Even when the whole family was watching.
He used to not care. He just did it.
“Lovebirds, that’s what.”
“What?” Mandy asked, startled out of her wandering thoughts.
“Folks started calling us the lovebirds. ‘Look, here comes the lovebirds.’ And they’d laugh. I didn’t always hear them, but I always saw the knowing smiles.”
“What folks?” Mandy said, trying to remember. Had she called them that? No, she didn’t think so.
“People in church, people in town. They started teasing us about it—not in any unkind way, I don’t think—but it made me—” He paused as if grappling for the right word. Like he wasn’t having any luck finding it. “I didn’t like it.”
“You were embarrassed?”
He shrugged, dipped his rag into the oil, and started working it into the girth as if the action required all his attention. Even though he’d already oiled it once and done a proper job of it. If he worked it even more it was likely to slip right off the horse next time they saddled her.
“So you let somebody’s teasing stop you from loving Mama?”
“I never stopped loving your mother,” he said in a reproving tone. He shot one swift glance her way and grimaced. Dismissing the idea. He offered no desperate protestations, no thousands of examples of all the ways he showed his love. It was just a statement of fact. It was reassuring.
“Does she know that?” Mandy asked hesitantly.
“Of course she knows that.”
Mandy let his words fall to silence. Let him hear them echo in his ears.
Why does Mama look sad sometimes? She didn’t say it aloud, but they were both thinking it—at least she thought they were from the pensive expression on Papa’s face.
“Would you tell her please, Papa? Would you tell her all of that?”
“Well, I....”
“Please? Not in front of anybody. Whenever you like, but could you please say something?”
He swallowed, then cleared his throat. After inspecting the girth in his lap and finding it sufficiently cleaned, he set it aside and picked up another. It wasn’t that they didn’t have ranch hands to complete such menial work. They’d just always liked taking care of their own tack together. Father-daughter time.
Now he glanced at her, his eyes probing. “That was quite a race you had there on Saturday. With Adam Booker.”
It was Mandy’s turn to mumble and fix her attention on her work. A nearly unbearable heat flooded her face and made her feel prickly all over. This was supposed to be a time to discuss her parents’ matters of the heart, not hers.
“And I can still picture clear as day that lasso going straight around him.” Papa huffed a laugh under his breath as if holding it back. “What I don’t understand is why you ran off.”
“I didn’t run off.”
“Very nearly.”
She again mumbled something incomprehensible, wishing he’d stop. She didn’t want to think about Saturday. How everything had been almost a dream, going so well, like a perfect soap bubble forming around her and Adam. And then pop.
It made her heart ache a little to think of it.
Perhaps she’d let out some small sound of distress for Daisy lifted her head and regarded Mandy with a worried expression.
“You seemed pretty companionable at the dance,” Papa said. “And after the race. All I can think is that something happened. Perhaps something untoward...”
“What? No,” Mandy said quickly, surprised. Did everyone think that? Did Mama? It could explain why her mother had seemed to hover close by on Sunday afternoon after she and the rest of the family had returned from their trip to church without her.
“Mandy, do I need to pay a visit to that banker fellow? I will, I promise, and he won’t forget it.”
What on earth did they think Adam had said or done?
“Adam Booker was a perfect gentleman. Is a perfect gentleman,” she insisted.
“Perfect, eh?” He changed tacks, just like that, fishing now.
“Not that it matters now.” All she had was a photograph to remember that day. A photograph of her and Adam that she’d hidden in her drawer. She’d gone into town Wednesday to fetch it from Harry Campbell.
“What does that mean?” Papa sounded so concerned for her, so prepared to make matters right. But if he were fully prepared to fight for her happiness why would he have ever agreed with Mama to send her away to Denver? She still couldn’t bring herself to ask him, but it sat between them. A betrayal of sorts.
Why couldn’t he have stood up for her with Mama?
“Nothing,” she said. “It means nothing, Papa. He’s just a man. We danced together.”
“You danced every dance together.”
Again she warmed with embarrassment.
“Something must have happened...” he probed, not letting it go.
She sighed. “Nothing Adam did. And that’s all I have to say. There was nothing, really.”
Only that somehow things had fallen apart. She could just feel it. A nagging sense that things had gone wrong.
“Mandy!” Darby’s voice rang out from inside the barn, from way down at the other end.
Mandy turned toward the sound of his voice, eager to escape her father’s interrogation.
“Coming!” she called back to her cousin, setting aside her tack and brush. To her father, she said, “I’ll be back to finish. I promised Darby I’d help him with Jingle’s hooves.”
“He still doing that horse’s hooves himself? Why doesn’t he have the farrier do them?”
“Jingle’s touchy about his feet.” She stood and brushed down her old work skirt.
“He babies that horse.”
“And you don’t baby Angus?” Mandy asked, calling attention to her father’s favorite work horse, an agile-footed Chestnut that he took out on roundups. The one Papa brushed twice after each ride to make sure he got all the burrs out of his shiny coat. The one Papa sometimes sang campfire songs to when he was sick and had trouble sleeping. That Angus.
“I do not baby Angus.”
“You mix his oats with goat’s milk.”
“That’s different. He’s got a sensitive digestion. It’s only practical.”
“Uh-huh,” Mandy said, laughing, falling back easily into the camaraderie they usually shared. It felt nice. She couldn’t bear being at odds with her father. Perhaps she shouldn’t judge him so harshly for falling in with Mama’s plans for Denver. Everyone knew she had a way of getting her own way and Papa wasn’t immune.
Which brought her thoughts back to her earlier concerns.
“You’ll talk to Mama?” Mandy asked, pausing in the entrance to the barn.
Papa waved her away.
“Papa, just tell me you’ll say something.”
He waved her away again.
“Papa.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t just think about it,” she said quietly, “do it.”
He settled back into his work, making no firm commitment. He was so like a cowboy in some respects. Most respects.
Soon, Mandy was standing in the center aisle of the barn near the back, with the doors propped wide open to let some light in. It was refreshingly cooler here, shaded by several tall leafy trees that stood to either side of the barn, blocking the worst of the summer heat. Mandy stationed herself at Jingle’s head, while Darby crouched in the dirt by the gelding’s front hoof to start trimming, a sturdy-looking pair of clippers in his hand.
It was a task they’d participated in together often enough that they took their places with the seamless movements of habit, without a lot of unnecessary giving of directions.
“Can you believe Papa stopped holding Mama’s hand because folks were calling them lovebirds?” Mandy stood supportively to Jingle’s left, near his head, where he could see her and she could soothe him occasionally by stroking his forehead and the side of his neck. Close enough to grab his halter if need be, but
also ready to spin out of the way if he got cranky and decided to take a nip at her. Normally, he wouldn’t, but he wasn’t his true self when his feet were being done. Daisy sat at a respectful distance, watching.
“What?” Darby clipped the tiniest of shavings off Jingle’s front right hoof, not more than a starter trim, but the clippers made a slight clicking sound, no matter how gently Darby applied the pressure. At the evidently terrifying noise, the gelding quivered from forelock to hind quarters, his normally placid eyes turning wild. He looked ready to bolt. Mandy held tight to the spot where the crossties fastened to his halter and soothed him with comforting sounds.
Once he settled down a bit, she continued, “You can’t tell anyone—Papa wouldn’t like it—but I asked him and that’s what he said.”
“People were teasing them about holding hands?”
“That’s what he said. And all the little things too, like holding her songbook, resting his hand against her back. You know. And so he just stopped doing all of it.” Mandy still couldn’t get over it. Jingle tossed his head in a concerning fashion, so she scratched the inside edges of his ear the way he liked. He leaned into her touch, but only partway, not fully distracted from the clipping business going on down at his feet.
“He stopped holding Aunt Belle’s hand because people were teasing him?”
“That’s right.” Mandy shook her head, still befuddled by her father’s actions. Or inaction, as it were.
Darby glanced up at her, just for one brief second, and chuckled.
“What?” Mandy demanded.
“Just thinking, that’s all. That expression. You know the one.”
“What? Which expression?”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” He sounded amused.
“What? Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“And I’m the apple?”
He just raised his brows—still concentrating on Jingle’s hoof—as if waiting for her to catch up. The teasing. All those years of being called Too Tall Mandy MacKenna. That’s what he meant.
“That’s different.”
“How’s that not exactly the same?
“Well, the folks in town were just teasing Papa. They never meant any harm.”
“And the boys who called you names meant harm?”
“I think they did. I really think they did.” Russell Girard’s pale freckled face swam before her eyes. That smug smile of his. It sent a slippery quiver of distaste up Mandy’s spine just thinking about it.
“Maybe you’re right,” Darby said.
“I’m sure I am.”
He kept working. There was an air of waiting about him though, as if he expected her to think about it some more.
Mandy thought more carefully about Russell. Had he meant to harm her? It felt like it. There was a lot between them. Years piled up. But had he truly meant to hurt her? Demean her...
“Pretty sure,” she qualified.
“And maybe you ain’t. Right, that is. Maybe they didn’t know any better.”
“They knew better.”
“They were just boys. And not very smart ones at that.” His expression was amused.
“That’s no excuse.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he agreed companionably, which was becoming very irritating. It was like he was placating her. As if she needed placating. As if she were irrational.
“I’m not an irrational female,” she said.
“Didn’t say you were.”
“Well, you’re acting like it.”
“I am?” he looked up, surprised. Jingle did a jerky little sidestep, and Darby had to quickly lean away. “Easy,” he warned, settling his hand on the horse’s shoulder to remind him who was beside him—head within kicking range—his favorite person. Jingle rolled his eyes toward Darby, then obediently settled. Darby went back to clipping.
“I am?” he repeated, without looking up this time.
“Didn’t you ever get teased, ever?”
“Not as I remember...” Darby paused to clip a particularly difficult spot that required two hands and a bit of grunting. “But then I was always an extraordinarily pleasant fellow.” He grinned, both in satisfaction at the job he was doing and at what he said.
He could be infuriatingly pleasant, that was true. And yet somehow it just came across as charming—not that her cousin needed to hear that from her. His head might swell and his favorite Stetson wouldn’t fit anymore.
“Uh-huh,” Mandy said, shaking her head at him.
“I saw you at the social with Girard. Things seemed a little...tense between you two.”
Mandy pressed her lips shut and gave Jingle a little extra love, crooning softly into his ear, telling him that he was being “such a good boy.” His left ear twitched toward her.
“Maybe you should talk to him—tell him how you feel,” Darby persisted. “Tell him you don’t like all his teasing.”
Mandy blinked down at the top of Darby’s head. Since when was a man encouraging a woman to express her feelings? Since never. She blinked again to clear her vision.
“You know,” Darby added, “make an effort to patch things between you.”
Patching things. Could “burned bridges” be patched?
She wasn’t interested in a close friendship developing between her and Russell Girard. But the idea of smoothing things over—of burying her bitterness—that was appealing. But how?
“And just what would I say?” Mandy asked, truly at a loss.
“You’ll think of something,” he said cheerfully. Unhelpfully.
“Thanks,” Mandy said, her tone dry.
“I think he’s got a soft spot for you, Mandy.”
“Russell?”
“Yep.”
“Russell Girard?”
“Ain’t more than one Russell in Cross Creek.”
Mandy shook her head. “Russell Girard does not have a ‘soft spot’ for me.” This could not be stressed enough, surely.
“He might. He certainly doesn’t hate you.”
“Sure seems like it.”
“He’s not a monster, I promise.”
“I never said he was,” Mandy protested.
“It’s just... Some men ain’t good at expressing themselves.”
Mandy just let that phrase hang in the air. It was too good to brush away with a quick comment.
“Even if Russell did have a ‘soft spot’ for me,” she said finally, “I don’t feel that way toward him.” Darby couldn’t possibly mean Russell was interested in courting her? No, of course not. Russell didn’t look at her that way. And she certainly didn’t look at him that way.
“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk to him—clear the air.”
Clear the air?
There was something about those words that settled deep into Mandy’s chest. Her fingers tightened more securely around Jingle’s halter. He leaned against the back of her hand, as if absorbing her comforting presence. She felt comforted back. Animals were so simplistic. Like Jingle. Like Daisy. Simple. Straightforward. They enjoyed a kind touch. They wanted to be fed on a regular schedule. They wanted to be spoken to kindly.
Men were...complicated.
She hitched up for a second and thought about her father and Darby. She frowned to herself.
Actually, men weren’t that different in that respect. Wanting to be spoken to kindly. Or women, for that matter. Everyone appreciated being treated decently, didn’t they?
“Maybe you’re right, Darby,” Mandy said thoughtfully, forgetting herself for a moment and resting her temple against the bridge of Jingle’s nose. The clippers click-clicked, and she straightened quickly, anticipating the horse’s distress. He dipped his massive head sharply, agitated, and she was glad she’d moved.
“Of course I’m right,” Darby replied in an affable tone that nudged at Mandy. She should try to take on more of her cousin’s pleasant qualities. Folks liked Darby. They just couldn’t help themselves. “About what?” he asked.
/> “Clearing the air. Maybe it’s time.”
“It’s always time to clear the air.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Most likely.” He chuckled to himself.
Mandy shook her head at his mock arrogance, but she had to admit she agreed with him, at least to herself. Hadn’t she urged Papa, in much the same way, to talk to Mama? Which left her with a rather peculiar panicky feeling. More like a heaviness everywhere. Her limbs suddenly weighed down, her shoulders too. Pure dread.
Just how did one go about ‘clearing the air’ with the boy—now a man—who’d once made her feel so awful about herself?
Chapter 12
That very next Sunday, Mandy sat in the church pew, desperately trying to not look at Adam Booker and failing. She’d chosen the aisle seat next to her father, with the express purpose of having a better view of Adam. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the moment she’d taken off her blindfold, the sight of his shocked face. The crowd’s laughter. Her stinging embarrassment.
The song leader stood, alerting the congregation that church was about to start. There was a rustle of folks moving about in their seats as he took the podium and asked them all to turn to a page number in the songbook. Mandy lifted hers and blindly turned the pages without truly seeing.
She glanced across at Adam again, noticing he’d moved up several pews today, so he was directly across the aisle—and one person in—from the MacKenna family’s pew. Had he done it deliberately? Had he done it to sit closer to her? It was a shivery exciting thought.
Or...perhaps his normal spot had been thoughtlessly taken by someone else this morning and it had nothing to do with her whatsoever, which was the more likely scenario. And yet she couldn’t stop her thoughts from circling back to the idea that he wanted to be closer to her.
He was looking so handsome in his Sunday suit and tie, so neat and clean. Today, he’d paired his dark brown suit coat and trousers with a neatly pressed Robin’s-egg blue shirt that was sure to bring out the blue in his eyes. He must’ve had his hair trimmed since the social, for it sat just above his shirt collar. She could see a bare strip of skin at his neck, lightly browned from the sun.
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