The Christmas Room

by Catherine Anderson

  Sam kissed her forehead. “Nah. I’ll send you to Europe, and when you come home with a kid, we’ll tell everyone it’s adopted.”

  “I’m going to work on this ranch until the day I give birth, just like my mother did. I can’t do that in Europe, so I’ll refuse to go.”

  Sam really wished she’d give him a year. As it was, nobody would show up on her big day. He might be able to mend fences with some of his friends if he had a whole year to make up with them. “You drive a hard bargain,” he told his daughter. “Shit. I’ll have to hire one of those wedding planners, and it’ll cost me a damned fortune.”

  “I work, Dad. I can pay for my own wedding.”

  “Over my dead body. You’re my girl. You deserve the best, and it’s my place to make sure you get it.” Sam thought of Annie, who had set such store on being a part of this community. She would have been so disappointed in him right now. “How will I find time for a wedding? By my rough calculation, I figure I’ve still got a hundred pair hiding up there on that mountain. If I don’t find all of them and get them to lower ground before the first snowstorm, my losses will be astronomical.”

  “I’m able to ride again,” Cam said. “I can help you and Miguel round them up.”

  “You have your own business. I don’t expect you to partner up with me and do ranch work.”

  Cam gave him a long look that glinted with mischief. “The ranch will one day go to my wife. The way I see it, it’ll be in my best interest to help. If she ever divorces me, I’ll get half of what it’s worth.”

  Sam glared at him. “Again, that’ll happen over my dead body.”

  Maddie spoke up. “At your age, that’s not only a possibility, but almost a certainty.”

  “Then I’ll accept your offer,” he told Cam. “I may as well work your ass off for every dime you might get.”

  Caleb came downstairs, bypassed them at the table, and stood in front of the open refrigerator. “What’s everybody arguing about?”

  Sam said, “We’re not arguing. We’re having a discussion.”

  “Oh.” Caleb shrugged. “At our house, nobody yells unless we’re arguing.”

  • • •

  Kirstin leaned against Cam as he walked her home with his arm around her shoulders. For her, this was a beautiful ending to a perfect day. “I am so happy.”

  Cam hugged her closer. “I’m glad. But why? I feel as if I just dodged machine-gun fire.”

  She giggled. “I loved when you flipped him shit about taking your half of the ranch proceeds if I ever divorce you. That was priceless.”

  “Kirstin, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but I was trying to piss your father off.”

  “I know. But, Cam, you need to tread carefully with Dad. He played you.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Daddy hates to ask people for help. He wasn’t that way before Mama died, but now it’s as if he has to prove to the world that he doesn’t need anybody. This way, instead of accepting your generous offer, he can flip you crap about working for your half of my inheritance. Don’t you get it?”

  Cam thought about it for a moment and then chuckled. “And he’ll never once shake my hand and thank me.”

  “Exactly.”

  “He’s impossible, you know. Your ring is just on the ‘right side of chintzy’? I’m telling you, the man terrifies me. Plus, he’s in love with my mother. He admitted that he’d marry her if she’d have him. Can you imagine what her life would be like if she said yes?”

  Kirstin smiled up at him. “Yes. Next to me, she’d be the most loved and spoiled woman on earth.” In the illumination of the yard lights, the creases on his forehead from his frown looked black. “Why do you think your mom likes him so much?”

  “I don’t have a fricking clue.”

  “Because he reveals to her a side of himself that you never see. Around you, Dad’s a negative old grump. I suspect he’s just the opposite with your mom.”

  “Maybe so,” he conceded. “It’s the only rational explanation there is. To me, he’s a constant rerun of Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “When I was growing up, there was no Mr. Hyde, Cam. He was the greatest dad ever, and he pampered my mother beyond belief. Except for during the lean years, whatever she wanted, she got. She loved him just as much as he loved her, and I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that she worked on the ranch until the day I was born. She told me that he wouldn’t allow her on a horse, even though she was an expert rider. He refused to let her clean stalls. No heavy work, period. But she’d sneak behind his back, because she knew he was stretched thin. She said when he caught her doing something she shouldn’t, he’d yell and kick dirt. It was the only time during their marriage when he actually got mad at her.”

  “Hmm.”

  Kirstin studied his chiseled features, trying to read his expression. “You can’t picture that man. Can you?”

  He sighed. “Let’s just say it takes a stretch of my imagination.”

  “He truly is worried about his bottom line this year if he can’t find all the cattle.”

  “Why can’t he just say that and share his concerns with the rest of us?”

  “Because then he’d look weak. I don’t completely understand my dad, but I have watched him struggle with grief. Never once did he come to me and talk about it. He just kept putting one boot in front of the other one.”

  “I don’t understand him, either,” Cam told her. “But I’ll try my best to get along with him.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maddie worried about Sam. Every morning he hit the stable well before dawn to load the horses into the trailer. And even on those days when Cam could go with him and Miguel to search for cattle, he came in late, so exhausted that he had gray shadows under his eyes. Miguel and Cam were younger than Sam, Miguel by two decades and Cam by three.

  One night when he walked in particularly late, Maddie met him at the door to help him shrug out of his jacket. He gave her that half grin that she’d come to love. “You’re fussing over me.”

  As she hung his outerwear on the coat-tree, she said, “Yes, I suppose I am. You’re working yourself into an early grave.”

  “I can’t argue the point. If I had another ten men, I might be able to find all those cows and drive them off the mountain. Thank God there hasn’t been any snow to speak of yet. It’s rare in this country. Normally the surrounding mountains have deep accumulation by now.”

  Earlier, when Maddie had heard the diesel truck pull in, she’d made him an Irish coffee. She fetched it from a table and handed it to him. He thanked her before continuing. “Miguel and I have tried everything. We’ve ridden together, hoping that the two of us can bunch them up and herd them down. But each time, they scattered, so we always lost a good half of them, if not more.” He sank onto the sofa and took a sip of his hot drink. “This is fabulous, Maddie. I swear I’m frozen to the marrow of my bones.”

  “Why do the cows run? I don’t understand it. Don’t they realize they’ll starve to death up there?”

  “They’re stupid,” Sam told her. “We got lucky today with a lead cow that has a few winters under her belt. She took off down the mountain like someone below was ringing a dinner bell. The others bawled and followed her. We caught fifteen. Almost filled the damned trailer. But that isn’t enough. I have at least a hundred and eighty-five still up there somewhere.”

  Maddie went into the kitchen to make herself an Irish coffee. The doctor said she could drink in moderation, and she was moderating every ounce that she swallowed. It relaxed her at night and took the worries off her mind. Her book. Dying on Cam while she still owed a fortune on their building. Missing out on Caleb’s graduation, when he went to college, and someday got married. She wanted to live long enough to hold her first great-grandchild in her arms.

  When she returned to the living room, she sat beside the ma
n who had baffled her and yet fascinated her ever since she’d first crossed swords with him. “Don’t you have the capital to pay everything off, Sam? Sell all the cows. Then you could enjoy life.”

  “And do what?”

  “Travel? Read to your heart’s content. Sit on the porch and watch the sun go down, maybe?”

  “If I did that, the ranch would die. I’ve worked all my life so I could pass it on to Kirstin.”

  “In other words, you plan to work until you die.”

  “Don’t you? Are you ever going to retire from writing?”

  Maddie couldn’t imagine not writing. It wasn’t just what she did for a living. It was who she was. “Probably not. I’ll be pecking at a keyboard even if I get dementia, and Cam will set me up with a fake editor’s e-mail address so I can send my manuscripts that make no sense off into a black hole.”

  “Well, I want to die in the saddle. My luck, I’ll have a heart attack and do a face-plant in cow shit, but I’ll never know it.”

  “I’m worried about you, Sam. You can’t go on like this. These are supposed to be your golden years.”

  He sighed. “The only thing golden about getting old, Maddie, is peeing in a cup at the doctor’s office.”

  “You’re a stubborn man.”

  He smiled. Deep creases angled down from the outside corners of his eyes to line his cheeks. She yearned to trace every crevice with her fingertips. “Yep. But you care for me anyway.”

  Maddie’s throat went tight. “I love you, Sam. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

  He draped his arm around her. “Ah, Maddie. You worry too much. Act like it’s one of your tea bags, and just let it steep.”

  • • •

  Two days after their tree-decorating party at Kirstin’s, a snowstorm struck after the three men left to go to the grazing land. Maddie had gotten up early to make sure Sam ate a decent breakfast. Then she’d added some energy bars to their lunch cooler so he would have something on hand to raise his blood sugar after he’d worked for too long on empty. She didn’t worry much about the younger men, but Sam was a different story.

  After they drove away, she went in to clean up the kitchen before Gabriella came. Maddie wasn’t sure how long she puttered. She only knew that the next time she looked out the window, white stuff swirled through the cold air and sprinkled the ground. Snow, she thought with a squeeze of her heart. Had Sam checked the weather report on his phone?

  Maddie guessed that he had, and she knew for certain that Cam would have. He complained about his son constantly using his phone after school, but that was the pot calling the kettle black. She pulled her own phone from her pocket and checked the report. Damn it, she thought. The meteorologist needs continuing education. No precipitation had been predicted.

  How deep would the snow get at a higher elevation? Maddie stared out the window with growing dread. Gabriella appeared, a vague shape in a red coat until she reached the porch. Maddie heard her stomping her rubber boots to rid them of frozen clumps.

  A moment later the woman entered the dining room divested of her outerwear and joined Maddie at the window to stare out at nothing. “This be bad,” Gabriella said.

  Maddie knew then that her concerns for the men’s safety weren’t unfounded. “How bad?”

  Gabriella fixed a frustrated gaze on Maddie, flapped her hands, and jabbered something in Spanish. Maddie didn’t understand a word, but she got the gist. Lives could be at risk.

  Her son was out there. Gabriella’s husband, Rickie’s father, was out there. And so was Sam. Maddie wasn’t a rancher, but she knew a horse could go down on slick, steep slopes. Those men needed assistance.

  Maddie wished she were an accomplished horsewoman who could ride up the snow-covered grades to find huddled bunches of cattle. Sam had been a godsend to her family during Cam’s recovery, and now when he needed her help, she was useless. Or maybe not.

  Sam had once had many good friends in this valley, men who could go into the high country to help him. She was aware that Sam had driven them all away, but in her opinion that was no reason for them to turn a blind eye to his predicament now. Cam had told her that many of the valley ranchers gathered for breakfast or lunch at the Cowboy Tree. She remembered the place well after a visit there once.

  As if on cue, Caleb emerged from his bedroom, freshly showered, wearing tattered jeans and a shirt that had the shape of Montana on the front, with the counties all filled in with red. It read, WE’RE FULL UP. GO BACK HOME. A drawing of a hand with the middle finger uplifted strengthened the message. Maddie didn’t think the sentiment was appropriate for school, but she was too concerned about the guys to say so.

  “Hi, Gabriella,” Caleb said. “I can drive Rickie to school if—”He broke off when he looked out the window. “Uh-oh, maybe only to the bus stop. It might be slick out there.”

  Gabriella replied, “He go bus.”

  Maddie cut in. “Caleb, can you look at your weather app? Mine says no precipitation today, and yet it’s snowing.”

  Caleb pulled his phone from his pocket and thumbed the screen. “Same on mine. Oh, well, Gram. Sometimes the forecasts are wrong.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Sam, your father, and Miguel left to gather cows not knowing a storm would move in.”

  Caleb’s relaxed expression tightened. “That’s not good, Gram. The terrain up there gets pretty rugged. It could be dangerous.”

  Maddie reached a decision. “I’m going to the bar.”

  “What?”

  “The Cowboy Tree, where your father says many of the ranchers gather for breakfast. I need to round up help.”

  Caleb switched his weight from one foot to the other. “But, Gram, nobody in the valley likes Sam. Why would they even try to help him?”

  “Because at heart they’re good people, and also because I’m going to shame them into it.”

  “Uh-oh.” Caleb looked worried. “I’m going with you, then. Dad’s told me stories about what you’re like when you get pissed.”

  Maddie had no time to critique her grandson’s language, either. She hurried to the bedroom to throw on nicer clothes, slap on some makeup, and find nice shoes suitable for walking on ice. As she quickly examined herself in the mirror, she tried to see herself as others did. She wanted to look like the successful author she was, not a worn-out old lady. Her efforts had improved her appearance, but she was still a long way from making a statement.

  Caleb left the house at her side, quickly stuffing jellied toast into his mouth so he could help her down the slick steps. A blob of sticky purple goo fell on his shirt and slid over several red counties on the western state line, turning them blue. The boy’s chest now looked like a copy of last year’s election map. He wore his new Montana Griz jacket hanging open and the dirty ball cap on backward. Maddie stifled a sigh. So much for making a good impression when she stormed the bar. She had what appeared to be a homeless teenager riding shotgun.

  When she was safely in the car, she remembered that she’d taken the SUV to book club a few days ago, and while she was out, she’d picked up groceries for Gabriella. Only she’d forgotten to check the gas before she came home. The needle was on empty. If she stopped to fuel up, she might miss the breakfast crowd.

  “Fuck,” she whispered.

  Caleb gave her a sharp look. “I can’t believe I heard you say that. If I said it, you’d rub soap in my mouth.”

  “Caleb,” she said with exaggerated patience, “I will be your polite grandmother again when your father, Sam, and Miguel are safe at home. For right now I do not need you to monitor my language. We may run out of gas.”

  “We could take my truck,” Caleb offered.

  “I can’t get in it. It’s too high off the ground and you have no running boards.”

  “Fuck,” Caleb said.

  “Don’t push your luck, buster.”


  • • •

  Maddie feared that her vehicle was running on only fumes as she pulled into the Cowboy Tree parking lot. She shut off the engine and hauled in a deep breath with her eyes closed. She heard Caleb unfasten his seat belt.

  “Gram, are you praying?”

  She lifted her lashes. “Lives may be at stake, Caleb. We got here on the strength of prayer. Now I’m asking for help to convince those ranchers to load their horses up in trailers and go to Sam’s land to help our guys get the cows out of there.”

  “There’s plenty of people here,” Caleb observed, scanning the many cars and rigs in the vehicle slots. “Lots of ranchers, I hope.”

  Maddie sighed and got out of her vehicle. Caleb met her at the front fender, grabbed her arm, and said, “Hold on to me, Gram. This snow is slicker than greased owl shit.”

  “Where did you hear that expression?”

  “Sam said it.”

  “We’ve both been around him too much.”

  Maddie was happy to cling to Caleb, and together they climbed the wooden steps. A covered, slatted walkway led to the double front doors. Nervous trembles attacked Maddie’s body as she advanced on the entrance.

  “It’ll be okay, Gram. I’ve got faith in you.”

  That was all well and fine, but Maddie didn’t have a clue what she meant to say. Once she was inside the building, a feeling of friendly warmth, the aroma of hot food, and a low thrum of both male and female voices surrounded her. She felt Caleb press close to her side.

  “A tree in the building is weird,” he whispered. “But I’ve decided I like it.”

  “Maddie!” a woman cried.

  Startled to be recognized, Maddie followed the sound of the voice with her gaze and was doubly bewildered to see Emma Pedigrew climbing off a tall barstool at one of the high tables near the windows. Maddie had come to know Emma at book club. She was a delightful old lady who was now able to read again, thanks to her son, who’d recently gifted her with a Kindle that allowed her to enlarge the fonts.