LITMIR.BIZ

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from his brow. It wasn’t easy pulling a shallow ditch, and what he and his brother were about to do was even more strenuous. Jimmy wished for the millionth time that he was back in California, sitting across from his boss, hashing out his next assignment. But his boss had asked him to take some time after Jimmy had gone over budget and still hadn’t delivered a good story on his last two assignments—a story on pandas in China and bears in Alaska

      It was probably overdue. After the death of his wife a year ago, he’d been dragging his daughter to faraway places, gathering stories and losing himself.

      But really losing six-year-old Briana.

      The grief swelled, threatening to take him to his knees. Instead of letting it consume him, Jimmy stomped his steel-toed boot on the shovel’s edge, driving it into hard dirt by a good inch. Then he did it again, and again, and again.

      Still he was mad, mad at a world that didn’t include Regina. Asthma wasn’t supposed to kill a twenty-six-year-old mother who took care of herself and carefully monitored her disease. And it certainly wasn’t supposed to kill her as she went into the bathroom to get her inhaler because she was having a little trouble breathing.

      In all, her death had taken twenty minutes. It had begun as a persistent cough when she was in bed one night. When it turned into a short, strangled intake of breath, he’d still not been concerned. This had happened before. She’d finally rolled out of bed, her face taking on the blue, pinched look he knew so well. She hated her asthma, hated that it attacked her without provocation. She’d stoically and quietly walked the length of the room—not wanting to wake Briana asleep on the other side of the wall—and gone inside the bathroom. He’d heard the sounds of the medicine cabinet door opening followed by water running and something else...her hand slapping against the counter maybe.

      Then, he’d heard her hit the ground.

      He’d been by her side in seconds, doing CPR with his cell phone on the floor beside him so he could scream for help.

      Help that had arrived too late.

      Briana had slept through the whole ordeal. He’d woken their next-door neighbor to watch his little girl while he followed the ambulance to the hospital. The next morning, he’d had to tell Briana that Mommy was gone, not coming back.

      She hadn’t believed him at first and continued to look for Regina, watching the door and the phone.

      Meanwhile, he’d numbly called the dentist office where Regina had had an appointment the next week. Then, he’d found the number of the woman in charge of Regina’s book club. Finally, he personally visited the gym where she’d taught aerobics part-time and cleaned out her locker. There he’d accidentally encountered the grieving dark-haired personal trainer who’d known Regina was married but didn’t care.

      His wife had been having an affair.

      Jimmy blamed himself. He’d been passionate about the wrong things, had been gone too much and loved too little. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Briana.

      He wouldn’t mess up love a third time.

      Still, he didn’t want his family to know how broken he was, so instead of screaming his frustration at life, he asked his brother, “Think this irrigation technique will work?”

      Danny said something under his breath.

      “Wasted effort?” Jimmy queried.

      “No, it will work.”

      Jimmy and Danny’s parents lived five miles away, just down Pioneer Road. While their dad, Mitch Murphy, ran a cattle and sheep operation, his brother Matthew—where they were working today—farmed beans, squash, corn and whatever else struck his fancy. Against his wife’s wishes, right now Matthew also rented a few acres from Ray Stone.

      The women in Jimmy’s family held long grudges.

      “Not Ray’s fault the girl ran off” was Matthew’s feeling.

      Jimmy agreed. Not Ray’s fault. It had been Jimmy’s for not being mature enough to listen to Meredith, to think things through, give her time. She’d been all of seventeen when he’d asked her to leave with him.”

      He’d thought she’d said “No, I can’t” because she didn’t want to be with him. Only later, after he’d been in school awhile, lived a little, grown up, had he realized it had been a “No, I can’t right now.”

      But it had been too late to change things by then. She’d stood up his brother at the altar and had left Gesippi. Seemed both he and Meredith had run away.

      “If you’re sure it will work,” Jimmy said after a moment, referring to the irrigation technique. Danny had been quiet for too long.

      “I’m sure the concept will work.” Danny came around the truck, a bright yellow roll of plastic ditch now on the back of his quad. “I’m just not sure if I have enough plastic.”

      Something about bright yellow stripes running down the center of cornstalks didn’t work for Jimmy. Gesippi, Arizona, was once home to the Tohono O’odham and Akimel O’odham Indians, expert crop growers who would laugh at Danny’s efforts. From the nearby Santa Catalina Mountains, to the Saguaro National Park, to every lake in between, Jimmy preferred natural beauty. Yellow plastic–striped rows of corn just didn’t do it.

      “I’m thinking,” Danny said, “that I’ll stop the quad at the end of a row and walk the plastic down.”

      “Walk?”

      “Well, more like unroll,” Danny admitted. “Maybe just the first few to get a feel of how I want it placed and how it’s going to settle.”

      “What do you need me to do?”

      “Nothing right now. I’ll anchor it on the quad. Shouldn’t be too hard to unroll.”

      “Okay, see you back at the house.”

      Jimmy could tell him that this was a two-man job. The roll would get stuck and one brother would need to run back to untangle it while the other pulled and straightened. But if Jimmy volunteered to stick around, he’d not be able to ride down the road and satisfy his curiosity about the SUV. Clearly the mysterious SUV was connected to Raymond Stone, and that both worried and relieved him. Strange how quickly Gesippi had settled around Jimmy, tapping him on the shoulder and reminding him that he could leave the small town but the small town wouldn’t leave him. He and Briana, his daughter, had only been back a week, which had been plenty long enough for Jimmy to notice that Ray’s body was weakening, his mind was somewhat confused and he was uncharacteristically grumpy.

      As they were Ray’s nearest neighbor, Jimmy’s aunt and uncle had plenty to say about Ray being alone. Mostly how lately they sometimes saw the beam of his flashlight in the middle of the night and heard him shouting in the distance. “As if he’s calling for someone or something,” Aunt Shari had said.

      He wondered if he should go over there. Jimmy didn’t care what the Stone family thought of him; he’d more than paid for his decade-old lapse in judgment. Looking over at Danny, Jimmy felt a moment’s guilt. Actually, Danny had paid more dearly. But maybe now with Danny getting married to the right girl this time, the relationship between the Stones and the Murphys would start to heal.

      Besides, Jimmy loved Ray Stone as if he was his own grandpa. The man had taught Jimmy to sit a sheep, wrestle a steer and ride a bull.

      His mind made up, Jimmy headed for his white Dodge 250 truck, brushing his hands on his shirt. He thought briefly about going inside and washing up, but if he did, Aunt Shari would either want to feed him or want to know what he was doing.

      As he approached, he noticed the brown SUV was parked in front of the house. That told Jimmy the driver was a return visitor. A stranger would have stopped just past the road.

      He parked behind the SUV as the porch door opened and a slender girl came out. No, not a girl, a woman. One he knew well. Meredith Stone, all long golden-brown hair, pink sweaters, and endless energy and smiles.

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