Texas Homecoming

by Carolyn Brown

  “Ready?” he asked. “Need to get anything from the van or tell Dixie goodbye?”

  “I’ll drive back out here later this evening or tomorrow morning and get what I need,” Stevie said around the lump in her throat. “I hate goodbyes, and I already kissed Dixie on the nose and told her to mind her mama.”

  With his hand on her lower back, Cody ushered her out to his work truck, and opened the passenger door for her. “I made sure Tex went with Mia and Jesse this morning, or else he would have pouted when he couldn’t go with us.”

  “I wondered where he was.” Stevie would even miss the dog lying on the sofa between her and Cody. “Are you and Jesse going after your truck today?”

  “Soon as I get back,” Cody said and nodded. “I’m sure the insurance adjustor will tell me that it’s totaled. When they’ve made their decision, I’ll go shopping for another one. If you want to go along, that could be our third date.”

  “What makes you think there’ll be a third date?” Stevie asked.

  “Because the third one is the charm,” he answered as he drove around the side of the ranch house and down the lane to the road. “It’s like this. You’ve been in two serious relationships, so this will be the third one. And now you don’t have to measure me by me, because you know that I’m not perfect.”

  “Aha.” She finally smiled. “A cowboy who admits he’s less than perfect is rare.”

  “Then I’m a rare breed,” he said with a grin. “But I do have faults. I don’t do well if I have a nightmare. I like to argue and flirt, and…”

  “You love your family,” she finished for him.

  “That’s a pro, not a con,” he told her.

  “Not necessarily. What if after the third date, your family doesn’t like me, or doesn’t think I’m good enough for you? What if you had to choose between them and a woman that you really like?” she asked.

  “I’m not crossing that bridge until I come to it.” He made a left-hand turn. “Look at all the trees that have been pushed to the side. This area will take years to recover from this storm.”

  Stevie just nodded, but she was thinking of all the years it had taken her to get from the crush she had had on Cody when she was a teenager to the way she was feeling that morning. Even though they had just left the ranch behind, she already missed it and the folks living there. In a little while Cody would walk her to the door of her house, and then he’d go on about his business, and she already missed him—even more than the ranch.

  Going home to her own things and her own bed would be wonderful. But she began to mentally list all the reasons why she wished she could stay at the ranch a few more days.

  The parking lot at the local diner was full, but then this was the time of day when the old ranchers gathered for coffee every morning. Stevie’s father had had a standing date for breakfast on Saturday mornings with some of his friends when he was alive. Cody made a couple of laps around the parking lot before he found an empty space. During that brief time, Stevie remembered being up early on a Saturday morning and asking her father if she could go with him when she was about six years old.

  “No, you would be bored, sweetheart,” he had said. “We talk about politics and taxes and those kinds of things.”

  “What’s taxes?” she had asked.

  Her father had patted her on the head, and said, “You’ll find out when you are older. Now run along. Your mama has made pancakes for you.”

  “You’re awfully quiet.” Cody turned off the engine and turned to face her. “You having second thoughts about this date?”

  “Nope, just thinking about my father. When he was alive, he used to have breakfast on Saturday mornings with his buddies at this place,” she said.

  “Dad used to come here a couple of mornings a week when he was able,” Cody said. “I often wonder if he misses the times that he spent with the guys his age. He never complains, but I can see how much it peps him up when some of those older men come to visit him at the ranch.”

  “Ever think about driving him into town once a week so he could catch up with the whole bunch of them?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cody answered as he slid out of the truck. “I even offered, but he told me he didn’t want to spend time away from Mama.”

  He jogged around the front of the vehicle and opened the door for Stevie. “He said she was the most important person in his life, and he didn’t want to waste a single minute away from her side.”

  “That is so sweet.” Stevie wanted that kind of lifetime commitment.

  “Yep, it is.” Cody slung an arm around her shoulders. “It’s nice to walk beside a tall woman who can keep in step with me.”

  “Well, thank you, Dr. Cowboy, for that compliment,” she said.

  “Just stating the facts, darlin’,” he said with a broad smile as he opened the door into the diner.

  The buzz of several conversations ended the moment they walked inside the warm diner and found a booth. Old men and a few ladies over at a side table stared at them for a minute, then the whispers began, and the telephones came out. Stevie swore that she could feel the breeze off their arthritic thumbs as they sent texts to folks in Honey Grove. She would have loved to be a fly that could flit from one phone to the other, read the texts, and then make another round to check out the replies.

  The waitress came right over to the table. “Good morning. Want to start off with…oh, I just now realized that you are Cody Ryan. Mia Ryan’s uncle, right? I’m her friend Justine. I’ve missed getting to see her since the blizzard hit us.”

  “We met once when you came out to the ranch with your little boy. Matty, is it?” Cody answered and then introduced Stevie as Dr. O’Dell.

  “Just Stevie,” she said with a smile. “Glad to meet you. Mia has mentioned you.”

  “Tell her that I’ll try to get out to the ranch this next week. Now, can I get y’all some coffee or juice to start off the morning?” Justine asked. “Breakfast special this morning is two scrambled eggs, biscuit and sausage gravy, either bacon or ham, and a stack of pancakes. Or you can order from the menu.” She pointed to the single sheet of laminated paper between the salt and pepper shakers and the old-fashioned napkin holder.

  “Coffee,” Stevie said. “Black.”

  “Same, and I’ll have that special you’ve got listed right here with ham.” Cody pointed to the item on the menu.

  “Me too, only I want bacon,” Stevie said.

  “I’ll get that coffee and have your order out in a jiffy.” Justine put her order pad in her hip pocket and went back toward the kitchen.

  “I like the hamburgers here almost as much as I like their breakfast,” Stevie said. “But I’ve got to admit, the breakfast at the bunkhouse was even better.”

  “Well, thank you, ma’am. I try to keep a well-stocked kitchen and pantry. I missed bacon, eggs, and pancakes when I was in impoverished villages,” Cody said.

  Justine returned with their coffee. “Your orders will be out in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you.” Stevie picked up her mug and held it in her hands to warm them for a minute before she took the first sip. “I believe we’re supposed to talk on our first date. Tell me something about yourself.”

  “I’m a general practitioner or a family doctor, as I like to tell people. I don’t like being tied down to a nine-to-five in an office, so I decided to put in a concierge practice where I treat the patients in their homes,” he answered. “I’m drawn to women with green eyes, and I really like the gold flecks in yours.”

  “Compliments of my father.” She smiled across the table at him.

  “Your turn,” Cody said. “Etiquette for first date and all.”

  “I’m a veterinarian in a small town. I love what I do, and we have that business of being tied down to an office in common, so I take my van to my animal patients for the most part. For small animals that need spaying or neutering, I’ve turned my mother’s garage into a little clinic,” she answered.

  �
��Well, now, that’s something I didn’t know. When Dolly weans her kittens, I should make an appointment with you to have her fixed,” he said.

  Justine brought out a tray loaded with full plates and all kinds of condiments. “Here you go, folks. Y’all enjoy, and just wave me over if you need anything else.”

  “Thanks,” Cody said. “It all looks great.”

  She rushed off to wait on a man and a woman who had just come in with a couple of children. Stevie glanced out the window and noticed an SUV with an Arkansas tag. “Looks like those might be folks from out of state. If you were traveling with kids, would you stop at a local diner or find a McDonald’s?”

  “I’m not much of a fan of fast food.” Cody salted his eggs and then used pepper for his gravy.

  “Me either, except for hamburgers from Sonic.” Stevie picked up a piece of bacon with her fingers and took a bite.

  “Well, now, if we’re talking hamburgers, I’m all in for a good, old greasy Sonic burger,” he said. “That can be our fourth date. We’ll drive over to the Sonic in Bonham and order burgers, fries, and chocolate shakes.”

  “I might go out with you on the second and third date, just to get to the fourth one if you can guarantee me that,” she told him.

  “It’s a promise,” he said, and nodded.

  Stevie had her coffee refilled twice and had finished her breakfast when she finally said, “We should probably go, Cody. You’ve got a truck to rescue, and I need to clean out the refrigerator and go to the grocery store.”

  “You’re right, but this has been fun.” Cody waved at Justine and she brought the check right over. He handed her a bill, told her to keep the change, and then slid out of the booth.

  “Yes, it has and thank you,” she said.

  Cody was stopped by former patients twice before they finally made it outside, where dark clouds had begun to roll in from the southwest. They had questions about the rumors going around that he’d wrecked his truck out by Max’s ranch and had been stranded for days. Cody took time to tell them the story of the buck that was the size of an Angus bull that had a rack a bushel basket wouldn’t fit over.

  When he and Stevie made it outside, Stevie nudged him and said, “You just made their day, and they’re already on their cell phones telling everyone they know that they heard it from the horse’s mouth about that wrecked truck.”

  “No, you did,” Cody chuckled. “Now they can be the first ones to tell their wives that the gossip is real, and that we were stuck in a tack room together for four days. Should we just go on to the courthouse in Bonham right now and make an honest woman of you?”

  “Not until we have that fourth date, and I get my hamburger,” she answered.

  He settled her into the truck and drove the familiar road toward the school. Her house, which was located less than a block away, was a little two-bedroom frame house with a railing around the front porch and a small, attached garage off to one side. He parked in the gravel driveway and again got out of the truck and opened the door for her.

  “You don’t have to walk me to the door, Cody. Like I said before, you have things to do.” She picked up her bag and slid out of the truck.

  “My mama would peel the leaves off a peach tree switch and take it to me if I wasn’t a gentleman.” He tucked her free hand into his and walked up the three steps to the porch with her.

  She fished her key out of her purse and started to open the door but noticed that he was frowning. “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s water all over your porch,” he said.

  “Snow makes water when it melts,” she said with a smile and then realized that the water was coming from under the door. “Oh, no!” she gasped and hurriedly opened the door. A flood of water rushed out of the house so forceful that it splashed both of them halfway to their knees.

  “You’ve got busted pipes.” Cody was already fishing his phone from his hip pocket. “I’ll call city hall and get someone out here to turn the water off at the meter, then we’ll see what we need to do after that. We might as well sit in the truck until they get here.”

  “Look in there,” she gasped again. “It’s six inches up the walls and…”

  When he finished his call, he took her by the hand and led her out to the truck. “We can’t do one thing until the water is turned off. Then we’ll figure out the damage and what we have to do to fix it.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “But everything that was on the floor is ruined.”

  “We’ll worry about that in a few minutes. They said they were already looking at a house not far from here that got flooded, so…look, here they are now,” he said.

  Stevie’s mind ran in circles. All her mother’s things would be waterlogged. The house itself would be a mess. There was no way she could live in there for weeks—if ever.

  Two guys got out of a truck and hurried over to the meter in the front yard. One of them used a long tool to turn off the water and then yelled, “I’m so sorry you got flooded, Stevie. This isn’t unusual with the older plumbing in these homes built back in the sixties.”

  “What do I do now?” she asked.

  “Get what you can out of it. Soon as we get done a block over from you, we’ll bring a pump and suck what water we can out of the house for you. Then you just have to wait until it dries and hire someone to come see if it’s worth repairing,” he answered. “Give us half an hour to finish what we’ve got to do, and we’ll be back. We’ve got both the gas and electric companies over there with us. We’ll bring them along to turn off those utilities. You shouldn’t go inside until we do that for fear of getting shocked.”

  “Thank you,” Cody yelled and then turned to face Stevie. “I’ll take you back to the ranch. You can stay in the bunkhouse with me as long as you need to.”

  Stevie closed her eyes and gave herself thirty seconds to get over the panic, and then she said, “Back this truck up to the porch. As soon as they turn off the electricity, I’m wading in there. My clothing is hanging in the closet and should be fine, and there’s pictures on the bookcase, and…” Tears began to stream down her cheeks.

  Cody took her in his arms and held her tightly. “I’m so sorry, darlin’. I’ll help you and together we’ll load what we can in the bed of the truck. And I’m going to call Jesse. He can bring his truck, and Mia can drive Dad’s. We’ll take care of you, I promise.”

  “But your truck, and…” she stammered.

  “It’s sat in that ditch for almost a week. Another day isn’t going to matter.” Cody took a white hankie from his pocket and wiped away her tears. “I’m here for you.”

  “I can go to a hotel in Bonham,” she sniffled.

  “Oh, no, you will not.” Cody shook his head. “After a shock like this, you need family around you.”

  Yes, you do. Her mother’s voice was back in her head. Don’t worry about stuff. It can be replaced.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I don’t think I would be electrocuted,” Stevie argued as she followed him out to the truck. “The water that washed out over us didn’t shock us.”

  Cody glanced down at their wet jeans. “We should go back out to the ranch and get into dry clothes and bring rubber boots before we tackle this. Leave the door open so the guys can get in there and start pumping the water out.”

  “You are probably right,” she agreed. “I’m afraid the house is going to be like your truck, Cody. Completely totaled.”

  “How’s that?” He led her to his truck and helped her inside, where it was still warm. “It might take a while, but if the foundation is still good, it could be gutted and new drywall…”

  “It’s more than sixty years old.” Stevie’s voice sounded hollow in her own ears. “And as much as I hate to admit it, the floors have begun to slope a little. I can’t bear to lose it, though. It belonged to my grandmother and then my parents, and it’s the only house I ever lived in. I stayed in the dorms the whole time I was in college, and I lived in a small apartment when I worked a
t the clinic in Oklahoma City.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He started the engine, backed out of the driveway, and headed back to the ranch.

  “Looks to me like we’ve got a lot of bridges to cross.” She groaned when she thought about the garage. “Do you think the water would have gotten into the garage? It’s attached, but it’s on a slab instead of a pier-and-beam foundation. Mama’s got boxes and boxes stored out there, and her car is parked out there. I haven’t even started it up and driven it since she died.”

  “We’ll just have to wait and see,” Cody answered. “And, Stevie, life is full of bridges. Some we burn. Some we cross over with help from a loved one. Some we detour around. This could be a detour. You might just have to live at the ranch until it’s all fixed up again. The upside is that you can make it all yours, and maybe that will be some sort of closure about your mother’s death.”

  She sighed and wondered how many bridges she would detour around in the future. For now, she could live at the ranch, which was a blessing, but that was beginning to feel like charity.

  Her phone rang, and she was glad to see Mia’s name pop up instead of someone calling about vet services that day. She would have gone out to wherever she was needed, but she wanted a few hours for all this to fully sink in.

  “Hello,” she answered.

  “How does it feel to be home?” Mia asked.

  “Not so good right now.” Stevie’s voice cracked, but she got control of it enough to tell Mia what had happened.

  “I’m so sorry, but you can stay right here at the ranch, Stevie. If you’re tired of bunking in with Uncle Cody, you can have my room, and I’ll go stay with Nana and Poppa,” Mia said.

  “The bunkhouse is fine, and thank you,” Stevie said. “We got wet when the water rushed out of the house, so we’re on our way back to get into dry clothes.”

  “I haven’t gotten the clothes that I loaned you, so there’s stuff there, and I’ll tell Dad that we’re coming to help. He can bring his truck, and I’ll drive Nana’s SUV. We can store what’s salvageable in the corner of the barn,” Mia said.