Montana Actually by Fiona Lowe Page A

reversing out of the lot. “This place totally sucks.”
    She held back a sigh. “Honey, if you’d called any of your teachers back in Topeka a moron, you’d be on trash collection for a week instead of writing a letter.”
    “I’d rather do that.”
    And she knew he would. Writing was a form of torture for Hunter. He had a bright mind, but the messages got crossed somewhere between his head and his hand. “Well, you can put out the trash for me at the diner and write the letter.”
    “Aww, Mom, that’s so not fair.”
    “It’s more than fair,” she said, taking a left turn. “I didn’t raise you to disrespect your teachers or anyone else for that matter.”
    Hunter slumped in the seat, his bottom lip pouting and his arms crossed. “I hate this place.”
    He’d said he hated Topeka. “You like the skate park.”
    He shot her a disgruntled look. “Yeah, but you hardly ever let me go.”
    Hardly ever was every weekend and one night during the school week. She pulled into the parking space between the diner and their house and threw the gearshift into park. “If you go write the letter now, do your math and put out the trash, you’ll still have time for a quick skate before dark.”
    “I could go now and do that stuff after.”
    “Nice try, buddy, but no.”
    He glowered at her before grabbing his backpack, climbing out of the car and slamming the door behind him.
    She watched him stomp into the house, and when the screen door banged shut, she dropped her head on the steering wheel, squeezing her eyes closed. When Hunter was one, she’d thought being a single mom was hard, but this? Watching her once loving and affectionate child vanish behind a wall of irritability and unhappiness made those periods of sleepless nights and teething seem like a cakewalk. When was parenting going to get easier?
    One day you’ll understand.
The words her mother had hurled at her when she was seventeen and pregnant rumbled in her mind. She lifted her head and gazed heavenward. “I guess this is what you meant, Mom. Any tips?”
    But all she heard was the drumming sound of a woodpecker, hammering home the fact that she was on her own with this and all things, just as it had always been.
    —
    BEAU hung up his hat, pulled off his mucky boots and washed his hands at the basin in the back bathroom before entering the kitchen. Being taught how to wash his hands by Bonnie was one of the first things he remembered about arriving at Coulee Creek ranch as a bewildered five-year-old.
    Used to a tiny one-bedroom apartment, the scream of sirens and the screams of his mother, the vast space of the ranch and the bellows of the bulls had initially terrified him. Now it was the other way round. Thankfully, he didn’t have the need to go to Billings or even Seattle very often, but when he did, the noise, the crowds and the traffic made him want to leave the moment he arrived.
    He picked up the basket of chopped wood for the wood-burning stove and walked into the kitchen. It was the heartbeat of the ranch house and his favorite room. It always smelled great, and he automatically breathed in deeply as he’d done for thirty years. He stopped short. Instead of the sweet scents of cakes and cookies or the mouthwatering aromas of roasting beef and crispy potatoes, all he got was a faint tang of ammonia with a lemon chaser.
    He couldn’t remember the last time he’d come into the kitchen at this time of the afternoon not to find something cooking in or on the wood-burning stove. Bonnie fed the family as well as the seasonal ranch hands who helped out at branding and roundup time. Right now, they were building the corral for the branding weekend, and usually his mother was baking to beat the band because come Saturday, thirty or more people would be on the ranch to help. His father had sent him to check on her because she’d been expected down at the corral with the midafternoon snack for the workers.
    Bonnie was sitting at the large, scrubbed