“Send him a photo,” G.D. barks.
I cringe, hating how G.D. and Lyon fuss at each other, which they’ve been doing forever. Mom used to say that they were like male elk crashing their antlers together—all noise and nonsense.
“You need to see a doctor, Pop,” Lyon says.
I flinch, waiting for the next crash.
“I need a doctor like I need a hole drilled in my head.” Straining, those creases at his eyes and mouth pinching, G.D. pushes himself up from the chair. “Dill’s chili will need a kick. I got hot pepper sauce from Mexico in my trunk.”
“I’ll get it.” Lyon, as big as a bear, the way G.D. used to be, stomps past me in only two strides. “I made you an appointment to see Doc Kerring, Pop.”
G.D. leans on the chair as he gets his cane under him. “I can get the pepper sauce. Go cancel that doctor appointment before I give you a kick. Then sit down and relax, boy. Have some of Dill’s chili.”
G.D.’s cane taps along the short hallway from the kitchen to the back room that he’s been calling his for the last nine months, since he came to live with us. According to Lyon, soon after he married Mom, G.D. became a second father to her. And that’s why he was pretty much the only person she’d let take care of her when the treatments made her weak.
Now, Lyon sighs and drops with a thump into his usual chair at the kitchen table, the one across from Mom’s chair, which no one sits in these days. He adjusts the toothpick. “That man’s more stubborn than a pack of mules.”
“Guess that’s where you get it from.” I force a smile, hoping this will lighten him up.
He tries to grin at my little jab, an echo of how we used to be, always tossing teasing and grins back and forth, but now his mouth only wobbles before going flat. He just doesn’t have any play in him anymore.
“He seems real down tonight, doesn’t he?” Lyon looks at me then, his eyes full of the familiar bloodshot sadness. “He needs to see Doc Kerring.”
I pick up a knife, start chopping more peppers. “You sticking around, having dinner with us, would be the best medicine.” I never speak to Lyon like this, but he’s sparked that anger deep down inside me again by talking about the doctor. Not that I have anything against Doc Kerring. He delivered me, treated all my ear infections, and stitched me up more times than anyone could count (I fell out of trees a lot before Lyon introduced me to horses). But doctors mean trouble. Lyon should know this.
He focuses on his boots, kneads his forehead. “I know it’s tough seeing G.D. sick.”
“He’s not sick!” The words shoot out of my mouth, sharper than I mean them to be. I throw the peppers into the pan, stir them so hard that pieces of beef fly out, land in splats onto the counter.
“Dill, Doc Kerring needs to get a look at G.D.” Lyon pauses. “You might as well know that he may want G.D. to go to the hospital for some tests.”
I glare at Lyon over my shoulder. He knows that even the thought of a hospital and tests scrapes the insides of my ears, sours my stomach. “No.” My voice busts out loud and startling. I turn back to the chili, grabbing a can of beans and the electric can opener. “He’s not going to any hospital,” I remind him, my throat tight, restrained. “He promised me that he wouldn’t.”
“Dill…”
The grind of the can opener chews up Lyon’s words.
When it finally stops, he clears his throat, sounding impatient. “Dill, I know it’s been a rough year, especially the last nine months, but you have to deal with…”
My hands slam the can to the counter. The thud is startling. My heart is galloping. Beneath it, sadness escapes the jar deep in my core. The ache swells up and wraps around my insides until my breathing becomes short and ragged.
“Dill, you can’t spend the rest of your life avoiding certain words. You can’t keep avoiding visiting her grave.”
“STOP!” My scream about shakes the ranch as my fingers torpedo into my ears. A tidal wave of a sob wells up into my chest.
My legs take me out of the kitchen, through the family room and back doorway. I fly across the yard, wishing with everything I have that Dead End has come home.
CHAPTER 4
NEIGHBORS AND FARMERS
The sweet smell of flour, milk, and eggs near knocks me flat as I step into the kitchen. It’s the first time in a long while that I’ve smelled breakfast when I haven’t cooked it. G.D. has never gone near ovens. And Lyon hasn’t opened a carton of pancake batter in months. Up until now, I figured he’d forgotten how to use a pan, and wouldn’t recognize a spatula if it slapped him between the eyes. But delicious smells don’t lie.
“Morning, girl.” G.D. leans on a counter, winks at me.
I smile at him as the breakfast smells take me back to special times when Mom, Lyon, and I began each day together around the kitchen table, G.D. joining us whenever he visited. Mom used to say how she loved starting her day watching Lyon and G.D. smile and listen to me chatter like a mockingbird gone amuck while we all inhaled her amazing blueberry, banana, or chocolate chip muffins—made from scratch, when Lyon didn’t pour pancakes.
When Lyon went to work and I went to school, or off to ride at the stable, G.D. and Mom would sit longer, drinking coffee and talk, talk, talking for hours, especially after Mom got sick and found it hard to get up the energy to garden, clean the ranch, and take care of her animals.
Even now I still catch myself half-expecting to see her by the stove, her long hair piled on top of her head, the way she wore it while cooking.
“Hope you’re hungry.” G.D. straightens. “Lyon made a mountain of pancakes before he left for the store this morning.”
“From the batter that comes in a carton, I bet.” Lyon doesn’t know how to make anything but pancakes from a container. Mom tried to teach him how to cook more, until he near burned the house down. After that, she didn’t let him near our oven, something I used to be able to tease him about.
That’s why, for the last six months, I’ve been the muffin baker. Mom fussed some about this, the way she did whenever I cooked or cleaned too much, saying I needed to be a kid while I could be. But she enjoyed those muffins. I could tell by the way she closed her eyes and slid into a smile as she chewed them.
I go to the counter near the stove, pull the coffee and sugar canisters out from the cupboard, and slide them back in line with the flour and tea canisters, the way they’re supposed to be—have been for as far back as I can remember. As I do this, I catch G.D. watching me, so I toss him a shrug. “Lyon has been moving everything,” I explain. Everything that was a part of Mom’s world. “He just can’t leave things the way they should be.” The way she’d had them.
I pull out Mom’s dark green, metal recipe box from where Lyon keeps stuffing it behind the coffee machine. My pointer finger traces the loopy script that spells out From the kitchen of Summer Stone MacGregor. Knowing she wrote these words on the yellowed, grease-stained index card taped to the top of the box makes the thing precious. The recipes inside it bring her back: her famous Christmas berry cookies, her secret barbecue sauce, the chocolate cake that she’d only make on birthdays. That card even has her chocolate thumbprint on it—a bittersweet fossil.
G.D. squints at me. He does this a lot lately—studying me as if trying to peer inside my skull and read my feelings like print. “When are you planning on telling Lyon about Dead End?”
When I don’t answer, he shakes his head real slow. “I heard you lie to your pop about Cub taking the dog for a walk, girl.” He stares at me long enough to make me squirm. “You can’t avoid the truth simply because you’re afraid of it.” G.D. lets out a big breath that sounds like worry. “Tell me, what’d you and your pop have a spat about?”
No way I’m going to share what Lyon said about the hospital.
“And don’t tell me that you didn’t quarrel, because when I came back into the kitchen with the hot sauce last night, I found Lyon trying to finish the chili.”
I wince. “That couldn’t have been
pretty.”
G.D. shakes his head again. “That boy was jumpier than a rabbit with fleas. But I didn’t ask any questions. Not even when he stuck around, watching the back door, waiting for you. Figured time would tell me all I needed to know.” G.D. goes to the oven, pulls out the baking sheet that holds the pancakes. “These are a peace offering or my name is Dolley Madison.”
I start to braid my hair, as if I don’t care about Lyon or his pancake offering.
“My Bets used to fuss with her hair, too, when trying to avoid something.”
G.D. knows darn well that being compared to the grandmother I’ve never known always makes me soft.
“You and your pop and even Dead End need to get close again, Dill.” G.D. uses a spatula to flip pancakes onto plates. “Take it from me: Trying to avoid the pain of what’s happened won’t do you a bit of good. Face your loss. Lean on each other. It’s the only way to feel any better.” G.D. pauses, thinks for a moment. “Your pop’s scared, girl. He hasn’t figured out how to handle what life has thrown at him. Like you. I’ve walked in those boots. I know how it feels to lose…”
As I’m about to cut him off, keep him from saying anything that will fire up the hurt, someone knocks on the screen door in the family room, making it rattle.
“Anyone home?” Mr. Fred Barley’s gravel voice comes through the screen much as it has been doing regularly for the last two years, ever since he bought the farm that pushes up against our driveway and the right side of our property.
Mom always welcomed Mr. Barley and his chatter. G.D. said that this was because she’d never really taken to the seclusion of country life in southern Virginia. And old Mr. Barley always brings information, local news, and gossip. Still, his visits weren’t enough. Mom drove north, back to the Fairfax County suburb where she grew up, at least once a month to stay a day or two with Mrs. Sarah Doyle. Lyon never liked this, but in the end, G.D. convinced him that Mom belonged in Fairfax. Apparently, Mom had opened up to G.D. and shared how much she missed her hometown.
“Hey, Mr. Barley.” I step into the family room, ready to offer pancakes to this man who reminds me of a barrel in overalls.
“Hi there, young lady.” He pulls at the visor of his oil-stained baseball cap with the tractor logo on the front of it. Part of his usual greeting. “What’ve you been up to?”
Before I can offer up some bland answer that might give him what he wants, his expression narrows into a squint that adds lines to his already-wrinkled and tanned face. He leans into the screen. “You been to visit your poor mother’s resting place yet?”
Stunned that he’d actually asked me the question that all our other nosy neighbors won’t, I go stiff. Unable to speak, I move my mouth like some kind of fish out of water. But in my head, I scream No pancakes for you, Mr. Fred Barley!
“Not attending the funeral, refusing to visit her grave. It’s not right, young lady,” he says when I don’t answer him. “You need to pay respect to such a fine woman.”
I don’t remember asking for your opinion, I don’t say, biting my bottom lip now, using every bit of strength I have to keep the hot anger inside me from spewing out of my mouth. Why can’t folks leave me be? People can be like chickens pecking at each other, Mom once said to me. I didn’t know then how right she was.
Poor Lyon, I can almost hear the neighbors pecking. After losing his wife, his only child won’t go to the cemetery. Terrible! They don’t know that Lyon brought this on himself. I told him not to take Mom to the hospital.
“Hello, Fred,” G.D. calls, working his way across the kitchen and into the family room.
Good-bye, Mr. Barley, I think, itching to get away from this man, desperate to be at the stable. Being around the peaceful shufflings and shiftings of Crossfire and the other horses is the only way I can put the pecking and everything else aside, even if for only a little while.
“Came by to warn you folks,” Mr. Barley announces. Rumors of trouble spread like floodwater in our community.
He pulls at the visor of his dirt-smudged baseball cap, a mangy thing that he wears day and night, probably even sleeps in. “Got myself two young steer.” Mr. Barley puffs himself up, proud as a prizewinning rooster. “Wanted to warn you. Steer can be skittish.”
Waiting for him to say something about the sheep-killing dog pack, I don’t breathe as I watch his square face with its wide, flat nose—a steer’s face.
G.D. nods. “Raising yourself some sirloin, Fred?”
He mentions top round and from there the two of them chat about beef, G.D.’s friendliness mixing with Mr. Barley’s matter-of-fact farming tone. G.D. invites the farmer inside, but he says no, thanks. That’s when I breathe again, excuse myself by mumbling something about needing to get to my riding lesson, and return to the kitchen.
I barely reach the pancakes when Mr. Barley clears his throat. “Also want to tell you that I’ve been made a sort of deputy sheriff,” he announces without masking his pride. “Seems dogs attacked some farm animals. The farmers are having fits, are talking about getting their mitts on guns to protect their livestock. Sheriff Hawks smells trouble. He wants me to teach those farmers how to properly aim at a target before the bullets start flying.”
I near fall nose-first into my breakfast.
“Say,” Mr. Barley adds with too much curiosity in his voice. “Where’s your dog?”
I’d have passed out if G.D. hadn’t suggested, “Around somewhere.”
A couple minutes later, Mr. Barley leaves and G.D returns to the kitchen. “I’m not surprised the sheriff asked for Fred’s help. He’s a good shot. Could shoot a can off our back fence from New Jersey if he wanted to.”
I eye the big, thick pancakes. Lyon would want to know about the sheep attack, the farmers having fits about it, and the sheriff smelling trouble. Being aware of what goes on around here helps him run his store. So he’d be plenty disappointed in me for keeping information from him, especially the part about Dead End taking off.
“You owe your pop the truth about what our dog has been up to.” Deep parenthesis lines crease either side of G.D.’s turned-down mouth. “Did you hear what Fred said about the dogs?”
This makes Lyon’s pancakes smell a lot less sweet, much more like disappointment.
“Our dog isn’t part of the sheep attacks,” I snap, my tone rock-hard. “He wouldn’t do that.”
G.D. tips his head up and down in what I’d call reluctant agreement. “It’s hard to imagine him going after livestock, but then I’ve been around the barn enough to know that anything is possible. Animals aren’t always predictable.”
“But telling Lyon the dog is gone will get that pooch a one-way ticket to a shelter.”
“Okay, let’s see what today brings,” G.D. says. “But be careful, girl. I know what it’s like to turn your back on what is. Why do you think I took off wandering like a hobo for years after losing my Bets?” His blue eyes puddle, which puts a big lump smack in the center of my throat. “Believe me, reality always catches up to you.”
I don’t speak. Can’t.
“It’s a MacGregor trait to want to burrow like a rabbit to escape trouble, but I’m here to tell you that ignoring the truth of your problems won’t make them disappear. Only facing then head-on does any good.”
I stare at my riding boots until the cane taps and the rings jingle back to the family room as G.D. mumbles something about how unfair life can be at times.
“Where’re you going? What about our breakfast?”
He waves my questions aside. “Not hungry anymore.”
“But you’ve got to eat!”
“I’ll be in the garden.” The back door squeals on its hinges, then slaps closed.
From the kitchen window, I watch him hobble across the backyard. Guilt gnaws at my stomach.
The door to the garage opens and slams closed again. “Hey, Dill.” Cub’s voice drags like the bottoms of his boots.
I throw myself at the kitchen doorway, almost plow over him. His clo
thes smell of laundry detergent and bleach. “Did you find…?”
Before I can finish, he shakes his head no. Then he lifts his nose and sniffs, looking like a rabbit with a buzz cut. “Pancakes?”
“Never mind them. We need to find Dead End. What if someone sees him, picks him up?” I pull harder at my braid. “What if…?”
Cub’s eyes go wide, showing concern. “What’s got you all wound up, Dill? You drink coffee this morning?”
“Lyon noticed Dead End missing, started talking about taking G.D. to the hospital for tests. On top of that, Mr. Barley’s going to teach farmers how to shoot dogs,” I rattle off like some TV newsperson gone berserk while announcing headline stories.
“Shoot at dogs? Jeez.” Cub scuffs his boots across the kitchen floor.
“We’ve got to find Dead End and get his furry butt home.”
“Dill, I can’t spend all day helpin’ you find Dead End. Donny says I got to help the twins fix fencing in our big field. He expects me to help him in our stupid garden again, too. He says I haven’t been pullin’ my weight.” Cub kicks at the floor. “I’m sick of brothers, chores, stupid gardens, and dumb vegetables. Good thing my mom likes you or I’d be home this minute helping her can tomatoes.”
He should have said Good thing my mom still feels sorry for you.
Cub kicks at the floor. “I’m sick of Donny tellin’ me what to do.”
Donny, Cub’s oldest brother, the tall one with the dark eyes and hair, and the kindest smile I’ve ever seen. Donny sends all my girlfriends into giggles and whispers. His deep voice turns me into something like oatmeal. As much as I want to ask Cub questions, get him talking about Donny, Cub’s mood screams that this isn’t the time. Especially since he’s never been even close to being okay with me talking about Donny. Not long ago, when I hinted at how nice Donny was after he congratulated me on a first-place ribbon I’d won in a jumping event, Cub started choking as if he’d swallowed a horsefly.
But now he keeps kicking at the floor. “I’m sick of my house. I’m sick of hand-me-down clothes, and I’m sick of too many church functions.”
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