While Cora had let her hair—worn in an angled wedge—go to salt-and-pepper, Miss Fancy’s stubbornly remained the red of her youth.
At a few months shy of ninety, she might admit to moving somewhat slower than she once had, but she was proud to say she had all her teeth, could hear anything she damn well wanted to, and only needed cheaters for close work.
She was small, more round than plump. She favored shirts or caps with statements she surfed for and bought off the Internet. Today’s read:
THIS IS WHAT A
FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE
“Prettier every time I see you,” Miss Fancy said when Bodine hugged her.
“You just saw me two days ago.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true. Come on and sit down. I need to check that soup.”
“It smells amazing.”
“Needs another hour or more if you can stay.”
“I really can’t, I’ve got to get back. I just rode by to see you first.”
Miss Fancy stirred her soup while Cora put away her toolbox.
“Tea and cookies then,” Cora decreed. “There’s always time for tea and cookies.”
Bodine reminded herself she was eating healthier, avoiding sweet snacks, empty carbs.
“Cora and I baked snickerdoodles last evening.” Miss Fancy smiled as she set the kettle on a burner.
Why did it have to be snickerdoodles? “I could take time for a cookie. You sit down, Grammy. I’ll make the tea.”
She got the pot, the cups, the leaf strainers, as neither woman would lower themselves to having a tea bag in the house.
“Y’all are missing your show,” Bodine pointed out.
“Oh, we’ve got it recording,” Miss Fancy told her, brushed it away. “It’s more fun to watch in the evenings and zip right through the commercials.”
“I’ve tried explaining to her the show doesn’t have to be on and running to record, but she won’t believe it.”
“It doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Miss Fancy told her daughter. “And I’m not taking chances. I heard that Skinner boy’s come back from Hollywood, and working on the ranch.”
“You heard right.”
“I always liked that boy.” Cora set a plate of cookies on the table.
“Good-looking as they come.” Miss Fancy took a cookie. “With just enough troublemaker in him to make him interesting.”
“Chase, and his serious ways, was the better for it. And you were sweet on him,” Cora said to Bodine.
“No, I wasn’t.”
The grannies exchanged almost identical smirking looks.
“I was twelve! And how do you know?”
“Had the pining eyes.” Miss Fancy patted a hand over her heart. “Hell, I’d’ve been sweet on him myself if I’d been younger, or him older.”
“What would Grandpa have had to say?” Bodine wondered.
“That married and dead aren’t the same. We were married sixty-seven years before he passed, and the both of us were free to look all we wanted. Touching, now? That’s when married and dead are the same.”
On a laugh, Bodine brought the tea to the table.
“Tell that boy to come by and see us,” Cora demanded. “A good-looking man perks the day up.”
“I will.” Bodine eyed the cookies.
She’d eat healthy later.
*
By the time Bodine finished for the day, the snow was falling fast and thick. She found herself more than grateful for the cookies in the afternoon, as she’d missed any excuse for lunch and now ran very late for dinner.
By the time she parked the truck back at the ranch, she was ready to eat whatever was at hand—after a glass of wine.
She shed her outdoor gear in the mudroom, hitched up her briefcase, and found Chase in the kitchen pulling a beer from the refrigerator.
“Beef stew on the stove,” he told her. “Mom said to keep it on warm till you got here.”
Red meat, she thought. She was trying to cut back on red meat.
Oh, well.
“Where is everybody?”
“Rory had a date. Mom said she was going to soak the rest of her life in the tub, and Dad’s probably in there with her.”
Instantly Bodine tapped the heel of her hand on her temple. “Why do you put that in my head?”
“The look in his eye put it in mine. I believe in sharing.” He waggled the bottle he held. “Want a beer?”
“I’m having wine. A glass of red wine every day’s good for you. You can look it up,” she insisted when he smirked at her.
Maybe she poured with a very generous hand, but it was still one glass.
“So, Maddie’s pregnant.”
“How the hell do you know?” Annoyed, she drank wine with one hand and scooped stew into a bowl with the other.
“Maddie texted Thad how she told you, and just about everybody else within shouting distance, so he told me. And just about everybody else within shouting distance. I was waiting for it anyway.”
“Waiting for it? Why?”
“It’s a look in the eyes, Bodine. It’s in the eyes—and a couple comments here and there about fatherhood and such.”
“If you suspected as much, why didn’t you pin him on it?” Annoyed, she gave Chase a hard poke in the side. “If I’d known a few weeks back, I could’ve hung on to one of the seasonal horsemen. And look who I’m talking to,” she said, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. “Never-Ask-a-Question Charles Samuel Longbow.”
“The answer comes around anyway. I’m taking my beer in the other room, by the fire.”
Sticking the spoon in the stew, Bodine followed him. Like her brother, she sat on the big couch, putting her feet up on the table.
“I called every seasonal I knew could handle being in charge. I need more than a rider. The handful I tried all have winter work already.” She ate stew, mulled on it. “I’ve got a few weeks before Abe’s gone to the damn desert, but I don’t like putting somebody up front I don’t know, I haven’t had a good chance to train. I’ve got Ben and Carol, but as good as they are, they’re not managers.”
“Use Cal.”
“Cal?”
“Yeah, he can switch back and forth easy enough. He’s as good as it gets with horses, and he’s a manager. You get too squeezed, Dad and I can fill some holes. Rory, too, or Mom. Hell, Nana can take trail rides. Rides pretty much every day anyway.”
“I went by to see her and Grammy today. Rode Three Socks. When Nana found out, she wanted to ride him back to the BAC for me. Got a little put out when I wouldn’t let her because of the snow. She shouldn’t be taking trail rides in the winter.”
In his deliberate way, Chase nodded, drank more beer. “She could do lessons.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of that. She’d like it. Well, if I can pull from the ranch on this, at least while Abe’s gone, it would save me from finding somebody else. You’re not completely useless, Chase.”
“Me?” He swigged some beer. “I’ve got untapped uses.”
“I don’t suppose those uses run to where we come up with about ten miles of red velvet, a dozen gold candle stands—five feet high—and a female harpist in a red velvet dress.”