Cora broke the gaze, her eyes dropping to the sheep. Imagination, that’s all it was.
Then Mavis made a burping noise, a kind of stuttered moan, and the pen filled with a foul green odor.
“Whoa.” Cora took several steps back.
Mac removed the tube, sinking down on his heels. “That should help. You can let her go.”
As Cora released Mavis, the sheep folded to the ground.
“Oh…”
“She’ll be okay,” Mac said.
“Are you sure?” Mavis didn’t look okay. Mavis looked miserable. But she was breathing more deeply, more regularly. She belched again. Mac gave a bark of laughter. “Eructation is a great sign. Good job, Mavey-baby.” He reached out and gave the sheep a scratch on the top of her head. Mavis sighed redolently and leaned into his hand. “She acts more like a dog, huh?”
Cora felt relief flow through her. “She’s always been like that. Not normal.”
“I don’t expect any animal you have would be normal.”
Mac twisted as if his lower back hurt and then looked over his shoulder. He peered into the barn, turning his head around and then twisting the other way so he could see all the way around. The light was dim, but Cora knew one thing: her barn was as well-maintained as her animals.
“You have help here?”
“Gee, thanks.”
He held up his hands. “I’m only asking.”
“No. I don’t have the money for help. This is mine. All mine.” She couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice.
Mac nodded. “It looks great. And…” he raised his head and sniffed. “Besides that awful smell coming from our girl here, it smells good in here.”
She smiled. “Right? I read once that Martha Stewart demands that her barns smell as disinfected as a kitchen so she can have impromptu dinners there whenever she wants.”
Mac’s eyebrows raised. “I’m horrified.”
“Me, too. Can you imagine if it smelled like air freshener out here? Cool Linen? Spring Rain? If it didn’t smell like hay and dust and dirt?”
“Just good clean poop.”
“Yes. Exactly. People don’t get that.” Cora sat on a small bench she’d built into the pen’s wall two years ago.
“May I?” He gestured at the other end of the bench.
She nodded. “Of course.”
“This is nice,” Mac said, touching the wood. “It’s sanded and everything. Benches in barns have put more than one splinter in my ass over the years.” He paused. “Did Logan build this?”
“No.”
Logan had never been good with tools, and Cora knew Mac knew that, too. Logan had ridden horses. That had been his one true talent, and holy hell, he’d been amazing at it. It was what she’d loved about Logan back then, the way he looked up on a bronc that was trying its level best to unseat him. Eventually he’d get down from the saddle (or get thrown from it), and he’d always stand up the same way, slow and long, hooking one thumb into his belt loop, pushing down his sunglasses to send her an insouciant grin, ready to ride into the ring again as soon as the buzzer sounded. Mac had seen him in the saddle as often as Cora had. More, since they’d grown up together. But Mac had always been in the stables, with the animals, moving around and under them, while Logan soaked up the rodeo glory.
Mac was still examining the wood. “Who did, then? They’re newish, right?”
He couldn’t imagine that she’d done it? It hadn’t even crossed his mind? Had she really been that helpless then? “They’re mine. I breed the girls every year with Charlie Foscalina’s ram. When they lamb, I like a place to sit and wait for the births. And afterward, I can rest here and watch them do the sproinging.”
“Damn.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
“But I am. You were such a…”
“A what?” What had Mac thought she was, so long ago? Just some random foster kid? Some nobody? No, that wasn’t right, not the way he used to look at her. She would like to think he’d thought she was a friend, but then he’d left and had never looked back.
“You were such a girl.”
She was as surprised as if he’d burst into song. “Okay, that was the last thing I thought you’d say.”
Mac stretched his long legs out, his brown cowboy boots broken in and scuffed at the sole. “What did you expect?”
She paused. And then she surprised herself by telling him the truth. “That you thought I was just a kid from nowhere.”
He tilted his head, and the overhead light lit the long plane of his cheekbone. His jaw was all stubble. He’d probably have half a beard by morning.
“You were from here.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You were in all the ways that counted.”
“Oh.” Cora felt warmed. Then she looked down at her ratty jeans, at the old homespun Aran she’d made ten years ago that she’d thrown on after she’d called him. “But just a girl? Please. I don’t even know the last time I used lipstick.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say just a girl. I said such a girl.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?” Was he teasing her? Because if anything, Cora was closer to a tomboy now than she’d ever been. She wore overalls, not dresses. She used lanolin on her lips, not lip gloss. Her manicures consisted of pushing Bag Balm into her cuticles before bed.
Mac didn’t answer. He moved instead back to Mavis. The sheep was lying down now, her eyes closed, her breath even. “You’re better, aren’t you, love?” His voice was a dark rumble, and Mavis looked like she’d purr if she could. Listening to Mac’s soothing tone, Cora wouldn’t blame her…
She stood, slapping her hands together. Both Mac and Mavis jumped. “All right. Thank you. How can I pay you for this visit?”
Mac ducked his head and kept his gaze on the sheep. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I owe you for your time.”
Mac collected his gear, throwing it in his bag. His motions were hurried. “We can work it out some other time.”
“Fine,” said Cora. “But we will work it out.”
He nodded and brushed past her. Just the shoulder of his jacket touched her as he passed, and Cora caught her breath.
Back at the car, he stashed his gear in the back without meeting her eyes. “Goodnight, Cora.” He opened the driver’s door and stopped. Then, without getting in, he slammed it shut again. Looking past her, he focused on something over her shoulder.
“No more horses, then?”
“Logan was the one who raised bucking stock. Not me.”
“Did he ever make any money on that?”
She twisted her fingers into her belt loop. “Nope. Never went into banking like he said he would, either.” Logan had let Cora down, over and over again. Not that she’d tell Mac that. “He worked part-time loping horses out at the fairgrounds. At least that was semi-steady cash.”
Mac nodded, thinking. “You still use that old bomb shelter?”
She hadn’t expected him to remember that. “It’s my favorite place on the property.” Inside it she kept a cot, stores of fresh water and enough canned food to last weeks. She’d made it more than just habitable. She’d made it a cozy little bomb shelter, as oxymoronic as that was. Just in case.
Mac said, “I used to hide in there when Logan and I played hide and seek. He was scared of it, so he never found me.”
After Logan died, I slept in it. Sometimes I still hide there. The words were loud in her head.
Mac’s stride was long and he was in front of her almost before she could register his motion. “I’m sorry.”
This was the time, then. This was when Cora said, with acid in her voice, all the words she’d planned: You’re sorry you left your cousin to die by himself? You’re sorry you never said goodbye to a man who loved you like a brother? You’re sorry you’ll never get a chance to redo the one thing that mattered the most?
Instead she just said, “Sorry for what, Mac?
”
“I’m sorry I let you both down.” He kept his eyes low, focused somewhere at their feet. “I can never forgive myself, and I can never make it right.” His voice thickened. “I did it all completely wrong, and I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I am. But I swear, Cora, I’d like to try to tell you.”
She opened her mouth to speak but had no idea what she wanted to say.
Mac nodded, sharply, and turned. The car door slammed, and he was gone, leaving Cora standing alone in the moonlight.
Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t be stupid.
She folded her lips firmly. Chores. The rest of them. And then there was spinning to do. A lot of it. Nothing was going to get done if she didn’t do it herself.
Don’t think of him. Don’t.
As she closed the barn door, she wished that for once, she’d listen to herself.
CHAPTER SIX
Home is where you make most of your knitting (and your life) mistakes. The right pillow and the right shoulder on which to rest can ease the fixing. – E.C.
The idea came to Cora while she was lying in bed that night, unable to sleep, determinedly blocking the image of Mac taking care of her favorite sheep from her mind. Money. She needed a creative way – another one – to bring in more money.
Okay. So what was she good at?
Skipping stones across the creek probably wouldn’t pull in any vast income. Nor would reading L. M. Montgomery novels in the bathtub.
She was already making things – candles, yarn, clothes. Sometimes it felt like she was making all the things, but the percentage brought back in was low per item. It hadn’t mattered that much, though. Her bank account, never robust, had never been totally threadbare. Not until recently.
It should be something that used her brain rather than her hands, not something that would cost almost as much to make as to sell.
Once she’d had what she thought had been a genius idea: she made a series of videos detailing what went into a self-sustainable lifestyle. She had one on how to grow high-yield vegetables in a small space. She’d racked up a lot of views on the canning video – she showed her favorite trick for peeling tomatoes – but by far her most popular video was the one about her ‘bug-out bag’, the bag she’d grab if she had to in case of tsunami or earthquake or other unnamed terrifying disaster. She sat in front of the camera with the backpack and removed one by one the flashlight, extra batteries, tiny hand-cranked radio, water purifying tablets, toilet paper and small trowel (very important, she’d said to the camera, keeping her face straight, because after all it was important), local and state map, list of emergency phone numbers, dried granola bars she’d made herself, can opener (with bonus corkscrew! In case your shelter had wine, and this was California, after all, you had to be able to open the bottle).The video had so many hits that she’d been able to put an ad at the bottom of it. But even so, the video made only a few dollars a month. She wasn’t going to get rich that way.
Cora stared at the moonlight illuminating the back of the curtain. She could write. She knew that. She’d written for the paper in high school, and it had been her favorite class, even though Trixie Fletcher had been the editor. But the thing that had been true in high school was still true today: Cora and Trixie were not pals. The one time she’d gotten up the courage to ask Trixie if she needed any help with the book review column at the paper, she’d been assured that Trixie most certainly did not. It had taken days to recover from the deep purple blush of shame.
Nowadays, beside the odd article for Spin-Off or Mother Earth News, her writing was usually contained to the What-If book. Maybe looking at it would help. She flipped on the bedside lamp and pulled the book from the nightstand drawer. The cover was battered leather, scratched and scraped, worn from being handled for so long. A thin, knitted bookmark marked the entry she’d last been working on. But What If A Boat Sinks wasn’t what she was worried about tonight. Cora flipped the pages, the scent of paper and ink pleasing her, as it always had.
Eliza Carpenter gave her the blank book many years ago, the first week that Cora lived with her that last year of high school. She’d said, “You worry so much. Too much, Cora.” At the time, Cora had been seventeen with a brain that never stopped racing, while it seemed Eliza had a secret well of peace that she dipped into regularly. Cora desperately wanted to know how to be more like Eliza.
She had been Cora’s first real friend in Cypress Hollow. Before Logan and Mac, before anyone at the stables, Cora had been placed at Windward Group Home. She hadn’t understood why the system – which hadn’t paid any attention to her for so long – would suddenly send her off to the middle of nowhere, a tiny coastal town full of people who would most likely stare and point and whisper as she walked around. The group home itself could hardly be called that – it only had four other kids, and they’d all been there so long it seemed like they belonged there, like some kind of weird little family. The four of them, Janice and Shirelle and Leona and one lone boy, Marquis, sat on the front porch and spat into the oleander bushes, playing poker using made-up rules and eucalyptus buds for chips.
High school in Cypress Hollow, Cora knew, would probably be brutal. Everyone would know everyone, and she’d be the loser just like she’d always been. Alone.
Then, as she’d been putting her notebooks away on the one bookshelf in the bare room, making sure her two favorite purple pens were secreted away behind them, a woman had knocked gently at her partially open door. “May I come in? I’ve been trying to give you some time to unpack, but I’m always so impatient. I’m Eliza Carpenter. I come every Tuesday to teach knitting.”
Cora had been attracted to the needles at once, even though she’d been shy of Eliza– she’d seemed so happy, so content in her own skin. Everything Cora wasn’t. Maybe the key was in the yarn, Cora had thought. She had loved the way the stitches slipped, one by one, from Eliza’s left needle to the right one. She’d adored how Eliza looked right into her eyes when she praised her neat, economical stitches. She’d loved how knitting had a point – it wasn’t just a craft girls did while passing time. You got something out of it. Something useful. It was a practical art.
Then later, when Eliza had taken her out of Windward, that first week of living on Eliza’s ranch, Cora kept pinching herself in joy while at the same time, she tried to stay out of the way. She teetered on worry’s sharp edge: Was she underfoot? Should she try to be more present? Would Eliza like her more if she vacuumed every day? Or was it better to assist more outside, with the sheep? Eliza would never keep her if she wasn’t useful, if she didn’t add value to the property. Cora didn’t know much, but she knew running a sheep ranch was hard work, and she was going to make it easier for Eliza, no matter what.
After they’d spent the morning repairing a broken fence (Cora had unspooled the barbed wire, not complaining when she cut her palm) and the afternoon making Eliza’s famous raspberry scones (Cora had done the mixing by hand, ignoring the sweat that soaked her T-shirt), Eliza had held the blank book between her square, capable hands and said, “Even on my darkest nights, I never worried as much as you do on a good day. But you know the difference between you and me?”
Cora couldn’t have begun to list all the differences that rested between them.
“There is no difference. At heart, we’re exactly the same, and that’s why we feel like we know each other so well,” Eliza had said triumphantly.
As she’d handed Cora the leather book, Eliza said, “You just need a place to store your worries.”
“What?”
“Write them down. Every single one.” Eliza opened to the first page and wrote What if… ? “Fill in the blank.”
Cora was skeptical. “But that won’t fix anything.”
“Of course not. You have to write the fix, too.”
So it had started. That night, Cora wrote What if Eliza sends me back? After a long, long time of thinking, she carefully wrote, If no one wants me, then I will take care of myself. I will always t
ake care of myself. It was simple. Too easy. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do it, not just like that. But she’d slept better that night than she had in years, her mind still and dreamless.
In the morning, when she’d woken in the cupola in Eliza’s little cottage, surrounded by windows that looked down on rolling green hills and acres of wooded land, she didn’t bother to pinch herself. If it was a dream, she had never wanted to wake up.
Eliza had been her answer to so many What-ifs.
But of course, Cora had learned over the years that there were always more questions, and every one solved meant another two to write down.
Now the old leather book fell open to a well-thumbed page: What if I run out of money? She’d written the question a few months after Logan died five years before, when she’d spent all the insurance money on first his funeral, then paying off his truck, and finally to fix the roof that had almost blown right off in a spring windstorm.
There were answers listed, so many of them, but the problem was that none was just right. Stop eating anything store bought. She was already pretty much doing that. Give up having coffee with friends. Cora couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought a cup of coffee she didn’t make herself at home. Sell the engagement ring. She’d done that last year – it was too bad it turned out to be cubic zirconia. She hadn’t allowed herself to be mad at Logan. It was too late for all that. Run away to Bali. That was just silly. She’d never leave home, not for any reason.
For one brief moment, she pictured Mac asleep in his grandfather’s house. If she stood and pulled back the curtain on the north side of the bedroom, she’d be able to see the roof he was sleeping under.
It would be a ridiculous thing to do. Think about the money. Think about saving yourself. She read the pages again and thought about getting up to find a pen.
But even without an answer, holding the notebook calmed her. She yawned. The moon had tucked itself behind a cloud, and its light no longer filtered through the thin curtain. Cora barely noticed when the book slipped from her hands, and sleep rolled over her like the ocean waves outside the window.
Cora's Heart: A Cypress Hollow Yarn Page 4
