THE LABEL ON the plastic zipper bag promised that the herbal mixture inside was beneficial for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Among other ingredients, the mixture contained raspberry leaf, stinging nettle and blessed thistle. That didn’t sound very promising, but the dried herbs did smell good. Lauren had ordered some in bulk off the internet, officially as a gift for Dalia. The bag had arrived this morning, the same day Tony invited her to the house for a meal to celebrate all the progress she’d made at the bunkhouse.
She already had a gallon of water heating on the stove to make a big batch of the herbal tea, or “tisane,” as Dalia said it was rightly called. Once it was brewed, she’d take a quart or so back to Vincent to keep in her fridge.
As she poured the dried mixture into one of Dalia’s big vintage canning jars, she heard Durango outside sending up a barrage of what she’d come to recognize as his vehicle-on-the-driveway bark. She set down the bag and went to the living-room window to look out.
“Incoming,” she said. “Looks like a Tacoma.”
Visitors were always something of an event at La Escarpa. The long driveway meant there was plenty of time to see a vehicle coming and talk about who was in it.
“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” said Tony. “I told Alex to bring the stuff today from his fancy salvage store.”
Lauren’s crap detector went off. There was something entirely too casual about his tone.
“Why don’t you go meet him, Lauren? Show him where to put the stuff.”
“Alex knows where the bunkhouse is, babe,” Dalia said.
“Well, yeah, but he’ll like seeing everything Lauren’s accomplished out there. He’s into all that, just like she is.”
Lauren went back to her herbs and filled the jar, slowly and carefully, as if she had all the time in the world. She was actually eager to show Alex what she’d done, and would have done it on her own without Tony’s suggestion, but now she felt a little funny about it.
By the time she’d finished and cleaned up the stray herbal bits from the counter, Alex was backing the Tacoma close to the bunkhouse. She went outside.
The Tacoma had an Architectural Treasures decal on the side.
“You drive a lot of trucks,” Lauren told Alex when he got out.
He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s hard to keep track of. One day I’m probably going to get confused and drop off a tractor at a home-renovation site.”
He lowered the tailgate. There were several blanket-wrapped rectangles lying in the bed of the truck.
He unwrapped the top one. “What do you think?”
It was the front door, the one Lauren had wanted to paint. The roughest of the rough bits had been smoothed out, and the wood’s surface glowed with a deep, bright luster.
“You were right,” she said. “This was all it needed.”
“It did turn out pretty nice, didn’t it? Want to go ahead and set it?”
“Sure.”
He eased the door out and carried it on his back, the way Lauren’s dad had taught her to carry doors. Lauren brought the box that held all the hardware.
When they reached the front porch, he set down the door carefully and looked through the empty doorway into the bunkhouse. “Whoa! You really got the place spiffed up. Looks a hundred times better already.”
“I’ve mostly just cleared out dirt and trash and random stuff.”
It was a big job, though, and it had to be done. And Lauren had been glad for the work. She’d needed something to calm her anxiety and help her sleep at night. Now the place was ready for the electricians to come tomorrow, and the plumbers the day after that.
Lauren and Alex got all the doors on their hinges and installed the doorknobs. She’d chosen stamped bronze backplates with keyholes that actually lined up with holes in the old doors. After each door was hung, she stood awhile opening and closing it over and over.
“I see you got that cast-iron tub out of the pasture,” Alex said when they walked outside again. The tub was sitting on the porch, ready to be refinished.
“Yeah. Tony drove the tractor out there and I helped him empty the water and weeds and haul it back.”
It was kind of hilarious how Tony kept enlisting Lauren’s help with all the two-person ranch jobs he normally would have done with Dalia, if Dalia hadn’t been pregnant. He’d have been mortified if he’d known Lauren was pregnant, too.
Not that the precaution seemed necessary in either case. Dalia was probably perfectly capable of butchering a hog and tackling a steer, even at seven months; she manhandled livestock and feed bags in a way that would have horrified Tony if he’d seen. And Lauren felt as fit as she ever had in her life. She hadn’t had a single day of sickness or even of things tasting funny. She knew false positives were rare—she’d read that much on the internet—but she still couldn’t quite believe she was pregnant.
“That hypothetical cowboy who built the bunkhouse loves a hot bath at the end of a long day of ranch work,” she said. “He’s also very tall. This thing is sixty-eight inches from stem to stern. I measured.”
Alex looked longingly at the tub. “Man. The tub at my place is one of those cheap fiberglass things. It’s like five feet long, and the part where your back goes is too steep. You can’t stretch out and lie back in it, and your legs are all bent.”
He stepped into the tub, lay down full-length and shut his eyes with a sigh. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. You get in here, you open up the window just a crack, enough so you can hear the frogs out in the pond, and you set your wineglass on the sill.”
“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a wine drinker.”
“Only in the bathtub.”
He had his arms resting along the tub’s sides and his head tipped back along the rolled top edge. Suddenly Lauren imagined two wineglasses on the windowsill. There was room in that tub for both of them.
The gray cat came sauntering by, saw Alex in the tub and jumped in before Lauren could give warning. Alex let out his breath in a strangled yelp, then he laughed a little and shifted the cat without throwing him out.
“Hey there, kitty. Maybe pick a different landing site next time.”
“That cat has been my constant companion in the bunkhouse,” Lauren said. “He’s like a little supervisor, with a paw in everything I do.”
“I’m not surprised. He’s never really fit in with the other cats. They’re all blood kin, but he was just a skinny half-grown vagabond who showed up one day, and he’s always been the odd one out. He’s probably glad to have a friend.”
“I didn’t know that.” Lauren reached over and rubbed her fingers down the cat’s throat, where he liked best to be petted. “You and I are both newcomers, aren’t we? We have to stick together, with all these clannish locals around.”
“This tub’s in good shape,” Alex said. “The enamel is discolored some, but not too bad, and the only chips are on the edges.”
“I’m going to go after the enamel with some lemon juice and an eraser sponge.”
“You might try a pumice stone, too. I’ve heard of people having good luck with that.”
Seeing that Lauren was examining the outside of the tub, the gray cat jumped out and looked at it, too.
“Not sure what to do about all this rust,” Lauren said. “It’s gritty, and it comes off on my fingertips. Maybe spray paint?”
“You want a grinder with a wire-brush attachment. Wear safety glasses and use a respirator. And be prepared for sparks. Then you can prime it and paint it.”
Alex gripped the sides of the tub and heaved himself upright. “Welp. Guess that’s it, then. I’ll go by the house and say hey to Tony and Dalia and be on my way.”
Back in the house, Tony had put on a Texas-flag apron. He greeted his brother with a hard handclasp and two brisk pats to the shoulder. “Hey, bro. Did y’all get the stuff put away?”
“You say ‘the stuff’ like it’s cocaine or something,” Alex said.
“It’s priced like it,” said Dalia.
“Hey, I’ll have you know I’m being superfrugal for you guys,” said Lauren. “You have no idea. You should see all the things I don’t buy.”
“We got the doors hung,” Alex said. “Things are looking good over there.”
“Glad to hear it,” Tony said. “Stay to dinner? I’m just fixing to fire up the grill.”
If Tony was trying to set something up, he must have put a lot of thought and planning into it. Those steaks had been marinating since the night before.
“Nah, I should get going,” Alex said. “I got stuff to do.”
“I made chimichurri sauce,” Tony said.
Lauren didn’t know what that was, but it clearly gave Alex pause. While he was pondering the offer, Tony said, “Besides, I need you to make the pico. Nobody does it like you.”
He pointed to a tempting-looking heap of produce grouped near a knife and cutting board.
“Pico de gallo is tomatoes, onions, lime juice, cilantro, jalapeños and salt,” Alex said. “That’s literally all there is to it.”
Tony picked up the knife and a tomato. “Okay. So it’s cool to chop up the tomatoes real big and chunky, right? And I’ll be sure to leave the seeds and juice in there. That way the chips will get nice and soggy.”
“Oh, give me that.” Alex seized the knife and the tomato and started chopping with precise, practiced motions.
Yep. No doubt about it: Tony was matchmaking. He probably thought he was being subtle. Lauren saw the sly grin he darted at Dalia behind Alex’s back.
“Aren’t you going to ask about your herbal tisane?” Dalia asked.
“Oh! I forgot all about it.” Lauren turned to the stove, but the pot was gone. “Did the water boil?”
“Ages ago. I steeped the herbs and strained the tisane into the pitcher and put it in the fridge.”
“Thanks.”
Lauren felt uneasy. This was just one more sign of how irresponsible and not ready for motherhood she was, going off and forgetting about a whole gallon of boiling water—water for making motherhood tea, no less.
“What’s tisane?” Alex asked.
“It’s tea for snobby people,” Tony said.
“No,” Dalia said patiently. “Tea is the leaf of the camellia sinensis plant. A tisane is an infusion of herbs.”
“Lauren bought Dalia some expectant-mother tea,” Tony said.
“Oh, that was nice,” said Alex.
“Hey, Lauren, get the cheese out of the fridge, will you?” said Tony. “We need something to snack on ’til the pico’s ready.”
Lauren opened the dairy drawer and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Dalia asked.
Still laughing, Lauren held up the plastic-wrapped package of Colby-Jack cheese. It was shaped like the state of Texas.
“What is it with you people and your Texas-shaped things? You are so proud of the shape of your state. So far in my time here I’ve seen Texas-shaped sunglasses, Texas-shaped waffles and a package of Texas-shaped pasta.”
“Oh, there’s plenty more where that came from,” said Dalia. “My mom has some friends with a Texas-shaped swimming pool.”
“We need that,” said Tony, pointing at Dalia with his steak tongs. “We need a Texas-shaped swimming pool.”
“No, we really don’t.”
“We don’t do that in Pennsylvania,” Lauren said. “Nobody puts in a Pennsylvania-shaped swimming pool.”
“That’s because Pennsylvania is a boring shape,” Tony said. “Pennsylvania is just a rectangle with errors. Now if a pool company in Pennsylvania started making swimming pools shaped like Texas, that would sell.”
“Hey, check it out,” said Alex, gesturing with his knife. “A Texas-shaped cutting board.”
“Made of mesquite wood, even better,” said Tony.
“And being used to make pico de gallo, for the hat trick!” said Lauren.
“Texas-shaped stuff is all over,” said Dalia, “but Tony is the worst I ever saw at it. He would seriously get the Texas-shaped swimming pool if I let him.”
“Well, who wouldn’t want a Texas-shaped swimming pool?” Tony demanded. “It’s a great shape.”
Dalia swatted him on the rear with a kitchen towel. “You’re a pretty great shape yourself.”
Once the steaks were served, Lauren saw what the big deal was about chimichurri sauce. Over dessert—Dalia’s flan—Tony got a crafty look on his face and said in that casual way, “So, Alex, when is your next get-together with your historical-costume friends?”
“Weekend after next.”
Tony waited two beats, then said, as if he had just thought of it, “Hey, you should take Lauren with you. She could take pictures, and do one of those journalism things that she does.”
It was actually not a bad idea. She could get a lot of mileage out of a piece like that, repackaging it for different markets—travel, local interest, fun things to do in central Texas. Probably a lot of opportunities for nice pics of people and places.
Alex shook his head. “Nah, she wouldn’t be interested in that.”
“Actually, I am interested,” Lauren said. “Is it nearby?”
“Couple hours away. But I don’t think you really want to go.”
“What do you mean?” Tony asked. “You’re always going on about how awesome it is.”
“For hard-core Texans and history buffs, sure. Maybe not so much for regular people.”
“Well, obviously I’m not on your level as far as Texas history goes,” Lauren said. “But I’m not dumb. And I do have some experience absorbing local lore. Where is this thing? I’ll go on my own. I won’t bother you, and you can pretend not to know me.”
“It would be silly for the two of you to both drive all that way separately,” Tony said. At the same time he gave Alex a look that clearly said it would also be very rude.
“It’s no problem, really,” Lauren said. “I can go on my own. I’m used to traveling by myself.”
“No, Tony’s right,” said Alex. “It’d make more sense to go together.”
“Good,” Tony said. “It’s settled, then.”
Lauren didn’t like the idea of tagging along with Alex when he sounded so far from enthusiastic, but if she insisted on not going at this point, she would be shaming Tony and making things more awkward.
Why was Alex so reluctant to take her? Admittedly, a few of their conversations had been a bit...spirited, and their views on some subjects were not exactly simpatico, but on the whole he’d seemed to enjoy her company well enough. At any rate, he hadn’t seemed repulsed by her.
Besides, he didn’t look so much annoyed as...embarrassed. Like he had something to hide.
Then it hit her. Alex had a girlfriend in the reenactor group that Tony didn’t know about.
Of course he did. A big handsome guy like Alex, so solid and hardworking and community-oriented—no way could he be single.
Maybe she wasn’t quite a girlfriend yet, just a girlfriend-in-the-making. In which case, having Lauren along would cramp his style.
Fine, then. She’d show him he had nothing to worry about from her. She’d give him plenty of space—acres of space. Really, he might have guessed as much. It wasn’t like she’d given him any reason to think she was interested in him.