Page 84 of Falling for the Cowgirl
What was wrong with her that everyone was always abandoning her? Why didn’t anyone ever love her enough to stay?
With despair settling into all the cracks of her broken heart, she finally drifted to sleep.
She only stayed at Brody’s for one more day before moving back to the bedroom she shared with Astrid at Wyatt’s. When Wyatt carried her up the stairs and deposited her on the bed, she climbed under the covers and decided she didn’t ever want to get up.
But a few days later when Greta went into labor while everyone else was gone, Ivy had no choice but to emerge and help her sister-in-law. By the time Astrid returned with the other three children from a ride out to the inn to check on the progress of the building project, Ivy was holding a newborn babe, a little girl.
After helping to bring the tiny bundle into the world, somehow Ivy felt as though she had a connection with baby Willa. Though her chest wouldn’t stop aching from the loss of Jericho, she found a measure of comfort in taking care of the newborn, holding and cuddling her every time Greta wasn’t feeding her.
By the time July turned into August, they were all aware Willa wasn’t thriving the way she should. The baby struggled to breathe, her skin remained a shade of blue, and she grew increasingly limp and lethargic. The doctor did everything he could to help the infant, but two weeks after her birth, Willa died.
Greta and Wyatt were devastated, and Ivy did her best to lend her comfort amidst their grieving. But the loss of the baby somehow felt like another rejection. The thought was irrational, she knew. But once again, she retreated to her bed and couldn’t find the energy to get out, even though her stab wound was mostly healed.
Astrid nagged her to stop lying around. Flynn and Brody pestered her, trying to convince her to resume life. Linnea and Savannah both came to visit multiple times, soothing and bribing. All the nieces and nephews attempted to cheer her up. But Ivy couldn’t shake the melancholy.
By mid-August, she guessed Jericho had long since made it to Chicago and completed his mission in delivering Otis to prison. He’d had plenty of time to write a letter to her if he’d chosen to. But with every passing day and no word from him, the finality of his leaving only added to her despair.
“It should’ve been me, God,” she whispered as she stared at the log wall. “You should’ve taken me and not Willa.” She didn’t need to live. Her life had always been aimless, useless, restless.
At a clearing of a throat from the doorway of the bedroom, Ivy closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, as she’d taken to doing whenever anyone came up to talk to her.
A moment later, the clearing throat sounded again, this time louder.
Ivy remained motionless.
At the uneven boot thump crossing to the bed, she guessed Flynn had come to plead with her for the hundredth time. And she didn’t care. After his part in driving Jericho away, her brother could go drink pickle juice all day as far as she was concerned.
At a poke in her backside, she let out a yelp but lay motionless in her sagging mattress.
A beat of silence passed. Then the poke came again. This time harder and sharper. Enough that she cried out and shifted in a half-hearted effort to scoot beyond reach. “Cut it out and go away!”
Another jab was her only answer. And it was so painful that she growled out her frustration, tossed aside her cover, and sat up. As she turned, she found Judd—not Flynn—standing beside her bed, a cattle prod in his hand.
“What do you think you’re doin’? Trying to give me another injury?” Her voice was harsh and loud. She was being disrespectful, but suddenly she was plain mad, though she didn’t know exactly why.
Judd twirled the long stick that they sometimes used to round up cattle. “Reckon if you’re acting like a lazy cow, you need to be treated like one.” His bushy white eyebrows gathered in a scowl, and his lips pursed beneath his long, drooping white mustache.
For a second, Ivy couldn’t gather her wits. She hadn’t expected Judd, hadn’t expected a cattle prod, and certainly hadn’t expected to be called a lazy cow.
Before she could dodge the prod, he poked her again, this time in her stomach. “Past time for you to get on up and quit feeling sorry for yourself.”
The end of the prod dug hard, giving her no choice but to jump up from the bed. “C’mon, Judd! This ain’t funny.”
“I ain’t trying to be funny.” His legs were spread as though to block her from getting around him. He wasn’t a large man, but he was as wiry and tough as old leather. She’d watchedhim wrestle plenty of steers to the ground and knew she couldn’t get past him even if she tried her hardest.
She locked gazes with him, putting on her fiercest glare. In her nightgown and with her hair hanging in tangled waves over her shoulder, she guessed she looked about as menacing as a pup growling at a coyote.
He held the prod out, and the glint in his eyes told her he aimed to use it again.
She tried to take a step back, but the bed was in her way. “What’s got you all riled up?”
“I’m afeared we ain’t gonna be ready for winter, that’s what. Now let’s go. We got a heap of work ahead of us.”
Ready for winter? Heap of work? “What are you talkin’ about? You’re sounding as crazy as a bedbug.”
“We’re gettin’ to work on that ranch of yours.”
She started to shake her head, but he aimed the prod for her thigh. She jumped out of the way, but barely. “Stop! I ain’t gotta ranch.”
