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“Does he need to go to the doctor again?”

I shake my head.

“Then what?” She comes to the counter, grabbing a bit of crispy chicken.

“Serena,” I say. “He’s almost seventy. It’s just part of it.”

She frowns, turning away. Dad spent his whole life being a cowboy before buying up land and taking things seriously, at least for a brief period. He was in his late forties when he and Mom had me and in his fifties when they divorced. Now, Mom lives in New York with her second husband, Hugh, and we fly in to visit her once a year for a few months. It’s a brief visit, but we both have a good relationship with them. I look forward to those times, though now, with Dad not feeling good, I wonder if we’ll be able to make our visit work this year.

Sometimes, I go back and forth on if I made the right choice in staying in Wyoming after the divorce. Of course, Serena chose to live with me. We’ve always been close. I just hope that didn’t fuck up her life. I know she’s young, but sometimes, it feels like she’s spinning her tires in the mud out here in the middle of nowhere.

I stir the pasta, putting the chicken back into the pan. The oven is preheated. I throw a few breadsticks from the freezer in and set the timer.

“You mind checking the barn tonight?” I ask.

She nods. “Yeah, I’ll do it before bed.”

“I’ll get Dad upstairs.”

She puts out her fist, a little smile on her lips. I bump it with mine and give her a weak smile in return. We might be drowning, but we’re drowning together at least.

She goes upstairs while I finish cooking dinner and plate it up. Dad will eat later, right before he goes to sleep. I portion out food for our new arrival and put it on the stove in a covered pie dish. Then, we go out on the back porch and sink into the rocking chairs where Mom and Dad used to sit when we were little. Serena starts ripping apart her garlic bread, mixing the bits into her pasta. It’s a little weird, but she’s done it her whole life.

I eat, watching in the distance as the wranglers come in from their shifts. Tommy, part time cowboy, part time cook, lives in the bunkhouse with them. He’ll make their food like he does every night. Not fancy, but filling. It’s just a relief I'm not responsible for feeding fifteen grown men every morning and night on top of everything else.

“So what do you think this guy is like?” Serena asks. “The guest.”

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “But Dad knows his agent, so he must be okay.”

“What does he write again?”

I wipe my fingers on my napkin. “Country, something like that.”

“What songs has he written?”

I shrug. “I imagine that’s covered in the giant NDA we signed, but I didn’t read all the fine print.”

She’s silent, chewing, thinking. “You think he’s a douche?”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. I hear stuff online about people in the music industry.”

I laugh. “I imagine he’s got a pretty big ego.”

“He’s hot, though. I looked him up last night.”

“If you looked him up, don’t you know what he writes?”

“I was looking at his face, not his credentials. I’ve got priorities.”

I swing my stare around. “You are banned from even thinking about that. He’s here to rest, which probably means he did something bad and his agent wants things to settle down. He’s a guest, and no consorting with the guests.”

“I know, I know,” she says, spearing a bit of bread and pasta on her fork. “I get it, I do. I was just kidding.”

My eyes scan the horizon again. The wranglers have entered the bunkhouse, where they’ll start drinking soon. It’s Friday night; I’m honestly surprised they haven’t all pulled out in their trucks to hit the bars until four in the morning. Despite having to rotate weekends, they’re cowboys, and they party like they have every weekend off. Maybe that’s part of the reason why Dad’s always warned us off dating one of them. Not that it worked, in Serena’s case.

“You okay?”