The Ranger

by Julia Justiss

  “And applesauce pancakes in the morning?”

  “Applesauce pancakes and bacon.”

  “Shoot, I may have to invite myself back for breakfast,” Brice said.

  “Y’all have fun, and remember, you can call me anytime,” Elaine said. “Text me some pictures of Bunny making spaghetti noodles, please!”

  “Will do. Bye, Elaine.”

  “See you tomorrow, Mommy,” Bunny said, giving her mother a hug and big kiss. “Ready, Miss Mary?”

  “So soon they abandon you,” Elaine said, with a mock sigh.

  “For homemade pasta and tomato sauce?” Brice said. “That just about does trump ‘Mommy.’”

  “Hush, now,” Mary said. “Nothing trumps Mommy. But even Mommy can lend her princess to a best friend for the night.”

  “Right. And you’re my bestest friend. You and Uncle Brice!” Bunny said, linking arms with each of them as they gave her mom a final wave goodbye and walked across the lawn to the gate leading into Mary’s garden.

  “There are bowls on the back porch. We have to pick tomatoes, basil, and oregano so we can start the sauce. Then, when it’s almost done simmering, we’ll make the noodles.”

  As Bunny ran toward the porch, Mary turned to Brice. “There’s a bowl for you too. Tomato sauce takes a lot of tomatoes. It’s labor intensive, so I always make about eight pints of sauce at once.”

  “That’s a lot of spaghetti!”

  “I use the sauce for all sorts of things—meatballs, lasagna, chicken cacciatore, salsa, to name just a few. If I want to be really industrious, I’ll can some, since the canned jars keep longer, but the spaghetti sauce for tonight will take a pint or more, and what we make today will stay tasty in the freezer for three months. I’ll easily use it up before then, so I usually skip the extra time needed to can. Did your mom not can food when you were growing up on the ranch?”

  “My stepmom wasn’t much for extra kitchen work, and we boys were busy enough on the ranch without a big garden to tend. Sure, we grew black-eyed peas and tomatoes and peppers and sometimes squash, though usually the squash bugs got that just about the time it started producing something edible. But we grew just enough for us to eat fresh.” He smiled. “Even then, we complained about having to weed the patch.”

  Picking up bowls from the porch, she walked over with him to the tomato section of the garden, where Bunny was waiting, her own bowl in hand. “Pick some of those oblong-shaped ones,” Mary said, pointing to the plant. “Only ones that are nice and red. Then some of the big ones here.”

  “You’ve got a pretty large garden—I hadn’t noticed just how large last time. Must keep you busy weeding.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said as she picked tomatoes and put them in the bowl. “I find it relaxing. And satisfying, seeing all the plants growing together in harmony. The sweet scents of the flowers, the sharp tang of herbs, the vegetative odor of grass and tomatoes and green peppers surrounding you while you work. I love it.”

  “I like flowers with vegetables,” Bunny announced. “These are pretty colors, but they smell bad.”

  “Marigolds,” Mary said. “Bugs think they smell bad, too, so they help protect the tomatoes. But the roses are pretty, and these smell good. The tomatoes protect them.”

  Brice raised his eyebrows. “Do they?”

  “Garden lore says they do, though there isn’t a lot of scientific research to back it up. But not everything has to be verified in a laboratory. Observation, experience, and intuition count too.”

  “They sure do in my job.”

  Mary frowned a little. She preferred not to remember what his job was. When he was in Whiskey River, he was off duty and never in uniform, which made it easier to forget. If she was going to enjoy his company, it was better that way.

  Shaking off that momentary irritation, she said, “Besides, flowers make the garden pretty, whether they actually help protect the plants or not. How many tomatoes do you have, Bunny?”

  “Six.”

  “Okay, we’ll need about thirty. Let’s finish picking them and then we’ll get some basil and oregano.”

  “And some roses, too? So the house will smell good?”

  “Roses, too, if you want some. You’ll need your garden gloves, though, so the thorns don’t get you.”

  “My bowl’s full,” Bunny said, handing it to Mary. “Can I get the snippers for the roses now?”

  “Sure. Don’t forget your gloves.”

  As Bunny ran off, Mary smiled. “She’s so energetic and enthusiastic. So sure the world is a wonderful place, each day a new present to be unwrapped.”

  “Children should grow up feeling that way. Loved, wanted, protected, sure the world belongs to them.”

  She sighed as a flash of memory of herself at Bunny’s age zipped into her head. Uncle Sal tossing her into the air to her squeals of delight. How she’d loved his attention . . . once. “Yes, they should enjoy that fantasy. All too soon they grow old enough to discover the world is often not at all what it seems.”

  Enjoy it before knowledge stripped away those childhood illusions to reveal the bitter truth.

  “Ah, the trick is to accept the reality of the world but not let it kill your dreams or your optimism,” Brice said.

  She swallowed hard, remembering her engagement party—she and Ian, holding hands, smiling. Before the world changed forever. “Sometimes that’s hard to do,” she said softly, looking away.

  He tipped her chin up to face him. “That’s why you have a team of friends to help.”

  A team to help. Is that what he wanted to do? Be added to the small team who supported her in Whiskey River—Elaine and Tom and Shirley?

  Did she want to add him?

  Pushing away that question for which she didn’t yet have a firm answer, she nodded. “And delights like Bunny to remind you of what the world might be like. Even if it is a fast-fading fantasy.”

  “Then you make it last as long as possible.”

  She turned away from the sympathy in his eyes that inexplicably brought tears to her own. It was foolish to think he was empathizing with her for what had happened in the past, since she’d revealed nothing. And had no plans to. At least . . . not yet.

  “I think we have enough tomatoes now.”

  He followed her to the porch, put down the colanders heavy with fruit, and went to help Bunny cut some fragrant Cinco de Mayo floribunda roses, their swirls of vivid coral-pink petals and gold stamens as attractive as the strong, old-rose scent. Then they plucked some rosemary sprigs to add to the display.

  Shedding their muddy shoes at the door, they padded into the kitchen and scrubbed the garden dirt off their hands.

  “We use boiling water to get the tomatoes ready, so I don’t want you next to the stove,” she told Bunny as she got out a vase for her flowers. “I’ll boil them for half a minute, then put them in an ice-water bath. Your job is to spoon them out of the ice water and put them on a tray for me. But if you get tired, you can work on the new puzzle I got you.”

  “I won’t get tired. I’m making tomato sauce for dinner!”

  “Okay, ready to get started?” she asked, turning on the heat under the sauce pot.

  “Ready!” Bunny called, jumping up and down.

  “As soon as the water is simmering, we can start. We’ll cook the tomatoes in the hot water and cool them in your cold water. Once they are all done, we’ll peel off the skin and you can put them in the food processor and chop them.”

  “I can peel the tomatoes as you go,” Brice offered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I may not be a gourmet cook, but I think I can handle that. It would make the process go faster, wouldn’t it?”

  He did like to be helpful. Appreciative of that, she said, “Yes, it would. There’s a compost bucket by the sink—you can put the skins in that.”

  With her three-person team set up, the work went much more quickly than when she did it alone. Bunny was delighted to play “fish the tomato
out of the water” while Brice quickly sloughed off the peels and dropped the skinned tomatoes into the bowl. In record time, they were ready for Bunny to spoon the naked tomatoes into the food processor, then press the button to chop them, after which Brice dumped the processor bowl into the sauce pot, where the chopped tomatoes began to simmer.

  “We’ll add the spices at the end, but for now, we’ll just let it cook.”

  “Can I make noodles now?”

  “We won’t need them until the sauce is almost done. How about we make something we can eat right away? You love cheese, right?”

  “Yum,” Bunny confirmed. Mary looked over to Brice, who nodded.

  “How about we make bird nests?”

  “Bird nests?” Bunny frowned. “Eat twigs and moss and stuff? Yuck!”

  “No, silly,” Mary laughed, ruffling Bunny’s hair. “We’ll make the nests out of this.” She walked to the fridge and took out the bowl of shaved Parmesan cheese, then brought it over to the worktable along with a large spoon.

  “Spoon the cheese into little nests on the baking sheet—about one large spoonful per nest, with about two inches between them,” she told Brice. “Then we’ll bake them in the oven and in ten minutes, cheese snacks!”

  Brice helped Bunny put the cheese onto the baking sheet the correct distance apart. After Mary put the trays into the oven, the smell of toasting cheese mingled with the odors of fresh-cooked tomatoes.

  “Good thing we’re making something to eat. It already smells so good, I’m starving,” Brice announced.

  “We have time before we need to start on the noodles. Who wants to play a game?”

  “Me!” Bunny cried.

  “Get out your favorite one, and I’ll get us a drink. Milk or lemonade?”

  “Milk,” Bunny said.

  “Water?” she asked Brice.

  “Please. I’m hoping for wine with the spaghetti later.”

  “Always.”

  “I’m astounded you managed to cook as much as you have thus far without any wine in your hand.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, enjoying his lighthearted teasing. “It’ll be five o’clock soon.”

  *

  The next few hours passed companionably, washing up the prep tools she would need again later, playing games with Bunny while munching on the crunchy Parmesan nests, occasionally stirring the simmering sauce, taking a walk into the garden to pick more roses, as well as vegetables to make their salad.

  While she washed the arugula and tossed it with store-bought romaine, salad greens not being amendable to growing in the heat of Texas in the early fall, Brice cut up the vegetables, fashioning the tomatoes into odd shapes and asking Bunny to guess what they were. As he had with her at the flea market, the identities he proposed—vampire, boulder, dog, horse, were so outlandishly unlike the shapes he’d made that he kept them both laughing.

  Watching him with Bunny, Mary felt something twist in her heart. He might be a lawman, a type she instinctively mistrusted, but there was something enormously appealing about a man who delighted in spending so much time entertaining a six-year-old. His patience with her, his encouragement, and the sheer joy she saw in his face as he made Bunny laugh filled her with admiration and a bittersweet melancholy.

  Ian would have been like that with our children, she thought sadly. Would she ever get over that loss?

  Then she chided herself, as she did whenever melancholy took hold. She’d survived, she had a job working with books she loved, a wonderful house, a great garden, and a kind neighbor who frequently let her borrow her precious daughter. She could walk down a street without having to look behind her, make her plans and go about her business without worrying that someone was scheming to make Uncle Sal’s little princess either a reward or a target. Papa had broken away, too, and was safe in Florida, making a new life with a new love.

  With so many blessings, it was as ungrateful as it was futile to pine for what might have been, she told herself as she checked the sauce. As Papa always said, make the best of what you have, and it will always be enough.

  Determining the sauce had simmered to perfection, she added herbs and got out the flour, olive oil, sea salt and eggs.

  “Time to make the noodles,” she announced, taking the clean processor from the dishwasher and putting it on the worktable beside Bunny. After quickly blending the flour, oil and egg mixture, she let Bunny help spread it out with the rolling pin before putting it into the attachment on her food processor. After cutting and rolling, cutting and rolling, she let Bunny feed the flattened dough layers into the pasta-cutter. She chuckled as the little girl whooped with glee when the flat rectangles separated into long, noodly strands and smiled as Brice took photos to text to Bunny’s parents.

  “We make this last because the fresh noodles only need to cook for a minute before they’re ready to eat,” she told Brice.

  “Thank heaven,” he said, groaning. “Smelling all that good food makes me so hungry I’m about to expire.”

  “Help Bunny set the table,” she said tartly. “It’ll take your mind off your imminent demise.”

  “Let’s light candles too,” Bunny said, after the cutlery and dishes were in place. “Mommy says we always have candles with a special dinner. This one’s really special ’cause I helped make all of it myself!”

  “You did, and we can’t wait to taste it,” Brice said. “Let’s fix plates, then we’ll take another pic to text to your mommy and daddy.”

  With the picture taken, the table set, the candles lit, the wine poured, and the plates arranged with noodles topped with steaming sauce and a grating of fresh Parmesan, Mary felt light . . . as if a bubble of happiness had lifted her above her workaday cares and sad memories. It was maybe the most content she’d felt since arriving in Whiskey River.

  She was inordinately pleased when, after his first bite, Brice looked over, his eyes wide. “This is fantastic! So much better than dry, store-bought pasta, it can’t even compare.”

  “Thank you, kind sir.”

  “You’re welcome, Uncle Brice,” Bunny chimed in.

  “I may have to commission you two to make fresh pasta for me once a week.”

  “Yeah! Then you’d have to come to Whiskey River once a week to get it,” Bunny said.

  “Are you not always here once a week?” Mary asked, surprised. She knew she’d seen him at least that often.

  He looked a little uncomfortable, which was odd. “Not until I started looking into . . . things on the ranch.”

  “Is that progressing?”

  “Not yet. I’ll keep plugging away. Something will develop.”

  “Just make sure you don’t reshape the facts to fit your theory,” she said with some asperity.

  He looked up, surprised and a bit indignant. “I should resent that remark. I’ll have you know I always, always let the facts shape my theory.”

  Did he? She really didn’t know how he operated. Maybe he was different from the cops she’d known. Maybe he didn’t take his foregone conclusions and try to shoehorn people to fit into them.

  In any event, she’d offended him. Pouring him a glass of wine, she said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you. Am I forgiven?”

  To her relief, he smiled. “A lady who cooks like you do and pours great wine is forgiven anything.”

  After dinner, Mary took Bunny to change into her jammies and then adjourned to the couch to have ice cream for dessert. The little girl soon faded, dozing off in the corner, hugging her stuffed bear. Nodding in her direction, Brice said, “Should I carry her off to bed?”

  “Yes. I don’t think she’s going to revive.”

  “It was a big day. She made her first Italian dinner from scratch.”

  “She did a great job too.”

  “Just as great as her teacher.” He gave her an admiring glance. “If you decide to open your own restaurant, let me know. I’ll be a backer—and a customer.”

  “I enjoy cooking when I feel like it and there’s no
timeline. There’d be too frantic a pace, running a restaurant. It would take the joy out of it.” She walked with him as he carried the little girl to the bed in the guest room and turned down the covers. He tucked Bunny in, brushing a lock of hair from her face, then kissed her on the forehead. “She sure is a darling.”

  “That she is,” Mary whispered, holding back the tears, brought back once again to the moment the doctors had told her she’d lost her baby. That it was unlikely she’d ever have another. You have this time with Bunny. It will be enough. You’ll make it enough.

  When they walked back out to the living room, Brice remained standing, not returning to the couch but not heading for the door. Lingering.

  She found to her surprise she wasn’t ready for him to leave yet, either. “How about some coffee with a dash of amaretto before you go?”

  “I’d like that. I do feel a little guilty. We took so long over dinner, I cheated your number one fan out of the ‘girls’ evening’ you promised.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll have a ‘girls’ morning’ to make up for it.”

  “Then I’d love that coffee. It’ll keep me awake for the drive back up to the ranch.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to stay with your newlywed brothers.”

  “I’m not. I’m staying at the house Harrison’s dad built on the part of the ranch he bought.”

  “The one that’s being converted to an event center?”

  “Yes. Since I’m back and forth more often, looking into things, my brothers didn’t want me paying to stay at the B&B.”

  “How is the renovation going?” she asked as she set about making espresso.

  “Grant’s done about as much as he can. Now they’re just waiting for the small business loan to come through to fund adding bathrooms and bedrooms in the barn. They hope to have it open in time to host Christmas events. Grant is excited about giving kids on the military bases in the city a chance to experience ranch life.”

  “It would be a real gift. It’s so beautiful here.”

  “Everything you hoped for when you took the job?”

  “Everything and more.”

  “I hope good friends are part of that ‘more.’” He took a sip of coffee, then paused as if deciding whether or not to say anything else.