Her hand ran across the saddle in her father's office, and she was infuriated to find dust on it. Mama's pride and joy was covered in thick layers of sandy grit; she made it her business to clear it all off, swiping over and over and over to make it clean again. The dust revealed only more dust, which revealed more dust, which gave way to dirt and thick, twisting tree roots. She looked around for something to use, a shovel or pick or any kind of tool to help her get past everything in the way, but instead, she found something else.
On Papa's desk was that old cardboard file box. What had once been white had faded a grey-beige over time, held together with peeling packing tape. It sagged to the side with the weight of its contents. The flimsy lid, creased from being bent more than once, beckoned her.
She wanted to know how such a benign object could keep her father from home so many hours a day. It was a Pandora's box of information, but she thought that the chance of hope at the bottom might not be worth releasing all the horrors in between - the things that etched dark lines under Papa's eyes and kept his gaze focused somewhere far from home.
Even after deciding to leave it be, her hand was somehow already on the lid, lifting it away. She'd expected all manner of things to come flying out, but when nothing did, she leaned over and peered into the dark.
At the shadowy bottom, darkness squirmed and writhed, all hope smothered by snakes.
\\
Maka woke forty minutes before her alarm. She felt with a certainty from intangible sources that she would be better off staying awake. She took her shower early, hoping that the corpse-like weight under her skin would ravel away in the steam, but a residual sense of foreboding only continued to drag along behind her.
She shuffled her way downstairs, navigating through the dark kitchen and needing only the glow of the pre-dawn sky to find the familiar essentials for starting the pot of coffee. And so, this was how she managed to startle Soul Evans when he came in the back door and flipped on the overhead lights.
His reaction only gave off more of the sense that today was just not going to be an easygoing day. The ranch hand froze in the doorway, hat already shading his eyes from harsh fluorescence, and Maka couldn't help but scowl at his less-than-friendly demeanor so early in the morning. Hadn't they been more or less on comfortable speaking terms after yesterday?
Well, if he wasn't going to say 'good morning', neither would she. Maka blearily poured water into the coffee maker, questioning the powers that be how on earth she had let someone who could make her so instantly irritable listen to Mama's cassette tapes. "You're up early," she said.
At this, the man seemed to recover, quietly shutting the door behind him. "...To pick up Pat," he explained. "Cept my truck ain't runnin'."
Maka paused in her scooping of fresh coffee grounds. She looked up with realization. "Oh."
"Came lookin' for you, to tell the truth."
She groaned, rolling her neck around in weary resignation. "You've already paid for gas, so you may as well," she said, dumping coffee into the filter with a tap of the scoop.
He made a noise that might have been a laugh. "What's that? Not gonna threaten to kill me?" The slight teasing drawl to his voice finally broke the awkward atmosphere since he'd flipped the lights on.
Maka gave him Suzanne Albarn's patented Look. "I think it goes without saying you know what's coming to you if so much as a paint fleck is missing."
His quirk of a smile was brief, but real enough. That hat brim dipped down in a nod. "That's better. Feels like a normal day, now."
Her mouth hurt from trying to be displeased and amused at the same time. She ended up asking if he wanted some coffee, but before he could answer, a cacophonous banging erupted outside.
Without sparing each other a glance, Soul took off for the back door to investigate while Maka hurried to the boot tray to slip on her shoes. No sooner had she sunk her heels into her black snakeskin, she heard the ranch hand shout up a storm. The clover covering the ground near the stables was slick with dew, and she slid a little in her rush to see what Soul was cussing over.
Harley pranced by, out and free, a giant plastic bucket between her teeth. As she trotted along the fence line, she purposefully smacked the bucket against each rail and post, scraping and rattling the entire way.
"You're gonna be glue you brat!" The horse had evidently felt too cooped up the past few days while her hock had been healing, and managed to escape the stables as well as let herself out of the corral. "Get your overpriced ass back here!"
Maka yawned to stifle her smile. "She needs to get back in before she breaks that scab open," she said.
Soul growled. "I know it, I know it. Where's Pat keep them ginger cookies..." He stalked off to the stables, but he got only as far as three paces before he stopped himself. "Ah, hell." Soul looked at Maka. "I still need to get Pat."
They both looked at his horse, who'd nearly manage to shatter the plastic bucket into shards, then looked back at each other.
He thumbed towards Harley. "You think you could..?"
"Like hell," Maka blurted.
Soul rubbed his face, looking apologetic. "Are you busy? Do you, uh, have to go to class or anythin'?"
Upon witnessing his attempt to grasp after what he'd noticed of her schedule, Maka's stomach took that moment to make a very efficient somersault. She immediately decided some spicy food for lunch today should stamp that circus right out.
She turned back to the house with purpose, cheeks heating for reasons she sincerely hoped weren't actual reasons and more of some type of... social allergy. "Don't worry about it," she said over her shoulder. "I'll get Pat. Go catch your 'rowdy equine', Spitfire." And she retreated too quickly to catch what he'd sputtered.
It was too early in the morning, clearly. She wasn't firing on all cylinders. On a normal day, the idea of Soul Evans actively trying to know her better through careful observation would not have caused any inkling of pleasure whatsoever. She self-prescribed a travel mug of coffee to take with her to Liz's house - it should help clean out her mental issues.
Soul was still coaxing his stubborn horse to him as Maka circled the driveway and left, all the windows of the house coming to life one by one in her rear-view mirror. The cattle guards knocked her radio on as she passed over them, and Mama's tape began to play.
Maka sipped her coffee on the smoother expanses of road between memorized potholes, and she believed she just might be feeling better. The brightening sky was chasing away the dread her dreams had given her - dreams which she could hardly recall in the first place by now. The sun peeked over the far horizon, pebbled by silhouettes of trees. And then Patricia Thompson's signature red Jeep Wrangler flew past Maka, speeding the opposite direction.
Her foot involuntarily let off the gas pedal, the truck coasting while she tried to make sense of what she had just seen: as long as she had known the woman, Maka had never seen Tina Thompson up before ten in the morning, so her driving her daughter anywhere before the sun was even fully up was both surreal and disconcerting.
The cassette tape clicked and switched sides as Maka slowly pulled off into the shoulder to make a wide u-turn on the narrow road.
\\
The spot by the front door was a place where visitors parked when they 'requested a meetin'', and was not a natural place for Pat's Jeep to be.
Maka noted that in the time spent driving halfway to Liz and Patti's house, her father had already left for work, his cruiser missing. If Papa was already gone, why would Tina have bothered to come calling? As Maka walked up the back porch steps, she saw a very occupied kitchen through the front window. The presence of multiple bodies created a quiet murmur which filtered outside, punctuated by Tsubaki's voice in higher, polite key - which wouldn't be much of an unusual thing to hear were it not a quarter after sunrise on a Monday morning.
When she let herself in through the back door, Tsubaki's strained words cleared. "I'm sure I've mentioned this already, but, as you know, the owner has already left for work-"
"You're the gee-em though, ain't you, honey? You handle all the money."
"Under his supervision, yes ma'am," Tsubaki politely answered.
Maka quietly shut the door behind her, the silence of no one turning to greet her making apparent the tenuous act everyone was putting on in the kitchen. Seated at the table was the general manager, who, though dressed, hadn't had time to put her long hair in her usual ponytail, and the dark threads clung haphazardly to her face. Across from her sat the woman in question, who'd made an overcompensated effort at looking professional for this meeting, which made her appear less like an adult and more like a young girl attempting to dress maturely but hadn't had enough practice.
At Tina's elbow sat Patti, wearing her usual clothing to muck the stalls before having to attend class, but her face was glowing in embarrassment. She studiously looked away from the table, focusing on Mitch who was starting up another fresh pot of coffee.
Seemingly oblivious to any kind of professional goings-on at the kitchen table or any kind of inconvenience Tina was causing, Blake Strickland mopped up egg yolk from his plate with a half-eaten slice of toast. He smiled brightly at the woman though she was clearly irked at his unneeded presence.
Despite the situation being anything but a casual affair, the whole outfit appeared to be deliberately carrying on with the morning. Maka sighed and toed off her boots to put back in the tray, one hand on the wall to keep her balance. She looked to the side and exchanged glances with Soul, who gave her one silent, implied warning while he dried his dishes: a slight raise and dip of his hat said beware.
Tina pressed onward. "Surely he trusts you enough to not hafta watch every little thing?"
"That's not for me to say," Tsubaki replied.
Maka pulled a mug from the cupboard and leaned on the counter next to Mitch. She grabbed a slice of buttered toast from the mountainous pile of it by the stove and held this out to Patti. "Morning, Pat," she said.
The girl wore the ghost of a smile and took the offered toast. "Mornin' Maks."
They were ignored.
"Everyone in town knows Sue Strickland," Tina said, sitting forward with her elbows on the table as if everyone in the room couldn't hear their conversation. "You're the one who's really runnin' this outfit while Sheriff Albarn's busy patrollin' and whatnot."
Maka watched a shadow pass across Tsubaki's face, a brief shimmer of anything but the calm she was presently displaying threatening to break through.
"So, I know you don't hafta call him up for every little decision. Patricia's not askin' for a million dollars, just a little advance to help her make it to next payday, you know?"
"Yer right, she ain't askin'," Blake said as he loudly scooted up and out of his chair, empty plate in his hands. Patti scrunched her eyes at that comment, visibly attempting to teleport anyplace away from the kitchen. Tina's back straightened high, frowning mouth already filled with venom to spit her indignation, but Tsubaki hurriedly interjected to thwart any incident.
"I do apologize for not talking with him about it when Pat first brought it up, but I've already told you I feel uncomfortable with making these kinds of decisions without the owner's input. I'll speak with him this evening to see what we can do."
The kitchen subtly shifted, relaxed, as Angel's End knew a dismissal from the general manager when they heard one. Blake whistled as he rinsed his dish, Mifune poured Maka a cup of coffee, and Soul made his way to the back door to get to work.
Cristina Thompson, however, either did not hear the end of the conversation, or simply could not take 'no' for an answer. A falsely-amiable laugh burst from her mouth like buckshot. "Well, you see, this evenin'? That's a little too late for us."
Patti placed her uneaten toast on the kitchen table, mouth pinched as if nauseated. Tsubaki's eyes flitted between the two Thompsons, trying to gauge whatever the hell that meant. Maka froze with her coffee mug halfway up to her lips while Blake and Mifune exchanged glances. Soul paused at the door, his hand on the knob.
Tina held her chin high. "As you may know, I am unemployed," she said matter-of-factly, with a shifting of her shoulders that challenged anyone who'd judge her for that statement, "and I am acceptin' my daughter's help to get on my feet."
Maka's hand tightened around her coffee as she watched Patti bitterly roll her eyes.
"But the bills're a little higher than normal this month? And if they don't get paid today, we'll be findin' ourselves in a bit of a situation."
She didn't like the sound of this one bit. "Pat," Maka said, "Is there gonna be some kind of troub-"
"Excuse you," Tina cut in with a glare like barbed wire. Maka bristled at being interrupted, but said nothing as she'd interrupted the conversation in the first place. What grated her most, though, was the way Patti's mother then turned her head back to Tsubaki, as if Maka wasn't even worth fully reprimanding. Incensed, she scowled, but Patti caught her attention.
The girl shook her head and mouthed a 'no', though Maka didn't know if she was answering her question or if that was her own version of beware.
"As I was sayin', that's why we're here askin' you for help. Even half a week's pay'd be fine!"
Conflict was apparent on Tsubaki's face, and the woman knew she had the attention of every pair of eyes in the kitchen - save Patti's. She sought after eye contact with the horse wrangler, but never received it. She sucked in a deep breath and let out a sigh, one hand rubbing the underside of her slowly-growing abdomen.
"I'm sorry, but this really is something that should be discussed with the owner, not just me," she said with sincerity.
All attempts at professionalism were dropped by Tina at this. "Really?" she asked, skeptical.
Patti finally turned her head towards her mother and hissed anxiously, "Would you quit, already?" but Tina paid her no attention.
"And Patricia speaks so highly of you."
Tsubaki's eyebrows shot to the ceiling, her voice bewildered just as much as offended, both. "I'm sorry?"
"What're you insinuatin'?" Blake blurted, abandoning the still-running faucet at the kitchen sink.
Cristina Thompson stood from her chair, hand slapping the table. "This is an emergency, here! Are you just gonna sit there and let-"
Maka knew the exact moment her vision bled to red. After seeing Tsubaki's polite mask fall off like peeling paint, watching Blake stride to the table and align himself at his wife's shoulder, and feeling the slight shift in the air around Mifune as his sights focused on Patti's mother, the very last straw that snapped Maka's control was Soul's wary call of her own name, which might have been his attempt to calm her down but only fanned the flame of her anger instead.
"Now wait a minute," she bellowed, slamming her coffee mug on the counter and ignoring its sloshing contents spilling over. "If you're gonna be making underhanded remarks about our manager, do you mind also telling us just what kind of 'emergency' you're in?"
With her hand still firmly pressed to the wooden table, Tina turned her head to regard Maka as one would upon finding a pebble in their boot. Her tone was sweet and heavy Southern Belle, reminiscent of her elder daughter but with enough condescension to set Maka's teeth to grinding. "I came here to have words with someone with authority, honey. So you kin butt yourself right on out of this, 'cause it ain't none of your business."
Needles rolled up her spine. Maka's mouth kept flapping despite knowing somewhere, beneath the deep fathoms of her pride, that she should probably shut it. "Regardless of my job here, I'll make it my business. If you got her into some trouble, I wanna know it, because Pat's family to us."
What the other members of the ranch might be doing or saying around her, she was completely unaware - all her focus was solely on Tina Thompson and the almost amused shake of her head, a vicious smile tugging up on one side of her mouth. "No," she said. "She ain't."
For all Maka knew, the kitchen could have been in an uproar or complete silence; the din of her boiling blood rushing through her ears was a deafening roar, and the only thing that cut through it was the whip of this woman's voice.
"What you need to understand," said Tina, "is that Patricia is an em-ploy-ee, not your sister." The words seared into Maka's bones, acid permanently etching into her marrow. "She don't live here. She's never lived here. She lives with me. She's my daughter."
Maka's jaw began to ache, her fists just itching to make contact with the Tina Thompson's smug face.
"She's my daughter and she'll do as she's told, 'cause she's a good girl. 'Cause I ain't dead."
Echoes of screeching chairs and scuffling boots vaguely made it through the haze of anger to what was left of Maka's rational consciousness. Her throat burned, hot combs dragging their teeth across her vocal chords. She didn't know what she howled - only vehemently wished it would rip Tina Thompson to shreds. It must have worked, because that woman who dared call herself anyone's mother was on the retreat, tugging Pat by the wrist and baring her teeth at the people herding her towards the front door.
But then it occurred to Maka that she didn't mean for Patti to be taken away, and in fact was the exact opposite of what she wanted. Her blind fury blanched and evaporated, and she became aware of her surroundings: of Blake's fuming face in her line of vision, of his hand tightly gripping her arm to keep her from going any further across the front porch, of physically being on the front porch despite having no recollection of passing through the door.
"The hell do you think you're doin'?" he hissed at her, while beyond him, in the driveway, Tina Thompson called at the same time, "Don't worry, Patricia will be findin' work elsewhere!"
Wait, no, what was happening!? What had she done? Panicked, Maka tried to move around Blake's roadblock of a body, and called out, "Pat?"
"We're goin'!"
Pitched high and child-like, Patti's voice cracked as she screeched, "I don't see why I gotta go anywhere with you, who weren't never around but for a blink!" She tried to twist her wrist out of Tina's hand. "Lemme go! Maks!"
Maka rushed forward to pry her away from Tina, but she was harshly yanked back by Blake. He wrestled with her a moment before she finally looked back at him, infuriated with his interference.
"Would you knock it off," he said. "Your fat mouth's made enough mess of everythin'!"
Behind him, Patti continued to call for help, but to Maka's incomprehension, no one went to her. Then Patti began to call out single names. "Sue? C'mon! Black St- Blake!" she pleaded, eyes wide as Tina ordered her to get in the Jeep.
Blake swallowed, grip never letting up on Maka's arm as he responded, "Mind your momma, Pat."
Shock splashed across the girl's face, her mouth forming around a 'what?' in silent disbelief. With minimal nudging from her mother, she melted into the passenger seat. Tina firmly shut the door, ignoring everyone from Angel's End as she marched to the driver's side.
Nothing before her eyes made a single lick of sense to Maka. This wasn't how things worked on Mama's ranch! Behind the windshield, Patti's eyes focused to the left, where Soul stood on the porch a few feet away. His eyebrows were drawn low, jaw in a tight clench.
The engine started, and Patti hurriedly cranked down the passenger window, her voice carrying over the lowering glass and through the dewy morning, ringing for any one adult to step in. "Soul, please!"
Heart in her throat, Maka realized that, through his brother and her sister, Soul and Patti had a connection outside of the ranch, and she vehemently hoped that this was a good enough reason to get anyone on this damned property to do something useful! At Patti's plea, she watched the ranch hand's entire body jerk forward, but Maka's hopes were swept away as Soul restrained himself.
Leaning partially out the window, Patti's face fell and collapsed into betrayal as Soul said, "Go on now. You'll be late for school."
Tina backed up the Jeep and drove down the driveway, Patti numbly sitting in her seat. Why was everyone standing around with their goddamn thumbs up their asses? Maka tried to yank out of Blake's grip again, but the man held her fast just the same.
"No!" she shouted at Soul, who looked at her in shock. She wanted to sink her fingers into his dumbstruck face and rip him apart. "How can you let her go!? You're like a brother to her, aren't you? You just abandoned her!" She relished the pained look bleeding into his eyes. "Why didn't you do anything?!"
"Because he's got more sense than a mule, unlike you," Blake growled, forcing her to turn back and face him squarely. "What in god's name is your problem?"
"Wait," Tsubaki said worriedly from the door frame. "Black Star-"
"Did you not hear what she said?" Maka blurted, shrill. "That-"
Blake Strickland leaned close and snarled, "You think you're the only one still hurtin'?" so fiercely it threw her heart off-balance.
Rage utterly tranquilized, she could only feel the ache of his fingers around her wrist and stutter out, "W-what?"
"We all miss her, Maka, but you just can't control yourself, can you?"
"I... I wasn't gonna stand there and let her talk about Mama like-"
"Like she was dead?" he finished, stunning her into silence. Blake huffed out an uncomfortable sigh, and there were less knives in his tone when he spoke again. "I hate that I gotta make it plain to you, but everythin' Tina Thompson said was true."
Maka would rather die than agree with him. There had been a maliciousness to everything Tina had said, an offensiveness that turned even the most factual of truths into lies, but Maka neither knew how to explain it nor properly convey why she had needed to react so violently at the mention of Suzanne. In the end, all she ended up murmuring was, "You don't understand."
"Of course I don't," he ground out, and in his face Maka saw with sudden and painful clarity something which she had never once noticed her entire life. "None of us were hers but you. I get it!"
Her stomach dropped to the earth. "Blake..."
Whatever kind of expression she had on her face only embittered him further. He shook his head angrily, changing the subject. "We're shorthanded as it is, alright? So what you gotta figure out is that the rest of us? We're still here. And if you keep tryin' to run everyone off 'cause you can't get a grip on your damned pride, then Maka, there ain't no purpose of any of us stayin' here."
Maka shied from him, burned. He let her go without any resistance, but as she turned to walk away from the house, he said, "I ain't through with you, where d'you think you're goin'?"
"I'm gonna muck the damn stalls!" she shot back, shaking voice caustically echoing along the covered porch. Maka's shoulder brushed past Soul's as she misjudged the distance between them through her burning eyes.
\\
She didn't know what to tell her father. Explaining to him that, while he had still been driving to work, she'd screamed at a grown woman, ran her out of the house, and lost Angel's End's horse wrangler while she was at it, was not something she looked forward to.
Re-incarcerated, Evans's Lipizzaner-wannabe snorted at her from the other side of a jerry-rigged gate lock. Soul's rushed handiwork shone with a length of heavy chain snapped together by a simple carabiner.
Blood still roiling with frustration and misery, Maka's first instinct was to simply shout at the stubborn horse. But having been around animals all her life, studying to become a veterinarian, and sitting through many lectures from Patti (the mere thought of whom made her gut twist) had taught her negative emotions towards a horse only brought trouble. She held her tongue.
If only she could remember that when she was around people. She'd failed that with flying colors, and now she had to take responsibility for her actions. Even if she felt such actions had been justified. At least... she thought so. The more time she had to reflect on it, the less sure she became.
Mama probably wouldn't have condoned her behavior. (But if Mama had been around to not condone anything, this morning's conversation wouldn't have happened in the first place, would it. )
Maka's throat was tired from abuse, aching from yelling and holding back tears. She felt unprepared, directionless, and altogether a failure. She longed for the guide that her mother had always been, because everything was falling from her hands, and the problem now wasn't so much the exodus but rather from whose hands it was all escaping.
She regarded the horse in front of her and sighed in resignation. Harley shifted anxiously behind the gate, having heard all the morning's commotion, and the rest of the horses in the stables were making a ruckus, feeding off the cues from their snooty ambassador and accustomed to being let out by now.
"I really don't have time for you," she growled at the stubborn mare, whose ears were focused on Maka like the twin laser sights of a gun. "How'm I supposed to clean up after you if you won't get out of the damn way?"
The horse, being a horse, didn't reply. Maka was not eager to open the gate separating them.
Luckily, just as she was coming to terms with having to go ask for help to distract the horse so she could get to mucking (which wasn't a pleasant thought as she didn't know who she could possibly face with dignity after this morning), Harley turned away from her, called by silence.
Of all the people Maka had been bracing herself to speak with, Soul Evans had not been anywhere close to the top of the list, even though it was his own horse that was hindering her work. He stood outside the corral, Harley walking away to greet him. The sun felt very warm on her cheeks, her body a statue made entirely of guilt and embarrassment.
"Go on," he said to her conspicuous silence. "I'll keep her busy, but I got work to do."
The correct response in this situation would be to thank him or, better yet, apologize first and then thank him, but the expression on his face when she'd accused him of abandoning Patti this morning was too easy to picture under that hat brim. Maka fumbled with the carabiner clip and let herself into the corral, hurrying to the stables without a second glance.
She'd never felt more of a ranch princess in her entire life.
The hand stuck around long enough for Maka to clean out Harley's stall, and disappeared into ether the moment he'd locked the horse back up again. He hadn't seemed eager to talk to her any more than she'd wanted to look him in the face.
She let her frustrations do her work for her, quickly and vigorously mucking stalls to keep abreast of the sun mercilessly arcing across the sky, but even so, the job should've been long done by now. She was working on the stall belonging to Mifune's horse (three-year-old gelding, paint, fondly named 'Cow'), when she was startled to find Soul had materialized back into existence.
He was leaning on a support beam, and she had no idea how long he'd been standing there. Maka huffed, stinging from adrenaline. She tried her hand at a snide remark, because that was what she would have done any other day, but it came out timid and petulant at best. "...Thought you had work to do," she said, redoubling her efforts at mucking the stall.
"I do," he replied behind her.
She waited for his boots to scuttle off somewhere but, alas, they remained firmly planted. Maka would have done a lot of things to avoid any confrontation with this man so soon. She settled for sifting out manure from the bedding and ignoring him as best she could while having the distinct knowledge she was being watched.
After a nerve-grating silence, Soul drawled, "Now that Pat's gone, I imagine I'll be helping with her chores, so you may as well face me when I even got my hat turned up and everythin'."
She cringed in the stall, pitching a clump into an almost-full wheelbarrow. Pride warred with reluctance as Maka attempted to not-sheepishly look over her shoulder. Soul's face was more or less neutral, bordering on uncomfortable. She wasn't sure what to make of the dark smudge high on his right cheek, but didn't let it distract her from what was undoubtedly coming.
He said, "I need a ride to town."
Maka's eyebrows dragged together. "W-what?"
Soul's eyes shifted off to one side as he idly used the post to scratch a spot between his shoulders. He sighed. "There's a part in town I need to fix my truck."
Was she relieved he hadn't brought up this morning, or aggravated that she'd braced herself for nothing? She turned away and got back to sifting through bedding. "Go ahead and take mine. You were about to earlier today - I don't care."
But he just wouldn't leave. He was making her so anxious she wished he would simply spit it out and put her out of her misery. Maka glanced once more at the hand. "...You know where the keys are."
The words were barely out of her mouth when he shot back, "Come with me," as if he'd been waiting on her eyes to meet his.
She tried to say any number of excuses to get out of it. She had work to do, or she didn't need anything from town, or she trusted him with her truck, but all that came out was a handful of stammering. Something in Soul's expression, or posture, or imploring tone of voice only made her recall a conversation from the night prior- of her admission that she didn't hate him and his skepticism of that fact.
It's this and knowing she owed him an apology that made her turn back to her work and say, "Mitch's horse gets a scoop of sweet feed." And her heart tumbled around in her chest when she heard him walk to the feed barrel.
\\
It wasn't until she buckled her seatbelt that she realized his intentions for bringing her along. Up to that point, she'd been too busy trying to figure out why he'd wanted her to go in the first place - she wasn't even driving. But it was something in the finality of her seatbelt clicking together on top of the constrictive feeling of the strap over her chest that clued her in.
This was a trap.
The ranch hand had lured her with a false sense of security by not bringing up the scene she'd caused in the kitchen, and now had her trapped in a moving vehicle so she couldn't escape when he finally could bring it up. She knew some words needed to be exchanged, and she'd planned to get around to it, but on her own terms, not corralled in a small space.
They traveled almost to the point on the road where she had turned around after Tina Thompson this morning, when he started with, "So."
Maka thunked her head on the passenger window, hoping she could somehow phase through the glass. "Get it over with," she groaned.
She heard the familiar sequence of button clicks for the truck's cruise control. "About earlier... Pretty turned around on what happened."
Her sigh fogged up the window.
"Just wantin' to get my facts straight."
"Well get to straightening."
The seat creaked a little. "First point bein': you're sore 'bout your mother and I should skip right over any mention of her."
Maka tensed, her bones aching with leftover acid.
"Second: the reason you're actin' all sullen is 'cause you know all that with Pat's momma coulda been handled different."
Bitterness seeped into her mouth as she recalled that woman standing in her family's kitchen, who'd reached out with her words, grasped the knife still embedded in Maka's heart, and given it that casual quarter-turn. Half of her insisted that her reaction had been justified, but the other half - the part of her that understood yelling only made things worse - told her she should've just held her tongue and kept her accusations for someone who did have authority, like her obvious 'daddy-sheriff'. Instead of keeping her head, she'd lost it. Instead of handling the situation like the grown woman she was, she'd thrown a tantrum.
Instead of going to the police with her fears over what kind of trouble Tina may have put Patti in, she'd made everything worse by shoving the girl even further into Tina's hands, and yelled at other people in the process.
"Thirdly," Soul went on after a silence, "...you said some ugly things to me, Maka."
She wanted to curl in on herself and rot. "I know it," she said to the window.
"But Tina is Pat's momma, so... there weren't anythin' I coulda done different from anyone else."
The apprehensiveness in his words caught her off-guard, dragging up memories of firelight glinting off silvery harmonicas. Maka looked away from the window, finding Soul watching the road as anyone with trouble on their mind watched without actually seeing.
She'd been wrong once again: this hadn't been a trap for her at all.
Without needing to grasp after what to say, the words came in an instant, knowing them to be true as she spoke them aloud. "There wasn't anything you could do, no matter what I said."
The scant buildings and faded water tower of the nearest town slowly bloomed into view. Soul took in a big, calming sigh, though it did nothing to lessen his stormy expression. He took off the cruise control and coasted to stop at a train barreling by at a crossing.
"Her face," he said, and the inflection spoke for itself.
Like counting calves in the spring and fall, her eyes automatically followed each passing train car. She realized they were both sick with heartache at the memory of Pat's broken expression as her mother drove away. "She'll forgive you. Probably not me, though." She felt rather than saw his glance. "If I had just kept my mouth shut, none of this would've happened." The end of the train sped out of sight, the crossing's signal arms slowly reaching for the sky. "There's nothing to blame you for," she murmured.
Soul didn't reply. He drove over the tracks and pulled into the town's single auto part shop, parking in the pot-hole-ridden lot and leaving the truck running. As he opened the driver's side door and slid out, he stopped for a moment to look at her, adjusting his hat over his eyes.
He said, "She still shouldn't've said that about your momma, or you. Tina, that is." And he shut the door and ambled inside the shop.
Words of gratitude still had a tendency to get caught in her throat just like everything else. She waited alone in the truck, chewing on her bottom lip and grateful for the reprieve. It gave her some time to will away the emotional flush that had overtaken her face.
When he returned, he deposited a heavy bag of various objects - small boxes, quarts of motor oil, tools, shop rags - into the empty space between them, which she transferred into her lap for safekeeping the moment he turned out of the parking lot and it had all threatened to slide to floorboard.
"Sorry," he said, but he sounded a little too amused to be sorry.
She huffed a little as she tied the handles of the bag into a knot. Then she noticed they were taking the long way home through town. "...Where are we going?"
"One more stop. Won't be but a minute."
To be accurate, he took six minutes, and he came out of it with a small paper bag rolled shut at the top.
"You wanna hold this one too?" he teased as he settled behind the wheel. Maka pursed her lips and took the bag from his hand, giving him a mild glare as she settled it next to her on the seat and kept her hand securely around it.
He turned up the volume on her radio a little and began the trip home. No more attempts at conversation were started by him, and Maka felt strangely at ease during the quiet drive. Mama's tape kept them company, and soon enough Soul was pulling into Maka's usual parking spot.
She was still unbuckling her seatbelt when he slowly reached over and retrieved the bag filled with auto parts from her lap. Before she realized what had just occurred, he was already out of her personal space and replacing her keys in the overhead visor. Then she saw he'd forgotten the paper bag at her side.
"Ah, don't you need this?"
Soul opened the door and exited the truck. Without looking at her, he said, "Naw, that one's yours."
Her seatbelt hissed as it retracted. "...What?" Maka opened the bag, peering into the shadows and finding a glint of blue at the bottom. She scoffed.
Soul leaned down a little to see her beneath the roofline of the truck and said, "Just keepin' my word good, Albarn." And he straightened and shut the door.
Maka watched the ranch hand climb the steps to the back porch and let himself in through the familiar door of her home. She took in the slant of the roof, the sturdy pillars, the thrown-open windows. Her hands slowly tightened around the paper bag, wishing to close the gaps between her fingers so nothing could slip between them.
At the bottom of the bag was a package of Oreos.