If you are reading this letter, then I’m gone. Don’t throw my ashes out in the Gulf where we had so many good times. Don’t let them sift through your fingers onto the sand where we built castles and watched the sunset. Those places should always come to your mind as good memories, not final ones. I want you to wait until the right moment and the right place. Don’t fret about it, Abby. When the place and the time are right, you will know. It might be in ten years and it might be tomorrow, but you won’t have a single doubt in your mind.
As I write this letter, I’m thinking of the day you were born. When they put you in my arms, I lost my heart to you that very moment. I loved Ezra Malloy that year we were together, but I truly believe now that he was only put into my life so that I would have you. So there’s no hatred or bitterness in my heart for him or the decisions that he made. There is a degree of pity, though, because he never knew the lovely daughter who would have brought him so much joy. Death is final, but it’s not the end. My love and memories will go with you throughout your entire life.
There was more, but Abby stopped there and hugged the paper to her chest. Martha raised her head from the rocking chair and growled down deep in her throat. She cocked her head to one side as if listening and then she jumped down and started toward the living room.
Abby didn’t care if there was another stampede or two old tomcats fighting out in the yard. She wanted to sit on the bed with memories of her mother flooding through her mind and remember the good times.
Martha barked once and then there were the sounds of boots on wood before a gentle knock. The front door opened. Martha nosed her way out of Abby’s bedroom, her body pushing the door all the way open, and disappeared up the hallway toward the living room.
Abby swiped at her eyes with her shirtsleeve and laid the letter down on her pillow. She could hear Shiloh whistling in the bathroom where the shower had been running moments before. Soft laughter came from Bonnie’s room, which meant she was talking to her Kentucky friends on the phone.
“Rusty? Is that you?” she called out.
She slung her legs off the bed and Cooper’s shadow filled the doorway to her bedroom. Her breath caught in her chest, still tight from crying so hard.
“I missed you today,” he said softly.
She put her hands over her face and sobbed so hard that there was a whooshing sound in her ears. Suddenly his strong arms slipped under her knees and around her back. He lifted her from the bed and carried her to the rocking chair. He sat down with her in his lap and she sobbed until only sniffles were left.
“What brought this on?” Cooper asked.
“Mama’s letter,” she whispered.
“Is that it on the bed?”
She nodded.
“And you’ve never read it before now?”
She shook her head. “One time before, but I was eighteen and still in shock and it didn’t make as much sense then as it does now. After last night, I was drawn to get it out again. Now I understand it better.”
“Abby, about last night,” he said.
She put a finger on his lips. “Don’t say it.”
“Why?”
“I can’t bear to hear that it was another mistake,” she whispered.
“I wasn’t going to tell you that, Abby. Last night was amazing. I was going to call you, but I wanted to hold you and kiss you tonight, not just hear your voice.” He traced her jawline with his forefinger and tilted her chin up.
His brown eyes fluttered shut and then his mouth was on hers, sweet at first and then deepening into something that chased all the sadness from her body and soul. She leaned into the kiss, wanting it to last forever, wanting him to simply hold her.
Martha cold nosed her bare foot and she jumped. Abby dropped her hand to pet the dog at the same time Cooper did. He wrapped his big hand around hers and brought her knuckles to his lips. Slowly, he kissed each one before he laced his fingers through hers and held her hand against his chest.
“I didn’t want last night to be a mistake,” she said.
“Neither did I, and I was so afraid you’d tell me that it was. Guess we both have to learn to trust a little more and worry a lot less. I’ll see you or call tomorrow. Good night, darlin’.” He carried her back to the bed and set her down where he’d found her. After a kiss on the forehead he was gone.
“Good night, Cooper.”
The next morning she awoke on her bed, the quilt from the living room thrown over her. Her mother’s letter rested on the pillow beside her. For the first time Martha had left the rocking chair and was sound asleep on the foot of the bed, her chin lying on Abby’s knees. She sat up, pulling her legs away from the dog, who gave her the old stink eye for waking her up.
“Good morning to you, too.” Abby laughed, her spirits as high as the clouds she’d dreamed about the night before. “Look at that gorgeous sunrise. It’s going to be a nice day.”
Martha wagged her tail and did a belly crawl up closer to the pillows.
“Lord, girl, you smell like a dog. I’ll have to give you a regular bath if you’re going to get on the bed,” Abby said.
“You let that mutt sleep with you?” Shiloh said from the open door.
“You don’t let Polly sleep in your bed?” Abby threw back at her.
“Not in a million years. She can have the rug beside the bed but she’s not getting up on my bedspread after she’s wallowed in the dirt and walked through pig shit.” Shiloh shivered. “You slept in your clothes?”
“I guess I did,” Abby said. “One fewer thing I have to do before chores this morning. Is Bonnie up yet?”
“In the bathroom. Shall we start breakfast?” Shiloh asked.
Abby bounded out of bed. “You make the biscuits and I’ll do sausage gravy.”
“You sure are happy this morning, and you haven’t even had coffee yet.”
“I figured out that I’m supposed to live in this canyon, maybe even longer than spring,” Abby said.
“Well, good for you. I figured that out the first time I drove down that windy road into it.”
Bonnie joined them in the hallway. Her face was scrubbed clean. She was dressed in work jeans for the day and her blonde hair hung in two ropy braids down her back.
“Good for her for what?” she asked.
“Deciding that she belongs in the canyon,” Shiloh answered.
“I never had a doubt that I belonged here. You must be slow,” Bonnie teased.
“Cooper have anything to do with that decision?” Shiloh grinned.
“Hell if I know anything where Cooper is concerned. Like you said, Bonnie, life is full of surprises. I just now figured out that I’m not leaving.”
“That’s a damn fine start,” Bonnie said.
Friday started out as a Murphy’s Law type of day. If it could go wrong it did; if there was no way for it to go wrong, it found one. Abby was reminded of Haley’s grandmother’s saying: What will be, will be; what won’t be, might be anyway.
The first thing that happened was the coyote in the henhouse.
Abby had just finished feeding the hogs when she saw Shiloh tearing off toward the house at a dead run. Abby went from a walk to a run to see what had happened, hoping the whole time that Shiloh hadn’t cut herself on a piece of the rusty sheet iron covering the chicken coop.
“Are you all right?” Abby yelled when she was in the house.
“A damned rotten old coyote,” Shiloh shouted.
“Where?” Bonnie had just set the bucket of milk on the cabinet and reached for the straining cloth.
“In my henhouse,” Shiloh hollered.
“Want me to kill it?” Abby asked.
“It’s my henhouse. I’ll take care of it.”
Abby didn’t know just how Shiloh intended to kill the coyote. Maybe she was going to asphyxiate him with n
ail polish remover. But her doubts in Shiloh’s ability to take care of matters disappeared completely when she came back through the kitchen holding a purple Ruger pistol.
“This I’ve got to see,” Abby mumbled.
“Me, too,” Bonnie said.
They followed Shiloh out of the house, across the yard, and through the gate. When he saw people, the coyote dropped a dead chicken and started pacing around the pen, trying to find his way back out. Feathers floated on the morning breeze and chickens huddled together in the corners. The rooster, minus most of his tail feathers, was on top of the henhouse, but he wasn’t crowing about anything that morning. He looked downright pitiful sitting up there with fear written all over his cocky little face.
“Rotten coyotes. Noah should have forgotten to take the miserable things on that big gopher-wood boat, if you ask me,” Shiloh fussed.
“Where’d you get that gun?” Abby asked.
“I bought it, along with a pump shotgun, a twenty-two rifle for hunting squirrel, and several others I left in my gun safe in Arkansas.”
“Ownin’ firepower doesn’t mean much if you can’t shoot straight,” Bonnie told her.
Shiloh muttered something, popped a hand on her hip, brought the gun up from hip level, and fired. The coyote dropped on the spot and the rooster let out a squawk that was louder than the blast.
“Mama doesn’t like it when I waste ammo,” Shiloh said. “Hold this for me.” She handed the gun to Abby.
“Sweet little gun,” Abby said.
“It caught my eye at a gun show. I wanted it so I bought it. It doesn’t have as much recoil as some of the other nine mils and I liked the color,” Shiloh threw over her shoulder on the way to the henhouse.
She picked up the coyote by the tail, dragged him outside the pen, and the three dogs circled the carcass, growling and biting at it as if they’d killed the critter. “Okay, ladies, that’s enough. The whole bunch of you shouldn’t be sleeping inside the house. If you’d been out here doing your job, you could have run him off and I wouldn’t have lost two of my best layin’ hens and the rest of my chickens wouldn’t be scared out of their minds. I bet we don’t get an egg for a week.”
“What are you going to do with him?” Bonnie asked.
“Take him to the back of the ranch and hang him on a fence as a warning to the rest of the coyotes,” Shiloh said. “When we go to feed this morning, I’ll toss him in the back of the truck.”
“That’s what we’d do with him in Kentucky.” Bonnie’s head bobbed up and down.
“If they had coyotes in Kuwait, we probably would have eaten it,” Abby said.
“Yuck!” Shiloh’s nose snarled. “I don’t mind squirrel, especially made with dumplings, or venison or elk, but I’m not eating coyote or possum.”
“Rabbit?” Bonnie asked as they started back toward the house.
The dogs wouldn’t leave the coyote alone, so Shiloh picked it up by the tail and dragged it along behind her. “Fried rabbit with sawmill gravy is almost as good as frog legs,” she answered.
Shiloh threw the carcass into the back of the work truck just as Rusty’s truck came to a stop outside the yard fence. He bailed out and yelled, “What is that and why are you putting it in the truck?”
“It’s a dead coyote. The dogs won’t leave it alone and we’re taking it out to the back of the property for the buzzards,” Shiloh said.
“It wreaked havoc in the henhouse,” Bonnie told him.
Rusty stopped and ran his fingers through his hair. “Abby kill it?”
“She did not! I did. It’s my chickens and my gun,” Shiloh told him.
Rusty’s eyes widened when he glanced over into the bed of the truck. “Right between the eyes.”
“With one shot,” Bonnie said proudly.
“Remind me not to ever mess with her chickens.” Rusty laughed.
Abby filled two buckets with hog pellets and started toward the pens when she noticed the hole in the fence and three of the biggest hogs rooting around outside their pen. This was a day for disaster for sure.
The hogs recognized the feed buckets and ambled toward her, grunting and squealing the whole way. She felt like the Pied Piper as she led them into the pen without a problem and watched them belly up to the feed trough like cowboys up to a bar.
“Thank God Bonnie programmed her number into my phone,” she said as she hit the button to call her.
“What?” Bonnie answered.
“Are you finished milking?”
“Yes, and I’m in the kitchen. It’s my day to make dinner.”
“I need help.” Abby told her about the pigs.
“Be right there. I swear this is the day for it,” Bonnie said.
Abby followed Bonnie’s orders as they fixed the fence so the pigs couldn’t get out again. Then the two of them carried a couple of cement blocks from the hog shed feed room and secured the area.
“One of them bastards probably dug his way under the fence and the others tore it when they were too big to get through the hole,” Bonnie said. “But this will fix it so they can’t do it again.”
“Thanks,” Abby said. “You said this was the day for it. What else happened?”
“I had finished milking the cow and be damned if a honeybee didn’t spook her and she kicked the milk bucket over. Lost every drop of the milk. I hope you weren’t planning on using the cream for something tomorrow,” Bonnie said.
“I wasn’t.” This must be the big test to see if she would really stay when the going got tough. Well, she’d made up her mind and she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Good. Shiloh is already on a tractor. You’re supposed to call Rusty when you get back to the house. He said that he’s sending you to the feed store in Silverton for a load of pig and chicken feed,” Bonnie said.
The gears in Abby’s head started turning so fast it made her dizzy. She’d be in Silverton. Maybe Cooper would have time for a coffee break. She’d wanted tell him how much it meant to her to see him last night. She called Rusty as she walked toward the house and told him she’d take her own truck so he didn’t have to bring the work truck in from the field. She was downright giddy until Bonnie sniffed the air.
“What? Don’t tell me the house is burning down,” Abby said.
“No, but you smell like hog shit. I’d take a quick shower if I was you, and put on them jeans with the fancy stitchin’ on the butt. And it wouldn’t hurt to spray a little perfume on your hair,” Bonnie said.
“I’m going to the feed store,” Abby protested.
“I’m not stupid. You’re picking up pig and chicken pellets at the feed store. You’re going to see Cooper in his place of work for the first time. You want everyone in the courthouse to smell you like this?” Bonnie asked.
“How did you know that?” Abby asked.
“You had the Cooper look on your face.”
“You are full of shit.”
Bonnie pointed right at her. “You are fighting an attraction, which is worse than bein’ full of shit.”
It was the fastest shower Abby had ever taken in her life. She dried her hair in record time and followed Bonnie’s advice about the perfume. She applied a touch of makeup and hit her hair with a curling iron, all in thirty minutes.
It was eleven o’clock when she reached the feed store. The guys there couldn’t have been prodded into action by a stun gun. They moved so slow that she wished she’d offered to load the feed herself. Finally, a baldheaded fellow in bibbed overalls handed her a bill fastened to a clipboard. She signed it and headed straight for the courthouse.
She parked the truck, checked her reflection in the mirror, and suddenly had second thoughts about even going inside. He’d never invited her to stop by, and it was his place of work. Maybe she should call first. Surprises weren’t always welcome.
She opened the truc
k door, but couldn’t make herself get out, not without calling first. Even that would put him in an awkward situation. She reversed the situation and thought about how she’d feel if he suddenly showed up at her office in the army unexpectedly.
“Complicated deluxe,” she mumbled.
“Good mornin’. Could I help you? You look a little bit lost. Hey, didn’t I see you at Ezra Malloy’s funeral? You are the oldest daughter, right?” An elderly man extended his hand. “I’m Everett Talley. Knew Ezra his whole life.”
“I’m Abby and yes, I’m the oldest,” she said.
“Well, I’m right pleased to meet you.” He dropped her hand after a firm shake. “Hope y’all are gettin’ along all right on the ranch. You here to see Coop? I heard y’all had been steppin’ out some. If you are, you done missed him. He pulled out in the sheriff car ’bout the time I drove up. See, his space is empty.” Everett pointed toward the reserved spot a couple of parking spaces down from her. “Got to get on down the road. The wife has already called three times. She’s ready to go to Amarillo to do some shoppin’ and I don’t want to be in no more trouble than I already am.”
“Thank you. Nice meeting you,” she said.
She shut the truck door and started the engine. “What now?”
That’s when her phone rang. She fished the phone from her purse and Bonnie’s name came up on the front. “Hello.”
“Where are you?”
“On my way home. You need something before I leave town?”
“How did it go at the courthouse?”
“Do you believe in fate?” Abby asked. “Cooper isn’t here.”
“Yes, I do. My grandparents were very superstitious. There’s a reason you weren’t supposed to see him today. You might never know what it is, but it’s there, so don’t doubt it.”
“Thank you, sis,” Abby said.
“Imagine that.”
“What?” Abby asked.
“You called me sis.”
“I guess I did,” Abby said.
Cooper didn’t get home until almost dark, and then he had to take care of the ranching part of his life. When he finally called Abby, it was near ten o’clock. He’d wanted to talk to her all day, but his deputy had been with him from near noon until quittin’ time, and by then his phone battery was dead.
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