Whatever It Takes Read online

  “Your insurance is through a Tyson K. Richardson.”

  I pick at the drape.

  “Sienna?”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “Does he know about this?”

  We don’t really have that kind of relationship anymore, but out loud I give the same excuse I’ve given everyone else these last months. “He’s working in London right now.” Like coming to Cheyenne for a saddle, it’s true. But like this appointment I’ve hidden from everyone, it’s not all the truth.

  She waits a few seconds until she realizes I’m not offering up anything else. “But you put down Mark Chadwick as your emergency contact—that’s your dad? You live with him in Lusk, right?”

  I nod.

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  I want to say that I’m not a child and I don’t need my dad to hold my hand for a lady doctor appointment. Instead I shake my head. And wish Dad were here and that he were holding my hand.

  “You and your family have been through a lot, and I’m guessing that makes it hard to talk to loved ones about difficult news, but this is a really heavy burden for you to carry alone, Sienna. Don’t keep it in.”

  “I won’t,” I say.

  You’d think that without much experience being dishonest in my life, telling these lies would be hard. I tell myself they’re coming easy because they are kind lies. Necessary ones. Protective.

  The doctor leaves. I shed the paper drape and start putting my clothes back on while I wonder who I’m really protecting. Them or me?

  2

  Mark

  October 1993

  Mark turned off the alarm on the clock radio within a nanosecond of the newest Celine Dion song blaring from the speaker on top—they loved her up here. He missed his Alan Jackson, truth be told, but when in Rome.... He rubbed a hand over his eyes and looked over to make sure the alarm hadn’t woken Mae.

  Dolly’s Donuts had to be hot and ready by six in the morning Monday through Saturday, which meant the donut fryers clocked in at three a.m. He really needed to get to bed earlier, but that thought only emphasized why he continually stayed up too late. Despite the pride he’d taken in turning off the alarm before it woke her, he rolled onto his side and slid up against her smooth back, closing his eyes and loving how perfectly their bodies fit together. He nuzzled her neck, and she snuggled backward into him, a mewing kitten-like sound escaping those perfect lips. He was suddenly very awake.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” he whispered into her ear, hoping she’d convince him that he could stay in bed another ten minutes.

  “Mmmmm.” She didn’t turn around to face him.

  What he wouldn’t give to stay just like this all day. Even if all they did was lie nestled together, warm in their bed: enough world for just the two of them. After another minute, he accepted the inevitable, kissed her neck, and began to pull toward his side of the bed—it would be freezing when he stepped out from under the covers. Their tiny apartment was heated by a single radiator in the living room, which meant the bedroom was left to the influence of a very cold fall. Mae rolled over to face him before he moved away, lifting her hand to trail her finger down his forehead and over the bridge of his nose. When she rested her finger on his lips, he kissed it and could just make out her responding smile in the dark. Her hair looked like mist floating around her head in the minimal light cast by the streetlight outside. “You ’ave to go?” she asked.

  The accented words rolled off her tongue. “You know I do. It’s a good job.”

  After blowing out his knee on the rodeo circuit when he was nineteen, Mark had convinced Mom that it would be worthwhile for him to get a degree in agricultural management. If generational ranching families like theirs wanted to make it into the new millennium, it wasn’t enough to just know how to raise and sell cattle. The University of Wyoming, in Laramie, was close enough for him to work the ranch on weekends and come home for summers. When his final year at U of W came into view, he met with a counselor about study-abroad programs. The rest of his life was going to be spent on the ranch, and before that happened he wanted to live somewhere else. It was the only part of the world outside his home state he was ever likely to see. Mom eventually agreed to a two-semester program offered in Ontario—at least he wouldn’t have to cross any oceans or learn a different language.

  Mark had arrived in Hamilton, Ontario, in time for winter classes. He made friends with people from all over the world, ate his fries with gravy, and went to clubs on the weekends. He’d gone home for the summer and then arrived back in Hamilton in time for his last semester of school—he’d walk at U of W in the spring. He’d met Mae at a club his very first night back—fate, pure and simple. He’d never brought a girl home, but what he thought was going to be a one-night stand turned into a whole new life. A couple of weeks later, Mae got kicked out of her friend’s apartment, but she had been pretty much staying at Mark’s place anyway, and they stayed up all night, tangled up in each other and making plans. The next day Mark dropped his classes and applied for a work permit—he couldn’t work on a student visa. They found a cheap apartment the same week he got the bakery job. He planned to finish up school once his permanent residency was straightened out, but for now he wanted to enjoy a life that was nothing like the one he’d lived up until now. Mom didn’t know about dropping out of school yet. She knew about Mae and the new apartment, though, and had plenty to say about that. He’d bring her up to speed once he figured out how to explain it in a way that wouldn’t lead to nuclear war.

  “I wish I didn’t have to go.” He pulled Mae tightly to him. Finding a job hadn’t been easy; employers were leery of immigrants, but he told himself every morning as he walked through the dark streets that he wouldn’t be frying donuts forever. And going home to Mae every day more than made up for the insecurity he sometimes felt being so out of his element. Mae hadn’t found work yet, but she was looking.

  Mae smiled, her green eyes twinkling in the bit of light filtering around the blanket hung over the window as a makeshift curtain. “You can stay ’ere with me. I won’t tell.”

  He leaned in and kissed her. “I’ll be back at noon. Maybe we can take a nap.”

  “A naked nap?”

  Mark had never known a woman like Mae Gérard; there certainly weren’t any like her in Lusk, Wyoming. She was bold and sexy and unapologetic about both. She also had this amazing ability to live in the moment and know what she wanted. That she wanted him, a farm boy from Wyoming, made him feel as though he could fly. This was how the other half lived—the city people with apartments instead of acres and paychecks instead of cattle sales where the proceeds had to stretch for twelve months. He kissed her and pulled back. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  She smiled at him and raised herself up on one elbow. “There is something I need to tell you, Mark. I ’ope it will make you ’appy.”

  “If it makes you happy, it will make me happy.”

  “It makes me ’appy. I tink.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You’re not sure?”

  She didn’t answer but shifted a little bit, bunching the pillow under her head. “I’m going to ’ave your baby, Mark.”

  Brakes and squealing tires sounded in his mind. Surely, he’d misunderstood. It had sounded as though she’d said . . . “What?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  They’d been together only a couple of months—the best months of his life, to be sure—but they talked about their future in vague terms because the present was so all-encompassing. And they’d been careful. Really careful, because getting Mae pregnant wasn’t part of any of the new plans he’d been making. This changed, literally, everything.

  “You’re not ’appy.” She started to turn away, and he took hold of her shoulder, pulling her back to him.

  “I’m happy, Mae, so happy. I’m just . . . surprised. But happy surprised. Ecstatic surprised!” He smiled to prove it and kissed her freckled nose. “This is amazing, Mae. We made a baby!”

  My mother is going to kill me.

  3

  Sienna

  “So, how was Cheyenne?”

  I look up from the sink, a handful of dripping silverware in my hands, and stare at Beck while my heart spins in my chest. How does she know about my appointment? “What?”

  Beck pulls her perfect eyebrows together. “Didn’t you pick up a saddle in Cheyenne this week?”

  I exhale slowly and look away from her now-curious expression. I focus on the sink full of dishes left over from my birthday dinner, which Aunt Lottie, Beck’s mom, hosted tonight. “Oh, yeah, it was good.” I extol the virtues of the saddle while I put the silverware into the dishwasher. I haven’t thought about the saddle even once since I put it in the barn two days ago.

  “I’ll have to come see it once you get it fixed up,” Beck says, joining me at the sink. I volunteered for dishes because I’m all but coming out of my skin tonight. The doctor’s office hasn’t called with the results of my biopsy, and my anxiety is growing by the hour. Does a longer wait mean bad news? Like, they ran the tests a second time to make sure? I’ve been reading personal accounts of breast cancer survivors online. They are terrifying.

  “I’ll let you know when the saddle is ready for your shameless praise,” I say, leaving out that it might be a while before I fix it up. Or never. Silence descends, and I panic a little because I can feel Beck watching me, wondering at my odd reaction and avoidance of eye contact. If anyone can break this shell I’ve tried to put up, it’s Beck, but if I tell her it will become a wildfire out of control.

  Officially, Beck and I are cousins—second, once removed—but she’s also been my best friend for most of my life. Her closest sibling is seventeen years older than her, and she’s only two yea
rs older than me. We’ve grown up together. She lived in town and I was out on the flats, but we danced in the same dance classes and joined roping club the same year. I took to heeling and goat tying in junior rodeo while she dominated barrel racing—always the more glamorous girl’s event. There are more pictures of my childhood with her in them than without, and our lives were supposed to continue their parallel course after high school. Here we are, though, and she’s got two kids and I’ve got none. She’s got a marriage that’s working, and I’ve lived apart from Tyson for almost half a year. She fits in everywhere she goes, and I fit nowhere anymore, except maybe with Daddy at the ranch. I’ve always belonged with Dad.

  “Thank you for the cake,” I say, trying to present a “free and easy” mood. I’ve thanked her twice already, but she doesn’t remind me.

  “You know I love an excuse to bake your mom’s cake,” she says, then knocks me with her shoulder. “And I happen to think your birthday is a pretty good thing to celebrate.”

  Mom’s chocolate cake has been part of every birthday I can remember. Aunt Lottie made it when I was growing up, and then Beck started making it for me when we were teenagers. Two years ago, when I couldn’t make it home for my usual spring visit during which we always celebrate my birthday with the family, Beck overnighted a frozen birthday cake to me in Chicago, perfectly thawed by the time it arrived. I was working full time to save up for IVF treatments and called Beck with blubbering thanks; she always knows just the thing. It took Tyson and me a week to eat the whole cake, and I didn’t regret a single bite even though I was supposed to be watching my sugar preparatory to the egg harvesting we did a few weeks later. I still tell myself that one cake couldn’t have made a difference, but after dissecting every move I made, it continues to be one of the things I narrow my eyes at and wonder, Was it you?

  Beck and I chat while we fill the dishwasher and then start washing the bigger pans and dishes by hand. We can hear the other adults talking in the living room. Uncle Rich is on the city council this year and keeps us up to date on what’s happening in Lusk politics, such as they are. Beck’s brother—that seventeen-years-older-than-her sibling—Malachi just accepted a job offer that that will be taking him and his family to Sioux Falls next month. He’ll be the third of Uncle Rich and Aunt Lottie’s kids to leave Lusk. Aunt Lottie got teary when the topic came up at dinner. Used to be that Grandma Dee would be right there in the fray of these after-dinner discussions, usually offering a contrary opinion to Uncle Rich. I’ve been missing her lately. Not that I ever didn’t miss her, but it’s been different this last week. Maybe because I want someone to be strong for me, and if Grandma Dee was anything, it was strong. Without her, I’m the strong one in the family, and the thought makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Grandma Dee was always getting after me to toughen up. I wish I’d done a better job of that. If I were tough enough, then surely I wouldn’t be feeling so unsteady.

  I realize the kitchen has gone quiet right before Beck asks, “Are you okay?”

  I smile wider and look up at her with my most innocent expression. “Yeah, just thinking about all the baby cows that will be dropping soon.” This is a flimsy excuse, because we’re still ten days out. We plan our gestational calendars to the day and therefore expect our first calves on the first day of April. There’s always a chance of calves coming a few days early, but usually they start late if anything. Once it starts, ho boy. Hang on to your hat and hope your horse is hardy.

  “How many do you expect this year?”

  “Ninety-three,” I say.

  “It’s gonna be a busy few weeks, then,” Beck says.

  “Yeah, but it looks like it will be good weather—at least this first week out. Thank goodness for that.”

  “No doubt,” Beck says. Her contribution to the ranch is helping with the meals at branding, which brings out any Reynold willing and able to dig in. We brand over Memorial Day weekend, and it’s the Reynold family version of a reunion. “Did you hear from Tyson today? For your birthday.”

  I scrub at a pan with some burnt gravy on the bottom. “Yeah, he texted,” I say easily. He’d tried to call, but I’d let it go to voice mail. Then he sent a happy birthday GIF. I responded with a smiley face emoji a few hours later when I knew he’d be asleep. London is seven hours ahead of Wyoming time. I blame a lot of our difficulty communicating on time zones.

  “Huh.” There is something calculating in Beck’s tone that causes me to give her a sideways look and wish I’d told her that I’d talked to Ty for an hour. I’m lying about so many other things that a fake phone call wouldn’t be too much to add onto the heap. “Did you hear that Reggie’s back in town?” Beck says.

  I turn my attention to the dishes and keep my tone dry. “I hadn’t.”

  “Just yesterday. He’s doing really great on the circuit.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.” Reggie is cousins with Beck’s husband, which shouldn’t mean that much in a town where cousins abound, but somehow it does. He’s a year older than me, but we did 4-H together, roping club, and dated for a few months in high school—I was his date for his junior prom, and you’d think we’d gotten engaged that night, the way everyone just expected we’d be the next couple who had wedding photos within three years of their junior prom pictures. The summer after that junior prom, Tyson’s family moved in. I’m still not sure if Reggie and I had already started to fizzle before he came, but we definitely fizzled afterward. Reggie was working his uncle’s ranch outside of Cody that summer, so he wasn’t around much. Tyson, on the other hand, was new and exciting and needed someone to show him around our one-horse town. Every day. For two months. I broke up with Reggie via a text message, and he started dating Courtney Miser as soon as he got home—he knew I couldn’t stand Courtney Miser. But I didn’t really care. No one sparkled for me the way Tyson did. Reggie could have Courtney and any other girl he wanted. Somehow at seventeen years old, I knew I had Tyson. Dad said he and Mom had fallen in love like that—love at first sight.

  “We should get a group together,” Beck says. “Grab some dinner one night and catch up with the old posse.” Those of us who rodeoed had called ourselves the Lusk Posse back in high school. I’d forgotten about that but don’t smile at the memory even though it’s a happy one.

  “I’m married, Beck.” I rinse out the scrubbed-clean gravy pan and put it on one of the dishtowels we’ve laid out. Beck picks up the pan and starts to dry with one of Aunt Lottie’s days-of-the-week embroidered flour sack towels. Beck and I had matching days-of-the-week underwear when we were kids—I was religious about wearing the right pair on the right day. Beck purposely wore them out of order. Such a rebel.

  I expect her to backpedal and pretend she wasn’t making as pointed a suggestion as my response infers. She can say, “It’s only dinner” or “You’ve known Reggie all your life, I’m not suggesting you date him.”

  Instead she says, “Are you?”

  I look up sharply, and she holds my eyes. I feel the flush in my neck and move on to the next pan. She wants me to defend myself and explain more details about my current marriage situation. I should just put down the pan and drop my defenses and tell her that I think I’m done and just need the chance to tell Tyson. But I don’t tell her this because . . . well, I don’t know really. I don’t know why I haven’t told her where things are between Tyson and me long before now, except maybe I’m not ready to admit that things are so screwed up. I’m tired of well-intentioned sympathy wrapped up in words like “In God’s time” and “You just need to relax.” Those comments were made every time I came back to Lusk without a baby in my arms or in my belly. If word got out that my husband and I weren’t speaking to each other anymore and I literally could not remember the last time we had sex . . . I wasn’t ready to field the pity.

  Beck turns so that her lower back is leaning against the sink right next to me and it’s harder for me to avoid eye contact, though I manage.

  “It’s been, what, six months?”

  “Since I came back to the ranch to help Dad? Yeah.” I scrub more than I need to in order to demonstrate my focus on the work at hand. Beck can’t see that the pan is clean from her new position against the sink, so I really play it up.