completely. But gradually she had begun to do it. And for a little bit of time afterward she had been...manic.
Giddy with freedom and unsure of what to do with that half the time. Some of it had been self-destructive, though she hadn’t meant for it to be.
Time had mellowed her. Though Ryder might disagree with that. Especially at the moment.
“I made a list of everything I need to get in order before I go having a baby,” she said, taking the bacon out of the fridge and moving over to the stove.
“Okay,” he said, his tone grim.
Obviously, this was not a subject he wanted to be in the middle of. Too bad for him.
“Health insurance is the one I’m not sure what to do with at the moment.” She got a pan out and turned the burner on, letting the bacon settle in the pan.
“And you think that you have to leave to take care of the baby?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It all feels like it goes hand in hand with growing up.”
“You are grown-up,” he said. “You can trust me on that one.”
“I’m not independent.”
“Take it from me,” he said. “Independence is overrated. As somebody who had my security pulled out from under me at a very young age, I can tell you there is no shame in banding together. Or did you forget that? Did you forget that it’s how we got through all of this?”
“I didn’t forget,” she said. “It’s just that I want...change.”
“Change is terrible,” he said, getting out his own pan and putting it on the burner next to hers. He cracked a couple of eggs into it and grabbed the spatula.
“Not always,” she said. “A certain amount of change is a normal part of life.” She picked up the tongs out of a canister next to the stove and flipped the bacon. “And I’ve been stagnant for too long.”
“What part of this thing is nonnegotiable for you? Leaving or the baby?”
She had no real idea what leaving would give her apart from change, in the broadest sense. There wasn’t a particular place she wanted to go. It was more that she was reacting to fear. The fear of being her mother. The baby was something else. A desire for love. For a sense of family. Completion.
“The baby, I guess.”
“Think about it,” he said. “If you stay here when you have the baby then you’ll have us to help out.”
“I don’t want to do that to you,” she said. “You already raised kids.”
“I did,” he said. “And to be clear I am not offering to raise your kid. But, Iris will be here. Iris loves babies.”
“I don’t know that your sister would appreciate you deciding that she can babysit.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “She’ll live.”
“Very sensitive of you.”
“I never said I was sensitive.” They both turned to face their respective frying pans, and their shoulders brushed together.
“I just... The whole point of this is... I don’t want to be like her. She’s...she’s just still here and she hasn’t changed and it made me worried maybe I haven’t done enough to move on from everything we went through, either.”
“If it’s just to change things, then you can do that in a much less permanent way than having a baby, you know? Get a tattoo, Sammy.”
“Tattoos are permanent, Ryder. Or did you not know that was the point of them?”
“All right, but you don’t have to feed a tattoo. Or change its diaper.”
“It’s more than that,” she said. “You have all this family that loves you. I don’t. I never did. I’m an only child from a couple of miserable people and you know that. You’re the only one who really knows. I want to fill my life with something...sweeter. Better. I want to make a family that I love that loves me back.”
“We’re your family,” he said, his voice rough.
“I know,” she said, shaking the pan slightly and letting the bacon pop and sizzle.
“But it’s not enough for you?”
She didn’t know how to answer that. Ryder and Hope Springs Ranch had been enough for her, more than enough for so many years. They had been the fulfillment of dreams that she hadn’t even been brave enough to have when she was a little girl. Dreams that had been nothing but whispers and echoes inside her as she had listened to the violence that tore through her house on a nightly basis.
But it wasn’t about enough. It was about shifting and changing and growing.