stella
Charlie’s routinemade things easier for everyone and before we knew it, two weeks had already passed since we’d moved into the big house, with Max and Wade as our roommates.
Except for the first couple of nights, which proved difficult, as she refused to sleep in the crib Max had painstakingly dragged down from the attic, things were going well.
We’d gone that first week into Atlanta and snagged some baby essentials that Max and Ray hadn’t been able to supply with hand-me-downs. Mostly things like diapers, wipes, pacifiers, a crib mattress, and obviously a few cute outfits. Max had been such a good sport as I pawed through the racks of endless baby clothes. He even offered his opinions when I held a couple up for inspection, never once looking like he wanted to be anywhere else.
I had put away a small amount of money in preparation for leaving Dean. During his working hours, I had babysat for a neighbor in our apartment complex. I left our apartment immediately after he went to work, returning before he gotback home. If he would have found out my intention to have money for myself, he would have drained my account dry on the notion that what’s mine was his and what’s his was also his.
In the weeks of living with Max, I’d managed to snag a job at one of the local boutiques in town. I didn’t remember how freeing it was to have something to call my own. It had been so long since I’d been anything more than just a mom. Going to work each day was the welcome reprieve I needed to fill back up my proverbial cup.
I’d only ever held jobs here and there, but working at the shop was easy enough to learn. The boutique focused on affordable but stylish clothing for the mid-twenties to early thirties crowd. I always managed to find a new piece or two that I fell in love in each new shipment.
This week, we’d gotten in a pair of rhinestone encrusted heeled booties and I was desperately hoping were still available in my size come pay day. I didn’t have any idea where I’d wear them to, but they had called to me, whispering sentiments of how sexy I’d look strutting around town.
While I was at work, Ray had taken over Charlie duty. I offered to pay for daycare or a sitter, even if it meant I was essentially working for free. It took a lot for me to leave Charlie with a certifiable stranger, but in the end, I’d rather her be looked after by someone I trusted in a home I knew, versus a childcare center where she was out in the open and vulnerable.
Ray would hear nothing of it and literally shooed me out of the house when I had to leave for work each day. Charlie had taken to her like a pig in slop. Ray even called her ‘tiny bestie’ when they ran errands together, often stopping in to say hi when they were near the boutique.
Ray had the luxury of working from home, which afforded her an exceptionally flexible and adaptable schedule. She ran a virtual interior design firm, something I’d never heard of, but found extremely fascinating.
She met with clients virtually to discuss their needs and expectations for a design project, then sourced all the items online or at local retailers, paid to have them shipped to the customer, and hired a local moving company to move everything in.
After all the main furniture was staged, she walked the client through staging with items they could find at local retailers or thrift stores.
She held the philosophy that a clear vision of the desired mood or feeling within a space eliminated any significant difficulty in the process of interior design. She taught her clients how to thrift, DIY, and use what they had to their advantage.
The entire experience utterly captivated me. I found myself enthralled by the fascinating process of watching her work.
I often came home from work to find her curled up on the floor with Charlie while she “colored”. Charlie would jab crayons into a piece of construction paper while Ray was poring over magazines, finding inspiration and using that to sketch ideas into her notebook.
We had all settled into a comfortable routine. In the evenings, after I’d closed the boutique and came back to the big house, I’d make sure there was dinner on the table before the guys got done with ranch work.
I had learned quickly that they were up early and done late. Ranching wasn’t for the faint of heart. Max explainedthat, technically, they owned a ‘ranchette,’ but that name sounded too feminine, so no one really called it that.
They were a small, thirty-five acre ranch with only a couple of horses, chickens, and a small herd of cattle. They didn’t have a large operation, but it still required a lot of man-power and even more physical labor.
Max was up early in the morning mucking out the stalls of the four horses they kept in the stables, making sure the cattle had ample hay and water, and checking crops as needed.
They mainly grew corn during the summer and harvested it for the local markets. Their primary income came from Wade’s riding and roping lessons he’d started with the 4-H kids and grew wider from there.
He held classes daily in the paddocks to the right side of the property, teaching anyone old enough to get on a horse how to ride like they’d been born with a saddle between their legs. You could tell that when Wade was on a horse, he was in his element. He rode with the grace and skill of someone who’d been riding as long as they could walk.
Wade was still a bit of a mystery. Max had mentioned that he used to frequent the rodeo circuit as a champion tie-down roper. He’d made it all the way to Vegas for the NFR, apparently the Super Bowl of rodeo events, and had gotten injured, putting his career on hold. In the seasonal interim, he had opened his training up, hoping to keep his skills sharp. Max said that he’d found a love for teaching and never went back to competing.
Max hadn’t gone into detail on the extent of Wade’s injuries, but it clearly made it so he wasn’t comfortable professionally competing, sending him into retirement.
I spent my days off walking Charlie around the property,getting the lay of the land. Though I hadn’t covered all thirty-five acres, my extensive hikes had given me a good feel for the land, its smells, and the sounds of the rustling leaves. The ranch was so peaceful. Something about the quietness of the ranch acted as a balm to my soul. It should have unnerved me, with all that we had endured, but instead, it gave me a sense of comfort.
Charlie loved stopping by the stables, the scent of hay and leather filling our nostrils as she watched the horses stomp and prance in their paddocks. You could hear her squealing a mile away when they reached their long snouts over the top of the stable doors and sniffed their whiskery noses on her tiny hands.
One afternoon, Max had shown her how to present them with treats safely. She had watched with rapt attention as he held his hand flat with a sugar cube in the center, and his horse, Joker, had gobbled it up.
The sound of her laughter, light and carefree, was so contagious that I couldn’t help but laugh along.
Max had taken her from me, propped her up in front of him with an arm banded under her legs, and flattened her hand as he had with the sugar cube in the middle of her palm. He patiently guided her, holding his large hand under hers to keep her palm flat, to the horse’s mouth and let it nuzzle up the sugar cube.
In that moment, you would have thought that Max had hung the moon and stars in the sky. I had never before witnessed such a look of pure, unfiltered wonder as the one that spread across my child’s face.
