of come up.
“Pansy? That’s her name, I think,” Caleb said. “Not much. I vaguely remember she’s part of a family... All the parents died. I mean, her parents and her aunt and uncle. So they all grew up on a ranch on the outskirts of town. That’s one of those things you don’t forget.”
West was surprised to hear that. He hadn’t imagined that she... Well, fundamentally he had imagined that somebody like her probably hadn’t been through many hard times. A cop in a small town where there was probably barely any crime. He would have guessed that she didn’t know much of anything about difficulty.
“She lives here,” West volunteered. “On the property. She also gave me a speeding ticket the other day. And tried to give me another ticket today.”
“Were you breaking the law?”
“No. I was getting ready to load in a loading zone. Why does everybody think that I’m a second away from breaking the law? I was exonerated.”
“And you never broke the law otherwise?”
“I never got caught. I’m not that sloppy.”
Sure, he’d been involved in some petty break-ins and things when he was a kid. But for a while he’d really hung out with the wrong crowd. Then he’d gotten his first job on a ranch in town and had found that he enjoyed building things a hell of a lot more than destroying them. That fixing a fence and earning a wage meant more than stolen cigarettes ever could. He had made a success of himself, and then his ex-wife had ruined everything. Sure, he was getting back on his feet now, but he had already gotten on his feet.
And Monica had been born on her damn feet. Complete with a silver spoon in her mouth and a high horse to sit on so she had a view of the peasants down below. She had no idea what it was like to struggle, not a day in her life.
Of course, she was probably struggling a bit now in prison. So there was that. She had taken so much from him, and fundamentally had no idea the amount of work it had taken him to get it, and what it had entailed for him to lose it.
He was still angry about it. He always would be. He wasn’t the kind of guy who let things go. He didn’t get to where he was by letting things go.
“Like I said,” Caleb continued. “I don’t know that much about her. But then, I’ve never had a speeding ticket.”
“You’re an ex-firefighter turned cowboy. How the hell can you be this boring?”
“Ellie doesn’t think I’m boring,” Caleb said.
“Well, that’s why the two of you are suited to each other, I guess.”
“Do you want to come out to the house for dinner tonight?”
West found that he...almost did. But it was still weird. Going over to the Daltons’ for things. He preferred to be there when school activities were happening. Big outdoor barbecues, where it wasn’t people sitting around a table. He had participated in the family Christmas a few months earlier, and he had felt...patently uncomfortable. He didn’t have any experience of Christmases outside of the years he had been married to Monica. Then, he had done the whole holiday thing. They had decorated their ridiculously showy home on the outskirts of Dallas in a way that would make the Joneses get stressed out about keeping up with them.
But growing up... His mom hadn’t done anything like that. No, she had usually hauled herself off to the casino and left him to fend for himself.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“Suit yourself. But you know you’re always welcome.”
“Yeah,” he said.
They continued working in silence for a while after that.
“I know the whole situation is weird,” Caleb said. “But nobody has any issue with you or McKenna.”
“I know,” West said.
Actually, the way that the Dalton family had accepted him was endlessly weird to him. He had a standing invitation to weekend barbecues from Tammy, and even though he didn’t really want to pursue a ton of quality time with Hank, the old man had been...well, friendly and charming in every situation West had seen him in. If it had all been reversed, and his mother had been the one that had to accept random illegitimate children it never would have happened. She barely accepted the children she had.
“When are you going to finish this fence?” Caleb asked.
“I’m going to be working on it off and on over the next few weeks.”
“And when are your cattle getting