Chapter Two
Rhett
I walked away from the town center, away from the sheriff’s office. After running into the woman, I had to wonder what such a well-dressed lady was doing in my little town. Since there are only about two thousand people in all of Mustang Ridge, I had known most of the people here since I was a kid, and she didn’t even look vaguely familiar. I was sure that I would remember if I’d ever seen someone that cute around town before. She’d been a foot or more shorter than me, with blond hair pulled back into a bun and green eyes that sparkled in the sun as soon as she’d gotten over her shock. She’d been dressed in some kind of women’s suit, a pantsuit maybe, in brown and pink. Maybe she’s a lawyer from somewhere, working for one of the business owners in town, I thought as I continued on to my truck.
I’d been in to see Sheriff Peters, but the meeting went right out of my head when I thought about the fact that it was a shame I hadn’t even gotten the woman’s name. Of course, I reminded myself as I settled behind the steering wheel and pulled my seatbelt over my chest, if I hadn’t recognized her, then she was probably not from around here—so I wasn’t all that likely to see her again.
Since I’d taken a break from my usual routine to go into town, I figured I should make the most of it. I’d written up a list of errands that had needed running, and by the time I got home from those it would be lunch time, and then I could go back out into the field and get the fence repaired without risking sun-stroke. I checked the list that I’d made on my phone and decided where to go first.
Mom had asked for some groceries to keep the pantry stocked up and to have a few fresh things in the fridge to eat, but the fresh things would spoil waiting out in my truck while I took care of other things, so I put that off to last. I pulled out of the parking lot attached to the town center, and went up the street a bit to Lyle Holder’s hardware store to get the things I needed to fix the fence.
I had plenty of wire, but I needed a few fence posts to replace what had been broken, so I parked outside the store and climbed out of my truck, waving hello to Lyle, who was out in front of his store, scrubbing the windows.
“You can go right on in and get whatever it is you need, Rhett,” he told me. “Just give me a shout when you need me to ring you up.”
It was the time of year when dust and pollen covered just about every surface it could attach itself to, so I didn’t blame Lyle for trying to keep his storefront looking good. I stepped into the cool air of the shop, blinking to let my eyes adjust to the dim light. Sarah Roberts—homecoming queen the year I’d graduated high school—was looking over the kitchen hardware, while Nathan Locke, who’d been on the varsity football team with me, was examining timber.
“Oh—good to see you, Rhett,” Sarah said, smiling at me as I walked past her.
“You too, Sarah. You still working on that kitchen?”
She nodded. “If you could build half as well as you tear down, you’d put Matt Jenkins out of business for good,” she told me, sighing.
I chuckled. “Well if I could build half as well as I tore down, I might not be a farmer anymore.”
An oven fire had gotten a little out of control at the Roberts house, but the volunteer fire department had been able to get it contained before it could spread beyond the kitchen. I’d gone over to help with the tear out, since Sarah’s husband Nick had helped me more than once in the past with some extra hands on my own farm, and between me, Nick, Kyle Burns and Matt Jenkins, we’d managed to get the tear-down done in less than two days. Matt Jenkins, the main contractor in town—along with a couple of his buddies—had managed to get the kitchen operational again within a week, but getting it completely renovated and back to its former glory was taking longer.
I chatted with her for a minute or two and then moved on to the section I needed, gathering up the stuff I didn’t have back at the farm for repairing the fence. Living out in the sticks, my family never really had any kind of complicated fencing—it just isn’t worth it when you end up having to replace parts of it at least once a season. But I’d run out of odds and ends—and fence poles—after the last time I’d worked the perimeter of the fields, so I needed to stock up again.
Lyle managed to come back in before any of us made it to the register, and I put my bank card down on the counter. I looked around the old shop while he rang up my purchases. Lyle had inherited the place from his father, the same way I’d inherited my farm. Lyle Holder Senior had passed away about three years before my dad had, after fighting pancreatic cancer for a couple of years, and Lyle had gone through hell to get his business degree while his father was sick, so he’d be in the best position to take over the shop when he died.
Lyle pushed the receipt across the counter for me to sign.
“This doesn’t look right,” I said, glancing at the total. I’d added up the figures in my head to make sure I knew how much I would be spending before I put my card down. “Did you ring everything up?”
“I did,” Lyle said. “You just forgot your discount.”
I shook my head, even though I knew it was pointless to argue with Lyle about giving me the discount. He’d been insisting on giving it to me ever since I’d done a favor for him a few years back—but I never felt good about accepting it. It’s his business, and he’s managed to keep it running. He doesn’t give out discounts willy-nilly, so don’t you go lecturing him about charging you full price.
Instead, I just thanked him and made a mental note to come in for some more supplies in another week—I’d need to anyway, but they were things I could either get from him or order from elsewhere, and I wanted to make sure to give Lyle the business.
I left the hardware store and loaded up the fence posts in the back of my truck, tossed the bag with the other odds and ends into the cab, and walked up the sidewalk to the craft shop. Mom wanted some fabric—she’d been very, very specific about what kind—to redo the curtains in the living room, since the ones she’d made years ago had gotten bleached out from the sun. Since I was going to be in town anyway, I’d agreed to pick it up for her.
“Good morning, Rhett,” Sandy Henderson said as I stepped into her shop.
“Good morning, Sandy,” I replied. “Mom sent me to come get an order for her, so I hope you can make sure I don’t screw up her directions.” Sandy laughed and grinned at me.
“Sweetie, you can just tell your mother that if she has a problem with what you brought home for her to play with, she can take it up with me,” Sandy said. Her grin went wicked. “Of course, I could enjoy giving a big old hunk of man like you a proper punishment.”
I rolled my eyes and kept smiling. Sandy was a few years older than me, but she’d been flirting with me ever since I turned eighteen. She’d opened up shop while I was still in college, and had managed to make a go of it, cornering the market on one of the few things Mustang Ridge hadn’t had up until that point.
I told her the specific kind of fabric my mother wanted, consulting the notes I’d made under Mom’s direction back at home, and Sandy nodded, all business once it came to actually taking and fulfilling an order. She went into the back and came out with a big bolt of fabric with a light floral print on it—I was glad to see it wasn’t gaudy or anything.
“Okay, this is for the outer part,” Sandy said, measuring off the length that I’d specified with practiced pulls on the bolt along the measuring table that was built into her counter. She cut the amount I needed and turned her back on me to grab something off of a shelf behind the counter. “And this will be the liner,” she mused, and I figured she was confirming it to herself more than telling me; certainly I didn’t think she expected me to be the one to make the curtains.
I chatted with her a little bit about business, about town gossip, and I finally excused myself when she had another customer come in. I checked the time and realized that I needed to get to the grocery store and then head back home, if I wanted to be in time for lunch. I got out my list again and went into the grocery store, blessing Mr. Jackson for having the forethought to install air conditioning right when it had become available, long before I’d been born. It was comfortable and cool, and I took my time gathering up the things I needed to take back home, including some decent steaks and some flour, some salt and some dried chilies, things like that—stuff Mom kept stocked in the fridge and pantry to make meals all throughout the week.
I headed back home as quickly as I could, knowing that even with the AC in my car, I needed to get the meat and other perishables out of the heat and sun sooner rather than later. Mom was sitting out on the porch when I drove up, and she stood to help me unload the stuff from the cab—I’d get the stuff for the fence out later.
“Did you find out who it was?” she asked.
I shook my head in response to her question. “Nah, but that’s all right,” I said. “I didn’t expect to.”
I’d visited the Sheriff to file a complaint about damage to my fence, which looked like it had been hit or run over—or maybe both—by someone late the day before. It was part of the fence that ran close to the road, so it hadn’t exactly been a surprise, but I’d also wanted to make sure no one had been hurt in the process.
“And of course you’re going to go out there as soon as you’re done eating and fix the fence with that sun beating down on you,” Mom commented, carrying the grocery bags into the house while I hefted the hardware supplies and her fabric.
“The fence is there for a reason,” I pointed out. “I might as well fix it as quickly as I can.”
“We live so far out and with so few neighbors that it could wait a few days,” Mom countered.
“And then animals will come in and get at the wheat or the sorghum,” I said. “Nah, it’s better to just go ahead and get the project done today.”
“On top of everything else,” Mom said. “You work too hard, Rhett.”
“It’s my farm,” I said with a shrug. “You used to tell Dad the same thing, and he taught me—you’d think you’d give up after a certain point.”
“The mail came in, there’s a stack for you on the counter,” Mom said, changing the subject from my father; I didn’t blame her. The anniversary of his death was coming up—it was almost a week away—and while I couldn’t get my old man out of my mind, I didn’t really want to talk much about him if I didn’t have to. Fortunately, the whole town knew the anniversary was coming up too—I wasn’t likely to have to talk about him to anyone.
“Ah, thanks,” I said, putting her fabric down next to the chair she preferred in the front room and putting my hardware down next to the door where I could grab it on my way out. I went to the counter that separated the main room from the kitchen and shuffled through the mail. “Aw, half of it’s from Marshall,” I told mom, calling out just loud enough for her to hear me. “You can toss it.”
“You know, you probably shouldn’t be leaving all those letters unopened,” Mom called back, and I heard the noises of her putting stuff away in the kitchen.
“It’s my mail to open or not as I wish,” I said.
“Still! You don’t want to miss some kind of important news,” Mom told me, and I could hear her voice going firmer, even if I couldn’t see her face. There was no point in arguing with her about it.
“I’ll open it one of these days,” I said. “For now, I’m more worried about bills.”
I opened up the other pieces of mail, but it was all pretty uneventful: I’ve always been careful about my money, so bills didn’t much surprise me, and the sales circulars were mostly the same stuff they always were.
“Damn! I just realized I forgot to ask you to get me cornstarch,” Mom said, coming out of the kitchen and into the main room. “I hate to make you go back into town, Rhett…”
“How urgently do you need it?”
Mom made a face. “If I don’t have it then dinner tonight is going to be pretty terrible,” she said.
I chuckled, but I knew she was serious.
“I’ll go get it for you then,” I told her. I kissed my mother on the forehead and she hugged me tight, and then I turned around and walked out of the house, headed back to my truck.
Mom followed me as far as the porch. “Can you pick me up some nice, fresh cream, too? And see if the grocery has strawberries—I want to make you a treat for when you finally finish up for the day.”
I grinned at my mother and nodded, accepting the additional orders. “I’ll be back in about thirty minutes.”
Town wasn’t too far away, but it was far enough that we didn’t usually make it out that way more than once a twice a week—at least not for any real length of time. Most of Mustang Ridge’s residents lived out in the farms, like us; even the people who had shops in town generally lived with their families out in the sticks. I saw plenty of town people, just not in town.
I climbed back up into my truck and turned around in the driveway. The fence could at least wait until it wasn’t quite so hot out.