7

HUCK

Saturday Night

“One more, Daddy. Please?”

Claire was tucked in beneath my arm on the couch, but she began to wiggle, eager for another story. It was eight and her bedtime.

“Done your routine?” I asked even though I knew.

She nodded, her hair damp and brushed. It was the same wheat-blonde color my hair had been at that age. Even though there wasn’t a drop of my blood in her, she was mine whether we looked similar or not.

“I bathed, brushed, and we’re doing the books. I don’t want to go to bed yet. One more.”

Our routine was something my mother had invented for me and my brothers when we were little. Bath, brush, books, bed.

Alice had seen to the first two, and Claire had hunted me down with a pile of books tucked under her arm.

“All right,” I pretend grumbled. “One more.” She pulled her favorite from the stack and held it out. “Do you think the bear ever finds his missing button?” I asked.

She looked up at me and giggled. “You know what happens, Daddy. We’ve read this one hundreds of times.”

“Then why are we reading it again?”

She wiggled some more and settled in closer, then flipped open to the first page. “Because I like to see him talking to the bird. They’re best friends like me and Lizzie.”

I started the book, but Claire set her hand over the page so I couldn’t keep going.

“Daddy, you said you were working on getting me a mommy.”

I sighed, stroked her head. Around lunchtime, Kelsey, one of Claire’s preschool teachers, had come to the ranch. I hadn’t realized it when Thatcher and I had watched Sawyer fireman carry her out of the auditorium, but she’d been the one to buy him. It had also been the woman to knee him in the balls the other day. Sawyer had it bad if he was still into her after recovering with a bag of frozen peas.

I wasn’t the one to talk. Not now. Sarah had stripped me down, got my motor running, and left me handcuffed to my bed.

Claire had wanted Kelsey to have bought me instead of my brother, but Sawyer had told her that I’d been bought too. By someone else.

Claire hadn’t forgotten that. It seemed being bought meant getting married. Getting a mommy.

I wanted to marry Sarah. I always had. But clearly there was some shit we had to work through.

Thatcher’s heavy footsteps came right before the slap of the back screen door. He lived in the converted old barn and came up to the main house often, usually for Alice’s cooking. “Hey, Sprout! I came to say good night before I went to work.” He moved behind the couch, grabbed Claire under her arms, and tossed her in the air. He owned a bar in town, the Lucky Spur. Since it was Saturday night, it would be busy and he’d work until well after closing.