Vetted Again

by K'Anne Meinel

  “Very much, but by then, I was living a different life than I had originally planned. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but after your mother died, I just wanted to get far, far away, and I wasn’t equipped to raise you.”

  “Yes, I understood that when I got older.”

  “How are Sean and Traci adjusting?” He worried that he was selling them short too.

  They had started school and fit in very quickly since they already had friends from 4-H. They loved living on the ranch, and the nightmares they’d had about how Rosemary died were subsiding. Of course, they were both worried about their father, but with the arrival of three babies, they were busy enough that they didn’t mention it often. They were doting on the babies since becoming aunt and uncle to them. She explained how they were fitting in as diplomatically as possible to her father. “They are looking forward to trick or treating by wagon at Halloween,” she told him, and she explained what that was in case he had forgotten what the 4-H troop did at Halloween.

  “Didn’t they go caroling last year?” he asked, trying to make his fuzzy mind work.

  “Yes, before Christmas, and it was a big success,” she reminded him, worrying over his faulty memory. “The 4-H troop is already planning on caroling again, and they hope to have at least thirty more horseback riders from the sign-ups. The troop has really grown thanks to Allyssa.”

  “You really got a keeper there,” he said and then grew silent, obviously thinking of Rosemary and his own poor choices again. “Have you heard any more from Trever or Peter?” He sounded almost scared.

  “Not since Henry sent a letter to their attorney. Have they bothered you again?” she asked, worried that she had missed something. She had told the home where he stayed that his two stepsons were not allowed to bother her father. He wasn’t strong enough to fend them off if they attacked him or verbally berated him, and she wouldn’t put that past either of them.

  “I don’t remember,” he admitted. “Should I remember that?”

  “No, Dad. It’s okay. We’ll let you rest at the ranch until you are all better,” and she said it with such conviction he believed her. But she didn’t believe he would get his memory back. They were going to have to file to get him on permanent disability. She’d have Allyssa call Henry...better yet, she’d call herself. She depended on Allyssa way too much and she knew she shouldn’t put everything on her shoulders.

  The drive home was long and boring, and she was grateful when she pulled around the fountain and parked in front of the house. Her father was stiff and got out of the Jeep slowly. He looked up at the house they had recreated, a modern version of his own parents’ home but with a few additional conveniences. Grabbing his suitcase and the cooler, she held his arm and escorted him up the stairs and into the house. They were both exhausted.

  “Dad!” Sean shouted, excited to see his father after so long and looking as though he were going to barrel into him.

  “Easy sport,” Keith warned the teen.

  “Not so rough,” Fey warned. “Remember, he’s still healing.”

  “Dad!” Traci called as she clambered down the steps. Fey could hear babies crying in their bedroom upstairs.

  “I’ll just take this up to your room, Dad,” she said, holding the suitcase up. “Go sit on the couch and rest. That was a long drive.” She carried both the suitcase and the cooler upstairs, dropping the suitcase in the guest room. She hurried into her bedroom.

  “Oh, thank goodness you’re home. I think Erin drank me dry, and these other two won’t settle down,” Allyssa complained as soon as she saw her wife.

  “I have supplies,” she said with a smile, holding up the cooler.

  “The ice packs worked?” She hadn’t been sure with the long drive ahead of her wife.

  “They worked. In fact, one of them still has ice in it.” She pulled the first bottle from the cooler and picked up a very fussy Molly from her bassinet. She was as familiar with Fey’s hold on her as she was Allyssa’s, and she immediately started nuzzling against Fey’s bosom when she tried to introduce the bottle to her. “She prefers fresh,” she joked but finally got the fussy baby to take the nipple.

  Allyssa picked up another bottle and gave it to Tom. He had a voracious appetite, and if Erin hadn’t completely drained her, he would have finished the job. Allyssa had dozed a little, which allowed the older baby to drain her breast. “How was the trip?” she asked.

  “Long,” she said tiredly, smiling as she fed her daughter. “My father is exhausted, and his mind isn’t at its best. I hope Sean and Traci don’t exhaust him further.”

  “They’ve been so excited. I had a hard time getting them to do their chores. We have another fox going after the chickens. I could have shot him if I was still carrying my gun,” she told her wife. She’d stopped wearing the gun when she was in her seventh month as it was impractical while she was pregnant.

  “Yeah, the babies wouldn’t appreciate the sound of a gunshot while they’re in your arms,” she teased with a grin.

  Allyssa laughed, imagining how redneck that would look. She missed having her gun, but she did feel safer with more people around the ranch. “We had a couple people asking about the roundup.”

  “We agreed to do it eight weeks after you had the baby,” she reminded her.

  “Yes, but some people already have their fall work done and are raring to go.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’d love to get back to riding, but my body isn’t ready,” she admitted. She was also tired as her body adjusted to feeding two babies. Between her and Fey it felt like they were constantly feeding babies. She fed Erin as often as she did his brother and sister, never giving it a thought that he had come from Fey’s body. He was as much her son as Tom was. She hoped Fey felt the same way about the twins. She looked at her wife fondly, watching her feeding Molly as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “I heard from Margaret,” Fey told her with a grin. “She called yesterday to say she was thrilled to have a child named after her,” she gestured with the baby in her arms.

  “I knew she would think we’d named Molly after her!”

  Fey laughed, nodding. “It’s okay. We know better. Today, she brought a pretty little dress for her namesake and two little suits for the boys.”

  “Is that who brought those velvet clothes?”

  She nodded. “They’ll probably only wear them once,” she said. “We should take lots of pictures in those outfits and post them, so Margaret gets bragging rights. I’m sure we can use them against fractious teenagers someday.”

  Allyssa laughed. Those were excellent ideas.

  * * * * *

  “Did you chew this?” Allyssa shook the shoe that was now road kill in front of Lexy’s guilty face. “Naughty girl,” she told her, and the dog turned away, ashamed. She’d slapped it across the dog’s nose but wasn’t going to do more than that. The dog knew she had done wrong and Rex was keeping his distance from the bad dog. He had never done anything like the terrier; it would never have occurred to him.

  Fey passed Allyssa as she went into the kitchen. “Disciplining the youngsters?” she teased. Between the pets and the kids, they were busy. This was their maternity leave? Later, Fey found herself on the couch with Tom, calming him after an attack of the hiccups had caused him to spew his dinner all over Allyssa. Fey had washed him up in the sink, changed his clothes, and was trying to get him to take a bottle. All the babies seemed to prefer Allyssa’s nipple, and she didn’t blame them. She worried that their sex lives would never come back after all these weeks. She was finally feeling some of her old energy returning but not her sexual desire. She watched as the terrier picked up its bed and tugged it into the sun shining through the windows of the farmhouse. What a smart dog.

  The phone rang, and Allyssa dropped the other half of the ruined shoes in the garbage can as she answered it. “Herriots,” she said into the phone since it was their private line.

  “Ms. Allyssa? Th
is is Juanita. I have my bus information for you,” she said into the line, almost shouting it.

  “Oh, that’s great, Juanita. Let me write it down,” she responded, thrilled to hear from her. Juanita had worked out her two weeks’ notice at her last job and was now ready to come to them. They’d sent her the bus fare. They were eager to have her on the ranch. “Okay, I’ll see you the day after tomorrow,” she told her. “I’ll be at the bus stop in Sweetwater,” she promised.

  “Okay, Ms. Allyssa. I sent my things on as you said, and I’ll have my suitcase with me.”

  “Great. See you!” she said cheerfully, looking forward to having her.

  “That was Juanita?” Fey asked as she came back into the living room.

  “Yes, she’ll be here the day after tomorrow.”

  “I hope she won’t mind helping with ‘the threesome’?” she said with a grin, using their nickname for the trio of babies.

  “I actually think she’s excited by that, but I don’t remember her ever being a nursemaid to us, just a housekeeper,” she answered, squinting as she tried to remember. Juanita hadn’t been the only housekeeper they had, and she wondered if her father had chased the others away with his wandering eye.

  Two days later, Allyssa left Fey alone with the children and her father as she ran into Sweetwater to pick up their new housekeeper. They were going to offer her the mobile home to live in, and if she didn’t like that maybe she would like the loft in the cabin. There was no room left in the house with everyone living there, but if they had to, they were going to build a bedroom in the basement. Somehow, they would make this work.

  Allyssa was hugged hard by the woman she had known most of her teenage years. Juanita didn’t look older. She seemed to have that eternal beauty some Hispanic women possessed; she was ageless. Allyssa knew Juanita had to be her mother’s age, at least, but had never really asked her. She pointed out the small town they lived near, explaining their ranch was four miles east of town, then pointing out other things of interest as they made their way out of town.

  “How are your babies?” she asked, showing what was most important to her.

  “Fine, and they’re growing fast,” she bragged, pleased. Tom was growing the fastest, trying to catch up just as Leslie had predicted, and this was a big relief to his mothers.

  “You breastfeed?”

  “Yes, I do, but Fiona pumps. The pain was too much for her.”

  “Ah, those pumps. They are a good thing. We had nothing like that when I had children.”

  “You have children?” she asked, surprised. She realized she really knew nothing about this woman, who had been in her life for over a decade. How terrible that she had never taken an interest.

  “They are grown, and they have their own lives,” she stated. She would say no more and looked around at the scenery. The bus from Pendleton had come this way, and as Allyssa turned off on the road towards the ranch and then into their long driveway, she was surprised at how remote it really was. As they came over that last hill, Juanita saw the little valley and remarked how beautiful it was. The covers of the books hadn’t done it justice. It was breathtaking with the mountains in the distance.

  The children took to Juanita as though they had always known her. She was a wonder with the three babies, freeing up both Allyssa and Fey as they regained their strength. Sean and Traci were in awe of how quickly and well she fit into their household.

  “How in the world were we going to cope without her?” Fey remarked more than once as they got used to having her around.

  “I know. She does more in a day than we could do together!” Allyssa complained good-naturedly. She had learned more from this woman than she had from her own mother. She was still angry at her mother and sister, and she had exchanged their gifts for the twins at the store for something appropriate the babies could actually use. They were able to use Erin’s gift, a lamp with a shade that projected circus animal shapes on the ceiling. It was adorable, and the babies loved it. “Thank goodness there are no clowns,” Fey had said when she saw it. They both agreed that clowns were creepy and the babies didn’t need to see them.

  Both Allyssa and Fey were grateful to have Juanita there. She taught them things they didn’t know they didn’t know. She made motherhood seem easy and didn’t mind them asking what they thought were dumb questions. She also got Keith up from his bed, off the couch, and out into the fresh, fall air. He watched the world go by from the front porch as Brock gathered his harvest, some of the large harvesters passing by the yard to get to the fields he had sewn. Some came in the back way, avoiding the ranch yard completely. The hay wagons came back full as he gathered his share, leaving some by the barn as partial payment for his rent. Woody and Brenda helped move the hay into the large barn’s loft where the bales were stacked to the ceiling. They stored the precious feed against what looked like a hard winter.

  “Look at the coats on these horses,” Fey marveled, having never seen their coats grow so long this early. “It’s going to be a rough winter,” she explained to her wife.

  “You can tell that by looking at their coats?” Allyssa marveled, always pleased to learn something new as they groomed the horses. Neither one of them were ready to get back to work. They were eager to start getting back in shape, but their bodies were still healing from the births of their babies.

  Their two herds of rescue horses were being culled but not by anything human. Despite all their horses being fixed, they were disappearing, and they suspected a stallion on the open prairie was the culprit. They discussed it as they watched one horse affectionately nibbling along a barn cat’s back. The cat was arching into the horse and rubbing up against its long face. “Look at those beggars,” Fey marveled, loving the sight before her.

  “Should I announce the date for the roundup yet?” Allyssa fretted, looking at the far-off mountains and worrying about Fey’s earlier comment about a hard winter.

  “We will both be past the six-week mark soon. How about you wait and see if you can sit on a horse then?”

  “Yeah, that kind of hurts my crotch even thinking about it,” Allyssa replied softly.

  Fey chuckled, knowing that would put her off any talk of a roundup for a while. Still, they both wanted to get rid of the cattle and some of the wild horses that were freely roaming their land. She looked off in the distance where Brock was plowing up the fields he had used and expanding those he could. The stubble would remain for a while, providing food to those animals and birds that foraged through it. They’d also been asked if hunters could come on their land, but they had refused every request because of all the children who roamed it. Since Ben had allowed it in the old days, a few of the old-time hunters resented his granddaughter for refusing. The women just hoped these people weren’t sneaking in the back way or the far side of the lake.

  Fey started to cough as the dust Brock was kicking up swirled into the barnyard. “This has been a dry summer and fall,” she noted.

  “We got some rain,” Allyssa pointed out, remembering a few days when things had turned to mud.

  “Not enough. The winter snow, if it’s deep enough, will be good for the land.”

  “You miss working with the farmers and ranchers, don’t you?” She laid her head on her wife’s shoulder, glad they both had slimmer bodies but sad that they hadn’t been intimate yet. Postpartum depression was something they were both fighting; however, they could still show affection and frequently did.

  “I do miss that. This is the longest I’ve been off work for years, and I’m anxious to get back. Also, those new interns are due in a couple weeks and I’m worried where we are going to put them.” They’d already put them off a bit, cutting some weeks from their internship as Fey wasn’t back at work yet.

  “We can put two twin beds in the loft. I’m sure they aren’t expecting luxury, and it’s really quite warm, remember?”

  Fey did remember. They had lived in that cabin for two winters, and while she had some fond memories of it,
the mobile home had also been available to them. Now, Juanita lived in the mobile home and she seemed to really appreciate the privacy. She’d been fixing it up to her liking. She’d asked if she could paint it, and in her off time she had spruced it up much more than their thorough cleaning. The insides had been painted a fresh, bright, white with brown trim that made the wood look new. Fey had even ordered some paint, so she could change the horrible yellow siding. She chose a brighter yellow that Juanita assured her she wanted. Fey didn’t think the mobile home could be improved but was willing to try to keep Juanita happy. If she wanted yellow paint, she would get yellow paint.

  “Where did that cat come from?” Fey asked, spotting a very pregnant cat slinking around the far side of the barn.

  “I have no idea, but people dump animals, you know,” Allyssa answered, lifting her head to get a better look at the calico beauty. “I haven’t seen her before.”

  “We better catch her and check her out. Can’t have a vet with pregnant animals roaming around when I can do something about it.”

  “Well, there are live traps we can set,” she mused. She hadn’t used them before, but one of the 4-H moms had told her about some rabbits they relocated using them. They later realized the same rabbits had returned from miles away after they moved them. They’d eventually given the rabbits to some elderly neighbors who loved hasenpfeffer.

  “I hope people aren’t dumping their cats and dogs. My God, if they start dumping horses on our range too it would be horrible!” she said, picking up the previous thread of the conversation.

  “We’ll know more after the roundup,” Allyssa attempted to soothe her wife’s agitation but she knew she was annoyed by the pregnant cat. They had fixed the few cats they kept around the ranch, so they didn’t have a slew of kittens to deal with. The calico slunk into the barn, so it knew where it was going.

  The two women drifted back towards the house, skirting the horse fountain and the longish grass growing around it that had been watered from its splashes. “I’d better get out here with the weed eater,” Allyssa noted as they went past.