LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FIVE

      JAKE PULLED THE sack of dog food from his truck and leaned it against the barn. He’d heard a thing or two about Gary Norquist, but Shelby should be safe enough with Stranger at her side. He looked once more at the group by the corral, sighed deeply and got behind the wheel. Maybe she’d call him; more likely Ross and Liz would drive her to Albuquerque and make a weekend of it.

      He’d felt pretty decent riding up from Cuba and then driving from Durango. Now his head ached anew and the scrape on his cheekbone burned. He checked his watch—coming on to noon, plenty of time to reach the ranch before Lucy got home from school. At least his beat-up face would give them something to talk about for a minute or two before she left again or shut herself in her room.

      Tom and Luke would be home by suppertime. Lucy got along fine with her brothers, using them as a buffer between herself and her father. They didn’t encourage her acting ambitions, but they understood her passion to chase a dream. Weekends were the worst, with the boys on the road, but Lucy’s drama club activities and her job kept her out of the house.

      All said, Jake might as well not have a daughter. Somehow the sunny little girl who had been his and Annie’s delight had become a beautiful but sullen stranger who slept under his roof. She seemed to hold some secret grudge against him, but when he asked her outright to tell him what was wrong, she would say only, “You wouldn’t understand, and it’s too late anyway.” He’d hardly had a civil conversation with her since Annie died.

      Tire tracks in the snow led from the main road to the log ranch house, the same vehicle in and out after the snow had stopped during the night. Mike must have brought her home in his rig this morning to pick up what she needed for school. Jake’s relief shamed him—hours before he would have to deal with her. Maybe he should just give in, let her drop out of school and see how she liked making her own way in Tinsel Town.

      He gritted his teeth. She was going to graduate if he had to drive her to the high school every morning and pick her up in the afternoon. He only hoped Mike could persuade her to follow him to the University of Colorado after her senior year.

      He had just backed up to the feed shed to unload when Luke and Tom arrived in Luke’s Explorer. Luke handed Tom a pair of crutches and held the kitchen door open for him to hobble through the back door.

      A few minutes later Luke came out dressed in work clothes and rubber paddock boots. He grabbed a fifty-pound bag of cow cake from his father and slung it over his shoulder.

      “Just a deep bruise, Doc thinks,” he told Jake. “He said Tom should skip next weekend if he’s got any sense.”

      “Yeah, right.” Jake pulled another bag from the truck and turned to face Luke. “Before you ask, I put my rig in a ditch on the way home yesterday. Oscar asked if I drew Bodacious in the short round, but it looks worse than it is,” he said. “And I picked up a hitchhiker along the way—the lady horse trainer Ross Norquist ordered up for Liz’s mustangs. I dropped her off at their ranch.”

      “Hitchhiking! In March? What the—”

      “She got a ride from Albuquerque with a trucker who figured she should give him something extra for his trouble. She told him she’d rather walk.”

      Luke whistled. “Hope she knows how to handle herself. One of these days Gary Norquist needs to get the whuppin’ he deserves.”

      “Best kind of defense—she’s got a dog size of a weanling calf.”

      Luke pulled a bale of straw toward the tailgate. “What’s this for?”

      “Mulch—I thought maybe we’d try to bring the vegetable garden back.” Jake’s eyes flicked toward a weed-choked patch just south of the house. Annie had delighted in her kitchen garden. He and the kids had kept it up even when she could do no more than sit in a lawn chair and supervise. “Maybe Lucy will take an interest.”

      Luke slapped Jake’s shoulder. “Maybe, but me and Tom will keep after it if she doesn’t.” He stacked the bales beside the toolshed. “Let’s rustle up some lunch, then I’ll fix that stretch of fence past the creek. Last time I rode out that way it looked like a bull elk sat on it.”

      They kicked off their muddy boots before entering the sunlit great room. Jake’s parents had knocked out interior walls to create a living space where the family spent most of their indoor time. A fridge and a massive gas range filled one corner, a round oak table dominated the center of the room, and a scuffed leather couch faced the wide fireplace. Plants Annie had tended lovingly sat along the ledge of a wide west-facing window—geraniums, aloes, a bay laurel and a huge flowering cactus Jake had given her as a tiny plant their first Christmas together. Scarlet blossoms still clung to the cascading stems; Jake harbored an unreasonable anger it should bloom so extravagantly with Annie dead.

      Tom sat in the recliner with an ice pack draped across his left thigh. Annie had bought the chair for Jake after a cow, resentful of being separated from her calf, had landed him with five broken ribs. As she’d weakened, the chair had become her command post from which she coached Jake and the boys through simple meal prep. Now whoever needed it most used it, although Jake never sat there without sharing it with Annie’s ghost.

      Luke set an iron skillet on the range and threw in half a pound of bacon while Jake pulled eggs from the fridge.

      “Don’t scramble the eggs to rubber,” Tom said. “And toss me a fresh ice pack—this one’s thawed.”

      Luke fetched the heavy ice pack from the freezer and dropped it in his brother’s lap. “Anything else? Champagne? Couple of buckle bunnies?”

      “Hey, Doc said I should rest my leg,” Tom said. “Guess I won’t be able to stretch wire with you.”

      “Aw, stop whining for sympathy.”

      A thundering silence

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