The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride (25 page)

The house was crammed with more than sixty years’ worth of furniture and memories, but it was still empty when Emily pushed her way inside with a suitcase in each hand. She set them down in the living room and went straight for her grandfather’s bedroom. The hospital bed still sat beside the window and the drapes were open. The rug beside it had a few tufts of yellow hair, and there at the end was a dog food dish half-full of dry food covered in ants. She cussed all the way to the back door where she tossed the food out into the yard for the birds.

It wasn’t quite noon, but she was starving, so she went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It hadn’t been touched since she left. Mold grew on leftovers. The milk was soured and smelled horrid. She pulled off her jacket, rolled up her sleeves, and pulled the garbage can in from the utility room.

She had a container of something green in her hand when her phone rang. She tossed container and all in the trash, reached in her hip pocket, and answered on the third ring.

“You home yet?” Stacy asked. “Jeremiah is out on a case and he told me to call. Dotty is driving us both crazy.”

“I’m at Shine Canyon cleaning out the fridge. Want to come on over and help me? I’ll give you a beer as soon as the job is done. It hasn’t been touched since I left and believe me, you’ll need a beer to get the taste out of your mouth,” Emily said.

“Good enough for you, running off like that without saying good-bye to the family. I’ll let Dotty know. She’s called me six times this morning. I can’t get a damn thing done and she cries when she mentions the sticky notes. What’s that all about?” Stacy asked.

Emily explained what the refrigerator looked like when she got there, what it looked like when the kittens shredded the flapping notes, and how she’d covered the top of it with new notes before she left. “I hate good-byes. It was the best I could do,” she explained.

“Fix it so you don’t ever have to say another one and I will be calling to check on you every day. I’ve never seen Jeremiah so troubled or worried about his mama. He’s worried that she or Clarice will have a stroke over you leaving. Drink a beer for me,” Stacy said and was gone before Emily could answer.

She picked up a container of her grandfather’s favorite picante sauce with a layer of white mold on the top. “Damn, Gramps! I thought this stuff would last forever. I’ve never ever seen it go bad,” she said.

When the refrigerator was clean, she carried the trash outside to find that the cart had not been taken out to the road since she’d left. It smelled even worse than the refrigerator. Thank goodness the trash man ran on Tuesday. She made a mental note to load it up and take it out to the edge of the road before dark.

The freezer netted her one frozen pizza that she popped into the oven. While that cooked, she pulled her luggage back to the room that had been her home since she was in a crib. It felt every bit as empty as the rest of the house.

“Hey, where are you?” Taylor’s voice echoed down the hall from the living room. “Hoyt called and said that he saw your truck.”

She met him in the narrow hallway. “I’m right here. You could have at least cleaned out the refrigerator, Taylor.”

“Didn’t think about it. Been busy on my ranch and that didn’t leave a hell of a lot of time to be doing women’s jobs,” he said.

She poked him in the chest. “Women’s jobs! If we’re dividing jobs, then I guess I don’t need to haul hay or work cattle since that’s a man’s job.”

He backed up into the living room. “Hey, don’t get all pissy with me. I was just stating facts.”

She brushed away a tear and he grabbed her in a fierce hug. “Let’s start over, okay? I’m glad you came to your senses. Those were nice people but not our kind. If you need any help call me and I’ll send someone. Sorry you found a mess. We’ve been busy and I didn’t think about cleaning up.”

Not
our
kind.
The three words rattled around in her head, replaying over and over again.

“I’ll be back in a little while to help you. I promise, but I need to step out on the porch and call Melinda. She’s expecting me at her place in fifteen minutes.”

“Go. I’m fine.” She stepped back.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind staying,” Taylor said.

She pushed him toward the door. “Go. I’m a big girl and I’ve got a lot of things to think about before I start working in the house. Tell Melinda hello for me.”

“Okay.” He grinned.

“Not our kind,” she whispered when she heard his truck pull out of her driveway.

What was their kind and what was our kind? What was the difference?

“Not our kind?” she raised her voice and repeated the phrase.

The timer on the stove dinged and she opened the oven door to the smell of pepperoni, cheese, and spices. “Does our kind eat frozen pizza, Taylor? I didn’t eat it once on Lightning Ridge. Is that what makes us different?”

After she’d put away half the pizza and washed it down with a bottle of Coors beer, she picked up her purse and slammed the back door on her way out. Her daddy used to punish her when she slammed the door in anger. She had to come back inside and go out, shut it gently, and repeat the process ten times. She went back inside the house, shut the door without a sound on her way out, and said, “That’s for you, Daddy.”

***

Clarice looked across the kitchen table and said, “She wouldn’t have left all the notes if she wasn’t planning on coming home.”

Greg swallowed a baseball-sized lump when he looked at the multicolored notes on the fridge. He picked up the platter of fried chicken, put a wing and a leg on his plate, and passed it to Max. “If she’s not here Friday evening, I’m going to Happy and I’m taking Bocephus and Simba with me. And don’t throw away a single one of those notes. I’ll put them all in a boot box and put them in the attic when she’s home.”

Max chuckled. “And what good will two tomcats do?”

“She’s got to miss them, so maybe if she knows she can’t have them unless she comes home, she’ll come to her senses,” he said.

Dotty exhaled loudly. “Patience, Greg. It’s a good thing she’s doing. Right, Clarice? And besides, where did this streak come from? I do believe your words were that a ranch didn’t need a lot of sentimental shit. It needed good business sense.”

Clarice felt Dotty’s eyes on her. “Why are you looking at me?”

“Explain to him about jitters,” Dotty said.

“You explain.” Clarice blushed.

“I didn’t do it. If I had, I might not have done it, but I didn’t. You did. So explain to Greg,” Dotty said.

“You’re talkin’ in riddles, Dotty. What was it you didn’t do that you might have done?” Max asked.

Clarice kicked Dotty under the table. “Must be the effects from all that liquor that she put away all those years ago. It does fry the brain cells.”

“Don’t you kick me, woman. I’ll kick you back,” Dotty said.

“Now it’s getting interesting.” Max laid his fork down. “I’ve never see you two argue over anything.”

“Nana?” Greg asked.

Clarice glared at Dotty.

“If you don’t tell, I will. It’ll make him feel better.”

Clarice shoved a fork full of potatoes into her mouth and held her hand over her mouth when she said, “I’m not sayin’ a word.”

“Okay, then I’ll tell what happened. It was two days before her wedding date. She showed up at my house with bride jitters. I’d gotten married a couple of months before that and my husband actually had a job in those days. He was working nights at a sawmill place down in Bonham. So I was alone and here is Clarice looking like hell on my front porch, crying her eyes out.”

“Why?” Greg asked.

“Because women do that,” Dotty said. “They get scared and they worry that they’ll make the wrong decision. And Clarice was ready to call off her wedding right then and run away so her parents wouldn’t be embarrassed and she wouldn’t have to face Lester’s sorrow.”

“You understand any of that?” Max asked.

Greg shook his head.

“It must be a woman thing.”

Greg pushed back his chair. “I’m going upstairs to write a letter. She didn’t say that we couldn’t write.”

“Real letters? On paper?” Clarice asked.

“Oh, yeah. We’ve been writing to each other all month,” he said.

“I think that it’s time we talk about putting the ranch in your name,” Clarice said.

“Why now?” Greg asked. “We were talking sticky notes and letters, not deeds.”

“Because you are finally realizing that it takes more than business sense to love a ranch like you should. It becomes part of your heart and soul like a real person, and I think you have gotten to that point.”

“Just because I…” Greg started.

“Yes, just because you…” Clarice smiled. “When you open your heart to one thing, the door is open, period.”

“Hard to explain the way it works, isn’t it?” Greg said.

Clarice laid a hand on his arm. “Business requires explanation. The heart doesn’t care about that. It just knows love.”

“And pain,” Greg said.

***

Dotty handed Clarice a cup of coffee and sat down on the other end of the sofa. “I thought he’d stop worrying if he realized even his nana had to get away for a little while and figure things out.”

Clarice patted her on the knee. “I know. It’s a woman thing. I hope they have a dozen daughters and he has to deal with them. I hope at least one comes to him just before her wedding with the jitters. Then he will remember and understand.”

A grin erased all the wrinkles in Dotty’s face. “How’d they get the letters to each other? I’m the one who gets the mail, and I didn’t see any letters.”

“So they have secrets other than the attic,” Clarice said.

“They pulled the wool over our eyes,” Dotty said.

“I’m glad that I didn’t marry Marvin. If I had, we wouldn’t have this in our old age.”

“God saved the best until last, didn’t he?” Dotty grinned.

“I believe he did. Why would they write real letters when they’ve got all that texting and email stuff at their fingertips?” Clarice said.

“Wouldn’t you just love to see those letters?”

***

Emily hugged up to Greg’s back, slipped an arm around his body, and snuggled in close to him. They’d have to get up soon so that they’d be in the house before Dotty started breakfast. She hoped that Dotty would make pancakes and bacon.

“Coffee,” she whispered. “Wake up, darlin’. I need coffee.”

She inhaled deeply but didn’t get even a single whiff of anything. Not bacon or warm maple syrup or even coffee. But hey, it was a long way from the kitchen, across the backyard, and to the attic. Her eyes popped open to see the sun rising out the window. She jumped out of bed and grabbed her boots.

“Greg,” she yelled over her shoulder. He had to wake up right now so they could slip into the house before Dotty made it to the kitchen.

Then she realized that she was in her bedroom on Shine Canyon, not at Lightning Ridge. And that she’d been hugging a pillow and not Greg. She threw the boots all the way across the room and stomped her bare feet so hard that the pictures on the wall shook.

“Dammit! Dammit!” she screamed at the walls. “And I bet there isn’t coffee brewing or pancakes either.” She slapped the pillow so hard that it rolled off the bed and landed on the floor.

She pulled on a pair of socks and padded to the kitchen. The bread was molded, but there was a box of English muffins in the freezer and if she shaved the hard edges off the cream cheese, what was in the center was still good. The coffee had been kept in the fridge so it wasn’t too stale.

One second she was chewing on an English muffin and the next Taylor was in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee. He startled her so badly that she dropped her muffin and had to do some quick fumbling to catch it before it hit the floor.

“Did you knock?” She gulped.

“Why would I? I’ve never knocked on the door in my whole life.”

“Have you even been in this house since I left, other than last night for thirty seconds?”

“No, I haven’t, and don’t you be giving me any grief about last night. I told you I’d stay,” he answered. “Why would I be in the house if you weren’t here, Em? I checked on things but you are home now. Things will go back to normal.”

“I’m going to town as soon as I finish breakfast. I’m going to the cemetery and from there to Amarillo,” she said.

Normal her ass! If this was normal, she didn’t want any part of it.

“I figured you’d want to get right back into the groove of work around here. There’s pastures to be plowed, and if you’re going to have cattle, you need to go to the sale up in Amarillo tomorrow and buy a few head. Are you going to raise Angus like always or switch over to another breed? Why are you going to the cemetery?”

“Because I’m going to see Gramps. Taylor, we need to talk, since you are here. Sit down and listen to me.”

He sat down at the table and cocked his head to one side. “You aren’t home for good, are you? I had my hopes up, but you aren’t staying, are you? Well, you’re damn sure going to tell Dusty. She’s off on a three-day thing with her job, but I’m not telling her. You have to do it.”

“Taylor, you are a good man and Lord knows this ranch wouldn’t have survived without you these past years. I love you…”

He grinned.

“But…” she stammered.

“No buts. You love me like a brother and you can’t bear to move off and leave me and the rest of the family, can you?” he asked.

“I do love you like a brother, but I love Greg too. And his ranch is over there and so is his family and they’ve become like family to me and I love them and this is so damned hard. My roots are here and I want to make this work again for Gramps.”

He reached across and touched her hand. “I know, Emily. I knew when I saw you with Greg. I feel the same way about Melinda and I understand. But you can’t blame me for not wanting to let you go.”

She jerked her hand free. “You can come see me anytime you want.”

Taylor’s eyes twinkled. “And you’ll come home for some of the holidays?”

“Of course I will. But a good brother would have taken out the garbage and cleaned the fridge.”

“That’s why a good brother needs a good wife. I hate those kinds of jobs even worse than I hate cats. You didn’t bring those miserable fur balls with you, did you?”