Kent released Charlie and joined his wife in the kitchen. Charlie seemed to develop a newfound interest in me and trotted over, half of his fist in his mouth. I wondered if I was supposed to feel some surge of familial love for this little human, but mostly all I did was wave awkwardly and wonder what the hell I was supposed to say to him.

            “Do you talk yet?” I asked him.

            He didn’t reply, which I took as a no. Instead he grabbed my forearm and looked up at me plaintively.

            “What you want, little bud?” I asked, wondering what Josh would do in this situation. He’d probably get on the floor at his level and start playing with him.

            He pointed at my arm more aggressively, and I realized he was curious about my tattoos.

            “These are tattoos,” I said, twisting so that I could show off both arms. “My uncle drew on my skin with ink, see?”

            “Draw?”

            “Yeah, draw. So you do talk.”

            He ran off without warning. When he returned, he had one of those child safe Crayola markers, which he held out to me before proffering his arm.

            “Draw!”
            I chuckled. “No way, you’ll smear it everywhere.”

            He showed me the marker and demonstrated how one removed the cap, as if that’s what I couldn’t figure out. I took the marker from him and drew a little heart on his upper arm, hoping it was enough to satisfy him without pissing off his mother. He had an absurdly adorable smile, and I found myself smiling along with him.

            Fifteen minutes later, we had dinner. Zahra kept asking if I had enough food or if I wanted anything else to drink, and I kept having to insist that I was fine. Afterward she’d give me more food as if I hadn’t said anything. She was a relentless woman, I’d give her that. Kent seemed to find it all very amusing.

            “It’s called Lebanese hospitality,” he explained to me after I tried turning down her fourth offer of more kibbeh.

            “It’s called basic hospitality,” she shot back. “Americans are just bad at it.”

            “No, generally we just let people decide what they want to eat and how much.”

            “If it were up to you, we’d be feeding him Hot Pockets and Kool-Aid.”

            I laughed. “I dunno, that sounds good to me.”

            While this cheerful argument went on, Charlie babbled happily in his highchair, smearing hummus all over his face. Zahra kept having to jump up to wipe his face clean with a washcloth. It was such a cozy domestic scene, and it still felt so bizarre. I still hadn’t really come to terms with it.

            After dinner, Kent did the dishes and cleaned up while Zahra talked to me about my life in LA. I didn’t mention that I worked for a porn star, instead glossing over that bit with my usual “I work in the film industry.” It seemed strange to me that Zahra was so openly interested in me, considering I was some other woman’s son that Kent had fathered accidentally as a dumb teenager. Zahra had also opened up her home to, fed me and seemed perfectly willing to let Kent fund my trip here. Maybe all that was included in Lebanese hospitality, I don’t know.

            Zahra excused herself to put little Charlie to sleep, because he was starting to hiccup and cry. While she did that, Kent offered to give me a tour.

            The house wasn’t large, just three bedrooms and a loft area. I got the second largest bedroom, which was clearly the room where books and boxes, and Christmas shit were stored. Still, there was enough room for a twin bed, a nightstand, and a dresser, and it was pretty cozy.

            “You got a bathroom for yourself, too,” he said, flicking on the lights in a small bathroom in the hallway, which was the only non-Montana-themed room in the house and instead was pink with a seashell motif. As we headed down the hallway to the staircase, I heard Zahra in the bedroom speaking in Arabic to Charlie. I wanted to ask how the hell a Lebanese woman had ended up here in one of the whitest, most remote states in the country, but I wasn’t sure if that’d come off as rude, so I kept my mouth shut.

            We left the house and trekked down a gravel path to the barn. The inside smelled strongly of hay and horses, and in the pen at the end stood the culprits, both staring at us like they’d come to us instead of the other way around.

            “There they are,” Kent said with a grin, reaching over the metal gate to give the slim brown one a pat. The other was white with big black spots. As much as I wanted to get to know a horse, I found their size very intimidating, and unlike dogs and cats, I was unable to read their body language. Still, they seemed to like Kent, especially when he offered each of them a carrot.

            “This here is Zahra’s horse,” Kent said, slapping the neck of the brown one. “Her grandfather used to breed Arabians, so I told her I’d get her one of those. Not an easy find in Montana; almost everything is a Quarter Horse up here.”     

            I nodded, like I knew what the hell he was talking about.

            “His name’s Shazam, but we all call him Zam.” Zam stretched out his neck, digging his nose into Kent’s jacket. “I don’t have any more carrots, you pig.” With a chuckle, he gestured toward the bigger, spotted one. “That’s my Appaloosa, Saturn. I call her Fat Ass.”

            Saturn sniffed me and rubbed her whiskery lip on my hand when I extended it. When she suddenly sneezed, I nearly jumped three feet in the air, and Kent started laughing.

            “She doesn’t bite, I promise.”

            “Ugh, horse snot.” I pulled my shirt out so I could look down at the small flecks of moisture that were splattered across it. “Thanks, Fat Ass.”

            “That means she likes you. If we ride out, you’d probably be best on her. Shazam can be a little bit of a snot on the trail, so it’s best not take chances.”

            I felt my previous confidence waver. Yes, I’d grown up with romantic ideas of being a cowboy, but I hadn’t really been this close to a horse in a long time, and I was reminded of how fucking big they were.

            “Oh, and those are our goats.” Kent pointed to a gate into a pen I hadn’t even noticed at first, and two small black goats were staring at us through the grate. “We just got them for Charlie to mess around with. They’re a hoot.”

            “What are their names?”
            “Whiskey and Rum.”
            I turned to Kent with a raised eyebrow.

            “I didn’t name them,” Kent admitted, throwing up his hands. “I get a kick out of the names though.”

            I moved a little closer to Saturn, reaching over the gate to pet her neck. She turned her head to observe me, then again pushed her lips against my arm and wiggled them. I yanked it away and she jolted.

            “Like I said, they don’t bite. She’s just nuzzling you.”

            “Okay, sorry.” I reached out tentatively to pet her head, which she seemed to accept as an apology.

            “You wanna scratch her right on her withers,” Kent instructed, demonstrating with Shazam by stretching out an arm to scratch at the base of Shazam’s neck. I did the same, and soon Saturn’s lips started wiggling. Moments later she threw up her head in the air and started weaving it around like a howling dog, except without the howling. It was the funniest thing I’d seen a horse do, and I couldn’t stop giggling as she leaned into my hand. I guess she really enjoyed the scratch.

            “She’s a character,” Kent laughed, giving her cheek a stroke when I stopped scratching and Saturn dropped her head with a satisfied smack of her lips. “You two are friends now, whether you like it or not.”

            Eventually we left the barn, and Kent and I stood in the driveway watching the sun set over the majestic Montana skyline. For a moment we didn’t talk, just taking in the scene. It was so quiet here, almost as quiet as the Californian desert. It would drive me nuts, but I could see why some people liked it.

            “So, what do you think of Montana?” Kent asked.

            “It’s nice. I like it.”

            “Not Los Angeles, that’s for sure.”
            “I’m a little surprised my mom came up here. She’s always been a city girl.”

            “Yeah, ain’t that the truth. I knew the minute I saw her that she was probably from California. Californians got a look to them. Must be all that clean eating and healthy living.” He paused, looking a little sad. “Plus she looked a bit like a movie star, the way she dressed and all that. Never saw her without a perfect manicure.”

            “She’s a little more laid back now.”

            “Yeah? I haven’t seen a picture of her in…” Kent made a face. “God, who knows how long.”

            I pulled out my phone and flipped through a photo album until I found a recent photo of my mother I’d taken on a shopping trip. She’d just bought a purse with her newly disposable income and she wanted to show it off. I handed the phone over to Kent.

            He whistled, and I hope I wouldn’t have to undergo a few minutes of him thirsting after my mother. Instead he looked a little wistful, and after a long silence, he handed the phone back.

            “Well?” I asked.

            “She looks happy.”
            “She just divorced Gary, so I like to think so.”

            “Not as skinny as she used to be.” When I gave him a look, he clarified. “She used to be so fucking thin, back when I met her. She wouldn’t eat anything. Right now she looks amazing.”

            My mom didn’t really talk about her past eating disorders, even though she’d mentioned it over the years. Her mother had been a total hawk about my mom’s weight, constantly criticizing what she ate and how she took care of her body, and so my mother had internalized that to an unhealthy degree. The less she interacted with her mother, the better her relationship with food got. While I don’t think my mother would touch fast food with a six-foot-pole, she definitely had healthier eating habits these days.

            “Still looks like a movie star, if you ask me,” Kent said with a small smile. “She told me she was getting divorced. Maybe next time she’ll get it right.”
            “I hope so.” Then again, my mother tended to go for whatever waste of a man deemed her acceptable soonest, so I wouldn’t expect much. However, I had similar trash taste in men and I’d somehow come across Thad, so maybe it wasn’t hopeless.

            “I really did love her,” Kent said, crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive stance. “And I loved you. I wish… God, for over twenty years I’ve wished it had gone differently. But I had problems, and your mother got scared. I don’t blame her for leaving.”

            “You could have tried harder to stay involved,” I blurted.

            “I wanted to. Of course I wanted to. But that’s when your grandmother called, started cussing me out and telling me that she’d get all her fancy Hollywood lawyers on my ass if I tried to get partial custody. Called me white trash.” Kent rubbed the back of his neck. “Charming, that woman.”

            “Wait, seriously?” I wasn’t shocked that my grandmother had done that, just shocked I hadn’t been told about it.

            “Oh yeah. Maureen’s parents flew up here right after you were born, and it was obvious her mother hated this town and especially hated me. Maureen had come up here to escape her, but when Maureen got pregnant, I think she realized that she couldn’t do it alone. Kids are expensive, and both of us were flat broke. Her parents had money. I think they had a significant part in convincing her to ditch me and go back to Los Angeles. Maureen always struggled to stand up to her mom, and I probably didn’t help.”

            “What’s that mean?”
            “It means I have a bit of a temper, and Maureen’s mother would just constantly nag and bitch about every little thing Maureen did wrong, and it pissed me the fuck off. So I let her know how I felt, and you can imagine how well that went over.”         

            I definitely could. If there was one person who lit my fuse faster than Stupid Gary, it was my grandmother, and if it weren’t for my mom making me promise to play nice, I might have said some very choice words that would have gotten me banned from the Perkins household forever. I’d been wary about respecting Kent before, but suddenly I found myself really liking him. I kept finding out more things we had in common, like a willingness to start fights in order to protect those we deemed as vulnerable.

            “Thanks,” I said.

            “For what?”

            “For standing up for my mom.”

            Kent gave me a slightly self-conscious half-smile. “Not sure she appreciated it that much.”

            “I do though.” My mother had told me about all of Kent’s alcoholism issues and how much he’d disappointed her, but she’d never told me he was mean or abusive, so I liked to think that even she’d agree with his version of events on this one. Her mother made for an easy villain.

            “Guess we should go back inside,” Kent said, clearing his throat again. “I’m sure you’re tired after your long trip today.”