“Files?” The frown deepened as she pulled them out. All neatly kept in manila file folders with years printed on the outside in the same slanted hand.
She started with the first one, dated 1984. It held her mother and Ezra’s original marriage license and a copy of her birth certificate. She’d weighed seven pounds and seven ounces, had come into the world at twenty inches long on November 16, 1984, at seven thirty a.m. There was a picture of her in the hospital nursery that had begun to fade and one of her in a bassinet on a sun porch.
“Mama, he threw us out. Paid you to leave and promise you’d never come back to the canyon and you sent him pictures of me? What was wrong with you?” Her voice caught in her throat and it took the rest of the beer to swallow down the lump.
There was one folder for each of her first ten years in the box with the number one on the top. Each one held newspaper clippings, report cards, and awards that she’d gotten at school. It ended with a picture of her building a sand castle on the beach with her mother.
Box number two covered her life for the next ten years. It wasn’t until she got to the end and found the copy of her mother’s obituary in the local newspaper that reality dawned.
“Mama didn’t do this. We were stalked.” Goose bumps the size of the canyon wall raised up on her neck and arms. “But why? He didn’t want me because I was a girl, so why would he even care what I did?”
The third box covered from ages twenty-one to thirty, ending with her separation papers. Lord, the man had copies of every commendation and promotion she’d gotten. The only thing missing were actual pictures of her in Afghanistan and Kuwait. Evidently it had cost far too much to hire an investigator to go that far.
It was all surreal, sitting there looking at her life. “But he only knew what I did and what I looked like; he didn’t know who I was. Mama knew the important things.”
She returned the smoky-smelling folders to their proper boxes and shoved them back under the bed, unwound her legs from sitting cross-legged and went straight to the closet for a bag of miniature candy bars. It might take every one of them to get her through the next hour until bedtime and then she wasn’t sure she would be able to sleep.
Her phone rang and she dropped the candy like she’d been caught stealing money from a bank vault.
“Hello,” she answered cautiously.
“Abby, are you okay? Your voice sounds strange.”
“Hello. Did you know about the boxes under the bed?” she asked abruptly.
“No, was I supposed to? Is this some sort of a horror movie?” Cooper asked.
“Did you know that Ezra stalked me my whole life and that he kept files on everything I ever did?”
“No, I had no idea.”
“Well, he did.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know. I’m in shock and I don’t understand why he’d do that if he didn’t want me.”
“Meet me in the hay barn. I can hop the fence and get there faster than if I drive over,” he said.
She started to say something, but the television noise behind him had stopped. When she looked at the phone, she realized he had ended the call. She picked up the disposable plates and headed toward the kitchen, glad to see that both Shiloh and Bonnie were in their rooms.
With one leg propped backward against the wide barn door, he looked more like one of those old Marlboro men than a sheriff. He dropped his boot to the ground and opened his arms. She walked right into them.
He drew her close and she could hear the steady beat of his heart thumping in there against his broad chest. “My God, Abby, you are trembling.”
She’d had those symptoms before, on her first deployment. It had happened when she and another vehicle were on their way to check out some intelligence. By a strange twist of fate, she’d been in the second sand-colored patrol car. The first one hit a bomb and went straight up into the air. Her driver stopped and backed up as fast as he could. Then bodies came floating down from the sky.
She’d made it back to base before she went into shock, but she recognized the symptoms very well.
“I feel violated,” she said.
“Why?”
“He didn’t want to know me, but he sent someone to spy on me. It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Crazy? That was Ezra. He was a controlling old fart. He might not have wanted you on the ranch to undermine a son he might have later, but you were his as much as this ranch was,” Cooper said.
“I was just a pile of hay or dirt or a cow?”
He kissed the top of her head. “Darlin’, I can’t explain Ezra or his crazy notions. He was old-school, back when old school was the only school, if you know what I mean. His ideas went back to the time that Texas was settled. I liked him. He was honest, opinionated, and funny. But that doesn’t mean I agreed with him. We had some damn good arguments.”
“About round bales of hay?” she asked.
“Among a whole raft of more serious issues, believe me.” His arms steadied her nerves as he tipped her chin up with his fist and his lips settled on hers like they belonged there. It wasn’t one of those steamy kisses full of passion and heat but it calmed her, grounded her in reality. Then he drew her closer to his chest and wrapped his arms around her and she felt protected from everything. Not even the boxes under the bed mattered anymore.
“I’m not sure that was a wise idea,” she said.
“What? The kiss?” She nodded. “Maybe not, but it happened,” he said. “Let’s take a drive. Have you been to Silverton?”
“Just through it on my way to the funeral, and I was running late.”
“Then let’s go get a soft drink at the convenience store and I’ll show you the courthouse and the police station and the diner. It’s a nice little Texas town.”
It wasn’t a date. It was two friends going for a cola or maybe a beer. She could damn sure use one more that night and Cooper would be driving.
Cooper had lived next door to Ezra, gone to church with him, talked to him over the fence, but he hadn’t actually known the man. When it came to Ezra, no one really knew what made him tick or think the way he did. So there was no way he could help Abby understand the man who’d fathered her.
If Abby had grown up on the ranch next door, he might have fallen for her when they were teenagers. But she hadn’t and like she said, she had wings. That meant she could fly away at any moment. He liked her, liked her spunk and her determination to learn the business, but . . .
And therein was the problem—a woman who hated the ground she walked on would never be happy for a whole lifetime in the canyon, and he’d never be happy with a lifetime out of the canyon. He wished things could be different, that she’d stand still long enough to grow roots, but that hateful voice that argued with him said that wasn’t likely to happen.
“It’ll be pretty in the spring when the wild daisies are in bloom,” he said.
“That’s what I hear. According to the marriage license, Ezra married Mama about this time of year. Now I wish I’d asked more questions about why she was even in Texas.”
“Why don’t you ask your living relatives in Galveston?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Don’t have any. Mama was adopted at birth by an older couple who died before I was born. Mama didn’t marry until she was past thirty and then she married Ezra, who was even older.”
His truck drove on, coming out of the canyon north of Silverton. Land reached out to touch a sky full of twinkling stars with a big round moon taking center stage. “Ezra said once that he met his first wife at a wedding, the second one at a church picnic, and the third one was a waitress in a truck stop between Claude and Amarillo. Does that help?” Cooper asked as he drove down Silverton’s wide Main Street.
Abby slapped her knee. “Georgia!”
“This doesn’t look a thing like
Georgia,” Cooper said.
“No, Georgia was Mama’s best friend when she was a kid. She had a picture of Georgia on the bookcase in the living room. It was taken on Georgia’s wedding day and Mama was in the wedding party. She told me about the wedding in the little white church that was in the background and how beautiful it had been with all the poinsettias and Christmas decorations. That must have been where she met Ezra, but that means they got married a month later. Holy shit!”
“Georgia who?” Cooper asked.
“Mama never told me her last name. She married a soldier and after the wedding they went to England. Their friendship had faded with the distance. I found Mama crying one day and she said Georgia had died,” Abby said.
Cooper laid a hand on her shoulder without a word. She reached up and squeezed it and then her hand went back to her lap. He moved his to the steering wheel and turned into a parking spot beside the courthouse.
“This is where my day job is located,” he said.
“That’s one big courthouse for such a little town.”
“It takes care of the whole spread-out county. Want something to drink now?”
“I thought I wanted a beer when we left home, but I’ve changed my mind. What I really want is a pint of ice cream—rocky road or praline—if there’s a place still open. I’d even share it.”
“Happy to.” He grinned. A rooster crowed, cutting off further comment about her ice cream habits, and she cocked her head to one side.
“That’s Rusty’s ringtone,” he said. “I’ll only be a minute . . . Hello, don’t tell me you are backing out of our trip.”
“No, this is a business call. Abby never came back from her walk. Her truck is here, and her sisters are on the verge of hysteria. Would you come over here and help us locate her?”
“She’s right here in the truck with me. We drove up to Silverton for ice cream,” Cooper said.
“I’m not hysterical,” Shiloh said in the background.
“Here.” Cooper handed the phone to Abby.
“Hello,” she said cautiously.
“Give me that phone,” Shiloh said.
“Oh, shit!” Abby whispered.
“Abby Malloy, we were worried about you,” she said.
Cooper could hear every high-pitched word coming through the phone. Shiloh was not a happy woman right then and Abby would have some explaining to do.
“I’m a big girl. I can leave the house without telling either one of you,” she protested. “Don’t wait up for me. And don’t bother to lock the back door. I could open that thing in ten seconds with nothing but a hairpin.”
She hit the “End” button and handed the phone back to Cooper. “Maybe you’d better make it two pints of ice cream.”
Chapter Ten
You think Bonnie and Shiloh will get out a shotgun and make me marry you?” Cooper teased as he parked the truck near the yard gate.
“I haven’t reported to anyone since I was eighteen years old. I’m not starting now. Good night, Cooper, and thank you for the drive and the ice cream. But most of all for talking to me about Ezra.”
He leaned across the console and brushed a soft kiss across her forehead. She would have liked very much for the next one to hit her lips square on, but the living room curtain pulled aside, framing two faces peering out, and she was glad she and Cooper were both sitting upright in the truck cab.
“Please don’t walk me to the door. They’ll think it’s a date,” she groaned.
“And that’s bad?”
“No, but it is personal. And after less than a week, I’m not ready to share any more of my personal life with them,” she said.
“I understand.” He nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Got any idea what’s on the dinner menu?”
“It’s Shiloh’s day to cook and I have no idea what she’s planning. She likes the kitchen better than outside, but I got to hand it to her, she’s pulls her fair share on the ranch as well as in the kitchen,” Abby said.
“And you?” Cooper asked.
“I don’t mind cooking or cleaning, but I’d rather be outside. I’d best get on inside or they’re liable to come out here,” she said.
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Good night, Abby.”
“Good night, Cooper.”
Martha’s old head popped up from Ezra’s chair where she’d been sleeping and she hopped down to the floor with a fluid movement, ambled across the living room, and stuck her cold nose into Abby’s open hand. Her tail wagged and Abby could’ve sworn the dog grinned when she dropped down on her knees to pet her.
Bonnie held out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
Abby shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m thirty years old. That’s too damn old to get my phone taken away because Cooper took me to Silverton for ice cream.”
“I’m not taking it away from you. I’m programming your number into my phone and then I’m putting mine into yours.”
“And”—Shiloh piped up from the sofa—“Rusty went through the roof when I said that about him killing us off to get the ranch. I might have given him an idea, though, so we have to watch out for each other.”
Abby handed the phone to Bonnie. “Y’all are paranoid. Rusty isn’t capable of murder.”
“But Cooper might be, or maybe Jackson. I can see them coveting this place, and what better way than to offer Rusty a big price after we all disappear,” Shiloh said.
“I thought you read romance books,” Abby said.
Bonnie put the phone back in Abby’s hand. “What’s that got to do with anything? I read romance, too.”
“It sounds like you’ve been reading murder mysteries. I’m going to bed now and FYI, ladies, I will not tell you I’m leaving every time I step out the door. We are grown adults, not teenagers, and I do not answer to either of you.”
Martha followed Abby as she started toward her room.
“No attention for Vivien and Polly?” Shiloh asked.
“No,” Abby answered.
“Why?”
“I like Martha better, and those two dogs belong to y’all, not me. Martha is mine. You want them to have attention, then it’s your job to provide it. I’m going to take a long, warm bath. Y’all have permission to use my half bath if you need it while I’m in the big bathroom. Just don’t knock on the bathroom door.”
“The queen gives orders but we can’t,” Bonnie said.
“Oldest child rights,” Abby said.
“And we get permission to enter the holy quarters.” Sarcasm dripped from Shiloh’s tone.
“Don’t get bitchy. Neither of you have invited me into your rooms,” Abby threw over her shoulder on the way down the hallway.
Ranching was never done.
Period.
No one ever said, If we get this fence fixed, it will be done for a week. Not once had she heard someone yell, And we finished plowing half the state of Texas, so we get to sleep until noon tomorrow.
But didn’t exist in ranching, not even for a nice excuse like, but I broke my fingernail and I have blisters on my toes. And no one ever uttered the words when I get the barn cleaned and the cows milked and the eggs gathered, I can read for the rest of the afternoon.
Thursday and Friday were long, exhausting days on Malloy Ranch. Two forty-acre fields were now planted in ryegrass and by spring the cattle would be eating green grass rather than hay. Two more fields were planted in winter wheat and next week the place where they’d burned the brush would be planted in a different kind of rye.
Cooper had been so busy with the sheriff’s job that he missed dinner on Friday and that made her cranky.
You are acting like a hormonal teenager, she fussed at herself.
Abby and her sisters had finished the evening chores and she’d sat down on the porch with Martha at her sid
e when her phone rang. Haley started in the minute she answered it.
“Sorry I haven’t called sooner but the twins had a stomach bug and all I’ve gotten done for the past three days is change stinky diapers and rock them. Tell me what’s going on and don’t stutter around. I feel something in my bones,” Haley said.
“And your bones never lie?” Abby laughed.
“Not when it comes to you they don’t,” Haley answered. “Trust me. Well, shit! Got a baby waking up. I’ll call later and we’ll talk some more about it. Big hugs,” Haley said.
Abby shoved the phone back into her pocket and said, “Well, Martha, at least I don’t have to change your stinky diapers.”
She reached out to pet the dog and the phone rang again. “That didn’t take long,” she said.
“What?” Cooper asked.
Just hearing his voice put a smile on her face. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Oh, got another boyfriend who calls often?”
“Another?” she said slowly.
He chuckled. “I called to tell you that I missed you at dinner, but I had to forget the lunch break if I was going to get through by five and get this pasture seeded.”
“Bonnie made fried chicken.”
He groaned. “I’d just about kill for good homemade fried chicken.”
“Then you should have taken a lunch break,” she said.
“Is your other boyfriend there now?”
“No, he is not and no, I do not have a boyfriend. How about you, Cooper? How many girlfriends have you got who are just your friends?” she said.
“I haven’t done a head count lately, but I will tell you that not a single one is here right now offering to help me plow until midnight when the rain is supposed to reach the canyon.”
“How many tractors do you own?” she asked.
“Two big ones and a little one that Grandpa bought for Granny to use when she got the urge to help. It hasn’t been driven in years, but I can’t bear to sell it.”
“Since you were good enough to teach me how to drive a tractor, I’ll drive one of them for you tonight. Tell me how to drive to your place. I don’t have any idea how to get there except over the fence. But why don’t you ask Rusty to help you?”
Daisies in the Canyon Page 12
