LITMIR.BIZ

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No time for such dalliances. Love ’em and leave ’em.”

      “Let’s see. It’s not Curly or Jimmy Martin. Who else did you see yesterday? Um. Oh, yes, Jake, but he’s not your type. He’s the right age and heaven knows good looking.”

      “Hey, Jake Hancock’s an idea.” Maude knew where Sally was heading, and she didn’t want to go there.

      “Is not. He’s too cowboy for you. Besides, if you’d have thought so, you’d have jumped his bones when your parents tried to set you up with him a couple years ago, after they moved off the ranch.”

      “And they had nothing left to do but meddle in their daughter’s life,” Maude finished for her.

      Sally tapped her chin. “There’s a man out at your ranch running Mountain High. It must be him.”

      “It isn’t and never has been my ranch.”

      “Oh, you are dodging on this one. He was in town a couple of times before you got here. I hear he’s hunky.”

      “Sally, he’s Henry’s brother,” Maude said.

      “The doctor? From Chicago?” Sally folded her arms over her chest and wrinkled her brow. “We don’t like him, do we?”

      “I’m trying not to hate him.” Maude let a flash of pain for her lost friend Henry grip her.

      “Just give me ten minutes with the man.”

      Maude laughed imagining five-foot-nothing Sally taking on Guy Daley. She’d do it, too.

      “What’s he doing on your ranch, anyway?”

      Maude started to reply, but Sally waved her off. “I know you don’t own it, but you should.”

      “Because I grew up there?”

      Sally nodded emphatically.

      “The truth is—” Maude paused.

      “What? What have you been hiding from me?”

      Maude put her chin down toward her chest and then confessed, “I could have had it.”

      “The ranch!”

      She nodded. “If I had wanted to be in debt until I was a hundred and ninety-three. The bank said as an M.D. and as a prospective long-standing member of the community we could work something out.”

      “So that’s not it.”

      “No, it’s not. I just couldn’t imagine working that hard for something…” Maude let her voice trail off. She didn’t know if she could say the words even to Sally. She barely said them to herself. She put her hands down on the table and rested her chin on them.

      “Something?” Sally prodded in a gentle tone.

      When Maude said nothing, Sally poked her on the arm. When Maude still didn’t respond, Sally poked harder.

      “Ouch.” Maude rubbed her arm that really didn’t hurt.

      Sally had squared her shoulders and made herself look like Atlas ready to shoulder the world.

      Maude chuckled. “Yeah, you don’t have any worries of your own.”

      Sally relaxed against the slat-back chair. “Well, there is the new worry I have about Lizzy hurling Oreos all over the carpet in front of the TV because she’s no doubt sitting too close, catching as much electromagnetic radiation as she can.”

      “Maybe we should go rescue her.”

      “Lizzy, sit on the couch and watch TV,” Sally called over the sound of Big Bird. Then she looked at Maude and smiled. “I can always flip the couch cushion over. Now what’s up with the ranch and how much does it have to do with one Daley brother or the other?”

      “It didn’t have anything to do with a Daley brother. At least it didn’t at the time.”

      “It had to do with…” Sally peered over the top of her glasses at Maude.

      “I didn’t want to work that hard for something that broke my heart every day.” Maude expelled a breath of frustration.

      “Amanda,” Sally said quietly.

      Maude nodded her head as she thought of the accident twenty years ago that now seemed as if it had happened yesterday. “One day I was the goofy girl with an older sister who wanted to take over from Doc Avery and the next day all I had were neighbors hovering over me not telling me a thing about what was going on.”

      “And all this time, I thought it was because you couldn’t afford it.”

      “Mom and Dad owed so much to the banks, I told them to sell it to the highest bidder.”

      “Yeah, one of those rich Coasters or some Arab sheik. I hate it when families move off the ranches.”

      “Henry was sanctimonious when he thought I’d lose my childhood home forever. He was determined I’d want it someday, so he bought it to save it from your Coasters and sheiks. Said he’d sell it to me when I was ready. He was so excited, I just couldn’t convince him I might never want the ranch. And my parents, well, they were tickled to be out from under the burden and retire to Great Falls with the nest egg Henry overpaid them. And we all knew with Amanda in a bigger town, she’d be well taken care of for the rest of her life.”

      Sally rubbed Maude’s shoulder. “Do you want the ranch now?”

      “I don’t. Too many memories. Too much work.” But as she said the words she thought of taking a dip in the swimming hole and long hikes to the hunter’s cabin.

      “Are you sure?”

      “We did have fun there.”

      The two friends sipped coffee as warm sunshine streamed between the white curtains with embroidered red tulips and fell over them like a warm blanket. Maude thought of the solace they had found in each other in grade school when they realized they each had an older sister who outshined them by, Sally had said, about a gagillion candlepower.

      “Maudie likes the enemy,” Sally singsonged softly.

      “Creep.” Maude laughed and smacked the top of the table with her hand. “I’m going back to the office where there is no one to tease me.”

      “No, you aren’t. You’re going to the hunk’s ranch to make a house call.”

      “Nothing is a secret in this town.”

      “There’s nine hundred and seventy-three of us in the entire valley besides you—no, nine hundred and seventy-four—Midge had her baby last week and, of course, we all know as much of everybody’s business as we can ferret out or make up.”

      “Can we change the subject to something that doesn’t involve me?”

      “But you came here to talk about you.”

      “I came here to sulk. You can imagine the jubilation that will break loose in this town if they find out there is a real doctor, a man doctor, in the valley.”

      Sally waggled her blond eyebrows at Maude. “Want to eat Oreos and watch Sesame Street?”

      “Yes, and then I have a house call to make.”

      Lizzy sat between them on the couch. All three wore headbands with sparkling stars on floppy stalks and ate cookies with a big yellow bird. Barney sat on the floor with his muzzle on the edge of the couch, eyes watching each cookie go from package to mouth, hoping.

      

      EARLY WILDFLOWERS greeted Maude as she drove the highway toward the ranch. At intervals a granite gray stream rollicked beside the road, and in some places rough escarpments soared high, held back by luck and prayers.

      Around many curves in the road, snowcapped mountains peeked above pine trees but never seemed to get any closer. Around others lay breathtaking drop-offs where

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