Page 2 of The Pieces We've Lost

Anything.

CHAPTER ONE

ellison

PRESENT DAY

We are only a couple short days away from opening night here in Houston, and the energy is electric! You can tell these folks are ready for the action youcannotfind anywhere else. This isn’t the world’s biggest rodeo for nothing, and what better place to have it than Texas?”

Voices from the Cowboy Channel droned on in the background, but I wasn’t paying attention, instead absentmindedly picking at the split ends of my hair.

That was until, “And this year also marks the fifteenth anniversary of the death of local Texas rodeo legend and former world champ—” I grabbed the remote from the coffee table in record time, snapping off the television before the host could finish his sentence. With the absence of the TV, the whir of the A/C unit was the only noise remaining in the house.

I didn’t need to be reminded of what happened fifteen years ago. I dealt with the consequences every single year, and I knew all too well the effect the sport had on my family.

I used to love rodeo. If you had asked me how I feltabout the sport at eight years old, I would have told you that one day I would be a champion just like my dad. I went to every performance with my parents. I was practically raised in the arena, and I watched the ropers and barrel racers in awe, knowing one day that would be me out there.

But then the accident happened, and my entire world split in half.

When you witness an accident like that, one with fatal consequences, you grow up fast. I knew rodeo was the reason I would never see my dad again, so I vowed to never associate myself with it in the same way he once did.

Rodeo only served as a painful reminder of how life, and everything you knew, could be ripped away in the blink of an eye.

The problem was that my mother still loved it. She still went to the one in Houston every single year, despite what had happened. And to make matters worse, she dragged me along with her—call it emotional support from her only daughter.

I slowly inhaled and exhaled, counting to ten with my eyes fixated on the popcorn ceiling in an attempt to slow down my heart rate. When it inevitably didn’t work, I swiped my hand across my forehead and headed toward the front door.

Before I could reach the door handle and free myself from the room that had suddenly gotten too stuffy for my liking, my mother came around the corner. “Everything okay, Ells?” she asked, the concern evident in her voice.

“Yeah, Mom.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I was just leaving.”

Hanna Merritt was the glue that held our familytogether. She was a ray of sunshine, the light in a world of darkness.

At least that’s what it looked like to the rest of the world. Deep down, I knew she was missing a part of herself, the other half of her heart. But she held it together like any strong woman does.

Hanna and Levi were a classic case of opposites attract. She was nurturing and patient and put others before herself, always. When my dad died, she was the one who kept everyone from going under. She didn’t allow his death to shut her down, working day in and day out to set me up for whatever future I wanted. She was selfless in that way, and sometimes I looked at her and wondered how in the world we could be related. If one thing was for certain, though, it was that we were soul-connected. You do not—cannot—go through the same thing we’ve been through and not be.

“Be safe, hon.” My mom’s tender voice broke me out of my trance.

I looked back at her over my shoulder and gave her an apathetic look, pursing my lips as my fingers grasped the doorknob.No guarantees there, Mom.I thought about the way my dad always told me he’d be safe before a rodeo and that nothing would ever happen to him.

And look where that got us.

“Right… Just going to clear my head for a while,” I muttered softly, mostly to myself, to keep me from saying what was really on my mind.

I twisted the door handle and stepped outside. Even though it was a bit overcast, I still had to pause for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the sunlight.

The Merritt family ranch sat on 150 acres of land on the perimeter of Houston. After I graduated from college,I came back home to help my mother. I was worried about her. Although we had family close by to help, I didn’t want her to be alone here.

I walked across the yard toward our barn and the large shop that my dad used to work in, taking in the panoramic views of the Texas landscape around our property. To the west were farms and ranch land that stretched for miles. To the south was Houston, and to the north were the hills where my dad was buried.

When I reached the shop, I lifted the garage door to let as much light into the large space as I could. When he wasn’t on the road for a rodeo or doing work around the ranch, my dad loved to restore old vehicles. He had done it his entire life, the skill passed down to him from his parents. Rodeo and cars were his focus before my mom came into the picture.

I made my way back through the dusty, dimly lit space, maneuvering my way around toolboxes, farm vehicles, and my dad’s old workbenches. The lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling back here had long since burned out, but I knew exactly where to find what I was looking for. Whenever I got stressed or needed to clear my head, I came out here.

My mom didn’t know about this coping mechanism—this way for me to feel closer to my dad—and I intended to keep it that way. This was just for me.

In the far-left corner of the shop, under a tarp, was my dad’s old 1965 F-100 that he started restoring right after he married my mother.

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