Changes of Heart (22 page)

Maggie didn’t sleep that night. She spent most of her time standing next to Dancer, scratching his ears and neck and comforting him with her words. She dashed to the house every couple of hours and stood in front of the fireplace to thaw her feet and hands and drink large mugs of coffee. Tessa, cocooned in a blanket, slept peacefully on the couch, which they’d dragged closer to the fire. Ian and Danny had set out for Sarah’s home shortly before midnight when the wind began to diminish.

It had been an impossibly long and arduous day, and Maggie felt limp with fatigue. Yet, for whatever reason, her mind was flitting from thought to thought and image to image.

Why in the world did I see Ian in my mind when Danny
kissed me? What do I really know about Ian Lane? Ellie certainly likes and respects him, and that’s a strong recommendation. I like him too. He brings something with him wherever he goes—something that’s uniquely Ian. His sense of humor is wonderful, but there’s more. His eyes tell more of a story than his words do—at least about his past. The death of his wife must have been as devastating on him as Richie’s death has been on me. Is this a misery-loves-company kind of connection
?

“No,” Maggie snorted aloud.

Then what was it? There was a lot to the man that she didn’t think any of them had discovered. He had a presence to him, not because he was a minister but because of his attitude about life. He’d seen pain, and he’d come out on the other side of it, if not unscathed, then at least unbroken. And he was so interested in everything—so curious. Maggie sensed that he wanted to know people well, to be emotionally intimate with them. He cared about what people said to him as much—or more—than about what he said to them. And he seemed vulnerable too. He seemed like the type who could have his heart torn out by misplaced trust or spurned love. Maybe that was why she found herself being so careful around him, why she sometimes avoided his eyes or stepped away when she thought he was going to say something about how he felt about her. But, for that matter, was she even sure that he
did
have any feelings for her?

At about 4:00 a.m., Maggie sat on a hay bale that she’d dragged into Dancer’s stall. The colt’s eyes had finally closed.

His right side was to the stall wall and his left rear hoof rested on the floor lightly but, even so, carried some of his weight.

Dancer’s eyelids quavered for a second when what sounded like a locomotive climbing a steep grade labored by on the road outside. Maggie hurried to a front window in the barn and stared through the still-falling and swirling snow.

A line of red flashing lights atop what appeared to be a charging leviathan lumbered past, launching massive sheets of snow toward the shoulder of the road. The Coldwater Department of Roads and Snow Control was out and battling the more than five feet of snow that had fallen.

As Maggie walked back to Dancer’s stall, her legs trembled. The ache in her shoulders was now a persistent, nagging pain. Her mouth tasted of too much black coffee, and her stomach craved a decent meal—she’d had next to no food since she and the others had arrived at her farm that morning.

Dancer’s eyes had popped open at the roar and clatter of the snowplow, and now he stood awkwardly with most of his weight carried by his three good legs. As Maggie watched, he eased the hoof of the casted leg to the floor. His eyes widened at the jolt of pain he must have felt, but he kept the hoof where it was, its surface flat on the floor.

“Brave boy. Brave Dancer,” Maggie said, stroking his muzzle. The colt found the pocket of Maggie’s open jacket as she hugged his neck and nuzzled inside of it, seeking a treat.

“Tomorrow, Dancer. Tomorrow you can have all the snacks you want,” she whispered.

When the roar of the truck was gone into the night, the silence seemed louder than the diesel engine had a few moments ago. The wind was a whimper—and barely that.

The storm had been reduced to an inconvenience rather than a death threat. The sky cleared quickly, and the tormented and churning clouds that had caused all the problems began slinking away like petty thieves frightened by light.

It was over. The storm was over.

The Montana winter lumbered on like a powerful but subdued beast of burden.

With it came Christmas, a season of tears for Maggie Locke. The decorations in the windows of the stores in town, the almost omnipresent sound of Christmas carols and songs, the cheery greeting cards, all prodded painfully at Maggie.

It had been hard to tell her parents she wouldn’t see them this Christmas—but it had been necessary. Maggie knew that she’d be unable to carry on a charade of good cheer, and that she’d only step on the holiday for her mother and father. They’d understood, and if for nothing else this yuletide season, Maggie was grateful for that.

She attended the early service on Christmas Day, doing her best to force smiles at friends who greeted her but twisting a tissue to damp shreds as she sat as far back from the front as she could.

She slid out of the pew a few moments into Ian’s sermon and literally ran to her truck in the overfilled parking lot,
sobbing and gasping. The hefty
thunk
of the new door on her pickup as she slammed it closed made her wish that the door could protect her from her heart the way it protected her from the subzero temperature and the gusting wind outside the vehicle.

Danny’s truck turned into Maggie’s driveway about midday, and she watched it from her bedroom window. She stood to the side so that she wouldn’t appear in the frame if the vet should glance up toward her room. Moments later she heard a bark and then a light tapping at her kitchen door.

I could say I was asleep—that I took a sleeping pill. But this has to be hard for Danny, coming here today, particularly after I scurried out of church like such a coward this morning. He means well—I know that. And he genuinely cares about me
.

She walked from the window, stopped in front of her dresser mirror, and sighed as she looked at her image. Her eyes were red rimmed and her face blotchy. She’d been clutching a pillow—Richie’s pillow—over her head, and her hair showed it.

The tapping sounded again, this time a bit louder. Maggie ran her hands through her hair, squared her shoulders, and headed for the stairs to the kitchen.

Danny smiled when she opened the door. Sunday shoved past him and danced around Maggie; his tail swiped rapidly as he whined and patted at her legs with his forepaws. She crouched to greet the collie, and he lapped at her face, ecstatic at seeing his friend.

“I won’t say Merry Christmas, Maggie, but I had to see you today—at least for a minute.”

Maggie stood, one hand still scratching between Sunday’s ears. “It’s OK,” she said. “I’ll make some coffee. Take off your coat and sit down.” She noticed an oversized green envelope that Danny was clutching with both hands.

Maggie gave Sunday a pair of Milk-Bones and measured coffee into her pot as Danny took off his coat and sat at the kitchen table, still grasping the green envelope. Maggie turned from the stove. “What’s that?” she asked, nodding toward the envelope.

“It’s... well, it’s a little gift. It’s just something I wanted you to have. C’mon, sit down and open it.”

Maggie pulled out a chair and sat. Danny handed over the envelope. She took it from him, noted that “Maggie” was written on the front, and then tore open the glued flap. Inside was a pair of pages neatly taped together at the centers. The pages were taken from a farm implement catalog and showed a picture of an Allis-Chalmers Deluxe Small Ranch Manure Spreader.

Danny spoke rapidly, almost tripping over his words. “I got a real deal on a used one, Maggie. A customer owned it, and then his daughter got married and sold her horse. It’s in great shape, and yours is about shot. This one will be perfect.” He paused for a moment. “Umm... do you like it? It’ll be delivered tomorrow.”

Maggie looked up from the pages. “You... you got me a manure spreader for Christmas?”

“Well... yeah,” the vet admitted, his eyes beginning to show uncertainty. “I thought you’d like it.”

Maggie hadn’t laughed—really laughed, with the wonderful release that comes with such a moment—in days. She jammed her chair back and hustled to hug Danny, almost taking both of them to the floor. “I love it, Danny! I absolutely love it!” She laughed into his shoulder and neck, not unaware of the scent of his shampoo and the strength of his arms holding her in an awkward embrace. There was no thought to the kiss that followed, no careful alignment of faces, no tentative move that preceded it.

I’m safe in this guy’s arms. What could be more delightful than a man who gives a girl a manure spreader for Christmas
?

She allowed the kiss to linger for a moment and then eased to her feet. The laughter caught her again, and this time it infected Danny. It was a good moment, and a warm one.

“I have something for you too,” Maggie said, going to the dining room table. She picked up a greeting card–sized envelope and handed it to Danny. “I’ll warn you, though; it isn’t as glamorous as what you gave me.”

Danny opened the envelope and removed a twenty-dollar gift certificate in his name to Karen Campbell’s Books, the Coldwater bookstore. “This is great,” he said. “Thanks, Maggie.”

Maggie smiled. “It isn’t much.”
There’s another envelope just like yours with Ian’s name on it. And a pair more for Sarah and Tessa
. Maggie cringed inwardly as Danny turned the certificate in his hands.
These people deserve personal gifts—things
I’ve picked out for them, things that will mean something to them
. She sighed.

“What’s the matter?”

Maggie shook her head, not trusting her voice.

“Very dumb question,” Danny said quietly. “Sorry.”

Maggie swallowed hard a couple of times, avoiding Danny’s eyes. “I need some rest, Dan. OK?”

Danny stood. “Sure. I’m going to look in on Dancer. I’ll call tomorrow.” He walked to her chair and put his hand on her shoulder. He began to lean forward toward her but stopped. Instead of a kiss, he squeezed her shoulder gently. Then, in a moment, he was gone, Sunday at his heels.

Silence settled into the kitchen. Maggie sipped at her now-tepid coffee. The sun streaming in through the window onto the table brightened and then dimmed as clouds scudded past in the blue depths of the sky. Maggie’s home felt good to her at this moment—as if its furniture and scents and sounds were embracing her.

Sell out and get out, get away from all this—that’s how she’d felt a year ago today. Cut and run. But that wouldn’t have made Rich any less dead—and that was the final truth of it. There was good here, and safety, and she was just beginning to believe that again.

She picked up the pages from the farm implements catalog and looked at the pictures, noting that Danny had used scissors or a razor blade to cut the page rather than simply ripping it out, as perhaps 99 percent of males on earth would have done. The farmer on the tractor hauling
the manure spreader was dressed like a model from a Land’s End catalog. He was wearing gloves, she noticed. His hat was a perfectly creased Stetson, unmarked by sweat, weather, or animal excrement. And behind him, his farm was an Eden, with small groups of perfect trees and fencing that was more precise and straight than any real fence could ever possibly be. Although there were broad pastures beyond the tractor and spreader, there was no sign of livestock of any kind.