Marilyn Mavers had a lot in life to count her blessings for. Born and raised in northern Texas, she'd met her husband Peter in high school and their long courtship lasted years until they finally married when they were twenty-two.
Her father Michael had high expectations and so Peter had to prove himself as a viable potential husband and provider before he allowed Marilyn to marry him. Peter was the fortunate heir of a cattle ranch in the Texas Panhandle, a 200 acre farm that had been in his family for generations.
But Michael knew that even with an inherited ranch Peter had to prove he had the strong work ethic needed to keep a ranch running and profitable. He'd seen several Texans inherit property and big family fortunes, only to squander it on gambling, booze and loose women.
He knew his daughter was a real diamond and deserved the best life possible. Once Peter had proven himself an excellent rancher, working seven days a week and only stopping when the sun went down, he became convinced of his worth and gave his permission for Peter to marry Marilyn.
Since then, they'd enjoyed a pretty solid marriage together, having three sons. All three boys had been raised in the rancher lifestyle and Judd, the eldest, was somewhat of a rodeo star and now twenty-one years old. Ryan was the middle child, fiercely competitive with his older brother whilst the youngest brother Liam was always trying to outdo his older brothers in any way he could. It was a classic case of sibling rivalry growing up together on Mavers Ranch, but underneath the competitiveness was a close knit family who looked after one another.
Marilyn, now in her mid forties, was pleased with how her life had turned out with Peter. She'd enjoyed being a rancher's wife and raising her three boys so much. But, as she'd hit her forties, a few cracks had began to show. The thing that had made them to successful financially and given them so much security was Peter's incredible work ethic.
Marilyn had always accepted that life on a ranch was all about the rewards of hard graft and had never complained that Peter would rise at 5am and work until dusk. Her job had always been to raise their sons and make sure Peter had a meal ready on the table for him when he got back in the house.
For years, that had been enough. But as her young boys grew into young men who had been instilled with a similar work ethic to their father, Marilyn had started to feel a little unimportant and neglected.
She still did her household duties and enjoyed cooking for them all, then sitting round the kitchen table and listening to them banter back and forth about their day.
But since hitting her forties, her sex life with Peter had become relatively non-existent. Not unlike many women in their forties, Marilyn had experienced an increase in her libido while Peter's had noticeably decreased. He'd never been the most amorous guy, with a fairly average sex drive.
It was something that Marilyn had always dealt with fairly well, feeling like she had hit the jackpot in terms of comfortable living and a stable family. Ok, Peter wasn't so interested in sex and only a mediocre lover when he did get in the mood, but he was a very hard working guy, faithful and not abusive.
This coincided with her sons hitting young manhood and no longer needing her as a mom as much. She knew this was all perfectly natural, but once she'd done her household chores for the day, she'd be sitting around gossiping with friends on the phone until it was time to fix dinner. She was never really one who enjoyed the local town gossip and always felt slightly on the outside, as their ranch was four miles from the nearest neighbor and six miles from the nearest town.
Her three sons were also going through a lot of changes and adjusting to the pressures of adult life. Peter saw his eldest son, Judd, as the natural heir to the ranch. Not only was he the oldest at 21, but he was already engaged to Nancy, a pretty blonde who he had started dating at high school, just like his father. Nancy even reminded Judd of his Mom, who was also blonde and very pretty.
He'd shown a natural inclination to ranch farming and so had unofficially become his father's favorite son. This was apparent to both Ryan and Liam, who were 19 and 18, respectively. It was typical for brothers to have a sibling rivalry with each other, but growing up together on a ranch with no one around for miles had made them both close knit and fiercely competitive with each other.
Their father saw it as healthy, a means of improving their skills that would hold them in good stead. The more he showed favour to Judd, the harder Ryan and Liam competed for his praise. As boys they would play fight for hours and whatever game they played, each one was always vying to be top dog.
But as hard as they tried, Ryan and Liam just couldn't outshine Judd in any way. He was the one his father favored, the one who was most popular with the girls in town, the one who was a budding rodeo star...a genuine cowboy. Marilyn was obviously aware of the competition between her sons but she tried to not show any favoritism herself, loving them all equally.
It would pain her to see her husband chastising Ryan and Liam for not being as good as Judd when it came to herding and then rounding up the huge amount of cattle on the ranch, something they had to do several times a year, for the cattle to get branded or to get their immunization shots.
Judd was just a born rancher, a total natural on a horse, even better than his father. Marilyn would have to make sure Ryan and Liam weren't bent out of shape by their father's tirades. They were both handsome and talented young men in their own right, it was just that Judd was a class above and it was hard for both of them to take at times.
Marilyn would love to wander out of the house in the summer, seeing her sons helping their father in the sweltering Texan heat. One particularly hot day in July she knew all three sons were hard at work building a new fence. It was so humid that, as she walked over to them with jugs of iced water, she could see they were all topless, sweat rolling down their back and beading on their tanned torsos.
They were all very fine specimens of young men and Marilyn, for the first time, found herself thinking a thought that made her blush; an uninvited thought popped into her mind, that she would have dated all three of them if she'd been their age.
As she approached with the water, she felt embarrassed by her own mind and felt relieved that only she could hear such an inappropriate thought. She just didn't know where it came from, but put it out of her mind and smiled at Ryan as he stopped pounding wood for a second.
"Looks like thirsty work so thought I'd bring y'all some ice cold water!!" she exclaimed and Ryan grinned, wiping the sweat off his brow. He was nineteen and looked like he spent half his life in the gym, but his honed pecs and biceps were all from good old fashioned manual labor. His two brothers put down their sledgehammers as they heard their mother's voice and their parched throats were grateful.
Liam took the jug straight out of his mother's hand and poured it down his bone dry throat. Water had never tasted so good and he felt immediately refreshed.
"Thanks Mom, I needed that...".
"You're welcome honey. You boys sure do work hard in the heat."
As Ryan took the jug off his brother and downed the other half, Marilyn handed the other jug to Judd, who was the most serious of the three.
"This ranch doesn't run itself, as Dad says...right guys?" he said, trying to motivate his brothers to compete with his intense and industrious work rate.
Ryan and Liam always took the bait whenever Judd goaded them and Ryan replied, "We'll keep hitting these fence poles in until it's dark"
"Damn straight" said Liam.
Marilyn shook her head, having seen this sibling rivalry going on for years. She was so proud of all her sons that she felt it wasn't necessary to be so competitive, but they were always competing even more whenever she was around. She smiled at how silly they all were, but she loved them all the same.
"I hope you boys are all wearing sunblock, the sun is unreal today..."
"Yes, Mom!" they said in perfect unison and she laughed, then walked back to the house. She felt happy to be helping them in just a small way and decided to make them a big dinner as a reward for their hard labor. Peter was away for the day, visiting a ranch thirty miles south to see if they could do business together.
With Peter not around, the three brothers could have just worked hard and called it a day at dinner. But Judd had turned it into a fierce competition and they were still there at dusk, the light barely enough to see what they were doing.
They'd been working in the blazing sun for hours yet still carried on past sunset and Marilyn was getting angry back in the house, their dinner in the oven keeping warm. Liam was feeling a little strange, he'd been lying about wearing sunblock to keep his mom happy and sunstroke was beginning to kick in, big time.
As the three boys finally headed back inside for their dinner, Ryan and Judd noticed Liam wasn't his usual ebullient self. Liam didn't want to show them any signs of weakness and was just grateful to get back indoors. Marilyn noticed he was a little taciturn as she served up dinner once they'd sat round the dining table together as always.
She was so used to her sons constantly bugging each other, the way brothers do, that Liam's quietness stood out like a sore thumb. He managed to get through most of dinner but he was starting to feel dizzy and disoriented.
He suddenly dropped his cutlery onto the plate with a harsh clatter that made Marilyn wince.
"Mom...I don't feel so good...I might not have worn enough sunblock maybe..." he said, dragging back his chair.
"Probably more like no sunblock, jackass. Now you've probably got heatstroke and that shit isn't funny...except to us!" said Judd, not known for his sympathy and compassion.
"Judd, don't be so mean to your brother! And don't curse in front of me!" exclaimed Marilyn, concerned about Liam while enjoying getting to be "Mom" again.
When Peter was home the conversation would be so typically male that inevitably she would be made to feel left out, almost invisible...except for when they wanted more food or a beer from the fridge. Without her husband around, her sons treated her more like they used to when they were boys, making her feel important and useful again.
"If you do have heatstroke, Liam, you're going to have to just sleep it off, there's no other way....I'm sure your father won't be mad at you, you've worked so hard today, too hard...."
