my pre-op appointment on Thursday. I’m due for another pain pill in half an hour; Tyson has an alarm set on his watch to make sure we don’t miss any. The post-op instructions were adamant that we not chase the pain, especially these first three days. So far we’ve stayed on top of it, but that means my brain is fuzzy, I can’t account for time properly, and I feel slightly sick to my stomach all the time. The only reason I can coherently text Dad is because we’re on the tail end of the last pill. It takes forever with just one hand, though, and I feel bad when Dad asks how things are going and I write, “Great.”

  Tyson continues to watch me as if he’s got something else to say, but I keep my focus on my phone. He’s been a great nurse: keeping me on schedule with the medications, helping me get dressed, taking me for walks around the parking lot of the motel, and making sure I get all the sleep I need. My body is starting to ache from being in bed so much.

  “I don’t think you should go back to the ranch yet.”

  I glance at him over knees covered in cheap motel bedspread and upon which my phone is propped. “I don’t really have a choice,” I say. “Dad hasn’t said it outright, but this is more than he can handle. Even with the guys. I need to get back.”

  “And do what?” Tyson says, waving toward my chest. I’m wearing a button-up pajama top, but the bulky bandage is still obvious. “You act as though you’ll jump on Rosa and work like you’ve always done.”

  I know I’m not up to that, but I can do some things. I finish the text to Dad and toss my phone on the empty side of the double bed. Tyson has been sleeping in the other bed. “I have to get back, Tyson. It’s not worth discussing alternatives.”

  “And how are you going to explain that to your dad?” He waves toward my chest again. “They said it will be two weeks before you can resume normal activities, and they mean sitting at a desk and washing your own dishes, not managing a ranch.”

  “I going to tell him I caught something this weekend—a flu or something. I’ll put myself on light duty.” The fact that I’m decades younger than most lumpectomy patients has reassured me that the recovery time line I’ve been given is much longer than I’ll need.

  “Which means, what?” Tyson asks. “Taking a four-wheeler instead of a horse and only working ten hours a day?” He sounds perturbed but I’m not being difficult, I’m being realistic.

  “I have no choice, Tyson.” I’m snappy now, too, because I’m right and he’s wrong and the meds make me irritable.

  “What if you tell your dad that we’re turning the weekend into a week. We can find an Airbnb that will be more comfortable than this, and you can continue getting the rest you won’t get if you go back there.”

  I’m shaking my head before he finishes, but I soften the answer because I know that his concern is genuine. I’m lucky to have anyone helping me right now, let alone him. “I wish I could do that, Tyson, but I can’t.”

  He sighs in frustration and runs his hand through his hair as he leans back in his chair. He crosses his arms over his chest and thinks something through for a few seconds while he stares at me. “Then maybe I should go back to the ranch with you. I can make sure you don’t overdo things and I’ll help where I can.”