“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re weird, man. You look like a model and women are lining up for you and you haven’t had sex since when? Tell me.”
“I don’t know. Olivia, I guess.”
“What?” His voice was high. “That was five fucking years ago at least. That is not normal.”
Shaking my head, I finally laughed. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
I landed at Great Falls International Airport in the early afternoon. I had brought one small carry-on suitcase and my laptop—nothing else. When my aunt Trish pulled up to the curb, she rolled down the passenger-side window of her gray dually. I hadn’t seen her in eight years, but she looked exactly the same.
She lifted her sunglasses in a dramatic gesture and said, “Well, well, look at you, all grown up. Get in here, you handsome thing.”
Once I was inside the truck, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Hi, Aunt Trish.”
As she pulled away from the curb she shook her head, her blond curls bouncing around. “It’s been too long, dammit. I know you and your pop have been busy but we miss you out here. Your uncle Dale misses your father so much.”
“It’s been hard to get away.”
She glanced over and pursed her lips. “Is that so?”
I smiled sheepishly.
“Well, you’re here now. Redman and Bea and your uncle will be thrilled to see you.”
We drove across miles of land as the sun slowly sank toward the horizon. I looked out the passenger window toward a field and saw a few pronghorn antelope grazing.
“Stunning creatures,” I said.
“Yes, they’re gorgeous.”
“God, it’s really beautiful out here, isn’t it?”
“You’ve been trapped in that concrete jungle for too long. You’ll feel more alive out here. The clean air gets into your bloodstream.” A beatific smile etched across her face. “You’ve changed a lot since the last time I saw you.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“You’re thinner.”
“I work out.”
She chuckled. “You do that L.A. kind of workin’ out. I see those muscles, honey, but those are skinny muscles. We’re gonna beef you up out here.”
I laughed. “Okay, Aunt Trish.”
“When we get to the ranch, I’ll show you around and introduce you to the other folks we have there with us. We’re puttin’ you to work—you know that, right?” She looked over and winked.
I looked down at my smooth, hairless hands. Prized surgeon hands were not meant to shovel shit on a ranch but I smiled at her anyway. “Who lives there with you all now?”
“It’s just Redman, Bea, Dale, me, and Caleb. He’s a young guy, like you. He’s been doin’ the ranch thing most of his life. He works hard. I’d say you two will get along but Caleb can be a little, well . . . he’s a bit of the macho type, and you’re more like . . . what do they call it out there? Metrosexual?”
“What?” I laughed in surprise. “I’m not metrosexual.” Her own laugh rang out.
“Well, you look pretty well groomed to me, and aside from that mess of hair on the top of your head, it looks like you wax every inch of your body.”
“Aunt Trish!” I scolded her playfully.
“But I’m your auntie so I don’t really need to know ’bout any of that.”
After we fell into a few moments of companionable silence, she said, “Anyway, Avelina is still with us. She’s a hard worker, that girl, but she keeps to herself.”
I remembered hearing a story of a man who killed himself on the ranch. I was pretty sure that the woman my aunt spoke of was the man’s wife, but I knew very little other than that. “Avelina is the woman who . . .”
“Yes.” She stared ahead and sighed. “So young to be a widow. It’s been four years since she lost Jake.” My aunt shook her head. “Like I said, she keeps to herself, but she’ll help you with the horses. She’s extremely skilled with the animals. Not so skilled with humans anymore, though.”
“Hmm.” For the rest of the hour-and-a-half drive to the ranch, I thought about how my aunt described Avelina and wondered if I was lacking some social graces as well. Had my career taken such a hold of me that I had lost sight of why I wanted to be a heart surgeon in the first place: to help people live their lives more fully? Yet lately, I hadn’t considered my patients much at all beyond the unconscious bodies on the operating table. It took losing one, so vibrant and young, to wake me up.
“Here we are,” she said, turning the truck up a long dirt road. As we approached the barn, cabins, and main house, the ranch appeared like a photo taken right from my childhood memory. Little had changed. The ranch house had a wide wraparound porch, and sitting there in wooden rockers, the picture of cowboy nostalgia, were Bea and Redman, smiling from ear to ear.