My Little Shadow

Chapter Fourteen: Letting Her Go

It had felt good to go back to work after I convinced myself that May was going to be fine when I returned. It felt amazing to breathe in the familiar air of the farm and feel the refreshing breeze that ran along my skin quickly.

Out here was the opposite of the mental hospital. The mental hospital was suffocating, overwhelming, and stuffy. Out here it was liberating, and freeing and there was enough land for me to do nearly anything I wanted to do without anyone watching me.

I could yell out into the sky and I doubt a soul would know about it. Without May here with me, I was left to my thoughts as I did various things that needed to be done around here including but not limited to taking a count on all of the cattle.

I spotted a calf that hadn't been there when I left. He had distinct white markings swirling in with his red fur, I don't think in all of the years that I've worked here that I've seen a calf look like him.

Instantly I was time-traveling back into the past.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Angeline's high-pitched squeal eroded my eardrums giving me no other choice than to listen to whatever she was going to say.

"Yeah, Angel?" She loved it when I called her that. She loved it out here, I was lucky that Mr. Jaded was such a relaxed boss man because I imagine someone else wouldn't have been so open to the idea of a four-year-old running all over their property.

"That cow over there!" She points to a very pregnant red Angus heifer. She was so far along that her belly poked out on either side of her. "Why is she so big?"

"Well, in a week or two she will have a calf running around out there." Angelina glanced back at me and her big brown eyes shined with a newfound excitement. Her mouth turned into a toothy smile before she glanced back out of the window to stare at the heifer.

"A baby cow!" She screamed and stuck her nose up to the window the best she could while being restrained back in her car seat. "You'll let me see it! You promise Daddy?!" 

I stare out there at that three-and-a-half-month-old calf, wishing more than anything that she could be here to see him.

"He's beautiful my Angel." 

I take one shaky exhale before continuing with my job, I was at that stage of grief where I didn't feel like I deserved to be happy ever again. Every time I got a glimpse of happiness I was reminded again that she was gone. Why should I get to smile when she never can again? Why should I get to laugh when she will forever be silent?

I was also at the point in grief where I recognize that that way of thinking isn't helping anything. Angelina hated when I was sad so why would I deny myself happiness? Why would I force myself to be something that she hated?

I look up into the multicolored sky, my truck currently in a park in the middle of the field, and I do what I have needed to do for a long time.

I screamed out. I hit the steering wheel. I let her go...

~.~.~.~.~

Mr. & Mrs. Jaded made me have an early dinner with them. I learned that they were planning a vacation to the mountains soon and they wanted me to keep an extra close eye on the place next week. Nothing too bad tended to happen out in the county but I reassured them that everything would still be standing when they returned.

So unintentionally I was returning home to May later than I wanted to, which made the call coming in from my brother a bigger inconvenience than it would have been typically.

Killian's name flashed on the screen while I was at a red light. I answered it and put it on speaker before sitting my phone back down on the center console.