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But you dream of some epiphany
Just one single glimpse of relief
To make some sense of what you’ve seen
– Taylor Swift, epiphany
She’s in the kitchen when he comes in. All tear-stained cheeks and broken skin that seem to be redder somehow in the low light of the descending sun. It makes her wonder if their conversation in the tack room did any good - if she really should be the one who’s ended up responsible for guiding him, and teaching him, and loving him. But he’s here, in dirt-covered boots and smelling like the barn, and she thinks maybe, just maybe, somewhere amongst the overwhelming mass of guilt and pain, she might’ve said the right thing. That revealing the deepest depths of herself might somehow show him that guilt and self-loathing over the past can be overcome enough to find a chasm of peace in the present.
“You hungry?” Beth asks, because without waiting for an answer, she’s already acted on a teardrop of hope from their parting words. Already rifled around in the old Foreman’s cabin for a box of cheeseburger macaroni on a silent prayer that the young man stood in the doorway might make his way up the long drive to where he believes home is. Where their family is, now that her husband’s home from Texas, and Carter, in all his adolescent glory has decided to be here too.
“You cookin’?” He asks, and a flicker of a grin dances across her lips at the true meaning of the reticence laced through his question. Sure, she’s no Gator, but she’s got to at least be better than the crap they manage to russell up down in the bunkhouse. Besides, this is a tried and tested recipe that she’s seen him devour like a horse, and she’s more than willing to remind him of the fact.
“Hamburger Helper,” She tells him, turning to lean back against the countertop, arms outstretched as her knuckles grasp onto the edge. And the glimmer of recognition in Carter’s blue eyes that swiftly greets her conjurs up so much of her husband when he accepts that he’s merely a passenger in her web of plans, that she’s reminded why she had to look away for a moment in the tack room earlier that afternoon. Why the young cowboy, with curling tendrils of shock black hair, and pain emanating from his soul sat on that damn mattress on the floor looked so much like Rip some twenty-five years ago that she truly wondered if she was taking in the son they should’ve had.
She failed Rip then. Failed herself too, she’s almost willing to admit now. But she won’t let that fate become the teenager in front of her. Not anymore. Not after all that’s gone on with her father, and now with Colby too.
“I could eat,” He says, arms wrapped protectively around his body, and she nods, sending him a reassuring smile, before reaching for a dish towel to simply distract her hands.
“Go wash up,” The parental inflections fall from her lips like they’ve been there all along, and quietly, like a small crescendo in her ear, the shackles she’s imposed on herself around mothering beg to be set freer than they ever have been, “Your room’s made up,” She adds, like it’s no other day. Really, it is.
“Thanks,” He says, and it’s quickly settled. Silently agreed that he’ll be staying in his bedroom here, and not the bunkhouse he’s chosen to frequent since Rip left for Texas, for whatever reason he’s told himself night after night.
She didn’t think much of it when he first stayed down there, eager to learn from Lloyd, keen to entrench himself in the way of life so that he could be ready to join the pack of wranglers properly upon their return from Texas. But as his footsteps creak on the wooden floorboard, quieter with each step he takes towards the stairs, she wonders if she should have questioned it more, should have pushed her husband on whether Carter was ready to go and moonlight in those rowdy and loveless lodgings that seem to be a rite of passage on this ranch. Because he’s more broken than those yahoos in the bunkhouse, more bruisable than her husband was at that age when he seemed to become a man before her own eyes; naivety is entrenched in the boy’s bones, and today’s proven that the plaster cast must be taken off carefully or else risk never letting a part of him heal at all.
But before she can give it too much more thought, the teen’s morphed into her husband, all dark locks and brooding eyes of a cowboy equally as tortured by the dark events of the morning, but perhaps more prepared to know how to move forward, now lingering in the doorway.
“Makin’ dinner,” She tells him, and she’d be more offended by the twinkle of incredulity in his eyes if she wasn’t so pleased to see him offer up some semblance of emotion. Any emotion, that doesn’t involve brooding on that sofa and festering in guilt. He’s told her he won’t allow himself to do that - that time, and her, is all he needs to look to the future, but she needs to see with her own eyes that she’s not losing her anchor to the ruthless seas of grief.
“Oh yeah?”
“Figured I’d make Carter’s favorite.”
“Honey,” He shakes his head, eyes closing briefly, “He doesn’t need a steak today.”
“Not a steak,” She frowns, heading for the oven to check on the bake bubbling away, “His favorite’s Hamburger Helper.”
“Darlin’,” Rip lets out a breath, hands on his hips as he watches the incandescent hotpot of pasta and cheese be pulled out of the cooker. He has no words for this wife of his, this magical woman who through her own strangling pain still seeks to take on other’s burdens and bury them as far away as possible.
“Go set the table,” She murmurs, dismissing whatever comment he’s intending to throw her way. She’s cooking for them, whether they like it or not, and this, she knows, is that young man’s favourite meal.
He sighs again, knowing there’s no point in fighting her. And after the sapping darkness of the day, he doesn’t have the capacity to muster any energy to even try, “Which table?” He asks, chewing on the toothpick in his mouth as the hunger-inducing smell of supper fills his nostrils. When was the last time he ate?
“Not the one I’ll be burning.”
“There ain’t enough room around the other for Kayce an’ his family.”
“They’re not eating with us,” Beth gives the food a stir, before throwing it back into the cooker with gusto and standing to look her husband in the eyes. Neither of them are oblivious to the distant tension starting to radiate between her brother and his wife, or the rage that’s started to seep out from a man who seems ready to go to war again. But it’s not their place to get involved, not their role to keep Kayce tethered to his family and Beth senses Monica is respectful enough to want to give their family the space they need too today. “It’s just us tonight,” She sends him a tender smile, reaching out to stroke his shirt, before with a small nod, he disappears off much like Carter did, to go and get ready for a meal they all need together.
The three of them soon settle around the small table in the Great Room, her husband to her right, and Carter straight across from her, around a steaming bowl of a meal she’s at least half-proud of today. She tries to focus on them, and the napkin in her lap, and not the vacant chair to her left that’s a visceral reminder of her father’s passing. Of the cobbled together family they’d somehow become that’s been blown apart, dismembered at the torso and almost allowed to bleed out at the hands of her godforsaken weasel of a brother that she’s going to—
Rip reaches out to palm her thigh under the table, and the weight of his hand is enough to remind her of the limbs they still have that can grow and heal from their own body. That these three orphans are melted together, breathing the same air, like they always will be, and that right now, being here with each other is what matters most tonight.
“This smells good, honey,” The deep timber of his voice is the next hand to scoop her into their own personal life raft and she sends him a small smile, because it does smell good - may look like it could be thrown in a pig-sty, but hell no one in this family eats with their eyes because the food’s rarely on the table long enough for anyone to get a good look at it.
“It’s Carter’s favorite,” She says, with a twinkle in her eye that only her cowboy, still chewing that damn toothpick, can tease out.
“Not sure you got much of a choice in that,” Rip mutters to the boy, pushing back his chair to stand up and serve them all a healthy dose of cheeseburger and macaroni.
“May I say grace?” Carter asks as the food’s scooped onto his plate, and whilst Rip seems to act like the request is nothing out of the ordinary, Beth feels her mouth go dry at the request. They don’t speak about God unless she’s taking a priest hostage and forcing him to marry her, or she’s sat on a roof staring out at a land that’s taken so much from her that she has no doubt it’s a physical manifestation of him. But her husband takes a seat again and looks at the young man, nodding like this is typical of their conversations down in the barn, or the bunkhouse, or out on those rolling pastures.
“You go ahead, Carter.”
The cowboy may be feeling the loss of John Dutton, but he has another man to look up to right here.
“Th-thank you,” He starts, hands resting on his cutlery and head slightly bowed. Until it goes quiet for a moment, and Beth instinctively reaches for Rip’s hand again, settling their soon-joined fingers on his thigh as she waits for what’s to come. She doesn’t know whether to say something when the silence drags on, but a light squeeze from her husband tells her to be patient; this isn’t about them right now. It’s about the boy in front of them with a puckered cheek and gouged out nose that already looks like it’s going to scar.
“For the sacrifices of others,” He finally says, “Today I’m grateful for that.”
She waits long enough to know he’s finished. That the simple echo of the words she’d shared with him in the tack room, the lesson she’d tried to impart as a result of years being eaten alive by her own guilt, is all he wants to say. When she’s confident it is, she reaches over the table, placing her free hand over his, “I’m grateful for that too.”
Rip mutters quietly, reaching out to pat Carter on the shoulder, “Me too.”
And then they eat. Three bruised souls, allowing their roots to knot together in the great trunk of the lodge. In the only room in the house that they like, in their own dining room, away from all the broken promises and false fallacies of the table that’s torn her family apart in the other. She can’t wait to burn that thing, to have it dragged out to the lawn and set on fire and see it twist up, up and away into thick smoke. This one though. This family, around this table. With scarred faces, and puckered skin, and bone-deep wounds that can only be healed through love, and forgiveness, and timeless gratitude for what they have today, and tomorrow. This epiphany of what they still have. This one they’ll all keep.