You sick, son?” Skip asked at Sunday dinner.
“No, just not hungry. I hate to eat and run, but I need to check on the calf.”
Skip raised his eyebrows. “Really? That calf seemed fine to me.”
Levi sighed. “I reckon I just need some thinkin’ time.” He pushed back his chair.
“About a new calf or about a girl?” Skip asked.
“There is a fifty percent chance that a calf will be born a girl and the same for it to be a boy, just like human babies,” Benjy said.
“You got that right, Benjy,” Levi said. “And maybe both, Skip.” He bent and gave Mavis a quick hug. “Thanks for a great dinner.”
Levi waved one more time over his shoulder as he left and almost made it to his truck when Skip caught up with him. The north wind blew so hard they had to hold their cowboy hats down, or they would have ended up in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Get inside the truck,” Skip yelled over the noise.
Skip asked, “Okay, kid, ’fess up. What’s eatin’ on you? You’ve never turned down dessert, especially when it was cobbler. So spit it out.”
“Claire.” He answered with one word.
“Go on.” Skip removed his hat and held it on his knees.
“Kind of hard to explain. I asked her to the ranch party and she said yes, and we seemed to be gettin’ along real well. But today she didn’t want me to go to Randlett with her after church. She said she had to get some stuff for her quilts and asked if she could drive the work truck. I told her I’d go help, but she said she needed to get away and think about things,” Levi told him.
Skip chuckled. “You’re fallin’ for that woman, son, and you want to spend time with her, but you can’t smother her. From what your mother says, she’s an independent woman, and she’s got to have her own space.”
“Kind of like that butterfly sayin’ about not cagin’ it up?” Levi asked. “I feel kind of stupid. I’m looking at thirty and acting like a lovesick teenager.”
“Most of us have walked in your boots, son, and age don’t have jack squat to do with it.” Skip laid a hand on Levi’s shoulder and squeezed.
“How do you know when it’s the right one?” Levi asked.
“I don’t know about all men, but I can tell you that when I met Mavis, my heart started skippin’ around in my chest, and when I had to be away from her it was heavy like a stone. You don’t always get to throw down a quilt in a clover field and hold hands and look into each other’s eyes and fall in love. Where’s the fun in that? You got to run the obstacle course like all of us did. That what comes easy ain’t worth havin’, and it won’t last. You fight for something, and then you’ll cherish it and hang on to it.” He settled his hat back on his head and got out of the truck. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, Skip.” Levi started up the engine and headed toward the ranch.
When he arrived at the corral, Nomie was romping around with Little Bit. It was probably time to turn her and her mother back out into the pasture, but he hated to take the calf away from the donkey. He leaned on the railing and let his mind go back to what Levi had said about talking to Claire.
He usually turned to walking or working when he had something to mull over in his mind. That day he started walking with Beau at his heels. The wind had died down, but there was enough of a breeze to blow dead leaves across his feet. He kicked at them with the toe of his boot and drew his work coat tighter around his broad chest.
“Let’s go home, old boy. We got us some thinkin’ to do of our own. And the first thing we’d better be learning is how not to smother someone with too much attention. I should have known that from all the strays I’ve brought in. You’ve got to let them come to you—not rush them.”
Claire made a cup of tea and curled up on the end of the sofa after she’d loaded the boxes of quilts that had sold on Etsy this week into the bed of the truck. She planned to ship them out tomorrow. Thank goodness, she still had plenty of stock, but she knew she needed to create many more with the new venture she was about to begin. She walked through her grandmother’s house, making decisions about what she should take with her and what she should leave behind for Angela and Grant.
Her mind was racing with what-ifs. What if she went through with the deal, got everything in her shop up and running, and then things did not work out with Levi? What if Mavis thought Claire had done Levi wrong and ended their friendship? What if it ruined her business?
She shook her head to shake all the negative thoughts away. Good glory, girl! It’s not like he proposed to you. He asked you for a date, and you were already looking at that house before you had a wreck.
“Anybody home?” Franny called out as she pushed her way into the living room. “I brought brownies and thumb print cookies. You got the coffeepot on? Don’t answer that. I can smell it and I’ll pour my own.” She set the plate on the coffee table, went to the kitchen, and returned with a steaming mug in her hand. “Where is Zaylie?”
“In her room talking to Teresa on the phone.” Claire reached for a brownie. “She’ll be out soon. She can smell your brownies a mile away. Have a seat.”
“Did you buy that old truck out there in the driveway?” Franny chose a rocking chair close to the end of the sofa where Claire was sitting.
“No, it’s on loan from the ranch until I can decide what I want to buy, or if I want to drive Nanny’s car,” she answered.
“Honey, that old car eats gasoline worse than a young calf goin’ after fresh green grass. It’ll be fun to have, and to drive around town once in a while, but to drive it all the time would break you. Get something a little more economical,” Franny said. “But that’s not what’s got your forehead in a frown today, is it?”
Claire slowly shook her head. “Not really. Franny, how long were you married?”
“Sixty years when my Joe died. Your Nanny and Poppa weren’t married quite that long, but we had good marriages,” she answered.
“How’d you know that Joe was the one you wanted to share your life with?”
Franny leaned back in the rocking chair, and the expression on her face said that she’d left the present time and traveled back more than sixty years.
“It was a hot July day, the last Sunday in the month. He’d come to a church picnic with his cousin, and I took one look at that long, tall cowboy and decided I would marry him if I had to chase him all the way to the moon. Didn’t have to do that because he said he felt the same way when he saw me across the lawn. I was seventeen that summer, and he was twenty. Mama hated him. Daddy threatened to shoot him.” Franny smiled.
“Why?”
“Oh honey, that boy had a reputation with the women, and he didn’t have jack squat. He’d worked on a ranch from the time he was fifteen, didn’t finish school, and my folks said there wasn’t no way I was going to even sit on the porch after church on Sunday and talk to him,” Franny answered.
“But you did?”
“Oh no, we did not! We met in town behind the school on Sunday afternoons. Mama planned on me goin’ to college and bein’ a schoolteacher, but that was her dream, not mine…” She sipped her coffee before going on.
“The ranch owner offered him a job as foreman about that time and said if he’d sign on for five years he’d give him five acres and a little house. And when I say little, I mean it was one room,” Franny said.
Claire immediately thought of the cabin. Could she live with Levi in that small space? Yes, her heart said before she could blink.
“So he proposed and we eloped. Daddy was so mad that he wouldn’t even let me come home for a month, but hell, honey, we was in love so that month went fast,” Franny said. “Mama finally drove out to see me and brought me a carload of my clothes and stuff, and we both cried because I wasn’t goin’ to be a teacher. Before she and Daddy both passed on they told me that they’d been wrong about Joe. Only regret I ever had after we married was not adoptin’ a kid or two after we found out we couldn’t have any of our own.”
“How long did you date?” Claire asked.
“Two weeks.” Franny giggled.
Claire gasped. It had been a little more than two weeks since she’d met Levi, and she was twenty-eight, not seventeen, but she couldn’t fathom eloping with him tomorrow.
Not even if you could spend every night with him in that little cabin? the annoying voice inside her head asked. Think of sharing one of those bunk beds with him.
Or maybe replacing those with a nice big king-size bed. She felt the blush rising to her cheeks at the thought.
“And I ain’t never looked back and wished I’d done something different with my life. Me and Joe added to that little parcel of land every year, and when he died we had three hundred acres. We’d built us another house, but on our anniversaries we still went back to our first house for a night or two.” She finished off her coffee and set the mug on the coffee table. “Now let’s talk about you.”
She told Franny about all the doubts. “He’s a good man, and he loves animals and kids. You should see him with Benjy and Zaylie.”
“That’s all good and fine, but what happens when he kisses you?” Franny asked.
“My knees go weak, and I don’t want it to ever end,” Claire said honestly.
“Then honey, that’s worth givin’ a chance. Has any other man ever made you all breathless like that?”
Claire shook her head. “No, ma’am.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Claire sighed. “You know what kind of parents Grant and I came from. What happens if Levi and I get into a relationship, and I figure out I’m like my mother. That I’m more interested in my quilting business than I am in Levi, or being a wife and mother.”
“The fact that you are worried about that says you’re not a bit like your mother,” Franny told her.
“How’s that?”
“Think about it. Put your mom in your shoes. Would she be wastin’ time thinkin’ about whether she’d break a man’s heart?” Franny scolded. “A relationship and a marriage is a partnership. You be honest with each other from the get-go, and ignore all those negative thoughts that the old devil sends to your head.”
“Can’t you just hear my mother if I told her that I’d eloped with a ranch foreman and we were going to live out on the boondocks in Texas? She’d have a heart attack. She went through the roof when I quit my teaching job and started quilting.”
“And what did you do?”
“I told her that she’d lived her life the way she wanted and I would do the same,” Claire answered.
“Then hold on to that, make your own decisions, and then stand by them,” Franny said.
“Even when your parents were angry with you, did you really never have regrets?” Claire asked.
Franny shook her head. “Not one time. I’d made my bed and I was goin’ to enjoy layin’ in it.”
“Is that brownies? I smell chocolate!” Zaylie yelled from the bedroom door. She skipped into the room and picked up a brownie. “Guess what, Aunt Claire? Teresa wants a kitten for Christmas too.”
“Is that right?” Claire acted surprised.
“Yep, and I told her that next time we got to do FaceTime I’d show her the three at our bunkhouse.” Zaylie picked up a second brownie and ran back to her room.
“She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her,” Franny said. “I’m glad that y’all got stuck in Texas. It’s been good for both of you.”
Claire nodded, but wondered how could such turmoil in her life right then be good for her?
Because it dragged you out of that comfortable rut you’ve been in since Zaylie was born and has put some excitement in your life. The voice in her head was definitely her grandmother’s.
But I liked my life. I knew exactly what was going on. Now I never know what emotion is going to float to the top at any minute, Claire argued.
She listened intently but her grandmother didn’t have anything else to say.
Claire turned on the radio on the way back to the ranch that afternoon. One minute Zaylie was singing along with all the classic country songs. The next she’d leaned over against the door and was “resting her eyes.” It seemed that the lyrics to every song that played spoke right to Claire, but when Chris Young began to sing “Chiseled in Stone,” tears rolled down her cheeks.
It was from a man’s point of view, but she could feel every sad emotion that he sang about. An old man was telling a younger one the story in song, saying that a person didn’t know anything about how long the nights were or lonely life was until it was chiseled in stone. She thought about Franny losing her Joe and how sad her eyes had been when she talked about him. Then the lyrics talked about how the younger man should drop down on his knees and thank his lucky stars that he had someone to go home to.
Claire got the message.
The very next song was the one they’d played at Nanny’s funeral, but that day as she drove through Wichita Falls and headed east toward the ranch, it had a whole new meaning. She didn’t want to pray her final prayer with regrets that she didn’t give whatever it was between her and Levi a chance. Maybe it would work. Maybe not. But she’d never know if she walked away without trying.
As if the songs were lined up just for her, the next one talked about putting her worries in his pocket and resting her head upon his shoulder. Levi would let her do just that, and she could rest her love on him.
“Cowboy honor,” she muttered.
A vision of him naming off all the things in the cowboy’s code of honor flashed through her mind. “Live each day with courage,” she whispered. “Well, Levi Jackson, it’s going to take all the courage and trust in me, but I’m willing to give us a try. Nanny used to say that if you try and fall on your butt, it’s okay, but if you fail to try, then you are a loser.”
Zaylie awoke somewhere between Nocona and the ranch, and the first words from her mouth were, “Are we home yet?”
“Not quite. Maybe another ten or fifteen minutes,” Claire answered.
“How many songs is that?” Zaylie asked.
“Three or four.”
“Okay.” She started singing along with Randy Travis as he sang, “He Walked on Water.” She’d come in behind the words, but somewhere in the middle of the song she stopped and asked, “Is he singin’ about Levi, Aunt Claire?”
“No, he’s talkin’ about his grandpa,” Claire answered around the lump forming in her throat. “What makes you think of Levi?”
“Levi’s got a cowboy hat, and I bet he could walk on water,” Zaylie answered.
“Only Jesus could do that,” Claire told her.
“Well, if we was drownin’ he’d walk on water and take us home,” Zaylie said with conviction, and then sang with George Jones as he started, “A Picture of Me Without You.”
Home.
Zaylie had used that word again. Claire had asked Franny if it made her sad to leave the ranch where she and Joe had lived their whole married life. She’d told her that home wasn’t a place so much as it was a feeling of belonging.
Claire had barely gotten parked when she noticed Justin coming around the bunkhouse. In a few long strides he was at the truck, opening the doors for her and Zaylie.
When Zaylie was unbuckled and on the ground, she ran into the house. “I’m glad I’m home. I got to go see my little baby kitties.”
He turned around to face Claire. “Want some help unloading all this?”
“Yes, thanks,” she answered. “Where’s Levi?”
“He’s over at Mavis and Skip’s.”
She had a lot to say to Levi, but she sure didn’t want to do it by phone. Hopefully, he’d be home before long.