Finding Home

by Lois Greiman

  Turning abruptly toward the tractor, she climbed back into the Farmall’s seat and backed away. The chain tightened, came loose, and dropped with a muffled thud onto the cow’s lower leg. Stomach churning, Casie drove forward and tried again.

  It took three more attempts before she was finally successful in dragging the cow out of the barn. With Jack frenetically chasing the curious herd in every direction, she backed through the cattle pens and out into the yard.

  Every horse in the paddock lifted its head and fled to the far side of the enclosure, blowing steam through fiery nostrils as Casie dragged her macabre trophy to the pit behind the barn where dead things went before returning to the earth.

  Almost there now. Just past the corncrib she’d take a left and…

  But a flash of color caught her eye. Casie jerked to the right and cursed silently. A red Cadillac was turning into her driveway. Jaegar. For a moment she was totally unsure what to do. Her first instinct was to duck beneath the steering wheel like a timid toddler. Her second was to abandon the tractor and book it for the barn. But maturity or a fair facsimile of the same prevented her from enacting either of those seductive scenarios.

  Instead, as the car eased to a halt not fifty feet away, she idled down the engine and disembarked from the tractor. A few fine curse words found their way into her brain as Philip Jaegar, dressed in dark, crisply ironed trousers and a white button-down shirt, stepped out from behind the wheel. Then the passenger door opened and those fine words turned to something a little more criminal as Sophie Jaegar unfolded from the confines of the Cadillac.

  “Miss Carmichael …” Philip Jaegar strode forward with a happy smile, hand lifted to grasp hers in yet another unwelcome meeting. “It’s so good to see you again.”

  Casie met his hand with hers. Her damned glove was still duct taped at the fingers. “Yes. I …” She nodded nonsensically. “How are you doing?”

  “Good. Great. Right, Soph?” he asked and half turned toward his daughter.

  The girl strode toward them, lips pursed, long hair sleek as a seal in the sharp morning sunlight.

  “It’s cold out here.” Her nose was pink, her lips as bright and glossy as her hair.

  “We’ll get going in a minute,” Jaegar said. “I just thought we’d stop by and see how things are going here at the Lazy.”

  Casie shifted her gaze from the girl. “All right, I guess. We’ve had a little …” she began, but in that second Sophie glanced to the left. Her eyes widened and her shiny lips parted.

  Casie stifled a groan.

  “What’s that?” Sophie asked, staring at the twisted corpse chained to the tractor.

  Casie refrained from shuffling her feet, from clearing her throat, from bolting for cover. “Like I was saying,” she began. “We had a little trouble with one of the cows.”

  “A little trouble?” Sophie turned toward her father, brows puckered, tone trembling with emotion. “A little trouble?”

  Philip Jaegar shifted his gaze past his daughter. He looked pale and a little sick to his stomach by the time he dragged his attention back to Casie. “I’m sure Miss Carmichael did everything she could to—”

  “Everything she could?” Sophie rasped. “She’s dragging a cow across the gravel like it’s a … a toboggan and …” She ran out of words for a second, forestalling any well-planned histrionics.

  Her father lurched heroically into the breach. “Listen, honey, I—”

  “And this is where you want to send me? Am I that bad?” Her voice was shrill. “Do you really want to get rid of me so much that you’d—”

  “Sweetheart, it’s not that I want to get rid of you.”

  “Is it Amber then? Is this her idea?”

  “Of course not.” He shifted his beseeching gaze to Casie, but she was once again debating whether it was too late to run for cover. Although she was a mix of a host of nationalities, she was predominantly German and wholly Midwestern; she’d rather take a bullet to the brain than deal with such explosive emotions. “We just thought you’d—” Jaegar continued.

  “We?”

  “I!” he corrected. “I thought you’d enjoy getting out of the condo for a while. I thought you’d want to spend time with—”

  “With what? Dead livestock? Are you crazy? Are you so hot for Amber that you can’t even—”

  “I’m afraid we made a mistake.” Emily’s practical voice cut through the moment like a pocketknife through suet.

  The three of them turned toward her in tense unison. It was nothing short of amazing to Casie that the girl didn’t turn tail and run. Instead, she stood absolutely still, every inch of her diminutive figure as straight as a T-post.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Jaegar.” Her expression was absolutely solemn.

  “Well—” He looked befuddled but rallied quickly. “I’m sure it can’t be helped. I mean … cows die. These things happen, right?” He shifted his gaze to his daughter, but Emily highjacked his attention without batting an eye.

  “No, there was nothing we could have done for the cow. She died of a massive hemorrhage while giving birth. But that wasn’t what I was referring to. I was speaking of your daughter.”

  “My—”

  “I’m afraid Sophie isn’t … well …” She gave the younger girl a silently assessing glance. “I just don’t think she’s up to the kind of experience that ranch life has to offer.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Emily shook her head and forced a prim smile. “I’m certain you raised her very well,” she said. “But some girls are just more …” She paused, squinting a little as if searching for the perfect word. “I don’t want to say weak or …” She shook her head. “Some girls are just too … fragile for this type of—”

  “You think I’m weak?” Sophie had taken a half step forward. Her stylish ankle boots crunched aggressively on the gravel between them. “You think I’m—”

  “I didn’t say weak,” Emily said.

  “Fragile!”

  “Sensitive,” Emily corrected blandly and caught the other girl’s glare in her own steely gaze. “Perhaps I should have said sensitive.” She shook her head, dismissing semantics. “Regardless of the phraseology, I don’t believe your daughter is up to—”

  “Who the hell are you—” Sophie began, but her father burst in.

  “Sophie!” In Philip’s defense, he sounded honestly mortified. “You watch your language, young lady. I don’t—”

  She swung toward him like a cornered cougar. “Are you kidding me? You think I don’t hear you and Mom screaming obscenities on the phone? You think I don’t know—”

  “Your mother and—” He stopped himself and blushed. “I’m sorry.” He turned toward Casie before shifting apologetically back toward Emily. “I suppose you’re right. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Sophie’s not—”

  “Sophie’s not what?” his daughter snapped.

  “Sophie would be happier elsewhere,” Emily said, but the other girl barked a laugh.

  “You don’t know me.”

  Emily smiled. The expression got nowhere near her eyes. “I know your kind.”

  “My kind?” Sophie took another half step forward, snaking her neck a little. “What’s that? Someone who doesn’t wear army boots to bed? Someone who doesn’t smell like …” She sniffed and eyed the girl’s dreadlocks. “Like trailer trash and hummus?”

  For a moment Casie thought Emily might lose her stellar composure and take a swing at her, but Em banked the fire in her eyes so fast she wasn’t even sure it had ever been ignited.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Jaegar,” she said, “but this isn’t a spa. This is a working ranch. This is life. And …” She shook her head and swept a hand toward the corpse. “… death. Pain. Blood. Sweat, and—”

  “You’re no better than I am,” Sophie snarled.

  For a moment Emily stood entirely blank faced and then she laughed. “I assure you, Ms. Jaegar, I’m not nearly as good as you are. That’s why I don’t wa
nt you to waste your time by bringing you into a situation you’re not ready for.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s my time.”

  “I realize that,” Emily said. Her voice sounded marvelously disappointed. “But it’s not your money.”

  “Dad!” Sophie snapped, turning sharply toward her father.

  He sprinted into action as if he’d been spurred in the flanks. “If it’s just a matter of finances, I assure you, my daughter is worth a good deal more.”

  “I’m sure she is, Mr. Jaegar. I just don’t think she’s ready.”

  “I can pay extra.”

  “It’s not about the money.”

  “Then let’s just give it a try.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Please.”

  Emily scowled, sighed long and artfully, then turned her mournful gaze toward Casie, who barely resisted the temptation to start like a flighty yearling.

  “What do you think, Ms. Carmichael?”

  She forced herself not to stammer. “I believe …” She shifted her gaze to Sophie’s seething visage. The girl looked mad enough to erupt into flame. “Miss Jaegar is tougher than she appears.”

  Emily waited four beats and shifted her attention back to Sophie before acquiescing. “All right,” she said finally. “If you’re sure, we’ll try it on a temporary basis.”

  “Thank you.” Jaegar said the words on a sharp exhalation. There was solemn relief in his voice, gratitude in his expression. “You won’t be sorry,” he added, and reaching out, shook Casie’s hand again.

  “I’m …” Casie felt as if she were living in an alternate universe. “I’m sure we won’t be.”

  “I hope not,” Emily added.

  Sophie glared at her. Emily’s expression was absolutely unreadable. But in a moment the Jaegars were gone, driving away in their dragonfly-bright Cadillac.

  Casie turned like one in a trance, mind fuzzy with what had just transpired. “This is nuts,” she said. “I honestly think we have both completely lost our minds. We can’t do this.” She shook her head. “Do you think we can do this?” she asked, but Emily’s attention had been dragged back to the corpse. “Em?” Casie said, but the girl was already pivoting away.

  In fewer than four seconds she was tossing her breakfast into the buttonweed beside the corncrib.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Don’t!” Casie said, then calmed her voice and cleared her throat as she took the cardboard box from Emily’s hands. They’d been cleaning her parents’ bedroom since shortly after the Jaegars’ departure. “I’ll take that.”

  “What is it?”

  “Dad’s important papers.”

  “Like bank statements and stuff.”

  “Yeah, that sort of thing.” That and doodled grocery lists and scraps of notes that Kathy had left behind and Clayton had subsequently hidden away, demanding that no one touch them. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “Yeah. Sorry about this morning.”

  “Well, you should be … tossing your cookies just because I’m dragging a dead cow around by its hind leg,” Casie said and shivered with grim exaggeration.

  “I should have helped you.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Casie said and flipped the sheets off the queen-sized bed. “Dead cow dragging is strictly a one-woman job.” She glanced toward Emily. “Have you always had such severe periods?”

  “Well …” She was piling stacks of miscellaneous papers into another box. “Not always.”

  Casie made a face. “I meant, since you started menstruating.”

  “Oh.” Emily cracked a grin. “Well, yeah. Pretty much since then.”

  “That sucks.”

  Emily shrugged. “It got me out of school for one full day every month. Mom would bake the most phenomenal gingerbread cookies and brew peppermint tea in one of her cute little pots covered with a cozy.”

  Casie tossed the sheets into a laundry basket, then picked up a spare sock by its toe and heaped it on top of the pile. “It’s hard to believe that you’re willing to give up gingerbread cookies for dead cows and late-night lamb feedings.”

  “What can I say? I have eccentric tastes,” Em said and added another sock to the heaping basket.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the doctor?”

  “For cramps?”

  “Maybe they can prescribe something.”

  “I’m not going to go all the way to town so some quack can tell me the pain’s all in my head.”

  “Okay,” Casie said, then thought about that for a second. “But if it’s a matter of money—”

  “Don’t sweat it, Case. Mom’s insurance would cover it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup. I got food poisoning just before Christmas. Spent all night in the ICU. The deductible’s all paid up.”

  “Food poisoning.”

  “Ike’s chili was always a little suspect.”

  “Ike …”

  “My boss. At the coffee shop?”

  “Oh, right. Well …” Casie said, digging under the bed for additional questionable objects she wasn’t sure she wanted to find. “At least I can buy you tampons or something.”

  “Don’t need ’em,” Emily said, scraping things out from the other side of the bed.

  “You can’t possibly have stuffed six months’ worth of feminine products into that backpack of yours.”

  “DivaCup.”

  “What?” She stared at the girl from under the bed, squinting past dust bunnies as big as mop heads.

  “Silicone cup that you, uhh …” Emily paused in her explanation. “It replaces tampons. It’s reusable. Environmentally friendly.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Have you been living under a rock or something?”

  “Pretty much,” Casie said. Pulling a piece of paper out from under the bed, she straightened and glanced at the just-discovered item. It was a picture of her mother. She was wearing a purple paisley head scarf and beaming at the camera. Beaten and worn, the photo was creased down the middle and water stained, but written in permanent marker were the words There’s no one I’d rather fight to the death with. All my love, K.

  Casie pushed herself to her feet and stared at the photograph as Emily came around the corner of the footboard to peer at it over her shoulder.

  “Your mom?” she asked.

  Casie managed a nod.

  “How old was she there?”

  Casie cleared her throat. “It must have been taken after she got sick.”

  The room went silent. Tattered memories swirled through the air like kindly ghosts.

  “Looks like she wasn’t afraid to die,” Emily said finally.

  Or live, Casie thought and wished she could say the same.

  By Monday they were both exhausted, but the house was as tidy and homey as it was likely to get without a subcontractor and a full-time cleaning service.

  “This is crazy,” Casie said and collapsed onto the mattress they’d propped onto an old metal frame found in the basement. The springs twanged noisily, probably because they were as old as black pepper. The headboard was rusty. If she tried really hard she might be able to convince herself that it made the room look rustic. “What are we thinking?”

  Emily shrugged. “I believe we’re thinking that Mr. Jaegar is going to pay us beaucoup bucks for the privilege of allowing his baby girl to stay here.”

  “In the attic?” The room was actually adjacent to her parents’, which she now occupied, but her family had always referred to this space as the attic and had stored everything from old picture frames to outdated clothing within its tight confines. The ceiling that slanted in over the bed only made the space seem smaller, and although the window beyond the mottled headboard did offer a panoramic view of Chickasaw Creek, there was no denying the primitive nature of the accommodations. “With the spiders?” she asked, noticing a web she’d missed earlier.

  “I think we should charge extra for the spiders,” Emily said. “They add a c
ertain … quaintness.”

  “This is insane.”

  “It’s unique.”

  “Dirty.”

  “Earthy.”

  “Terrifying.”

  “Challeng—” Emily began, but her counterclaim was interrupted by the sound of tires on the gravel below the window.

  “What’s that?” Casie sat up abruptly.

  Emily went to the window to peer out. They’d washed and ironed the old curtains, but they still looked as faded and out of date as a crocheted doily. “Holy hell, I think—”

  “Emily!” Casie reprimanded.

  “I think they’re here.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should—” Casie began, but the significance of the girl’s words shot through her like a poison dart. “Who’s here?”

  “The Jaegars.”

  “Holy hell!” Springing up, she lurched toward the window. “They’re not either. They can’t be here.” Below them, a candy-apple Cadillac was parked beside Puke like a thoroughbred in a pigsty. Casie blinked, knees weak. “That can’t be them. They’re not supposed to be here until after five.”

  “Well … technically it’s nine hours past five o’clock.”

  “Five o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Emily grinned a little. “Maybe you should have made that clear.”

  “No! They couldn’t have possibly thought I meant five o’clock in the morning.”

  Emily shrugged. “We’re on a farm. Early risers and all that.”

  Casie closed her eyes and stifled a moan as Philip Jaegar unfolded from behind the steering wheel of his Caddy. His daughter exited more slowly.

  “Dear God,” Casie said. “There she is. What the … What am I going to do with her?”

  “You know, you’re an adult,” Emily said, still scowling out the window. “You can swear if you want to.”

  “Why did I let you talk me into this?” She was whispering, even though there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of being heard.

  “I think it might have been for the two grand a week.”

  “I don’t care about the money.” She faced the girl in abject terror. “I don’t even want the money. Make her go away, Emily. Make her go away and I’ll give you anything you want.”