As I poke a spoon at the browning beef and sizzling onions, I wonder again how I’m ever going to find Dead End and haul his furry butt home before Lyon notices the dog being gone. The question sticks like gum to the bottom of my riding boot, smack next to another worry. Did I disappoint Ms. Hunter by not cleaning out the stalls first thing this morning, the way she expected me to? Sure, I finished the job this afternoon, after searching for Dead End, but Ms. Hunter wanted the work done early. She requires her stable to be run in an organized way. Upsetting her is about the last thing I need to do. Her stable is my refuge these days. The one place where I don’t keep expecting to see Mom.
“Our dog could be anywhere,” G.D. mumbles from his seat at the kitchen table, more to himself than to me.
“I’m sure he hasn’t gone far,” I say, picturing the dog sitting and panting near Mom in this very kitchen while she cooked or baked, both of them smiling and happy.
“The last time the pooch took off, Cub and I found him in the woods behind the stable.” I try to sound upbeat. But the dog wasn’t there this afternoon, I don’t add. “He’s just confused right now.”
“Like you?” G.D. squints hard at me. He’s always been able to sense my inner troubles.
I give him my I don’t want to talk about me look.
“And you’ve been running around all day. So, why are you making dinner when we got a freezer full of casseroles, fried chicken, and covered dish meals?”
Because filling the ranch with Mom’s cooking brings her close again, I don’t say. Being in this kitchen, her room, makes me feel like she could walk in here at any second. That everything could go back to being happy and as it should be. And because I think Mom would want me cooking her recipes. I always watched her cook, helped her gather ingredients, and measured for her while we talked about school, friends, and riding.
At least until she got down-and-out sick, and meal-making times became bed-sitting times, with me doing most of the talking and Mom listening, sometimes with smiles. Dinners became unimportant then, turning into frozen pizzas, canned soups, and cold cereal.
“I see what you’re doing,” G.D. scolds. “You’re avoiding what’s happened.”
I start to chop peppers, hammering the knife hard. “Maybe it just annoys the spit out of me how everyone within a five-mile radius has been bringing us meals for the last three months.” As if casseroles can plug the gaping holes that Mom has left. “Why does everyone think I can’t cook any better than Lyon?” A guy who finds boiling water a challenge.
“Folks want to help, girl. That’s all.” G.D. lets out a long breath. “Okay. If you insist on cooking, let your old granddad help.” But he winces as he tries to push himself up from his chair.
I wave him back down. “You’re helping me plenty from where you are.” I try to sound cheerful—for him.
I’d never admit it, but cooking dinner does seem like a waste of time tonight, since Dead End has taken our appetites with him. And I’m sure not cooking for Lyon. He hasn’t shown up for even one sit-down dinner since Mom left. He’d rather stuff down leftovers after midnight—or whenever he drags himself back to the ranch after work. Mom could always get him to come home for dinner, but not me.
“Got that chili recipe from a hitchhiker in El Paso.” G.D. eases himself back into the chair. “Gave it to your mama. She knew what to do to make it better than delicious.” G.D. shifts. “I miss everything about that woman.” He stares at his boots. “Never met anyone who loved dogs more than me, until Lyon brought her around.”
I concentrate on chopping more peppers. “I added extra beef, to put weight back on you.”
G.D. rubs his chin. “Don’t count on that. But I’ll eat my share. You’re a darn good cook. Take after your mama.”
I smile. Compliments like that are sweeter than fudge, especially since I wonder if Mom had been teaching me to cook to get me ready to take her place in the kitchen.
“If I were a betting man, I’d wager that you’ll be as long-legged and pretty as your mama, too.”
Now I really smile.
“You’re a good combination of your parents.”
I’ve heard this before, but these days it gives me special comfort.
“Got your love of horses and your riding skills from Lyon and me. My boy has always been a top-notch rider. And he gets such a kick out of watching you ride.”
My smile goes flat. “You mean used to.” I return to the browning beef and stab hard at it. “Lyon doesn’t go near the stable anymore. Not to watch me ride. Not to ride himself. Whenever I ask him when we’ll ride again, together, the way we used to do, he says he’s too busy at his stupid store.”
G.D. nods in that knowing way he has. He’s told me before that Lyon escapes to MacGregor’s Feed and Farm Store to keep busy while absorbing what has happened.
“Even Ms. Hunter’s been asking about where he’s been,” I mutter.
Good thing she doesn’t hold Lyon’s disappearing act against me. She still pays me to feed, groom, and exercise her horses, still gives me free riding lessons and lets me ride Crossfire in shows. G.D. figures Ms. Hunter likes that I make her horses look good by winning blue ribbons. Lyon says she respects how I put away my pay, saving for my own horse or even my own stable someday. Mom used to say that Ms. Hunter was simply a smart woman who recognized a hard worker and fellow animal lover.
But I wonder if Ms. Hunter has noticed how my heart has wandered away from its one-time focus on show rings, blue ribbons, and shiny trophies.
“Your pop can’t be around the horses right now, or the smells of grain and leather,” G.D. says, his voice low. “They remind him of happier times.”
I stare at the chili. “All he does is work. He hasn’t touched his guitar, whistled, or sung so much as half a note in the last year.” Even though the man couldn’t hold a tune if it had a handle, I miss his singing the most. I miss sitting beside him, watching his fingers work the guitar strings as they guide his voice through a song. He’s hiding behind that wall he’s been building around himself, I don’t say, remembering what I’ve overheard Cub’s mom tell the minister. Ever since, I haven’t been able to shake the image of Lyon behind stacked stones as tall as an oak tree.
My fingers find my right back pocket, where I keep the picture of Mom and Lyon that I’d laminated last week. I love this photograph of them on their wedding day—young, dressed up, polished. If their smiles had been any bigger, they wouldn’t have fit in the photo.
G.D. grunts, shaking his head. “Your father’s been burying himself in his work to escape the reality of…”
“Don’t!” I jam my thumbs into my ears. After a minute of G.D. not moving his lips, I uncork my fingers, breathe. “Maybe Lyon doesn’t want to be around me anymore.”
G.D. lets a huge sigh go. “It’s not you.” He shifts in his chair, massaging the necklace rings. “Believe me, girl. It’s not you. Your pop’s trying to keep from thinking about your mama. He’s running from his grief. Like you’re doing with all your work at the stable and all the laundry and house cleaning you’ve taken on around here.” G.D. glances at the refrigerator. “And all the cooking.” He sighs again. “Ten people couldn’t get as much done in one day as you’ve been doing.”
After a long, silent minute, he clears his throat. “Has Cub called?”
The desperation behind his question makes my chest ache worse. I shake my head no. “But he’s got tons of chores that keep him from a phone,” I say even though I know Cub would have called if he’d seen Dead End. Before I can spit out another excuse, driveway gravel crackles. The rumble of Lyon’s truck fills the garage.
G.D. and I exchange arched-eyebrow looks of disbelief as Lyon’s work boots thump across the family room and enter the kitchen.
“Well, take my lunch and call me hungry,” G.D. says, grinning big. “Nice to see you home at a decent hour, son.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lyon grumbles over the toothpick that pokes out from between his lips. He’d almost started smoking again, a year ago, when the doctors told us that Mom was sick, but she’d made him promise that he’d never go back to tobacco. Instead, he chews through forests of toothpicks.
“I’m making dinner,” I tell him, sounding too hopeful.
“Smells good.” But he throws me a weak half smile that tells me he won’t be sticking around for dinner. I can almost hear him say I’m sorry, kiddo—words he used to offer up whenever I got sad or disappointed, words that always made me feel better. Almost as soon as that half smile appears, though, it disappears. Faster than a shy rabbit.
Lyon thumps to the counter where we keep the mail. “I can’t stay.” Charcoal crescents hang like hammocks under his bloodshot eyes. Shadows that weren’t there a year ago. But then, a year ago, before Mom started going to the hospital for treatments, his black hair hadn’t been edged with so much gray.
His latest toothpick slides to the opposite side of his mouth as he flips through envelopes. “I left some orders here, need to get them back to the store.”
Of course he does.
“Where’s our favorite dog?” Lyon glances right, and then left, his gaze pausing on Dead End’s rumpled fleece dog bed lying neglected in the kitchen corner.
“With Cub,” I spit out as if lying is something I do every day. “He took him for a long walk.”
Lyon’s forehead crinkles, probably from confusion since Cub has never taken Dead End anywhere without me. But Lyon leaves my lie alone, doesn’t poke holes in it. A year ago, he’d have picked up on this fib in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. Because he knows me inside and out. But he’s stopped paying attention to what I do, or stopped caring.
Shaking his head, G.D. looks away from me, grumbling his disapproval. “Sarah Doyle called again,” he tells Lyon after a minute that feels more like a week. “She wants you to get back to her.”
Lyon gives me a smug look that I’ve come to hate worse than canned peas. It says, You and I both know why she’s calling. Then he tips his head down, as if focusing on me over the top of glasses, and silently asks, “You ready to go visit your mom’s place under the dogwood tree yet, Dill?” He’s thrown this question my way too many times already in the last three months. It always makes me tight. And my continuing refusal to go within ten miles of Fairfax County makes Lyon tight. I’d like to say that this makes us even, but it only makes me miserable. Before Mom got sick, Lyon and I went everywhere together.
“Why don’t you both visit the Doyles this weekend and…” G.D. pauses before hitting the issue smack in the center. He glances sidelong at me as I get ready to cram my fingers into my ears.
“Sounds good to me,” Lyon says. “We’ll go see where your…”
I mutter a solid “No” that cuts him off.
With a sigh that shows I’m exhausting him, Lyon flips more envelopes. “Apparently, Sarah Doyle and I are going to need a tow truck to drag Dill to Fairfax.”
I clear my throat. “I’m making G.D.’s southwestern chili,” I tell Lyon, hoping to change the subject while also tempting him into staying home. “I made cornbread, too, with corn off the cob mixed in. The way you like it.” The way Mom always made it.
Of course, he keeps sorting stupid envelopes. “I’m sure it’s delicious, Dill.” Lyon drops the remaining mail on the counter. “Maybe I’ll have some when I get home tonight.” Before I can offer up an argument, he turns to G.D. “How you feeling, Pop?”
“Never mind me. What’s the latest with that new store?”
Also known as the threat that’s been at Lyon’s back for a year and a half. Before life got serious around here, Mom and Lyon would talk about this new store for hours, working out ways to keep customers coming to MacGregor’s.
Lyon wipes his hand over his eyes and bites down hard on the toothpick. “It opens next week. A huge warehouse of everything a farmer could ever need. All computerized and high-tech. Don’t know how my little store will compete.”
“Horse wings and hoof feathers.” G.D. sweeps his bony hand as if brushing away Lyon’s concern. “No one in his right mind would give up doing business with you. You’re honest and hardworking. You understand farm life and the needs of farmers.”
“Thanks, Pop. Now forget about my problems and tell me how your legs are today.”
“They’re still attached to my body. That’s all you need to know,” G.D. snaps.
Lyon glances at me, his dark eyes questioning. Much as I want to explain G.D.’s sour mood, I sure can’t say anything about Dead End being gone. “His legs have been bothering him,” I point out instead.
“Don’t be troubling your pop about my legs, girl.” G.D. wags a bony finger at me. “Go add those peppers and beans to the beef before it cooks into shoe leather.”
Lyon sighs. “Pop, I called Doc Kerring and told him about your weight loss and leg cramps. He wants to see you.”
“Send him a photo,” G.D. barks.
I cringe, hating how G.D. and Lyon fuss at each other, which they’ve been doing forever. Mom used to say that they were like male elk crashing their antlers together—all noise and nonsense.
“You need to see a doctor, Pop,” Lyon says.
I flinch, waiting for the next crash.
“I need a doctor like I need a hole drilled in my head.” Straining, those creases at his eyes and mouth pinching, G.D. pushes himself up from the chair. “Dill’s chili will need a kick. I got hot pepper sauce from Mexico in my trunk.”
“I’ll get it.” Lyon, as big as a bear, the way G.D. used to be, stomps past me in only two strides. “I made you an appointment to see Doc Kerring, Pop.”
G.D. leans on the chair as he gets his cane under him. “I can get the pepper sauce. Go cancel that doctor appointment before I give you a kick. Then sit down and relax, boy. Have some of Dill’s chili.”
G.D.’s cane taps along the short hallway from the kitchen to the back room that he’s been calling his for the last nine months, since he came to live with us. According to Lyon, soon after he married Mom, G.D. became a second father to her. And that’s why he was pretty much the only person she’d let take care of her when the treatments made her weak.
Now, Lyon sighs and drops with a thump into his usual chair at the kitchen table, the one across from Mom’s chair, which no one sits in these days. He adjusts the toothpick. “That man’s more stubborn than a pack of mules.”
“Guess that’s where you get it from.” I force a smile, hoping this will lighten him up.
He tries to grin at my little jab, an echo of how we used to be, always tossing teasing and grins back and forth, but now his mouth only wobbles before going flat. He just doesn’t have any play in him anymore.
“He seems real down tonight, doesn’t he?” Lyon looks at me then, his eyes full of the familiar bloodshot sadness. “He needs to see Doc Kerring.”
I pick up a knife, start chopping more peppers. “You sticking around, having dinner with us, would be the best medicine.” I never speak to Lyon like this, but he’s sparked that anger deep down inside me again by talking about the doctor. Not that I have anything against Doc Kerring. He delivered me, treated all my ear infections, and stitched me up more times than anyone could count (I fell out of trees a lot before Lyon introduced me to horses). But doctors mean trouble. Lyon should know this.
He focuses on his boots, kneads his forehead. “I know it’s tough seeing G.D. sick.”
“He’s not sick!” The words shoot out of my mouth, sharper than I mean them to be. I throw the peppers into the pan, stir them so hard that pieces of beef fly out, land in splats onto the counter.
“Dill, Doc Kerring needs to get a look at G.D.” Lyon pauses. “You might as well know that he may want G.D. to go to the hospital for some tests.”
I glare at Lyon over my shoulder. He knows that even the thought of a hospital and tests scrapes the insides of my ears, sours my stomach. “No.” My voice busts out loud and startling. I turn back to the chili, grabbing a can of beans and the electric can opener. “He’s not going to any hospital,” I remind him, my throat tight, restrained. “He promised me that he wouldn’t.”
“Dill…”
The grind of the can opener chews up Lyon’s words.
When it finally stops, he clears his throat, sounding impatient. “Dill, I know it’s been a rough year, especially the last nine months, but you have to deal with…”
My hands slam the can to the counter. The thud is startling. My heart is galloping. Beneath it, sadness escapes the jar deep in my core. The ache swells up and wraps around my insides until my breathing becomes short and ragged.
“Dill, you can’t spend the rest of your life avoiding certain words. You can’t keep avoiding visiting her grave.”
“STOP!” My scream about shakes the ranch as my fingers torpedo into my ears. A tidal wave of a sob wells up into my chest.
My legs take me out of the kitchen, through the family room and back doorway. I fly across the yard, wishing with everything I have that Dead End has come home.